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Dental Practice Management Articles The Brand Based Approach Written by: Anita Jupp © Copyright. ADEI. All rights reserved. |
One of the core staples of marketing is branding. Too often, people assume that branding is just choosing a logo and colours and applying that consistently to marketing materials. And sure, that's part of what branding is but it's also much, much more than that. Branding represents the "whole picture" of your practice. Your brand tells patients who you are and what you do while promoting your strengths and increasing awareness. Your brand is your entire service - how a patient perceives your practice, the experiences they have, your dentistry.
Your first step in practice branding is to determine what is unique about you and your services. Your distinctiveness will usually be dependent on the type of dentistry you perform and the type of patients you want to attract to your practice. The key here is to gear your marketing plan and branding approach to the type of patients you want - make your brand relevant to your patients.
A family dentist will typically want to appeal to young families. The young families are usually busy, working parents with many extra-curricular activities for children and an active lifestyle of their own. They'll be attracted to a practice that welcomes children, provides helpful payment options, has an accessible location with good hours and offers a variety of general dentistry. Bright, lively colours with family friendly appeal are likely to attract new patients to this type of practice. Alternately, a dentist may wish to appeal to older, adult patients who have flexible income and are more focused on aesthetics rather than maintenance. The branding approach for this dentist might focus on sophistication and elegance in marketing rather than smiley cartoon faces or bold, primary colours.
Naming Your Practice & Tag Lines
It's not necessary to name your practice but if there is more than one dentist, a practice name might be handier than identifying individual dentists. The name should be a reflection of what you're trying to project to patients. If your practice focuses on cosmetic dentistry, your practice name and tag line should reflect that. In a similar vein, solo dentists might want to incorporate only a tag line for their practice, rather than a practice name. Again, it should be a unique identifier that will help patients to identify with the practice.
Creating a Look: Colours & Logos
Once you've identified the type of patient you'd like to attract and identified your practice strengths, it's time to create a consistent look to promote your brand to patients. Consistency is one of the keys to trust and if your patients are presented with a jumble of different brochures and multi-coloured cards and papers, you're not promoting consistency. You're promoting disorganization. Patients want their dentist to be successful; in fact, they expect you to be successful. They want to see nicely prepared materials because that emphasizes efficiency, preparedness and success - primary qualities for promoting positive patient relations.
Identifying Your Strengths
You'll also want to identify your strengths. Simply being a good dentist isn't enough. Patients already expect that you're good. What other strengths do you possess? Capitalize on those strengths. Identifying your key strengths will help you shape an overall marketing strategy. Your strengths will become part of your brand and your brand will help you build patient loyalty and trust.
Marketing Your Brand
Externally, ensure that your brand is promoted in all of your marketing materials. For instance, include your tag line on business cards and letterhead. Emphasize your individual strengths and practice brand qualities on new patient brochures.
8 Steps to Successful Practice Branding
To summarize, there are a number of steps for successful branding of a dental practice.
- Identify the type of patients you want to attract
- Identify your practice strengths
- Identify your individual strengths or skills
- Select a practice name and tag line
- Select practice colours
- Create your logo
- Invest in professional marketing materials
- Market your brand consistently - internally and externally