As a general dentist or orthodontist, it’s likely that one of your main areas of focus is attracting new patients to your practice. Monthly new patients are one of the most important indicators of a healthy, thriving practice.
How is your new patient flow? How can you attract more new patients to your practice? How can you achieve a consistently high rate of new patients?
Typically new patients come to a practice in the following 4 ways:
- Referral from an existing patient
- Referral from another dental professional
- Their insurance carrier’s website
- Finding your practice online
How New Patients Find Your Dental Practice
It’s important to recognize that these often work together. For example, if a patient refers a co-worker to your dental practice, that person will very likely look up your practice online. They may go to your website, check your Yelp reviews, and visit your social media pages. If they like what they see, there’s a good chance they’ll call to schedule.
The same is true of a referral from another dental professional or finding your practice through their dental insurance. Very often with dental professional referrals, a patient will walk away with more than 1 choice to see. The same is true when a patient searches their dental insurance website. Chances are, they will check you out online 1st in a variety of places, and judge whether to call and schedule based on what they see online.
The practices who have clean websites with relevant information, excellent online reviews, and a steady social media presence are most likely to win more new patients.
Finding Your Dental Practice Online
What is your online presence like right now? Is it easy for patients to find you by your name? What does your website tell them about your practice? How do you look in your online reviews? Do all these components work together to produce a positive picture of your practice to prospective patients? Or is your online presence discouraging new patients from calling your office and scheduling?
In the modern world, it’s critical to have a positive online presence, as it’s one of the central ways for new patients to find your practice – and thereby help keep your business robust and growing. And it’s easier than you think!
Here’s some practical steps to get you started:
- Make sure your website has the information patients most need easy to find. This includes your address, phone number, hours of operation, insurances accepted, and procedures offered.
- Keep your online reviews positive. Yelp, Google and Facebook are the most important online review platforms. Note that it takes an internal strategy of asking happy patients to review your practice online – and then making it easy for them to do so – in order to gain these positive reviews.
- If you’re going to use social media to market your practice, make sure that you post regularly. It’s worse to have a social media site you never use, than to not have one at all. Better yet, it’s a powerful tool to have a great social media presence with regular, relevant and interesting posts.
At ClearEdge, we know how critical your new patient flow is to the health of your dental business.
We help you with all of these components and more to ensure that your online presence is positive and encourages patients to call and schedule in your office. Contact us today to find out more about how we can help!
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