Wednesday

Dentists, Time To Break the Bounds of Brand Insignificance Empower a Dental Care Expertise Presence!

Dentists want, need, should able to attract new patients. But what makes a consumer decide on one dental office over another? Differentiation makes all the decision making difference! Doing what every other dentist does means getting in line for leftovers or difference splitting.

Instead of doing splits and causing all that strain, dentists must leap ahead, and more patients gain, by employing the proper brand, which includes logos and websites, but also deploying a branding strategy efficiently, coherently, consistently and comprehensively.

Call Oli at 1+888.380.0020 • Set up Branding Interview
A 30-Minute Consult is Complimentary
Standing out in the crowd is a vital step toward the future. Unfortunately, many dental consumers stop too soon, stall and wait around for ‘someday' to begin again.

You know what I mean, those Dentists who regularly presents more comprehensive restorative and/or aesthetic smile makeovers (or cosmetic dentistry of any kind). Of course, this occurrence is also reminiscent of how the dental branding process can play out (or not).

Patients get their free whitening with that one tooth crowned or maybe even as far as enhancing the front four veneers, but often need more than the ‘patient's minimum/get-by' level of work, and just stop there indefinitely. This stalling pattern can be for an ‘unknown' reason or because of a ‘supposed' road block.

The patient feels fine about the minimal work done, but you/the dentist have missed a great opportunity to really enhance their life. As a marketing consultant, I often notice a point in the dentist's brand development with similar, corresponding attributes.

Analogous in the marketing for dentists realm: think of creating dental logos as teeth whitening and office websites as the front four veneers. Both branding elements offer similar immediate and beautiful benefits to our respective clients. Yet the client's long-term financial situation/health and increased production/oral functionality has been treated in a mostly superficial way, and not in a sustainable fashion.

When a dentist completes a ‘basic' branding package, they are very happy, but there are often elements that are subtracted, which means long-term viability is potentially greatly hampered. Either the dentist was not ready to proceed with the entire marketing case plan for various reasons or they have a more specific objection like current funding is insufficient.

Notice the similarities the above paragraph has with the patient's comprehensive dental health situation. While these objections may have realistic initial downsides, the upside sufficiently protects against the potential likelihood of long-term failure caused by scrimping on an ongoing marketing program with multiple (yet affordable) facets.

Presentation of the dental office brand is not merely designing the pieces or product development (such as business cards or letterhead) but the practice message and structure and consistency of overall marketing strategies.

As a dental treatment comparison, what does smile whitening achieve if the patient settles for it rather than progressing to veneers, especially if their condition would not improve much? Regardless of what the dentist tells the patient about taking care of their smile, the value of the dentist's expertise/services will be diminished.

Likewise, the perfect dental logo and accompanying dentist website will be ineffective if it is not deployed expertly, comprehensively or whatever is right for the situation. Like being displayed at appropriate intervals (monthly dental care postcards, videos uploaded regularly...) and in proper venues (Facebook, other social media). To properly ‘take care of' dental office's brand, there must be consistency in deployment and a comprehensive ‘web of inputs' to catch the consumer where they are at and that provide a constant value boost.

If dental logos and dentist websites were ultimately ‘ineffective' - marketing deployment is listless, then dentists would value the ‘artwork' of even great dentistry design less. The result would be fewer dentist-client referrals for the marketing consulting agency, and the design firm.

Dr. Walter Owens, Meharry in Nashville, and Richard Chwalek, Dental Consultant

Take the patient/dental office & dentist/marketer comparison idea one step further…
A dentistry practice can have a great doctor/team combination when it comes to one-on-one patient interaction, but if their external patient communication strategies are weak, the effect may be a total wash as to bringing in enough new dental patients to be successful over and above basic survival.
Not getting the dental logo, practice website and complementary brand information in front of patients at the right time or often enough, can reduce office treatment production revenue significantly. This problem eats away at the value built up internally by the dentist's expertise and everything the team brings to the table.

This disassociation of the dentistry brand from the daily reality (of how communication works) will cause long-term patient retention issues, difficulties upgrading current patients to higher-level treatments, and lowering the percentage of case acceptance by new, as well as, current patients.

It's like a marketing periodontal disease that gets the best of the dental communication process. The waiting, stalling, sitting on hands, deteriorating dental marketing condition should not allowed to become rampant. If my "gum disease communication statistics" are up to date, three out of four dental practices have periodontitis and often don't even want to know it.

Current patients will migrate to other dentists if the value the current dentist offers is not communicated proactively and assertively to his/her audience, whether internal or neighborhood. Without ongoing, integrated dental marketing, patients will perceive that competing practices put a higher value on their care (than you do), are more up to date (than you), and provide an wide open environment of free flowing knowledge (compared to you).

Patients not properly informed will find reasons why the non-communicative dentist's services and expertise are not valid. Trust can be less a matter of expertise or even interpersonal interactions initially because people can get a ‘feeling' from various communication inputs and formats.
Attaching meaning to your dental brand through multi-dimensional contact with the consumer is essential in this hyperkinetic era of marketing influences.

Why so easily abdicate anything to that dentist competitor on the north, south, east, west side?
  • Retain stronger new patient referral agents!
  • Empower even MORE dental care referral agents!
  • Better educate more consumers to upgrade their dentistry to value your dental brand!
Dental logos design firm that collaborates with Niche Dental is @ TPVhq.com
As actual periodontal disease dissolves the supporting structure around teeth, the infrequent ‘socializing of contacts' or a near total lack of a public presence will cause current patients to fall by the wayside, disintegrate a referral network and miss out on developing the next generation of new patients.

Additional issue that creates difficulties in the long run for the dental brand is the functionality of only getting to the front four, which can mean getting overextended in today's high flyers like Facebook (only one example). In this hyperactive communication environment, dentists need to be flexible and know what really works from a dentistry perspective not just from marketing ‘industry' or Internet craze side.

Keeping current patients, attracting new patients, and solidifying referrals is not a one off, yesterday or today type gimmick. Dental marketing brands cannot hold up or take higher ground when presented as an everyone else brand. Being on Facebook (or whatever is the newest, best thing the after I write this article) is merely only one element of today's dental brand strategy.

One superb dental marketing platform can become the generic platform, much like the yellow pages 15 or 20 years ago. While the yellow pages had value back then, and may still have some, it stopped differentiating one dentist from another in any major way because the platform had became ubiquitous: the directory where ‘every dentist' should be/probably was (consumer perspective).

The yellow page dentistry advertisement would differentiate the dentist, but the platform lost its power to be a ‘I'm the different dentist/game changer' as more assertive marketing was pursued by other dentists.

No one or two dental marketing sources will ever attain the level of success dentists ultimately require unless it has many posterior (brand supportive) campaign elements and platforms. Dentists that hope one marketing shingle will trend in a ever higher positive direction without a posterior overarching system of support, will end up with a crowning redo achievement on their front-four alone failed strategy.

The obligatory ‘Facebook' treatment (or front four) will almost always dissolve from the stress of carrying the load all by itself, as competitors pile on, byte into the initial vein of porcelain inlay. Shortsighted (not looking around the obvious) solutions will nullify the initial brand investment, meaning lower new patient stock activity and lower advanced care acceptance returns.

While it often makes sense execute dental practice branding development in phases to cushion the financial portion, the brand appointments cannot be continually cancelled. Dentists need to quickly tie the branding ecosystem together to solidify their brands in each patient's mind and with the public at large.

Waiting and waiting longer can create branding transition frustrations and difficulties, when the dentist-client, like the patient is not staying in the loop to make legitimate and long term value/results possible. Momentum can be lost in the time that elapses between doing the dental logo and when the remainder is deployed.

If dentists move toward deployment as seamless as possible, everyone stays excited about the dentistry brand development/treatment process, which means no one ends up waiting too long to find out what the benefits will be. Letting the branding process take a vacation at the juncture of initial design elements to implementation of the dentist's message and various platforms (online and off) can have long-term marketing consequences.

Outstanding in the dental services crowd is very possible, but the process must be ongoing, additive and flexible to meet all the challenges dentists reading this are envisioning. Yet, as dentists know, letting the patient lag in the comprehensive phased treatment process can put an end to it, and often for many years thereafter or forever. These patients will leave when they have lost trust in some form, not been prepped effectively from a marketing standpoint, and other dilemmas that arise in the interim.

It is the same with a logos/dental branding process. Just because the teeth are whitened (dental logos) and front four done (dentist practice website) does not mean the dental marketing consultant or the dentist is done branding advancing.

Yes, a cool dental logo and dentistry office website are great (and a Facebook account deployed), but don't expect that these elements alone will provide the healthy and long-lasting results dentists like you really are expecting and more importantly, require.

Like your patients, you have the freedom to choose: a super looking yet superficially limiting solution or ongoing ‘outstanding' branding success.

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Writing Reduced, Status Produced and Issues Induced

By this Dental Marketing Connective Communication© Consultant...


Richard Chwalek
NicheDental.com


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Dentists, For More on My Unique Social Media Program or...
  • Contact me via Online@nichedental.com or...
  • Call 1+888.380.0020 and schedule a consultation with my Co-consultant Oli Gonsalves.


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Monday

Branding Lacking: New Patients Whose 1st Question is, "Do You Take My Dental Insurance?"

When you're a dentist who provides high value care, why do many new patients first ask this question, "Do you take my dental insurance?"



Developing an effective presence in the dentist's local market is crucial for a dental practice to achieve long-term success. This is especially true of dentists who need a higher percentage of fee-for-service patients to be viable, and profitable or those who accept more comprehensive recommendations.

Unfortunately, many people have a generic, if not more negative, view of dentistry. Therefore, without evaluating the marketing environment and the strategies needed to pursue that market now, and upgrading how the dentist presents him or herself to fit the new landscape, each marketing action can lead the audience to form the wrong impression about the dentist's service, and back to the future.

Successfully changing perceptions requires more than in-office pronouncements about quality or search advertising that links to a promotion of free teeth/smile whitening, a new technology or cosmetic dentistry technique.

For example, Invisalign 'clear braces' have a great dental technology concept, but every other dentist uses it or a similar product.

Taking a proactive, pragmatic, strategic approach is necessary to change this impression. The educative value of this tightly focused approach is much greater than the sum of its parts. Understanding the basic components of effective marketing will keep the focus on long-term results.

Evaluating these components offers insight into the effectiveness of your strategy. Achieving synergy in marketing makes it more likely that people are not only made aware of the dentist's image and message, but that patients also react more appropriately to the dentist's recommendations.

Each dental marketing component – high value branding, a consistent neighborhood conversation, and assertive public presence – will be examined to develop a synergistic dentist, dental office brand identity.

In this first installment, I will look at what is the type of high value image dentists should strive to present.

High Value Image


The FOUR components of a high value image include design, message, logo, and presentation, which constitute the overall dental brand.
  • Design: It includes colors, style of interior, external, patient, and public presented elements, and a cohesively projected image
  • Message: It involves what is said, how it is said and how often it is being said, how congruous it is between dental team members, and in public advertising
  • Logo: The look should fit the message, service style, services presented, team, doctor, and decor presentation.
  • Presentation: Distribution of the logo/message must be done throughout the environment, not merely on a website and/or letterhead. The promotion of these elements should make them synonymous with the dentist's name and/or practice name. 

Combining these four elements means the brand is able to interact effectively, succinct and purposeful they are

Unless dentists create this type of impact, their marketing becomes part of the clutter. With the success of this new level of influence, the dentist can create a better atmosphere of dental treatment acceptance.

The design of each dental marketing piece should make an impressive visual statement that catches the eye. However, the design must also effectively influence and work with the logo and message to uphold the brand.

Few dentistry office brands will thrive or even survive in this economy without a cohesive packaging of these elements. For example, many people have watched an entire television show, even when entertaining, have difficulty remembering the identity of any of the sponsors.

While the dental logo is part of design, in the context of the context of dentistry promotion, it has another vital purpose. Those who develop online advertising campaigns, dental postcards, brochures and other media need to think of how the logo influences the consumer in the marketing, as part of the brand and within every design element.

One basic strategy in design structure is logo placement. Placing the dental logo is very important to building the design brand. The design needs to accentuate and point to the logo. Without this design quality, the dental logo becomes just another element on the piece, like the area coder, rather than the flag bearer of the dentist's marketing.

Online images, advertisements, direct mail and the dental practice's websites will confuse the dentist's audience unless the design components are coordinated and memorable. Synergy of design, message and logo give the brand the ability to speak to the dental services consumer audience with clarity. This clarity has to be present or high value, a consistent tactile, visual conversation, and public presence are more difficult to elevate, raising the awareness high enough for consumers to see dentistry differently.

CONCLUSION


Practices that wish to sustain an effective level of marketing engagement need to find the right balance, but without engaging the branding issue, dentists will lag behind competitors. Approaching the audience in this refined way will increase the likelihood new patients will demand the dentist's highest level and most healthy appropriate treatment plan.

The competitive environment will continue in various ways because other dentists are making this upgrade, and of course, how the local economy is affecting each and every dentist in their area. The challenge is to move ahead as quickly as possible with a plan that makes sense for the individual dentists.

Yet, like the patient who is skittish about all the costs, and changes in their life involved in this choice, many dentists will put off what is needed till 'a better time' and they miss out on the benefits doing it today would have done for them.

Dental insurance, rather than being something disliked by dentists, or scorned, should be placed in the area as a supplement to the reality of what is possible, not an impediment to getting there, or even thinking about get there. High value branding is a foundation for changing perceptions, and then moving towards success for all parties involved!

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This has been the basics of high value branding, next up a consistent neighborhood conversation, and then the last topic in this dental marketing consulting series will be activating an assertive public presence – will be examined to develop a community aware, synergistic dentist, dental office brand identity.

Dental Marketing Consulting Blog Post,

By Dick Chwalek, Niche Dental
NicheDental.com

The Peripheral Vision is the Designer of Most Elements on this page including dental logos.

Dentistry Logos or Branding: Dentists, What Is Your Focus

Practice owner dentists have two goals: serving their patients and making money. Dentists not making money will not be able to serve patients. Everything stops without proper cash flow.

Dental logos, no matter how artistically pleasing, are not cash machines. Dental branding on the other hand can be your PIN password to success.

Dentists, have you asked yourself this question: Are logos really needed for my practice? Actually, no dental office needs a logo. However,  every business needs a brand.

Strategic dental branding helps the consumer make faster, more accurate decisions:
  • Is this the dental office that I should consider?
  • How should I think about the dentist's expertise and services?
  • Are the dental office's fees commensurate with the service, and treatment value provided?
Yes, some dental practices can build brands with heavy lifting, sweat equity, and elbow grease. Others locate in an area with economy on cruise control (growing, upscale, many families). Then, you also have the dentist as selling machine.

What about the dentist that lacks oodles of time, long community standing, and/or sales prowess?

  • The Economy has hit the dentist hard, compared to other dentists
  • Dentists who have built their practice with referrals, but referrals are dwindling.
  • They change their dental treatment approach, and patients are not accepting this strategy.
  • Revenues have slowed and the practice realizes this is real, not a fluke.
  • The area has changed, and patients have different expectations, and other options (new dentist competitors).
  • It is a startup dental practice, and many things have to go right to be successful.
  • Finally, the area has some cruise control elements, but dental consumers are unaware of YOU!

How Can You Get Things To Move In Your Direction?

  • Do some advertising in the local newspaper?
  • Send direct mail dental postcards?
  • Improve your dental team?
  • Relocate or remodel your dental practice?
  • Lower your fees? Offer half off smile whitening?
  • Run PPC Online Advertising or SEO to your dental website?
  • Add new advanced technology, cosmetic (botox) services and promote them?
  • Develop a new dental logo?
The answer to these dental marketing questions are yes and maybe no. Here are some ideas to give you a way forward.

FIRST, Do Something Consistent And Unique

Doing something consistent is vital, but which ones and why do them? You figure this out by determining what your dental brand is. To many people and dentists, branding sounds like pure marketing consultant hokum.

Sadly, it often is. Not because there is no value in dental branding, but because few dentists develop their brand adequately, using rationale data and appropriate examination of their dental practice development goals.

Many companies disappear before most of us know who they are because of a weak idea. Other “great” marketing ideas have a short lifespan: the pet rock or petfood Dot Come, my pet examples. Then there are companies like Wells Fargo and Microsoft with brands that were built over time rather than through a "branding process".

Dental practices usually fall somewhere in the middle of the previous brand building examples. Waiting 5 years to build their dental brand is an eternity for some dentists. Most dentist brands also  don’t outlive the first dentist who develops it.

Many dental practices start up much like a new family owned restaurant. They have good food (clinical skills), a nice interior presentation, and excited people ready to serve. They can thrive for a while on this energy and with a healthy referral base. "Come to my dentist - she just opened a practice and is looking for new patients. She is very friendly and gentle." 

A few years later the schedule is full and “accepting” new patients are less of an issue. Maybe the dental practice is on cruise control on the wrong road and does not know it. Besides the economy hitting a wall, there also things like the community changing – younger competitors shake things up and newer suburbs pull people away.

Dental treatments, techniques, and strategies evolve. These complex concepts become a harder sell or just bewildering to present in a cohesive way. Financing and dental insurance add more issues and complexity to the relationship.

New dental patient referrals start diminishing. And face-to-face referrals often cannot provide the right mix of “education” to move consumers up the ladder to higher-level dentistry.

Patients still thinks the dentist is very nice, but $12,000 for a restorative or cosmetic case requires more than nice. Patients and other local consumers start seeing other dentists marketing and begin thinking the competitor has something their dentist does not have.

As dentists figure out how they will garner your portion of these dental patients, others are stumbling onto to these consumers by just doing something. These dentists slap together dental logos, ads, PPC advertising, SEO keyword content, DVDs, mailers and dental websites, Facebook, Twitter...

With shear force of doing something (and often being the first to do it), these doing something dentists find some success.

While dentists like you could jump into this fray with your own something here, something there dental marketing campaign (or possibly you already have) you stop short and say to yourself: "This is not for me. There should be a way I can have success, but still present the image I want." This is where dental branding is required!

Rather than "advertising" and hawking your dental wares, you want to communicate a different level of dental value and expertise. Your dental brand could be an upscale image or just an upgrade in expectations and results. An effective brand cannot be pulled from the shelf.


Make It Happen With Dynamic Dental Branding!

  • It’s an approach with more depth than artwork alone (a dental logo)
  • Determines who you should be (moving beyond the generic dentist concept)
  • Refines your image so you speak directly and efficiently to your target patients
  • Provides an effective background story to build memorable and genuine rapport
Communicating relevant aspects of who you are (your dental brand) helps consumers make quicker decisions about "what to do" as your patient. It prompts or cues dental patients to more easily accept what you emphasize.

Example of A Common Consumer Experience

Coffee is an intrinsic part of the consumer culture. Service stations give it away with a fill up. Some restaurants give free coffee refills. It can be sold as a loss leader to get you to buy a meal. Now with one word, I will get many of you to pay $3.99 for one cup a joe: Starbucks! What does coffee have to do with dentistry or dental marketing?

Well, too many consumers think of dentistry healthcare’s loss leader. If the patient gets it with a fill up (it's covered by their dental insurance) they will consider it. When done properly, dental branding changes this dynamic and puts dentistry higher up on the priority ladder.

Yes, not every consumer will reprioritize his/her dentistry budget because of marketing. No matter what Starbucks does to their coffee, I won’t pay $3.99--because I do not like coffee. But Starbucks is focused more on the “coffee group” than me. They have defined their audience and are mining that vein. Targeting me is a waste of their time.

Furthermore, brands cue consumers on what to do, believe in, and ask for. Rather than a restaurant that sells generic coffee you become a coffee spa. Dentists like you need to refine who you are.

Otherwise it will be difficult to make "your latte´" seem more valuable than people currently perceive it (and possibly have a higher price) if you are promoting a large menu of other choices.

This is more than becoming a cosmetic dentist, which is still a generic concept and misunderstood at the same time. Good dental branding is about the dentist, their passion and how the dentist wants to serve patients.

When targeted dental consumers (desired patients) are presented the dentist's brand, they will relate to it. If a dentist's audience sees another dentist doing the same thing, they will be grounded to the branded dentist because they will have self-selected the brand, not just stumbled into any dental office.
How does brand loyalty play out in the real world? Example: Few Starbucks' clientele are ever seen at McDonalds (or any other less refined competitor) getting their coffee.


While no dentist has the funds of a marketing behemoth like Starbucks, there are many strategies to develop and build your dental brand to make it standout. Most established practices only need 5 to 10 new "targeted" patients each month to be successful and new dental practices can develop a stronger following by going this route. A correctly positioned brand is able to "find" those new dental patients and draw them in.

So, do dentists like you NEED a dental logo or a dentistry brand? Not every dental practice does. Some dentists just plow ahead and get it done on their own terms.

However if I ask, "What is Nike's logo and what do you think when you see it?" Then you understand how a logo can change the dynamic of your dental marketing.

Dental logos makes communication visual, adding another dimension. Humans experience many things visually. It makes learning simpler. It gives us quick cues about our world. Colors, shapes, and the like speak to us emotionally, which is very powerful.

CONCLUSION: Still Don't Want A Dental Logo?

Still thinking dentists don’t need logos? First, it is your prerogative. Of course, many dentists tell me a person's smile can say a lot about them. My response, "And no one NEEDS a 'beautiful' smile! Do they?" So is visual experience important or not?
The logo is the "beautiful" on a dentist's marketing. Like bright, confident smiles, dental logos might not be "needed" but can be very persuasive at speaking in a way nothing else can. The dental logo also helps to integrate a dentist's marketing materials and message.

If the dentist's logo is designed to fit their dental brand, then it will be distinct enough to separate the dentist from the smiling teeth logos, generic toothbrush dentistry brands and other wannabes.
A dentistry brand is many things: the dentist, their dental team, and the practice environment. It is the patients wanted by the dentist. It is the community. It is people centered, not dental focused. And, it should have a complementary dental logo.

Don't get a wannabee dental logo, get a dental brand.

For the depth and experience in dental branding,

Contact Niche Dental - Email or

CALL Oli 1-888.380.0020 
Have him set up a consultation with me
 
Dental Marketing Commentary by Dick Chwalek
 
Dental Communication Integration Consultant

Developer of Connective Communication©

Twitter.com/NicheDental

Facebook.com/NicheDental


 
> Member, co-founder Northern Dental Alliance
 Original Dental Logos or Branding Article

Friday

Dental Brands on the Downward, Deteriorating Direction: Then Upwardly Update!



Invigorate Your Referrals & Refresh Your New Patient Numbers
Dental office brands can become stagnant. Then deteriorate very quickly, depending on the the local and national economic environment, and strength of the practice structure and management.
Dental Dentists Office Logo
Generally, within seven to ten years many elements can begin to spread apart, and lose it's strength without a focused reenergizing effort.

A dentist's brand includes the office location, décor of facility, architectural layout, dentist expertise, team presentation, practice mission and advertising messages. Of course, there also is the logo design and the look of the collateral marketing materials. Some dental brand elements will have a much longer life, and other dentistry brands become outdated even before Google can rank it.
  • Weak & Confusing Dental Brands
  • Deteriorating & Stagnant Dental Brands
  • Dental Office Brand Identity
  • Visual Brand Icon: Dental Logos Design
  • Conclusion: Refreshing Dentistry Practice Brands
Does your dental practice brand have the strength to thrive?


Weak, Tired & Confusing Dentistry Brands


  • Employing generic marketing when dentists want to emphasize high value dental services
  • Advertising convenience and speed while expecting consumers to pay a high quality treatment fee
  • Promoting cosmetic dentistry without the look and feel of artistry within practice brand elements and office design
  • Building awareness of implant dentistry expertise while simultaneously focusing a lot on free and discounted dental services
Dental office brand inconsistencies mean your patients and consumers come in with hard to manage expectations.


Deteriorating & Stagnant Dental Brands
  • Dentists with significant expertise who have little high value public exposure
  • Referrals built solely on simplistic brand knowledge and expressions such as “friendly and nice”
  • Dental offices where comfort is not an obvious focus in the treatment, setting and team demeanor
  • Marketing focused on services, NOT on people and the overall value of advanced, lifelike dentistry
When a dental brand becomes stagnant and too internally focused (about what the dentist is comfortable with), patients start to look elsewhere. Simply being nice and friendly no longer makes the grade anymore.

Dentist, Practice Brand Identity
Logo Design, bottom portion


Brand is closely tied with image. A stronger dental brand can take the office image to a higher level. Dentists with exceptional credentials and a well-honed brand are an infinitely more cohesive entity. An expert can't stop adding new techniques and knowledge and a brand can't rely on one element to survive long term.

Many dental offices rely on one or two branding elements: nice/gentle, location/expertise, facility/high-tech or great team/superb service. These dentistry branding attempts can only cover so much ground on their own.

New dental patients are attracted because of many branding efforts. Relying on one or two elements like location and referrals means gaps in new patient development will appear. Branding is communication; communication is everything for a dental practice. Oral health, dentistry expertise, and preventive dental care compliance all need communication to make them viable within a consumer society, and ultimately, perceived as vital to each individual.

Marketing dental expertise is complicated. To be successful advocating your high value dentistry services, the complexity needs to be skillfully explained and succinctly understood. This is difficult to do when current and prospective patients are being influenced and distracted by other branding efforts that appeal to them at more basic and emotional levels from ‘free whitening’ and ‘covered by my dental insurance’ to ‘mercury fillings’ and ‘dentist visit fear.’

Marketing a full line of dental care services that are always changing and often misunderstood is problematic. This garble of clinical terms intermixed with always evolving marketing techniques adds to the confusion, which disconnects the consumer from understanding the value your dentistry expertise makes possible.

A relevant and concise brand sets your dental office apart from dentist competitors selling those same services as well as other consumer services, which will end up taking precedence when dentistry is missing from public discourse.

Standing out from the generic dentist crowd has a lasting impact. Providing brand name dental services like Lumineers, Invisalign, CEREC One-visit Crowns can be helpful initially. But when every other dentist is advertising the same way, you begin to blend in again.

Rather than being the “brand named” cosmetic dentistry veneers artist, invisible braces/orthodontic expert, or high-tech crown restorative dentist, develop an image that is bigger and more exclusive than a service you provide that every other dentist does. A unified and distinctive practice-branding strategy can tie together these other elements and create a focal point for your dental advertising and value educative messages.

Visual Brand Icon: Dental Logos Design


Combining a unique dental logo, cohesively designed package of materials, a congruent image with a consistent salvo of ongoing refreshed re-branding strategies can prevent your dentistry brand from going on life support.

Brand Consulting by Niche Dental, Logo Designed by TPV
Dental brands such as ‘drill, fill and bill’, ‘dentistry has little value’ and ‘only if insurance covers it’ survive in the minds of patients because most dental offices have similar images or generic marketing strategies. Therefore, dentistry mostly attracts one segment of the larger consumer audience - those who have tooth loss, those in pain, the insurance patient and the (non-fearful) health conscious.
Some of these consumers are desirable, but won't change their current perspective without a different message; many others are not likely to ever connect without an enhanced brand identity being presented.

A unique brand that incorporates pleasant images (no dental chair mouth mining), relaxing actual patient renewed smiles (not fear producing metal probes) comfort creating service strategies like sedation dentistry (avoiding the perception that tooth pulling is the goal) as well as advanced technology for a more rewarding experience and smile makeover result has substantial potential to change perspectives and lives.

Comprehensive dental branding will bring more people from the yesteryear of bad dental visit memories to the present day ‘brand’ of total oral health with the dental ‘logo’ of exceptional value and oft spoken ‘tagline’ of painless treatment and pain free living. Effective dental branding is about high value not high cost, great service not great expense, and lifelike results not lifeless quality.

Brands focused on rejuvenated oral health and stunning smile makeovers present the public with a reason to rethink their current value system and move beyond the generic concepts of fix and maintain into the realm optimal and exceptional. Whether dental branding makes sense to you or not, many of your patients and much of the general public need an assertive and refreshing message to move in the right direction quickly enough to preserve their oral health and in many too many cases save their smiles.

Conclusion: Refreshing Your Dentistry Office Brands


Sitting on the sidelines means more people missing out on your dental expertise and smile makeover artistry, which is a losing position for everyone. Patients lose teeth. Dentists like you miss out on revenues. Public dental health continues its supreme reign as the ultimate king of loss leaders.

LIFT your dental practice to a higher plane of dentistry communication. Get properly and profoundly branded!

Contact Niche Dental
Monticello, MN 55362
• CALL 866-453-1026


Or Oli @1.888.380.0020
Fallbrook CA

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Thursday

Dental Logos are not Brands, Branding is Much More!

A Dental Logo is only ONE part of a dentist's brand.

First, successful dental branding is NOT manipulation. It is about the reality of how people make decisions. Focus somewhere else, and achieve nothing new or better, or as a business, gather much less revenues.

Most importantly, a dental brand should explain who you/the dentist are, why you are, and what you are able to do, and how well you are able/qualified to do it. It must be created and regularly expounded in a unique style while effectively referencing your specific expertise.

This should be done visually, logically as well as emotionally, yet appropriately, as to how it is described by your dentistry patients. It also must be developed comprehensively and consistently, detail by detail and then rinse (update) and repeat...


The concept of stick it up there on the website of nearly forever and leave it with some cute refrains takes me to:


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A Dental Brand Website Content Development Aside
  • Including, I Must Confide, Some Snide
Unfortunately, too many dental marketing guru ruse-sters and web no insight-ers think brevity always trumps lengthy. While these purveyors of petite postings may be right in 'their' specific, privatized instances, they miss the sign posts of general public relativity: Nothing is simple unless you pile on tons.  


Basically, you need all of it -- everything that's reliable included in your expertise and dentistry in general, cosmetic, etc. -- for the public and patients to understand what is really going on. Dentists need to translate their dentistry reality into the consumer's specific perceptions, or as many of them as can be produced.

If dentists merely let a write-everything-with-an-8th-grader in-mind advertising copywriter extract out their version of what makes the best branding concept, dentists merely get the dental marketing gu-rusers understanding of dentistry.



Yes, long articles are not for everyone's consumption; except ones I finally finish. Yet, this not about writing for you the dentist, them the marketer or even the general consumer/patient of lore, bore and snore.

Successful branding for dentists is about reaching each and every person who might venture near a computer or mobile phone browser, and key in local dentists, cosmetic dentistry, dental offices, etc...


If this is not so, write this dental marketing consultant contrarian one even two short paragraphs (of 2 or 3 sentences each) for your main web pages that will attract more than a few consumers, similar to you, to your dental practice. This is where we/they, the dental consumer, would notice almost nothing except what is in front of the curtain, sheerly little of depth or unique appeal.

Content is king, not concise. Comprehensive wins the day not the obsession of compression... 

Dentists who may have an English Major or general (Eng Profs) as a patient will wince and maybe even weep at words too cheap like how their noses look down on this heap, but those dentists should just plead arrogance... or some other nonsense that's familiar to me or similar to something appropriate contritely concise and not as over dyed, contrived and snide.

FRONT_corner_bpk_dentistry_K9000_Designed_The_Peripheral_Vision_mailed_Express_Dental_Marketing
NOTE: This prosed preponderance is not about junk SEO content, or Search Engine Optimization specifically or ponderously proposed. Except this post and sentence fragment. This type of brand development writing is the best method to splice and dice what dentistry is really like dude about. 
Knowing one specific dentist's point of view (expertise/services) in great detail helps them really like dudette standout. It is an attempt to make possible for a dentist to find the sweet spot of content for as many 'specific' consumers (new dental patients) as possible. 

Obviously, dental branding not only about online textual development, it is integral to all marketing successes. Multi-various forms of communication must be employed from dental postcards and postings to online and outdoor advertising, consistently and frequently, as a practice budget can produce, many consumers and current patients.


Otherwise dentistry marketing will continue to do nothing more than in the past as to their dentistry/dental care.
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20 Years of Concise Aloof––So Far Provides Flatline Proof: 
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Let's Get REALLY About Dentistry Branding


Newsletter_boca_dentists_DESIGN_TPV_corner
Few people quit smoking because it is bad for them. They drop the habit because THEY find a way out, which can be almost anything. Except for someone else's admonishment, and the various tried and no-do myths created by the old and most of the new guard (as noted previously).

The only myth that actually works is the one I use on my teenagers (they don't smoke yet--so not for that). It is this simple, two sentence verse... "BECAUSE I SAID SO! THAT'S WHY!"


Of course, I don't recommend using it on actual dental patients. But if you are the dentist that does, please video record it, and I will play it on my YouTube Channel NicheDental2000/videos.


So what we are REALLY talking and writing profusely about is constantly dropping in content pertinent to all almost everything every type of person (dental consumer) would be interested in as powerful a format as possible. This concept sounds and looks like overkill. Well the statistics noted above would tend to prove otherwise; meaning spreading less data about the value of dentistry as a solution has terribly tanked over the years.

And while a down economy does not help, income is NOT gone, it is 'merely' reallocated to what each person considers a 'necessity' today. Let me see... If not true, then teeth falling out a consequence of modern living.


Dental brand building is a non-stop process; not dental health month once in awhile. Rather, dental health should be filling every micro second or as close as each dentist is able to define and refine their brand, and then redefine it again and again.


Palmore_Websites_by_TPV_screenShot_postcards_mailings_dentists_alabama
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Beware Dissing Claimer: Dentists' logos are the only element that does not need to change over time: it can grow stale and stagnant, gathering color-penciled drawn cobwebs, and still depict ancient illiterate 'crowns' kinged long ago.

Thou beseech thee to avoid the following of the leaderless siren call belched by the by-the-bye bygones and anti-mod squads: Advance not ye teeth pulling gods, and filling hammering clods! 


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In Nearby Conclusion


As we know (us learned in teeth chatters and experts in garrulous fields) consumers don't proceed with dental treatment merely because their teeth will fall out (or even are falling out). Dental visit fears, procrastination, and denial are not easily overcome. Niche Dental (that's me) focuses on reducing these roadblocks by communicating in an assertive, professional, consumer yet human (sometimes stuff & humid) and reality-comprehensive way.

The right brand prepares the ground for more fruitful action, like more new patients, and more patients doing more including a dentist's current patients. A Dental Brand involves almost everything you/the dentist are about.

Noted Below are many of the specific elements of 'who you/the dentist are' and who you/the dentist must understand you/the dentist are when it comes to the consumer audience and people who are already dental patients.
Finally, In Conclusion, Or Get a Clue Contusion
So on and so on, but to wrap this up...


Communicating in a connective, consistent and complete reality-induced way provides the consumer with the whole story. Nothing but the whole enchilada and various condiments, and comments.


Niche Dental offers individualized brand management to create strategic, long-term value:
To schedule a complimentary 15 to 30 minute consult with me*:


Call Oli @ 1+888.380.0020 , or get started on your dental marketing.

Sincerely,

Dick Chwalek
    *Honestly, only 30 minutes, or ask me to end the call if I run on like this.

Most Postcards, Direct Mail Printing, Consumer Mailing Lists by Express Dental Marketing

Most Dental Designs, Stationery, Other Printing by The Peripheral Vision



Also Posted @NicheDentistry.blogspot.com

Also Posted @NicheDental.com