Solo Medical and Dental Practitioners Should Focus More on Quantity than Quality with Professional M

For several years, solo healthcare professionals could get new patients to their facilities by customary word-of-mouth referrals from their current clients who would pass on a doctor’s or a dentist’s information to their close friends, nearby neighbors and co-workers, which had spared them from having to resort to dubious medical and dental marketing tactics. For a few doctors and dentists, the idea of utilizing either traditional healthcare and dental internet marketing to build up their practices sends them right into a tailspin due to the negative stigma associated with medical advertising.

Nevertheless, with the sputtering economy, many people haven't only fallen victim to job displacement, they've lost their health insurance too. Without any insurance and no source of income coming in, lots of people miss their routine medical and dental appointments. This doesn't herald well for just about any medical physician or dental professional who must have a dependable flow of patients to keep their practices afloat. For a doctor or a dentist to enhance their patient numbers, several solo practitioners have tried to turn to some method of marketing to raise the public's awareness of their healthcare facilities. One of the biggest queries medical professionals have is: what kind of marketing works the best?

Before, some of these dentists and doctors mailed out promotional letters to individuals within their local neighborhoods. On many occasions they'd use high-end cardstock or even engraved stationary, thinking that the extra cost and focus on detail in their letter campaigns would translate to the quality the dentist would be able to give to those possible clients.

"It’s not that it is a terrible strategy to send people mailers to promote your medical practice," says Helmut Flasch, an internet dental marketing executive and CEO of Doctor Relations, Inc., a clinical and dental consulting company based in California’s San Fernando Valley. "However, if you are planning to spend the money to do so, why don't you stretch your budget by using less expensive paper so that it gets to 40,000 mailboxes instead of 500?" Mr. Flasch goes on to state that quantity over quality is much more significant here as most individuals really don’t notice or care how the mailer appears, and in most cases, it ultimately ends up thrown away.

"Don’t send mailers just once," advises Mr. Flasch. "The more mailers you send out to the same individuals on a cyclical basis, the more success you are going to receive. It's very much a numbers game." Additionally, he recommends employing dentist internet marketing to reduce advertising expenditures while decreasing a practice’s carbon footprint.

Mr. Flasch highlights yet another alternative way for doctors and dentists to boost their profile which doesn’t demand a hefty medical or dental advertising spending budget. He feels that medical professionals who become more involved in local community events and activities will find it simple, and even enjoyable, to network with prospective patients who may be looking for a doctor on down the line for possible healthcare needs. This method is known as "Un-advertising." "People become familiar with the doctor or the dentist as a humanitarian who has got an authentic interest in his community, rather than as a medical entity. This works well for anyone, regardless of their occupation," states Mr. Flasch.