Dental implant marketing has never been more important
Why?
Three Reasons:
- The customers who delayed treatment during the pandemic are back.
- There are more seniors in need of dental implants than ever before.
- Cosmetic dentistry is growing in importance as aesthetics dominate many people’s minds.
And the profits involved in implant dentistry are high. All-on-four cases alone can easily bring in $40K apiece!
The dental hiring situation presents the limiting factor
It has been difficult, to say the least, for the last several years. The dental industry was hard-hit during the pandemic – losing 10% of its workforce, and it has struggled to recover.
Added to this, dentistry is facing the effects of the generational shift from Boomers to Millennials.
We looked at both of these converging labor currents in recent blogs.
Dental Implant Marketing – Achieving Results in the Tight Labor Market
Dental Implant Marketing – How Smart Dentists Are Achieving Results With Millennials
In this blog, we’ll look at more general ways that smart dentists maximize their investment in dental implant marketing while navigating the tight labor market.
The important thing to remember is that dental implant marketing is still possible! Smart dentists are doing it all over the place – and you can too!
Generational Change Labor Current
Just for a refresher on Boomers and Millennials and why generational change matters.
Boomers or Baby Boomers born in the wake of WWII (from 1946-1964). There were 76.4 million births during those years of them, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
In 2022, the number of Boomers in the U.S. stood at 68.59 million, a number that, of course, includes many Boomer-age immigrants.
The Boomers stand out for their dynamic traits. As a generational group, they were colorful pioneers, redefining, in many ways, every life stage that they passed through, except for the area of work.
Boomers found meaning for their lives in their work, much as their parents and grandparents had done.
This acceptance of the work status quo changes abruptly, however, with the Millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996). Millennials, in many ways, do not fit the traditional work ethic mold and are more interested in changing the mold than adapting themselves.
Millennials tend to be confident, upbeat, technologically savvy, and open to new ideas. They tend to work well in teams and expect to relate and make friends with coworkers who may be very different from themselves.
They tend to be confident that they can take on the world, without always understanding what that means.
They do have a strong commitment to a work/life balance. Although the best ones do understand the need for a strong work ethic, almost all Millennials are also strongly interested in maintaining their outside interests and life.
The important thing to remember is this: Work is not the meaning of a Millennial’s life nearly as readily as it is (or was) for a Boomer.
The reason that all of this matters is simple: Boomers are retiring in droves, leaving their places to be filled by Millennials and the first waves of the (largely similar) Gen Z (those born between 1996 and 2012).
How to Achieve Dental Implant Marketing Results in the Current Labor Environment
So how should dentists navigate this changing labor landscape to maximize results with dental implant marketing?
First, we’ll list some practical, general strategies and then we’ll look at some ways to especially position your office to meet the expectations of Millennials and their unique outlook.
Practical General Strategies
1. Make burn-out prevention a top priority
For all of your employees, prevent burn-out to keep staff levels from becoming critically low and endangering the growth that you could be achieving through dental implant marketing.
This may be especially true for aging Boomers who may be tempted to retire early if things become too rough.
Watch for the signs of approaching burnout: complaints about shifts, changes in consistency, and lack of interaction with other staff.
Counteract this with employee surveys, frequent evaluation and discussion about how it is going, streamlining of workflows, and automation of processes.
See below for ways to do this.
2. Hire a remote dental assistant for your practice work
Hiring a remote dental assistant for your internal office work may be a new thought, but if you are struggling to fill all your positions, consider putting more resources into patient care and outsourcing your dental assistant work to an off-site professional.
These professionals do not need to worry about office distractions and can often work much more efficiently, giving your practice an edge.
This will decrease stress about the staffing shortage and allow you to focus on dental implant marketing.
You’ll see that this is best left to off-site professionals as well, leaving you to focus on the superb patient care that will bring implant patients in by referral, time after time.
3. Look for a dental implant marketing company that handles all incoming leads and scheduling.
Client Connection Group is a dental implant growth partner that handles all incoming leads and scheduling. Your staff doesn’t lift a finger until the patient walks through the door.
Their staff is also highly skilled and able to secure higher close rates than your in-office staff would be able to do.
4. Increase pay where needed to increase job satisfaction
Although turnover is still high across dental job positions (Turnover among dental assistants is expected to be close to 30% in 2023), job satisfaction seems to be increasing overall.
This seems to be due to increasing income. Since income was the motivator chosen most frequently by respondents as their reason for changing jobs in 2022, dentists seem to be realizing this and raising salaries accordingly.
The average pay at private practices alone increased by 8.5%. This seems substantial until you remember that inflation rose by 8.2% for the fiscal year ending in Sept. 2022.
Breaking it down further, office managers’ pay increased by 5.5%, billing specialists increased by 13%, and front office staff members saw their pay increase by 6.5%.
These pay raises usually came because they were asked for. Forty percent of surveyed dental hygienists and 44% of dental assistants reported asking their employer for a pay raise during the previous year. Of those who asked for them, 43% of assistants and 66% of hygienists received the requested bump in pay.
The dentists who listened to the requests were wise. Job dissatisfaction and job switching increased measurably for those who did not get the raise that they asked for.
Unfortunately, many smaller, non-DSO dentists are reporting cutting their salaries to cover pay raises for employees and inflated overhead.
This is where dental implant marketing is crucial. Bring in more lucrative cases and you won’t have to cut your salary to afford to pay your employees better.
Attracting the Talent That You Need to Engage in Dental Implant Marketing
So how do we best attract and retain top-level talent in our offices so that our dental implant marketing efforts can be maximized?
- Keep an abundance mentality. Avoid the mentality of scarcity, the belief that there is NO ONE out there to fill the labor needs in your practice. The proper mentality is that there are more than enough people to fill your needs if you reach out with the right message and the right package.
- Present your business as an irresistible place to buy into and sell your practice to your internal customers, and your staff. Why does this work? Because Millennials buy EXPERIENCES!
- Look for people with a calling, not just those who need a J-O-B or even those who see dentistry as a career. Appeal to people with the offer that they, in your practice, can fully express their purpose. This is what you want to offer people. “Are you interested in being a hero as our hygienist, changing people’s smiles on good days and transforming their lives on the best days?”
- Feature your employees on your office website and include what they enjoy doing both in and out of the office. This will both reward and recognize current employees and show potential employees the dynamism of your office culture. Showcasing a high-energy environment also has benefits for potential employees browsing your website as it will both attract those who might fit it and tend to repel those who might recognize that they would be out of their league.
- Make sure your office IS a fun place to work. Don’t let an employee who spoils team spirit remain in your office even if they are a star performer. You could lose all your truly good employees by tolerating one bad apple. Also, the flood of new customers brought in through dental implant marketing will tend to increase the pressure on your employees. This pressure is seen as an enjoyable challenge to a healthy team but will strain a team mired in subclinical relationship issues.
- Wrap your entire practice in a transforming purpose. In every interview and presentation, keep this overarching “reason for being” front and center. Employees, especially Millennials are practically starving for purpose in their lives. If you can offer a life-changing purpose to them as a member of your team, your staffing problems are over.
Summary
Dental implant marketing has never been more important and is the way to increase profitability for your practice.
Don’t let the tight labor market prevent you from pursuing dental implant marketing. Follow these ideas for attracting and retaining the employees you need and pursue your dreams of practicing profitability!
Dental Implant Growth Partner for Maximum Results
Want a dental implant growth partner to help you expand your dental implant marketing while navigating this long-term labor crunch?
Reach out to Client Connection Group today!
Client Connection Group will help you with all lead follow-ups, answering the phone, doing the scheduling, and sparing your precious office staff. Your staff won’t lift a finger until the patient walks through the door!
Sound like a way to meet the labor challenges?