(This post was expanded and updated on 8/29/23.)
Dental implant advertising is an important endeavor for dental practices. Check out our recent blog post about laying a good foundation for it:
Dental Implant Marketing – How to Lay a Good Foundation Part 1 – Collect Testimonials
Although it is important, dental implant advertising has often not received the thought and attention that it deserves. Thus, it has frequently received a bad rap – and for good reason.
Many times, dentists and marketers have seemed desperate to simply bring in new implant patients, no matter what. Their advertising has often mainly consisted of shouted offers that have often been downright misleading if not dishonest.
The Wrong Way to Do Dental Implant Advertising
Here are a few notorious examples of this kind of dental implant advertising.
- “Implants Starting at $995”
- “Teeth-in-A-Day”
- “One-Hour Dental Implants”
- “Implant for $1,095; Abutment & Crown for $950;
These offers sound good, but all of them contain caveats and are, quite frankly, too good to be true. Many times, the final price of the implants will end up being much higher than offered, and a certain amount of corner-cutting is the only basis on which they could ever be remotely accurate.
Implants simply cost more and take longer to install than these ads would lead you to believe.
Dental implant advertising like this feeds the popular notion that implant ads are usually lies and that marketers are almost universally scoundrels.
Rather than establishing a solid foundation for something important, messages and attitudes like this undermine it from the very start!
None of this is necessary.
There is a far, far better (and far more profitable) way to do implant advertising!
A Better Way to Market Dental Implants
Instead of shouting half-dishonest offers, why not try building a solid foundation of goodwill?
Building goodwill through your dental implant advertising is the way to set yourself up for success from the very first interaction with the prospective customer!
Top-performing dental practices pursue this far more attractive (and profitable) goal.
Instead of hollering dishonest bargains they quietly build valuable goodwill in their communities by meeting people’s needs through their implant marketing.
What we want to focus on today is this fact: These practices PROSPER because of it!
What Do We Mean by Goodwill?
What do we mean by our use of the term goodwill in dental implant advertising?
What we are primarily talking about is “The level of positive or negative feelings that the people in your community feel about your brand and practice.”
Trust is largely the reservoir of goodwill that your practice builds up over time as people realize that you are interested in providing benefits to them and meeting their needs instead of simply pulling them in with a deal.
Every time people see your ads, they begin to associate you with a certain image. And the image that you want to build is that of the dental implant EXPERT, the trusted source for all of your patients’ needs.
The last thing you want to be seen as is someone who is simply trying to take their money and give them something (in this case, implants) that they may, or may not, need. You want to be seen instead as someone with something to GIVE.
That is how you build goodwill in your community through your marketing!
Rewards of Building Goodwill Through Dental Implant Marketing
Building goodwill can sometimes seem unattractive because it does take some time. But doesn’t anything worthwhile involve time?
Practices should dedicate themselves to creating goodwill in their community through their dental implant advertising.
Although they may not see immediate results, they will get results and those results will be sweet.
Spending the time and effort upfront to connect with patients at a deeper level is anything but wasted. The high trust levels that can be built through dental implant advertising make building goodwill its #1 priority and will surprise even the practices that engage in it.
These implant practices will discover that their soaring case acceptance rates mean that the majority of the work is completed by the patient’s act of walking through their front door.
Doesn’t THAT sound attractive?
Cutting out the time spent with patients who do not accept treatment will add many dollars to any dental practice’s bottom line!
These practices also reap some of their rewards due to what is often called the value ladder. Here’s what the value ladder means:
Although the patients responding to these dental implant ads enter to access the high-value implant services, they will tend to stay for the regular cleanings and fillings as well or, in other words, they swim down the value ladder.
This holds because a patient who trusts a dentist enough to sign up for a $50,000 full-arch implant is certainly going to be able to trust that dentist for regular semi-annual cleanings after that.
Taking advantage of gravity in this way represents incredible ongoing value for a practice. It is also a huge improvement over the inefficient attempts of some dentists to force patients to swim up the value ladder!
Without any trust or goodwill built in their community, they are forced to simply hawk screaming, limited-time discounts such as “Free Whitenings!” or something similar as they try to pull cold people in off of the street in hopes that they will then swim up the ladder and access the more expensive treatments such as implants.
It is a sad fact that this has been proven not to work. Many times, these patients simply take the freebies and depart, never to be heard from again.
Using this analogy, the ads that we saw at the beginning could be thought of as attempts to lower the top rung of the ladder in hopes that more people will hop aboard.
Both of these approaches are hard on a dental practice’s bottom line, and they are unnecessary! If we begin with a solid foundation of goodwill in our community, built through quality dental implant advertising, a profitable edifice rises almost on its own with the rewards only growing over the years.
Talk About a Lose/Lose Situation
Here’s another sad fact that few practices seem to recognize. Dental implant advertising done without regard for building goodwill neither costs less money nor takes less time than dental implant advertising that builds trust in the minds of prospective patients.
This kind of advertising leaves dentists with nothing to show for it except a few patients who received discount services. This only seems like a good thing when there is nothing to compare it to. In other words, these dentists have never realized that there is a better way to advertise.
They have never experienced the valuable, long-term results of building goodwill in prospective customers’ minds. They have never realized that dental implant advertising can serve a much more important purpose than simply drawing in stray bystanders who like the sound of “$1000 Off!”
A poor job at building community goodwill is truly a lose-lose situation and should be avoided at all costs. Unfortunately, it is still far too common.
As we said, the value of goodwill built through dental implant advertising is also partly because it can be stored for the future.
Although people may not need dental services immediately, they will retain their positive impressions either for themselves or their loved ones. When they do face the need, guess who they will think of first? It’s going to be the practice that first stamped that powerful positive impression on their mind.
Powerfully Improve Lead Quality
Don’t forget one more important point that we touched on but didn’t make explicit. The quality of leads you get through this kind of dental implant advertising is head and shoulders above that of the other kinds of marketing.
These people recognize that you have what they want and are already, at least somewhat, connected to your practice.
This means that much of the screening is done for you through your advertising.
For a system that further screens the patients, reach out to Client Connection Group. Our system means that unqualified patients will not move forward and take up your valuable time.
Check out Client Connection Group today!
Read the Ultimate Guide to Goodwill
For a complete treatment of building goodwill through dental marketing check out our Ultimate Guide.
The Ultimate Guide to Building Goodwill Through Dental Marketing
Wrapping It Up
This system works because human nature never changes. If a dentist seeks to build a connection with his patients through dental implant advertising, prospective patients WILL begin to trust them. They can’t help it.
Seriously, the doctors who are best at building goodwill are going to win the dental marketing game -EVERY SINGLE TIME. Their better-qualified leads and soaring case acceptance will only mean much higher ROI on marketing and much greater profitability for implant dentists.
Although this process may take some time, don’t let that deter you. As we said, you have no choice if you want to grow and prosper.
And the rewards of building goodwill through your dental implant advertising are simply too good to ignore!
Dental Implant Growth Partner
Want an implant growth partner that will actually help you climb to this level and reap these rewards?
We have a wealth of experience in dental implant advertising and our coast-to-coast clients have found themselves flooded with patients attracted by our different kinds of ads.