The Dentist And Marketing ROI
My wife was complaining last night about the dentist our two college age kids see. She was upset that the dentist’s schedule has little room and flexibility during the college holiday break schedule. The dentist happens to be a friend of ours, so I called him with a “customer relationship” suggestion.
I asked him if he wanted to, was it reasonably easy to access his database and produce a list of all of his college age patients. He said, “sure, why?’ I relayed the perception my wife has about the scheduling issues.
I suggested that he might want to think about sending out an email in October to those parents of his college age patients and informing them of special holiday break appointments he has reserved for those who will be in town during that time.
I told him I thought it would accomplish several things:
1. Using your data to communicate with customers about a specific idea or proposition is always a good idea and strengthens the relationship.
2. By letting parents know that you have special times for their kids set aside during the holiday period signals that you care about their needs and helps distinguish your level of service/brand from others.
3. Regardless if they avail themselves of the offer, it creates good “word-of-mouth” and nothing increases marketing ROI like WOM!
All of us have an opportunity to leverage our customer data and transform it into actionable efforts that will boost marketing ROI.
As for the dentist, he liked the idea and said he looked forward to thanking me in person at my next visit. Uh,oh.
Wow. This one hits home. We have had great difficulty getting our son’s braces adjusted every six weeks, while he has been away at college. Seems our dentist isn’t open on Fridays or Saturdays and makes no attempt to be available on those special holidays when college kids can head home for a three-day weekend.
We finally arranged for one of their dental hygienists to do the adjustments on the one Saturday a month when she came into the office to do recycling. If we could get him home that Saturday, he could have the adjustment.
Dentists really should think about college student appointments or be prepared to refer them to someone in the college town.
Good news: Our son’s braces came off this week. This will no longer be our problem.
But, I suspect it’s a bigger issue in the dental profession than the dentists realize. Or, maybe they know but don’t really care?
That is a really great dental office marketing idea! Imagine if most dental practices would take such a proactive approach to earning business – they would receive referrals and nearly be assured of making their practice profitable even in this tough economy. Great suggestion.
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