In the last blog, we discussed the need to identify your most profitable niche as a means of maximizing the sale value of your practice.
Once identifying the niche is done, the next step is to focus on the best means of attracting the person who is that ideal, specific patient.
Consider the orthodontic practice of Dr. Q. For years, Dr. Q. has used traditional marketing to attract patients to his practice. The primary source has been referrals from general dental offices but as more and more general dentists decided to offer clear plastic aligners, the referrals suffered and as a result, Dr. Q’s practice went from “very profitable” to “barely profitable”. Fortunately, cash flow was still sufficient to support operations and marketing but, as a result of the drop in profitability, the value of the business declined from a point where Dr. Q could retire comfortably to “virtually unsellable”.
The solution for Dr. Q. was a 2-pronged approach to revamp the marketing by:
- Maximizing the value of the general dentists that still referred and
- Create new marketing that educated potential patients about the value of seeing an orthodontist instead of relying on a general dentist.
Phase 1 involved strengthening the relationships with the general dentistry practices that still referred. Dr. Q, like most business owners that rely on referrals, had never created a systematized approach to generating referrals beyond the bare minimum of occasionally reaching out to referring practices and periodically sending a small “thank you” gift or message.
For Dr. Q, we recommended a specialized digital marketing company – eLaunchers – to consult and create a referral system that would encourage the general dentists to refer more often.
With eLauncher’s assistance, Dr. Q. created co-branded materials that answered questions about orthodontics and general dentistry for both his office and the referring dentist. The goal was to have the referring dentist give out the materials BEFORE the patient needed orthodontic services and positioned Dr. Q as "the expert” long before his services would be needed. Additionally, Dr. Q had included an offer for a patient to upload an image into specialized software that created a virtual “before and after” version of a patient’s smile after a treatment program. To get the results, the patient needs to take a picture with their phone and text the image with their name and email address.
These images and patient information were loaded into a marketing campaign designed by eLaunchers that regularly contacted the prospective patient and offered to have them come in for a complimentary assessment.
Phase 2 required Dr. Q to revisit the messaging he had been using and hire a copywriter to change the copy on Dr. Q’s website, brochures, and ads from “practice-centric” to “patient-centric”.
This involved changing statements like “Dr. Q is a board-certified orthodontist…” to “Compared to a general dentist, you’ll benefit from seeing a board-certified orthodontist like Dr. Q. because…”
Additionally, ads were revamped to speak to the experiences and feelings of the prospective patient and less to the procedures and marketing dollars were shifted away from “bottom of funnel” marketing like Google Ads, to more “top of funnel” advertising like banner ads, Facebook and Instagram.
All of this resulted in Dr. Q’s income rebounding in just 9 months. Additionally, because we could now demonstrate to prospective buyers that there was a marketing system that could predictably and reliably create new patients, we were able to get a premium price for Dr. Q’s practice that was considerably higher than had previously been expected .
This was a true win-win as Dr. Q had more money for retirement and the purchaser of the practice knew the typical experience of income loss due to the transition would be minimized.
If your situation is similar to Dr. Q’s and you’d like to investigate ways to maximize your practice’s value for sale or transition, reach out to Stan Kinder at 703.298.1690
Will you be thinking about selling or stepping away from your practice in the near or long-term future? To discover all your options, call 703.298.1690 or click HERE to schedule a Discovery Call NOW with Stan Kinder for the best options whether selling or retiring.
