Grow Cosmetic Cases in Your Dental Practice
June 1, 2024
Boosting Case Acceptance and Per Patient Production
Dental offices that experience high profitability from cosmetic procedures typically have a substantial patient base originating from general practitioner (GP) services. This extensive patient base is crucial for generating cosmetic cases.
The emphasis is on “generating” these cosmetic cases because they won’t be magically scheduled. While cosmetic cases may naturally be scheduled, you miss out on many opportunities when you aren’t proactively discovering that your current patients want a more beautiful and confident smile..
The first priority is to increase general patient volume through hygiene appointments, hygiene patient reactivation, and attracting new patients. This increased volume provides a larger pool to present your cosmetic services. Presenting cosmetic cases to your existing patients is more cost-effective and yields better results than marketing to find more new patients.
This blog will delve into ways to more effectively grow cosmetic cases in your dental practice.
Present Cosmetic Services to Existing Patients
Don’t Assume Patients Know What Services You Offer
Many dentists are surprised to find that loyal, long-term patients often go elsewhere for services like clear aligners or veneers simply because they didn’t know these services were available at their usual practice. It’s ironic to see dentists spend heavily on community advertising while neglecting to inform their own patients about their offerings.
Increase Cosmetic Case Acceptance
Your Hygiene Department is the Mitochondria of Your Dental Practice
Most patients spend more time with their dental hygienist than any other clinician in your dental practice. Make certain your hygiene department is optimized to effectively communicate treatment needs and truly understand what your patients’ smile goals are.
It’s ironic to see dentists spend huge amounts of money on community advertising while neglecting to understand what they current patients’ smile goals are. Did you know?
Teeth whitening is an 11 Billion Dollar industry however, few people search for a dental office to buy teeth whitening.1
Dentists are missing out on easy profit solutions and a way to have more patients accept cosmetic dentistry.
Strategies to Boost Cosmetic Cases to Existing Patients
The Smile Evaluation. Cosmetic Questionnaires
Introduce a smile evaluation – a cosmetic questionnaire for all new patients and annually to every patient.
Learn what your patients’ smile goals are. People are more likely to pay money for what they want so find an easy what to know what your patient wants.
In-Office Promotions
Display promotional materials throughout your office—posters, flyers, videos, and before-and-after photos. Place these in high-visibility areas like the waiting room, in front of dental chairs, at the front desk, in hallways, and even restrooms.
Consider offering patients a patient rewards program like The Smile Club.
Patient Engagement
Encourage your patients of record to follow your practice on social media. Post informative videos, patient testimonials, plus, before-and-after photos. Always include a compelling offer such as The Smile Club where patients receive free whitening pens.
Give patients a reason to keep their dental appointments. Make dental appointments fun, not dreadful.
Team Training
Ensure your employees are well-informed about the cosmetic services you offer so they can educate patients effectively. Consider scheduling “lunch & learns” and implement consistent training with your team. Get everyone on your team, the same page.
It takes a patient 7 times to hear something new like information about ‘Gum disease and gum treatment.” Break down the words you use into words your patients easily understand. Understand your patients values and know how to attach a benefit to their values or objections.
Use words such as gum disease over periodontal disease. Explain they have infection, inflammation, a hole in their tooth or bleeding gums.
Consider scheduling a team training to elevate your cosmetic case acceptance. Your hygiene department is key to successfully getting patients to “YES!” and boost cosmetic cases.
New Patients
While marketing cosmetic services to new patients can be effective, it can also be costly and tricky. Using Google ads, targeted social media ads, implant marketing funnels, and direct mail can be expensive.
There are effective ways to use your website to attract more new patients looking for cosmetic dentistry such as: Teeth whitening, Invisalign, and implants, etc.
Reach out to us and ask for our template to use on your website – proven to attract more new patients.
Keys to Successful Marketing of Cosmetic Services
1. Manage and Track New Patient Leads
How you manage new patient leads is crucial. Make sure your front office employees promptly and repeatedly follow up with online form submissions and phone calls from potential new patients. Train your team to handle these calls effectively, and use call recording systems to monitor and improve performance.
2. Invest in Training
Never cut corners or expenses when building a strong-seamless team. Invest in training your team, consistently optimizing your patient care, services and technology. Ensure the best patient and practice outcomes. Understand your key performance indicators and train your team to drive their specific metrics. Doctor’s job is not to micro-manage but when your team understands what’s expected and how to monitor their expectations everyone stops working so hard!
3. Track and Manage Results Closely
Successful dental practices monitor their progress and growth or lack-of. Track cost per new patient lead, appointment scheduling rates, case acceptance rates, overdue hygiene patients, cancellations, etc, etc.
With our no-cost snapshot we will show you and your team exactly what opportunities lie in from of you and each team member understands their responsibility to drive profitability without working hard.
The doctor and entire team must stay actively involved in your success strategy. Doctor’s role is to inspect what they expect of their employees. We consistently hear that many employees simply do not know what their employer, the dentist, expects of them!
Conclusion
- Boost Cosmetic Cases: Focus on reactivating overdue hygiene patients and market your cosmetic services to these existing patients first. When you reactivate many overdue hygiene patients, many will have restorative and cosmetic cases that are unscheduled. Now is your chance to get them scheduled.
- Invest Wisely: Be prepared to invest on effective strategies to grow high-value patient services.
- Monitor Results: Understand your key performance indicators and Track your progress. Train your team to ensure you have systems in place that will to help you work SMART and stop running on a treadmill.
Implementing these strategies will significantly boost (cosmetic) case acceptance rates, enhance your per patient production, ultimately growing your practice and profitability.
For personalized direction on your practice growth, book a no cost opportunity ZOOM call with us. We’re here for you and want to see you get to your next level of success.
Contact us to grab our Smile Evaluation or Schedule a Team Training so your team knows exactly what’s expected.
