What Is Wrong With the Marketing of Dentistry?

It was one of the things we flagged up at the very start of the Covid era, that nothing would really change, and that the marketing of dentistry and dental practices will continue to prioritise and promote the idea of going to the dentist, which is great if you are one of the 50% or so of the population that trusts the idea of regularly attending, because it gives you choice about where you go and what you may elect to have done.

But it’s a problem for the other 50%, because as wonderful as the images of glamorous straight white smiles are, they are of less relevance to anybody that just isn’t yet in the habit of regularly going to the dentist, and maybe they need a bit more encouragement than the standard “we’re accepting new patients” too?

So now we have the potential for the perfect storm with six months of pent up demand, varying interpretations and definitions of fallow time that have cut the supply of dentistry, costs that have been masked by various Government interventions, and we could be witnessing an era of artificially busy dental practices with profit and loss accounts built upon sand… and yet nothing will have really changed, too many people will still be walking around with undiagnosed and yet treatable disease in their mouths et al.

So is it all doom and gloom?

No. Remember when we slowed down, jumped on an endless wave of Zoom webinars and spoke about all of the opportunities? The opportunities are still there, we just need to reconnect with them. Take some time out from being busy and ask the big questions that you can’t answer with Google. Think about the public narrative, your processes, your systems and the team that deliver them for you and you will find opportunities.

• Identify the bottle necks in your dental practice, condense them down to one word. Sit down with your team and explore how to remove each bottle neck.
• Think about your leadership style when things get tough. Learn from it and make and personal or wider changes in your practice.
• Which member of the team can you least afford to lose? Decide what you are going to do about it.
• How can you change the narrative and the (negative) perceptions about going to the dentist?