Want to know the secret to success in dental implant marketing? On a recent podcast episode, Dr. Eric Block asked Driven Dental’s Charles Biami about the biggest secret for marketing implant services to patients in a way that boosts their acceptance rate.
Charles explained the secret is that most patients want to say “yes” to treatment. They’re looking for reasons to accept your case and move forward with the procedure; the only problem is that the cost of implants prohibits them from entertaining the idea. They want to say “yes,” but they have income or credit challenges.
And so, most implant practices lose out on a significant portion of the population needing implants. That is unless they offer flexibility in the realm of financing.
Thankfully, there are a few ways that dental implant practices can tackle the problem of cost becoming a barrier… and therefore treat more patients:
1. Understand your own numbers.
The first step involves understanding your numbers backward and forward. How well do you know your dental practice’s finances? Do you know the revenue that each procedure generates as well as the cost of equipment, overhead, and wage?
Take the time to examine your numbers. Develop an understanding of which procedures at your practice generate the most profit so that you can prioritize them. This will also help you see how much “wiggle room” you have to offer in terms of financing. You might find that even though offering payment plans for implant procedures reduce revenue in the short run, it helps in the long run due to gaining a higher number of patients.
2. Utilize a Dedicated Team Member to Pre-Educate, Pre-Screen, and Pre-Qualify Leads.
Another way to ensure your implant leads move forward is to dedicate a full-time team member who pre-screens, pre-educates, and pre-qualifies your potential implant patients before they come to your office. This new team member effectively becomes a Virtual Patient Advocate (VPA).
In our time working with dental practices, we found that those who hired an additional VPA on top of their regular team had the best results – since their current teams were already quite busy. In fact, we’d go so far as to say it’s a necessary new position for any dental practice that wants to thrive in the world of dental implants.
If you don’t have someone on your team… or as you’re just building your implant practice… you could consider partnering with a marketing agency like Driven Dental Implant Marketing and utilize our dedicated VPAs to do it for you. That way, before patients sit in your chair, they are pre-educated, pre-screened, and either ready to pay for treatment or ready to commit to a financing plan with good credit.
The hidden benefit to a VPA? More efficient consultation time for you and your team. If patients come ready to commit to treatment, already having overcome questions about finances, then they will require far less conversation before moving forward. This means less chair time for you and shorter consultations.
3. Offer flexible financing solutions.
There’s certainly a risk to offering flexible payment options… but if you don’t make financing available to at least some potential patients, then you’ll miss out on a large chunk of them.
Many dental practices partner with a finance company that specializes in financing medical and dental procedures. All of these partners fall on a spectrum of which prospective patients they’re willing to work with: some only take patients with a good credit score, and others are willing to work with people looking to build their credit back up. Find a financing partner whose approach aligns with yours.
4. Partner with a marketing agency that “gets it.”
What does it mean for a marketing agency to “get it?” It means they understand the challenges you face from their experience working with implant practices like yours. They know that cost is the #1 barrier for patients moving forward because of their conversations with real implant patients.
Any marketer you partner with has to know what goes through your patients’ minds. Plus, they should know the reasons patients seek out treatment, and also the reasons they refuse to move forward.
Lastly, they need to understand how to navigate through the financial conversation in a way that leads to happy implant patients, not just a higher number of leads.
If you’re interested in learning more about the patient journey and having the financial conversation, you can book a free educational strategy call with us. We’ll go over some of the best practices for talking with patients who are cost hesitant as well as some of the best practices for marketing to your ideal patient. At the very least, you’ll walk away more competent in this area.