One of the key marketing pieces of a dental practice is the building itself. When you’re hoping to entice or retain patients, how close are you looking at this important facet of the business?
Marketing From the Front Door
First impressions can make or break a patient’s expectations of the quality of your care. Sure, you can have all the chops, the talent, and the follow through to boot, but you don’t want to scare them away before they’ve even passed the front desk.
Attention to detail is more important than visual attractiveness when it comes to the front office, but visual attractiveness or a clean, up-to-date look is important. At my practice, we take this all the way to the parking lot and the yard around the office. We keep the parking lot stripes current.
I actually sit in the reception room on a regular basis to look for spider webs and other things out of place to make sure the reputation we have in regards to attention to detail is represented by the whole package.
Weeds in the grass, spider webs on the ceilings, and burnt out light bulbs are not congruent with the services we are offering.
How Appearance Feeds Demand
One of the most significant changes at my practice that really made a meaningful difference in the demand for high-end services was building a new building. Patients all of a sudden starting asking us about cosmetic procedures. Just the nice facility gave us credibility overnight.
This isn’t to say that you should drop everything and sign a lease on a different space. It’s simply an example of the power of ‘looks’ in determining the luxury or quality your practice implies.
What environmental factors have positively affected your practice’s success? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!