Startup Dental Practice Marketing Strategies
How the GIVE Process helps startup dental practices
create profits and life-change
By: Jayme Amos with co-author Allison Sampite
During an international stage presentation, in front of hundreds of dental professionals earlier this year, I revealed how a simple four-letter word, when applied as a Startup Dental Practice Marketing strategy, attracts hundreds of new patients with zero competition.
Why am I revealing one of the secrets behind our success in guiding startup-practice owners? Because my team at Ideal Practices is committed to supporting private practice ownership and creating the most fulfilled startup-practice owners across the country.
And because this Startup Dental Practice Marketing strategy works.
If you pay close attention to the details in this article, and read to the end, you’ll learn how this simple four-letter-word strategy will have more influence over your profits and fulfillment than any other effort.
See the results our Clients Get Using this strategy
Watch how doctors open successful startups with ZERO business experience
As a bonus, you’ll learn why this concept requires no additional money from your pocket.
Let’s begin.
The four-letter-word strategy is: “GIVE”
In this article, we will discuss 2 massive and tangible benefits that you will get when you implement the GIVE process properly into a startup practice.
First, I will show you how doctors attract hundreds of new patients using the GIVE process while enjoying a startup private-practice at the highest level of fulfillment.
Second, I’ll show you how this simple GIVE process will help you eliminate competition, even with a small marketing budget.
ATTRACTING HUNDREDS OF NEW PATIENTS
One of our clients, Dr. Lauren in Colorado, put the GIVE Startup Dental Practice Marketing strategy into place.
By her 4th day in practice ownership she had 209 new patients.
That’s a tremendous number of new patients for a scratch startup practice, agreed?
The GIVE process is one of the key strategies that enabled her rapid growth.
Here is how this Startup Dental Practice Marketing strategy worked for Lauren. She and her husband are passionate about the outdoors and activities like mountain biking, kayaking and hiking. As part of our GIVE process, her practice was partnered with a charity that restores local mountain bike trails.
Over the course of a year, the preparation of opening her startup and proper implementation of the GIVE process were put in motion. Our team guided her through the alignment of all the moving parts. For a startup, the proper timing and integration are crucial to getting the best results in the GIVE process.
For her, the results were unquestionably worth the effort of preparing properly.
Over the course of the GIVE process, the mountain bike organization could see how passionate she was about their cause. Because of this, they invited their 1,000-member bike community to her open house.
Can you imagine the impact that had on her open house?!
Hundreds of people were excited to be introduced to a dentist they connected with on a personal level. They arrived wanting to be with this dentist of shared values, not just discounts.
She showed me video from her grand opening event. It looked like a large town-sized picnic! In her own words, it was “like a dream come true”. It was exactly the kind of practice she wanted. She said that 8 out of every 10 of the patients that come to her practice feel like her ideal patients. Patients like that create instant fulfillment in practice ownership.
The aha moment?
None of this was an accident.
This was all planned and intentional. But it didn’t take just 4 days. It took a year of planning. Nor did it involve a fancy postcard or lavish marketing budget.
Instead, she had a practice that was opened properly, using a proven process for startups. And she was on the path of profitability in her first month. And her practice was filling up with patients who chose her.
How does that sound for the potential of your startup practice?
See, when you integrate the GIVE Startup Dental Practice Marketing process and weave it in with all the moving parts of a successful startup practice – results like these are pre-planned.
If you do this right, your startup success will be reverse-engineered.
This is a heart-based, intentional plan that compels hundreds of patients to chase you. This allows you to have a cause built into your practice that you can stand for in a deeply authentic way.
See the results our Clients Get Using this strategy
Watch how doctors open successful startups with ZERO business experience
“IT’S NOT ABOUT THE MONEY.”
Here’s the catch.
Your GIVE must be authentic.
It is imperative that you prioritize this. Without authenticity, your GIVE will be instantly sniffed out as a gimmick and it will hurt your reputation in irreparable ways.
By focusing on authenticity, you will create a shared purpose and a cause that lines up with the fulfillment in practice ownership you desire.
When introducing your GIVE, prioritize authenticity.
THE DANGER OF GIVING “BACK”
If nothing else, you must avoid giving “back”.
The term “GIVE” demonstrates pure motives. Giving “back” is something far different.
See, there’s a subtle, psychological difference when we say, “give back” instead of give. When we say, “give back” it implies the thing given was never yours to begin with.
With giving “back” there’s obligation, duty and requirement. But if you properly focus on your GIVE, you will have a process that allows you to come from a place of total, pure generosity.
The GIVE process reveals a genuine, high integrity representation of you and it communicates your values to the community.
I want to help you use this in your practice so you can impact more patient’s lives while enjoying practice ownership on a new level!
Your GIVE process must integrated correctly at the outset of your startup. It must be woven into each aspect, investing the year prior to your opening day through the strategic planning of things like site selection, demographics, lease negotiation, equipment negotiations, construction monitoring and lenders negotions.
During the process, you need to get crystal clear on topics like: What do you stand for? What do you want to be known for? What do you want to be remembered by in dentistry?
Pre-plan all of those things and combine your GIVE partner to align the practice’s reputation with your values even before your grand opening.
Case study: Toms Shoes versus Nike
The power of a properly crafted GIVE strategy is seen in the comparison of Toms Shoes and Nike. This case study is very much a David and Goliath story.
Tom’s Shoes is known as the “Buy a pair, Give a pair” company. With every shoe they sell, they give one to a child in Africa.
Nike is the $9 billion behemoth in the industry. When pit against Toms Shoes and their meager $400 million annual revenue, David seemingly cowers in the shadow of such a Goliath.
Lets put those numbers into perspective. Nike’s annual marketing budget is estimated to be 100 times greater than Tom’s.
With 1/100th of the marketing budget, Tom’s uses its GIVE as a slingshot to connect its authentic purpose to customers, knocking the competition on its back.
Based on a prominent marketing industry study, consumers familiar with Toms-Shoes’ GIVE choose to purchase this brand over the Nike brand by a sizeable margin (Brand World Value index)
In other words, with 1/100 of the marketing budget, the GIVE behind Tom’s shoes has more influence at the time of sale. The GIVE outpowers all the marketing dollars and endorsement deals that Nike invests in.
Don’t miss the impact of this!
The Goliath of the industry outspends the David by a factor of 100. Yet David prevails because of the GIVE.
Here’s why it works.
Nike’s “Just Do It” tag line motivates people to get up and run and overall be active.
Toms shoes represents much more than a catchphrase. It has a values-filled call to action: Buy a pair, give a pair.
Because Toms shoes created an authentic GIVE, its story carries values that customers can actively choose to participate in.
It’s like this for your startup dental practice.
To begin, the questions you must answer are:
- Who is the potential Goliath against your private practice?
- What GIVE is authentic to you that your startup practice can slingshot to topple that Goliath?
ELIMINATE COMPETITION
Seth Godin is one of our day’s greatest marketing minds and author of The Purple Cow. He stated: The easiest way to succeed in business is to become a “category of one”.
The lesson here is that you don’t have to compete with Goliath, or even try and slay him.
Instead, put yourself in a category of one by creating an authentic GIVE and weaving it throughout your practice.
Implementing the GIVE Startup Dental Practice Marketing strategy properly into your startup will yield you hundreds of new patients, create a new level of fulfillment in practice ownership while avoiding competition even with 1/100th of the marketing budget.
See the results our Clients Get Using this strategy
Watch how doctors open successful startups with ZERO business experience
To you and your success~
Jayme
Jayme Amos is the CEO of Ideal Practices, Dentistry’s elite Startup-Practice consulting firm. He and his team of consultants work with a limited number of private practice dentists each year to open highly successful new practices.
He is the bestselling author of Choosing the Right Practice Location, host of the Ideal Practices Podcast, founder of HowToOpenADentalOffice.com and creator of the Startup Practice Blueprint Course.
Overseas, Ideal Practices provides the funding for 10 startup businesses in third-world countries every time they help open a startup dental practice in the United States.
Jayme can be contacted at jayme@HowToOpenADentalOffice.com
