Editor’s intro: Reaching out to GPs has never been easier. Let Dr. Mark Reber show you how to “turn your marketing upside down” with newsletters by the Referral Bridge.
Dr. Mark Reber discusses reaching out to GPs each month and sharing practice-building information
What are you doing to grow your endo-dontic practice? If you are like most of the specialists who reach out to me as a general dentist, you’ll call my office and set up a time to take me to lunch. We’ll make small talk over a nice meal and as we wrap up, you’ll share some new information about endo. “Hey, let me tell you about my new bioceramic sealer!” We’ll shake hands and each run back to our busy afternoons. “Take care! See you in a few years!” Sound familiar?
Is that really the best you can do? Thankfully, there is now a much better way to reach out to all your local GPs and really catch their attention.
Imagine what would happen if you really did “turn your marketing upside-down” and didn’t talk about yourself at all? What if instead you turned all your focus on to the GPs and their practices? Instead of meeting GPs one at a time and talking about warm versus cold gutta percha, imagine sending all the GPs a warm personalized letter, introducing yourself and including some of the latest general dental news from the Chicago Midwinter Convention or the Annual ADA Convention. Now they are listening to you!
For example, a few years ago, a new anesthetic technique was developed that allows the dentist to instantly anesthetize any tooth … even mandibular molars. We aren’t even talking about a 60-second wait. You can now literally put down the syringe after using it on tooth No. 30, immediately pick up the handpiece, and start working. Here’s the even bigger news: 99% of the dentists out there have never even heard of this groundbreaking anesthetic technique! This technique was just demonstrated to senior dental students at one dental school in 2018 and will certainly be taught at others in the years to come. A decade from now, most dentists will probably be aware of it. But your GPs can hear about it next month — from you!
As you reach out to your GPs with golden nuggets like this each month, you quickly develop an all-new stature. The GPs now see you as their friend and ally because you are sharing things that they can use in their practice every day. You are helping them and impacting their bottom line. They return the favor by now referring their endo patients to their new friend and ally — you.
What is reassuring is that you don’t have to hold yourself out as an “expert” on these monthly topics or necessarily endorse the techniques and ideas that you will be sharing each month. Instead, you will be openly giving credit where credit is due and steering your GPs to the appropriate primary sources if they are seeking more information about the tips you are sharing to help build their practices.
We all know that dentistry is changing and improving at a breakneck pace. It’s difficult for even the best dentist to keep up with everything. Now you are gaining a loyal following of GPs because you are helping them do exactly that.
You can certainly research, organize, edit, and rewrite a newsletter like this yourself each month. Or you can reach out to The Referral Bridge, a company that works exclusively with dental specialists, to do all this for you, including creating the personally addressed letters for every GP in town each month. All you’ll have to do is press “Print,” sign the letters, and include a few referral slips with each one before you drop them in the mailbox. Done. And the great news is that it can be done for as little as a few hundred dollars a month!
Now can you see the benefit of “turning your marketing upside down” and talking to the GPs in town about them instead of about you? And as you see your own practice grow while your GPs are seeing their practices grow, you can sit back and enjoy the perfect definition of a true “win-win.”
Reaching out to GPs and to potential patients online also can boost your practice performance. Read “How social media can help your SEO performance,” by Ian McNickel, MBA here.
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