The Easiest Way to Invite New Patients to Your Practice: CommunityCONNECT™

You probably didn’t learn juggling in dental school, but owning a dental practice certainly demands it. You’re expected to do what you do best—dentistry—while also managing a team and thinking up unique marketing efforts in order to maintain a steady flow of work.

This is where in-house membership plans come in.

Membership plans provide a steady, stable revenue stream while increasing patient loyalty, leading to increased case acceptance. One of our favorite ways of adding new members to your practice is through CommunityCONNECT™—our exclusive marketing tool that helps you add dozens of new members with minimal effort.

Year after year, more and more people find themselves without dental insurance. According to Evelyn Ireland, the executive director of the National Association of Dental Plans, only about 50% of companies offer dental insurance. Clearly, it isn’t a given that employers will include it, and we’ve seen the number of uninsured dental patients continue to skyrocket. This makes a large segment of the population perfect candidates for dental membership plans, and one great way for you to find these patients and get them through the door is to offer enticing coupons to the members of local community groups.

HOW DOES COMMUNITYCONNECT WORK?

This is almost embarrassingly simple. There are only three steps.

Step 1: Create a group in your DentalHQ dashboard. Give it a name.

Step 2: Determine the discount on your membership plan that you want to offer that group. Maybe it’s 5%, 10%, or you’re feeling generous and it’s 25%, 40%, 50%. Completely up to you. Once you create the discount, the system generates a group code.

Step 3: Obtain the email address of the group’s administrator and/or its members. Then, you can send out a unique link or the group code through your DentalHQ dashboard.

Boom. Done. Were you expecting more?

You’ve just invited an entire community group to become members of your practice, and it took you about 26 seconds.

As marketing initiatives go, it doesn’t get much simpler. And it’s highly effective, because …

COMMUNITYCONNECT BENEFITS YOU AND YOUR NEW PATIENT.

While you might balk at the idea of what are essentially fee reductions, this method will make you more money in the end. When you offer a new patient a discount, you begin the process of endearing them to you, opening up the opportunity to build a great working relationship.

They appreciate it so much because it does positively impact them. They feel that they can get a sense for you, your work, and your practice while getting a “deal,” and your involvement with their community group will go a long way too.

Why do we ask friends and neighbors for referrals whenever we need to find a medical professional, landscaper, or plumber? It’s because we gain instant assurance from the fact that others we know personally have had a good experience with someone we plan to pay for goods or services. While you might be offering your coupon and membership plan to a whole new group at once, your involvement with their administrator and openness in communicating with the entire group will have the same effect.

Not to mention, this creates an opportunity for the organizers to offer members an appealing perk, which adds value, in their eyes, to participating.

COMMUNITYCONNECT IS FREE.

Yes, really! If you are one of our DentalHQ partner offices, CommunityCONNECT is included in your suite of services. If you’re not yet a DentalHQ partner office … come on in, the water’s fine. 10x your marketing efforts, all included.

SO, WHOM CAN YOU OFFER IT TO?

We encourage you to think outside the box on this one, because the possibilities are endless! But here are a few of the types of community groups we think fit the bill:

• Retirement communities
• Athletic clubs
• Religious organizations
• Community orchestras
• Support groups

Let’s focus on retirement communities for a minute. This is the proverbial fish-in-a-barrel situation—retirees are perfect candidates for dental membership plans, and retirement communities can house hundreds of people each.

Wells Family Dental Group in Raleigh, NC (owned by Dr. Brett Wells, DentalHQ’s CEO) recently began an outreach campaign. They created gift baskets of food, gifts, and office swag, included a membership plan brochure with the community’s discount code, and dropped them off at local retirement communities. Super-fun, and super-easy.  

If you’d like to learn more about CommunityCONNECT or any of the other tips, tricks, and techniques we’ve got up our sleeves, we’d love to talk! Reach out to us at hq@dentalhq.com.

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