The Proceptive Perspective Dental Blog

I have had several people ask me how we came up with Proceptive Dental as the name for our new Internet marketing company. If you look up the term “Proceptive” on Wikipedia, you will find that in biology the “Proceptive phase” is the initial period in a relationship when organisms are courting each other. For humans this is also known as the dating phase.

Now if you really think about it, marketing a dental website and dating both utilizing many of the same basic principles. Now I’m talking about “basic principles” here, so don’t rush out and take your potential patients to the local bar for happy hour and then a nice dinner in order to convince them to commit to your practice. However, there are several techniques used in the dating world that you can apply to your online dental marketing strategy which will increase the number of new patients for your dental practice.

So let’s start by looking at some of the common goals single people have when they go out on a first date: Usually they are trying to put their best and most important qualities forward, they want to physically look their best and they are looking to attract a potential partner that is compatible with them.

Those goals should be the same when looking to successfully market a dental website to potential new patients online.

Putting your best qualities forward – I remember when I first met my wife, I made sure to talk up my good qualities. Sure, I might occasionally snore at night, I’m a compulsive sports fan (especially for the Yankees), can border on neurotic during the playoffs, and I’m a little high strung at times. Yet these were not decisive qualities for my wife. It was the fact that I am genuinely a nice guy, have a good sense of humor and I have a career which means that I don’t live in my parents’ basement. These were the traits that were attractive to her and made my slight neurosis a non issue.

The same approach should be used when marketing your practice online. It is your practice’s important qualities that your website should focus on and that should be at the forefront of your online message. This means focusing on your specialties, on the new high tech equipment in your office, on your education, on how you treat your patients, or on what separates you from your competitors. These are the qualities that are going to be important to someone looking for a new dentist in your area.

By focusing on your good qualities, it is more likely that the new patient will overlook some of your not so great qualities (we all have them), like the fact that you don’t offer weekend hours, that your office is a bit of a drive from their house or that the magazines in your waiting room are seriously out of date (if you have the Time Magazine that declares Mikhail Gorbachev as the Man of the Year, it might be time to update your periodicals.)

Physically looking your best – I remember on first dates, I would always wear that one really nice luck dress shirt I owned, would splash on that sample tester of expensive cologne, and would make sure that every hair was in perfect place. Well, just as you want to look your best for that first date, you also want to look your best when you first meet that prospective patient. Achieving this look might mean its time for a dramatic make-over…except it is not for you; it is for your website.

Your website is the online representation of you and your dental practice. Having an out dated, FrontPage designed website is like wearing a powder blue leisure suit on that special first date. A hard to navigate or confusing site is comparable to not being able to carry on decent conversation during dinner, and a site that is too slow is akin to showing up an hour late to pick up your date.

Now while on most dates you will have a good couple of hours to make that first impression, online you are lucky to get a few seconds, let alone a couple of minutes. That is why a well designed, professional looking website can make the difference between getting stood up or the start of a beautiful dentist / patient relationship.

Attracting a Compatible Partner – You go out on an amazing date, everything is going perfect, she laughs at your jokes, you share common interests… then you find out that she happens to be visiting from out of town and lives half way across the country. Now before you spend all this money on an expensive dinner and get your hopes up that you might meet “the one”, it is a good idea to make sure they at least live in your area code. It is for the same reasons that it is important to attract the right visitors to your website.

A good online marketing campaign will focus on attracting local visitors to your dental website. What is a good visitor? A good visitor is someone who lives in your local market and is in need and actively searching for the services your practice offers. By focusing an online marketing campaign to capture localized search visitors, you are much more likely to get visitors to your site that are “available” and “in the market” for your services.

So when evaluating your current Dental marketing strategy, you should try to keep some of these basic dating principles in mind. Focus on your practice’s best qualities, make sure your website is up to date and patient friendly, and ensure that your marketing program is locally focused in order to find new patients in your area. By following these basic dating ideas you should be able to get past first base and start closing the deal on new patients for your practice.