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How To grow a dental practice: Our top 5 expansion strategies

Are you looking for ways to grow your dental practice? If you are, you’re choosing a great time, as dental practices are finally climbing out of pandemic-related profit losses.

With patient volume reaching an estimated 81% of pre-pandemic levels in February 2021 (ADA), we’re seeing a healthy uptake in dental practice patients.

But that doesn’t mean you can click your nitrile-gloved fingers, and growth will just happen. Expansion takes time. And while you’re facing staffing challenges and intense competition, it can take even longer.

If you’re wondering how you can capitalize on this surge in demand to grow your dental practice, we’ve got the guide for you.

We’re revealing our top 5 proven expansion strategies to help you generate steady dental practice growth and reach new levels of success. Just keep reading to understand and apply these growth strategies to your practice!

1. Build your dream dental team

According to Dental Economics 2021 survey, more than 95% of respondents feel there’s a shortage of dental staff available for hire, and 66% were actively looking for dental staff members at the start of 2022.

So we’re not saying building your dream team will be easy, but it definitely is possible and will be a crucial factor in the growth of your dental practice.

To attract and retain the best talent, you must compete with other dental practices by offering a desirable work environment/company culture, benefits packages, and competitive salaries.

If you’re struggling with your talent acquisition processes, you can get support from an experienced talent recruitment firm or dental business consulting firm (like us!) that understands your industry.

2. Expand your locations

Whether you buy a portion of another dental practice’s business, acquire it completely, or open a new dental practice from scratch, you’ll benefit from:

  • Diversifying your income stream
  • Reinforcing your brand elsewhere
  • Taking a larger share of the market

Before doing this, you’ll need to sit down with your financial advisor or business consultant to ensure this is the right next step for you.

If you’re not ready to expand your footprint now, why not start building a strategy to do so in the near to far future?

3. Level up your dental practice marketing strategy

Maybe you’re not in a position to expand your dental practice to another location but want to increase growth in your current practice. In that case, implementing a carefully-planned ongoing marketing strategy will be your best friend.

Here are some of our top marketing tips for dentists:

Create a high-performing website

Your website is your most important sales asset, convincing target patients to book an appointment by reflecting your unique selling points and expertise.

But what happens when a website doesn’t reflect your dental practice’s value, communicate what you do effectively, or make it easy for target patients to book an appointment?

You hinder growth. To acquire new patients, you need a website that convinces them you’re the best choice and makes it easy for them to book in with you.

With an effective combination of quality content, impressive visual design, and user-friendly functionality, upgrading your website is a fantastic way to grow your business.

Implement an omnichannel strategy

Research by Aegis Dental Network shows that most dentists are doing some form of marketing.

  • 77% use their website
  • 68% use social media
  • 48% use email marketing
  • 34% run print ads
  • 21% run online ads

How many marketing channels are you currently using? If you’re not using many of the above, it might be time to create an omnichannel marketing strategy that reaches your target patients across multiple touch points.

Use patient data to your advantage

A Digital Commerce 360 study found that 64% of healthcare organizations don’t use patient data to track performance. Data is a crucial aspect of any dental practice marketing strategy.

Without gathering patient data, you’ll find it much harder to make a significant return on investment on your marketing campaigns, as you’ll be basing them on guesswork.

Leverage the power of analytics to create more targeted ads and level up your marketing-induced growth today.

Want to learn more about marketing for dentists? Check out our previous blog “9 Proven marketing ideas to grow your dental practice.

4. Upgrade your dental office

While upgrading your dental equipment, office interiors, and website might not seem a priority; if you want to grow your practice, you also need to boost your patient’s impression of quality.

To deliver a first-class patient experience (and charge more for it!), you want to make patients feel like they’re getting the “best of the best” treatment when they step into your dental practice.

If you have drab office interiors, an outdated website, or lack the latest technology for new treatments, you might be causing patients to choose a more “modern” competitor instead of you.

5. Improve your online reputation

According to a recent study, 71% of people use online reviews to help them choose their new dentist, and referrals account for 72% of new business for dentists.

So if you want to see real growth in your dental practice, reputation management is a must. How can you improve your online reputation?

  • Ask current patients to leave a review
  • Address negative reviews with a polite response
  • Add positive testimonials to your website
  • Post positive testimonials on social media
  • Reply to social media comments promptly

Feeling inspired to put these growth strategies into action?

We sure hope so! From investing in your staff recruitment strategy and developing your marketing activities to giving your dental practice a makeover and managing your reputation, there are plenty of ways you can kickstart your growth strategy today.

But if you’re truly committed to dental practice growth, you need help from experts who know the industry, know business strategy, and have the dedication needed to help your practice reach its best growth phase yet.

That’s us! If you want to talk to the dental practice growth experts, get in touch with us today.

At PatientBoost, we offer business consultancy, digital marketing, and web design services for dental practices ready to streamline and automate their processes, attract new patients, engage their employees, and upsurge profits. With a long-term, strategic, and data-based business plan, we can help you reach your growth goals at a pace that feels good to you. Interested? Book a free 15-minute consultation today!

CASE STUDY

Dickens Yard Dental

Meet Dr. Sahil Thakkar. Owner, founder, and principal dentist of Dickens Yard Dental, a dental practice based in West London. As a brand new business, the main goal was to increase the number of new patients to kick things off.