| It’s no surprise that dentists are not immune to many of the problems faced by all small business, particularly when confronting the marketing of their practice. A recent study conducted by Serfwerks Marketing Academy of more than 50 dentists located in the Boise, Idaho metro area, unveiled that, like most small businesses, the proprietor (in this case the dentist) is most frequently the individual within the practice responsible for both making marketing decisions (see Figure 1)and implementing any of the business’s marketing efforts (see Figure 2).The study also found that 80% of the individuals implementing the marketing experience of the individual implementing the practice’s marketing efforts had only on-the-job marketing experience (see Figure 3).
Finally, dentists do better than average regarding the monitoring of their return on marketing investment as 40% measure their marketing ROI (see Figure 4).As more than 60% of respondents spend up to 5% of their total practice expenditures on marketing activities, monitoring the practice’s marketing ROI can become very problematic if they have no idea how that investment is performing. Given the high level of involvement dentists have in the implementation of their marketing efforts, as well as the lack of formal marketing education, it is imperative for practice growth that not only the dentist focus more on revenue-generating activities such as treating patients while providing non-clinical support staff, such as an office manager, with the marketing training to improve the effectiveness of the practice’s marketing efforts in both retaining existing patients and attracting new patients. To assist dental practices in overcoming these challenges, Serfwerks Marketing Academy has developed a marketing training series exclusive to dental practices to assist the dentist, office manager, or other support staff to develop dental-specific marketing skills to fuel the practice’s growth. The two-day workshop assists the dental practice in not only developing a system to monitor marketing performance, but also helps the participants learn marketing skills such as market research, developing a marketing strategy, using marketing tools effectively, and more. Participants also receive a toolkit containing sample data, workbooks and more to assist them through the process of marketing their practice. The first workshop will be held in Caldwell, Idaho with sessions on September 19th and October 12th. More information about Serfwerks Marketing Academy’s dental-specific marketing training can be found at http://bit.ly/I5sLmQ. To request dental marketing training for your practice, please contact us. |
 Figure 1—Dentists Responsible for Marketing Decisions  Figure 2—Marketing Implementors within the Dental Practice  Figure 3—Marketing Experience  Figure 4—Dentists Monitoring of Marketing ROI |
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