What is my dental practice selling and why it matters

Every marketer who makes a TikTok video, or an Instagram or Facebook reel hopes to go viral. And the best ones do because they are funny or clever or timely. If you are using them to promote your product or service, however, you don’t want to leave out the most important thing – your product.

Information about your product should be the focus of any marketing you do. Sure, it’s great that you can entertain people too, but any message needs to be able to convey the specifics of your product or service to the audience who has a need for it, and who can afford it.

Know your product, know your audience

You have to think about it this way. What is my dental practice selling? Why does a person need this product? Who exactly are we selling this product to?

Once you determine your audience you need to figure out if you have access to them. What are your best avenues to reach them? It may be Facebook, but it may be something else.

Then you need to start thinking about messaging to that desired audience. Why do they really need the product? What is the true motivation for purchasing it? That true purpose is very important.

Let’s use the example of teeth whitening to examine this idea further. Your teeth whitening product makes teeth three to five shades lighter or wider. That’s the demonstrated benefit.

Who wants the product? People who want brighter teeth. These are people who attend a lot of events. It’s going to be brides and grooms. Maybe it’s somebody who is in the media. They could be a public speaker. It is someone whose appearance really matters to their job or what they are trying to accomplish. A person like this is going to be your ideal candidate.

Now that you know this you start to think about access. Do you have access to these brides and grooms? Do you have access to people in the media or the public speaking realm?

Access drives the strategy

The question of access is an important question because if you can’t reach a certain audience then it is a waste of effort to promote a product or service for a specific group in a particular way. That is when you might go back to the drawing board and ask who you can most easily reach. And determine what their true intention is for buying the product or service.

In terms of our example, teeth whitening, the intention might be that the person doesn’t really like going to the dentist but maybe they want to land a new job where their smile would be almost as important as their resume.

The bride is someone who wants to have ideal wedding photos. She wants to show up looking radiant, having the best smile possible when the couple has committed thousands of dollars for wedding photos.

When the woman looks at those pictures years from now, she wants to be thinking what an amazing day it was, not ‘oh man, I wish I had gone to the dentist.’ That is a message you can deliver to a specific audience that has real resonance.  

One last thing to note is that you only want to promote the services that you most enjoy providing. If you are not great with children don’t advertise that you provide a pediatric dentist service. Focus on the things you like to do. It will pay off with a positive word of mouth and referrals. What is good for you will also be good for business.