Dental Practice Marketing

Marketing for dental practice is not easy as other practice. Dental customer never comes to see a doctor until one has any pain. New patient always reject to visit the dentist, Old patient shows reluctant to visit dentist again. One research was done on dental problem it tells that, most of the employee take leave only due to some kind of problem in teeth, absenteeism  in schools due to dental problem but people never feel so much concern because it is not life threatening.

Recently one of my friend got married before married he went to visit dentist to clean his teeth and for other treatment for teeth. I asked, you never visited dentist till now but why before marriage, he answered like in marriage lots of people visit, then family of fiancé will be there so I don’t want myself to be feel embarrass so I cleaned up my teeth.

So,  here marketing concept is “Dentist should target couples to be married, recently married couple at this time they want to look better than before, at this time they do everything to look better, so why not SMILE".  

House can be big billboard for your advertisement

If consumer are willing to accept advertisement on their cars, in their personal lives and on their social web page, then why not their home as well? Now most of the company using this advertisement tactic to do brand promotion in rural areas. Concept is just simple, find a house with good location, which owned not rented, negotiate the rate with house owner for the advertisement, and colour that house with your advertisement or your brand colour with logo till the negotiated period. For this advertisement company will pay a small amount monthly till the advertisement will be on the house. If time period is over then company will paint the house as it was earlier without advertisement.

In India Wockhardt hospital, Nasik is applying this concept to do marketing in rural areas. This advertisement has good visualization among the rural area. Because your advertisement is on house so people can easily see it.

Simple but effective use of m-Health

Just imagine the situation when one patient is being operated in the OT. Their family and relative  are wondering here and there for just little information about their “How is the patient?” How is Operation going on? Patient family regularly go to front office and ask for what is going on, asking for any little information about their patient health. In the night time this situation creates more problems when there is no one available to answer their queries. 

I have gone through such situation when a patient was being operated for Bypass surgery, patient family keep asking me about their patient but I am not able to tell because I was management guy not Dr, or even I was not aware what was happening inside the OT. But, now I can realize the use of  mhealth here. 

This is obvious a simple but I think effective step hospital can take. When patient is in OT, doctor or patient family easily connect each other with mobile application or simple by SMS. Time to time doctor can provide information about the patient condition thru mobile application to the patient family so they need not to worry about. If doctor is busy then any nurse can send this information.

This will not only give an emotional support to family but also reduce the tension. A simple mobile alert can solve many problems.

Hospital themed restaurant : Will we see Restaurant themed Hospital and Clinic in future ?

Have you ever imagine that you are sitting on Hospital bed eating your favorite food, tomato Ketchup in syringe, food in test tube. Doctors serving your orders.Waiter as nurse, wheel chair ridden customer. Yes it is right. In Singapore one cafe follow Hospital theme in their restaurant. (Clinic cafe ).  

While going through all these just one question is coming in mind that Can we able to change the perception of hospital from the mind of people or community?. I think, when restaurant can themed as Hospital why not primary healthcare center and hospital themed as Restaurant, where people can come and see the doctor without thinking that they are going to some place where all are patients. 

In my point of view healthcare has to change its way how they approach to people. Even radical change is required in the way hospital do the marketing and Advertising. Current situation is that no body look at the ad,billboard, or other advertisement of hospital as they people interested in others product advertisement or movie trailers etc.

But, St. Joseph's Hospital has experimented unique way of advertisement.They used movies themed advertisement. They show patient story like documentary  movie. They promoted it like they are going to release a movie, a 2 sec trailer is also launched, document release date mentioned on the print Ad, patient has been shown as a hero. This initiative was accepted by the people. On the release date thousand of people had came to see the documentary,  Red carpet was there for welcome.

     

Social Media and Hospitals in India (Mumbai)

As in west all hospital are leveraging the Social media tools to reach their patients but If we see the situation of  Hospitals in India in the area of using social media it seem it will take much time to come in main stream. Still, In India hospitals and physicians are not fully utilizing social media to reach patient and perspective audience. Most of the hospital just mentioned social media logo on their websites to connect but those are not active if active but not maintained since one year  its shows that they are not inclined towards use of social media. It may be possible that they think their patient are not using it so why they should use it? As is USA and other countries I have seen that hospitals, community hospital and physicians are using these tools actively to interact with patient and community.

So, I just thought to do small research on how the Top hospital of Mumbai using these tools. I found that only one or two hospitals are using it fully other just has their account but not updating it. There are no pages on websites for community education on healthcare. Given below is my finding in tabular form.

Source : Hospitals official websites