Emma Wilks explores why your practice’s personality is vital to creating a standout brand that will help to grow your patient list…
How does one dentist stand out from the other? It almost sounds like the beginning of a joke…but far from it, it is often at the crux of making sure you continue attracting new patients.
Dentistry is a competitive market where, you could argue, everyone is offering essentially the same service.
So, it becomes increasingly important to make sure you can stand out from the crowd and help potential patients to choose your practice.
One simple but effective way to do this is to make sure you have a strong brand that sets you apart. And while dentistry is fairly homogenous in terms of the services it offers, practices are all unique in terms of their culture and their teams.
It is this practice personality that will attract patients to you and help to build those connections that instil loyalty.
That’s why your brand should be all about your practice’s authentic personality, rather than something that feels generic and faceless.
And the word ‘authentic’ is crucial. It should be a true reflection of your practice’s culture, in terms of the overall service – not just clinical, the beliefs you have, and the standards you hold.
As important as the clinical element is, often that is not necessarily what patients will remember, or why they will recommend you to others.
To quote the great writer Maya Angelou, ‘people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel’.
Your personality as a practice will have a huge impact on the way you make patients feel.
And it needs to be infused in every element of your branding so that people who are viewing your website or walking past your practice, instantly understand what you are all about as a business and how they might feel if they became a patient.
Every part of your brand – the colours you use, the font in your logo, the décor in your practice, the uniforms, the language you use, and the behaviour of your team – reflect your personality and tell patients what to expect.
Although sometimes that is by accident rather than design.
You may never have sat down and decided what your business stands for, or what kind of culture you want to have. But you will have a logo, external signage, a decorated practice, etc. and all these things are sending out signals about the kind of practice you are.
And it may not be the kind of signals you would choose.
If you haven’t considered what kind of personality your practice has, maybe now is the time.
Once you have a personality profile, then take a look around your practice and at all elements of your branding and see if they are aligned to it.
Being consistent is key. If you want to provide the best customer service in your area, and you’re sending that message through your adverts, social media channels or webpages but it’s not reflected in the way a member of the team interacts with patients, that patient is going to feel their expectations have not been met and that they have been let down.
Consistency and authenticity build trust, and we all know how important that is in building strong relationships between dentist and patient.
Maybe now is the time to give your practice a personality test and make sure your branding is a match for it.
