Tips & Tricks: When you know whitening won't be enough

Whether GP or specialist, we find the vast majority of dentists we work closely with everyday tend to have one commonality. Almost all say they are spending a substantial portion of their monthly marketing budgets in search of people willing to accept cosmetic treatment.

Dentists utilizing their marketing budgets wisely are using a combination of online and traditional dental marketing strategies. Typically, these involve website optimization, ppc, and direct mail along with some form of community newspaper or magazine advertising. The problem with using this approach for cosmetic leads is volume.

Without an existing relationship, finding those random people that will consider you for their cosmetic treatment (or even show up for a free consultation) can be difficult. If you’re doing this, you’ve likely had to attempt to persuade the type of person who doesn’t make a habit of regularly going to the dentist, either because they feel they can’t afford it, or they don’t value it to accept your cosmetic treatment. You’ve also probably encountered the other type of person who wants you to give them good reason why you’re better than their current dentist.

These scenarios make opening up cosmetic conversations with new people extremely difficult and often uncomfortable. So where should a dentist look to for solid opportunities and quality conversations that will lead to more cosmetic work?

Here's the trick to getting patients to move forward with restoration

Look towards your hygienist, and your current patient base. There’s an easy way to get your hygienist to keep opening the door to restorative treatment over and over again.

First, have your hygienist record the anterior shade of each patient during routine recall appointments. Patients with anterior shades of A3 or darker are prime candidates to accept treatments resulting in whiter teeth. When dealing with shades this dark, most often whitening treatment alone won’t be enough.

When you do your exam, ask those with a shade of A3 or darker if they would like to see a digital simulation of how they would look with whiter teeth. Then, use SmileSIM™ to show them an improvement of at least 5–6 shades. Ask them if they like what they see, and if they are interested in learning more about what it would take to get there.

It’s as easy as that. Every patient who sees an improvement in themselves turns itself into a qualified conversations about improving a smile! Repeat this with every single patient who wants to know more and you’ll be doing more restorations in no time.

Once you compare the cost of SmileSIM™ to your cosmetic acquisition cost from your regular dental marketing channels, incorporating SmileSIM™ to increase cosmetic workload really does become a no brainer. Especially when almost 50% of patients shown a SmileSIM™ accept treatment.

SmileSIM™ creates the opportunities.