Follow Up System and Automation for Your Dental Office

Dr. Ginger Bratzel discusses the importance of follow-up system and automation to grow  your dental practice and get more out of your marketing.


What is follow-up?

Follow up is the process of keeping contact with prospects or existing clients, customers or patients over the long period of time. If they want information on something or if they have shown some interest, so you want to  keep in contact by giving them bite-size pieces of information while providing value to them over the long hau to increase your know, like, and trust factor with them.

When I mention follow-up, we often think that we are already doing that as part of of our marketing systems.  But in reality, we’re not. We’re not because it isn’t happening with each and every patient each and every time.

If we break down all the prospects in 3 parts that I like to call the “Rule of 1/3.”  

Highly Interested

The first 1/3 is composed of those people that easily respond to your dental marketing. They are going to call, make an appointment to come in or they will show some affirmative actions to your marketing. Most of us judge our marketing’s performarance on that one step alone to be successful or not based on this one group alone and stop right there.

And by doing that, they are ignoring  the other 2/3 of prospects, 66%, still looking for a dentist.

Moderately  Interested

The next 1/3 or the middle group is “kind of interested” but they are not yet in that point where they can  make the decision to come in. This kind of group needs some more information from you. They need more interaction.  They need more information about you or about the consequences of their dental condition and the benefits of what treatment can bring to them in patient focused marketing.

Slightly Interested or “Undecided”

The toughest group and the last 1/3 is composed of those people that arethe “high fruit in the tree” that nobody wants to climb up to that part of the tree  because it’s so hard to reach despite being abundant. Those are people that need a lot more interaction. They need more systems. They require more of your time. It is just like making a fine wine that is undergoing fermentation. It takes a certain period of time for them to take an action. So you really have a system in place to do that over the long haul.

 And that is the role of the automation system. If you don’t have the correct follow-up system which is automated to do that, you’re going to lose that 66%. You have the great intention in following up people or patients, but because of your schedule, you can’t do that anymore. So that will be possible with using the new patient attraction automation system and that will surely grow your dental practice very quickly.