You provide a signature service, and your brand image should reflect this. Creating a brand by which prospective customers recognize you is imperative – and it continues to promote your marketing efforts in your community, online, and through your direct mail dental marketing campaigns.

Building a brand image is more than a clever logo, slogan, or business name, and these things alone are not enough to brand a dental practice successfully. Effective branding motivates customers to buy, and effectively branding your dental practice in your marketing efforts will motivate your neighborhood prospects to react favorably to your call to action. A strong personal brand will connect you to your community and provide a recognizable point of difference that appeals to the quality new patients you want to attract with your dental marketing.

Personal branding is how you market yourself to others. It’s in everything from your neighborhood newsletter, website, social media accounts, advertising in local media, storefront, signage, and even in your presence at community events, philanthropic outreach, and speaking engagements. Personal branding is the part of your reputation you can control and tailor to your specific competitive advantages. With effective branding, your prospective patient base will look at you as their trusted neighborhood expert. It’s a critical first step to a successful dental marketing campaign.

Before you can begin to create, assemble, and distribute your marketing materials, a cohesive, realistic, and appealing brand image that supports your mission – and the impression you want to give your community about your practice – needs to be established. The voice of your dental practice, your brand image needs to reflect the ongoing care and attention that your practice delivers, in the manner in which you deliver it – year over year. Choosing the important aspects of your brand image can be time consuming, but it provides a firm guideline under which all of your future marketing will be designed and implemented. The tone of your language and the feel of your practice are two important aspects of a strong brand image. Do you want patients to see you as a high-end boutique practitioner or down to earth and cheerful? Are you the leading expert in a technique or technology on which you built your practice? Whom do you want as your patients, and how do you want them to see you? These are all questions to ask – and answer – as you develop the brand image for your dental practice marketing.

Once you have determined how you want your patients, neighborhood prospects, and community to perceive you, then you can begin designing the dental marketing plan that supports and augments your brand image. Direct mail newsletters, postcards, brochures, and signage all need to support the image you want people to have while they experience your practice – once you have that down you will be much better equipped to market your practice and start accepting more quality new patients!