Page 82 - The Dental Entrepreneur

The Dental Entrepreneur

“Nothing influences people more than

a recommendation from a trusted
friend“

Mark Zuckerberg

CHAPTER 13

Marketing Mastery

The History Of Marketing In Dentistry

With most dental schools not currently providing meaningful business training for the young
doctor, coupled with the marketplace that is greatly penalizing this lack of preparation ,
This chapter could well be the most important piece of the self employed puzzle.

“Marketing” has always been dentistry’s dirty little buzz word. It certainly evokes a wide range

of emotion depending on the mind set and peer group of the individual. When I graduated from
dental school, any type of marketing efforts by medical or dental professionals was considered
highly unethical and in many instances illegal. Thankfully, those days are gone but there are
still plenty of dentists who struggle with what it means to be a “professional” and what is

appropriate as far as self promotion in a world changing at the speed of sound. I have
classmates who for the first time in their career experienced a significant downturn in the
recession of 2009. Many had absolutely no idea as to what to do marketing wise. A lot of older
dentists have no training or experience with marketing and are generally pretty uncomfortable
with the idea of having to do it. Most novices immediately throw money at the “Internet”
because that is what they have been told where the action is. The reality is that 95% of dental
web sites yield absolutely nothing. Marketing is a lot more sophisticated than that.

So Dentistry finds today with a significant identity crisis that falls very much along generational
lines. Is Dentistry a “profession” or is it a business. Are we really doctors or are we business

people. I think a closer inspection of the free enterprise landscape will help you decide.
Besides, the profitability pressures being exerted on dentists by insurance companies,
corporate dental enterprises,backed by Wall Street hedge funds,are pouring hundreds of
millions of dollars into the practice acquisition and management business because they know
that dentistry is a business, a very profitable business, and the opportunity currently exists to
take this away from dentists who are still struggling with their identity.

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