We LOVE our startup clients. Take a look at the reference stories for our startup client offices and you'll find that all of them are breathing a HUGE sigh of relief. We get the best result stories from our startup clients.
Starting a brand new practice is a combination of high stress, high anxiety, and elevated levels of excitement. Welcome to being the boss! Seriously though, promoting your new practice doesn't have to be hard – it has to be planned properly!
If you look at every one of our startup stories, all of the following are/were true:
1. They understood the reality of the market area they chose (doctor/patient ratios).
2. They understood the value and payback of having us develop the strategy, design and deployment of their marketing plans.
3. They understood the sound business decision to fully fund their marketing budget, even though at the time it seemed like a leap of faith.
4. They understood the long term benefit of building their practice more quickly, rather than waiting for it to build itself.
Here are some common mistakes you should avoid if you are starting your own dental practice:
1. Do not ignore the reality of the competitive makeup of the market area.
If you have the option of selecting a site based on its market potential – do so! Do not just look for where all the rich people live and open your doors. Chances are you will be opening in the middle of a lion's den with a poor doctor/patient ratio.
2. Be realistic with who is going to handle the promotion/marketing of your new practice.
Doing things solo, if you add up your time, will undoubtedly cost you more than having us handle everything. Doing things solo adds risk to your marketing dollar. We're not saying you might not be successful, we're just saying you haven't done this for 18 years like we have and may make some mistakes along the way. Mistakes that we've already made learned from and now avoid.
3. Do not under-fund your marketing budget!
Ultimately your first year marketing budget is totally up to you. But if you spend a bunch of your loan money on technology or equipment that could wait until you are productive in your practice – you may be doing a lot of crossword puzzles on top of the expensive equipment! A dental practice needs patients first. Then, go buy whatever you'd like.
4. Try to be a bit more aggressive than “we'll wait and see.”
How quickly your new practice grows is also totally up to you. But what is the long term value of getting there quickly? If you are 30 years old and take home 250k in your first full year, what is the value of those dollars vs. waiting four years to reach that point? Well, at age 60, the value is approximately $1.85million.