Creative ideas to market my dental clinic offline?

I haven't worked with any dentists in India, but a lot of dentists I've talked with here in the US have had quite a bit of success with using coupons like a discounted initial visit, free x-rays, or free teeth whitening to get patients in the door and then they make their money on routine visits, more expensive procedures like cavities, ongoing whitening, root canals, etc.

As far as distribution, you can partner up with non-competing businesses and get them to distribute your coupons/gift certificates for a percentage of the profit or in exchange for promoting their coupons, flyers, etc. to your customers.

Again, not knowing much about where you live in India... you could work with other doctors, restaurants, sports clubs, day spas, etc. There's virtually no risk, and even if you don't make a profit on the first visit, you will profit over the long-run with repeat visits, etc.

Also, do you have a database of patients that have stopped visiting you? There's all sorts of things you can do to get your inactive clients to come back in... Happy to give you some ideas here if you're interested.

Another idea... You could setup a referral program with your existing client base that would give them incentives to refer their friends and family to your clinic.

Also, do you have a referral relationship with an oral surgeon? That's how it works here in the US... Dentists refer patients that need extensive oral surgery to an oral surgeon and the oral surgeon refers patients to the dentist for the routine things.

I could give you some more ideas if I knew more about your clinic, but there are all sorts of things you could do.

--Joshua

Offer something free!

Try getting joint ventures with cross promotion of local businesses. What places would refer you business?

Maybe other doctors can promote you and you promote them?

Miky, Joshua has given you some really good information up there.

If you are wondering how you can meet up those restaurant owners, doctors, gym centers, etc... you can try to join meetup.com. A lot of networking partners can be found over there.

Another suggestion is to search for some beauty saloon owners and network with them.

Did I hear you ask WHY network with beauty saloon owners? LOL! They are in the beauty industry, my friend! Women (and now men) like to appear in a better looking appearance, right?

Yellowish teeth doesn't make one seems nice. So those beauty saloon owners are having clients that already PRE-SOLD to your service, if they are having some broken teeth, or those wanted to do orthognathic surgery to beautify themselves, those who wanted to get the braces to be planted (is that even the correct word to use?)... wow, I can go on and on...

You can try out pharmacies too, since those people who have toothache doesn't really want to go to a dentist, and they would rather buy some medicine to ease out the toothache.

So that could be a good idea too, to find out if those pharmacies do get a lot of people to buy toothache medicines, and if they do, you can ask for the owner or sales personnel to "upsell" your business card or coupon or whatever, to those who buy the medicine.

Pay them commissions if you will. Create some sort of system to track where does the coupon come from.

Or else, just build a referral system for yourselves, after your EXISTING clients done some dental check up with you, tell them about your referral system, and let them know they will get a "finder's fee" for getting you a client.

We are not dentists, and we might not know what kind of services you're providing, if you can list that out in here, I suspect this thread would be flooded with ideas that you can use.

Does this help?

Aiden

Oh yea Miky, just thought about this.

I am sure that your area has schools, right? Once in a while do some FREE workshop or free dental-health-seminar to EDUCATE those kids, or better, together with the parents, that would get you exposed to A LOT of prospective clients in a short amount of time.

How can it be done? One short tip here. You know, schools or non-profit organization those kind of community, they HAVE a lot of existing members. Partner up with them, or give them something of VALUE.

For example. Schools often runs fundraising activity. Well, you can get people to PAY to attend your weekend workshop organized by the school or NPO (they have the crowd) or whatever it is, that you teach them something about dental-health care, beautifying their teeth, jaw or something related, etc... and in the end, the money would be either shared by both you and the school or some other parties, or the money will go over to the school's fundraising fund entirely.

Doing it this way, you will get to be exposed to the MASS in a short period of time. It's your own take to decide whether this is justifiable with your time or not.

You can give those attendees some coupon too. First time visit - 10% off or something like that.

Does these ideas help?

Aiden

That 'Pizza Hut delivery' is a great idea. It really works in introducing new stores, products, etc. That coupon idea is als great. Who says no to freebies? Everybody loves freebies. So if you give out free-dental-check-up coupons, a lot would check out your clinic and the dental services you provide. And oh, why not feature a customer monthly? Sometimes, free exposure invites customers too.

Yes you can do outbound marketing but now people use internet so also aware your brand on internet with help of a SEO expert that generate awareness of your clinic.

Tooth Whitening Pinole | Root Canal CA

RTB DSPs provide access to global ad inventory on 98% of major websites (including IndiaTimes.com for 11 cents CPM -- very cheap).

With a little digging you can find 10 cent CPMs on many well-known websites (see screenshot).

I rarely pay more than $1 CPM for high-quality geotargeted impressions ($2 CPM with Big Data audience targeting and retargeting).

Create some coupons for your dentist business offering a 20% discount. Offer incentives such as free gifts etc to make them want to go to your dentist rather than someone else's.