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Brand image is defined by the profile your business maintains in your competitive environment, for dental offices, this means the proximity of the office, where patients are drawn from. A good metaphor for an effective local brand action is a stone thrown into a still pond- the image of your brand ripples out in your customer area, fading out at the point when your marketing dollar loses impact. Web based tools such as SEO and social media may push your brand impact out further, or increase the longevity of your investment, but in the local market there is no substitute for continual investment in local marketing. So, why brand your practice? Think about your own shopping habits. Chances are you choose the name brand product over the generic product, assuming that the quality of the name brand product is better. Same rules apply to dental practices. You will pick the "brand" you know and trust of over the brand you know nothing about. Shaping your reputation through purposeful branding is your most valuable asset.

As mentioned in the first series of this blog… Frisco, Texas is one of the fastest growing cities in America. Located just 25 miles northeast of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and Dallas Love Field, Fresco has become a very affluent city. The city has grown over 30,000 people in a short 5 year period. What this means for a practice in this area…is a great opportunity to develop your brand and practice in a brand new market with limitless potential. The majority of US dental practices still follow the directory driven approach for their marketing campaigns. While this may be an acceptable way to advertise in an already developed city, it will not work for newly developing and growing cities. Here's why: An established practice in an established city may already have a large customer base and following. They have been in the community and have developed connection, contacts, and customer loyalty. A practice opening in newly developing city does not have these same advantages. They must start at ground zero and build up their practice reputation in order to compete in their market.

While many offices in the area take steps towards the future (setting up a web site, dabbling in social media;) in our survey we find that only some offices fully commit to both in-bound and out –bound marketing. Developing and maintaining a brand is a full time job in itself. Dental offices with at least one individual solely dedicated to marketing and community outreach, are seeing much better results, and growing their practice exponentially.

Getting started on your brand means you must first determine what you want your patience to say about you, to remember about you. Next you will want to come up with a positioning statement or a tag line; something that sums up what you are about or why the patient should pick you over the next practice. Something like "we cater to cowards" is a cute and clever way to emphasize how gentle your practice is. Consistently delivering on this message will create a powerful dental practice brand, attracting the patients, and referrals that you want. Your reward will be consistent profit growth!

Dentamedia was created to document these results, so that dental offices can easily discover what works; so that they can find case studies on line, so they can see what is going on in their immediate area, and get a leg up on their competition.