More general dentists than ever want to treat implant patients. And small wonder — with roughly 10,000 Americans retiring every day, the implant or full-arch market is only growing larger.
But wanting and succeeding are two different things. Implant marketing is not like regular dental regular marketing, so if you want consistently grow your implant patient base, then you’ll need to get wise to the specific nuances around buying cycle, ad strategy, and lead nurturing that distinguish the implant game.
Trust us — the implant centers you’re competing with know this stuff already.
If you’re just getting started, read our complete guide to dental implant marketing first. But if you’ve already got a working implant ad funnel in place, try these 4 tactics to refine your process further.
👉 We’ve used this approach to generate implant patients at a 7:1 ROI. Get the case study to learn more.
Focus on a specific patient type
You may have heard it said that if you’re marketing to everyone, you won’t reach anyone. This is good advice for any marketer, but it’s even more important for implant marketing.
Why? Because each implant lead is expensive. Simply getting a full-arch patient to show up for an initial consult might cost you $500 or more — and then turning that consult into a start will almost certainly set you back thousands.
So one of the best ways to keep your acquisition costs as low as possible is to build your marketing to reach a specific patient type. The more targeted your approach, the more likely that when you speak with a lead, they’ll be a good fit to start treatment.
In other words, carefully focused marketing weeds out window shoppers or people who are only curious about implants and are years away from actually pulling the trigger.
Key tactics here include:
- Target a certain credit score.
- Market to patients who are already actively looking for implant treatment.
- Mention a rough price range the first time you get a lead on the phone.
Take this approach, and when a patient does show up in your office, they’ll be more likely to (eventually) turn into a start.
👉 Deep dive: Watch this 22-min episode of the Full Arch Advantage Podcast to learn specific tactics that help you get more high-quality implant leads.
Invest in original photography
This might seem fluffy. But investing in high-quality photos of your practice and team is a one-time expense that will pay off for years to come.
Why? Because they make your marketing materials stand out. And they help give your brand a higher-end feel (which is less important if you’re only looking for GP patients but can matter a great deal when you’re aiming to get potential implant patients to spend tens of thousands of dollars).
Hire a professional to spend a day or two at your practice. Be sure to get:
- Shots of your facility itself — exterior, interior, the whole deal
- Photos of your doctors, treatment coordinators, and the front desk team
- Overall, you want to show people what to expect when they pull up in your parking lot
You’ll be able to use all these images in your marketing indefinitely. And they’ll help your website and ads to leap off the screen by putting a personal, human face on what can feel like an otherwise intimidating process.
Do lead nurturing
This is huge. If you really want to generate consistent, predictable implant revenue, then you have to nurture your leads.
Lead nurturing is about sticking with leads through the months-to-yearslong buying cycle that typically goes along with implant treatment decisions. Because implants are so expensive, nobody says yes to treatment overnight.
That means you’ve got to maintain a relationship with a lead while they do research, get second opinions, and consider their financing options.
You can ask your front desk team to tackle this. Here’s their basic framework:
- Whenever a new lead fills out your “learn more” contact form, you need to get them on the phone within 14 days so you can qualify them. This is where you want to make sure they know roughly what treatment would cost.
- Then regularly follow up with your lead until they’re ready to book a consult and then start treatment.
- If you can’t get them on the phone or they’re nowhere close to starting, you can put them in a drip email campaign to help them learn more about implants.
The key to all of this is having a good CRM in place to track each implant lead through the nurturing process, and then investing the 8-12 hours a week you’ll need to do those follow-up calls.
👉 We don’t just create implant leads — we nurture them for you. Book a 20-min consult to share your NP growth goals and get a free marketing plan.
Get a really clear sales process
Most dentists don’t want to hear it. But we’ll keep saying it anyway: Implant dentistry is about sales as well as clinical.
Buying dental implants is like buying a car (if not even more expensive, depending on the case). This means that unless you have a flood of unbeatable word-of-mouth referrals coming in, you need a dedicated sales process to help get patients to the point where they are ready to say yes.
This can include:
- Creating sales scripting for everybody involved, including doctors, front desk, and treatment coordinators.
- Offering multiple treatment options.
- Establishing financing partners.
- Clearly defining sales roles (Who presents treatment? Where does it happen?).
- Deciding how much or if you have any flexibility on pricing.
- Leading with value in all of your consults (helping patients understand how implants will improve their quality of life).
Now, we cannot emphasize enough that sales don’t have to be shady. Done right, you’re simply trying to help the patient solve a problem that they have.
A good sales process is about mutually deciding whether or not you are a fit to work together. You never want to give a patient the hard sell — just help them understand if and how you can help make their life better.
To really nail down your sales process, you can work with a sales consultant who can teach you and your team how to implement all of the above.
👉 Next level up: Watch this 18-min interview with Gary Bird and Greg Essenmacher about how to close more full-arch cases.
Read the 7:1 ROI case study👇
