Generating more dental implants or full-arch patients is complicated. Among other things, you’ll need to design a comprehensive growth strategy that includes an implant marketing funnel tailored to your patients’ specific buying cycle, invest in lead nurturing, and make sure you’ve got a treatment coordinator with some serious sales mojo.
But before you get too far into any of that, you should figure out your unique value proposition (UVP).
Your UVP is the cornerstone of your marketing — how you present your practice to the world. It’s what sets you apart from the crowd and helps to define you in the minds of your potential patients.
Keep reading to learn how to create yours.
👉 Master full-arch growth: Watch our free video masterclass on building your UVP (plus 15 other powerful sessions on full-arch marketing and sales).
What is a UVP?
Your UVP defines, well, your practice’s unique value. If you don’t live and breathe marketing, a unique value proposition may sound like quite a mouthful, but it’s really just your specific answer to one key question:
“Why should your patients choose you?”
If you can’t answer this question, you’re going to struggle to generate new patients. But if you’ve got an answer that you and your team feel good about, the rest of your marketing and sales will go smoother.
UVPs are hardly unique to dental, of course. Every business that’s serious about marketing has one. Walmart, for example, emphasizes how you’ll save money shopping for essentials, while Lyft and Uber build advertising that focuses on the convenience of using their services.
Common UVP ideas for full-arch dentists
Before we dig into the specifics, check out a few generic UVP ideas to get you thinking.
- Time. You might advertise how your All-on-4s are much faster than other implant techniques.
- Convenience. All the implant services you need under one roof rather than having to go back and forth between an oral surgeon and a GP.
- Lifetime guarantee. Highlights the fact that your work is so good you feel confident backing it for life.
Note that we didn’t mention price here. Why? It’s often a losing battle. Most dentists in the full-arch space are GPs who don’t have the budgets to compete with high-volume full-arch implant centers on pricing — and that’s before accounting for the dangers that come with being seen as a “cheap” brand.
👉 Important read: Why most dentists shouldn’t compete for full-arch patients on price.
Why do you need a UVP to get more full-arch patients?
Here are three reasons why your dental practice needs a UVP:
- The full-arch market is incredibly lucrative — and competitive. If you’re trying to get more full-arch cases, your competitor down the road probably is too, which means that you need a way to stand out.
- Full-arch marketing budgets, especially those of specialized implant centers, tend to be massive. If you can’t compete with that dollar-for-dollar, your UVP can help distinguish you anyway.
- Full-arch patients are making a life-changing financial decision. If you want to convince them to spend tens of thousands of dollars at your practice, you need to be able to communicate your value upfront.
This is not to say that a UVP isn’t important for your regular GP marketing, too. But it’s essential for closing more full-arch and other dental implant cases because marketing and sales are such an unavoidable part of that niche.
👉 Want help growing your full-arch revenue? Start with a free marketing plan to see what’s possible.
How do you build your UVP?
We’ve given you some basic ideas already. But those aren’t good enough — because your UVP needs to fit your practice like a glove.
These are the four key components to building a UVP:
1. Target audience
First, you need to know who you are marketing to. This is about defining your avatar — your ideal new patient — as well as doing research on your overall market: the income levels, population density, and competition in your area.
2. Key benefits
It’s also essential to understand the benefits you actually provide. What are the biggest advantages to your specific full-arch solution?
We should note here that benefits are not the same as features. While features might be things like zirconia crowns or in-house milling machines, benefits are about how your treatment will actually improve a patient’s quality of life.
For example, rather than just talking about how you use lasers when performing extractions to prep a patient for full-arch, you’d want to emphasize how the lasers reduce pain, increase recovery time, and limit the risk of infection.
3. Emotional appeal
Next, we want to take benefits one step further and explore big-picture emotions. Spending $25,000+ per arch is an emotional decision as much as a logical one, so you need to meet your patients on that level too.
Here, you’ll want to think about transformation. How will your treatment help a patient transform their day-to-day experience?
Focus on the specific feelings involved. Instead of “You’ll get your smile back,” try the more evocative “Feel confident again when you smile.”
4. Distinctiveness
Your practice really is unique. So what makes you different from your competition? What do you do better?
Consider different factors like physical (shiny new office, great location), operational (easy scheduling, free consults), personnel (friendly team, board-certified doctor), or whatever else makes you stand out.
Turn these 4 elements into your UVP
Take the time to really think through each of these four elements. Talk about them with your team, get feedback from patients, and take a look at your online testimonials and reviews.
The more you put into this, the more valuable your output will be.
Once you’ve got it all on paper, you’ll be ready to distill everything down into one clear UVP that will appeal to your target audience, share the benefits of your treatment on a practical and emotional level, and highlight what makes your practice distinct.
Now if this sounds like a lot to accomplish in one short statement, it is! When you actually write your UVP, it won’t address all four of those factors directly — but they will all influence your final product.
For example, let’s say your UVP is “Get new permanent teeth in just 24 hours.” This would appeal to an audience that values speed, offer relief to anyone eager to feel the benefits of a new smile and set you apart from competitors who may take 6 months or more to complete treatment — without saying any of those things explicitly.
👉 Key resource: Learn how to optimize your full-arch growth by tracking 7 essential KPIs.
What do you actually do with your UVP?
Once you’ve got your UVP, you use that as the basis for all your marketing messaging when you start building out your funnel. This may include ads, emails, social media, website/landing pages, phone calls, and whatever other marketing modalities you choose to use.
It’s important to keep your UVP consistent across all channels. While you can tweak it slightly to appeal to different elements of your audience, you want the overall message to be the same.
That will help give you a cohesive brand that sticks in the minds of potential patients and builds trust.
👉 Key resource: To learn more about putting your UVP into action, read our complete guide to building your full-arch marketing funnel.
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