By Nate Porter, AOS Executive Director, The Jameson Group I f you're new to offering orthodontics in your dental practice or have been offering it for years, it may be time to reevaluate your marketing strategy to attract potential patients. The first step is to review your data to assess your current position. You might find you lack the data to measure your marketing effective-ness. That's a great place to start. In order to assess the effective-ness of your marketing, you need data. A few important pieces of data to start with are as follows: ᕢ How many orthodontic cases would you like to start each month? from external marketing (make sure you track the source). ᕣ Where are each of your current orthodontic cases coming from? A few examples of refer-ral source are: existing patients referred as part of a patient consultation for hygiene or doctor visit; existing patient referred as result of an outbound campaign (email, newsletter, text message, outbound calling, etc.); new patient referred by existing patient (track referring pt name); or new patient referred ᕤ What percentage of prescribed treatment is accepted? ᕥ What are the demographics of your orthodontic patients? For instance – their age? family status? Existing or new patient? Defining the problem will go a long way towards identifying the solution. As Albert Einstein said, ““If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.” ᕡ How many orthodontic cases are you starting each month? Gather & Evaluate Data gathering and tracking is not only important to planning your marketing strategy, it will be impor-tant in tracking the long-term success of your project over time. Because of this, it’s important to put systems in place to create a permanent structure to gather the necessary data. Some practices have been successful in assigning one person in the practice to gather and track information about new treatment or new patients. Others have a specific treatment coordinator for orthodontic treatment and that 24 Fall 2024 JAOS
Journal of the American Orthodontic Society Fall 2024: Page 24
