Your Ideal Patient and How to Get More of Them | GMS

Mar 3, 2025

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Are you reaching the right audience or casting your patient net too wide?

In this episode of the Ground Marketing Series, we unravel the secrets behind targeting the perfect patient audience to boost the success of your marketing strategies. We dive deep into the art of identifying and defining your ideal patient personas by analyzing demographic and behavioral data. By honing in on specific patient groups, you'll uncover the psychological and behavioral dynamics that drive patient decisions, enabling you to make smarter, data-driven marketing moves.

We’ll walk you through practical methods to analyze your existing patient base and research local demographics, crafting marketing strategies that meet your patients where they are. Learn how to naturally engage your target audience in places they frequent, utilizing pre-visit strategies, impactful initial interactions, and persistent follow-ups. To cap it all off, discover the power of forming local partnerships and nurturing community relationships for long-term success. Embarking on this detailed guide, you'll be equipped to create a strategic ground marketing plan that resonates with your ideal patients, laying the groundwork for sustainable growth.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

Crafting a detailed profile of your ideal patient persona.
Utilizing demographic and behavioral data for marketing plans.
Targeting patient groups using psychological and behavioral insights.
Analyzing current patient data and local demographic trends.
Engaging with patients in their natural gathering spots.
Developing a systematic and structured approach to ground marketing.
Building robust local partnerships within the community.

Tune in to discover how to transform your practice's marketing strategy with precision and insight!

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Learn More About the Ground Marketing Course Here:

Website: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/the-ground-marketing-course-open-enrollment/

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You can reach out to Michael here:

Email: michael@thedentalmarketer.site

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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)

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Michael: Alright, we're going to be discussing identifying your target. Now, this is huge how to pinpoint and approach your ideal patients through ground marketing. So right now, if you're thinking, man, I hear this all the time, I need to find my target audience. I need to know my ideal patients. Maybe sometimes you're thinking like, I just want any patient, but no, you gotta get specific here.

Niche down. And you do have an ideal patient in your mind, right? Maybe you're an existing practice in your favorite patients. Those are your ideal patients. If you don't have a practice yet and you're in the opening startup phase Who you've worked with in the past as an associate and your favorite patients, whoever they were, those are ideal patients, right? Obviously it's going to evolve within time. You're going to get more niched down and more specific, which is going to be perfect. Because you're going to be able to target that audience.

So why targeting matters in ground marketing. So ground marketing is not about reaching the most people. It's about reaching the right people without precise targeting. Efforts are wasted on audiences who are unlikely to convert into loyal patients. So identifying your ideal patients ensures. That your marketing is efficient, high converting and relationship driven.

That's, what's going to be most important, right? You want it to be efficient. Obviously you want it to convert as high as possible, but relationship driven these offers or these other things, they can be easily broken, right? you can cut ties quickly. But once that relationship thickens and thickens more, it's harder to cut because it's a relationship.

And that's what you want. You want these ideal patients, all of them to be relationship driven, unlike digital marketing, where you can segment audiences with online analytics, ground marketing relies on behavioral. Demographic and psychological factors to pinpoint ideal patient groups. And in previous episode, we discuss the psychology behind it.

Brown marketing. Now the science behind patient behavior and decision making, if we understand how people make healthcare decisions, it's going to help us tailor our approach. So I want to give you some key psychological factors that drive patient choices. And these are things you need to keep in mind whenever you're out ground marketing, or just in general, whenever you're doing any type of marketing.

Okay. It's four things, And number one, this is a huge one, proximity and convenience. People providers within a 10 to 15 minute radius from home or work. So a solution for this. Is you want to focus on high foot traffic areas near your practice, grocery stores, schools, gyms, coffee shops, anything in that area, in that radius, you want to focus on and there's a, module in the ground marketing course under the existing patient analysis.

The EPA module or the EPA unit, we discussed this in depth. We dive a lot deeper on the exact radius you should be looking at for your practice. that's number one, proximity and convenience is trust and social proof. So patients choose providers recommended by friends, family, or familiar community figures, right?

The solution for this would be leveraged word of mouth referrals and local partnerships to build credibility. So your favorite patients right now, the ones who talk you up, make sure they are consistently talking you up, but you want to turn them into ambassadors who can turn other potential patients into ambassadors.

You want to keep this going. That's going to be social proof and you want to build trust as well. That builds a lot of trust. As we know, that's the strongest form of marketing, which is referrals, word of mouth. So that's what you want to do. You want to leverage word of mouth referrals and local partnerships to build your credibility.

That's two trust and social proof. Three is immediate need versus preventative mindset. Now, some patients seek urgent solutions maybe they have tooth pain, emergencies right, things like that. Then others prioritize long term dental health, so Invisalign, cosmetic work, etc. Your solution for this is segment patients based on need and customize your approach accordingly.

If you're going for emergency patients, That's what we're going to start targeting. Emergency locations, clinics, urgent cares, specific locations. If you're looking for long term, preventative, think of cosmetic, right? Or full mouth reconstruction or something else. Misalign, implants. That's where you want to start targeting.

Start thinking of where that demographic probably would be. That coupled with trust and social proof and then proximity and convenience. Now we're targeting, right? We're niching down. And finally is financial concerns and insurance acceptance. So many patients choose a practice based on insurance coverage or affordability.

This is not new to you. You know this. You get a call maybe a couple times a day saying, Does my insurance cover this? many patients choose a practice based on that. So the solution is Highlight flexible payment options and insurance acceptance in your marketing, and we're going to dive deeper into this.

And in the ground marketing course, there's a whole section on this, on how to verbalize or enhance your vocabulary. So. You know how to respond when people ask questions like, do you accept my insurance or how much does this cost? And so forth. So identify which psychological driver fits each audience and tailor your messaging accordingly.

Okay. So little do you know right now, your marketing message is tailored to a specific target audience. Is it the target audience that you want? Based on these four things, number one, remember proximity and convenience to trust and social proof three immediate need versus preventative mindset and for financial concerns and insurance and acceptance based on those four things, who do you think your marketing messaging is targeting right now?

so we're going to niche down if it's the right people, perfect. We're going to continue to do that. If it's not, we need to adjust. And make sure you want to niche down to your ideal patients, who you want to continue to see forever, if you could. So now that we got that down, number one, the science behind patient behavior and decision making.

We understand how the patients are going to be making decisions. Now we want to define your ideal patient persona. So a patient persona is a detailed profile of your target patient. You want to consider the demographics, behaviors, and pain points. So the steps to create an ideal patient persona, and here's where you probably want to take out your pen and paper write this down, right?

And start analyzing and start defining your ideal patient persona. So step one, analyze your current patient base. Who are your most loyal and high value patients? Write that down. What age group, income level, and insurance plans do they have? Write that down. Group them. What common concerns bring them to your practice?

Write that down. Okay. That's going to be huge. This is probably the biggest thing ever, because let's just say you have lot of patients, right? And you're writing it down, you're like, your most loyal and high value patients is let's say Bob and Barbara. I love them. What age group are they?

Oh, they're ones in the thirties, ones in their fifties. Okay, income level. Oh, I see the income level is common. It's in the 100k to And they do have insurance too. They have PPOs. Okay, cool. Awesome. What common concerns bring them to your practice? Well, They both had initially, you know, pain or maybe they moved and then they wanted to see a new dentist.

Or something, or they just had, concerns or they wanted cosmetic work done. Now you're starting to niche down, okay, where do they work? What income level? Where is their HOA? Or where do they live? And what type of apartments at the same time, wherever their hobbies are, what are they doing?

Things like that, right? You're starting to live around their life. That's how you're analyzing your current patient base. Once you live around their life, they go to these grocery stores, they go here, they go here. Now we're starting to niche down. Let's focus on those locations to ground market too. So step one, most important step, analyze your current patient base.

Step two, you want to research your local demographics. You can use your U. S. census data, city planning sites, or my favorite is local Facebook groups to gather insights. Just go to the Facebook group in your community. There's probably five or more. And then they even niche down on that. There's mom groups, there's athletic ones, there's ones who love recipes and stuff like that.

And just in your community, niche down on that and be a part of those Facebook groups, and you're able to gain some insights on that. What are people talking about? Even if you just type in the search bar, dentist. You're able to gain a lot of insight on that. What's their concerns? What are they looking for?

And things like that. And then you want to identify major age groups, household incomes, education levels, and common employment types. Always do that. Every single one of your patients, you should be able to know where they work at what type of obviously insurance they provide, but at the same time, what I recommend and in the course, we recommend this all the time.

And we teach you, we give you the scripts on exactly what you should say and how to do this. So that you can get into these patients who let's just say, Oh my God, you work at the Amazon fulfillment center. It's a corporation of 000 employees or a hundred employees. And you would love to have them as your patients because their insurance is great.

Yeah, we give you the script on how to ask that patient who's already a patient of yours, how you can dive deeper into their place of employment, who do you need to contact, things like that in order to go inside of the corporation become one of their main providers. So you definitely want to be asking these questions to all your existing patients already, but at the same time, this is something you want to sit down and start identifying yourself, the age groups, household incomes of your ideal patients, the education levels, common employment types, things like that.

So that's step two, research local demographics. And the way you can do that is by going to Facebook groups, but us census data and city planning sites are good to Facebook groups, you're able to get a little bit more insight, casual conversations, which is what's on their mind at that time.

And identify a lot of the insights that you're trying to get. So step three would be identify their pain points and decision making triggers. And this is where the Facebook groups come in pretty handy. You can see the insights. You can see what people are saying, but do they struggle with dental anxiety, busy schedules, cost concerns?

Are they parents seeking pediatric care? Are they young professionals considering Invisalign? Look into this. Okay. So you want to do three things on step number two, which is number one, analyze your current patient base, who are your most loyal and high value patients, age group, income level. Step two, research local demographics.

U. S. Census data, local Facebook groups, right? Three, identify their pain points and decision making triggers. Remember, we discussed what four decision making triggers are. So identify them. Identify their pain points. What are they? And then we niche down. An example of this is right here. And if you're listening to this on the podcast, great, wonderful.

But when you can, look at the video version of it because this is where I'm showing you right now the examples of the patient persona. So let's just say persona number one, the busy parent, which is ideal for pediatric and family dentistry. Their ages is 30 to 45. Their lifestyle is full time working parent and their kids are aged from four to 12 pain points would be lack of time and concerned about their children's health, their dental health.

So your marketing approach is this. You want to offer a convenient evening or weekend appointments partner with local daycares and schools for easy referrals. And provide family discounts, if you would like, or bundled appointments. Okay. That would be how that would look if you're dealing with a busy parent.

Persona number two, the aesthetic driven young professional. They would be ideal for a cosmetic or ortho services. This is a young professional. there between the ages of 25 to 40, their lifestyle, their career oriented, active on social media, and willing to invest in appearance, their pain points.

Is they want straight white teeth, but they fear high costs. So your marketing approach would be you offer interest free financing and small makeovers. Just offer the interest free rate financing, offer something bundled up. That's beautiful. A lot of the times we like to show them the big ticket price and say, Hey, this is all the discounts we're giving you.

You don't need to do all that. You can just say, you're going to get this at the monthly rate. That's it. you're being efficient with your time, short, sweet, to the point brevity. And at the same time, it's appreciated by them. They're like, Oh man, I can do that.

That's as much as like a gym membership or a CrossFit membership. You want to partner with gyms, salons, or coffee shops where they frequent. And you want to provide a before and after transformation and influencer collaborations. And in the course we discuss on how you can do that and influencer collaborations.

And in the podcast, we discussed that if you want to type in the search bar on our website the dental marketer. org, you can type in Tyler Brady, he discusses quite a bit on how to do influencer marketing and collaborations. But that's what you want to do. You want to provide before and after transformations big time.

one thing I recommend is you want to create two to three personas and align your outreach strategies accordingly. So your ideal patient doesn't mean it has to be one specific persona and one specific ideal patient and that's it. You can have multiple. and I challenge you to have three ideal patients.

So one could be the busy parent, the other one can be the aesthetic driven young professional, and then the other one can be like The retired senior who is living it up in the community center, right? And you can go from there. So that's going to be step number two. So to recap, step number one is the science behind patient behavior and decision making.

Two is defining your ideal patient persona, which we just did. Three is now locating and approaching your ideal patients. once you've identified your ideal audience, the next step is finding where they gather and crafting their perfect approach. You want to craft your perfect approach. So where to find different patient groups in your community. Now you can make a list and put top left patient type in the middle, where to find them and then on the right best approach.

if you want, you can look at my, screen and I have that right here. So the patient type is parent with young kids. You can find them in schools, daycares, pediatrician offices, kids, sports events, ice cream shops specific gyms, just for children, like jamboree and things like that, et cetera.

And your best approach could be, you can offer a free comprehensive exam. You can offer something as like a free consultation. You can have signup sheets for parents. You can offer, Hey, come in your first visit a tour for free, right? You can create an event just for the parents to tour everything, do something amazing for the children.

That would be your best approach. Patient type. Young professionals, where to find them, gyms, coworking spaces, networking events, coffee shops. You want to go to specific events. If you're looking at the chamber of commerce on the calendar, you can see specific events that people are a part of your community throws specific things for them.

A lot of apartment complexes, humongous apartment complexes, throw events every single month for people like a wine and cheese type of thing or anything like that. You can be a part of that. And honestly, your best approach is promoting teeth whitening. That has been incredible. Promoting teeth whitening, or if you want Invisalign specials as well.

Patient type, seniors and retirees. You want to go to community centers, senior health centers things like that. And you want to offer specific things, right? Mainly what we've seen is they have a lot of questions specifically. About not just insurance, but what's covered, what's not, they will have insurance questions.

And so we will dive much deeper, maybe multiple episodes on seniors it's an incredible patient base we forget sometimes that, they're the ones who are learning the quickest, the internet, and they're using it the most. And at the same time, they are excited to receive emails and so much more.

So if you're at senior events, senior centers, and things like that, independent living facilities, all you really have to do at those. When you're speaking to them, if you're doing like a booth and a luncheon or anything like that, it's just answer questions and they will sign up and they will be a part of it and they will get their families to go to, so you can do free oral health workshops at these facilities.

You can do implant consultations and things like that. But I'd go with, just wanting to answer questions and then you can. Understand the feel of the group and be like, okay, this is what they want. We're going to offer that, or maybe they don't want anything. They just need work done.

And then you want someone to finally answer their questions. So anyways, we're going to dive deeper on seniors and later episode, emergency patients, right? You want to go to urgent cares, clinics, pain management centers. That's where you can find them and then provide specific emergency things, right?

You want to partner with pharmacists, let them know, talk to them, partner with urgent cares, partner with hospitals, small clinics, things like that. Give them specific flyers if you want on the services and how you're available, what you can do, things like that. And then patient type corporate employees.

You want to do HR departments, lunch and learn sessions, offices, offer insurance maximization workshops. You want to dumb it down to them, literally to where you can explain it to a third grader. That's how you want to look at it. And then you want them to be able to explain it to an actual third grader.

That way, you know, that they understand the more you can educate them like that, the better, especially with corporate employees, because they have a ton of work. They're doing a lot and they just want, Hey, did I maximize it? Did I do everything I could? At the same time, I know a lot of members in the course, they do have onsite dental screenings, or they actually will go to these corporations and work on them.

They have these mobile units that they can just go and do cleanings there. That is huge and helps them out a lot. And the companies absolutely love that because more time there is better for the corporation than, you know, less time out and about. Scheduling and then having be out, So if you can offer that, that's awesome. like I said, we dive deeper into that as well in the course. Now, you want to strategically choose locations where patients already gather rather than trying to bring them to you. Okay? So if they're already there, strategically choose that location. I'll give you an example. There's a pretty big hotel.

Let's just give a name, right? Let us say the Hyatt or Marriott or something like that. Right. And they have quite a bit of employees and instead of you trying to go after, Oh, Hey, me go just for the front office. Hey, let me go for the maintenance, signatures, housekeeping.

They actually have team meetings early in the morning, monthly team meetings. And believe it or not, they will allow you to come in, set up your booth and have speaking time. that meeting with everyone watching you. And so that's your time, And that is a good example of you're choosing a location that offers insurance, that offers good benefits to their employees and things like that.

And. You're choosing locations where patients are already gathered, rather than you're trying to bring them to you individually and just handing out your flyers, you're being strategic, right? And then one of the last is number four, creating a targeted ground marketing approach plan.

So now that you know who you're targeting and where to find them, let's just say it's the mother, right? With the kids or it's the young professional. Now you know where to find them. You need a systematized approach. Okay. So there is a pre visit strategy. You want to establish credibility first, right?

You can either do that by connecting on LinkedIn or local business networks before showing up. That's why sometimes I do recommend joining the chamber of commerce or the rotary club, but it's not necessary in the course. We teach you how to, be a part of the chamber of commerce and other events without actually joining the chamber of commerce.

So you don't have to pay that fee, it does help. if you are. Because you're able to be a part of specific networking events. Now that's one thing you can do. You can also send an email or letter of introduction of your practice before visiting businesses. This works sometimes. I have yet to do this, but I added this in here in this episode because I know some of the members do it.

For specific corporations and it's helped out tremendously. So go ahead and do that if you like. I know it's specific corporations. we actually in the course we give you the template. We give you the whole script on what to say in the email and then boom, you can just put your name and send it.

But like I said can do that or can find a common contact who can introduce you, right? Mutual connections. That is the best thing. That is what I normally do find a common contact, mutual connections, and that equals trust, right? You call the location. Hey, one of your patients just came into our practice and, you know, I had a couple of questions and.

They are like Cause you're calling the HR department. Is everything okay? What, What happened with that person? Oh, no, they're just saying how much they love it there. They love you. And we love them as a patient as well. And I was just wondering, is there any way we can kind of, offer more specific benefits and special offers for the employees there?

mean, We love you guys. We love employees that you have. And boom, you're able to get in there, right? And offer more. But that is because you have a common contact who can introduce you. Technically, the person didn't even introduce you. You just have a common contact.

And that's what I utilize. I'm just like, hey, you work at this location? Perfect. Is it okay if I call the HR department or, you know what I mean? And let them know. And nine times out of ten, the patient who's already an existing patient will tell you sure, you can go ahead. I mean, I have nothing to do with it.

And then just go ahead and call. And then you're able to get in. So perfect. That's a pre visit strategy, right? And then the perfect first interaction you want to approach without being salesy. So that's A. A is the pre visit strategy. B is the perfect first interaction. You want to keep it casual and conversational, not sales pitchy.

I can't express to you how important this is. Keeping it casual, Almost like you're talking to a friend. Not overly casual, but casual in the sense of you're now walking in there with everything in your hand and you're not on the phone call.

like you're reading something from a script, although you might be reading something from a script. You just want to keep it casual, offer something of value up front, And then use social proof. You know, We worked with other businesses and we've helped their employees and patients. We would love to support your team too.

You can use social proof in the sense of, you know what, every month we partner with a fitness facility. And this month we would love to partner with you guys. We saw incredible results for our patients the employees or the clients or the members in. 24 hour fitness. And we really wanted to partner up with LA fitness now, because that's just been a request and you have something every month that we can be a part of?

boom, they're going to say, yeah, we do. We have something that you can be a part of. Wonderful. How does this work? And then you can continue with them. Never start with. And this is a humongous pro tip and you hear this all the time and you've probably done this, I've done this So never start with, Hey, we'd love it if you send referrals our way. So you're going in, dropping off flyers to the perfect location that you want your ideal patient to come from. And you're like, hi, I'm the new dentist down the street. We'd love it if you send referrals our way. That does nothing. Maybe one in a million times it might get you a referral here and there, but that's it, just know as you're the person who's asking for something. So start by offering something first. And then see follow up system. I cannot tell you how important following up is. And I discussed this in the previous episode. I mentioned this is probably where you either gain or lose the most potential patients, new potential patients. Most people won't book immediately. They need reminders and touch points. So you want to immediately follow up same day, send a personalized message, thanking them for their time. Everybody you meet at an event, you just dropped off something, you introduced yourself in the sense of you're going to go be a part of their event.

You dropped off a signup sheet. just follow up immediately that same day. more than likely the person you spoke with is not one of your patients already and they can become your patient. Step two, you want to do a three day follow up, right? Provide a quick reminder about the offer, the benefits.

And then you also want to follow up again with that. If they haven't booked, want to offer a limited incentive. month our free whining is ending, and I noticed there's only five more days left, or we have five free whining sessions left. We'd love to save one for you, things like that. Right. And we're going to dive so much deeper, multiple episodes on how to follow up specifically. But in the ground marketing course, I give you the breakdown, I give you the scripts. I give you templates, everything on exactly how to follow up, how many days you should wait, how many months, if so.

And what to do and what to say in each of them, but remember 80 percent of conversions happen after five to seven touch points. So keep nurturing leads, always keep nurturing leads. So a final thoughts you want to have a targeted strategic ground marketing plan, That is the key to success.

So a step by step summary for success. And in this episode is number one, you want to understand patient behavior, identify what drives decision making and we discussed that right. Convenience, cost trust, create clear patient personas, define who you want to attract, and then define their pain points. Get those two crystal clear. Three, locate the right places. Be where your target audience naturally gathers, but be there consistently. Don't just be there one time and that's it. Be there as much as you can for as long as you can. Locate the right places. Four, use a systematic approach.

Have a pre visit strategy, an engaging first interaction. And a structured follow up. So when ground marketing is done strategically, it builds sustainable, high value patient pipelines without relying on expensive ads. Identifying your audience is the most critical step to making your efforts pay off.

So that's what you want to do. First and foremost. Okay. So thank you so much for tuning into this episode. I hope it helps. I'm excited to see you continue to skyrocket on your ground marketing journey. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out You can email me, you can find me at Michael at the dental marketer dot site.

That's the email. Or you can just go on the website, the dental marketer. org and fill out. One of those follow up forms, but the best way to reach out to me is if you are part of the ground marketing course, which I'm going to put a link to it in the show notes below, it's going to be the first link in the show notes below. I mean, We have live office hours like this. You're able to engage with me, talk with me. It's like a mastermind session. At the same time in there, you're able to see all the strategies, all the scripts, all the templates, all the workshops. You even see real life examples of me. I hide the camera or I'm on the phone.

Doing these strategies and you're able to see it work in real time, exactly how it's supposed to be. so definitely join the ground marketing course. I'd love to see you in there. I'd love for you to be a part of it so you can start attracting new patients, but at the same time, become the go to practice in your community and build these incredible local partnerships And that's what we're going to be discussing in the next episode, building local partnerships that matter. So thank you so much. And I'll talk to you soon.

Your Ideal Patient and How to Get More of Them | GMS

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

Learn More About the Ground Marketing Course Here:

You can reach out to Michael here:

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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)