Great news! You’ve decided to expand your practice by including Dental Sleep Medicine and Craniofacial Pain services. So, what is the next step? Let’s start marketing! Whether you decide to higher a big-name marketing company or a freelance writer, creating an effective and successful marketing campaign is important for educating your patients and referring doctors.
1. Get Out There and Introduce Yourself to Your Community
Reach out to your community. Don’t be afraid to let your community know who you are and what services you provide. Introduce your practice to your local sleep specialist or family doctor. By doing this, your local sleep physician or family doctor will be aware of the services you provide, while building a relationship for proper diagnosis and treatment planning.
Introducing yourself to a local sleep physician and family physician is a good way to establish a solid relationship because you’re informing them that you:
- Are screening your dental patients for sleep apnea
- Will be referring to them for an evaluation and diagnosis
When you have evaluated and placed an oral appliance in a patient, a follow-up sleep study is recommended to determine the success of your therapy. Once again, this opens up doors since you will utilize the sleep physicians in your community to retest your patients.
2. Learn How to Properly Bill Medical Insurance
It is also important to gain an understanding on how to file a medical claim for oral appliance therapy since dental insurance offers no coverage. There are companies and products one can invest in to better understand medical billing. An example is Nierman Practice Management.
Like many companies, Nierman Practice Management provides a comprehensive suite of products, educational courses and software solutions to help grow your sleep practice. You should also consider being “in network” with medical insurance plans since your patients ask for it. This helps your office become more visible and easily accessible for patients.
3. Enhance Your Web Presence
As you know, your patients utilize the Internet on a daily basis. From shopping to socializing, they can use the Internet for all of their needs, so why aren’t you doing the same?
Creating and improving your web presence is essential in marketing your Dental Sleep Medicine practice. From social media management to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it is important to establish a proper plan for the maintenance of your web presence.
As you know, the Internet is endless, which means your marketing efforts are as well. To begin, I personally utilize a freelance writer, Sara Berg, to manage my marketing and web presence. She provides me with:
- Custom blog posts
- Web content
- Press releases
- Social media management
- Professional articles
- Ghostwriting a book
- Reviews
Through these services, I am able to maintain a well-rounded web presence and marketing plan—you can, too. You’ve taken the biggest step already—choosing to incorporate Dental Sleep Medicine into your practice.
Now it is time to take charge of marketing your Dental Sleep Medicine and Craniofacial Pain office to reach new patients. What are you waiting for? Get going!