Summary

A good brand strategy is crucial for your practice. It will create stronger relationships with your patients, empower them to be brand advocates for you, and highlight what makes your practice unique. There are three components to branding that we will discuss; distinguishability, replicable, and authenticity.

Before diving into these three components, you must first ensure that the foundation for branding your dental practice is solid, and that is consistency This is key because your patients, your team, and the community around you need to be communicated with consistently to recognize your brand. It may feel at times you are being redundant, but consistency is the true foundational layer to build your brand.

One way to determine if your practice is distinguishable is to consider what your office is NOT. Ask yourself, what patients are not a good fit for your practice?  Starting to brainstorm these ideas will help you come up with aspects that you do want your office brand to portray. Next, make sure that your systems are replicable. For example, can all of your staff members provide the same wowing new patient experience? Lastly, is your branding authentic? This means does it portray your passion and your story and are you bringing that to the office each and every day?

Consistently depict these three foundations of branding in your practice and you will see your practice grow!

Full Transcript Below

Hey guys, this is Shawn, founder of Zana and I’m super excited to share with you some really cool takeaways about the importance of branding. Now, as a dental practice owner, you’ve probably heard a lot about branding, you know, over the last five, 10, 15 years, depending on how long you’ve been in dentistry. But most of what a shared about branding, most of what a shared in colleges about branding has to do with big corporations. It has to do with big, like famous brands that you know about, like Coca-Cola. Now how Coca-Cola or Boeing or Southwest, how they manage their brand really is, um, isn’t really similar at all with how a small business like yours or mine would have to do with branding. Now, branding is incredibly important because right now if you’re watching this video, it’s because you really want to grow your practice.

You really want to be a part of some practice that you’re building that you can be proud of and you want it to last. You want to have amazing connections with your patients and you want to deliver something truly remarkable in the marketplace. And that’s because value wins, right? Like anything having to do with differentiation. The reason why differentiation is important is because it’s all about delivering exceptional value. And again, whoever delivers the most value consistently wins. So what does branding have to do is all of this, well I already told you the kind of branding or nothin talk about, we’re not talking about Coca Cola and Pepsi and these ambiguous notions of branding. Now when you execute a good brand strategy in your practice, it’s going to, um, enable stronger connections with your patients. It’s going to empower your current patients to be able to be brand advocates.

Um, and what it’s going to be able to do is it’s actually going to be able to help highlight those differences that you already have in your practice in a really simple way. So again, it’s going to be able to enable stronger connections with your patients. It’s going to be able to empower current patients to become brand advocates and be able to share easily, uh, and at the same exact time it’s going to be able to help out, um, really highlight those key differences that are in your practice. Now there’s three components of branding that I want to tell you about in this, um, in this video. Okay. So now when it comes to branding in your practice, I want everything that you’re thinking of in terms of branding to really focus on the central theme of consistency. So that’s going to be the overall theme, um, around anything that has to do with branding.

So anything that has to do with branding for small businesses and dental practices, the number one thing that you need to focus on is consistency. Why that? Well, that’s because your patients, your team, the community around you, if you’re, if whatever you’re doing when it comes to having a brand strategy, which has to do with messaging, it has to do with, uh, the way you’re positioning yourself. It has to do with the way that you greet your patients. It has to deal with the culture that you create in your practice. If it’s not done consistently, it’s going to fall short and really what you’re shooting for, which is again, building a great practice and for a patient to be able to recognize a brand, it just has to be consistently communicated, consistently backed up. Now this might seem like you’re kind of beating the same drum over and over and over again, and it’s going to become redundant and it’s going to become, it could even become hollow when your team meetings, when you’re sharing the same thing over and over and over again.

But that is what you need to do, um, to really brand your practice. Is it, so again, everything has to do with, uh, the foundational layer is consistency, but be thinking of your practice brand in terms of, uh, is it distinguishable? Like can you actually identify what it is about your practice that’s different? Because when you’re thinking of branding, you’re thinking about what your practice is. And sometimes the easiest way to identify that, uh, they say contrast is the mother of clarity is by thinking of what your practice is not. So who does your practice not serve? If there’s an individual that walks through your doors and is not going to be a fit, what do they look like? Again, the same analogy I use is when you’re thinking of a whole Walmart, um, consumer versus a whole foods consumer, they don’t look anything alike.

And they would be dumbfounded if they found themselves in the wrong store, right? So by identifying what your practice is not about, you can start identifying what your practice is for. So can you identify what it is about your practice that you want to start incorporating into your brand? Um, another thing is, is it replicable? Meaning if you have an amazing customer or patient experience that you’ve trained your team, can that be something that you can replicate? Now, um, with McDonald’s, one of the craziest things about why they were able to grow and scale and have such wild success. It’s not because they made amazing hamburgers. It wasn’t because of the taste. It wasn’t because of how fresh they were. It wasn’t because of the quality it was because no matter what McDonald’s you went in anywhere around the world, but starting out anywhere in the U S you would get the same exact big Mac.

You would get the same exact hamburger. They were able to systemize, um, their processes so that every single burger tasted the same. Their fries were the same. It wasn’t like in one venue. You might get something different. Their processes were so perfect that they could consistently deliver the same exact thing. So again, is it something that you can replicate consistently be thinking of that? Uh, and then the last component I want to share with you. So again, number one is, is it distinguishable? Uh, meaning is it recognizable? Is it identifiable? Number two is, is it something that you can repeat? And number three is, is it authentic? Now, you know, again, I have a podcast with dr Alison houses called the authentic dentist. And so much of that is we’re talking about topics about authenticity. And that is that the greatest asset that you have as a practitioner is indeed the brand that you possess.

It’s your giftings, it’s your story, it’s your perspective, it’s your passion. And if you’re not bringing that every single day consistently, you’re not going to achieve that great, um, potential of success that you could have. Um, so again, I’m wanting to challenge you to be thinking of branding in terms of these things because again, a good brand in your practice is going to enable stronger connections with your patients. They’re going to understand what you’re about and they’re gonna understand what you’re not about. It’s not just going to enable that. It’s going to empower your patients to be able to communicate really clearly to friends and family about what you’re about. And then it’s going to enforce your key differences to patients. So once again, that’s going to enable, enable stronger connections. It’s going to empower your current patients to be advocates, and it’s going to enforce those key differences that you have in your practice. So those are, um, kind of like three, um, reasons why branding and your practices important. And the three components of a successful brand at a very foundational level is, is it distinguishable? Is it something that you can replicate? And again, is it authentic? I hope this video served you and I’m really excited for you to keep going and building that practice that matters.

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