Need help marketing your practice? Why not ask the best!

Dental practices across Australia and New Zealand are universally singing a chorus of doom and gloom when it comes to the current trend of dwindling patient numbers. Hence there could not be a better time for a visit from arguably the world's all-time greatest dental marketer, Dr Bill Dorfman, who is heading down under in September for events in Sydney and Melbourne.

Simply titled "Marketing Dentistry 2013", the full day event is designed to give you an abundance of simple but effective ideas that you can implement immediately to boost your practice and effectively help you connect with patients new and old. And the program has been specifically developed for the local market.

"Dr Bill Dorfman redefined dentistry as we know it," said Joseph Allbeury, Publisher of Australasian Dental Practice and a 20-year veteran commentator on trends in dental practice. "If you asked most dentists which of their peers had had the greatest influence on their careers, Bill's name probably wouldn't be one of them.

"In reality however, if you look at it from the outside like I have for the past 20 years, Bill Dorfman changed it all. Almost singlehandedly, he created a bridge between clinical dentistry and patient understanding and then managed to pretty much tell the whole world about it. That bridge was Zoom! and TV was the mass medium of choice to make it, Dr Bill and dentistry topics for dinner table conversation."

Dr Dorfman almost singlehandedly ushered in the whole genre of teeth whitening in the dental chair when, four years out of dental school, he launched Discus Dental (now a part of Philips) and the Zoom! light-assisted whitening system to the masses. The idea of going to the dentist suddenly became attractive to patients and using a lamp in conjunction with whitening gel made it a strictly dentist-only procedure.

Only a handful of dentists in Australia really got the power of Zoom! from day one and they cashed in. Many dentists preferred the "excitement" of C&B and veneers when candidates were plentiful; now that patients are in short supply however, the power of Zoom! has really come into the fore as a great way to connect with patients new and old.

"Dentists have, for all time, focussed on the patient in front of them in the chair and because there was an abundance of candidates almost queuing at the door for treatment, not a great deal of consideration was given to how the patient actually got there.

"Now of course, with a depressed economy, growing competition and patients keeping a close eye on their spending, many dentists have time on their hands to look at the bigger picture. Smart practices are starting to ask the right questions about how they can attract more patients in a tough market; essentially how they can not only survive but thrive."

Dr Dorfman's Marketing Dentistry 2013 seminar promises that delegates will leave with a rock-solid certainty about how to: develop a structured, measurable marketing plan; compete in a saturated market and avoid being "just another dentist"; use Social Media effectively; reach the patients you want for your practice; know what your marketing budget should be (it's less than you think!); know what works, what doesn't, and why.

"Marketing Dentistry 2013 promises an audience for a day with the world's best known dentist as he delivers powerful insight into how to take your practice to the next level. If you look closely at the golden rules of practice management and dental marketing today, much of it has simply been pulled verbatim from Bill's best-selling book Billion Dollar Smile or taken from Extreme Makeover or one of the numerous other outlets he has in the media.

"Dr Bill Dorfman is a powerhouse of ideas and insight into how to make you and your practice stand out from an ever increasing crowd. And right now, there has never been a greater need to do so."