Owning a dental practice can be very challenging. But what is more challenging is finding a way to improve the quality of your dental services and at the same time exhausting all the revenue streams in your dental clinic.
If you are looking for how to make your dental practice more profitable, then you should read on as I will be exploring some quick fixes you can start implementing from today to increase revenue in dental practice.
Is opening a dental practice profitable?
Yes, opening a private dental practice is very profitable. But that depends on a lot of factors like how much time and money you are willing to invest in your dental practice, and some minor factors like your overhead costs, how much you charge for services, and the location of your dental practice.
Also, although government dental practice promises a lot of job security, a well-set-up private dental practice is way more profitable although it comes with a lot of risks.
How profitable is dental practice?
To increase revenue in your dental practice, you must first be aware of how much you should be making assuming all best profitable strategies are put in place.
The average dental office profit margin is 40% (gross) according to popular sources. And the gross profit margin is a metric used to assess how profitable a business is. It is the percentage profit from your dental practice excluding all your expenses, taxes, and depreciation.
The dental practice profit margin is different from the net profit in your dental practice which is the total profit you make after all expenses and taxes have been subtracted.
According to Statista, the annual average net profit of all dentists in private practice in the United States is USD$203,010.
This figure may vary depending on your overhead costs, rents, payroll, and supplies, how much you charge for services, how many patients you have, and where your dental practice is located.
How to make your dental practice more profitable
If you are new to private dental practice and you are looking for how to increase revenue in dental practice, then here is a tip:
“The best way to make a dental practice more profitable is to optimize the revenue streams for the dental clinic”
By optimizing revenue streams, I mean finding creative ways to attract more clients to your dental practice and improve the quality of care you render to these clients.
These two things are the pillars of a profitable dental practice, and we will be looking at 12 quick fixes you can deploy now in your dental practice to bring in more customers and improve the quality of your services.
So how can a dentist increase revenue?
The 12 Ways to Make Your Dental Practice More Profitable:
1. Inculcate the Profit Mindset in You and Your Team
Owning a private dental practice is a business, and must be treated as one. This is not taught in any dental school. And the goal of every business is to make a profit. For such a business revolving around healthcare, the surest way to keep a constant profit flow is by improving the standard of patient care.
So whether you have just two employees or over 10 employees in your dental clinic, a good way to inculcate the profit mindset in yourself and your team is to host seminars, webinars, business meetings, courses, and workshops that will teach you and your team to develop the right profit mindset.
This should revolve around how to treat patients the right way and how to maintain a good relationship with them through excellent communication skills.
2. Develop a Marketing Strategy for your Dental Practice
This may sound brand new to many dentists who still do not believe that a dental practice is a business. Developing a successful marketing plan for your dental clinic should not cost you so much money, or else you plan on hiring a marketing agency.
Here are some top marketing ideas for dental offices:
- Know your competitors: These are those dental clinics very close to your practice and who offer similar services as you do.
- Have a brand identity: Have a logo, color, and tagline.
- Engage in community outreaches: This includes sponsoring events and giving out toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc. Do this before other brands reach out first
- Study and specify your target audience: While it may be too bad to narrow down your specialty so much, having something people know you for is a great way to increase popularity.
- Start building a client register
- Advertising: Start advertising in local newspapers, television, and online.
- Give people enough reason to call your dental clinic
- Let People Know About All Your Services: This could be achieved through business cards and websites.
There are a lot more things you can include in the list, but for a start, doing all the above will bring in more clients to your dental practice.
3. Build an Online Presence
You are leaving a lot of money on the table if you own a dental clinic and do not have an adequate online presence.
The key components of online presence in any business are; a landing page with your services and a social media presence.
LANDING PAGE
Having a good social media presence is not just all about having a website or landing page, but having all of them optimized for search engines. Make sure you set up your local SEO on Google so that clients living near your practice can be able to find your clinic. If you have trouble doing this, you could hire an SEO expert on Fiver or Upwork who could help you set this up without much stress.
SOCIAL MEDIA PAGES
Businesses that have active social media handles have better visibility and have more chances of reaching out to more people daily.
On these channels, you can share your procedures, facilities, services, and customer reviews.
The recommended social channels for your dental practice include:
- Facebook page
- Tiktok
- UHIVE: This is a next-gen platform that enables you to own free and paid virtual spaces for your businesses in the metaverse. The value of these spaces increases with time and is projected to be worth more money in the future. You can start claiming spaces now by downloading the UHIVE app.
Once you have your brand identity figured out, setting up all these social pages for your business should not take you more than a day, and the benefit is exponential.
EMAIL LIST
Do you still underrate the power of an email list? Having an email list is not just for online-based businesses. You can boost the profitability of your dental practice by collecting clients’ emails and sending them regular newsletters.
Ideas on what to send them include; birthdays and seasonal wishes, promotional emails on your new launches and services, how to use your products, best teeth health practices, etc.
INFO CHANNELS
The two major info channels of our time are blogs and Youtube channels. Although they can be very stressful to manage, as your dental practice grows, you will find sharing information about your business on channels to be very useful.
Sharing information about dental care is crucial to driving massive traffic to your dental clinic.
4. Focus on the Most profitable procedures for Dentists
Another way to increase revenue in your dental practice is to concentrate your focus on the most profitable procedures for dentists and spend less time on the unprofitable ones.
As a dentist, you should know what procedures have a higher profit margin. These are those procedures that you spend less resources on while treating your patients, and those procedures that most patients are willing to present to your clinic for.
Some of the most profitable procedures for dentists include; dental crowns, dental bonding, inlays, polishing and scaling, root canals, Invisalign maintenance, and fitting, dental implants, etc. There is a separate post on the most profitable dental procedures on this blog.
5. Build a Specialty
By building a specialty, I do not mean being known for just one procedure, doing this will be counter-productive. I actually mean singling out one specialty in dentistry and being well-known for every procedure in such a specialty.
It could be cosmetics dentistry, pediatric dentistry, geriatric dentistry, etc. Having a specialty increases customer retention and trust in your dental practice.
6. Increase Services
To make more profit in your dental practice, you should not be as boring as other health centers. Include things like selling snacks, games stations, and televisions for customers waiting in the reception.
Also, you can include additional services for customers who undergo certain procedures like free polishing and scaling and so on.
7. Build a Patient’s Record
Aim to collect the contact information of every patient that visits your practice. This information should include; phone numbers, date of birth, emails, addresses, and services offered.
This is how you build a strong support base and newsletters for your business. With this information at your disposal, you can also invite your clients to whatever events you are hosting and also remind them of the need to visit their dentist when due.
8. Make Payment Easy For Your Clients
Increase the available payment gateways for your clients. This will make payment easier for your patients and you will reduce the number of debtors in your dental practice.
Bearing in mind that recently, most people prefer card payments, you may want to get a good card reader like Sumup card reader to make accepting payments from your clients easier.
9. Review Your Pricing Structure
When last did you update the price list of your procedures in your dental practice?
As the cost of living keeps increasing and as inflation rises, you should as well update the price of your services, or else you are running a charity.
A general analysis of your prices should be done at least once a year. This will help you know when it is time to increase or reduce the price of your dental services.
10. Avoid Over-dependence on Insurance
With insurance, patients tend to pay less and get access to very minimal services. Some patients who are not well educated on how the health insurance schemes work may also feel like they are not getting enough for the services they paid for.
So it is your duty to educate them on their insurance schemes to save your business, or you can offer them a better alternative to insurance which is helping them collect payments in advance for future services.
This will help to reduce the cost burden of certain dental procedures on the patients.
12. Start Accepting More Patients into Your Practice
It is good to refer patients whom you feel have cases that are beyond your expertise. However, as you are doing so, you keep losing tons of patients in the process.
So the best way to avoid this is to keep practicing, going for courses, training, and programs that will help broaden your horizon and increase your skills in dental practice.
You can make it a point of duty to take at least 2 courses in unfamiliar procedures per year. You can do more if you have all it takes.
Conclusion
Having a private dental practice is a very profitable venture. To increase revenue in dental practice, all you need to put in place is to maintain a constant influx of patients to your practice and to increase the quality of services you render in your center.
With the above fixes, I am confident that you will be able to see a massive positive change in your dental practice.
FAQs on How to Increase Revenue in Dental Practice
How can a dentist get more clients?
You can get more clients in your dental practice by building a strong social media presence, and a strong marketing strategy, and by improving the quality of services you render to your clients.
How often do dental practices fail?
You should feel confident about starting a dental practice in the United States as popular sources estimate that the failure rate of the dental profession is less than 1%. The reason is that dental care is an essential element of human confidence.
How do I market myself as a dentist?
There are 3 things you must do to successfully market yourself as a dentist and they are; build a landing page, have active social media handles, and engage in community services and outreaches. These three will cover your online and offline marketing campaigns in your dental career.
How do I market my dental clinic?
To market your dental clinic, you must do a local dental SEO for your landing page to enable people to locate your business on Google Maps. You should also have a brand identity with features like a logo, brand colors, and motto/taglines.
How much can you make owning a dental practice?
By owning a dental practice, you can make as much as USD$203,010 in annual net profits. This can be more or less depending on your location, price of services, and other expenditures.
Also, Read; Business Ideas for healthworkers
