What is your Practice’s Competitive Advantage?

What is your Practice’s Competitive Advantage?

“If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.” — Jack Welch

Very true words spoken by a very successful business leader. What is your Practice’s competitive advantage? And more importantly, are you successfully communicating it? Here are some simple steps to define, create and communicate a competitive advantage:

Step #1. Assess your Practice’s strengths. What do you do really well? What in your approach, education, training and background makes you different or better? Be specific as possible. (Hint: your current patients are often the most reliable source of this information. Find out what they think.)

Step #2. Define your ideal Patient. Income, location, insurances, dental problems, mannerisms, personality, schedule, etc. Everything you can put down on paper.

Step #3. Ideal Patient’s Needs Assessment: put yourself in their shoes and analyze what their specific needs are and how you are currently serving those needs. (Hint: some of your current patients will meet your ideal patient criteria. Be sure to ask them what your not doing today to meet their needs.)

Step #4. Competitive Analysis: research your closest competitors. Start with the ones that you are competing with for patients right now. What are they offering that is different than you?

Step #5. Now add everything up. Look at your strengths, your competitor strengths, and your ideal patient’s needs. Where are the gaps? Where are the opportunities?

Step #6. Adapt your practice operational model to meet these needs, and communicate, communicate and communicate some more. Let those ideal prospective patients know that you can deliver what they need. Leave no doubt.

Practice Treatment Plan can help you in this process. We specialize in Dental Marketing Strategy, Integrated Marketing Communications and Patient Experience Enhancement.