Boost Your Marketing Efforts with Feedback

There are a wide variety of ways dentists can provide reviews of your laboratory. Google and Facebook can often supply reviews from engaged clients. These unsolicited reviews are most likely to be highly positive or negative because the average client does not feel compelled to provide feedback unless they are incredibly grateful or furious. An additional means of gaining reviews is through third-party sites that provide Net Promoter Scores (NPS). One such site that is focused solely on the dental laboratory industry is LabWorthy (mrktmetrics.com/lab). This site provides a convenient way for your clients to give feedback on how your laboratory is doing on a scale of 1 to 5 in terms of fit, value, communication, and esthetics. Unfortunately, unsolicited feedback only skims the surface when it comes to understanding your customer base. While you should certainly take into account any feedback given through Google or Facebook, soliciting reviews and input from the full spectrum of your clients is necessary to truly benefit and boost engagement.

Requesting feedback from your clients not only allows you to ask specific questions but also emphasizes the value you place on your dentists' opinions and experiences. This display of respect can have a positive side effect of increasing client satisfaction and loyalty to your laboratory. You can use case stuffers, social media, and/or any other channels you have at your disposal to gain as much feedback as possible. You can also use email to send out surveys with direct questions, helping you get the highest-quality feedback possible. The more data you have, the higher your chances are of satisfying a majority of your clients.

The goal of surveys or marketing inquiries is to gain insight into how your average client views your laboratory, services, products, and team. First, it is essential to pinpoint the areas of your laboratory that you want to examine and improve, whether that be a dwindling number of removable cases or a high number of remakes. Then, you can craft direct questions that deal with those issues. These surveys should lead your clients from a simple base question—such as, "How likely are you to send us a removable case?"—to a more personal, open-ended question that gets to the heart of the problem—such as, "What would help increase the likelihood of you prescribing us a removable restoration?" In addition to asking open-ended questions, it is also a good idea to use sliding-scale questions to determine client opinions. Making dentists rank your laboratory on a variety of factors will help you analyze your data once you have obtained enough feedback. While sites such as Google and Facebook generally do not influence dentists to leave reviews, much less ones containing thorough and insightful feedback, email surveys and resources like LabWorthy can help you obtain quality feedback that helps you optimize your engagement and connect better with your dentists.

After you collect a large amount of feedback from all types of dentists who use your laboratory, you can begin utilizing that information to optimize engagement. Depending on the types of questions you ask, you should be able to determine the best marketing methods to use and the kinds of marketing topics your dentists are most likely to interact with, as well as how to cultivate your marketing strategy to increase overall sales. Paying attention to the feedback, both solicited and unsolicited, can significantly benefit your laboratory. Understanding your typical dentist client can help you focus on your strengths and learn to work around your weaknesses.

Your laboratory's bottom line will always be one of your top priorities. However, whether you have an in-house marketer or work with an agency, the main focus should be on how dentists are engaging with your laboratory's marketing efforts. By having a thorough understanding of the types of dentists you work with, you can optimize print and digital pieces to better cater to their interests. Boosting engagement encourages brand loyalty to your laboratory and will eventually lead to higher conversion and increasing profits.

Terry Fine is President of AMG Creative in Fort Collins, Colorado.