In the furor over predictive AI tools like ChatGPT and Dall-E, you may be asking yourself an important question: What, if anything, does this mean for my dental practice?
Whether it’s a chatbot on your website, tools and services to help with insurance billing, or AI-generated search results, machine learning has revolutionized how we interact as humans. In some industries, this has raised worries about layoffs. But in your dental office, it should spark a different response. Why? With technology replacing much of the mindless busywork your team has to do every day, your staff has time to concentrate on those things that require a human touch.
At its core, a dental practice is all about human relationships and care. In the face of increased automatic technology and machine-generated content, deepening human relationships helps your practice to thrive. Put tech to work doing what it does best, and put your team to work doing the important empathy-based work that only people can do.
How Real Relationships Empower Your Dental Practice
When you think about dental care as a commodity-based business primarily driven by volume, price, and speed, then it might as well be conducted by robots. In fact, the sooner we can just sit alone in a booth and have robotic arms take care of our biannual cleaning, the better.
But any practitioner worth their salt knows there’s more to oral healthcare than that. Human connection drives healthcare, especially dentistry. Oral care is more than cleaning plaque and filling cavities. A dental practitioner listens to their patients and learns what their concerns and priorities are. They treat people; not just teeth.
How does emphasizing the human element help your practice thrive and grow?
It Separates You From the Crowd
Here’s the thing about generative AI: nothing it says or produces can be copyrighted. The truth is that when you use AI-generated tools, there aren’t many ways to ensure that it’s distinct from what your competitor down the street could do. If you lean on AI as your key differentiator, you’re just going to find yourself in a race for the lowest prices. On the other hand, when you focus on building a culture of human caring in your office, you create a relationship-based business that approaches business in an entirely different way.
It Affects the Way Your Patients Feel
Although we’d like to think that our patients are impressed by our dazzling skills with composite filling, the truth is that what affects patients’ opinions about your practice the most is how you make them feel. When they feel welcome and important, when they know that their concerns are heard and you want to make their lives better, retention rates and case acceptance go up. Those feelings come from face to face interactions and time spent together.
It Turns Patients Into Promoters
Despite the amazing capabilities of targeted digital ad campaigns and clever machine-generated content, the fact remains that great reviews, word of mouth marketing, and direct referrals are your very best avenue for gaining new patients. And how do you get those? By creating patient-practice relationships that expand outwards. You delight your patients to the extent that they want to share the news with their circle of influence.
Empathetic Content Versus Sympathetic Content in Marketing
Generative AI like ChatGPT and Midjourney specifically have interesting potential for your marketing efforts. These tools can generate photo-realistic and hyper-specific images out of thin air, create ad copy for you, and even write blog posts for your site. You can follow our Dental AI Art Instagram account to see just what’s possible. After the spiel above, are we recommending that practices avoid using these tools altogether? Well… no! In fact, learning how to properly leverage these tools might be an excellent way to create something you never would have been able to before. Most of all, it can keep you from getting bogged down in the time-consuming work of producing regular content. By taking a lot of the work off your plate, AI frees up your marketing manager enough for her to turn her creativity to other things. To create a good synergy, it’s important to understand two kinds of marketing content: sympathy-based and empathy-based.
Sympathy-based content connects with people based on how they think. It is…
- Practical
- Convenient
- Price sensitive
Sympathy-based content can help you rank higher on SEO, explain more about how certain procedures work, or notify patients about a new service.
Empathy-based content, on the other hand, connects with people based on how they feel. It is…
- Emotional
- Relatable
- Comfortable
Empathy-based content should be highly personalized, and take into account exactly how people are feeling, It will consider what’s making them feel concerned, vulnerable, or hopeful at a moment in time. For dentists, this kind of content can help hesitant patients overcome their fear of the dental office, feel more motivated to prioritize their regular care, or take the plunge to get a smile makeover they’ve been considering for a long time.
While AI can be an amazing tool to help you generate sympathy-based content, it can never completely understand your patients enough to provide empathy-based content. Instead, that’s up to your team!
5 Empathy-Based Marketing Ideas That AI Can’t Do For You!
As a dental marketing company, we’ve seen the impact that empathy-based content can have for a practice firsthand. Making it a regular effort has long-term, long-ranging influence on your practice growth. Here are a few ideas to get you started…
1: Create a charitable giving campaign that builds up your community
Investing your time and effort towards charity does amazing things for your practice. It gives your marketing more reach than you’ve ever experienced before. Even more than that, it transforms your team’s feelings about the work that they do every day. It even affects your patients’ feelings about being a part of your practice. After all, we all want to be a part of something bigger and greater.
This charity campaign sells smile-whitening services and products in your practice to raise money for a charity of your choice. Picking an organization that hits home for your team can make it even more impactful.
2: Share highlights of your team
The real fuel of your practice is the people who make it run. When you strengthen connective moments between your staff and the patients they serve, your power to positively impact patients’ lives grows… and your practice stays busy.
Find a way to share regular “Learn more about our team” posts on social media and other digital platforms, sharing a picture of a team member along with some fun trivia tidbits about their life. Focus on conversation-starters and invite questions and interaction. Even better, create a video interview!
3: Before and after pictures and videos with real patients
You know that dentistry has the power to change lives. When you work on a smile transformation case, see if the patient is comfortable with you sharing before and after photos to demonstrate the impact. Even better, share a video of the “reveal moment.” These moments can be powerfully emotional and drive home the difference that a smile can make.
4: Fun in-office team competitions and games
Some of the best social media for dentists content out there isn’t necessarily educational and might not feature your services at all… these posts are simply engaging snapshots of your team interacting and having fun. Film a roller-chair race, see if you can understand what teammates are saying with cheek retractors in, or race to see who can empty a case of floss the fastest. It may all seem silly, but these moments make your patients want to come and be a part of the atmosphere that your team enjoys together.
5: Advice video addressing a common question from patients
We all have questions that we hear again and again in the dental office. How do I floss around a permanent retainer? What’s that tool do? Do I really need x-rays? Answer en masse with a video that you share on your social channels. It’s a great way to get your face out there. Even better, it helps your patients know that you’re listening to and thinking about their concerns.
Spend More Time Being Human
Technology just keeps progressing, and with it, your ability to get things done in the practice keeps growing, whether you’re milling your own custom crowns, automating insurance billing, or letting a machine write the first draft of your article about bruxism. Just remember to take the time you save and use it to expand the empathetic, human influence of your team. Take time to listen to your patients, understand who they are, and share your passion for the amazing work that you do. In both your dental marketing and your in-office interactions, let the power of human relationships transform the work you and your team do every day.
About The Author: Christine Hill is a seasoned content writer and legacy member of the My Social Practice team. After cutting her teeth creating blogs and social campaigns for dentists, she has gone on to specialize in content management, branding, and SEO strategy for a huge variety of businesses. Now, she’s sharing her insights to show dentists how to utilize a better understanding of their audience to achieve amazing marketing results.
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