Putting it all together

Even as recently as 15 years ago, orthodontists in most areas did not have to advertise and market their practices (beyond the phone book and through referring dentists) in order to achieve success.  The reasons for such are many, but include the facts that competition was less, the consumer had no easy means of performing his or her subject matter research and were therefore less likely to “shop around,” and patients were often disinclined to go outside of their immediate community for orthodontic treatment.  Add to this the fact that there has been a decrease in market share for orthodontists due to general dentists and pediatric dentists performing more and more orthodontic procedures.  And so orthodontics has been consequently pushed into a new era that virtually requires that its practitioners engage in the business of marketing their practices.  But “Marketing Principles 101” is not a mandatory part of the future orthodontist’s curriculum, and even if it were, the materials learned would be far outdated by the time he or she went into practice.  And the designated PR or Marketing employee usually has little or no significant experience in either creating a true marketing strategy or managing such a strategy into fruition.  Consultants can often supply good marketing direction but at a high price and with little measurable result.

Ingenuity’s “moment” occurred during a conversation between its founder, a marketing and technology entrepreneur, and one of his good friends, an orthodontist.  The friend was lamenting his declining new start rate in the face of a slowing economy.  The conversation expanded into an all day Q&A session about the orthodontic practice, orthodontic marketing, the role of social media in orthodontics, and the orthodontic industry at large.  This discussion led to research, and then to concept, hypothesis, and testing to derive the one basic premise upon which Ingenuity was to be built; Marketing and advertising in orthodontics has evolved very little over the past decade even as the world of personal communication has changed dramatically.  What’s more, while most orthodontist recognize the increasing importance of social media marketing for their practices, the vast majority don’t have the time or resources to create or fully execute a plan for implementing such. And finally, most orthodontic practices use one of a few companies to build their websites and simply hope that their search engine optimization is such that their sites will rank high in the search engines.  But even the most astute practices that are on top of the aforementioned are left to wonder, “what kind of return on investment does all of this bring?”

Ingenuity works to provide you with the direction, platform, and tools to integrate all your marketing campaigns into one cohesive “net.”  This “net” is constructed of social media marketing campaigns, online orthodontic contests, social network participation and management, and search engine optimization.  Once this “net” is stitched together, the yield in new patients will be realized.  And, while we work with and alongside your practice’s designated marketing coordinator, or you the orthodontist, the service is largely self managing.  You are not called on to bare any significant overhead, in terms of cost, time, and/or labor, in order to reap the benefits of Ingenuity’s Orthodontic Social Media Marketing System.