Dental labs have grown more competitive in a highly digitalized world. Now, it is made more apparent that making your brand stand out is just as important as being outstanding. Every business is now compelled to answer one fundamental question—What is your story?
As the owner of a dental lab, you are no longer expected to be just credible. You should also know how to communicate your credibility. And this is why effective marketing matters.
What Role Does Marketing Play?
Stories can make or break your reputation. A good story can build trust and help people remember your name. It communicates what you stand for and offers a solution to the challenges your customers are facing.
On the other hand, a story—one that isn’t authentic to your brand—can confuse your audience. They may see a gap between what you’re saying and what you’re doing. Nobody wants to be misled after all and so as a marketer, you must build a foundation of trust with the customer.
When it comes to marketing, the dental lab industry is no different. Dentists work with different labs and each lab may have similar services but they each tell different stories. Marketing is a tool to understand your story and the goal is to find the right people who resonate with that story.
This, of course, is easier said than done.You may have the right product but perhaps you are talking to the wrong audience. You may have the best service in the industry but no one knows your name.
Ultimately, it’s a matter of finding the right pieces that paint the right picture. Marketing clarifies your message and in effect builds trust and authenticity to your brand.
The Pros of Marketing Your Lab
If done correctly, marketing can spell the difference between growth and failure. Here are a handful of reasons as to why you should give marketing a chance.
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Brand Awareness and Recall
Before your brand becomes popular, the people must first know that you exist. Like it or not, humans search for stories to cling to. Without consistent attempts to make conversation, how will you expect customers to recall your name? In short, you simply need to put your brand out there.
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Understand Your Winning Story
You can view marketing as a diagnostic tool. It guides your team to ask the right questions and avoids crowding your mental load with unnecessary information.
Ask yourself, what makes you any different? The market is already saturated with ads. Surely, there’s something about your brand that offers unique value. Extract that value and make sure to emphasize it in your communication efforts.
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Saves Time and Focuses Efforts
Once you know your winning story, it will be easier to focus your efforts on the pieces that really matter—the ones that generate leads and the ones that convert these leads to potential customers.
Followers, clicks, open rates do not really matter much when you understand where to direct your efforts. In reality, these numbers do not accurately reflect a consumer’s appetite.
Ineffective Marketing and Risks
The strength of your lab’s marketing is dependent on your team’s ability to execute it. You see. it’s not always about the product but more about how you communicate the product.
Most marketers fail to understand that how you sell is just as crucial as what you sell too. Here are some things about storytelling that you have to be careful about.
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Inconsistent Messaging Breeds Distrust
Story is king but when the story is inauthentic, you will likely lose your potential customers and may even lose the trust of your current ones. This is why understanding your story is important.
If you constantly change how your brand talks and how they appear, chances are you damage your reputation by appearing unsure about your positioning. It helps to reassess if what you’re saying is actually what’s being perceived.
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Unclear Direction Means Unclear Results
Purposeful marketing narrows down your scope. The smaller the scope, the easier it is to measure your results. With an unclear direction, you not only set yourself up for failure in the long run, you also will likely get confusing results. Designing the right efforts around your clearly defined goals will yield clearer results.
Marketing is not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. It is a product of experimentation and collaboration. For dentists and labs alike where the service and products are identical, knowing how to standout is a necessary skill.
Evident understands that and makes it a point to create a CAD team around the customer— creating dental cases unique to their own identity. It’s about adjusting to the workflows of the customer and not the other way around.
For inquiries about dental lab designs or for partnerships, feel free to send us a message via our Contact Us page.
