What’s Your Dental Practice Value Proposition?
There are hundreds of thousands of dentists out there. What makes you so special?
When you break out to start your own practice or need to improve your current practice’s marketing strategy, it’s vitally important that you determine what makes your practice stand out. Your value proposition can focus on anything from your website redesign to your practice aesthetic to your marketing strategy—or one central idea.
So what exactly does a value proposition include? And how do you write one?
What is a Value Proposition?
A value proposition helps set your practice apart from the competition online. Value props act as a customer-centric statement that communicates the unique experience patients will have working with you. It answers the question: why should patients choose us?
A good value proposition should clearly present three points to your ideal patient:
- The solution you offer
- The benefits of choosing you
- The advantage you have over your competitors
Example:
“Transforming smiles is our passion. At [your practice], we specialize in creating confident smiles through cutting-edge orthodontic treatment with patience, kindness, and care.”
The Solution: Creating confident smiles
The Benefits: Patience, kindness, and care
The Advantage: Using cutting-edge orthodontic treatment
Value Props, Taglines, and Slogans–Oh my!
Marketing is all about the power of words, which is why your value proposition is such an amazing tool to draw in new patients. But taglines and slogans are also important for your practice’s image, and they tend to go hand-in-hand with value propositions. Let’s break these three tools down further:
Value Proposition
Emphasizes specific benefits, solutions, and advantages of your practice. Generally more comprehensive and meant to persuade potential patients.
Tagline
A short and memorable phrase that is part of your practice’s branding. Typically brief and designed to create brand recognition and leave a lasting impression. Encapsulates the brand identity of your practice.
Slogan
A short and catchy phrase that is generally used for advertising campaigns. Meant to be attention-grabbing and memorable. Can be temporary and change often.
Each of these phrases can be used in different ways to communicate the mission of your practice, but they should all be written in a similar tone and support your overall message. Check out these value proposition examples for small businesses to get your wheels turning.
The Real Value of Your Value Prop
In the vast world of messaging, why does your value proposition matter? Why should you bother with one more written statement about your practice?
First and foremost, a value proposition is written for your patients. It has less to do with you, and everything to do with how you can serve them. It should be the type of sentiment that immediately connects with your ideal audience.
A well-written value proposition quickly communicates your unique selling proposition (USP) that differentiates you from your competitors. In an industry where content can feel stagnant, dull, or unoriginal, this can be the place you outshine the rest.
When you live up to your value proposition inside your practice, you build a strong, positive reputation for the type of care you provide as a dental professional. This can also spill over into your internal team and how they administer care and work together in your practice.
Value propositions help focus dental marketing content so you can have a cohesive strategy and communications across all of your platforms.
How to Write a Value Proposition
To determine what your practice’s value proposition should be, you need to analyze what it is that defines you, your practice, and your style of care. These four steps can help you on your way to a clear and concise value proposition.
Revisit Your Mission Statement
Your mission statement is another piece of your branding strategy. It outlines the fundamentals of your practice and can define core values, long-term goals, and a desired impact on the community. Look through your mission statement to find a jumping-off point for a value prop.
If your mission statement talks about “creating healthy smiles,” use your value proposition to define how you are going to achieve that goal for your patients. Use your value proposition to communicate your mission statement in a patient-friendly, purposeful way.
Take a look at this article for how to write a mission statement.
Research Your Local Audience
What does your practice bring, or want to bring to your community? The obvious answer is dental care, but you can do a little extra research to find out what needs your community has and how you can fill those needs.
Look at the demographics of your local community. Are there a lot of young families? Do you have an older community with specific dental needs? Are your services the first of its kind in the area?
Take a look at reviews for your competitors and other dental pros in the area and note the good and the bad. What can you do differently to reach local patients?
Define Your Tone Of Voice
Tailor your tone to match your target audience. If you are working with kids or teens, you can be more warm and fun (and even throw some humor in there). If you specialize in oral surgery, you may want to be more clinical and professional. If you are looking to connect with patients who have anxiety about going to the dentist, focus on sounding reassuring and understanding.
Think about how your practice is involved in the community and how you want to convey that to potential patients.
This can also help you as you work on the copy of your dental website. Modern and well-designed dental websites should clearly state their value proposition and the tone should be cohesive across the entire site.
But don’t expect a well-written value proposition to save your website alone. A clearly stated value proposition can’t hide an ugly website. It’s just part of your overall messaging.
Start Brainstorming (With Templates!)
A great brainstorming session can help you round out your ideas and the personality behind your value proposition. You can even use AI to get started. Expert dental marketers are using ChatGPT and artificial intelligence to help with writing mission statements and value propositions.
Play with different prompts to get ChatGPT to give you variations of your value prop and fresh adjectives to describe you. Remember: never copy and paste from ChatGPT or you may end up with the same value prop as a dozen other dentists. Use it as a tool to brainstorm new ideas.
Here are some templates and examples you can use to start writing your own value proposition:
Value Prop Templates:
- [Practice Name] empowers [target patients] to [transformative outcome] by providing [unique services].
- [Practice Name] provides [specialty] with [key differentiator], enabling [target patients] to [desired impact/outcome].
- At [Practice Name], we [action verb or phrase] to [desired outcome] for [target audience] by [unique approach or offering], ensuring [key benefit or result].
More Brainstorming Examples:
- “Discover your perfect smile at [Practice Name]. From teeth whitening to veneers, we can help you achieve the smile of your dreams.”
- “Your child’s dental health is our priority. [Practice Name] makes going to the dentist fun again and helps your child build a lifelong habit of taking care of their teeth.”
- “For complex dental needs, trust the expertise of [Practice Name]. Our board-certified oral surgeons offer advanced surgical solutions with compassion and precision.”
Real-Life Examples of Value Propositions for Dentists
Here’s our roundup of some great value propositions for dental professionals. Use these to spark some fresh ideas and conversations around what makes an ideal value proposition for your practice.
Heartland Dental
This value proposition gives the reader a clear CTA (call-to-action) for how Heartland Dental will help them. Your CTA can be a powerful tool on your website to convert website traffic into new patients.
Salt Lake Modern Dentistry
Salt Lake Modern Dentistry gets specific as to why they are the right choice for crowns. They also promise care that’s “faster, less invasive and more efficient,” which is a great USP and connects with patients quickly.
Maple Grove Dentistry
Maple Grove Dentistry does a great job communicating a feeling of genuine care and clearly outlines the desired outcome for potential patients.
Put Your Value Proposition to Work for You
Use your cleverly crafted value proposition to put purpose behind your marketing campaigns, your practice culture, and the way you serve your patients. Over time, a great value prop becomes synonymous with the defining characteristic patients love about your practice.
You’ll find that most marketing strategies for dentists include a focus on value propositions because a great value proposition helps make a great dentist.
Get the value proposition you want faster with the help of a dental marketing company like My Social Practice. Let us help clarify your message quickly, so you can start seeing more patients.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Can I Make My Dental Practice Stand Out?
Identify your strengths individually as a dentist or as a whole as a practice. Do you inject humor and fun into your work? Are you compassionate and patient? Do you work well with children? Does your experience or personality drive your quality of work above the competition?
Use your value proposition to identify and communicate your individual qualifications for administering high-quality care to your community. Then use it on your dental website and marketing materials until it becomes ingrained as part of your practice identity.
What Qualities Make A Good Dental Practice?
Your value proposition can help you communicate yourself as a quality dental practice. Based on your tone of voice and the type of care you provide, use words like comfort, caring, professional, patient, understanding, and quality. Most patients want to be heard and treated with compassion. Use your value proposition to express how you can meet those needs. These can also be dental keywords that help you show up in Google Search.
About the Author: Adrian Lefler is a dental marketing expert and a key member of the dental marketing team at My Social Practice. My Social Practice is a dental marketing company located in Salt Lake City, Utah. Adrian is passionate about helping practices grow through SEO for dentists. If you’d like to book one of the members of My Social Practice’s speaking team, you can do that HERE. Interested in learning more about the benefits of dental SEO or our dental website service, please give us a call.
