How Best New Patients’ Members-only Model is Reshaping Dental Practice Marketing and Carving Out New Savings to Boot.
Buying Power: Words that consumers equate to savings, and one of the driving principles behind the success of internal marketing and promotional products company BestNewPatients.com (BNP). The other? — Relationship marketing. Because as BNP sees it, in order to thrive, dental practices must have a strong internal marketing program in place, but it has to be easily implementable and most of all affordable. With highly-customized dental hygiene promotional products as its basis and elite pricing for its members, BNP is changing the way dentists are marketing their practices, while creating access to savings that help level the playing field.
Director of Marketing Crystal Henderson tells us why BNP, a CWA partner company, expects growth to continue to trend up and why a growing number of practices are taking advantage of its member privileges.
DNM: What is BNP?
CH: In 2013, BNP launched as a provider of customized dental hygiene promotional products based on our belief that customization helps establish the brand identity of our members and creates triggers that spark conversations among patients and potential patients. And that this type of specialized marketing directly impacts our clients’ bottom-line. The challenge, however, is that it can be costly to do. What we came up with was something based on a commitment made by CWA founding partner Darrell Cain years ago and that was to identify opportunities to leverage the buying power of our community of dentists to reduce the cost of services and supplies. So it’s simple, BNP makes quality customization of the products that have the most marketing impact for practices affordable for our members. We create custom logo designs, referral and re-appointment cards, and any kind of specialty cards our members want. Again, these things can easily be outside of a practice’s budget, but BNP puts them in reach.
The response has been phenomenal. Our membership numbers have hit triple digits in just two years because the marketing impact and the savings are there.
DNM: How does the BNP membership and price savings work?
CH: For an annual membership fee of $125, BNP clients have access to Professional Elite pricing on a range of products offered by top dental suppliers including Crest/Oral B. We’ve been operating for two years and already we’ve been able to obtain pricing that has created annualized savings as high as $4000. In fact, we guarantee that every practice that joins will get their membership fee back in annualized savings, or we’ll fully refund it. Depending on the practice size and how much product they use annually, most clients are coming in at an annualized savings of $200 to $2000 on their purchases. And they’re saving approximately 25 percent per order on the big three — toothpaste, toothbrushes and floss. The positive impact from that is felt immediately.
On top of the savings, members get full access to a hands-on, knowledgeable service team which includes an on-staff hygienist and BNP dedicated Crest/Oral B reps. This makes the whole buying process turnkey and easy, and our clients have been very pleased. The value we’re delivering for them is reflected in our exponential growth over the last two years.
DNM: There are other companies that do this. What’s the BNP difference?
CH: BNP was born out of Cain Watters’ 30-year history of helping dentists and dental practice reach business and financial success. I’m not aware of any similar company with deep roots like ours in the financial side of dentistry. We’ve taken that expertise and layered on a proven marketing philosophy – people purchase based on relationships – and added a partnership with industry giant Crest/Oral B. And speaking of relationships, the BNP customer experience is managed by a licensed hygienist who speaks the language of our clients and fully understands their needs. Our clients would be hard-pressed to find this level of expertise with anyone else.
Moreover, we know that our clients are dentists first and business people second. Our 5-Star customer service is what allows them to focus on patients. We do the price shopping. We manage the process. Ultimately, over and above marketing and saving money, we’re lightening the workload of their business and that is something they really appreciate.
In aggregate, all of this is helping BNP members better compete in their marketplace and this is something we’re extremely proud to be able to say.
DNM: How does BNP plan to build on its success?
CH: We will continue our focus on educating practices on the value of relationship marketing – communicating their “story” and training theirs staffs to support internal marketing programs. We want all of our doctors to have confidence in their teams’ ability to professionally gain new referrals and knowledgeably communicate the range of services a practice offers.
As membership numbers grow we will be able to negotiate increasingly better deals that allow for more robust marketing programs, ultimately helping our members own the marketplace in which they compete. We’re thrilled to see that we’re on track to do that.
To order, visit http://bestnewpatients.com/ .
