Using Public Relations for a Dental Practice

By Dell Richards

Public relations is a way of marketing a dental practice through the media and directly to potential patients without purchasing advertising time or space. Well-written press releases and follow-up phone calls targeted to the specific audience of various media outlets can result in stories that are worth more than purchased advertising. One key to successfully communicating to others through public relations is straightforward writing. The following article not only covers the variety of opportunities available to a dental practice through PR, it also serves as an excellent example of the style of writing that should be used for PR communications.

Article copyright 1998 Journal of the California Dental Association.
Photographs copyright of the authors.

Using public relations is one of the best kept secrets of the business world. In some publications, nearly 50 percent of all the "news" is generated not by reporters or editors but by public relations professionals. A study by the Columbia Journalism Review of the prestigious Wall Street Journal revealed that 45 percent of the Journal's articles were the result of press releases and pitches.

Unfortunately, public relations and marketing are rarely taught in dental school. Like running a business, this skill is usually acquired through the school of hard knocks only after the shingle is hung. Unfortunately, the days when a dentist could open an office and expect two weeks' worth of patients to walk through the door are long gone.

Some dentists also feel that they are lowering themselves by "selling their wares" even though their "products" are expertise and knowledge. In today's world, getting your name out is a necessity no matter what your profession. Publicity offers the ability to show the dentist's expertise and gives the doctor a legitimacy advertising cannot convey. Being featured or quoted by the media conveys credibility, a quality that cannot be bought. If done right, publicity can add to your stature as a professional, as an expert in your field, and as a human being.

By creating name recognition, media coverage also can boost patient numbers. When I started representing a Sacramento office nearly four years ago, the dentist was doing some marketing but little publicity. Through the use of externally generated media stories and internally generated marketing such as newsletters, we have increased his patient numbers by more than one-third.

Despite the statistics, few dentists understand publicity or how to use it to their advantage. So, what is public relations and how do you get it?

Put simply, public relations is the ability of a dentist -- or the dentist's PR person -- to get stories about the dentist into newspapers, magazines, trade journals, radio, television, and other media outlets. In the broadest sense, PR also includes marketing directly to patients with items such as newsletters, brochures, booklets, fliers, and handouts.

PR people usually open the media's door by using a press release. A release is a double-spaced, one-page document that contains an item of news. It should contain a headline and the basic who, what, where, when, and how of a news story as well as your office name, address, and general office phone number.

If you want to know how to write a press release, read the first few paragraphs of any newspaper, magazine, or trade journal article. Unless the article opens with an incident or personal story, known as an "anecdotal lead," the article will summarize and contain the general information of the complete story. If the article has an anecdotal lead, there will be a "nut graph" by the third paragraph that contains the essence of the story in one sentence.

To find out what the essence of a story is, apprentice reporters often resort to the mom trick: If they had to tell their mom what the story was about in one sentence, what would they say?

And how should they say it? The language used in a press release needs to be simple and straightforward. In other words, no jargon. For example, since the public uses the word "cavities," press releases and newsletters should use the word "cavities," not "caries."

The release should also contain the name and phone number of the person who will handle the media. Not having a professional is one of the biggest mistakes businesses make. You need a professional who can pitch a story or answer questions in one or two sentences without using technical language. You also must call the media back immediately. Reporters work on horrendous deadlines and cannot wait for a response. When I worked on a daily news service, I would have a list of 10 people to call (sources) to get quotes. The first three people who filled the bill got into the story. The rest didn't. If you don't return a call within an hour, forget it. You will only show how little you understand the nature of the media. You will not only waste your own time but theirs and probably be crossed off their source list.

To be effective, press releases should be targeted to the audience that the media represents. For instance, if a new dentist is joining your practice, you would want to send a press release to the local business newspaper as well as the business section of the local daily newspaper. If you are a member of a dental society, and it has a newsletter with a people section, send a copy there. To know what to put in the press release, read the section you are targeting. Use it as a model for the tone and the information the release needs to contain.

When I first started working with the Sacramento dentist, I realized that the techniques he offered his patients were uncommon. At the time, he was encouraging his patients to make their own floss out of a yarn that had been clinically tested by a periodontist in the area but was not yet marketed commercially. (Johnson & Johnson recently came out with a woven floss that is remarkably similar to the concept he was promoting at the time.)

This new technique -- handmade though it was -- and its benefits formed the basis of the first releases sent to the local media. Because the editors and producers had never heard of this type of prevention, they were interested. As a result of the press release and a flurry of phone calls, the dentist and his periodontist were interviewed by all of the local television stations over the next few months.

Some people think that once the media bites, that is the end of it. Certainly, if you send that press release about the new dentist joining your practice to the local business newspaper -- and it has all the necessary information -- you probably will never hear from an editor. Instead, a paragraph in the local "People" section of the paper will appear in a few weeks, as if by magic.

This is rarely true, however, of a quote in an article or a feature-length story in a newspaper, magazine, or television. In these cases, you must be willing to spend time working with harried editors and reporters -- and their chaotic schedules. To be frank, this means being at their beck and call.

Because you are actually being given free editorial copy or air time, the time between landing a story and seeing it in the media can be quite intense. One television station wanted to send a reporter to the dentist's office for its three-hour morning show. We had to be at the office at 5 a.m. for the filming to start during the 6 a.m. segment. Although the dentist usually begins seeing patients at 7 a.m., those patients had to be canceled when we got a call from the producer saying they wanted to send a reporter out. Patients who matched the station's audience and were willing to be on television had to be found instead -- on less than 24 hours notice. To film a three-minute segment for the show every half an hour, we had to be available for four full hours. During this time, we all -- from the dentist and staff to myself -- ran around getting the reporter everything she needed for the next segment.

If you work with television, you also must be willing to hurry up and wait. Because mainstream media relies on breaking news, events change rapidly. One television station kept having to cancel its interview with us to send reporters on breaking stories. It took more than a week for the station to be able to send a reporter out for a story that simply was not as newsworthy as a flood, a prison riot, or even a public official's press conference.

During that time, we had to be on call and willing to rearrange patients as necessary. Because we have worked so hard to generate publicity and because we let patients know about the campaign to get the latest information on preventive dentistry out to the public, however, the patients not only support the efforts to get publicity but are excited to be able to help.

For those who consider their time too valuable to "waste" in this type of endeavor, check the cost of getting your name into the media any other way. To get a realistic picture of what PR is worth, begin by comparing the cost of local television or newspaper advertising with the amount of time -- and money -- spent. A front-page story in any section of the local daily newspaper can be worth $10,000 or more -- if the front-page story could be bought, which it can't. The 18 minutes of television coverage we landed during the morning show was worth thousands of dollars in advertising terms. Yet because it was part of the editorial content of the program, it was more credible. As such, that amount of time was much more valuable than that same amount of advertising time ever would be.

Although we landed stories on three of the four local television stations right off the bat, there was still one station that had not covered the story. Revamping the press release to include other new technologies, we sent it to the one remaining station. After the idea was rejected by the news department, I called the producer of the noon segment and pitched the idea of a demonstration of how to prevent cavities and gum disease for a program that often showcased cooking. We were soon writing a question-and-answer script for the noon reporter to use on the program.

Once we landed the local television stories, we decided to focus on a local business newspaper. Again, we revamped the basic idea. This time, I gave a pitch that focused on the hidden cost of dental problems to business, downplaying the information about prevention. The editor's interest was

FIGURE 1. A reprint of an article that appeared in a local business publication

piqued, and we were asked to write a 750-word article on the dollar-and-cents aspect of dental prevention to business.

Successful marketing uses one theme in as many different ways as possible. As long as the target audience is the priority, the idea will work. The different ways we used the "Prevent decay with technology" release is an example (Figure 1).

Another example of what can be done was the use of the business newspaper article. Once the article was printed, we rewrote the headline and first few paragraphs to change the slant to fit our audience, i.e., our patients. One of the ways we did this was by substituting the word "person" for "business" and dropping statistics that were not relevant. We then had a graphic artist lay out the article and printed enough copies to send to the doctor's patients with the next issue of the newsletter.

FIGURE 2. A reprint of an article that appeared in the local newspaper. The reprint was sent out as an insert in the office's patient newsletter.

Newsworthy personal items also can generate news, if the right audience is targeted. Every year for the past three years, this particular dentist has gone to Baja, Mexico, with his church to volunteer free dental services to the local people during Easter week. Because I had heard through the PR grapevine that the editor of a weekly section of the local daily was on the lookout for editorials, I pitched the idea that volunteerism gave as much back emotionally and psychologically to the dentist himself as it did to the people he was physically helping. The editor liked the idea and asked us to write a 750-word column that was published citywide.

After the volunteerism column was published, we added black-and-white photos of the Baja trip to it and had the article laid out by our graphic artist. Again, we printed it as an insert for the newsletter (Figure 2).

We also constantly market to patients. A newsletter full of the latest information on dental prevention goes to patients every other month. While it does have newsworthy information on the office, we focus on health information that is of interest to the patient. Recent issues have had articles on prescription drugs and their effect on the mouth, stress and oral health, bacteria and teeth, and liquids and teeth, to give a few examples of the subjects chosen (Figure 3).

FIGURE 3. A dental office newsletter.

To be effective, a newsletter must look -- and sound -- professional. Writing in plain English rather than technical jargon is essential. Since people see at least 3,000 pieces of very sophisticated advertising every day, explaining the obvious does not work. A jaunty, letter-writing tone can also feel like it is written down to the patient. Remember that the patient is not a friend. He or she is a critical, highly informed consumer who has little time for fluff. Because people get most of their information from journalism of one form or another, the tone of the newsletter needs to be that of journalism itself: Dry and fact-filled. It must also be free of misspellings. Mistakes look amateurish and damage your credibility. Patients will think very little of your efforts to inform them of the latest dental health issues when those issues are presented in sentences with misspelled words. Proofread your newsletter thoroughly, and then have at least one other person do the same.

If you want to start a newsletter, start the first issue with useful information. Don't spend the first issue talking about how you're going to start a newsletter. If you decide to use a newsletter as a marketing tool, follow through. Don't promise a newsletter you can't deliver. If you say the newsletter will go out every month, it has to go out every month -- no matter how much of a burden it is -- for at least a year. Otherwise, you will look worse than if you had done nothing. For a newsletter to work as a continuing direct mail piece, issues must also be done at least quarterly. The rule, however, is the more often, the more effective.

In addition to an ongoing newsletter, we have written and published a number of booklets. While the staff gives the booklets to patients with an explanation of its purpose, I use the publications to generate publicity.

FIGURE 4. A children's coloring book, published by the dental office.

Again, targeting is the key to success. When we published a children's coloring book (Figure 4), I sent a press release specifically about children's dental needs to local monthly publications aimed at parents. Since we were giving the coloring book away free, the headline included the words "Free Offer."

The press release to the weeklies who target neighborhood adults, however, took a different angle: "Local dentist publishes coloring book" with no mention of free offer. While the editors used the coloring book as a graphic in the story, they were not interested in dentistry as much as the man. When we wrote the article, we wrote about his lifelong love of dentistry. Unlike the earlier releases, this article had little actual information on prevention.

The local weeklies also cover six different geographic areas of town. In the article, we mentioned as many areas as we could:

• The area of town in which the office is located;
  
• The area of town in which he lives; and
  
• The area of town in which he grew up.
  

We even included the area of town in which his wife grew up.

Because we managed to work in four of the six areas the newspapers covered, we were able to get the story into four editions. Afterward, another edition picked up the story because they had seen it in so many other editions and had space to fill.

The doctor is now taking the coloring book one step further -- marketing it to other dentists for their patients.

While successful public relations is neither easy nor cheap -- and requires a high degree of commitment from the dentist -- publicity can be one of the most effective ways of creating interest in your office, achieving name recognition and generating new patients.

Author

Dell Richards is the owner of the Sacramento public relations firm Dell Richards Publicity. She specializes in health care clients.

To request a printed copy of this article, please contact/Dell Richards, Dell Richards Publicity, 1250-33rd St., Sacramento, CA 95816.