Why Word of Mouth Means So Much More These Days

For decades in this country, among the most powerful people in any given city were those who owned the newspapers, because they controlled a good deal of the flow of information in town. For decades, millions watched on television what the executives of three networks decided they would watch.

Compare that with what’s happening today. Newspapers everywhere are either dying off or struggling for relevance and survival. The average TV viewer has dozens of specialty channels to choose from. And, perhaps most notably, “citizen bloggers” and the friends we follow through social media are having a tremendous influence on the decisions we make in all areas of our lives. We’re getting more information from more sources than ever, including from among ourselves.

And that is an exciting development for dentists.

Dental practices have always been about person-to-person interaction and they have always grown and thrived on word of mouth endorsements. The relative with the story of her incredible dentist. The co-worker with the transformed smile and the heartfelt recommendation. That’s what success has always been built on. But now, those patients are not just telling the person in the next cubicle. They’re writing on their blogs, they’re tweeting pictures of their new smiles, they’re posting Facebook updates before they’re even out of your office. This is word of mouth multiplied and accelerated—and it’s what is going to make the next era of dentistry so exciting.

When opportunities for exposure multiply, it creates new levels of awareness, and that means new levels of expectations. As I often say, patients are also consumers, and today’s plugged-in consumers are well-informed and demanding. They’re starting to realize that dentistry today is about high-tech convenience. They’re also realizing that a skilled dentist today can not only restore their smile, they can make it better than what nature originally bestowed on them.

We’re entering  a new era—an era of the consumer-driven practice, where it’s about always being ready to fulfill patients’ needs in a way that compares with what they’ve come to expect in the greater marketplace. Dentistry has already been feeling the impact of these accelerating changes in the marketplace, but I believe we’ve really only seen the beginning.

The dentists who rise to the top in the years to come will be the ones who welcome this new paradigm, who give priority to staying on top clinically and to creating great value through their patient experience. For those who want to deliver the best dentistry to the most people, it truly is a great time to be a dentist.