Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid When Launching a Dental Membership Plan
Launching a dental membership plan can bring tremendous benefits to your practice, offering an additional revenue stream and providing affordable care options for your patients. However, creating a successful membership plan involves careful planning and execution. Many practices make avoidable mistakes that can limit the effectiveness of their plans or hinder growth. To ensure the success of your membership plan, it's important to recognize and avoid these common pitfalls:
- Pricing Your Plan Too High (or Too Low)
To make your membership plan profitable, your pricing must cover operational expenses while being competitive with other practices. If your pricing is too high, patient sign ups may be low.
- Offering Limited Services
Ensure your plan includes services that match your patients' most common dental needs, such as preventative care. Consider offering tiered pricing or customizable plans for additional services like fluoride treatments and teeth whitening.
- Making It Difficult to Sign Up
A complicated enrollment process will limit patient participation. Create a user-friendly website where patients can sign up easily, whether they're in the office or engaging with your marketing materials.
- Not Encouraging Continuity
Your plan's success depends on long-term patient enrollment. Use strategies like charging an enrollment fee to discourage frequent cancellations and offering slight discounts for annual payment options.
- Leaving Out Your Staff
Involve your staff from the beginning and train them well to ensure they are enthusiastic about the plan. Without their support, your plan’s growth may be limited.
- Marketing Ineffectively
Develop a strong marketing strategy for your membership plan. Use clear and consistent messaging across digital, print, and in-office materials to help current and potential patients understand the benefits of joining your plan.
- Accounting Incorrectly
Membership plans can present accounting challenges, as payments are received before services are used. Make sure your accounting processes are set up correctly to avoid confusion when it comes to assigning production to doctors and hygienists.
- Not Tracking Results
Track important data points such as total membership, monthly recurring revenue, and patient retention. In addition, collect feedback from both patients and staff to gauge the effectiveness of your plan.
- Setting Your Plan (and Forgetting It)
Your membership plan requires ongoing management. Adjust your pricing, services or marketing strategy based on patient needs and feedback to ensure continued success.
- Not Using Membership Plan Software
Managing a membership plan manually can be complicated. Using software like Dental Menu can simplify the entire process and reduce the administrative burden on your team.
Avoiding these common mistakes will help ensure that your dental membership plan is successful and sustainable. With careful planning, the right tools, and a focus on patient and staff engagement, your practice can thrive.
Ready to simplify and grow your membership plan? Schedule a demo with Dental Menu today to see how our software can make it easy for you.
