The right marketing support, the right track

TracksLesley Morgan-Barlow, business manager from Synergy Dental Care, explains how she got her practice marketing plans back on track by finding the right people to support her, and reflects on how you can do the same.

Today, our practice marketing is a very powerful tool – not only is our logo a visual signifier of our brand, but also our practice values and culture, which supports the whole team to focus towards our business goals.

However, a little while back I wasn’t doing as much marketing as I’d done before, simply because I didn’t have the time. We desperately needed to refresh a few marketing materials, but to get it all sorted I was going to need help.

Yet, the thought of handing our marketing over to someone else to understand our brand and interpret into our literature was a little daunting, and I am sure that I am not unique, as other practice managers or business owners at some point have probably felt the same way when looking for support.

Ultimately, I needed to trust someone to get under the skin of what we were all about and listen to my ideas, which sounds a little intense for the creation of a brochure, but nevertheless, extremely important to me. I needed someone to take an integrated approach so that I could drive our business forward.

A leap of faith

Luckily we were clients of Practice Plan; I had been extremely happy with the experience of their other services, so decided that it was time to take a leap of faith and take advantage of the marketing and design services available to us. I needn’t have worried – they really took the time to understand our practice and what we were trying to do.

They delved into our brand and practice and really focused on how they could help us, from boosting plan numbers to creating a new patient brochure. They even supported me with social media, taking the time to train me on aspects that I wasn’t so sure on.

The ideas they came up with and the materials they produced really embodied our practice values and enabled me to tailor everything to our patients’ needs. It was an amazing experience; they thought of everything, organising the practicalities of what size the literature would need to be, right down to the type of paper that everything should be presented on. What they produced was consistent with our brand but also fully supported me to integrate the materials the team needed to help the practice move forward.

As I mentioned, I am sure that I am not the only business/practice manager who has had to come to grips with finding the right marketing support.

So, if you find yourself in a similar situation, the things to keep in mind are:

  • The bigger agencies are not necessarily the best – you might assume that the biggest agencies or those with the flashiest client list are the best, but unless you are going to be one of their top paying clients, you are unlikely to receive a dedicated service. Your business may be smaller but you deserve a dedicated service
  • Find an agency that is specialised in your niche – being good at everything is extremely inefficient. A specialist will understand your industry, saving you time, as well as providing you with guidance on the marketing that is working and what isn’t
  • Find an agency that has your best interests at heart – an agency that will properly invest the time to get to know your practice and what you are trying to do will ensure you get, not only the right outcomes, but an integrated plan.

Because the marketing and design services at Practice Plan fit all of the above, they are now a solid go-to source of support and advice when it comes to any of our marketing.


Practice Plan is a specialist provider of practice-branded patient membership plans and an increasingly significant source of wider business support services for dentistry. Over the years, it has helped thousands of dentists introduce membership plans to become profitable and sustainable businesses. Access to experienced regional support managers, customer service advisers and expert marketers as well as dental business consultants and speakers, means a practice will get the practical and strategic advice needed to help them achieve their unique goals. If you’d like to know more about how Practice Plan could help you make a greater success of your practice, visit www.practiceplan.co.uk/dental-plans or call 01691 684 165.

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