CONNECTING WITH
SLEEP PATIENTS THROUGH
MARKETING
There are many ways to mar-
ket your dental practice. By now
you’ve probably tried a lot of
them and settled on a program
that works for your practice. But
marketing for sleep is different
than for traditional dental proce-
dures. Why? Most patients don’t
know there is something wrong
with their sleep. If they do, they
don’t think they can do anything
about it. They probably think “I’m
just not a good sleeper.” And most
of all, your patients are proba-
bly not aware their dentist can
treat sleep. Sure, they know you
are the person to see for clean-
ings, cavities, and whitening, but
sleep? Why a dentist?
The Challenge
To market sleep to your existing
patients and to the area around
you, you need to do a few things:
• Raise awareness about
sleep-related breathing disor-
ders: the symptoms, dangers
and treatment options
• Educate about the importance
of sleep to total wellness: mood,
immune benefits, heart health,
diabetes
• Show them they can get help
from a dentist; the choice is not
just “CPAP or nothing”
To succeed you need to break
through preconceptions. Disrupt.
Shake things up. After all, it’s not
traditional dental care; there
is no aching tooth to treat. The
patient needs to understand a
problem they may not have been
BRETT BROCKI
aware of. They need to grasp the
gravity and urgency of the situa-
tion. And they need to take action
to change their life.
Conversations,
Not Advertisements
Big ideas take time to permeate
the consciousness. To change at-
titudes, you need to start a con-
versation about sleep, health and
wellness. Over time you can build
on this conversation, show your
expertise and when the time is
right, screen, test and propose an
intervention.
You can start the sleep conversa-
tion in all of the traditional media
you already use: postcards, print,
radio and website. This is a big
differentiator between you and
all the other practices that do all
the procedures I mentioned in
the 1st paragraph. Introduce the
idea that a dentist can help with
your sleep problems. This plants
the seed. But traditional media
offers limited space to truly ed-
ucate patients on sleep-related