How patients think

After years working inside the implant industry, swapping over to the patient side of the fence has proved highly illuminating.

Establishing a website to assist implant patients and respond to their questions has given me interesting insight into how they think and what it is that they are really looking for. A robust patient survey, our own site analytics, and hours spent talking to patients have challenged many of the assumptions implant providers have about what motivates implant patients. Here, I will outline some of the key lessons that we all need to take on board if we are to please more of our patients more of the time.

Three problems propel people towards implants

A recent survey we conducted confirmed that three different health issues trigger patients to consider implants; 45% of respondents confirmed that they had missing or broken teeth, while 28% were looking to replace dentures or bridges. The third major group (17%) were interested in implants because they were suffering from gum disease and loosening teeth.
While these groupings won’t surprise clinicians, they do highlight that not every implant patient is the same. They don’t all have the same problem, and each is exploring an implant solution from an individual perspective. It also serves to remind us that, while many will be having their first major dental treatment, others will have already spent many hours in the dentist’s chair. There is so much scope to market to these groups differently, but they tend to get lumped together.

Patients know more than we’d like to think

The trend towards self-diagnosis, the influx of medical web content, and the boom in innovative apps and devices seen across the health sector are also impacting oral health. While patients might be on their own individual implant research journey, many of their initial behaviors are the same — and most begin online. You only need to look at the monthly number of Google searches around “dental implant” (18,100 on average per month) to know that, first, lots of people are searching and, second, that most start their journey by typing “dental implant” or something similar into Google. The web has created a new tribe of “researchers,” and it’s surprising how diligent they are. We found that only 10% were on their first research foray, 26% had already done some research and were looking for a trustworthy practitioner, and a further 26% had already been to see a clinician and were considering their treatment recommendation. This is interesting because it shows how modern behaviors are bleeding into dentistry. Just as people use online recommendation services to minimize risk when selecting a tradesman, so people are looking to really ensure that they are making the right choices when investing significant money in something like dental implant treatment.

Researchers want reassurance and references

The cost and complexity of dental implant treatment means it is hardly surprising that the most visited pages on our site are the pages on cost (“Why can’t I get a price for something I want over the phone?”), the Charter (a set of principles to help people interrogate the quality of their implant providers), and the FAQs.
Researchers are really keen to amass information so that they can make good choices, and it’s up to us as an industry to help them do so. The only way to neutralize misleading “cheap implant” ads on Google is to work together to generate alternative information that will help people make good choices for the long-term.

Reassuringly, once people have been encouraged to ask searching questions of their providers, obtaining an experienced, qualified clinician becomes their key priority. This is followed in second place by the avoidance of future problems, and in third, by quality of outcome. Giving patients the right reassurance upfront relegates cost down the list as a priority (although it will always be important).
Not surprisingly, the importance of an open and flexible discussion around treatment options is also important to researchers: having done their homework, they don’t want to be railroaded into a single solution.
Feedback from other patients is also influential: in the world of TripAdvisor® and OpenTable®, patient cases work as “references” for clinicians, giving potential patients reassurance that problems like theirs can be resolved. They can have an impact on their choice of practitioner.

Patients don’t care about what we care about

This insight around patient priorities is interesting because it clashes with what many practitioners are currently doing. Instead of showing how years of experience and expertise have generated case after case of satisfied customers, many practices wax lyrical about their practice — which is further down on the list of priorities for patients.
Yes, ambiance and friendly staff are nice to have (and caring staff, in particular, will be referenced by satisfied clients in reviews), but they won’t convert researchers on their own. Those practices marketing their “contemporary space” and “spa-style waiting area” are missing the point — and wasting an opportunity to position themselves around the things that really matter: expertise, experience, and evidence of good results.

Your website is not enough

This final insight brings us full circle to the point about Google searches. No matter how sexy your website is, it — and any expensively produced films on it — will be wasted if they simply languish in the digisphere.
I was looking recently at a beautiful practice video that must have cost thousands to make, without registering that it had only received around 30 views in 2 years. These days, most practices have grasped the importance of a digital presence, but the rules of the web have evolved once again.
People researching implants don’t start their journey by typing in their postal code; they start with a question or a search term, so you cannot rely on your website popping into their eyeline. Now, to be part of their conversation, you need to be generating content that responds to their needs, and you must be making this content easily available.
These days, content is now much more important than a website; pushing out blogs, articles, and case studies will always trump the sexiest of practice pages, and video is king. We all need to respond to these changes to feed the appetites of this new breed of “researcher” patients, showing them that we truly understand the implant journey they are on.