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What Do Patient Personas Do for Orthodontists?

As an orthodontist, you might rely on most of your patients to come from dentist referrals. While your relationships with dentists are essential to your business, they will not necessarily help you grow to the size you want.

Marketing is a very important part of the orthodontist business. Inbound marketing, like blogs, help attract customers to you. This means minimal to no cold calls or mailing.

But before you start trying to engage with potential patients, you should consider your current patients first. This is where patient personas come in.

Patient personas are archetypal representation of your ideal patient, based on data from your actual patients. These are essential to narrowing down how to communicate with prospective clients. They’re simple to create and are solely based on statistics and information from your current database.

Why Create Patient Personas for Orthodontists?

In order to have a conversation with someone, you need to get to know them a little bit. This is the same concept when it comes to sales and marketing. You need to know who you’re reaching and talking to.

While you might not know everyone your ads and content reach, it’s good to have a specific target group.

Target marketing is a part of inbound marketing that identifies the group or audience most likely to need or buy your services. This then in turn allows you to promote directly to them. Facebook ads are a good example of this.

Creating patient personas shows you who your target audience is based on the majority of your current patients. This way, you’re able to effectively market to groups that match your actual patients’ profiles.

How to Create Patient Personas for Orthodontists?

Using data from existing patients and compiling it to create patient personas may seem complicated but it really isn’t.

After looking over a list of your current patients, build the personas by identifying the key qualities you see. Use these to illustrate the main overlapping sections of the target audience, like a Venn diagram.

The main components in patient personas are:

  • Patient goals – Why do they want to see you? What do they need?
  • Demographics – Age, ethnicity, etc.
  • What are their challenges? What might keep them from choosing your service?
  • What are their main sources of media and information? (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.)
  • What is their family history? What are their hobbies and interests?

If this sounds like overkill to you, think again. You want to be as specific as possible with these in order to target the right group of people.

How can Patient Personas help Orthodontists?

Patient personas help you identify who you are trying to attract to your business. These also allow you to understand your current patients better and know why they chose you. You want to make getting new patients as easy as possible, so why not base that on how you’ve attracted others in the past!


If you want to learn more about how we can help create patient personas for you, call Ortho Sales Engine today!

Ortho Sales Engine specializes in marketing solutions for orthodontists, combines more than 20 in-house services to create customized, repeatable marketing systems, and serves as a trusted partner to doctors and their teams. To learn more or schedule a free consultation, visit orthosalesengine.com.