OK. You've just purchased a Halimeter. How do
you get your patients interested?
While there is no one right way to market, we can
offer some tips.
1. Publicize the notion of breath treatment
in conversations with your patients and colleagues, with waiting room
materials, on your website, and in billing envelope stuffers.
2. Remember that treatment for oral
malodor is not a "get rich quick" scheme, but is another
part of total patient care. Millions of people have chronic halitosis,
but up until recently had nowhere to turn.
We get dozens of e-mails every month from regular
people--your patients--who found out about the Halimeter and bad breath
treatment. They are asking us what they can do to solve a problem
that they've had for years!!
Generally, they ask us AFTER they have checked
out our list of Halimeter
dentist websites, and haven't found a practitioner in their area.
If we can't find one in our records, we refer them to THEIR OWN dentist.
3. There are several different approaches
to treatment. Please refer to our Experts'
Forum.
Some doctors go whole hog into dispensing of rinse.
Others treat the condition as a purely oral hygiene matter, and advocate
tongue scraping, with an initial course of chlorhexidine rinse. The
choice is yours.
Having the Halimeter in your office allows you
to diagnose and then treat, which, of course, is the standard ethical
method for delivering health care. Empirical treatment, which in this
case, would be to simply dispense rinse upon hearing of a complaint
of halitosis is not recommended.
Quite clearly, if self-diagnosis is sufficient,
why not self- treatment, as well? You have no monopoly on selling
rinse or tongue scrapers. Visit any drug store.
And, in those cases where the malodor is NOT of
oral origin, but bespeaks a more serious condition, how would you
feel simply dispensing rinse to a patient with undiagnosed diabetes
or lung cancer? The Halimeter lets you pinpoint the source of the
malodor.
4. Come to us for more tips and materials.
We have long supplied an office flyer entitled "Could You Have
Bad Breath And Not Know It?" This is a color pamphlet, folded
to 3.625 x 8.5 inches. (92 x 216 mm)
You can download this
flyer in Acrobat format. If
you need to download the latest version of Acrobat click here
and follow the instructions to download the Free Acrobat reader.
To print it in actual size DO NOT check the "fit to page"
option.
5. Sign up for our newsletter (on the
homepage). There are usually
good marketing tips in it--often taken from successful ideas forwarded
to us by your peers.
6. Don't be afraid to share your
ideas with us. You will hardly be helping a competitor. Instead, you
will be advancing the field and improving us all!
