What is dental positioning, and why does it matter?
Dental positioning is the place a practice occupies in a patient's mind relative to every other option in the area. It is not the logo, the tagline, or the website; those are expressions of a position, not the position itself. Positioning answers one hard question: for which patient, and which kind of work, is this practice the obvious choice? It matters because the market sorts practices by that answer before a patient ever books, and a practice that can be described six ways is not remembered as any of them.
Position is what the market decides, not what you say
Every practice has a position whether it chose one or not. The question is whether it was decided deliberately or assigned by default. Left undefined, the market files a practice into the commodity category, where it competes on price. Defined well, the practice is filed as the clear choice for a specific need, where price stops being the conversation.
The test of a real position
A real position survives a simple test: could the nearest competitor claim the same thing and have it still be true? If they could, it is a description of the category, not a position. A genuine position is defensible. It is the ground another practice down the road cannot simply copy.
Related
The sale happens before the sale.