My goal with Orthoprenuer Marketing is to mentor and tutor orthodontic practices on the power of making orthodontic treatment fun, informative and a pleasure to experience for the entire family. If orthodontic practices master the "art of relationship building" through day to day marketing strategies, word of mouth "viral" referrals will attract more patients than they will know what to do with.

The Orthoprenuer Marketing Matrix is due out shortly.
Among other things, the system will include professionally designed contests for the kids that can be set up in under 10 minutes, prewritten news columns, to be distributed by the orthodontist in his name, to the community on the importance of orthodontic treatment, and marketing tips and ideas to allow the teams to spend less time developing strategies. This will free up more time for orthodontic teams to concentrate on what they do best, orthodontics.

New poducts will be rolled out on a regular basis to help offices build strategic marketing plans, at a pace they feel comfortable implementing. It will enable orthodontists, as well as other dental practices to promote themselves in a fun and caring atmoshpere. Building relationships with patients, parents and referring professionals is what it is all about it today's overextended and stressed society.

Hopefully, many orthodontic practices will improve on the less than optimum experience you described, with my help and guidance.

Here's to the Orthoprenuer Practices of the future. Their time has come!

I had the privilege of taking my 11 year old nephew to the orthodontics a few weeks ago. This same boy who had cried during his first few visits because he did not want braces was now telling me that he was going to have alternate colors on each tooth.

But I just wanted to say that I am so with you when it comes to appealing to teenagers because once you were inside the practice, there was little to do, we were delayed by 20 minutes but the staff were friendly.

What I saw in the waiting room was the same boring leaflets I could find in my dental practice and a showcase with the same boring display of toothbrushes, toothpastes and dental floss. The TV was the cheapest and smallest they could find and both my nephew and I were bored.

What was clear to me was that they were still trying to market to the parents rather than the children who were going to be wearing "the prison bars" as we used to call them in my day. Yes, my newphew was given no choice but to have a brace, but he would have been much more at ease had he at least have been exposed to some fun pictures of kids wearing their brace and even a few video testimonials of a group of kids sharing their experience.

I pray my daugther won't need their services, but I hope they would have moved on somewhat in their marketing approach by then!

Trish Jones