My tooth started hurting slightly and I flossed it. Then it chipped and flew out of my mouth. What ensued was a throbbing pain in my left premolar tooth. First I went to the Polyclinic near my house and I saw a GP who referred me to the dental clinic at another polyclinic and the National Dental Centre.
She said she could not comment much as it was out of her expertise. Next I ended up at a crowded Singapore dental clinic who did X-rays and reports but could not do treatment as the dental clinic is not for that purpose. She scheduled me for a teeth cleaning session and told me to just wait for the National Dental Centre consultation.
The public healthcare system also took too long. I got pushed around from the polyclinic to the National Dental Centre and was scrambling to find information on CHAS card subsidies, Medisave payment options and/or government subsidy rates.
So I turned to Google and then to Anthropic’s Claude. I searched for information and solutions, which led me to the private healthcare industry. Interestingly, it’s private clinic websites that provided better information on CHAS card subsidies, Medisave payment options and/or government subsidy rates.
The Empowered Patient is the Best Customer
I searched high and low for a dental clinic that best suited my needs.
I was not a fan of dental treatments as I had experienced slight bill shocks in prior visits. I went in complaining of pain on one tooth but left with 8-10 fillings on multiple tooths. I was also doubtful of the filling process. How does the filling process work and does it take away natural tooth structure?
I eventually got persuaded by one particular dental clinic.
They had transparent fees, clear dentist profiles, specialist dentists doing YouTube explainer videos on their website. They also clearly illustrated their unique approach to holistic dentistry and root canal treatment. It was shown clearly WHY they were different from every other dental clinic.
I was sold and was willing to pay a premium for it. Healthcare is a lifelong investment after all.
I had initially gone to a first consult at a neighbourhood centre. It ended up with two fillings and a teeth cleaning session.
The cost of a root canal is four to five times cheaper but I still proceeded with the latter. I was a customer that was willing to pay a premium for it’s positioning in the market place.
My own customer journey taught me as a marketer: the educated and empowered patient is a sold patient.
First, I found the experience of being pushed from GP doctors in our polyclinic system to long wait times at the National Dental Centre weary. Perhaps, it is not their fault as they are swamped with cases. I also wanted to be an educated patient to find out what the hell was going on with my teeth.
As patients, when in pain, it’s natural for a patient be obsessively searching for solutions and options from the healthcare industry. That’s because we’re looking ease literal pain! The general public, like myself, are far from medically trained, but health savvy consumers would source for preliminary information before making a decision.
If you as medical practitioner are great at what you do, then there’s no reason to NOT show up when a user is going through this process!
That is where healthcare marketing comes in.
Healthcare Marketing and the Patient’s Journey
I get it. You are a doctor, psychologist and/or medical healthcare practitioner. You went to medical school not to write Google Ads copy, deal with WordPress installations, SEO keywords, or manage a CRM pipeline. That is where we, as a healthcare marketing digital agency, come in.
I was not too persuaded by the usual dental procedures and started researching alternatives. I typed in “holistic Dentistry Singapore”. I went through the first page of Google’s results and found that there are roughly three providers in Singapore that purport the practice of holistic dentistry.
One of them gave out an entirely free PDF just for root canal treatments. I downloaded the PDF, clicked on the dentist’s profile, saw beautiful illustrations on the root canal treatments, went through an explainer video, and liked that they used ceramic fillings and not metal fillings.
I was SOLD.
The dental clinic marketed each and every dentist and their staff like a personal brand. This allayed my fears of walking into a sanitized environment (like many dental clinics) filled with serious-looking dentists that only wanted to get business done.
The Category of One
I remembered walking into the dental office and commenting that I was pretty impressed by their marketing and liked their online user experience. They too had pretty good Google reviews. That was how I cancelled my root canal treatment at my neighbourhood location for a location that is more upscale.
Through their positioning of holistic dental treatments, they were in a category of one.
There are only two or three other dentists in Singapore that cites the use of holistic dentistry.
However, their landing pages did not really explain how different they were from this clinic’s. The fees weren’t transparent too, unlike this clinic’s.
The clinic explained that they used microscopic technologies so as to not remove too much of healthy, natural teeth. That was music to my ears as I had more than enough fillings done by dentists through the years. I did not want to be going into a situation where they are removing my good teeth for the sake of doing fillings.
In my previous visits to the dentists, I did not even know what was going on in my mouth. However, upon self education and watching a couple of educative Youtube videos, I learned that fillings were done by first drilling (removing) away decay and your natural tooth, then filling it with some sort of metal.
Here at this clinic, they mentioned that they used biodegradable materials and ceramic. That is a clear and huge selling proposition for me.
Producing Content for Healthcare Marketing
Today, you have probably heard about A.I. ad nauseam. However, producing static content for your practice is equally important for both marketing and being picked up by LLMs.
I started off this root canal journey by being referred by my father to a neighbourhood clinic. He said it is ‘cheap’ and I initially thought all dental clinics are made equal. I happily went for my first session.
It ended with two metallic tasting fillings, and I left begrudgingly because I had been doing fillings at the rate of at least once year now for the last decade. I always wondered what the hell was going on and if teeth were made to be decayed so easily.
That was when I looked for alternatives, typed into Claude, and it returned the concept of holistic dentistry to me.
However, it was only by searching “holistic dentistry Singapore” that I managed to find localized results: Singapore dental clinics that were providing holistic dentistry. This taught me the value of static content.
A.I. is great but static content serves its purpose. Google’s indexing function serves an ALL important function. LLMs parse data, learn from it, and generate output. LLMs may also hallucinate Search is ‘static’.
If you’re a user looking to get medical advice, I am sure you’ll be cross referencing from source material itself.
Conclusion
I have been working in the legal marketing space for a year now and am considering expanding into the healthcare marketing niche. I also had an intuitive hunch that the private healthcare industry in Singapore values marketing services far more than the legal industry does.
Going through my root canal journey as a patient opened my eyes to the healthcare landscape in Singapore. I used to rely mostly on the public healthcare system, but this time I needed something timely and effective.
If you, as a medical practitioner, have something unique to offer the world, then perhaps you should look to market your services in the best possible light to consumers and the public. Position your offerings well and educate the consumer. An empowered patient makes the best customer.
