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Embrace Progress: From Clinical Skills to Marketing, Orthodontists Need a Wide Skill Base by Daniel Grob, DDS, MS, Editorial Director

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As all of you know, having a successful practice isn't just about clinical skill and isn't just about practice management. A successful practice requires you to wear many hats and understand many topics. Several of those topics are explored in this issue of Orthotown Magazine.

This month, some of our topics are indirect bonding, TADs, and clear aligners. The story on indirect bonding is by Andrea Cook, a speaker on clinical excellence who poses the question "Is your practice ready for indirect bonding?" Learn how digital imaging is changing the practice of indirect bonding and reducing laboratory time.

Regarding TADs, one of our recent reader polls indicates that many of you are utilizing TADs for at least some of your more challenging orthodontic movements. On page 14, Dr. Mohammad Razavi shares his thoughts on how some difficult situations that arise in everyday practice can be managed with the select application of TADS and traditional orthodontic mechanics.

As for clear aligners, Donna Galante, a member of the Orthotown Magazine advisory board, compares and contrasts clear aligners and traditional braces on page 42.

One of my favorite topics to discuss is marketing, and since marketing ties together all your other skills (from procedures to running an efficient practice), I'd like to address it here. After all, if you don't get patients in the door, you're not getting enough use out of your skills. For most of us, attracting more mouths to fix and more receipts to count is the goal and challenge of everyday business.

So what resources are available to market your practice in the 21st century?

Let's break it down to some of the most visible ideas that all of us can use to move our practices into prominent positions in our communities. The goal of my practice and hopefully of yours is to become the go-to place for straight teeth and a great smile, a sort of primary-care orthodontic practice, if you will. I feel the key to orthodontics maintaining its identity as a specialty will require practitioners to adopt this mindset.

A great place to start is to highlight and expand on your referrals efforts. This could nudge traditional office-to-office marketing to a new level. Indeed, focus on the referring doctor and staff relationship. Ask yourself why any dentist would be compelled to send patients out of his or her office for services in your office?

You may respond that it is their obligation to refer orthodontic patients as part of their patient-care exam. But remember, the good thing about orthodontics is that patients know when they need it. Or put another way, it's elective.

If your experience is like mine, being the next orthodontist to offer your services to your local dentist is not enough of a draw to get their attention or compel them to refer.

At my practice we've recognized this for a number of years. We have sponsored CE meetings for local offices and staff, and have used the opportunity to educate and confer CE units to local dentists. Years ago, we jumped through all the hoops to become an AGD-accredited Pace provider of CE credits.

Yes, this was an enormous project, and not without bumps along the way. But our experience is that once we achieved Pace status, our offer to provide lunch-and-learns and after-work CE meetings was not only a great chance to meet the other team members in the area—it gave them a valuable benefit as well.

How can you develop referring relationships in a different manner? Maybe you're not up to that much paperwork or you don't feel comfortable putting together CE courses. That's okay. Undoubtedly, you have a special feature of your office or treatment mechanics that you or your treatment coordinator can address. What works well to get their attention is to indirectly expose the information.

For instance, we have found that taking photos of all procedures in our office during treatment is a great way to educate our staff on everyday orthodontic practice.

We try to photograph steps of patients' treatment and all appliances at delivery, progress and completion. We have found that once staff members learn how to take great photos, they are well on their way to becoming a proficient orthodontic dental assistant because they look at, and learn from, the photos they are taking. Photo-taking is seriously lacking in many general dental practices!

Helping these practices to take great photos is an awesome way to help build their practice and at the same time show them how well your team is trained.

As a bonus and during a joint-training session, you get to explain the procedures or devices that are the focus of your pictures. Hence, the indirect approach.

We have invited staff to our practice for training, we have gone to their offices to assist, and on occasions, brought in a speaker for a Friday-morning meeting to talk for half a day on various topics.

One of the keys to marketing in the new era is to help the general dentist be busy! If you haven't already figured it out, where the new orthodontic practice needs to go more than any other time in history is to the aid of the family dentist!

It is imperative to stand out as a source of dental knowledge beyond the point of making teeth fit Class I on white-plaster casts.

We have personally walked casts, X-rays and photographs over to dentists for the sole purpose of helping them do more basic and extended treatment projects.

Joining study clubs where complex restorative treatment plans are discussed is also a subtle way to get the opportunity to discuss your orthodontic knowledge and show how it may have a positive impact on their treatment plans.

The continued trend of orthodontics being offered in more than just traditional settings is, of course, because the modern family dentist does not have enough general dental work to do (ahem)! Attempting to keep dentists busy will help show them that nothing is more profitable than doing lots of restorative dentistry.


Orthotown Magazine
September 2025
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