Alibaba Health and Dentalink Forge New Retail Partnership to Unlock Growth in China's Dental Healthcare Market

VCBeat (WeChat: vcbeat) has learned that during the 24th South China International Dental Exhibition in 2019, AliHealth (00241.HK) and Dentalink reached a comprehensive cooperation agreement. AliHealth will build a new retail platform for consumer healthcare in dentistry, leveraging multi-platform resources from the Alibaba ecosystem—including Taobao, Tmall, Alipay, and DingTalk—and deeply integrating them with Dentalink’s clinic management system. This integration will fully connect online multi-channel patient acquisition, in-clinic diagnosis and treatment, and patient lifecycle management, thereby creating a new retail model for the dental industry. Additionally, it will provide clinics with visualized marketing management and reporting analytics based on quantitative data to support operational decision-making.

Traditional marketing and promotion in dental institutions are centered on advertising, employing offline ads in conjunction with telemarketing to acquire new patients through a broad-reach approach. This strategy yields strong short-term stimulatory effects; however, if not underpinned by robust medical quality and service, it is difficult to establish a brand “moat.”

Dental institutions with an internet marketing mindset have adopted a model combining precision online advertising and lead management. They acquire initial patients through paid impressions, clicks, and feed-based ads, while improving conversion rates via continuous customer marketing, achieving notable results. However, as local competitors increase, the bidding-driven model causes costs to soar, indicating that these institutions have not fundamentally transformed their own marketing and patient acquisition capabilities.

Meanwhile, another group tends to focus on offline marketing by gathering crowds in residential communities for seminar-style sales and membership card top-ups; their marketing strategies also await expansion and upgrading.

The entire industry faces the same dilemma: without advertising, it seems impossible to build brand awareness and capture market share; with advertising, a year-end cost analysis reveals that marketing and customer acquisition expenses account for nearly 10%–20% of total revenue, leaving razor-thin profit margins.

Against this industry backdrop, a number of forward-thinking dental hospitals and well-known chains have significantly reduced their advertising investments, continuously lowering the proportion of advertising expenses. For instance, TC Medical’s 2017 annual report revealed that marketing expenditures for its Ningbo Dental Hospital were cut by RMB 4.5 million, driving sustained performance growth through word-of-mouth service quality.

Maló Clinic, a dental chain, has adopted a “zero-investment” strategy for traditional advertising (including online ads) at one of its single stores in a first-tier city, paying for customer acquisition costs based on actual store visits and performance-based outcomes. These gradual shifts in customer acquisition methods reveal the bold, ice-breaking stance of industry pioneers.

While reducing advertising expenditures, a new customer acquisition traffic model is emerging. Dental institutions with leading marketing concepts have gradually adopted a comprehensive channel expansion strategy, integrating online social e-commerce, location-based services (LBS) platforms, key accounts, and insurance channels into their integrated marketing efforts.

Taking Malo Clinic, a benchmark user of the Dental Steward service, as an example, its initial patients were sourced from various integrated online platforms, demonstrating diversified characteristics and a willingness to explore new avenues. Notably, during Alibaba’s Tmall “Double 11” and “Double 12” shopping festivals in 2018, Malo Clinic emerged as a top merchant on the AliHealth Tmall platform.

Yang Zhiyu, Director and CEO of Malo Dental, stated that major promotional events such as the Tmall Double 11 Shopping Festival have a powerful traffic-aggregation effect, enabling brands to rapidly convert accumulated brand equity into orders within a concentrated timeframe and create blockbuster products. For chain institutions, systematic data capabilities are core prior to the integration of various marketing channels and strategies. The technical support and solutions provided by Yayi Guanjia to Malo Dental—including in-clinic patient management, treatment management, multi-platform appointment integration, operational data, and management data reporting—have facilitated the implementation of omnichannel, multi-scenario marketing campaigns.

As a giant in the internet sector, Alibaba’s ecosystem covers over 98% of the full life-cycle digital footprints of internet users across China, undoubtedly making it a leading user data-driven platform in the country. Through this deep collaboration between AliHealth and Dentist Manager, clinics will be able to integrate with AliHealth in one go via Dentist Manager, thereby gaining access to the entire traffic resource pool of the Alibaba ecosystem.

Wang Yajun, Head of Consumer Healthcare Operations at AliHealth, commented on the partnership, stating that in 2019, AliHealth would focus on developing new retail in dentistry. By joining forces with Dentist Manager to pool resources, they aim to better serve a broad base of merchants. Throughout the year, comprehensive themed monthly promotions and shopping festival campaigns will be rolled out, leveraging diverse content operation formats—including Taobao live streaming, special features, influencer articles and images, short videos, and the “Ask Everyone” Q&A section—to fully activate online and offline demand scenarios in dental care. Through this innovative new retail model, AliHealth hopes to create incremental market growth in dental healthcare, drive deep integration between the internet and the industry by leveraging consumption upgrades and data, and jointly shape a new landscape for the dental sector.

According to Cui Yiqian, Chief Operating Officer of Dentalink, the company has accumulated over a decade of extensive expertise in the field of medical imaging. As a digital dentistry platform in China, it possesses independent core R&D capabilities for intraoral scanners, 3D design platforms, and CBCT systems. In 2014, it pioneered the launch of the Dentalink Clinic Management System, achieving comprehensive coverage among tens of thousands of clinic users. More than half of large private dental hospitals in China are loyal users of Dentalink. This collaboration with AliHealth will further empower core dental institutions, enabling them to “enhance patient acquisition capabilities while reducing marketing costs.”