Dental marketing is integral to the success of any dentistry. It allows you to learn more about your competition, reach new patients based on your location, and get in contact with prospective patients who want to learn more about the types of services you have to offer.
Dental marketing is also a crucial factor in increasing website visitors. By taking advantage of dental marketing, a dentist can find potential patients and build from their already established clientele. Good dental marketing methods in today’s complex landscape requires a multifaceted and multichannel approach. Creating a brand reputation, utilizing social media, and creating online content are all aspects that are vital to dental marketing trends and can ensure your success in the dentistry field.
Dental Marketing-The Whole Picture
These days, dental marketing ideas tend to focus heavily on digital tactics, like local SEO keyword use and social media marketing, while at the same time refining the traditional advertising methods of yesterday. By using online platforms and tools, modern dental marketing ideas allow your dentistry to reach a larger audience while forging long-lasting relationships in the process.
Classic Marketing Strategies for Dentists
Of course, there’s also something to be said about classic advertising methods that dental marketing experts have relied on for years. These forms of marketing offer a more personal approach to reaching out to a prospective patient to encourage them to book an appointment with your office. It’s about building your reputation in the community so locals will be more likely to call your practice to schedule an exam. This type of marketing can also involve contacting a new patient or prospective patient by mail, which can be beneficial to people who are new to the area and are searching for dentists that can provide certain services.
A good marketing strategy will include both traditional and digital marketing tactics that are designed to help dentists see a significant increase in business.
Dental Marketing Ideas Using Direct Mail Offers
Because a dentist’s audience will most likely be local, dental marketing for this type of business comes with many advantages. You can try some traditional dental marketing ideas, such as reaching out to existing and prospective patients via mail. By sending out postcards or mailed offers to people within a set radius of your dental practice, you can ensure you market your business services to the right audience.
Focus on sending out postcards every two to three months to reach prospective patients and your existing patient list. You can also send out brochures regarding high-end cosmetic dental procedures to specific areas where you’re trying to attract new patients.
New Patient Direct Mail Flyer
Sending a direct mail flyer with a discount in the welcome packet that’s commonly given to new homeowners in the area is also a great dental marketing idea that will allow you to easily connect with new patients who more than likely don’t have a dentist in the area yet. This is a great, affordable marketing strategy that has withstood the test of time.
Use the Internet for Free and Paid Dental Marketing
In today’s world, digital marketing is essential, since it can reach a broader audience.
Digital marketing for your dental office can promote your brand on the web and will help grow your practice. Marketing and advertising on the internet can allow you to stand out from the competition. Establishing a name for your practice and building a solid reputation on the internet is essential to capturing an audience of prospective patients.
If you haven’t focused on using web tools for marketing purposes, to drive potential patients to your websites, then the first step is learning about the free social media platforms available and how to use them to your advantage. When you advertise on the net, your team can put together a marketing plan that will increase the volume of business you handle at the office, while building your reputation in your local community.
Social Media Platforms
Marketing using social media platforms gives your dental office an excellent way to reach out to and find new patients, while also building and strengthening relationships within your local community. Facebook, for example, has great tools for a dental marketing strategy and allows your practice to build online relationships where you can stay in touch with patients, provide updates and information, as well as collect reviews from your existing patients.
By developing and maintaining social media pages, such as a Facebook page, your potential patients will have a quick and easy way to review your practice and ask questions through the built-in messenger feature. Sharing pictures and videos of your practice and your team on social media can also serve as a great way to make patients feel a little more connected with you and your staff.
Social media will also allow you to reply to questions and concerns that any prospective patients may have, humanizing your practice and building a solid reputation as a dental office that truly cares about its patients.
Local Awareness Ads for Dental Practice Marketing
When you’re creating online content or advertising on social media platforms such as Facebook, you need to know your audience. Local Awareness ads can be a great way to reach your local audience and market your business. These ads utilize Facebook’s integrated mapping software to allow you to set a mileage radius around your practice’s address so that you can market your dental practice to members in your immediate community.
Appointment Reminders for New Patients
Dental marketing is not only about attracting new patients. Maintaining relationships with existing patients is vital to any dental marketing strategy. One way to do so is by using appointment reminders, which contact a patient to notify them that they have an upcoming dentist appointment at your practice.
You can use reminders in a variety of ways, including:
- Emails
- Texts
- Phone call
- Direct mail postcards
Many dental practices use a combination of physical reminders such as postcards coupled with phone calls or digital reminders such as an email or text message.
Focus on Local SEO
A marketing campaign wouldn’t be complete without focusing on local SEO. Local search engine optimization allows you to get the most out of dental marketing by letting you put information about your practice online, such as the address and phone number of your practice, so you can target locals that are in need of dentists that can provide the treatment they’re looking for.
Creating Quality Content
Creating quality content and sharing it on your dental practice’s site is a great way to show your expertise and it’s an essential dental marketing component for any campaign. Quality content is also an important aspect of SEO. It will help your practice’s site rank higher in Google searches, increasing overall traffic to patients seeking a dentist office in your area.
Blog Posts, Pages, and Video
Online dental marketing involves drawing more visitors to your website by creating informative content that new patients and existing patients find enjoyable. Your team can write unique content on your website using blog posts that include targeted keywords.
Blogs
Blog posts are an effective marketing tool that many dental practices rely on. These posts can help with generating leads, especially with people in the area who are searching for experienced, reputable dentists that are knowledgeable and trustworthy.
When you target search engine keywords on your site using blog posts for dental practices in your area, it allows you to promote the type of services that your practice specializes in.
Video
Adding video to both blog posts and the landing page on your dental site will add plenty of value that Google will recognize. This well-rounded marketing approach will help your team build your brand by giving the public an inside look into your practices while learning more about you and your team.
Additionally, if you are optimizing for local searches, you are letting Google know that your dental practice is in a specific area and that you want to target customers within that area.
Where to Share Your Marketing Content
With proper content marketing, you can also increase organic traffic growth, which allows you to cut the overall costs of dental marketing on paid campaigns.
Before you start creating any content for your dental practice, it is important to determine which channels you will be using to share that content.
First, you will need to identify the right social media platforms. These will typically include Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Having profiles on these platforms will connect you with potential patients and increase your ranking in search engines.
After you have successfully identified which platforms serve your dental practice the best, you can decide which content formats work the best for you. This can include shortlists, FAQs, how-to’s, or even personal essays related to your dental practice.
Digital Marketing Ideas for PPC Google Ads
With Google Ads, a pay-per-click platform that drives businesses to the top of Google searches, you can bring more visitors to your website. Studies have shown that most new patients choose a practice on the first page of search results.
What Do Patients Look for?
Patients who are searching for a new dentist usually look for specific, and sometimes urgent services such as a root canal or broken crown, which makes targeting specific keyword search terms in your ads very important. Google Ads will allow you to utilize certain keywords to appear in searches for specific dental services.
If you want to drive more traffic to your site, PPC, combined with SEO marketing strategies will cover all of the bases. SEO is more of a long-term marketing solution, whereas PPC can provide immediate results because it will place your practice at the top of the search results, making it highly visible to any people searching for a local dental office. This is what makes it a great option for a new dental office that needs results immediately.
Emergency Dental Office Keywords
SEO keyword research is an essential aspect of dental marketing and will help your site rank well in major search engines. Emergency keywords can help your dental practice diversify SEO keywords allowing for better results. Emergency keywords, such as “emergency wisdom tooth removal” or “emergency cracked tooth,” are great ways to improve your SEO ranking and bring more visitors to your website.
Customize Keyword Targeting
In addition to target keywords, Google Ads will allow your team to optimize your SEO searches further. Google Ads allows dentists to run ads for location-based keywords. You can even set a specific radius from your practice.
Beyond just advertising through Google for dentist marketing, Google supplies you with a wealth of information on consumer behavior and demographics. This allows your team to view metrics on which keywords perform the best, your ads’ success rates based on time of day, and the types of devices that people see your dental marketing advertisements on. This data will improve your ad campaigns and even boost your SEO and other social media dental marketing strategies.
Remarketing with Facebook Ads
Search remarketing with Facebook and Search is the practice of reaching out to a patient a business already has an existing relationship with to try to get them to take specific actions. Remarketing campaigns are a great way to get patients to book their checkups and other services or they can be used to connect you with potential patients who have visited your website but did not book an appointment.
Facebook Ads is one the best platforms to use for remarketing in your dental marketing strategy. Facebook Ads give you the option to retarget based on the specific activity on your website. This will allow you to use website data to create a list of people who have visited your website and took specific actions.
The Importance of Online Reviews for Marketing Dental Practices
When a patient leaves a review on your website or somewhere else online, it gives people searching for dental care in your area the ability to learn more about you, your team, and the type and quality of the services you offer. Reviews are a great way for the public to get an unbiased look at what your practice has to offer, what they can expect in terms of services, communication, and the overall experience.
Of course, you want only positive patient reviews, however, bad reviews do happen. If you receive a bad review somewhere online or on your website, make sure your team responds to the review and encourages the patient to call the office to discuss the situation or have your team contact the patient directly by phone. This will show the public that you and your team are putting forth the effort to resolve the matter.
Working with a Dental Marketing Agency
If you need help creating a well-rounded, effective dental marketing plan, hiring a dental marketing company can be your best bet, especially if you don’t have much experience utilizing social media platforms or paid search ads. There are many dental advertising agencies available who can help you get the absolute most out of your dental practice by establishing a trusted online presence, ensuring the voice search ads you pay for are targeted to the right audience, and helping you grow your presence online and in the community. If you haven’t seen the type of results you were hoping for when you first launched your marketing campaign, it may be time to let the pros take over. While this type of service is not free and may impact your marketing budget, many professionals have found that it quickly pays for itself.
Let the Pros Take Over
These marketing professionals know exactly how to build your brand and can create pages and video on your website that shows the public what you have to offer, increasing marketing success. Patient marketing strategies created by the pros often help you get an edge on the competition, as you learn more about your target audience and the important changes you can make online and to your practice itself, that can generate new business.
Final Thoughts
Using different dental marketing strategies will help with practice growth. With the right patient marketing methods and SEO tactics, you will see an increase in site visitors and appointments with new patients. The above topics are all examples of marketing techniques that have proven to be effective. However, not every marketing technique will work for every business. It can ultimately depend on your location, whether or not you use more than one marketing strategy and how dedicated you are to staying on top of your website and updating information and content. Remember, if you don’t have much success marketing your dental practice on your own, there’s no shame in having a pro step in to take over marketing and create a campaign that can take your dental practice to a whole new level.
