Effective Dental Marketing
Dental marketing is a process to promote your dental practice; ultimately resulting in your dental practice attracting more new patients as well as keeping hold of your existing ones.
Marketing is key to growing any business and for making that business thrive. Here we look at some of the specifics of dental marketing and offer tips to help you get ahead of the game in dental marketing.
HAVE A WELL-DESIGNED WEBSITE
Having a well-designed website with clear ‘calls to action’ is essential. With people being increasingly short of time and wanting ever faster and more efficient technology, the site needs to be easy to navigate and the user must be able to see the telephone number, email and contact form pretty much straight away.
At Dental Design, we design websites that immediately let the user know they are in the right place. They demonstrate clear headlines and well written, straight forward information, which is designed in-line with the specific dental practice and meets their aims and objectives.
MAKE YOUR WEBSITE MOBILE FRIENDLY
According to official Google stats, over 60% of search queries globally are being made on mobiles rather than desktop computers. It is vital in this day and age that your website is mobile friendly.
If your site is not mobile friendly it often loses information on the screen or can’t be seen properly. Plus, if your site is not optimised for mobile use it could take longer to load, which could result in you losing potential patients.
FOCUS ON LOCAL SEO
Search engine optimisation is essential in increasing your website’s visibility in online searches. Without SEO your site will find it hard to stay in the top spot and it will fail to show up for those keywords you want to rank for.
Local keywords such as ‘dentist Cambridge’ or ‘Best Cambridge orthodontist’ are the keywords that will bring you new patients through the door. After all, it isn’t helpful if someone based in London finds your site if your practice is located in Cambridge.
Local SEO helps to attract your target audience and is also great if people use a voice search option like Siri or Alexa asking for a local ‘dentist near me’. We have several ongoing SEO packages to choose from if you want expert help with your SEO.
CONTENT MARKETING
If possible, include content on your website such as blog posts or FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). Blog posts can bring visitors to your site and allows you to build a relationship with the user, which could ultimately result in them turning into a new patient. After all, you would rather visit a dentist that seems to be knowledgeable on the latest treatment techniques and technologies.
Fresh content on your site is also a factor in helping your site to rank higher on Google. However, it is important to have the resources to maintain the blogs as it doesn’t look too good if the blog post was posted over a year ago with no further activity.
PAY PER CLICK (PPC)
PPC is the most targeted online marketing channel and is great for new practices who are just starting up. It has a quick return on investment, so if increasing your patient numbers is one of your major goals, then PPC could be right for you.
PPC allows you to target more than one area, so if you are a practice in a large city or are located between locations this could be very beneficial. It is important to write creative adverts that include obvious ‘call to actions’ promotions and special offers are good to use as these will encourage the user to ‘click’ and visit your website.
Maximum daily budgets can be set to help spread the costs over the month as well as maximum costs per click so that you don’t overspend on a particular keyword.
Dental Design offers reports with all the stats you need to monitor your ad campaigns. We have the expertise and experience in creating and running successful PPC campaigns for dentists and the team here are Qualified in Google Ads so they can always maintain PPC Best Practice.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Social media, such as Facebook is great if you want to grow your dental practice. It can help increase new visitors as well as maintaining return visitors. When done correctly, it is a medium, which keeps the conversation alive with its patients.
The key is to post interesting and engaging information and articles on your social channels. You are increasing the trust of your brand, which in turn encourages return custom. We offer either social media training for your team or a fully managed social media service here to help you keep on top in the social world.
GET INVOLVED IN YOUR LOCAL COMMUNITY
Dentists heavily rely on local business, rather than national business, therefore getting involved in your local community and local events is key in promoting your dental services. Maybe you could sponsor a local sports team and provide t-shirts with your logo on the back of them, for example.
Attend local events or festivals and get yourself known in your local community. Other options may be to go into your local school and present a talk about good oral healthcare as we all know that starting young with oral health education is essential.
LEAFLET DROP
Sometimes seen as outdated, but the good old leaflet drop can be effective for dental practices. This is because it is 100% hitting your local target audience. It is advertising a local business for local people. The most effective leaflet would probably include a special offer, such as teeth whitening, or you could include a dental implants offer in an area with a higher ageing population.
REMARKETING CAMPAIGNS
Remarketing is the process of reaching out to existing patients that you already have a connection with and trying to get them to do something specific. This could be to book their 6 month check-up or could even be used to promote new treatments now available in the practice.
APPOINTMENT REMINDERS
Marketing isn’t just about attracting new patients or customers, it is also about maintaining your customer base. Sending appointment reminders or reminders for them to book a 6 month check-up is a good re-engagement method. Emails and text messages are probably the best methods.
NEWSLETTERS
Another form of remarketing could be to use newsletters to be sent to existing patients. These could be blogs delivered straight to an in-box but the key is not to send them too often as they will more than likely get deleted.
It is also important not to make them too wordy. Snippets, useful facts and top tips are always a good start. Make them topics of interest to the patient about the latest dental treatments or new dental technologies, for example.
REFER A FRIEND BONUSES
Bonuses for friend referrals are a great way to attract new patients. You could create a recommend a friend bonus of £10 off their first dental appointment if they sign up to the practice.
A further £10 discount could be given to the friend that recommended them, which could help maintain your existing patient list. You could also consider referral bonuses for specific treatments if you were hoping to promote a specific treatment such as teeth whitening or Invisalign.
GET INTO THE MINDSET OF YOUR PATIENTS
If you can think like the patients you would like to attract to your practice, then you will have a better chance of attracting them. Think about which local events they are likely to attend. Think about the keywords and search terms they might use to search the internet and make sure that these appear in the text on your website or in your PPC campaign.
In short, use the knowledge you have of your existing patients to maintain your patient base and think like those patients you would like to attract in the future.
FURTHER INFORMATION
We hope you have found this information useful and if you would like to find out any more about dental marketing and what we can offer here at Dental Design, please get in touch on 01202 677 277 or [email protected]
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