Look for cross-promotional opportunities
It’s best to ‘think outside the box’ when it comes to cross-promotional opportunities. Of course, a natural partnership with a dentist would be a health-conscious company. Maybe a connection with a local pharmacy, beauty clinic or hair salon. When you have a common shared purpose, such as personal appearance or health, cross-promotion makes total sense. For example, an offer of teeth whitening, and then a facial treatment from the beauty salon across the road would work. Both companies would benefit from potential new customers for life.
However, businesses don’t always have to have common ground to join forces. You could get together for a common cause, such as promoting awareness of Mouth Cancer Action Month. Maybe you could sponsor a local children’s football team or join forces with an unlikely candidate. It can make things much more interesting.
Connect to your local communities
Often a dental practice will get more patients through its doors by ‘word of mouth’ and personal recommendations. If you are looking to increase patient numbers even more then you can use methods such as building lists through special landing pages and through your website. Although, other options include connecting to ‘real’ people in your local community.
Visit local farmers’ markets, street fairs, charity races and walks and be active in your local community. Perhaps you could hand out freebies with your information on them. Take photos of your dental team out and about in the community and these can be used on your social media channels too.
Publish an interactive quiz
Quizzes are very effective as people are so compelled to complete them. If the quiz is designed cleverly, you can use the results to send out targeted mail shots to attract new patients through your doors.
Use some obvious questions in your quiz and throw in more interesting curve balls to keep the user’s attention. When designing your quiz, think about what results you want to achieve. Your end goal will probably be to get patients to book a call and make an appointment, as well as investing in your services for the rest of their lives. The user can provide their email to get the results of their quiz. After all, people can’t resist learning more about themselves and their personality traits.
Host an ‘Open Practice’ Event
Hosting an event is a great way to attract new potential patients. Offer complimentary oral cancer screenings, a smile makeover contest, or other special offers to entice people to attend. Your team could give dental health presentations, or even offer face painting for the kids. You could also consider a photo booth with props, crafts, games, a DJ, karaoke, or a live local band.
If you offer raffle tickets and prizes you can collect personal emails and then follow these up with a mail shot later down the line. Another good option is to give tours of the practice, so potential new patients feel comfortable there. You could also record a video of the event and take lots of pictures for your social media sites and website. You could even consider doing a ‘Facebook live’ during the event.
Share a patient experience
Video testimonials can sometimes appear a little lacklustre, but they should not be overlooked. Your patients are vital in communicating their positive experiences to potential new patients. There doesn’t need to be a direct CTA in the video as people relate to a person’s journey. Great testimonials involve how the patient felt before the treatment and how it has made them feel or affected their life after the treatment. The viewer will then research the possibility of having the treatment themselves and that’s where your dental practice comes in.
If you would like to book in photography or video testimonials, our in-house photographer Claire at Dental Design would be happy to advise you, call on 01202 677277 to find out more.