If I hate anything more than eating asparagus is going to the dentist. However, everyone needs a dentist at some point in their lives. But how do we find the best one?
While talking to my friends I’ve noticed their struggle in locating a good dentist. Learning from their bad experiences like having artificial cavities filled to being overcharged, what we must all agree on: having a decent dentist is challenging.
As a dentist, you need to understand the right way of marketing your dental practice.
Marketing is the key to success for any business and dental practices are no exception!
You may have the best staff and the best rates in town, but it won’t work if your potential clients can’t find you. How will your practice expand and get more appointments without the right advertisement?
Knowing that advertising can help build your business is the easy part. But how to do it is the real question. That’s because traditional marketing practices no longer work these days.
But don’t panic! Here are 12 genius dental marketing ideas that work. Apply them and make it simpler for your potential patients to find you.
12 Dental Marketing Ideas To Increase Your Traffic
1. Get Involved In Society
Needless to say, if your dental clinic is in Huston you won’t be treating patients in California. By nature, dental practices are local businesses, thus, they rely on local communities for patients. Therefore it is necessary for you as a dentist to involve more in community projects.
This includes attending festivals, sponsorships, etc. Basically, find ways to connect with more people from your city. You can also teach oral hygiene lessons at schools or the local university. It provides you an excellent opportunity to get word-of-mouth publicity with your targeted audience.
2. Social Media
Social networking gives the clinic another outstanding means to reach out to new patients, to develop, and improve doctor-patient relationships. Platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Linkedin offer unique and engaging ways that will give you a heavy reach.
This will help to stay in touch, generating conversations, providing, and updating information. Thus, creating a better first impression. Besides that, this platform also provides a perfect place to keep in touch with your existing patients.
Read More: How Small Businesses Can Use Social Media For Marketing?
3. Create Your Own Website
This is how it will look:
Here’s the deal: The website is always the first contact that a customer has with your clinic. Hence, they judge you based on how it looks and operates. To prove our point, a recent study pointed out that 48% of people assess the clinic’s reputation by their website’s design and form an opinion in 0.05 seconds after the page loads.
Read More: Why Are Websites Necessary for Small Business Growth?
These are the main features that your website requires to draw more patients:
- Profile of dentists
- Online appointment schedule system
- Online bill-paying system
- Renewal of prescription
- Messaging features so that patients can interact easily with dental services
- Good distribution of videos (see more about that further down)
But this is not it!!!
- Create your website quickly
- Secure it
- Make this mobile-friendly
- Get it SEO-optimized
4. All In For Video Content
There is one best way to draw new patients: videos. People spend lots of hours every day watching videos by dentists sharing their experiences. So why not join the bandwagon? Take this opportunity, to create a name for yourself.
You’re in the perfect spot to use videos and the visual aspect. Create one-hour videos with state-of-the-art 3-D technology, take a time-lapse of a difficult dentist procedure. Get video testimonials of your work from various patients and upload them online.
Here are some ideas you can make videos for your dental marketing:
- Greet Your Website Visitors- Make a video introducing yourself and welcoming your visitors. Show a glimpse of the facility and the staff and start developing a relationship right away. Use the video-medium to show your personal side.
- Dentist Profile Videos- Let new patients develop trust in dentists when the dentists share their profiles in video form. Patients can understand the dentist and their expertise in a more meaningful and interactive way.
- Review Videos- Ask the patients to leave a video review before they head out. Visual evaluations work as the best way for your patients to testify about your knowledge and expertise. This will help attract more clients when they can listen to the truth directly from patients.
- Procedure And Therapy Videos- Guide the audience through what the real procedure would look like. You can show them the room where the procedure will take place, who all will be assisting you, and who will go about doing the procedure.
- Educational Videos- Take content from your blog and convert it into videos. Educational videos do extraordinarily well in research and patients can enjoy long-form content. Besides that, educational videos also allow you to showcase your expertise to the world.
5. Start Blogging
Starting a blog would significantly improve your profile on Google. Patients are constantly browsing questions like “Does activated charcoal work to whiten teeth?”, “What’s the best toothbrush for sensitive teeth?”, “How often do I really need to go to the dentist?”, etc.
Patients have a lot of concerns. Answering them is one of the best ways to create content for your blog. Plus, at the end of the blog, you can mention yourself, your educational and professional background, and get patients from across the world.
Related Article: Major Benefits of Blogging for Small Business
Here’s are some blogging ideas:
- Fix The Wrong Impression- When asked about the main obstacles to being a dentist, people don’t visit them unless they are in pain. Many people don’t think that a routine dental checkup is important. This is one area that you can convert into a host of blog posts.
- Hop on The Trends- I’ve got a lot of festivities coming up, which means my smile is on my mind. In the spirit of “natural” whitening, Googled activated carbon as a whitener. Apparently, it is a major subject of debate, which led me to read six separate blog posts about it. I believe I am not the only one who’d do so, so begin writing.
- Write on Healthy Dental Habits- People are conscious about healthy lifestyles, especially during the pandemic, so take advantage of it. People are searching for simple ways to keep themselves healthy, and brushing and flossing are as easy as it can be. Write blog posts on developing not only a healthy mouth but a healthy body.
6. Dental Office On Google Map
Register your dental clinic on Google Maps to increase your reach. Thus, making it easier for people to find you! It is perfect for you, your patients, and for Google, too. You are more accessible to new patients, and as Google’s audience is growing, it will recommend you to new users.
Let’s take a closer look at how you’re going to benefit:
- Patients Can Simply Find Your Correct Information- If your office appears in the Google Maps search results, your patients can easily see valuable information, including travel directions, ratings, hours of service, and phone numbers.
- Free Advertising of Your Clinic- It’s not going to cost you a penny to get your practice listed on Google Maps. There’s no better value for your investment in internet marketing and advertising than Google Maps.
- Happy Patients Become Your Advertisers- Google Maps lists encourage your patients to review your services, boost your Google Maps score, and help get new patients through that door.
See that list of clinics above? That’s a Google Maps search result. This guide will show you how to rank your practice in these search results, too.
A Simple Guide on how can you register yourself on Google Maps
6 Easy Steps:
- Sign up on Google My Business
- Search for your clinic
- Add your clinic’s detail and service area
- Verify your clinic
- Finish Your “Google My Business” Profile
- Add photos of your practice
Get started today!
7. Optimize Your My Google Business Page
Nothing beats Google My Business to exploit a location-based marketing campaign. This is normally the first move for any veteran SEO. If you don’t have a Google My Business list, you’ll need to build one.
Google My Business is a free Google tool that lets business owners monitor their web footprint through the search engine. For dentists trying to draw more customers, Google My Business is going to help you out a lot.
You’re already familiar with the Google My Business listings, even though the name doesn’t ring a bell right away. Google’s Local Search Results (shown in the screenshot above) creates a list of nearby dentists with details a prospective patient requires (address, working hours, profile, ratings, etc.).
8. Patients Review
Reviews are the cornerstone of every local SEO policy. They are extremely significant. 72% of patients first look at the ratings when looking for a new doctor. So you ought to have frequent and consistent positive feedback from your patients to maintain your ratings.
One of the greatest errors that dentists make is logging patient feedback in the patient management application portal or personal portals. The feedback recorded here will not be as useful as the reviews posted about your services on Google.
If you’ve earned a healthy portion of Google feedback, start focusing on Facebook reviews next.
How to get patient reviews?
- Request them to record a quick video testimonial at the end of their appointment.
- Request them to leave you a Google review (send them the link).
- Email them and ask them about their experience.
- Ask them on Facebook about their feedback (Instant Messenger).
Read More: Reviews Can Help Small-Scale Business to Grow
9. List Yourself In Dental Directories
Google analysis has shown that today’s customers are researched-obsessed, primarily so that they can feel more secure in their choices. Out of 90% of consumers, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal advice. This includes online ratings and feedback.
In addition to standard directories such as Yelp and the Google My Company profile, you can update or order your listing on the following websites:
- ADA – American Dental Association
- The Dentist Hub
- ZocDoc
- Every Dentist
- Smile Guide
- Super Dentists
- Dentists.com
- Dentist Directory
- RateMDs.com
Related Article: How to Gain More Customers Using Google Local Listing?
10. Patient Referral Bonus System
How do you keep your name at the forefront of your client’s mind and allow them to inform people about your services?
By delivering a full variety of referral incentive packages. The patient incentive is simple: if a person refers your practice to a new client, and if that person attends your practice, then the initial referrer will get a discount or a dental product.
11. Email Marketing & Newsletter
66% of people check their mail as soon as they wake up. Keep in touch with your current and prospective patients by sending out a monthly e-newsletter with dental tips, emerging technology, information, and even something funny or interesting.
E-newsletters serve as a friendly reminder to schedule your next appointment without being pushy or open in the call for action. This also helps you to be in the mind of your clients, so next time they need dental work, they can directly contact you.
Read More: Everything You Need to Know About Email Marketing Automation
You can use email marketing for lots of things:
- Appointment reminders
- Teeth tips to stay healthy
- Motivational tips
- Ask them for a review
- Community news
- Updates on your practice
- Team and staff updates
12. Guerilla Marketing
Marketing’s main goal is to spread awareness and stand out! Guerilla marketing is the pin on board for this. Though the same may sound bewildering, let’s see an example of guerilla marketing:
Dental Marketing Ideas In Action
Our validated dental marketing ideas are built to make your dental clinic thrive and help you stand out in the crowd. There are several different ways to market to dental customers, and these 12 are all the most successful ones.
By using a mix of different techniques that fit well for your clinic and the people you wish to attract, you will start seeing an uptick in appointments before you know it.
