As a dentist, you have a lot on your plate. You’re responsible for the health and well-being of your patients, and you have to stay up-to-date on the latest dental procedures and technologies. On top of all that, you also have to run a successful dental practice.
That means marketing your dental practice to attract new patients and grow your business. If you’re looking for digital marketing ideas to help you market your dental practice, here are 12 ideas to get you started.
1. Launch A Dental Podcast
Consider a dental podcast if you want to expand your reach and fill more appointments. According to the record, a digital marketing expert agrees that it is an effective way to reach more customers and a great way to build an audience that cares about the services you offer.
Dental podcasts are a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your field while helping people improve their lives. You can also use the podcast to promote your dental practice and generate new leads.
How Do I Get Started?
Planning is essential to success with any podcast project. You don’t want to leave anything to chance.
Create a plan – Figure out what you want to accomplish with your podcast. Do you want to promote your business? Get new subscribers for your newsletter? Inspire people to take action? As you go along with the project, keep your objectives in mind.
How Long Should Each Episode Be?
Shorter episodes are better for two reasons. First, people’s attention spans are getting shorter. Twenty-five minutes might be too long for some listeners. Second, it is easier to create shorter episodes. Sometimes, when I am recording, I get stuck because I want to cover too much material. Shorter episodes mean you can update your followers with new episodes more frequently, which keeps people interested and coming back for more.
2. Request Reviews From Your Patients
Prior studies have shown that reviews from real people are much more influential than any number or rating can be. That’s why you should ask your patients for reviews. Real, curated reviews from people like your clients are powerful and help you stand out.
How Do You Get Reviews From Clients?
When people are happy, they usually don’t consider reviewing their used business. You need to give them a nudge and make it easy for them to leave a review of your practice. There are several platforms where you can display reviews that have been left about your business. These include Google My Business, Yelp, Bing Local, and Facebook Business.
To keep the positive reviews flowing in, here are a few effective marketing strategies for getting more reviews.
Ask Gently For Reviews: It should be obvious but don’t be demanding or pushy. Instead, ask gently to leave a review. You can do this on your appointment reminder phone calls, email templates, or even letter or paper cards you hand to clients as they leave. Make it easy for them to click and leave a review by adding links or instructions on how to do so.
3. Provide A Dental Membership Program
Distributing floss and toothpaste to your community will not turn your patients into repeat customers. But a dental membership program might.
As active physicians in the local communities, you must constantly build trust with the people you serve. Trust leads to credibility, and credibility leads to confidence in your recommendations. When your community members need service, if they trust you and have confidence in your recommendations, they are more likely to act on them.
A dental membership program is exactly what it sounds like. A way for patients to access your services at a discounted rate. These are usually month-to-month subscriptions, but they can also be one-time discounts for customers.
As a dentist, you know that the services you provide take time and money from your patients. Sometimes affordability is the biggest barrier to care, especially when patients need multiple services. A membership program allows you to offer discounted services while still making money, reducing the cost to the patient while making your services more accessible.
As a marketing tactic, a dental membership program is a win-win-win. You win by creating a service for your patients, the patients win by getting access to affordable services, and your business wins by building long-term loyalty.
Why Should You Consider A Membership Program?
As we’ve discussed, there are a few good reasons to incorporate a membership program into your dental practice. Let’s recap them here:
- Red reduces the cost of service to the patient and makes your services more accessible to patients
- Builds long-term loyalty and increases repeat business
- Makes you look like a trusted resource
How To Create A Dental Membership Program?
Why not just create a membership program and hope your patients buy in? The truth is, there are some steps you need to take to make sure your program is a success.
Educate Yourself: Before creating programs for your patients, you need to understand how your finances work.
Dental membership programs are great for both new and established dentists. If you’re starting, a membership program can help you bridge the gap between having zero patients and full capacity.
Membership programs also make sense for dentists who are already running special discounts, such as “pay for 2, get 1 free” offers. Packaging these specials into a membership program can make them more appealing to your patients while also making the specials more sustainable for you.
4. Engage Your Audience With Relevant, Engaging, And Informative Content
If your goal is to develop a marketing plan for your dental practice, you need to consider what matters to your patients and potential patients.
This year has brought many changes in dentistry. From FDA-approved devices to improved dental implants, the advancements in technology have made it easier and more affordable for people to improve their smiles or be more comfortable with their dental issues.
You should leverage this great momentum to create engaging content that will help your audience solve their problems or address their concerns. Here is a list of content marketing ideas for dentists that you can use to create a successful marketing strategy for your practice in 2022 and beyond.
Raise Awareness About Dental Implant Benefits
Dental implants have been a sturdier and longer-lasting solution to replace missing teeth. While many people are familiar with traditional dentures and understand the issues they cause, implants still need to be more widely adopted.
To help patients understand the benefits of implants and negate their concerns, a list of dental implant benefits can help you create engaging content that will appeal to your target audience.
Demonstrate The Ease And Comfort Of Dental Braces
While many patients would like a better smile, they hesitate to consider getting braces because they believe the process will be painful and inconvenient.
This fear usually comes from the pain and intolerance they experience with traditional metal braces. If they know of newer, more comfortable alternatives to metal braces, they would be more likely to consider getting the treatment they need.
Create honest and relatable content to demonstrate the comfort and convenience of clear ceramic braces or Invisalign aligners.
Create content explaining how vaccines are made safe for dental patients and how they can benefit from vaccinating.
5. Make Sure Your Google Business Profile Is Optimized
Google my business profile is a page showing your business information on Google search results. It appears above organic results and plays a major role in building traffic to your website.
In fact, studies show that 55% of users still need to modify their search queries even when they get relevant results. This indicates the power of your Google my business profile in driving traffic and expanding your reach.
However, to take full advantage of this feature, the profiles need to be fully optimized for maximum impact.
Google displays information such as location, hours, contact details, and a photo of your choice. It’s like your business’s brand snapshot that users can easily recognize.
Users can also receive notifications when there are updates, such as changes in hours, so they can easily keep track of your business.
Why Should You Optimize Your Google Business Profile?
When your Google my business profile is complete and up-to-date, it means that you’re fulfilling users’ search requirements. In other words, when users search for your business, they should be able to find your profile. It’s as simple as that.
It also gives you a chance to present yourself in a positive light so that users who aren’t familiar with your business can get a positive impression.
When your business profile is found in searches and is complete and accurate, it means that your business will get new customers via Google. Isn’t that a reason enough to take a few minutes and optimize it? Yes, it’s.
6. You Need To Upgrade Your Website Design
If your website design needs to be updated, it might hinder your ability to connect with potential clients. When businesses close at record rates, redesigning your website might support your practice growth. However, when updated and improved, your website can become a powerful marketing tool that draws new clients and encourages existing ones to become more engaged.
The design trend for 2021 is still emerging, but two emerging themes are user experience and minimalist design. User experience designers focus on making the website user-friendly and easy to navigate. Simple, clean designs that focus on content rather than decorations are trending and present no distractions to visitors.
Another emerging trend is the use of dark and vibrant colors. The two colors combined create a dynamic contrast and feel energetic and exciting.
It is important to make sure your new design incorporates SEO-friendly design elements. This means the pages on your new website will be created so that Google can easily read and rank, resulting in your website appearing at the top of search results for relevant keywords.
So, a dental practice that wants to succeed online should focus on making its site easy to find via local searches, particularly those conducted using voice. It’ll entice them to check out your offerings and schedule consultations.
7. Hosting A Dental Contest Giveaway
If you’re looking for a unique, innovative, and fun way to promote your dental office and gain new patients, consider hosting a dental contest giveaway.
If you have a contest on your blog or one of your social media profiles, it’s a great way to drive traffic to your website and promote your brand. Give out anything that is connected to your company, like free tooth whitening or a free cleaning, for example.
Check to see if the rewards for your competition are of sufficient value to encourage individuals to pick up their email addresses to participate. The use of contests as a method for generating email lists is highly successful.
This new dental contest giveaway will help your patients learn more about your goals and encourage them to make healthy lifestyle choices.
8. Email Marketing
As a marketing medium, email is still extremely effective and a very personal way to keep in touch with your clients. People generally prefer receiving emails to any other form of communication.
Use your internal email database to keep in touch with current patients to maintain a healthy patient population. The patient’s email address needs to be collected on your registration paperwork. You may use them to remain in touch with patients between appointments, and you only need to email a patient once per month.
Email marketing is another method that may be used to notify patients of forthcoming appointments and confirm those appointments. A straightforward email reminder may significantly reduce the number of appointments canceled or missed at your office, which can ultimately save you money.
9. Creating A Google Ads Campaign
Investing in pay-per-click (PPC) search advertising is one way to overcome the obstacles that might prevent your business’s page from appearing on the first page of results provided by a Google search.
Google Ads is a great way to reach new patients and promote your Dentist business. You can create a Google Ads campaign targeting specific customers or patient groups. By targeting patients with specific keywords, you can increase the likelihood that you will reach your target audience.
10. Create Facebook Ads
Facebook ads can be a great way for dentists to reach their target audience. By targeting specific demographics and interests, dentists can create ads that are more likely to result in clicks. Additionally, using Facebook ads can help dentists generate leads and sales opportunities.
You may get an advantage by using Facebook’s vast array of demographic targeting options, which are at your disposal in plenty. Targeting potential clients based on factors such as language, relationship status, occupation, income, and interests, in addition to the more significant factors, is another option.
The research’s findings indicate that women make the majority of dental purchase choices. You may improve your chances of standing out from the competition by directing your advertisements toward local mothers who have recently made purchases of children’s clothing and who are located in the vicinity of your business.
11. Participation In Guest Postings
A leading online retail brand for outdoor and camping products adopted guest posting as part of its marketing strategy to attract new customers and grow market share.
Guest posts can help your website gain more inbound links and engage with the larger blogging community that is connected to your business.
Getting along well with other bloggers may result in the improved potential for collaborations, cross-promotion, link spreading, and of course, reaching a larger audience. This is in addition to the obvious benefit of expanding your readership.
Why Would You Want To Do Guest Posting?
- It’s a low-cost way to build authoritative links back to your domain.
- The links increase your Google ranking.
- It allows you to showcase your expertise in a well-established channel.
- You get to communicate with the audience that you want to target.
12. Creating Educational Videos
Educational videos are powerful. They can be used to convey a message, teach, or enlighten. And they’re so convenient to reach millions with minimal effort – upload to a platform and click share.
Dentists should take advantage of this powerful medium. They can inspire patients to improve their oral health, lifestyle, and more. And since videos are so easily shared, yours can reach millions without much effort. Just imagine the impact you can make!
Why Create Educational Videos?
Videos are one of the fastest-growing mediums online. Over the past few years, video consumption has doubled. People watch videos on YouTube for millions of hours every day. That’s time that could’ve been spent reading content or other books but can be covered in a few minutes.
People are willing to take advantage of this medium because it’s so convenient. And shorter video clips are more engaging than full-length ones.
Educational videos are also effective for sharing knowledge. Readers appreciate content that’s been well-explained and demonstrated. They are more inclined to watch your videos than read your posts, which is an excellent method to introduce your material to new audiences.
Conclusion
Digital marketing for dentists can be a great way to attract new patients and grow your business. However, it is important to understand that digital marketing has no one-size-fits-all solution.
The best strategies for one dentist may not work well for another. It is crucial to test out several ideas and techniques to identify the most profitable for you and your practice. Thanks for reading, and I hope you found these 12 digital marketing ideas for dentists helpful.
