The ultimate guide to marketing for the dental industry
Dee Overfield - 15 November 2019
Creating a strong marketing strategy for your dental practice is important for bringing in new patients and growing your client base, as well as for forming relationships with your current patients. With our award-winning expertise, we have compiled some of the best ways to market your dental practice to keep your business ahead of your competitors.
Your dental website
The first step to your dental marketing success story is to have an innovative, informative website for your dental practice. Your website must be helpful to both current and potential patients. It should contain key information such as your contact details, opening times, location and the services and products you offer. A convenient and simple booking system, an FAQ and a photo gallery containing before and after images are also important. It may also contain more engaging content such as a blog, reviews and testimonials, and a page for you to introduce your staff on.
SEO
Next, we can turn to search engine optimisation. SEO is a non-paid method for increasing the quality and quantity of traffic to your website through search results. It’s important that your website is fully optimised for the relevant keywords surrounding the dental industry. This makes your website more visible to search engines, helps you to rank higher in organic search results and increases the traffic to your website. Remember to optimise your website for mobile usage too!
Technical SEO
An additional part of optimising your website involves the technical structure. Technical issues such as broken links can adversely impact your site speed with Google picking up on this and other problems. Fixing any technical issues improves crawlability so it’s a vital improvement to your site to boost your search rankings and to increase user satisfaction.
Local SEO
Another key part of your SEO success story is local SEO. This involves optimising your website to rank for a local audience. It’s important that your website is optimised for the address of your practice and the town or city you’re based, in order to rank for local searches and to help patients to find your practice offline.
Check out the SEO Services we offer here at Wagada for more information on how to boost your brand’s online profile.
Reviews, recommendations and referrals
With 72% of patients looking at online reviews as the first step to finding a new dentist or doctor, high-quality reviews are another valuable method for bringing in new patients. There are many ways to gain high-quality, positive reviews, such as making use of Google My Business’ review feature. This will help to grow your client base as they reassure new patients that your practice is the right one for them.
Referrals are an additional method of increasing the credibility and the trust patients have in your practice. Ensuring that you provide all of your patients with outstanding customer service will improve their overall dental experience and make them more likely to recommend your practice to friends and family.
Google Ads
A further step you can take to market your dental practice is through paid Google Ads. Google Ads works on a pay per click basis, where you only pay when someone interacts with your ad and the amount you pay depends on how competitive the keyword is. In this way, Google Ads allows you to target your ads to the relevant audience and select keywords that will target those specifically searching for related terms.
This can be a great investment to your business; you can track each ad, measure its success rate, makes changes to improve performance and turn them on and off as you please. Plus, even if your Google Ad doesn’t lead to a click-through, simply just having your website at the top of search pages is great brand awareness. For further information about Google Ads and how they can help to grow your business, visit our website.
Google My Business
Google My Business is a free service that displays your business profile immediately when people search for your business on Google. It has also become increasingly more important and relevant for ranking purposes. Google My Business is simple to set up and enables people to easily access key information about your business without the need to click through. This feature is also a brilliant way for you to showcase events, photos, posts, questions and answers and most importantly, reviews.
The power of social media
The impact of social media platforms cannot be under estimated. There are various social media platforms to hand but we recommend that you focus your time and efforts into just one or two channels, rather than attempting to be present on all of them. In order to decide which channels you’re going to invest in, it’s important that you identify your target audience and understand the demographics of each channel to help you develop the engagement you want.
Once you have done this, social media is a great way to get your brand out there and to interact with patients. It can also be used to humanise your brand. Showing the human side of your practice is an invaluable method to build trust in your patients. Humanising the staff working at your practice by displaying the people and the personalities behind the business helps to familiarise patients and helps them feel more relaxed. A creative way to utilise social media with this in mind is to post behind the scene photos or video content.
A great example of the impact of social media on your business is our work with Allon Barsam, Laser Eye Surgeon. We set up a ‘Day in the Life’ Facebook campaign to present Allon as a familiar and trusted face to his clients. The campaign was a huge success, achieving a total reach of 5,402 over just 15 days.
Community involvement
Another top tip for humanising your practice and getting your brand out into the public eye is by getting involved in the local community. Whether it’s running educational events to raise awareness or promotional events to advertise a new treatment, there’s a huge variety of creative ways to increase your brand presence and build relationships with members of the public.
Additionally, you may decide to get involved in a team activity such as running the half marathon, supporting a local charity or sponsoring a sports team at a local school. Whatever you decide, there’s always a way to build up your reputation and get your brand seen.
Remember to keep your patients up to date with the events and activities you get involved in through Google My Business and your chosen social media accounts. Local newspapers may also be willing to promote your involvement, a great PR opportunity for your practice. PR is a cost-effective way to raise brand awareness and could cover a range of dental-related content, from dental hygiene education to promotion of your products and services. There’s no harm in asking!
Direct mail
A final step to your marketing strategy is the use of direct mail. Sending a postcard to potential patients living near your practice is a cheap way to boost your clientele. Direct mail is also a great way to target potential patients who have just moved into the area, as well as to send current patients appointment reminders.
There are a huge range of methods to market your dental practice and boost your client base. However, creating and managing a successful marketing strategy isn’t an easy task.
If you require more information and would like to find out how we can help you develop your dental practice and attract new patients, download our free white paper on “Tried and Tested ways to get more Dental Patients”. Alternatively, get in touch today. Call us on 01727 260 187 to speak to one of our experts at Wagada.
