Best Dental Marketing Ideas To Grow Your Practice

It doesn’t matter how huge your dental office is, but if your patients don’t know that you exist, you are probably missing the opportunities of growing and staying ahead. Marketing is something that dentists don’t prefer. However, it plays a key role in making your dental practice successful. Though different websites will guide you with a plethora of dental marketing ideas, this blog lists tips that are practical. And implementing them will help you drive good results.

But before that, let’s start with a few stats.

Did you know?

• According to a survey performed by Bright Local, 97% of users read online reviews of a local
business before making a decision.
• In 2018, the healthcare providers in the U.S. spent a whopping $2.84 billion just on digital ads, inclining by 13% from 2017.
• Of all the internet users in the world, about 66% search for information on a specific disease or medical problem.
• About 83% of organizations pertaining to healthcare engage in content marketing today. (Source : truenorthcustom)
• It is important to have a mobile-friendly website because 80% of the top websites on Alexa are now responsive or mobile-adaptive. (Source)

Excellent Dental Marketing Ideas

So, here’s the hard truth: Dental practices are no longer the way they used to be. Today’s dental business is more saturated with lots of advertisements. So, the question is, how are you ever going to differentiate yourself from the competition? And how are you going to improve your patient flow?

Well, whether you need more patients for your dental practice or trying to create brand awareness, these marketing ideas will come in handy.

1. Have a custom-made website design

To run a dental clinic successfully in the digital world, it requires handwork as well as creative advertisements. Though out-of-the-box solutions have now made it simplified for anyone to build a website in less than a day, it doesn’t do justice while trying to distinguish yourself from other healthcare providers. So, have a website that is custom-made for your dental clinic.

Fact: 44% of visitors will leave the website if there is no contact information. (Source)

Benefits:

•  Establishes your online presence
•  Increases authority and credibility
•  Improves search engine rankings
•  Saves money, time, and hassle
•  Facility to add your treatments, photos, and testimonials online
•  Option to take appointments from your patients directly

Tips:

•  Use some real photos on the website
•  Include separate and clear sections for “About Us” & “Testimonials”
•  Make sure that your website is responsive
•  Keep the contact information noticeable
•  Include clear CTAs (Call-to-Action)
•  Do not ignore SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

2. Send emails to your patients

Emails help in building trust and more than that, they keep patients informed about their appointments. Let’s face it. Most people hate going to the dentist but since it is a part of a hygienic living, they need friendly reminders about it, or they may forget.

Besides sending reminders, you can even email your patients about some healthy tips on oral hygiene. These truly help.

Fact: According to litmus, users take 11 seconds to read an email. So, avoid including too much information. Keep your paragraphs short enough for readers to skim. Also, your CTA (Call-to-Action) should be clear like Book an appointment, Reschedule for a cleaning, Avail this discount, Try our new service, etc.

Benefits:

•  Shows that you care for your patients
•  Increases traffic and visibility for your website
•  Positions you as an expert
•  Encourages new referrals
•  Creates long-lasting relationships with your patients
•  Keeps your patients up-to-date about new treatments, products, deals, or offers

Tips:

•  Send reminders about the appointments regularly
•  Be polite while asking for reviews
•  Keep the email copy engaging
•  Educate your patients about new trends in the dental industry
•  Follow-up with new patients
•  Promote about your offers in email newsletters

Also Read: Best practices to follow while sending emails

3. Optimize your local listing

Though there are many dental marketing ideas, this particular dental strategy is straightforward and least time-consuming. All you have to do is optimize your GMB (Google My Business) page. Though this sounds like a simple tip, it comes with a baggage of perks.

Local SEO is one of the most and effective ways to reach your local audience. It helps boost your listing rankings to attract more people.

Just do a quick google search with the keyword “dentists near me” and you will see a list of dental clinics or dental practitioners popping up. This usually happens when you do location-based searches. This is known as Google’s Local Pack. The details in it are pulled from different local GMB (Google My Business) pages.

Fact: 72% of users who look for local businesses online, end up visiting the physical locations that are within 5 miles. (Source)

Benefits:

•  Increases the chances of showing up in the GLP (Google Local Pack)
•  Delivers quick results
•  Builds trust and creates awareness
•  Improves organic rankings
•  Brings more patients
•  Leaves a positive impact on your business

Tips:

•  Set up an optimized business listing on google
•  Perform proper keyword research
•  Use an available local number
•  Include real, high-quality photos
•  Keep the information consistent
•  Avoid any penalty-inducing offense

4. Create an interactive video to answer your patient’s questions

There might be times when you would have some common questions from your patients. What if you don’t have the time to keep answering over and over again? This is where “videos” come in handy.

You can create a video that answers all the common questions of your patients. You can even have a YouTube channel and publish a few informative videos once in a while and share it among your patients. This will also save your time.

Fact: 80% of the internet users will watch a video whereas only 20% will read an entire piece of written content. (Source)

Benefits:

• Videos boost sales and conversions
• Increases your ROI
• Helps build trust
• Encourages more social shares
• Helps your patients to remember you better
• Educates, engages, and entertains the patients

Tips:

•  Tell it like a story
•  Show empathy
•  Educate and inspire your patients
•  Keep the video content fresh, compelling, and brief
•  Include patients’ testimonial videos
•  Give an office tour

5. Implement an AI-powered chatbot

According to Wikipedia, a chatbot is an artificial intelligence or computer program that conducts conversations either through texts or audio. These programs are usually designed to simulate how humans would behave or talk to others on the internet.

With the advent of online chat, not only have internet users grown, it has also changed the way humans communicate with businesses. Since people look for immediate gratification, chatbots can meet as well as exceed humans’ expectations by giving them a frictionless and quick mode to connect with your services.

Not only are chatbots in trend these days, but they are also implemented by different organizations, and for valid reasons.

Fact: Chatbots will benefit the healthcare industry by 73%, insurance by 75%, and e-commerce by 90% in the coming years. (Source)

Benefits:

•  Serves as a dental assistant
•  Books appointments automatically with your patients
•  Sets up appropriate appointments and can even remind them about it
•  Makes safe payments
•  Drives positive conversations with your patients
•  Increases patient engagement

Tips:

•  Allow bots to take appointments or reschedule automatically
•  Enable bots to send surveys after an appointment
•  Allow the bot to ask the patients about their symptoms and show relevant options or health tips to fix health issue
•  Have a bot that brings conversational AI (Artificial Intelligence) to healthcare
•  Keep the bot’s conversations in a way that it comforts and gain trusts of your patients
•  Ensure that your bot provides proper support to your patients

6.Run local ads on Facebook

Sure, you can spend all your time and put in great efforts trying to get your dental website on the first page of Google. Of course, you can optimize your pages and write interesting blogs that your followers and visitors like. You can certainly do every little thing to guarantee for a long-term success online.

But, the question is – what if you need visitors immediately?

Well, then “advertising” is the answer.

Undeniably, Facebook is one of the most powerful advertising platforms out there due to its wide-ranging targeting abilities. Now, a part of this targeting is put into play with its Local Awareness Ads, which is designed exclusively to show it to people close to your location.

Facebook has robust targeting tools to allow marketers and advertisers to find their audience based on demographics, competitor affiliations, interests, and much more.

Fact: 39% of the Facebook users follow different business pages just to receive some special offers. . (Source)

Benefits:

• Helps your business to gain visibility
• Helps you to reach more prospective patients
• Creates brand awareness
• Generates more exposure
• Drives more people and revenue
• More quick and effective

Tips:

• Test your ad copy and images
• Test your new CTAs
• Test with different ad copies and formats like videos, images, slideshows, etc.
• Make sure to adjust and target
• Test with various ad objectives
• Keep it clean and short with just one CTA (Call-to-Action)

7. Increase and manage your online reviews

Online reviews convert into real-time results and you can’t deny that. Reviews are highly important, especially for individuals who don’t have dental insurance and hence, don’t have in-network dentists to pick from.

Most cities boast thousands of dentists, but a person is never going not know what makes Mary’s Dental Clinic better than Pete’s Tooth Buddies. So, they switch to online reviews. They make up their entire online reputation. A majority of patients consider them while making a decision on which dental practice to visit.
Fact: 86% customers read through at least 10 online reviews before making a decision about a local business. . (Source)

Benefits:

• Brings more patients for your dental practice
• Close relationship with your customers
• Builds trust
• Constructive criticism and additional suggestions
• Paves a way to grow your business
• Helps you stay ahead of your market competitors

Tips:

• Ensure that your online reviews are updated often
• Address the negative reviews in a positive way
• Respond to your patients quickly
• Never publish fake reviews
• Be transparent
• Keep building positive relationships with your patients

8. Run PPC advertising campaigns

PPC (Pay Per Click) are ads that are placed on top of the organic search results for specific keywords. You will be charged a specific fee only when the user clicks on your result. It works on an auction-based model and is extremely valuable for small businesses.

You may be the world-class dentist office in your location, but unless your patients know about you, you will eventually fail in capturing the traffic to scale your dental practice. However, PPC can do a great deed to compete against your competitors in the same region by outranking them with paid advertisements. This way you earn great visibility and reach out to your target audience.

Fact: 49% of users click on text ads whereas 16% on video ads and 31% on shopping ads. . (Source)

Benefits:

• Helps you make small adjustments while running the campaigns
• The set-up is easy and quick. You will be able to see its impact almost immediately
• Highly cost-effective because you get to pay when a user clicks on the ad
• You get to choose your target audience based on your demographics like device, language, location, etc.
• Creates brand awareness
• No dependency on Google algorithmic updates or SEO

Tips:

• Make sure you have good amount of digital marketing experience before executing your PPC campaigns, as there is real money involved
• Ensure that you target the right audience with the right keywords
• Keep a record of how you are receiving the calls and test your campaigns
• Keep the ad copy interesting and valid with right information
• Make sure that your ad titles are enticing
• Keep the landing pages with authoritative content

9. Engage on social media

When it comes to digital marketing, social media is an important platform, especially for a business because today, 70% of the users pick a local business that has a social media page. Why? Because they go around to see what other customers are talking about the business and how has the business utilized social media for establishing itself in the community.

If your practice participations in any local event, utilize social media for promoting what you are doing. This can do a great help.

Fact: Almost 90% of the millennials believe in the health information that is shared on social media. .

Benefits:

• Increase in brand awareness
• Better inbound traffic
• Improved trust from customers
• Higher and qualified conversions
• Increased website visibility and traffic
• Helps health practitioners to reach an extensive audience

Tips:

• Educate people on different health problems and give tips to lead a healthy lifestyle
• Post regularly with valuable information
• Get your clinicians and employees involved
• Use hashtags cautiously, but effectively
• Use positive images
• Discover different patient communities

10. Post videos for improved dental practice

Though videos on dental hygiene might not seem too appealing, it can help in a great way. So, once in a while, it is a god idea to post a few educational videos, how-to videos, tips to maintain good oral hygiene, etc. This creates a lot of attraction.

Besides these, make a video on your office tour and introduce them to your dental practice. This creates a personal connection and gives patients a knowledge of what to expect after they reach at your office.
Fact: According to a survey performed by Google on 700 health administrators, every participant reported that they watch videos to look for product demonstrations. Further, 79% of them continued to the respective website. . (Source)

Benefits:

• Boosts the CTR (Click-Through-Rate) by 300%
• Increases your website traffic
• Improves your reach and visibility
• Enhances search engine rankings
• Convey your message efficiently
• Reveals your personality

Tips:

• Show that you care for your patients
• Keep the content relatable
• Create inspirational or compelling stories
• Create videos that connect with your audience
• Share a few videos on industry innovation
• Ensure that you shoot in a good lighting