Dental Marketing

Increase your dental practice’s monthly intake of new patients and profit margin.

Modern dental marketing employs both cutting edge digital tactics and refined traditional advertising strategies to achieve the dental practice’s marketing plan goals and promote future growth. In other words, the goal of a digital dental marketing plan is to engage and introduce potential new patients to your dental practice’s services and content.

Dental marketing techniques and goals change from season to season, but there are a few strategies that, when employed correctly, are some of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to maximize the positive results of your dental marketing plan.

With over 20 years of experience in dental and medical marketing, Epic Modern Marketing’s team aims to help dental and medical professionals market effectively to their clients online every day.

In addition to their years of experience in the field of dental marketing, Epic Modern Marketing’s team has studied and thoroughly analyzed the various tactics and techniques used in the most fruitful dental and medical marketing campaigns.

Through the use of Search Engine Optimization technologies and direct marketing strategies to target your dental practice’s ideal patients, dental practices have been growing their client base and expanding their practice.

One of the goals for any dental marketing plan is to increase the dental practice’s monthly intake of new patients and profit margin.

Two of the most prominent factors considered by dental practices and dental marketing directors when designing a dental marketing plan have to do with smart spending on marketing and strategic targeting of new dental patients.

Firstly, the dental practice and marketing director must determine which of their marketing techniques are effectively bringing in new clients and which ones are not.

Once a dental practice has determined which of their dental marketing methods are not as profitable as others, they can redistribute their dental marketing budget and invest in more fruitful means of marketing their practice and services.

The goal of any dental marketing campaign is to find methods and strategies that work.

One of the benefits of digital dental marketing is that it allows dental marketing teams to easily monitor the public’s activity and interactions with dental advertisements.

When a dental practice is actively keeping track of which marketing strategies are working best for their practice’s needs and goals, they are maximizing their new patient intake and profits by investing in the most efficient and effective methods for their practice at that time.

Furthermore, many of the digital dental marketing outlets like social media platforms and promotional emails can be
altered immediately and inexpensively. While being cost-effective and easily accessible by the dental practice’s target audience is one of the benchmark aspects of any dental marketing agenda, another important step when designing a dental marketing plan is understanding not only how to reach new patients but how to draw in your dental practice’s new, high-quality patients.

It is crucial that the dental marketing plan is bringing in patients that will be coming in regularly for basic cleanings and checkups, it is the patients that are looking for a dentist to perform specialized procedures and dental care that really help increase the practice’s profits.

The phrase ideal or high-quality dental patient is a bit ambiguous. Obviously head dentists and dental employees value all of their patients and want to see them progress in their dental hygiene journey, but there are a few characteristics that set apart regular patients from these high-quality patients. These ideal patients are people that are willing to keep up with the home care directed by their dental provider and will get on the right track for their progress.

When a patient is actively involved and concerned with their dental progress, they are far more likely to complete specialized treatments in a timely manner. Dental care is a process and progress does not happen overnight, but when a patient is vigilant about their dental progress, they are more likely to make appointments and stay up to date with their dental provider’s instructions and suggestions.

When it comes to acquiring these high-quality patients, the dental practice must consider both long term and short term dental marketing strategies to maximize their potential new patient intake.

There are various long term and short term dental marketing strategies used by some of the top dental and medical providers across the country that can help your dental practice get found online and appointments booked by these high-quality dental patients.

Implementing some of these techniques into your 2020 dental marketing attempts can not only help bring in new
dental patients in the near future but also help your dental practice grow in the long term.

One of the most prominent and efficient long term dental marketing strategies is search engine optimization or SEO. As of January 2020, there are over 1.7 billion websites on the internet and most people use search engines to filter through information to find what they need. The most used search engine is Google, monopolizing over 80% of total internet users.

Hypothetically, a potential new dental patient searches for dental implants on Google, and then they are presented with results pages based on what Google thinks is the most applicable to their search.

Paid Google ads pertaining to dental implants are presented at the top of the results page, followed by the websites that are most likely to contain valuable information that the user is looking for.

If the user is not able to find the information they were looking for on dental implants on the first result page, 95% of the time they will alter their word choice in the search bar rather than continue their search to the second results page.

This is why SEO is so important to the current success and future growth of your dental practice. If a dental practice cannot be found easily online, it will have a much harder time bringing in new, high-quality clients than if it were one of the top results on the search page. When your dental website and marketing are able to be found, you will attract visitors to your website that are looking for exactly what you offer, making them the most likely to convert to online subscribers or regular clients.

If your dental website is not appearing on these high-quality patient and visitor’s pages, it is the same as if your dental practice was nonexistent.

How Google Works

It is important to understand what factors determine which dental websites are shown on the first Google results page instead of the pages with less traffic.

A website’s position on Google is determined by its page rank, composed of particular search terms or keywords. The first search engine works by tracking keywords on all webpages, so if a potential new patient searched “dental veneers,” they would then get back a list of websites containing those keywords.

The websites mentioning dental veneers the most will be presented higher on the result page than others with less mention of the desired subject. The next factor in determining where a website is positioned on the results page is the credibility of the site. Dental websites that are frequently backlinked, or referred to on other websites, are more likely to be considered relevant by Google. Keyword seeding allows Google to find your dental site while backlinks determine how much Google trusts your site to be relevant.

The results Google presents users are known as organic results because they are always changing based on the website’s verbiage and overall traffic. Now that you know how search engines work and sort through information online, how can this knowledge be applied to your dental marketing strategies to streamline success?

Search Engine Optimization to boost your dental website’s traffic and ability to get found come in many shapes and forms. One successful and credible way to polish your online reputation is through public consumer reviews. People read online reviews when deciding where to eat, what to do, what product to buy, and on many other occasions. If a potential dental patient stumbles upon your practice’s website having never heard of it before, positive reviews from patients may help sway them.

Public Online Reviews

Online reviews show current patient approval and satisfaction and increase the credibility of the capabilities and character of your dental practice.

The quality of service is reflected in the dental website’s overall star rating while the frequency of public reviews shows that the practice is relevant and reliable. Robert Cialdini is an American psychologist and professor and has researched heuristics in human decision making and persuasion for decades. Heuristics describe the various problem-solving techniques humans innately possess, which are effective in the short term but are not always rational or optimal.

Cialdini argues that there are six pillars in persuasion, one of them being social proof. The social proof pillar suggests that people are more likely to perform certain actions if they can relate to the people who performed the same actions before them.

In other words, if people see others doing something, they are more likely to do the same thing. This can be applied to the importance of public patient reviews because they provide a means of social proof that may help bring in new clients that were otherwise unconvinced.

Lastly, public reviews are something that a dental practice can accumulate over time, allowing them to stay at the top of the results page so long as they maintain their service to satisfy and exceed the expectations of patients.

Market Effectively With Google Ads

Another potential form of dental marketing is online advertisements like Google Adwords and on various social media platforms.

The goal of any advertisement, whether it is digital or printed, is to optimize the advertisement to attract the maximum amount of engagement from potential clients.

Dental Google ads can make it easy for dental practices to reach new patients in many ways. Potential patients see hundreds of advertisements a day, so it is important that your dental practice checks off three key boxes when designing a Google Ad or any other promotional post. Firstly, the dental practice must choose a high-quality image for their advertisement to promote a refined, professional image.

This may be the first impression many potential patients are getting of your dental practice, so it is best to choose a high-quality image to reflect high-quality dental care.

Secondly, the text of Google or social media advertising should be engaging, but not too lengthy. Every word printed on your dental ad should be encouraging the reader to click your subscribe button or visit your dental website.

Lastly, the dental practice should publish the advertisement in about a five-mile radius from the practice.

People are generally not willing to travel very far to see their regular dental provider, so finding and interacting with patients close in proximity to your practice can help your dental practice book appointments and bring in new patients.

It is crucial that dental practices be very specific and selective when deciding which direction or demographic to target with their marketing because a holistic approach targeting everyone will likely cost the dental practice more money than it makes it.

So if a dental practice wanted to promote their dental Invisalign services, they should construct an advertisement made specifically for people searching for Invisalign treatments in a 5-mile radius from the practice to maximize new patient intake.

The process of trial and error is a tedious one, but when dental marketing teams think and act critically to understand what works best for their dental practice’s marketing goals, the results will be worth the time and energy invested. Marketing trends change, but the ability to continuously exceed the expectations and needs of dental patients will always help a dental practice grow.

A thorough understanding of what current patients like and what future patients are looking for is crucial to any business’s success, but in the field of dentistry where patients expect nothing but the best from their dental provider, it is even more essential.

SEO and Ads failing?
Here's why...

You could have the million dollar commercial but what happens when your website and online reputation are duds? In this video, I'll discuss exactly how the OIT strategy turns website visitors into appointments. Better than that, I included a surprise at the end! ~5 minutes.

"The 'hot strategy' of last year is over. The market is always changing. To stay ahead you need to be smart and consistently pursue innovation, where ever it may be found."

- Cole Williams, CEO

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