In today’s age, the traditional dental marketing strategies just won’t cut it when dentists are looking to attract new patients.
Technology is growing more and more popular as time passes and people are finding new ways to utilize it every day. Learning how to attract more patients online will help you grow your business rapidly.
In this article, I am going to show you the best dentist marketing ideas for attracting new patients to your dental practice.
Online Marketing Ideas for Dentists
Search Engine Optimization
SEO (search engine optimization) is the methodology of optimizing your website and Google My Business listing to get more traffic and patients online.
For most people, when it comes to looking for anything, the first step they take is Google search what they are looking for. When looking for a dentist, it is likely they will do the same.
The higher your business ranks on the result list, the higher your chances will be when attracting new customers. They will see your business website and soon make an appointment. Optimizing your website to increase your ranking on Google first means that you must help Google understand your website through SEO.
This more specialized technique of SEO is Local SEO and can help dentist get more patients from Google. Thousands of people are searching for a good dentist near them.
With SEO, you can rank high for these terms and get more traffic to your website and to your dental practice.
In the healthcare industry, SEO is very important. Patients are always searching the internet for information, tips, and remedies. When they search for help with their dental issues, you want to make sure your website comes at the top of the list.
Google Ads
Success with increasing your SEO rankings can take months to master. If you want to start getting more patients right now, Google Ads is a popular way to go. Google Ads allows you to identify what your potential patients are searching online and then you can target them with your ads. For example, if they go to Google and search “dentists in my area”, your ads will pop up. These ads can vary depending on cities, zip codes, and areas that your practices are located.
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Google Ads is a great dentist marketing tool, because it allows you to target different demographics based on income levels. When navigating through Google Ads, simply select “Advanced Location”, click “Location Groups”, and then click “Demographics”. Here, you can choose the household income tier that interests you and click the red “Add” button. With this feature, you can target different income levels with ads catered to their income.
Google Advertising is a very popular dental marketing idea for dentists everywhere, so the competition is very high. As the competition rises, the cost of advertising will rise as well. However, it is only thanks to the fact the strategy is working. Google Advertising is causing many dentists to grow their business.
Claim Local Business Listings
Nowadays, having online visibility is majorly important in getting new patients to your business.
Making sure your business is visible online in your patients area is a big factor in successful marketing. To achieve this, you should list your business on different business listings.
You should make an account on multiple platforms and keep them consistently updated with the right information. Some of the most popular free business listing websites include Google My Business, Bing, Yelp, Citysearch, and Yellow Pages Manta but here is a large list of citation sites that we created.
Increase Your Reviews
Reviews are a great way to attract new patients.
Many people will trust the reviews of your current patients just as much as recommendations they get from friends and family. When it comes to going to a new dentist, people are skeptical, seeing honest and positive reviews about your practice will build people’s confidence in your staff. So, it’s a good idea to make a good impression with future clients this way, because reviews will absolutely influence their decision to visit your business or not. So encourage your patients to give a review online after their appointment.
As long as you are providing great service, they will most likely be happy to. You can do this through automated emails and text messages as well. Websites like Google, Facebook, Yelp, and dentist directories are beneficial places where your reviews should be seen.
There are many different ways to get reviews from your customers, like having them record a quick video after an appointment, ask them on Facebook or by email. Simply asking your patients whenever you can to give a quick review of your services will go a long way in growing your business.
Utilize Social Media
With the popularity of technology comes the popularity of social media.
Nowadays, people are not just relying on Google to check reviews, they may also be relying on your social networks. Potential patients may look at your Facebook and Instagram pages to learn more about your business and staff. However, reviews are not the only way social media can be used to your benefit, you can also use social media to build engagement with an audience.
People use social media to share content for many reasons: to bring valuable and entertaining content to others, to define who we are to others, to build relationships, and to spread the word about specific causes.
Social media is where a majority of your patients spend a lot of their time, so why would you not want to utilize these tools to your advantage in growing your business? Post meaningful content that adds value to your patients, like tips on to keep your teeth shiny and bright or discuss why it’s important to floss every day or any other dental advice that your patients will find valuable.
Once you begin posting content, build your followers, build your exposure, and increase your business
Email Marketing
Another popular and successful dentist marketing strategy that many business uses is email marketing. Email marketing does its job by inviting new patients, engaging with your current patients, and encourages former patients to come again.
It is easy to create a series of newsletters to send via email to a specific audience and encourage them to make appointments with you. If you are not utilizing this tool to send weekly emails to potential, current, and past patients you are missing out on a large number of potential clients.
Dental Blogging
Blogging serves one main purpose for many businesses; it increases website views and viewer engagement.
Your dental blog is the place you can use to educate your audience on all things oral hygiene. Creating a blog helps you to target your audience. Let’s say you make a blog post about gum disease and how to help fight against it. If someone is searching about gum disease, then they are most likely in need of a dentist and finding your blog post leads them right to your office.
Covering common topics about dental hygiene can get you some visibility and extra traffic to your site, which will lead to more appointments in the future. You can do this by finding topics that relate to common challenges and goals that many people come across.
Once you find your topics, write valuable blogs about these topics. Blogs are also a good place to broadcast patients’ reviews and promote any special services that your practice offers.
Update Your Google My Business Page
Consistently updating your Google My Business Page can attract more patients immediately. When someone makes a search on Google based on location, they will most likely see a map of local listings. This is call Google’s Local Pack, and it gets all of its listed information from different local Google My Business pages.
Your first step is to claim your Google My Business page. Once you claim your page, fill out your business information: Your business categories, main phone number, business description, hours of operation, address or service area, and review section.
Optimize Your Website
Many of these tips have been geared towards not only boosting your business, but boosting your website. If you are attracting all of these new people to your website, it is important that your website can do its job in attracting patients to your business. Your website should include some attractive features for your patients:
Online scheduling, online bill pay, online prescription renewal, staff profiles, videos, and messaging capabilities between patients and providers.
Along with these suggested features, your website should be fast, secure, and mobile-friendly. The whole point of technology is to get what you need quick and easy. When landing on your website patients need information fast and within seconds, if it takes longer than that, most people will leave your site. For healthcare websites in general, your website should be secure.
Everyone wants to know that if they decide to put any information on your website, they will not have to worry about their personal information being shared across other sites and with strangers. People also prefer to get their information mobile or at least have that option.
Whether they are at home, in the car, or at work, patients will want to be able to view your website on their phones. So, making your website mobile-friendly will increase your website visits.
Invest in Video Marketing
People love videos. The healthcare industry is a great industry to use video.
Website welcome videos are popular and beneficial videos to put on your dental website. Create a video so your potential patients can get a view of your office before making the trip. Profile videos help increase your patients’ confidence in your business.
Creating videos that introduce physicians to consumers will help them feel more comfortable before their future visits.
Testimonials and reviews from current patients can help attract new customers by building their confidence and trust in your staff. Educational videos that answer some common questions that many people have will attract new clients.
People look to their doctors to educate them on the information they are not educated on, so creating these videos will build their confidence on your knowledge.
Local Facebook Ads
Local awareness ads on Facebook are very helpful when it comes to advertising your business to local consumers. With these ads, you can share important details with potential patients, like the address, distance to the office, hours of operation, and directions.
It is important that you get the word out about your dental business and reach as many people as possible. With local awareness ads on Facebook, you can reach your local potential clients rather than people from all over the country that will not really show any benefit from your ad.
Remarketing Ads
Remarketing is a dental marketing strategy that shows specific ads focused on bringing in potential customers and helps reach people that have visited your website or business.
If you collect email addresses at your dental practice, you can use these through Customer Match on Facebook or Google Ads. You will upload the email addresses to create an audience and create an ad that would attract people to come to your practice again. You can even include a reminder for a cleaning or teeth whitening.
There are many tools, tips, and strategies that you can use to grow your business. Even though these tips can help you attract new customers, it is all up to you to keep them coming back. Make sure to build a professional, friendly, and reliable relationship with your patients.
People want to feel comfortable and safe in the hands of their healthcare providers, so make sure you are taking the time to improve your business online and inside your practice.
Offline Marketing Ideas for Dentists
Networking
Partnering
Direct Mailers
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