It can take five to seven impressions with a patient before people become aware of your dental business. Meanwhile, you only have seven seconds to make a solid first impression. Within that time, patients will decide whether they like and trust your brand.
If you’re failing to appear in front of potential patients, you need to consider your dental marketing strategy. Here are a few tips that can help.
With effective marketing for dentists, you can start drawing new patients to your practice. Read on to discover the tips you need for success today!
Set Goals
Before going live with a digital marketing campaign, it helps to establish specific goals. Outlining your goals can help you determine the best dental marketing strategies for the job.
Otherwise, you could risk wasting valuable time and energy on strategies that fail to appeal to your target audience.
Determine your priorities, such as:
- Generating brand awareness and recognition
- Attracting new website visitors
- Establishing your credibility
- Becoming a thought leader
- Generating online leads
- Booking appointments
- Gaining social media followers
- Gaining email subscribers
- Improving your ROI
Set a key performance indicator (KPI) to track your progress as you try to achieve each goal. For example, you might track unique website visitors, form submissions, or social media followers. Then, set a deadline for each goal on your list.
Determine how you’ll accomplish each goal, too.
For example, you can use search engine optimization (SEO) to generate brand awareness and website traffic. As part of an effective SEO strategy, you’ll also need to consider content creation.
Strategizing with specific goals in mind can give the rest of your dentist marketing more direction.
Research Your Target Audience
You might struggle to accomplish your goals if you fail to consider your target audience first. Research your patients by gathering demographic and psychographic information. For example, you might consider their:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Salary
- Education
- Career
- Hobbies
- Interests
- Pain points
Consider the dental pain points they’re experiencing. For example, maybe your patients are concerned with the appearance of their smiles. These patients are likely to prioritize cosmetic dentistry services.
Maybe you’re trying to appeal to a mother with kids to market your pediatric dentistry services instead.
Understanding your target audience will allow you to personalize your marketing messages.
Update Your Website
If your website is slow, outdated, or unappealing, new visitors will leave without exploring additional pages. Each time you lose a website visitor, your bounce rate could increase. A high bounce rate tells Google you’re not offering the best possible online experience.
Google might drop your search engine rankings, making it more difficult for you to reach new patients.
Before that can happen, update your website. Make sure it’s:
- Secure
- Fast
- Mobile-optimized
- User-friendly
Consider investing in web design and development services this year. Otherwise, make sure the backend of your site is optimized with Google’s Core Web Vitals in mind. These ranking factors can help you improve your website’s user experience.
Otherwise, make sure there’s more than one way for visitors to contact you. You can use forms, pop-ups, and chatbots to engage your visitors.
Create Informative Content
Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional methods while generating three times as many leads. Meanwhile, companies that blog produce 67% more leads a month than those without.
Creating informative, engaging blog posts can help you appear in front of more potential patients. It can also help you establish your experience and expertise in the industry. In time, potential patients will recognize your expertise.
They might feel more comfortable trusting you with the dental services they need.
Create different forms of content for your website, including blogs, eBooks, polls, quizzes, and video content. Then, share your content online through social media and email marketing.
Use SEO
Search engine optimization can help potential patients find your website and blog content during online searches. You can reach the top of search engine result pages to make sure patients find your practice first.
Gather keyword research to determine what search terms your patients use to find local dentists. Then, create content for those keywords.
Don’t stuff a blog post with a keyword after it’s already written.
Claim and optimize your Google Business listing, too. Potential patients can find information about your practice with ease, allowing you to generate more leads.
Ask for Reviews
Once you update your Google Business listing, ask your patients to post their reviews on your profile. Positive reviews can strengthen your online reputation. New patients might feel more inclined to trust you after reading positive reviews.
Positive reviews can also benefit your SEO marketing strategy.
Reward your loyal patients to keep them coming back to your dental practice, too.
Create PPC Ads
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising will allow you to appear in front of more prospective patients online. You can appear in front of patients based on demographics like their location. You can also appear based on the terms they use during a search.
Consider using Google Ads and Facebook Ads to develop your campaigns. You can create both text and display ads to generate brand awareness and website traffic.
Automate Emails
Email marketing will help you remain at the forefront of the patient’s mind. You can send them appointment reminders or let them know about new services you’re offering.
Make sure to use strong subject lines to encourage more people to open your emails. Within the email, use a call to action to encourage people to take action. For example, you can direct them to schedule an upcoming appointment.
Entice more people to take action by offering discount codes and coupons for dental services.
Stay Social
Social media marketing can help you engage your patients in real time. Start by reformatting old blog posts for social media posts.
As people begin commenting on your posts, respond! Let them know you’re available to help in any way they need.
Keep up with the latest dental marketing trends, too. For social media, you can use influencer marketing or create more live video content.
Develop a Successful Dental Marketing Strategy Using These Tips
Developing a strong dental marketing strategy can help you reach new patients. Get started by using these helpful tips. Once your campaigns go live, make sure to review the data from your efforts.
Then, make adjustments to your campaigns to generate more leads and improve your ROI.
Using the right tools can transform your practice.
Discover our pricing today to get started.
