Anytime you choose a restaurant, healthcare provider, or service, there are factors that play into your decision. The practice’s reputation, signs, ads, and more entice you to choose their services. Marketing helps you decide “what’s in it for me” as you choose a product or service.
Dental practice marketing is no different. If you want patients, you need to strategize how to get (and keep) them. You need to determine what your target patients need, how to serve them, and how to solve their “what’s in it for me” dilemma so they do choose you.
But, how do you target patients and properly market to them? What does dental marketing do for you and your practice? Here, we will answer the all-important “what’s in it for me” question to show how you benefit from marketing so you can do the same for your patients.
What is dental practice marketing?
Marketing is all about how you present your practice and connect with potential patients. It establishes your brand, reputation, and voice as a business. Years ago, marketing strategies were mostly based around print, radio, or television advertisements.
Today, dental practice marketing also entails digital techniques to boost a dentist’s online presence and find more qualified patient leads. Strategies and techniques rely on popular keywords, search engine optimization (SEO), ads, user experience, and more.
Having a marketing plan helps dentists and patients find one another. As a dental practice owner, you have a vision for your practice, your patients, and your expectations. Perhaps you want to ease patients’ fears by providing sedation dentistry for relaxation so they can still achieve optimal oral health. Marketing helps you achieve that vision by connecting you with your target patients.
As a marketing company, our goal is to help clients become known as whatever their marketing promotes. This becomes their brand and voice as a practice. We meet that “what’s in it for me” question to show patients how they can benefit from making you their dentist.
Benefits of marketing for dentists
The benefits of digital marketing go beyond simply driving revenue and increasing sales. While those are crucial to maintaining a practice, marketing also establishes brand awareness. Although print marketing may have been enough at one time, in today’s digital world, you need to go a step further. The benefits of online dental practice marketing are immeasurable.
When it comes to marketing, you no longer have to ask, “what’s in it for me?” Consider a few of the following advantages:
Increase your practice’s visibility online
Digital marketing for dentists uses specific strategies and techniques to reach as many potential patients as possible. There are various marketing platforms and channels available and plans can be customized based on your needs, competition, location, and budget.
One crucial marketing tip is to design and develop a website that is optimized for SEO, mobile and desktop use, and user experience. Without a website, patients can’t find and research providers easily, meaning they may move on to the next potential dentist instead.
Social media, review sites, Google My Business pages, and online ads are important for increased visibility, but they simply funnel patients to your website. Having a website is necessary to help patients take the step to actually book an appointment.
What’s in it for me? Whether our clients simply have a website and a GMB page or they have social media and ads too, our digital marketing techniques make their dental practice visible. Patients can easily find their dental practices and learn more about them. The funnel for turning more qualified leads into patients has started once a practice has an improved online presence.
Rank higher in search engines
Using our strategies mentioned above helps dental practices rank higher in Google and popular search engines. Each search engine uses an algorithm which helps decide how and why to rank various websites. These algorithms change periodically to keep showing the best and most relevant content on the first page of search results.
As digital marketing experts, we stay on top of the latest trends and techniques. This often includes using specific keywords, questions, locations, images, videos, or data throughout the website. These strategies are designed to target a given location or search terms and to meet expected user experiences.
What’s in it for me? We devise a marketing plan to help you meet Google’s expectations to answer patients’ questions with relevant content, keywords, locations, and experiences. In turn, Google (and other search engines) rank your website higher in search results.
Gain more qualified patient leads
With our digital marketing techniques, we can fine tune and tailor dental marketing plans to the exact patient demographics our clients want. Using Facebook and Google ads, we can pinpoint and design ads to reach patients who search for related terms and locations. When searching or scrolling for a related topic, our client’s ad pops up inviting patients to the website.
What’s in it for me? Our digital techniques and marketing strategies such as ads help funnel more patients to our dental clients. Online ads help our clients get in front of more qualified patients to help make that initial connection. Google and Facebook ads for dentists drive website traffic, increase phone calls, and boost patient conversions.
Improve your brand’s reputation
New and seasoned dentists can benefit from marketing. New dental practices need to establish their voice, brand, and reputation. While marketing improves the practice’s visibility, it also helps showcase who exactly the dentist is, what they stand for, and how they excel in their field.
For experienced dentists, marketing is just as important. Perhaps a dentist wants to open a second practice or is taking over an existing practice and needs to make it their own, they still need to revamp their reputation.
Our content marketing boosts a dental practice’s online reputation by establishing the dentist as an authority on a specific subject. From the landing pages to the blog posts, we create topics and subject matter that are original and informative. We use high-ranking keywords and optimize the content for search engine results. This builds up the dental practice as an expert in their field and also improves visibility.
What’s in it for me? With content marketing, our clients achieve brand recognition and become an authority. Patients look for dentists who are experienced and knowledgeable. With a successfully developed website, we give our dental clients a voice and face that patients want.
Measure the success of your marketing campaign
Digital marketing is measurable! With digital marketing, our marketing team can track ads, click-through rates, and website scrolling. Heat maps and A/B testing allow us to monitor patients’ interactions on our clients’ websites. We can visibly monitor how patients use and interact with web content, where they click, read, or stop scrolling. Additionally, we can use two versions of an ad to track which performs better.
Measurable marketing shows us which methods, platforms, and strategies are the most effective and produce the best ROI for a business. Marketing plans can then be modified for improved results.
What’s in it for me? Our clients know how effectively their marketing funds are being used. Our clients know they are getting the best bang for their buck to grow their dental practices. We can track our strategies and techniques to actually show what is working for each practice.
With the availability of software programs such as Dental Intelligence, our dental clients can analyze all aspects of the business. This includes understanding which marketing channels drive patient traffic, staff performance, and treatment type. This allows the dentist to see what works, what doesn’t, and what needs to change.
Choose a reputable dental marketing company
Whether you are a new or seasoned dentist, you can benefit from dental marketing strategies. Bringing your practice to the next level requires effective digital techniques to improve visibility and boost search rankings. Our digital marketing company specializes in the dental industry and helps our clients target the right patients through customized marketing techniques.
Now that you know “what’s in it for you,” step into the world of digital marketing to boost your online presence and build your brand reputation. It’s time to grow and achieve your dental practice goals.
About the Author: Lamar Hull is the founder and CEO of Med Rank Interactive, a full-service digital marketing agency in Charlotte that specializes in marketing for dentists, orthodontists, oral surgeons, doctors, pharmacists, and multi-location medical practices. Lamar has an MBA in Internet Marketing and devotes his time to staying on top of new techniques and trends in the digital marketing field while leading his team of marketing professionals.
