7 Dental Marketing Strategies You Can Start Today
Marketing your dental practice is an ongoing task that deserves a good portion of your attention. A common mistake that dental practice owners make is to only think about marketing when they have space to fill. As soon as the books are full, they switch focus away from lead generation and wait for a downturn in demand before starting it up again.
This is a huge and costly mistake that could limit your growth. When you continue marketing – even when you are fully booked – you open up the possibility to hire new staff, expand your practice, introduce new services and even open a second site.
If you want to reignite your marketing plans but aren’t sure where to start, here are seven strategies you can get started with today.
Optimise your Google My Business listing
Google My Business will drive new leads to your website every month, but only if you have this set up correctly. It will help your practice to appear in searches and on map results for key terms – but only if you optimise it correctly.
Getting started
The first step is to set up and verify your listing. Verification is essential as it will give you ownership of the profile and ensure that no one else can make unauthorised changes to your listing.
You then need to make sure all of your information is up to date, including contact information and opening times. You can also post temporary opening times during holidays such as Christmas and bank holidays to keep your patients informed.
You can post timely updates to let your followers know what is going on in your practice. It’s also an excellent place to share your offers, open days and promotions.
Ask patients for reviews
Gathering customer reviews should be a core part of any dental marketing strategy. Reviews help to build trust and authority. They can also make your practice appear more trustworthy on the search engine results page, particularly if you make the most of rich snippets.
There are many platforms to choose from. While you might only be actively seeking reviews on one platform, it’s important to add a profile and verify this on every review platform. This will prevent competitors from claiming your profile.
You can choose from Google My Business, Reviews.io, Trustpilot, Yell, Facebook and more. Working Feedback is an automation platform that will streamline the process of gathering reviews. This specialist software will take the stress out of gathering reviews.
Automation is the best way to gather and utilise reviews. It takes the pressure off your practice staff to remember to ask for feedback. It can also create more natural and intuitive interactions that are more likely to lead to positive feedback.
Of course, if you are asking for feedback, you need to anticipate that it might not always be positive. If you do receive negative feedback, it’s important to take this offline and respond to it in a timely manner. This will help to avoid damaging negative review attacks by spammers.
Increase your social media presence
Social media might seem like a frivolous activity, but it should be a key part of your marketing mix. Love it or loathe it, your ideal target patients are active on social media, so you should be too. Here are just some of the ways you can make social media work for you.
Use original imagery
This isn’t the time for stock images or poorly designed graphics. You need to invest in quality imagery to make your posts stand out. Social media is visual, so make sure that your images are up to scratch.
An iPhone can take good enough photos these days, but you might want to invest in a practice camera to upgrade your images. You might already have photography skills in your practice team, but you could also send a member of staff on a training course.
Remember that bespoke professional imagery can be reused across your social media, website, brochures and adverts.
Empower your team
Everyone on your team should feel confident producing content for your social media channels. When everyone is involved in the process, it takes the pressure off and prevents it from falling on one person’s shoulders.
You could organise a weekly rota with every member of staff responsible for a social media “takeover”. Or you could use a shared social media content scheduler to allow everyone to produce draft content and then have one person responsible for scheduling it.
Make use of video
Video is one trend that you cannot ignore. Facebook and Instagram are already shifting focus towards video content and sharing more of this in users’ feeds. And if you want to be successful on a site like TikTok, you need to be confident in producing video content.
Add your dental practice to relevant directory listings
Directories help to make your practice more discoverable and also provide a boost to your website’s SEO. This marketing strategy allows you to quickly build relevant and reputable links to your website, which helps to increase authority.
You should add your website to niche and general directories in addition to local directories. Pay close attention to how your practice is represented across different directories and make sure it is consistent. The practice name, website address, physical address and postcode all need to be identical in order to reap the benefits of this added visibility.
Invest in paid advertising
Investing in paid advertising can be daunting, but with a smart strategy, you can make the most of your investment. The cost per lead is the most important thing to consider. If the cost per lead is more than you can make back on the cost of the treatment, then your strategy isn’t working. As long as you are converting leads and the cost per lead is lower
Google Ads is excellent for driving high-intent leads to your website, while social media advertising is excellent for volume. Facebook is also excellent for targeting local individuals with timely offers.
Setting up adverts without expert advice and support isn’t recommended, as you can quickly eat through your budget without seeing a return on your investment. Working with a specialist dental marketing agency will help you to achieve the desired results.
Focus on SEO
SEO stands for search engine optimisation. It is the process of optimising your website so it can be easily discovered in search. This is done through tasks known as on-page and off-page optimisations.
On-page optimisations would include things like changing the content of your website so that it more accurately reflects what you have to offer. It might also include adding in some local keywords. For example, if you want to appear in searches for “Invisalign in Birmingham”, you would need to include this key phrase in your content.
Off-page optimisations include things like building links to your website. When a website has more links pointing to it, it makes it more discoverable. It also lets search engines know that it is a trustworthy website. The quality of the links also makes a big difference. For example, a link from the BBC website would have more value than a link from an unknown blog.
The problem many dental practices have with SEO is that it isn’t an exact science. You can do all of the right things, and you might not see the returns you want. However, it’s important to stick with it, because websites cannot be properly optimised overnight. It takes time to build authority and trust.
Working with a dental SEO agency is essential for success. There are General Dental Council guidelines that need to be followed when advertising your practice, and only a specialist will be familiar with these rules.
Create regular engaging content for your blog
One of the simplest ways to reach new potential patients is through written content. Blogging is still one of the simplest and low-cost ways to engage your current patients while attracting new patients to your practice.
What should you share on your blog?
Your blog can serve as a portal to share practice information such as changes to opening times. It’s also the perfect place to introduce new staff members. When you are running promotions or offers, this information should be available on your blog. And finally, you can also share useful information to help your patients care for their teeth.
Blogging for SEO
Regularly updating your blog can also help to improve your SEO. It’s a simple way to keep your website content new and fresh. It’s also an opportunity to target longtail keywords.
While your treatment pages might target short-head keywords like “Dental implants in Coventry”, your blog can target longtail keywords like “How long do dental implants last”. These phrases might get fewer searches, but they are relevant to a high-intent audience. Answering these questions on your blog will also help existing patients and prospective patients to make a decision about treatment.
Need help getting started with any of the strategies outlined above? Elevate Dental Agency is here to help. Get in touch today to request a call back.