A Quick Guide to Dental Marketing

Recent research found that around two-thirds of US adults visited a dental clinic in the previous twelve months, which equates to approximately 170 million people!

With so many patients looking for treatment, dentists need to up their online advertising efforts to make sure they can claim a larger share of this lucrative market.

But, how can you create an effective dental marketing plan? The online marketing world moves fast, and you might be wondering where to start.

While internet advertising methods do evolve quickly, there are numerous techniques that consistently achieve fantastic results.

Let’s dive in and learn more about attracting more patients to your dental practice.

Create Patient Personas

One of the most important steps for designing your digital advertising plan is to create patient personas. You can use a virtually unlimited list of criteria depending on your goals.

For example, you could think about where your patients live, their occupations, or their hobbies. You could also consider which type of treatments they would be looking for.

This can help you understand precisely who you are marketing to, allowing you to laser focus your advertising efforts.

Optimize Your Website

When you attract the attention of new dental patients, they are unlikely to drive straight to your door. The first thing they will do is check out your dental practice on the internet.

Therefore, you need to ensure your website gives them a fantastic first impression of your business. For example, your pages should load quickly and your site should have a simple navigation plan.

You should also ensure your website displays correctly on mobile devices, as well as computers and tablets.

Focus On Local SEO

Using the right SEO techniques can help your business appear higher in the organic search engine results and increase your online visibility.

However, this is a specialized area and you may want to work with professionals that are proficient in local dental SEO marketing.

These experts will have years of experience in content marketing for dentists. They will also be up-to-date with the latest SEO advertising techniques and understand how to achieve excellent results for your firm.

Invest In Paid Advertising

If you are looking for rapid results from your dental advertising plan, then investing in paid advertising can be an effective strategy.

This method involves buying online ad space and specifying which type of consumers should see your marketing content.

For example, you could advertise to people that live in a certain geographical area. Or, you could focus on people who look for specific terms online.

This could include consumers who search for information about dental crowns or fillings. You could also target people who are looking for general oral hygiene tips.

While this strategy can work quickly, it can also become expensive. Therefore, it’s important to keep a close eye on your ad spending to avoid going over budget.

Establish a Social Media Presence

There is such a huge audience on social media that is impossible to ignore these platforms when creating your dental marketing plan. However, you don’t need to establish a presence on every social media site.

Instead, one of the best social media tips is to only choose the ones that are most relevant to your practice. You can then focus your energies on those marketing channels.

For example, if you have high-quality photos of the results of your dental work, you could post these on sites such as Instagram and Pinterest.

But, if you prefer to provide clients with useful information, you could write on Twitter or Facebook.

After posting, it’s essential to make sure you interact with patients who show an interest in your content. You can do this by replying to their comments and sending a thank your message.

This can help establish a bond with people looking for dental care.  They could then be more likely to contact your practice for their oral health needs.

Build An Email List

Although email has been around for many years, it is still an effective dental marketing tool. If you already have patients attending your dental practice, be sure to ask for their email addresses during their next visit.

It’s important to confirm that you will not send too many emails as this could put people off. But, you could advise that you’d like to send information and special offers once or twice a month.

This is an excellent way to stay in touch with patients and build a relationship. You could also make extra revenue from your promotions at various times throughout the year.

Analyze and Adapt

Even if your dental digital marketing plan seems to be getting good results, you still need to see if you can optimize it further.

By analyzing the data and making the relevant changes, you can make your marketing strategy more cost-effective as time goes on.

For example, you could find that patients often leave your website after viewing certain pages.

This could mean the content is difficult to read, or that it does not help the reader find the information they are looking for.

You can then tweak these pages to ensure potential customers get value from the content. This makes it more likely that they will continue to browse your website and book an appointment with your practice.

Create Your Successful Dental Marketing Plan

When you have an effective digital marketing plan in place, it’s possible to attract a steady stream of new patients to your business. It’s vital to invest in local SEO strategies and to have a responsive website.

You should also be active on social media, and use paid ads to quickly get in front of your target audience.

Following these steps could help you become the number one dental practice in your local area!

For more helpful online advertising tips, be sure to check out our Digital Marketing section before you go.