It’s no secret that dental offices need new patients monthly in order to grow their business. But traditional methods are marketing for dentists aren’t working as well as they used to, and are far more expensive than other strategies, namely digital marketing. Times have changed. Welcome to the digital age.
The problem is that dentists are highly-skilled professionals who are incredibly busy people. It’s not their job to understand marketing, just like it’s not a marketer’s job to know how to successfully (painlessly!) perform an extraction. And just like some extractions can be painful, some experiences with marketing agencies who don’t understand how to market for private practices can be painful as well.
That’s why we’ve put together this list of 7 things that any dentist can do to guarantee he or she sees results with their online marketing efforts. If nothing else, you’ll pull back the curtain on what your marketing agency should be doing for you.
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1. GENERATE MORE TESTIMONIALS & ONLINE REVIEWS
Consider this:
- 88% of people surveyed trust online reviews as much as recommendations from a friend or family member.
- 7 out of 10 people surveyed said that if they were simply asked to leave a review after a positive experience, they would do so.
- 74% of them said that positive reviews make them trust a dentist more.
If that’s the case, then why aren’t more dentists more concerned with generating more reviews for their online listings?
When it comes to in office visits, by all means you should be asking for video reviews and testimonials from your patients!
Remember those old infomercials from back in the day? You know the ones – “Before I bought Bob’s course, I was broke and was sleeping in the back yard under a cardboard blanket with my dog Spot. Now, I’m a multi-millionaire and I’m sleeping wherever I want with whoever I want! Thanks, Jimmy!”
Okay, maybe an extreme and corny example, but the point is, the reason why informercials were used so often is because they work so gosh darn well. People simply trust people more when they can see them. Video has a lot more information in it than sound, and far, far more than text information. So when they can see the person, hear the person and process the words of a person who’s had a great experience with you, it will almost always drive at least some measure of credibility to the person being spoken about. Plus, it makes for amazing content to share on social media, which we will talk more about below.
As far as online review generation, this is a very important process of any local business’ marketing campaign, and dental practices are no exception. But there’s a right way and a wrong way of asking for online reviews for your business – the right way will boost profits, and the wrong way will actually lower it. That’s because outright asking for reviews could be a violation of the Terms of Service agreement of online review platforms, and could get you penalized, lowering you in the rankings, which in turn could costs you tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands if you’re a cosmetic dentists) of dollars in lost business.
That’s actually exactly what happened to one major corporation I consulted on their Reputation Management and marketing practices.
This company was a huge $82 Million dollar a year national brand, who was doing review generation wrong, and in their case, jeopardizing hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales for being in violation of a TOS agreement for explicitly asking for reviews. I found the error, notified them and they fixed it, saving them huge amounts of money. So unlike the offline testimonials, if you’re going to ask for online reviews, just make sure you’re doing it in a way that is consistent with the terms of service of the platform you’re using. (If you have questions about the process, feel free to shoot us an e-mail and we’ll be more than happy to help.) But make no mistake – more reviews ultimately will lead to more profits for your business.
2. OPTIMIZE YOUR GOOGLE MY BUSINESS LISTING
This is a step that actually doesn’t take very much time at all, is relatively easy to do, and can lead to better search result rankings and position you better to get new patients.
Hopefully by now you’ve already claimed your Google My Business listing. If you haven’t, click the link and claim your business listing.
Once you’ve claimed your listing, you’re going to want to optimize the information in the listing.
You’ll want to make sure you’ve filled out all of the information in your Google My Business account. Things you’ll want to make sure you’ve filled out are:
Your business name, address and phone number (NAP)
Your business category
A description of your business
Hours of operation
Your review section (more on reviews a bit further down)
3. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION – GET FOUND IN SEARCH RESULTS
The next part of Google optimization, but admittedly not something you can do yourself is called SEO – Search Engine Optimization. It’s something we take great pride in being able to say we are experts at, so take our advice here – of all the steps mentioned, it’s one of the most important things you can do for your business.
That’s because your prospective patients can’t find you if you’re not where they can see you.
Making sure that you rank number on the first page of Google for searches like “dentists near me,” and “best dentist” are important, but a good SEO agency will go one step further and make sure that you rank well for several other keywords you’d probably never even imagine your prospective patients are searching for (they absolutely are.) Keywords like “Dentists open on weekends,” “Dentists who take X insurance,” etc.
Making sure that you appear in search for all of these different search terms ensures that you not only rank well for the obvious things, but even for the things that aren’t so obvious. And here’s a little marketing tip for you – even though only 10 or 20 people may be searching for those weird phrases a month, the fact that YOU come up #1 in the rankings for those results means that a much higher percentage of people who click on them will actually end up calling you, because of the difficulty in finding results for that search.
4. OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE
Did you know that 48% of people say a website’s design is the #1 determining factor in terms of deciding whether or not a business is credible?
Think about it from your patients’ perspective – if they made an appointment with you and showed up and found your office looked like something straight out of the 70’s, with old equipment and bad lighting, what would you expect them to think? You’d be lucky if they even stayed for their appointment, right? Well that’s exactly what it’s like for someone who views a poorly designed website.
Your website is your first opportunity to show your prospects that you’re willing to give them the best service, the best environment, and ultimately the best treatment. If you take your practice seriously, you owe it to yourself, your business and your patients to show them that. And when it comes to your online presence, your website is the #1 way to make that happen.
But it isn’t all about looks. It’s also about what you have to say on the website. An experienced marketing agency would make sure that before the web design comes into play, everything about your business is thoroughly understood by having a deep-dive discovery session about your practice, so that they can get as much information as possible and package that information in such an impeccable way that you become the obvious choice in the mind of the visitor. That’s one thing we do at our agency that 99% of other web design agencies don’t do, and what we recommend to every client.
It’s also about functionality. Is your website fast? Because 50% of people leave websites that take longer than 3 seconds to load. Use Google’s Page Speed Insights. In one click, you can check the page speed of your website and know if it’s up to speed (no pun intended!). Some other functionality to consider – Do you give patients a way to easily pay their bill online? In 209 there’s no reason not to make things as easy for patients as possible. What about online scheduling? Are you providing tons of valuable content to people that educate them on the reasons for why they need to do the things you encourage them to do? Do you have a high-quality photo and bio for guests to read about to learn more about you? Which brings me to marketing tip #2. People do business with people like know, trust, and like, not people who do great work yet they could care less about.
The fact is that people will judge you based on appearance, and there’s nothing any of us can do about that, since that’s a part of the way humans operate. It’s a part of the Reticular Activating System, a part of the brain whose sole job is to make determinations about what’s in front of us FAST. See a lion? Let’s not wait for it to bear its teeth to decide we should run! And I suspect this is one of the reasons many patients come into your practice – aside from staying healthy, they want to look and feel their best.
So make sure your online presence is as sparkly and shiny as you make their smile.
5. CREATE LOTS OF VALUABLE CONTENT
Earlier we mentioned the power of SEO for small businesses and for dental clinics. When it comes to ways to increase search engine traffic, nothing beats creative highly valuable content. Nothing.
In fact, websites that have a blog receive 434% more traffic than those that don’t. Tell me again why your dental clinic doesn’t have a blog?
Now, you might be thinking, “I don’t have time to run a blog!” Of course you don’t! But that doesn’t mean you can’t outsource the content. A good marketing agency can create highly engaging content for your practice on an on-going basis and increase traffic to your website by 434%. I have a client who just this month ranked on the front page of Google for the first time on 9 or 13 of his company’s top keywords. With a $3,000 – $10,000 average sale price and hundreds of searches a month, you can imagine why my client is as giddy as a choir boy on Christmas morning.
When it comes to what type of content you should be writing on your website, you really have to think in terms of your patients. What things are they going through or dealing with? What problems do they face? What are their thoughts toward dental care? In this guide from Cigna Health Care, you’ll be able to get some invaluable information about the types of concerns your patients have, and from that get an excellent resource from which to draw your inspiration for coming up with content for your website. For example, they cite research that shows that as people get older, they visit the dentist less often and their reported dental health gets worse. This is a great opportunity to educate your readers on the benefits of continuing their dental care and why it’s arguably even more important the older a patient gets.
Another great example of great content is clearing up common misconceptions. This is no different then those “Ask Dr. So and So” radio shows or TV segments you may have heard or seen in the past. It’s an opportunity to be an authority on dental care and clear up the most common misconceptions. An example from the Cigna research would be that:
Consumers believe that if they aren’t having any tooth pain, they don’t need to go to the dentist.
What?! I’m sure you can come up with 10 reason off the top of your head why that’s not true. But most most people haven’t put in the years to go through the extensive training you have, and as a consequence they don’t know. Knowing that information yourself doesn’t help you any to get you more business if it stays in that brilliant, well-trained brain. You’ve gotta share your knowledge and expertise.
Creating high value content on your website is no longer really an option if you want to be an authority in your field. And there are literally thousands of topics that you can write about, based on the types of things that are on people’s minds. “Do those blue light UV filters really work to whiten teeth?” “Do whitening kits over the counter work?” “If I rub banana peels over my teeth will it whiten them?” (I’m not making that one up – there really are homemade YouTube videos out there suggesting this as a viable alternative to your services.)
Ninja Marketing tip #4 – when you create an article about one of these topics and you notice that one really seems to be catching on and garnering interest, why let the appeal of that article die with the article itself? Create a video about the same thing on social media, and create TWO brand assets from the same content, and get 2 flows of interest and traffic for the price of coming up with one piece of content.
6. CREATE A DOMINANT SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE
With our dental clients who we run social media marketing campaigns for, when they ask their patients “How did you hear about us”, there are two answers that dominate their patients’ responses: “I heard about you through Facebook,” and “I heard about you through a friend.” That’s not a coincidence.
People who do social media marketing the right way understand that the two are absolutely identical, with the only different being one is in person and one is online. They are both relationship oriented. Relationship Marketing is something that will be around for as long as humans are around, because we are a tribal species. We were created to be connected. Social media may give us lots of cat videos, weird memes, and videos of grandma dancing around in the kitchen, but at the end of the day it also gives us connectedness. That connectedness should be something you use in your business to stay – well, connected – with your followers, and people within your community.
The truth is that Social Media Marketing done right can make you an absolute Rockstar in the eyes of your community in the sense that you can become viewed as the de facto authority in the dental field by using the platform. In marketing, this is called TOMA – Top of Mind Awareness – and it means that when people think of a dentist, they think of you. There’s no better way to create TOMA than social media marketing.
Social Media Marketing gives you the opportunity to stay connected with people who are current patients, as well as the opportunity to connect with potential patients. You can get valuable feedback, run promotions, get messages directly on the platform about hours of operation and move the conversation forward about scheduling visits, and even educate and inform people about new technologies or treatments all from the same platform.
Some people don’t like social media, but that’s because they don’t understand it. Does social media marketing work? Absolutely. It has no choice but to work, because it’s how humans are wired. It’s called Social Proof.
How many times have you been to a good restaurant because someone recommended it to you? How many times have you made a purchase only after looking at reviews of what other people had to say about the gadget first? Probably more than you could even count, and that’s because of social proof. When your social media business page for your Dental practice begins to fill up with likes and shares, as more people engage with your content and share your content, and as more people become familiar with just how much value you contribute to the community through your posts and pictures of the happy, healthy smiles you’ve delivered time and time again, it’s literally only just a matter of time before people start pouring in.
7. RUN AWESOME PROMOTIONS TO BEAT YOUR COMPETITION
Everyone loves a good deal. The internet is a great way to capitalize this because everyone and their mother is on it. Literally. So what does this mean for your dental practice and how can you use this information to your advantage?
By putting great offers in front of people.
Advertising has always been a great way to get people in the door. But there’s a smart way to do advertising and a not so smart way to do advertising.
Like boosting posts.
For the love of God and by all means do not boost posts. Friend’s don’t let friends boost posts.
But when done right, online advertising can and will be a massive success for your business. Having awesome promotions is a major part of that, because you’ve got to give people a good reason for walking through the door.
An example of this would be a bowling alley with arcade and bar. You’re giving away a free $10 worth of free game play on the card as the promotion on Facebook. Why in the world would you give away $10 of free game play? I’ll tell you why. Because the same type of people who like to play games like to bowl. And this promotion only applies on your slowest nights, meaning most of your lanes will be free! And guess what? Your gaming card takes into account that it costs on average $2 per game so that’s only 5 games, when research shows that people spend an average of 2 hours in a location. So you got them in the door for 5 games worth of play, when now they’ll be renting lanes and getting drinks from the bar or vending machines while they do it.
That’s why.
And it’s no different for your dental practice.
But running ads is a lot more complicated than simply having a good promotion. It’s about coming up with an engaging creative, great copy, and a streamlined process that includes the installation of a Facebook pixel to your website and many other campaign and platform specific tweaks, which is why you should really only work with an experienced ad agency to run your ads. But when you do, it’s something that will undoubtedly move the need for your business – and quickly.
CONCLUSION
These strategies will quickly and effectively begin to bring in awareness, brand recognition, create authority, and ultimately bring you patients on an on-going basis. Just remember that strategies are just like ideas in that they are only as good as their execution. You can have the best idea in the entire world, but if you don’t execute on it properly, none of it matters.
If all of the steps involved in this article sound a little overwhelming, feel free to reach out to us and schedule a free dental marketing consultation. We’d love to give you a free website audit and custom strategy session tailored to your dental practice that can help you get a good understanding of what things you can tighten up.
I hope these tips have been helpful to you, and may you continue to do awesome work, one bright shiny smile at a time!