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The 5 painless reasons why you need digital marketing for your dental practice

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If you are a dentist but have never applied any digital marketing strategy for your dental practice because you never heard what digital marketing is all about or it is scary or too risky for you to try, then let this blog give you a sense of clarity. 

Now, we both know that for the longest time, dental practitioners like you have relied on reputation and referrals to build and increase your customers. Brand loyalty as well as the consistently high quality of dental services have also played a part in retaining your existing patients and capitalized the word of mouth marketing and referral system to have a sustainable and thriving dental practice. 

Though traditional advertising such as radio ads and adding your dental clinic on yellow pages have done the trick, the fact still remains that just like some of your patients’ teeth, these strategies will eventually decay over time.

Don’t get me wrong, the dental industry is an evergreen practice. In fact, by the time you are reading this, the dental industry is estimated to be worth $37 billion (2021).

However, if you want to stay on top of the game and to make your dental practice more profitable, it’s essential to have a digital marketing plan for your dental practice. 

In 2021, it is more likely that your target patients are on digital media. Whether you are looking for high-quality patients, chances are they are all online and they are consuming some type of online platform (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok)  for their work or personal life.  

Google processes more than 3.5 billion searches per day and at least 85 percent of consumers use the Internet to find local businesses. The rise of online product or service reviews has been the basis for your customers’ purchasing decisions as 72% of patients look for reviews when searching for a dentist.

Dental marketing isn’t just about reaching a larger audience — it’s also effectively delivering the right message for your target customers. Dental marketing can help dentists to strengthen ties with existing patients and also bring in new patients. You might have many goals concerning where you want to be and how much you should have earned in the next five years as a leading dental care provider. 

Now, You might feel overwhelmed with all the platforms available on the market but the key in marketing for dentists is to understand where and how to connect with your potential leads can strategically target and filter high-quality clients in order to attract, retain and market to your patients are some of the advantages in learning the basics and benefits of digital marketing. 

Let’s look at some of the benefits of digital marketing for dentists and learn more about why it’s necessary for the continued success of your dental practice. 

Benefits of Digital Marketing For Your Dental Practice 

Boost Online Visibility and Brand Recognition 

Generally speaking, your potential patients are more likely to look for dental services from a practice they’ve heard of before. In just one click, patients can research all the dental clinics they can visit. Raving online reviews are also their basis of whether or not they will set an appointment with your dental office or your competitors nearby. 

Depending on your brand identity, you can create relevant, and insightful content for your potential clients to be informed and entertained about your dental services so that increases your chance of being remembered beyond your dental clinic name. 

Digital marketing plays a big role in establishing your digital presence and making sure to execute marketing strategies that are in line with your brand message, value, and your services. 

SEO and its Role 

When you have established an online presence, your efforts will be useless when the website is not on the first page of search results. SEO is done to make your website to be on the first page of search results. 

For some, you might feel that it’s a bit overwhelming to understand what SEO is about, but having a dental marketing agency will help your dental practice to get as much online visibility through Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Remember, In order to rank higher than your competitors in search engines, it all begins by optimizing your website page, doing keyword research to target terms being used to search by your potential clients, and lastly your backlink profile. 

There are tons of dental marketing agencies out there, however getting the right dental marketing agency should have experience in building links from high authority websites that are within the dental market category. 

Accessibility To Leads

Digital marketing allows your patients to connect with you on search engines, social media, email, and your dental practice websites. Being both visible and accessible to your potential customers using their mobile is also a game-changer. 

A whopping 77 percent of American adults own a smartphone and are likely to use it to check the news, use social networking apps to connect (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), and buy products online.  Digital marketing can help you to strategically access them via social media marketing campaigns, SMS marketing, and email marketing. 

Balancing between creatively marketing your dental practice with the given data, you are opening the doors of instant brand recognition, connection, and loyalty. 

At this point, your dental marketing should be mainly digital (online) otherwise you’re wasting a lot of potential to thrive in this digital age and improve your digital marketing practices for your dental clinic even during a pandemic 

Generate High-quality leads

If you try to resonate with everybody, you will not resonate with anybody. 

You may have all the digital marketing in place, but the end goal of all dental marketing services is to target potential clients and to filter qualified leads and convert them into paying clients.  

Qualifying high profile clients and converting them to paying one is possible as long as you can analyze your target audience’s online behavior; such as their fear and pleasures towards the dental practice subject, you will be able to create marketing content that resonates with your target patients’ needs. 

There are tons of dental clinics out there. Getting the riches from your niche is all about successfully creating a digital marketing campaign targeting a potential, current or former patient with the perfect message, at the perfect time and over the ideal channel. 

Nurture interested or existing leads

Aside from targeting fresh leads to your business, digital marketing can help you convert interested or existing patients into paying ones. 

You never know if there are people within your area who are thinking about getting their teeth straightened but haven’t searched for the right dental clinics for them.

Returning to our hypothetical radio advertisement above, there’s another audience segment that we haven’t discussed: people who are interested in receiving dental services but haven’t started looking for dentists yet or some patients already searched a dental clinic nearby online but haven’t decided if they will book the appointment yet

This is why your website and its content should be compelling enough to remove the fear and uncertainties of your leads. The successful sales process is about converting the feeling from uncertainty to an act of certainty.  

Speaking of certainty, there are dental marketing companies that can promise you “conversions” or “site visits” but the question is, what are the possibilities of guaranteeing that these are not just wasted marketing efforts that don’t guarantee a call from your clinic to book an appointment with you?  

Working with a dental marketing agency that not only can boost traffic to your site for new or existing leads but also to specifically pinpoint the actual name of the patients booked from the marketing campaign is worth considering when picking the right dental marketing agency for you. 

Flexible Content Per Target Audience

Radio advertising can also be helpful in spreading awareness especially if your product or service is widely and generally used by the market. From detergent or food products, generally, people will be attracted to this type of campaign as these are essentials. 

However, if you apply traditional advertising to your dental practice you might have vague results. The listeners will receive the same message even though each audience has different levels of buying state; thus might not be relevant.  

When you use digital marketing for your as part of your dental marketing strategy, you will be able to craft your ideal avatar; their age, income level, lifestyle, and purchasing decision and adjust your digital marketing content or campaign to establish rapport and trust in this type of audience.  

Remember that your content relevance is equivalent to your response rate and the bottom line sales. 

Measurable Digital Marketing Success 

Again, traditional advertising can run via newspaper, posters, billboards, or radio ads. 

As fancy as it may sound to be announced on air or be seen on a billboard by passengers, there is no sufficient data available that can prove its effectiveness and if the conversions are coming from the ads as most consumers today are already online.

 That’s why digital marketing has proven its efficiency because you are now able to see the tangible analytics to which traditional advertising lacks. 

You can now see the website statistics and check the number of site visits, clicks per page or the device used when they check your site.

From your social media campaigns, you will be able to see how much does it cost to curate paying leads or your cost per click and if it is even worth the money or marketing efforts.

From this data, You and your dental marketing agency can gauge how you can strategically craft your website and content, your social media postings, and even your weekly newsletter. 

Hiring the right dental marketing company that can be flexible to find tactics that work and are transparent to adjust your budget to another marketing campaign and create content that converts the most paying leads is very vital towards any digital marketing success.

Affordability 

Knowing about the perks and benefits of digital marketing is great but at the end of the day what’s the catch? Every great proposition comes with a price.

You might be thinking, this sounds awesome! But how much does it cost? Will it create a hole in my pocket? The answer is absolutely not.

For example, if you run a traditional marketing campaign for your dental clinic’s grand opening; you will have to consider the cost to hire a graphic designer, printing, permit payment, as well as the manpower to post all the posters. On the other hand, social media marketing requires less overhead, making it more cost-effective.

It is better to invest in dental marketing services with visible and measurable results rather than spinning your last coin for an expensive traditional radio ad that is targeting the mass market that doesn’t guarantee that there will be a return on investment.

The great thing about investing in digital marketing is that every marketing strategy is specific and measurable. From targeting specific lead categories to actually seeing the numbers of how many people actually visited the site or click through the ads. 

From there, you can launch specific campaigns and run a paid test online campaign ads to see which one works well and to stop the ones that cost more leads per click, and increase the budget for the ones that will work well.

Ready to Get Started?

Digital marketing is by far the most effective way to promote your dental practice right now. 

Adjusting to the new ways on how dental marketing can be done nowadays can be challenging just like other industries are still trying to adapt.

But the faster you adapt and upgrade your dental marketing strategies, the faster your dental practice will thrive from your competition.     

Remember when you are choosing the right dental marketing agency for you, one should not only build a site, create a social media campaign for your dental practice, but also actually convert traffic to actual sales. 

Moreover, would it be nice to actually know the names of the booked patients all coming from the marketing efforts of the digital marketing agency that you hired?  

This is why Rise DDS is the leading and only dental marketing services provider in the U.S. that shows you actual visible results by patients’ names from our marketing efforts.   

Let us help you decide which marketing strategy suits your dental practice today. 

Book a 30-minute discovery call consultation here. 

Dental Digital Marketing, Cont.

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Social media management

Monitoring and managing social media can be challenging. It’s nearly impossible to put a value on having a professional manage your accounts for you. Not only this, but social media managers can help develop strategies and content that best fits your practice.

Part of a social media manager’s job is to engage with potential patients, answer questions, respond to comments, and create quality content. By using automated posting tools and scheduling posts in advance, you can save time throughout the week so that more time can be spent on other practice marketing tasks.

Another benefit of social media management is the potential for negative comments. When a post receives a negative comment, rather than responding directly to the patient, a social media manager can curate and craft a response from your practice that still answers the patient’s question or concern. Since you’re not replying to an individual person, it prevents any type of confrontation between patients and the staff responsible for handling social media accounts.

Website design

A beautifully designed website can bring together all of the pieces of your dental marketing puzzle. Websites can showcase your latest content and blog posts, as well as provide a welcome to potential patients. A dental website also allows you to register new patients and collect leads from visitors.

Although websites are sometimes overlooked in the world of dental marketing, they are an essential component to any dental practice’s growth plan. Not only do they act as a hub for all other forms of online marketing, but they also make it easy for potential patients to get in touch with you directly through email or phone if they want to schedule an appointment or have more questions about your services.

Dental practice management

Because the digital world is ever-changing, it’s also constantly changing your dental marketing strategy. For this reason, you need to have a team or group of people working with you on managing multiple aspects of your dental practice.

Typically, a good dental office management group will include :

Digital marketing manager :

handles content creation and social media posting tasks for the practice. Also manages paid advertising campaigns.

Digital media team member(s) :

develops and maintains SEO strategies and keyword strategies to increase organic presence in search engines such as Google. This person may also be responsible for monitoring analytics to determine the most effective keywords and strategies for your practice. Sometimes this role is combined with the digital marketing manager role.

Graphic design team member :

may also be part of the digital media team, or may handle all graphic and content creation needs for the practice. Or, they may work with both marketing and social media.

Search engine optimization (SEO) manager :

this is a separate role from digital marketing manager in that this person can only manage SEO strategies for your practice. Usually, the SEO manager manages content creation around SEO topics and answers questions about search engine optimization on behalf of the practice.

Webmaster :

ensures that all websites are updated with information about new services, as well as any future changes to services or forms/documents required for patients to use your practices. Webmasters also update the website with any new news, information and press releases.

Web development team member :

works with the webmaster to ensure all practices’ websites are up and running, are accessible by all devices and updated regularly.

Web content creator :

manages website content that is rich in keywords and copywriting that can be easily indexed by search engines. This person is also responsible for any long-form copywriting needed for print materials, like dental brochures or newsletters.

Web designer :

creates the user experience of your dental office’s website. This person uses wireframes to help determine interaction between users (new patients) and the practice website (your practice). They also manage the aesthetics and usability of the site.

Web marketing team member :

manages the daily content that is shared on various social media platforms. This role is responsible for creating, scheduling and removing content from social media accounts as needed, as well as writing up any tweet/status updates or blog posts that are needed or requested by the practice’s social media team.

In the United States, spending on internet advertising will reach $81.9 billion in 2018, an increase of 12.8% over 2017. This increase is largely attributed to increased spending on mobile advertising which is set to overtake spend on newspaper and magazine advertising for the first time in history during 2018.

A campaign consisting of patient testimonials and endorsements can have a major impact on the adoption of a new product or service by increasing credibility and sales volume. The use of humor in marketing has been growing as an effective business tool that not only helps boost brand personality but also can help drive sales growth through increased brand engagement.

Growth plans and marketing strategies for dentists should include the digital side of the practice. While these plans should have great content and good ideas, there is still a need for digital agencies that have the tools and experience to create and manage campaigns on several different platforms. Here are some tips for finding a digital agency to help grow your practice:

Once you’ve found a digital agency that specializes in your market sector, make sure you ask them how they’ll measure campaign performance. It’s also important to go over budgets before work begins so there aren’t any surprises later on.

Digital marketing is not limited to online campaigns only; although it does bring significant value in this area. A study by McKinsey & Company in 2015 evaluates the impact of digital media on consumers’ purchase decisions. The results of the study indicate that digital media has had a significant impact in changing consumers’ behavior and purchase decisions, particularly in new and emerging markets like India.

Digital marketing is not just a buzzword for dentists; it can be used to grow your practice’s organic visibility, which gives you more control over your brand and how people contact you for appointments. With the average person spending almost 3 hours online daily, it makes sense to harness the power of this consumer behaviour to increase your visibility.

Dentists should focus on the internet, television, radio and print to reach their target audience. Here are four simple principles that can help you understand how this form of marketing works:

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to online marketing for dental practices. It all depends on what your particular audience wants, how much money you have to spend and where you want your practice to be in the long term. There are also many options for online advertising that include display ads (ads that appear on websites), search ads (ads that appear in search engine results pages) and social media ads (ads created by advertisers to promote their products or services).

Dentists who are considering using an online marketing campaign should keep in mind that it is a delicate process. While digital media may be more cost effective than other forms of advertisements, the effectiveness and success of a dental practice depends on the online media chosen to create and promote its services.

Here are some tips for advertising online :

Before you start your online search for a digital agency, make sure you have an idea of what you’re looking for. You can ask friends, family members and colleagues to recommend agencies they’ve worked with in the past. Make sure you talk to at least three different agencies before deciding which one will be able to create your plan.

Which dental marketing services are best for my practice?

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There’s no “one-size-fits-all” approach to marketing services. On the contrary, each dental practice requires a customized plan for its specific goals and objectives.

With our proven integrated marketing services, you will gain a competitive edge! We’ve built-in your practice’s informational needs into every stage of the marketing process – from conceptualization through execution. Our expertise allows us to ensure that your message, execution, and message placement all deliver on expectations.

Our marketing services are designed to create a highly-focused presence in the marketplace. By leveraging our expertise, we can ensure your message is delivered accurately and consistently. We provide you with team members who have extensive in-field experience and a history of positive customer results. Our customized results will attract new patients, build trust within your patient base, and enhance overall brand recognition.

In addition to traditional paid media, our integrated marketing services provide more opportunities for engaging patients. Our digital marketing services allow you to capture emerging patient behaviors, providing high ROI opportunities that your competition will not be able to match.

Our integrated marketing services provide a consistent approach to all elements of your marketing plan. As a result we understand your practice’s unique goals and objectives and can make recommendations that will produce the highest level of ROI for your practice.
Successful dental marketing means presenting the best possible image and message to your target audience. Our marketing services are designed to help you reach the right people with the right message – your ideal patients!

Engaging your target audience with a consistent message will increase brand awareness, improve image perception, extend credibility and build trust through word-of-mouth marketing. With our integrated marketing services we can work with you to establish both a creative and an effective platform for communicating with your patients.

Effective dental advertising communicates value. We focus on building a unique and consistent brand identity that provides credibility and conveys trust.

Our dental marketing services start with a professional consultation to determine your practice’s unique marketing objectives. Our team will then develop a strategy to achieve these goals. From there, our specialized marketing services team will implement the plan. End result: your message will be delivered in a highly effective and credible way.

Our marketing services have been successfully implemented by scores of dental offices nationwide. Dentists from practices as small as one office, to large corporations, are providing us with referrals because of the positive results they are experiencing.
We have worked with practices of all sizes and in many different markets to provide integrated marketing services that deliver outstanding results.

Dental Marketing the Right Way

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Are your current dental marketing efforts producing any meaningful results?

rather than passively waiting for referrals, and waiting for patients to somehow magically find you, consider how purposeful, intentional dental marketing can be vital to continually and steadily growing your dental business.

However, most patients and potential patients still don’t know where to find your practice. If they’re a patient you can always ask them to contact you directly. But for the other 85% of potential patients, they’ll need to be referred by somebody, and a highly effective way of doing that is through digital marketing.

How does digital marketing bring in new patients?

The most effective way to get leads through digital marketing is through social media. It’s how people are finding their current dentist, and it’s what you want your potential patients to do as well. Social media is the quickest and easiest way to contact people, build trust and confidence with potential patients and current patients, bring in new leads, increase brand awareness, and improve search engine rankings!

But the surest way to get leads is by word of mouth. Ask your friends or family who they would recommend for a dentist appointment. If you have enough referrals from those types of sources or if leads come from your company site (which is marketing itself).

Dental marketing is not the same as dental advertising. If you want to market your dental practice then you need to think about long term. You’re not just selling a product; you’re helping people with something important that will become a necessity in their everyday lives.

You also should remember that your site is not only for new patients but also for existing patients who still need some convincing or a reminder of why they liked your service in the first place. So your marketing needs to focus on improving retention, increasing word of mouth and referrals, and, finally, growing your business through advertising.

You’ve got a lot of options when it comes to advertising and marketing your practice. But the most effective approaches are the ones that are personalized to your practice and focused on building brand awareness, online visibility, and increasing referrals.

Here are some things you should do for dental marketing:

  • Make a list of all the people who have seen your website or heard about you in some way before. Begin to build a contact list so that when you make changes to your site or launch new content, you can reach out to them and remind them about what they’ve seen before while also guiding them to new content you’ve added or updated since last time they visited.
  • Start a blog. People are drawn to new and interesting content, especially when it’s on a topic they care about or are interested in hearing more about. You can post regular articles that talk about new developments in your industry, give readers information about their oral health habits, discuss your practice or your approach to dental treatment, and much more. The key is to regularly produce new and valuable content for your blog readers!
  • Don’t forget the importance of email marketing. Email marketing is a great way to build brand awareness online by reaching out to potential patients via their inboxes and reminding them of what you have to offer. Start a newsletter for your practice and invite people to sign up. Also, send out regular content updates that promote digital marketing and explain why you think your practice is a great place to come in for treatment.
  • Share valuable content. Put a lot of energy into creating great dental content that will be useful to your readers, whether it’s through social media posts, your blog, Instagram, or other similar channels. Make sure it’s educational and informative so that people will want to share it with their friends!
  • Invest in a content management system. If you want your dental marketing to be successful then you need to invest in a really good content management system like the one from Dental Tribune. CMS has several great features that will help make your digital marketing and digital presence much more effective. Here are some examples:
  1. Allow you to update your site as often as necessary and as often as possible so that it’s always current.
  2. Makes it easier for people to share your site’s content with others by providing social media buttons that make it easy for them to quickly take action and share your content with their friends, family, and other contacts.
  3. Allow you to drill down into data about your site’s visitors so that you can see what types of content are most popular, who your visitors are, and more!

Dental marketing doesn’t need to be complicated. Focus on building brand awareness and trust, attracting new leads, and encouraging word of mouth with your existing patients by providing valuable content that will resonate with people. Digital marketing can help you reach people where they already spend a lot of their time online as well as provide them with the information they need to make better decisions about their oral health.

If you want to learn more about dental marketing and get the most from your digital marketing, Dental Tribune is the right choice for you. It’s a ridiculously easy-to-use content management system that will help you organize and optimize content for your site, maximize on your digital reach with search engine optimization (SEO), and improve customer service!

Go ahead and give it a try today!