The Only Online Marketing Blog for Dentists You'll Need

Do you want your practice to be more successful? To be seen as 'The' best in your area? Sure you do. But you'll never get there if people don't know how to find you. Sound familiar? We can help you be found.

Blog By:
TysonDowns

First things first:

Why should patients choose your practice?

It may take some careful thought and consideration to pin down exactly what your competitive advantage is, but you can start by considering your location, specialties, services, and responsiveness.

If you don’t think you have anything that makes you unique, how can you start being special? Can you promise to respond to dental emergency calls, any time of day or night? Can you begin offering a new dental technology that none of the other dentists in town have?

Even something simple, like letting customers watch Netflix from an iPad during treatments, can make you unique. And odds are, you are already special in some way. Once you identify your Unique Selling Proposition (USP), you can use this to entice new patients in all of your dental advertising endeavors.

Is your website up to par?

A great website for dental practices is a high-converting, user-friendly website. This website turns visitors into patients because it delivers what people want in a digestible, no-hassle format. There are numerous important elements to a high-converting dental website, but here are the main ones:

One of the most important aspects of a great dental office website is user experience.

Let's first define user experience (Commonly referred to as UX). 

Outside of marketing professionals, few service providers realize what an impact their website’s user experience (UX) can have on their conversions.

If your site or content creates difficulties for visitors in getting the information they’re looking for, they'll likely leave.

How Can You Provide a Better User Experience?

We could go on for hours about the things you should or shouldn't do with your website. For now, we'll review three different things you need to look at when considering the user experience on your website.

Mobile compatibility

Having a website that’s mobile-compatible is a marketing necessity at this point. Mobile search is on the rise and here’s the kicker: 

Google has also added mobile compatibility as a ranking factor, meaning that it can affect whether or not you appear in search results when a user performs a search from their mobile phone.

Luckily, making your website mobile-friendly isn't as terribly complex as it was years ago. Hopefully, you have hired a professional website design company that knows what they’re doing and is following design and user experience best practices. If so, they should be able to ensure your website is responsive, which, according to Google, is the preferred method. 

Page speed

Society has changed us.

It's changed me.

It's changed you.

It's changed nearly everyone.

In what way?

People don't like waiting and get more impatient than they did previously.

Remember the encyclopedia? 

What did we do if we wanted to find something?

Well, if we were lucky enough to have a full set of encyclopedias, we'd go grab the book with the appropriate letter, and turn through the pages to find it, and hopefully we could find the information we wanted.

Now?

Most of us search on our phones or computers and have the exact information within seconds.

Here, let me show you.

What state do you think has the most gold? Alaska? Nevada? Let's see.

So, when we are able to get information that fast, we kinda expect it in other areas of our life.

This is why people want your website to load fast when they visit it.

In fact, even a 2-second delay in page load time can cause up to 87% of visitors to abandon a site.

You can make sure your pages load quickly with the help of Google’s PageSpeed Tools. It even identifies ways you can make your site faster, so you can start improving your page speed now.

Crawl errors

To learn more about effective website design and user experience, listen to The 10 Minute Healthcare Marketing Podcast, Episode 26, which I've added below.

Most likely, you will hire an outside web design agency to create your dental practice website. However, keep in mind that this is not a one-and-done job; you need to keep the information on your website up to date and post new content on a regular basis. An easy way to keep a fresh stream of content going is by updating your onsite blog regularly.

Create relevant content

Contrary to popular belief, internet marketing isn’t just about SEO.

You also need to draw in your audience by providing them with the helpful information they’re looking for and building their trust in the process.

A blog is a great way to build trust and relationships with your visitors, though not the only way.

You could create an online video show.

You could create a podcast.

There are a lot of ways to create content.

Your content shouldn’t focus on overtly promoting your practice (that’s what paid advertising is for). Instead, it should concentrate on addressing common concerns of potential patients, such as:

And don’t stop at a blog.

Creating content such as this and sharing it with your community is just the start.

You could create a whole content marketing strategy that can truly transform your online presence and reputation.

Build links for off-page SEO

Here are some ways you can build links to dominate the SERP.

Optimize For local search

Google has updated its search ranking algorithms frequently over the years, which has made it necessary for a business owner who is marketing their practice on their own or for the marketing agency to stay on top of these changes.

While most changes impact 'organic' results more than local, because the two different types of search results are tied together, changes can impact both.

Here are some important things to consider when looking to improve your rankings in local search.

Utilize Location-Specific Keywords

When it comes time to research keywords to rank for, you can use Google’s Keyword Planner to find the ones most relevant to your business.

However ranking for highly competitive keywords like “dental practice” is going to be really difficult, and also isn’t very necessary for local search.

Here’s what you should do instead:

Come up with location-specific keywords that include descriptors related to your area, such as city and state, zip code, neighborhoods, or colloquial terms locals use to describe your town or parts of it.

Combine these with your relevant “dental practice” keywords, and incorporate them into your content and dental advertising:

Get Set Up With Google My Business

You should fill out your dental practice’s information on Google My Business if you haven't already. Use your location-specific keywords in your business description and make sure your name, address, and phone number (NAP) listed on the site are correct.

Next, go to other major third-party review sites where your NAP may be listed (such as Yelp!) and ensure your listings match your NAP on Google.

With our clients, we run a local citation audit to see where the problems may lie. 

This step is critical because Google will refer to these other listings of your business to determine the authenticity of your dental practice. Even minor discrepancies in your NAP across platforms can negatively affect search rank.

But here’s the cool part:

If you do this part right, it significantly increases the chances that you will rank well in local search, and your practice can appear in the Google local 3-pack when someone does location-based searches. 

This is prime search real estate, exactly where you want to show up.

Come up with a compelling offer

Getting people to visit your website is important. However, traffic isn’t everything — you need to make an attractive offer to get the potential patient to take action. You can use an offer to “land the sale” (get someone to become a paying patient) or even just to collect useful information. For example, you can use an offer to:

So what should your offer be? Here are some compelling offer ideas for dentists:

Start by focusing on a single, time-sensitive offer for new patients. If that one doesn’t do well, try testing out a more valuable or lower-risk offer — for example, where the person only has to give you their email address or “like” your page to receive something free.

Step up Your Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing goes hand in hand with the off-page SEO. Social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Quora, and others are useful dental marketing tools in several ways. But social media is about so much more than SEO — it’s about shaping your brand’s online image. You can use social media to:

d in hand with the off-page SEO.

Select your platforms and set up business profiles

Don’t make the mistake of stretching yourself thin over every social platform out there. You need to decide which are the most relevant for your dental marketing plan.

Facebook and Twitter are usually the main social networks that dentists use to reach their target audience. You might also consider working with Pinterest, Google+, or LinkedIn. 

And here’s the deal:

No profile may be better than an abandoned one.

I'm still on the fence about this one.

With an abandoned profile, there's still some benefit from a reputation management perspective (another web property/search result that can potentially push down a negative site or review).

But, what does an abandoned profile do?

Well, it mainly frustrates the visitor.

Today I did a search for a business, and I clicked on their Facebook page in the search results, because I thought their Facebook page would have the most recent and updated information.

Unfortunately, the page hadn't been updated in over 6 months.

Frustrating....

I'd recommend focusing on a few different social networks you can commit to and update on those and interact on those, and learn them inside and out before going to another platform.

Of course, it goes without saying, time is money, so you may want to consider using a platform to help you decrease the amount of time you have to spend doing the 'busy' work.

Setup complete profiles for your dental practice, and try to make them uniform across platforms.

Have the same style of background images, share the same type of content, etc.

Start sharing

Now:

You have several new channels to market your brand and content. Utilize each platform’s unique features to amplify posts that will draw people back to your practice’s website.

That said, social media isn’t all about sharing your content. If you want people to pay attention to the things you post, you should also share interesting or entertaining content related to your industry as well.

Also, take social media as an opportunity to display social proof.

Recruit your staff to participate in the conversation and endorse your brand, and highlight positive customer experiences on the platform.

Engage with your audience

Next, you should make efforts to engage with your audience. The most important way to do this is by responding to their comments on your posts. But you can also enter into different social conversations on your own to broaden your brand reach.

Here’s the deal:

Social media has become a platform for customers to endorse or complain about their business experiences. In some ways, keeping up with what your audience is saying on social media is a kind of customer service. 

If a patient tweets at you about a bad experience, make efforts to fix the problem publicly on the platform. This will put your business in a positive light for everyone else who’s watching.

To really get the most from social media marketing, you need a solid social media strategy that includes a social media calendar to plan out the timing and content of your posts. Learn more about ways you can get new patients with social media by reading our blog post on social media for dentists.

Advertise Your Dental Practice with Direct Mail

Direct Mail, or postcard mailers sent to a targeted group of prospects, is a surefire way to get more patients. Direct mail has an estimated response rate of 24% and an average return of $16.39 per name mailed, according to a HubSpot study.

Tyler Brown, Marketing Specialist at DentalMarketing.net, says he typically targets neighborhoods near a dental practice’s locations and sends out professional-looking postcards with an incentive/promotion to get people to call. Brown says that of every 5,000 postcards he sends, he gets an average of 35 calls, resulting in about 7 new patients.

OK, so direct mail isn’t 100 percent online like the rest of these strategies, though it coordinates nicely with digital dental marketing strategies. According to digital marketing expert Richard Rushing, as quoted by Direct Marketing News, companies that have a compelling direct mail offer or message that they link with their online ads can expect “a 10 to 30 percent uplift in conversion…when combining the two channels.”

One way to combine digital marketing with direct mail is simply to follow up with an email to the people you send mailers to.

So, how can you get started with direct mail? Easy — buy a list of new homeowners in your area and send them offers using direct mail (postcards are best) and email follow-up. Learn more about dental postcard marketing.

Get Smart With Your PPC

Ask Your Patients for Reviews

Alternatively, you can have iPads in your waiting room setup to make it easy for patients to leave you reviews. You should also have a large image link on your website, allowing patients to leave you a review on Google.

Make it easy for patients to review you on Google by providing a link and instructions on your website.

Finally, while it is important to also be active on Yelp and other online review sites, you should know that Yelp has slightly stricter policies regarding asking customers/patients for reviews — that is, you’re not allowed to do it. With Google, you can ask for reviews as long as you don’t “solicit” them.

Quantify Your Efforts

An important step that many beginning marketers forget about is finding a way to measure their success. There are two essential components of doing this well, one you should adopt before you start your dental marketing plan, and one you’ll start using after you begin.

Before you launch a concerted marketing campaign, you need to have a clear, quantifiable understanding of what you hope to achieve with it.

Improving your bottom line is a goal, but there are a lot of component tasks that you can work towards to make that happen, such as:

Whatever objectives you have, you should make them specific and measurable. For example, you could plan to:

Set goals that are achievable for your size practice, and know you can always adjust them down the road.

Track the ROI of Your Dental Marketing Plan

The main components to figuring out your ROI are to keep track of new patients, new leads (prospective patients), and revenue. 

If potential patients don’t convert, it doesn’t necessarily mean your marketing strategy failed.

But it can be a good indicator that something’s not working.

For example, a new lead may have seen your ad on Facebook and made initial contact with your office. However, one of your front desk staff members may have been underperforming (perhaps didn't have a phone script to use or didn't follow the phone script), and as a result, a potential patient didn’t convert. 

This makes it vital to keep an eye on new leads that don’t convert and find out why they didn’t (and fix the problem). Resolving these issues can, in turn, enhance patient experience and retention.

You must know as much information as possible about why they didn't convert.

Was it because:

1. What is the attitude/skills/knowledge of the person answering the phone?

2. Is there a mismatch between your ad message and what you are actually offering?

3. Of price?

4. Availability?

Whatever it is, your team that answers your phone needs to be tracking these leads and why they didn't convert (at least their best guess based on the information they have).

Use Analytics Tools

Once you have your goals and are beginning to implement your marketing plan, you need to have the dental marketing tools in place to see how well your efforts are paying off.

Google Analytics is a must-use tool for any business hoping to market online. 

Get your website set up with it, and start getting detailed insights into your marketing efforts, such as your website’s:

How do You Calculate Your Internet Dental Marketing Return on Investment?

This is straightforward; however, when it comes to timing and inputs concerning net profits, things can get tricky. So how do you overcome this hurdle? The best way to resolve this issue is to set up a Customer Retention Management (CRM) System.

Further, to avoid human error and time waste, it’s best to automate it. Accurately entering data and managing it on a spreadsheet is quite difficult, so investing in a good CRM system can help your practice.

A good CRM system will provide consistent ROI methodology and revenue attribution. The factors also can be configured based on service line characteristics. Further, you can also keep information like email threads, social media threads, and patient data all on a single platform. What’s even better is that you can figure out direct and indirect revenue in a practical manner.

Patient relations and marketing activities can be significantly enhanced with the right CRM software for your practice.

What should you consider when setting up a CRM system?

First, you must consider it an investment and focus more on the long-term benefits than just the cost. You also have to look at how the cost of training your staff to use the system efficiently. You might also need to consider how well it will integrate with systems you’re already using at your dental practice.

These days, there are all sorts of options, from CRM Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to software that integrates into your phone system and social media platforms.

A good way to make a decision is to take an in-depth look at your practice, ask your employees what they need, and compare that to your bottom line. This should help you understand what kind of CRM system will suit your dental office.

It’s also good to note that CRM software isn’t automatically all-encompassing. So, you have to do your homework to ensure that your staff isn’t wasting time manually entering information from one platform to another. It has to be set up in a way that it automatically captures the data of your interactions with patients regardless of the platform (email, telephone, or social media).

Automation and security are the best part of CRM software and mobile apps, but not all offer it. So you have to look into that aspect as well when choosing the right CRM solution for your practice.

According to PCMag, the best CRM solutions are as follows:

Tracking the ROI of Social Media for Dental Practices

Marketing ideas for dental offices are usually focused on a digital platform these days, so strategies involving tools like pay-per-click (PPC) and social media come up often. When engaging in promoting your dental practice on a social media platform, your strategy needs to have two main components:

1. Stay connected to existing patients.

2. What patients experience at your practice needs to match the culture of your social media posts.

Without engaging with your patients, there is no real way to calculate the costs and benefits of your social media campaign. Further, you won’t be able to have a clear idea about patient retention, reviews, and referrals.

The best way to get the most out of your social media campaign is to maintain a dental office culture that actively posts and promotes on social media. However, it’s essential that your employees are aware of the rules when it comes to staying compliant.

To get the maximum ROI, dentists need to be engaging, consistent and remember to focus on providing value. Some tips to keep your social media platform active are as follows:

Further, consider if your posts are something that your patients would want to share, or want to 'like.' Getting 'shares' or 'likes' helps you get noticed by more people, which means better brand exposure, and more potential patients.

You can also dig deep into the effectiveness of your social media efforts with analytics tools. Social media automation platforms like Buffer, for example, will micro-analyze your every tweet or post engagement, shares, etc., in addition to scheduling posts to go out at optimum times.

To have a successful dental marketing plan, you’ll need to establish operations for a lot of unique strategies and follow marketing best practices.

Still, marketing a dental office can be an overwhelming undertaking.

Though, when you do it right, it is extremely rewarding!

What is the ROI on SEO for dental practices?

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is important to making your practice visible in local searches. Engaging in an SEO campaign can help your practice show up on the first search page and improve your search ranking. Further, you will also be visible on more patient review websites.

To achieve the online visibility you want, you will need the following components in your SEO campaign:

There’s always going to be competition and new dentists entering the marketplace, so you have to have an ongoing campaign to stake your claim on digital real estate. As a result, you should stake your claim on your local listings and work on removing duplicate profiles and incorrect profiles.

You can also encourage your patients to leave reviews on these sites and manage it regularly. This can be done by the dentist during consultations or by office staff.

What is the ROI on Pay Per Click for Dental Practices?

One thing to note when engaging in PPC is that time defines the success of your campaign. Each time a prospective patient clicks your ad, calls your dental office, and schedules and appointment, it has to happen quite quickly, or you have the potential to lose that lead.

So PPC alone isn’t enough to get the maximum ROI. You will need to use other internet marketing strategies we've discussed in this post.

For example, when a prospective patient contacts your office after seeing your advertisement, you need a well-trained individual at the other end of the phone with a knack for closing the deal and booking the appointment.

The ad copy should also be enticing to make the prospective patient click it. Further, the ad should use keywords and location targeting accurately (or you’ll be wasting a lot of money).

You might also want to consider device-specific landing pages to ensure that you don’t miss out on the mobile audience, or better yet, use call only ads with Google AdWords.

Further, make it easier for them to call you directly after visiting your website with a call to action.

Call recording and tracking can also help see what keywords and times drive calls. However, if you decide to record the calls for quality assurance, please make sure that your patients and prospective patients are made aware that the conversation is being recorded.

Read more call tracking for dentists. 

Conclusion

Once you get started with all of these dental marketing techniques, you will watch your new patient numbers start to grow, maybe steadily, but probably in fits and spurts, at least initially. It is good to do a combination of short-running campaigns (i.e., direct mail, time-sensitive promotional offers, PPC), along with continuous online marketing strategies (writing content for link building, staying active on social media, email marketing, etc.).

Be sure to pay attention to your web analytics so you can note which keywords and offers work best and refine your strategies as needed.

Do you need help with your dental marketing strategy? Not sure if you are doing what you should? Not sure of the results to expect? Let's get you an analysis. Just click the button below, and we'll set you up with a website and SEO analysis.

To learn more, check out our podcast episode called 8 Internet Marketing Mistakes Dentists Make.