In an industry where word of mouth is more important than most, many medical and dental professionals can be left wondering how digital marketing for dentists would benefit them. From a streamlined system for appointment making to reaching a larger clientele base, there are many ways in which digital can help dentists.
At Crystal Clear Digital Marketing, we are making digital marketing for dentists a reality, helping these dental professionals to bring in more new clients and gain favorable reputations in their communities.
Updating Your Website and Business Listing
When starting a new practice, or even if the number of clients you’re used to seeing has started to dwindle, digital marketing is a fantastic way to shake things up. There are a few different ways in which companies can perform digital marketing for dentists. From revamping a website with updated SEO terms to performing social media campaigns, it is important to know how everything works so you can understand what you need to make digital marketing for dentists work for you.
The first place you’ll want to start is by taking a long, hard look at your current website. Is your website easy to navigate on both your computer and phone? Does your website get straight to the point or does it require patients to click around before they find what they’re looking for? Pull up your website as if you were looking at it for the first time. If you’re able to get to where you want to go quickly and find crucial information like hours, prices, and contact information easily, you’re most likely ready to move onto the deeper levels of digital marketing for dentists.
SEO
A few years ago, to be considered digitally savvy, you needed to have a website. It was the difference between being only found in the Yellow Pages versus being discovered on a much larger scale. Fast forward to today, and simply having a website is no longer sufficient; you need to have a good site that shows up at the top of search engines.
The ability to show up in the first few searches is crucial for a dentist because many people that search for dentists in a given locality may only make a short list before they suspend their hunt. To increase your ranking in search engines, make sure your website contains the right keywords that will make your business found. For instance, if your office specializes in certain types of dental surgery, you’ll want to make sure you use specific terms and phrases that people might use to find that surgery when they search on Google, Bing, or Yahoo.
Adding Your Location
In addition to increasing your visibility through SEO, you can also utilize some services through Google My Business, Bing Places, and Yahoo Local. These services allow small businesses to create profiles that appear in search engine results when someone looks for a local business. This is especially helpful for a business such as a dentistry because more often than not, when people search for a dentist, they are looking for an office in a specific location.
By utilizing these services, you can ensure that not only your name will pop up when a potential patient is searching for a dentist, but an entire profile that includes your website, office location, hours, services provided, and other patient reviews will show up as well. This will make it easy for a patient to receive an excellent first impression of your office at first glance.
Digital Advertising and Social Media
After you’re done tweaking your website and ensuring that you’re appearing on local searches, it’s time to start thinking about reaching out to potential clients via a Google AdWords campaign or social media advertising. Promoting your practice’s services through Google AdWords or social media advertising gives you a larger reach to a targeted audience on a sliding budget that you’re able to tweak whenever you want.
The ability to have dynamic ads versus a static ad in a newspaper or commercial means that you’re able to address the specific needs of both you and your patients. If you want to reach people who live in a certain area or have specific habits, this is the place to do it. This is where digital marketing for dentists can have a big impact on your business. By using digital advertising, you have greater control over what your ad looks like when it goes out, who sees it, and how much you spend on it.
This amount of control might seem overwhelming, but that’s what our team at Crystal Clear Digital Marketing is here to help with. Another large benefit of advertising online is that you can create promotions and contests that run for a specific amount of time. These campaigns can not only help you attract potential patients via introductory offers, but they can also keep current patients engaged and interested in referring others to your practice.
Email Campaigns
Email campaigns offer a more personal approach when compared to social media campaigns. Ideally, they will work in tandem, giving you the ability to share a social media campaign with a close-knit group of patients who have given you permission to email them. This is also a great way to build a unique relationship with your patients because you can send them special offers, such as birthday discounts, check-up reminders, dental hygiene tips, and more.
It’s typically recommended that you offer a preliminary discount just for signing up. After you’ve gathered a healthy amount of emails, you can start sending out campaigns on a bi-weekly or monthly basis with office news, special offers, and more.
Try out a few campaigns at first and pay attention to the metrics (how many people received the email vs. how many people open the email, etc.). These key metrics can help you understand what resonates best with your unique audience. Sending out email campaigns right to a patient’s inbox also makes it easier for them to share an offer or unique procedure that your office performs with a friend or family member.
Reviews and Feedback
Another very important aspect of digital marketing for dentists is the ability to obtain public feedback from more of your clients. Remember when we discussed SEO and website visibility? Well, beyond looking at your business information, the first thing a potential patient is going to look at and compare with other dentists in the area is patient reviews.
This is another way in which your social media and email marketing campaigns can work together. When a patient is leaving your office, be sure to remind them to leave a review on Yelp, Google, or Facebook. Another method you can use to make sure that more patients leave reviews is to schedule email campaigns that trigger after a patient has come in for a visit. You can provide links to your specific pages so that your patients don’t have to spend time looking for the page.
Overall, online reviews accomplish two very important things for a business such as a dentistry: they show new and prospective patients that you perform services that leave your patients happy, and they make your existing patients feel like they are able to communicate their praises and concerns. Either way, you are demonstrating that patient satisfaction is your number one priority.
Digital Marketing for Dentists – What Has Changed?
Before digital marketing came to be, one of the most effective methods you could use to advertise was to place an advertisement in the Yellow Pages or local newspaper. Radio and television ads were also effective, but in the days of immediate gratification, people only want what they are actively searching for. Now, if people aren’t looking for a dentist, they will tune out your ad, no matter how flashy it is or how smooth a radio voice you hire for it.
Digital marketing for dentists presents a unique opportunity because of the immense amount of customization and targeting that it affords. If you’re searching for new patients, focus on outreach with some Google AdWords campaigns or social media ads. If your goal is patient retention, email campaigns and reminders can go a long way. No matter what your marketing goal is, it is easy to see that digital marketing provides you with infinitely more access to a wide array of previously untapped and unavailable markets.
Leave it to the Professionals
In an increasingly digital world, it only makes sense that digital advertising is becoming a “must-have” for any kind of business, regardless of the field. It’s important to remember that an effective digital marketing strategy does not just rely on one method alone, but rather a marriage of multiple methods working together to achieve an end goal.
If you’re interested in learning more about how digital marketing for dentists can help your practice, speak with the professionals at Crystal Clear Digital Marketing. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you and your practice!
