Pay Attention To These 5 Social Media Dental Marketing Trends
Whether you are a dentist, Orthodontist, or pediatric dental practice, it’s vital that you stay up-to-date on the latest social media dental marketing trends in order to grow your practice.
Dental marketing is shifting to almost exclusively digital marketing. Digital dental marketing is less expensive than traditional types of marketing and it’s far more trackable, which allows your practice to test and refine your marketing campaigns.
With online dental social media marketing trends evolving at a rapid speed, dental practices that are not focused on the future of dental marketing are already falling behind. Now is the time to be pro-active about your dental marketing plan.
Social Media Marketing Trends Are Shifting From Complicated To Simple
Although social media dental marketing trends are changing quickly, the good news is that marketing tactics are shifting from complicated to simple. Gone are the days of polished and scripted videos and long detailed posts about your dental practice. Now, it is impressive to share genuine and spontaneous content. Your patients want quick and engaging content that resembles content their friends post online.
Do you want to show up before competing practices on Google maps? What about in Facebook and Instagram search?
Are you striving to provide the best comprehensive care and educate your patients?
Are you set on having the best practice culture and patient experience of any practice in your area?
With the right plan, your dental practice will outshine the competition and build trust with patients when you incorporate these social media dental marketing tips into your marketing strategy.
This blog will walk you through current dental marketing trends that are gaining momentum, and how you can easily implement them to grow your dental practice:
5 Important Social Media Dental Marketing Trends
1. Leveraging Local Social Media Influencers
A social media dental influencer is a person who has built a large following on a social media platform. The worlds leading brands are using social media influencers to reach more of their target marketing than ever before.
A dental practice can attract and convert dental patients through local influencers who already have your potential patient’s attention and trust. An influencer doesn’t need to be famous to have authority. All they need is a high level of trust with their followers in order to increase dental patient referrals.
One of your very own patients could be a well-known influencer on social media! Influencers are a huge opportunity to promote your dental practice in a highly creative way. Working with an influencer will allow you to reach potential local patients who may not normally see your practice’s other dental marketing strategies.
2. Social Media Marketing Campaigns With Cash And Prizes
It can feel impossible to come up with a catchy dental marketing campaign. A memorable and clever dental marketing strategy does wonder for setting your practice apart from your competition. Think about the kind of dental patient that you want to attract.
Are you targeting parents of pediatric patients? Or, are you looking to get senior patients through the door? Tailor your creativity to harmonize with your target demographic.
Post meaningful content like fun pictures, contests, games, giveaways, and even dental tips and tricks. This kind of content marketing will attract a new flow of potential patients. My Social Practice has an entire creative team built to create dental marketing campaigns and ship off the ideas and props right to your door. Get dental social media ideas shipped right to your door and never ask “What should I post?” again.
3. Live Streaming On Social Media Platforms
Here at My Social Practice, we follow the growth and improvement of our clients’ social media dental marketing efforts. We’ve found that it’s not uncommon for live video posts to get up to ten times the amount of Likes as standard images. It is no secret that video content is more interesting. Additionally, dental video content helps patients and prospective patients connect with your team on a human level.
Live-streaming takes the pressure and complexity out of producing dental video content. When your patients tune in to a live stream, they don’t expect anything to be scripted or edited, they just want to see your authenticity and possibly say hello to you in the comments! Live video is a great way to give your patients and fans a behind-the-scenes look at your practice and promote a connection with your team.
4. “Storified” Social Media Content Has Skyrocketed
Facebook and Instagram stories provide some unique social media dental marketing possibilities for social media reach and growth. Stories are essentially slideshows of videos or photos that stay on your dental social media page for just 24 hours. Stories from people and brands you follow appear at the top of your feed, making it easy to quickly see what your friends are up to.
The format of Instagram Stories, including the 24-hour limitation, can actually help you create more engaging content. Here are a few reasons why:
- Be more spontaneous. Do you have an idea for a dental social media post but you’re not sure if it will work? An Instagram story is a perfect way to experiment. If it’s a hit with fans, you can continue adding to the story, and if not, it won’t stick around long.
- Take patients along for the ride. Instagram Stories offer a unique way to make day-to-day events interesting. Running practice errands or unboxing a new piece of equipment? Share an interesting snapshot from each step of the process, resulting in an easy-to-follow montage of moments.
- Never worry about over-posting. Stories are completely separated from regular Instagram and Facebook feeds. You can post as much as you want to a story and never annoy your followers or clog their feeds.
- Less polished = more authentic. Traditionally, Instagram has been seen as where people share their best, most-composed photography. It is not so with Instagram Stories. In the context of a story, a less-curated, more fun look at your practice is a better approach—and requires less effort on your part!
The stories format is likely to become the primary way users interact with social media platforms, replacing the role of the News Feed. Smartphones and shorter attention spans will continue to fuel the prominence of short-lived content in 2021.
Successful social media dental marketing trends change all the time. Yet, the core goal of your dental marketing strategy doesn’t change. You’ll always want your patients to feel comfortable and confident coming back to your practice. Above all, it will always be important to provide the best possible dental care and promote dental health for both patients and non-patients.
The dental field is very competitive. You want your patients to stay loyal to your dental office and even recommend you to their friends and family.
Reading blogs like this will pay off big time for your practice. Dental marketing can be overwhelming and there are many dental marketing companies claiming they can solve the problem. My Social Practice is the first dental-focused agency to create the easiest and more effective social media dental marketing solution out there. Let us do the heavy lifting with unique marketing strategies for your practice, website content, social media ideas, online reviews, and you’re own personal social media consultant.
5. Dental Marketing On TikTok Is A Big Deal
I’m sure that you have heard of TikTok. It is a relatively new social media platform that entered the social media scene in September of 2016.
TikTok is a vertical video creation application. That’s it. It is different from Instagram in that you can’t share photos, carousels, or guides. It’s known as an entertainment platform and it is growing faster than any other social media application.
In 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic TikTok blew up! It was downloaded 315 million times, which was more than any other app download.
Forward thinking dentists are using TikTok to educate and advertise their practices. They have successfully leveraged TikTok dental marketing to create interesting and fun conversations about oral health. They’ve found a way to make dental self-care look cool. These TikTok dentist accounts will inspire to help you begin creating your own TikTok videos.
Check out this Orthodontic TikTok marketing interview that Blake Hadley from My Social Practice did with Vanessa from Advanced Orthodontics in Laredo Texas.
An Orthodontic TikTok Success Story
Ensure that your dental website is polished and has a seamless design for both desktop and mobile users. A new dental website doesn’t need to break the bank. My Social Practice designs beautiful, blazing-fast, dental websites to show your potential patients everything they want to know—and why your practice should be their choice.
Use our Dental Website Grader to find out if your website is up to snuff. If your site isn’t up to standard, reach out to us to find out how we can fix that. Download our free dental website ebook to see if you have all 7 website essentials! And also don’t miss out on our $4,000 dental website credit for all new clients of My Social Practice.
6. (Bonus Trend) Integrate Social Media Content Into Your Website
Your dental website is the core of your online presence. Your potential patients will look you up online before calling or making an appointment and many of these potential patients are going to check out your website.
As the creation of social media content has blown up over the past few years, integration software and digital marketing tactics have been developed to improve website content.
Gone are the days of static, brochure-like dental websites. Today’s website is integrated with the creation of social media content that the practice is creating.
What do I mean by integration?
An integration is when you post a video to your Instagram account and it automatically shows up on your website. Or, when you shoot a before and after video using a TikTok filter and the video is then displayed on your ‘Before and After’ website page.
The digital marketing trend is to shift the way you think. Your practice digital marketing should be a constant flow of new creative information that’s all connected. You shouldn’t have an independent dental website campaign, or a singular social media campaign. You should have a content creation campaign that feeds your entire online presence.
About the Author: Adrian Lefler is a dental marketing expert and a key member of the dental social media team at My Social Practice. My Social Practice is located in Salt Lake City, Utah. Adrian is passionate about helping dental practices grow. Interested in learning more about the benefits of social media for dentists please schedule a complimentary consultation. And, don’t forget to read our Google My Business reviews.
