Orthodontic Marketing Ideas that Grow Orthodontic Practices
Orthodontists that implement Orthodontic marketing ideas and stay consistent with social media posting see their practices grow through increased awareness, engagement, and higher conversion rates.
After working with thousands of dental practices, we’ve realized that digital marketing ideas for Orthodontists have much higher office marketing benefits than other dental specialists.
When you consider the trending Orthodontic marketing strategies and the selfie culture we live in today, it’s easy to see why Orthodontic social media ideas are a prime marketing opportunity.
Time and time again, social media for Orthodontic offices prove to be one of the best and most effective digital marketing strategies for finding new patients.
Orthodontic Marketing Strategies that Increase New Patients
Marketing your orthodontic practice on social media isn’t just about how many likes or followers you get. Although new followers help to increase your online reputation and social proof, your decision to implement digital marketing ideas is about dollars spent and a return on investment.
To keep your investment low and your return high, marketing strategies for Orthodontists should focus on converting an interested potential patient into an active scheduled patient. To accomplish this, the best Orthodontic marketing ideas are simple to implement, easy to stay consistent with, and provide a clear ROI.
Marketing Ideas for Orthodontic Offices that Improve Reputation
When Orthodontic social media is part of the overall marketing strategy, an Orthodontists reputation is one of the most critical factors for measuring success.
It’s one thing to be found online but another to be chosen. Social media accounts like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have a high value in the mind of your patient. Although there are some organic ranking benefits with orthodontic social media posting, it isn’t easy to measure and should not be the intent of your Orthodontic marketing plan.
Social media marketing for Orthodontists is a social-proof marketing initiative. You appear to be more qualified than your Orthodontic competition if you have more followers on your Orthodontic TikTok account, social media reviews on Facebook, and engagement on your posts.
The Orthodontic marketing ideas in this post will help with establishing a strategy that will help to convert interested patients to scheduled patients.
1. Share Photos Of Your Team
Marketing ideas for Orthodontic offices should lean on and leverage the social media accounts of the team members. One of the best ways to take advantage of this marketing opportunity is to snap photos of the team.
In your social media caption give each team member a solid by mentioning how amazing they are. Try to be specific and talk about ways that they make your team the best Orthodontic team around. You may not be surprised to see that your digital Orthodontic marketing efforts pay as your team members re-share your posts to their personal social media accounts.
Orthodontic social media post opportunities can happen anytime your team is together. Snap a photo to show off your team culture when your team is going out to lunch, celebrating a holiday, or involved in an Orthodontic marketing charity event, or just visiting with each other in the office.
Sharing photos of your team keeps your social media accounts looking authentic and leads to the benefits of a psychological effect called transference. Transference is when your patient correlates the quality of your Orthodontic marketing with the quality of your Orthodontic care.
Some orthodontic practices feel uncomfortable with taking photos of the team. We’ve developed a great Orthodontic marketing strategy that will take the edge off. Download the Life Events Social Sign pack, which gives you a sign and reminds you of some reasons to snap a photo of a team member.
2. Launch an Orthodontic TikTok Marketing Strategy
The hottest trend on the street in 2023 for Orthodontic social media marketing is TikTok. TikTok is a mobile video app that has taken the world by storm and you should pay attention because it’s one of the best online avenues for growing a social media following.
Orthodontic TikTok marketing is still in its infancy and most practices have not adopted a successful Orthodontic strategy. Setting up a TikTok account for your Orthodontic practice is simple and free.
There are quite a few dental TikTok accounts that you should follow because they’ll help you understand the type of content that does well and gets tons of engagement.
3. Host an Social Media Marketing Contest
Practice giveaways and Orthodontic contest ideas are a fun and easy way to get your team and patients involved in your orthodontic social media efforts.
You can get creative and run an Orthodontic contest that helps to promote healthy oral habits, like running a Flossing challenge as in the example below. Orthodontic contests like these aim to encourage your patient to take a 30-day flossing pledge. Once they’ve accepted the challenge, invite them to share a photo for a chance to win a prize.
Other great ideas would be to run a caption contest where you ask your followers and patients to caption a graphic for a chance to win.
4. Highlight Events in Patients’ Lives
Showing interest in the lives of your patients and team members is a powerful way to build relationships. Without a doubt, those strong relationships are what allow your practice to thrive. Not only that, but you can also create great content for your social media pages!
As well as being a great place for promotions, social media can be used to show that you care for your patients’ well-being and that you enjoy working as a team. Use it to show patients that you’re ready and anxious to welcome new patients into your orthodontic practice family.
Undoubtedly, orthodontic social media provides a way for your practice to foster relationships in your local community. By following and liking posts from other local businesses, you stay connected and relevant. Remember, referral sources are relying on social media to provide social proof for your practice.
For children, and many adults, the idea of starting orthodontic treatment can be stressful and daunting. They may be nervous about the changes to their diet, speech, and appearance orthodontic appliances bring.
Ease patient anxiety and use these worries as an opportunity to go the extra mile for your patients. Take note and celebrate the beginning of orthodontic treatment with a photo, a goodie bag, or maybe even a gift certificate for a smoothie. Check out these free resources that make snapping and sharing HIPAA safe patient photos easy.
Share a “Patient of the Day” or “Team Member of the Day” post! Congratulate your team member on a recent accomplishment, or just express your appreciation for them. An important part of orthodontic marketing is simply staying connected on a personal level with your patients.
Some of the most effective posts in your orthodontic social media marketing will actually come from your patients, not from you. For one thing, it’s awesome when a patient snaps a photo at your practice. Apart from connecting with your, all of their friends online will see what a great experience they had with you.
Additionally, share their post on your own practice page and thank them for coming by. Patients starting orthodontic treatment will feel at ease seeing that other patients are having a great experience at your practice.
5. Implement Marketing Strategies to Get More Google Reviews
Independent studies and our research show that reviews significantly impact Orthodontic practice growth more than ever. Your potential patients will decide whether to visit your practice based on your online reputation.
Google reviews influence whether a patient will call and schedule with your Orthodontic office.
A research study by BrightLocal sheds more light on how online reviews significantly influence the growth of small businesses. Every year, online reviews have a dramatic rise in impact on an Orthodontist’s reputation and visibility.
A few new statistics in the study are especially interesting for dental practices.
- 97% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses
- 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
- Nearly 7 out of 10 consumers will write a review of a local business if asked
So what do you do to get more Orthodontic reviews? The answer is to run a review campaign. We’ve developed a set of Orthodontic marketing materials to help a practice launch the campaign.
We Can Help Launch Your Orthodontic Marketing Strategy?
As a My Social Practice client, you’ll receive everything you need to easily create social media content. Not only social media content, but content that attracts and retains orthodontic patients. That includes services like social media marketing ideas, blog posts, an amazing orthodontic practice website, and SEO.
In addition, you’ll have regular custom coaching to maximize your effectiveness. Let’s do a free consultation with you to help you find marketing strategies for orthodontics that fit perfectly with your practice. Plus, check out our huge library of free downloadable resources with more orthodontic marketing tips!
More Orthodontic Marketing Strategy Training & Tips
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most important social media marketing strategy for Orthodontists?
Quality of content! Close behind is consistency. You can post to your Orthodontic social media accounts daily, but if the posts could be more interesting and engaging, more value will come out of them. Social media is about being social, meaning you have to be involved at some level. Orthodontists that want social media to work for them but not be involved should simply not get started.
Leaning on a dental marketing company like My Social Practice can help feed the pipeline of creative and trending ideas, which cuts down on the amount of time that you need to invest in maintaining an Orthodontic social media marketing campaign.
Does Orthodontic social media marketing work?
If work means that it helps to increase case acceptance, the answer is a big yes. Social media has proven to be a solid digital marketing strategy to help small businesses grow.
What Orthodontic social media does not do well is track how many new patients come from organic posts. If an Orthodontist runs social media ads that link to a landing page with an offer, that would be a trackable strategy. On the other hand, organic new patient growth from social media efforts is very difficult.
One of the main reasons it’s so difficult is that most patients nowadays are multi-touch patients. This means that no single Orthodontic digital marketing strategy is responsible for conversion. Instead, patients use websites, social media, reputation management as well as word-of-mouth marketing to make their decisions. A great Orthodontic marketing solution is one that encompasses all Orthodontic marketing strategies in a unified marketing campaign.
About the Author: Adrian Lefler is an expert dental marketer and a key member of the dental marketing team at My Social Practice. My Social Practice is a dental marketing company located in Salt Lake City, Utah. Adrian is passionate about helping dental practices grow. If you’d like to book one of the members of My Social Practice’s speaking team, you can do that HERE. Interested in learning more about the benefits of SEO for dental practices or our dental websites service, you can learn more here.
