Table of Contents
- The 4 Essential Components of Great Dental Marketing
- 1. Modern Aesthetically Designed Website
- 2. Local SEO Optimization To Rank Higher In Maps
- 3. Integration Of Effective Social Media Strategies
- 4. New Content And Blogging Boosts Dental SEO
- Implementing All Four Strategies Into A Comprehensive Marketing Campaign
- Need Help? We’ve Got Everything Covered
- Dentist Marketing On TikTok: 4 Video Ideas To Do This Week
- 6 Reasons Custom Dental Graphic Design Improves Practice Growth
- 3 Funny Instagram Dental Marketing Reels Ideas To Do With Your Team
The 4 Essential Components of Great Dental Marketing
Finding a good dentist is difficult, but as a dentist yourself, you also might find it has its own difficulties. Bringing in valuable patients, and a lot of them, is no easy task! How can a dental practice market its services using dental SEO strategies relevant in 2022?
Today digital marketing for dentists requires several different approaches that utilize all the web has to offer. Although SEO for dentists is constantly evolving, four prime components play a vital role.
Do dentists need marketing? Yes, most definitely. Read on to learn the four ways of how to attract new patients to your dental practice through effective marketing for dentists:
1. Modern Aesthetically Designed Website
Approximately 20% of all dentists don’t have a website. Seriously! That was a stat I found in early 2021. Hopefully since then the dentists that didn’t have a site have come to the light.
A modern, comprehensive website is the cornerstone of any good dental practice’s digital marketing. First impressions matter tremendously, and if your dental website design looks like it came from the stone age, you are definitely going to have a big problem getting new patients. Patients want to be treated in a lovely modern practice, and a website to match that practice is essential.
Beyond good looks, your website should be organized and function well. Website organization and functionality improve patient website experience, which translates to higher conversions.
A website gives you a place to host content, offers information on your services, and then goes on to send the right signals to Google for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. Having information for your practice on your site, coupled with custom copywriting and keywords, increases the chances your practice pops up when people search for specific dental services.
Some ideas and features to consider when upgrading your website to attract more patients are:
- Professional photography
- Online scheduling
- A well-designed blog with up-to-date articles
- Online bill pay
- Online prescription renewal
- Live Chat
- ‘Meet the Dentist’ and ‘Meet the Team’ profiles
- Videos, videos, videos
- Regularly scheduled content that helps and informs your patients
Check The Technical Aspects Of Your Dental Website
Putting these features into your web design helps make significant steps towards improving your ability to attract new patients. But features and capabilities are not the only important things you need to do. A great marketing for dentists campaign requires that you need to work on some of the more complicated technical aspects of the site.
2. Local SEO Optimization To Rank Higher In Maps
A Google My Business (GMB) listing is required for local dental online marketing. A GMB listing is what shows up in the Google maps section of SERP’s. When you rank higher and in a wider radius on Google maps potential patients in your community will more likely find your practice.
Google My Business is a free listing that helps all business owners manage their online business listing across the Google search engine. For dentists looking to bring in new patients, Google My Business should not be underestimated.
When looking for a local dentist on Google, a map location is generated with all the nearby dentists. Most information a new patient needs is listed in the Google listing, such as an address, business hours, phone number, website, reviews, average review rating, main service, etc., making it easier for the person searching to their answers and become your newest patient.
Around 90 percent of worldwide searches happen on Google. The importance of an optimized Google My Business listing is a huge opportunity that most dental offices are not aware of.
What Happens When You Optimize Your GMB Listing?
When a potential patient in your community searches for a dentist online, they’ll find your GMB listing in the Google Map 3-Pack. These are the top three listings on the Google map, which are on the first page of search engine results.
It’s a big deal to be located on the first page of the SERP. Our own dental marketing case studies have shown that it can double and sometimes triple your new patient phone calls.
Basically what is happening in the optimization is that your practice will rank not only higher in the search engine but also at a wider radius. So, patients who used to search for a dentist and didn’t see your listing in the Google map because you were too far away, will now find you in the map.
Google gives wider rankings to business listings that have been optimized.
Recorded Webinar To Help You Learn How To Optimize Your GMB Listing
What Happens If You Don’t Optimize Your GMB Listing?
When a local potential patient searches for a dentist on Google, they won’t find your listing on the first page, even if you’re the closest practice from where they are searching. It’s true. You can be one mile away from a patient who is searching “emergency dentist near me” and practices that are actually further away will show up higher in the map.
It’s not that your practice listing isn’t there, it’s just several listings or even pages deep in the results.
There are only 3 listings on the first page of Google. If the patient clicks into the maps section to see all of the listings they’ll find approximately 10 listings per page. If you’re on page 4 do you think that a consumer is going to have the patience to peruse 40-50 results? Probably not.
Thousands of consumer online search studies have shown that more than 90% of people searching choose a result on the first page on SERPs. The practices listed on the first page are the ones that get the lion’s share of new patient phone calls.
3. Integration Of Effective Social Media Strategies
Social Media Helps Drive Awareness
All digital dental marketing campaigns should include setting up and maintaining social media accounts. Social media helps your practice stay in constant contact with current and potential patients in your community.
If you learn how to produce good content that gets lots of engagement, you’ll find over time that it will become one of the most valuable aspects of your marketing plan.
Using social tools doesn’t require big budgets like traditional advertising or online paid advertising. But it does require some time and training to understand how to be effective and measure the effectiveness.
Which Social Media Tools Should You Use?
After helping thousands of practices runs effective social media campaigns we’ve learned that it’s important to use the right tools, but more important to create the best types of content.
Using Facebook In Your Social Media Marketing Campaign
Even though Facebook seems ancient in the social media world, it isn’t going away. If anything, it’s evolving.
You can’t forget that Facebook has more people using the software than any other social media platform. If you’re trying to reach your local audience, Facebook needs to be part of your marketing plan.
One of the benefits of Facebook is the direct messaging function. There should be someone on your team that mans the direct messages from Facebook. Direct messaging is nearly as important as your practice telephone. If you don’t have a team member to do this you should seriously consider hiring someone to do it for you.
Using Instagram In Your Social Media Marketing Campaign
Instagram is owned by Facebook but was built as a mobile photo sharing app. Over the years it has added tons of functionality, to the point that it’s one of the best ways to advertise and market a dental practice.
The mean age demographic of Instagram is younger than Facebook. So if you’re trying to reach mothers with small children, Instagram fits that demographic.
Instagram also has a unique marketing opportunity with influencers. Instagram influencers are people who have followers that trust their opinion about brands and products. I know how some people feel about Instagram influencers, keep reading. When it comes to dental social media marketing, we’re not talking about influencers with millions of followers. Influencers that big have followers scattered across the world.
Dental practices do extremely well with micro-influencers. These are people on Instagram with less than 10,000 followers. When you look at where followers of micro-influencers are located you’ll find that a much larger percentage are located in your community. And, that is what you want.
Humanizing your practice can help your patients feel closer to you and your staff. This creates feelings of trustworthiness, kind of like being part of a family. And isn't the ultimate goal to have a large dental family?
Using TikTok In Your Social Media Marketing Campaign
TikTok is a fairly new social media platform that frankly blew up during the pandemic. TikTok is a mobile video app with a vertical platform.
During the pandemic, people stuck in their homes distressed about life, found themselves downloading TikTok and watching hundreds of entertaining videos. It’s mostly an entertainment application. The content is quick, fun and interesting. Dentists and orthodontists have learned how to use TikTok to promote their dental practices.
4. New Content And Blogging Boosts Dental SEO
Creating interesting quality content and sharing it regularly on your practice’s site is a great way to show you know your stuff. Uploading new content is an essential part of dental marketing for dentists and is essential with dental SEO. It helps your website rank higher on Google, which in turn increases your chances of being found by those in need.
Starting a blog will majorly increase your presence on Google. Patients are constantly searching online for answers to their questions. Dental patients have many questions, especially when it pertains to their health.
One of the best ways to start a blog for dentists is by answering your patient's frequently asked questions.
With well-written regular scheduled content fully optimized for a search engine, patients can’t help but find your practice. When you provide high-quality, accessible information, you create a connection and often new patients.
But before you begin randomly blogging, you’ll want to do proper research and develop your marketing for dentists plan along with your target audience. This can sound overwhelming for the busy dentists and maybe an excellent time to reach out to a marketing agency specializing in dental SEO. Digital marketing for dentists is not an easy task when you consider just how much dental competition there is out there.
A dental marketing agency will have the expertise and experience to speed up content creation for an effective marketing for dentists campaign. Suppose you don’t want to work with an agency. In that case, you can also do it yourself or work with a coach to help you plan a perfect dental marketing strategy uniquely for your practice.
However you decide to continue, make sure the content you’re creating matches with search intent on Google. You’ll want to create blogs that answer questions that new patients are looking for answers to. Having creative dental marketing ideas and proper content will result in organic traffic growth, which will help reduce money spent on any paid campaigns.
Implementing All Four Strategies Into A Comprehensive Marketing Campaign
When it comes to promoting, advertising, and building a brand, social media, great website development, digital marketing for dentists strategies, together with SEO are life changers. Digital marketing for dentists is very inexpensive compared to traditional marketing and way more effective at building any business, including a dental practice.
So, the benefits are enormous for your practice to invest energy in, social media, SEO and content web marketing for dentists. Google Maps SEO helps you move up to the first search engine page on the Google map. Beyond that, there are several other benefits:
Need Help? We’ve Got Everything Covered
If you are ready to take the next step to attract new dental patients but don’t know where to begin or simply don’t have the time to get going, My Social Practice is here to help. Fill out a form to get a personalized no-obligation dental SEO summary and quote. An SEO and marketing strategy can be one of the best investments you’ll make for your dental practice. We can’t wait to get you started.
About the Author: Adrian Lefler is a dental marketing expert and a key member of the dental marketing team at My Social Practice. My Social Practice is 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 dentist SEO or our dental SEO service, please schedule a complimentary consultation. And, don’t forget to read our Google reviews.
