Networking events are a great way to boost your pediatric dentist marketing plan this year. Learn from seasoned professionals, make friends in the industry, ask questions, and get excited about new possibilities. The more connections you make, and the more contacts you have, the more your pediatric dental marketing will improve.

The 2023 AAPD conference will be in Orlando, FL this year and includes important topics like insurance coding, dental fear research, and pediatric sedation.

Choose a team member who is willing to learn, take initiative, and get everyone organized. Empower them with the training and the support by sending them to the Dental Digital Marketing Conference. Discuss and designate a budget for the in-office tools, online resources, and ad spend that they might need.

Most of all, work with your social media director to set concrete goals and a content calendar. Social media is meant to be fun and easy, but success rarely comes without effort and clear objectives.

Pediatric dental marketing on social media is an essential to stay relevant in 2023. Parents (and kids) are spending time watching funny, engaging videos on social media every day—why not add your practice to the mix? Whether you want to focus on educational snippets, fun facts, transformations, or hop on a trending audio, there are thousands of ways to use your pediatric dental social media presence to capture the attention of potential patients. Use relevant hashtags, ask patients to follow your practice, and post regularly to get more exposure. 

Here are three posts from pediatric dentists to help inspire you and your team.

Check out these great TikTok dentists and trendy content creators. Also, don’t miss our free TikTok and Instagram Reels ebook to get started creating your own catchy content today.

The more that you can get your patients to participate in your marketing the stronger your marketing becomes. Your community is going to believe what others say about you more than what you say about yourself. Find ways to tweak your marketing campaigns so that your patients are participants, and are front and center.

Pediatric marketing campaigns that encourage patients to snap photos, shoot videos is much easier than you think. By running a monthly or holiday related contest kids and their parents will get involved without much coaxing.

Monthly contests, charity opportunities, patient of the month announcements, and local humanitarian events are marketing ideas where your patients can get involved. Create great photo ops with dental social signs, and celebrate special occasions like “My first visit from the Tooth Fairy!” Parents will love the opportunity to get involved in a contest when the contest requirements are to snap a cute photo of their kids before or after their next visit.

One of the best social media marketing campaign strategies is to simply ask a question, record the answer and then decide on a way to publish the content. Just keep it simple. Ask them to weigh in on pressing issues such as “Does pineapple belong on pizza? or, Should you brush or floss first? The faster and easier they can answer, the more likely they will be to participate or post an opinion.

When you publish any content to social media and someone chimes in it sends a signal to the social platform that your content is being received well. This helps the content to be spread to more people in your community.

There was a show on television called “MythBusters” and it played for several years. Old wives’ tales can spread misinformation about dental hygiene. Take a minute to “bust a myth.” Myths are a great way to engage someone with interesting and high quality content. The more interesting the more likely they’ll engage and when they engage the content spreads.

When patients are front and center in your marketing campaign you’ll find that you get much more reach and influence than if you don’t have them involved. Always ask yourself this question, “How can we make our patients the heroes in our marketing campaign?” When you figure out how to do that, you’ll find success in pediatric marketing.

If you’re looking to make a real impact in your town and be perceived as the premier authority on oral health, one of the best places to get involved would be an elementary school. Reach out to the PTA and sponsor an event. Not only is this probably the best place to educate on oral health issues, it’s probably the best place to find new patients.

You could also send branded gifts to the school to hand out to kids on community outreach day like coloring books, pens and pencils, or dental hygiene items. Be sure to provide free promotional swag for the kids like fidget toys, balloons, and stress balls.

Hosting a giveaway is a great strategy when you’re looking to build your followers on social media tools like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.  Work with local companies or influencers to give away exciting incentives like:

• Treats from a local sweet shop
• Gift card to a local toy store
• Children’s museum passes
• Movie tickets to a family movie premiere
• A smartwatch for kids
• A new iPad or tablet

Doing frequent, small prize giveaways is an excellent way to show patient appreciation! Even the chance to win a $10 gift card is enough for fans to Like, comment, and share with friends — which helps new patients find you. Giveaways are also a great way to create dental marketing video content.

Just make sure to follow social media HIPAA compliance guidelines.

Get everyone on your team involved. Whether you’re teaming up with a local business, raffling off electric toothbrushes, or giving away free teeth whitening, there are always new and exciting ways to engage with your community. Make your giveaway more successful by asking each of your employees to share it on their personal social media accounts. Don’t forget that you should write a blog post about what you’re up to as well. 

Charity marketing for pediatric dental offices is a great way to promote your practice to your local community. Getting involved in cause-related campaigns help to bring awareness to your practice and connects parents to your brand in a unique way. By sponsoring a charity—especially one involving children—you can show your community that you care.

Consider hosting an event that benefits your charity partnership like a 5k, food drive, or food truck roundup. Invite current patients, as well as members of your community. Be sure to include information about your charity sponsorship on your practice’s website, social media channels, and promotional materials.

From supporting local causes to national days of awareness show your team support and encourage others to learn more about the charity. If you’re not sure which way to turn to find a great charity partner take a look at our list of the best dental charity organizations. Some of our favorites are Give Kids a Smile and Smiles For Life.

Even with a bunch of amazing pediatric dentist marketing ideas, your practice can still lose out on a lot of potential growth without a great pediatric dental website. Your website is a living breathing extension of your office, and it should reflect your welcoming atmosphere, personality, and professionalism. 

Pediatric dental websites should appeal to both parents and children, while still maintaining pediatric dentist SEO best practices.

At a minimum make sure your website checks off all these boxes:

Updated “About Me” Bios: Be sure to include photos of you and your staff and create bios that are approachable for a young age group. As much as you can, tell a story in your bios. Children understand stories better than facts and technical information. Write a short and quick story about each one of your team members. This will help orient your practice in the mind of your patient and help them to feel comfortable about coming to your pediatric office. 

Clean Pediatric Design: Make your website clean, modern, and easy to navigate. If your pediatric practice has a theme, lean into it with fun imagery when appropriate. Remember that it’s the parent of the patient that makes the decision about scheduling an appointment. So, don’t get too goofy in your approach. 

Responsive Pediatric Design: Pediatric dental websites that aren’t optimized for both desktop and mobile devices are frustrating to use, and result in high bounce rates. My Social Practice can help bring you up to speed if you’re in need of a new pediatric website that is responsive and modern. 

Links to social media: Provide up-to-date links to all of your practice’s social media pages so that parents can easily navigate to your profiles. Prospective patients want to see what your practice is up to, and get to know your team a bit better through your posts. Your social media icons should be on your homepage preferably above the fold. 

Start Telling Stories in Blogs: A current and regularly updated blog is part of good marketing for pediatric dentists. Your social channels are a chance to share important information and get your audience to visit your practice’s website. If you don’t have a blog on your website don’t stress. They are super simple to add. Call your website design company and ask them to add one. If they are unable to, give us a call if you’d like to add a blog to your site. We’d love to help out.

HIPAA Compliant Forms: Most pediatric dental practices have a “contact-us” or “request an appointment” form. Those forms need to be encrypted with the standards set by HIPAA regulations. HIPAA requires that ePHI be encrypted at rest and in transit. When a patient, or parent of a patient, fills out a contact-us form the ePHI data is sent to a server and the package must be encrypted while in transit. Most contact-us forms are not correctly encrypted.

To find out if your forms are encrypted run a HIPAA Compliance Website Audit.

Many of your patients, especially the kids, won’t always remember the name of the practice. They may not even remember the name of the dentist. But, they’ll often remember the name of the team members who interact with them.

By celebrating your team you take the focus off of you and place it on the people that your patients interact with. When your patients and local community know how awesome your team is, they’ll automatically know how amazing you are. 

The human connections between your pediatric dental team members and your patients are what keep your practice healthy and thriving. They also happen to make the some of the best social content.

It could be Halloween, the Super Bowl, Star Wars Day, or just a Wednesday (when we wear pink), but appreciating your team’s willingness to dress up and have fun is a must-share on social media accounts as well as good fodder for a blog post. Have your followers vote for their favorite costume or share their costumes in the comments. 

Dressing up for a holiday is also a great way to encourage team spirit. We know how difficult running a practice can be. So any chance that you can work a little fun into a day, can be really helpful to brighten your team spirit.

We know how proud you are of your office, so share it. It’s okay to talk about it! Snap a picture of your waiting room, front desk, or exam room to show current and prospective patients what to expect during their visit. This is the perfect space to share any new updates, technology, new hires, or location. And while a picture of the practice is good, pictures of your team at work, are even better. Take a walk through your practice as if you were a patient being introduced by one of your team members. Video is a great way to introduce your practice to your community and video is also favored in all of the social media algorithms.

It’s always fun to catch a team member outside of the office. Share a photo of yourself celebrating a holiday, on vacation, or enjoying one of your favorite hobbies. This helps build trust and connection with your patients. For some pediatric dentists this can be uncomfortable because they like to keep their work life and personal life separate. That’s okay. You can always lean on your team members that are willing to share their personal stories. It doesn’t always have to be the dentist that in every single photo.

Look for opportunities to snap a photo or video using the Life Events Social Media Sign Pack. The signs will help to guide you in your content creation and tell awesome practice stories. 

Remember to focus on what makes your practice different. Lean into what makes you different and post to social media, write blog posts, and add content to your website.

Getting positive Google and Facebook reviews is one of the best things you can do to grow your pediatric practice’s online reputation. It’s especially important to increase your overall marketing ROI. No matter how a new patient finds out about you, approximately 2/3rds of them will go read your online reviews before they schedule. If your reviews are less than amazing, you may not get the phone call. 

Build a consistent flow of positive patient reviews by downloading this free Google review marketing kit and launching a practice review campaign.

While most pediatric dentists are familiar with the harm that bad reviews create, they may not fully understand the importance of positive reviews in creating a healthy online presence. Everyone knows that bad reviews are inevitable. Even the best pediatric dentists get hit with negative reviews. The way to respond to a bad review is to stay professional and follow the guidelines of this post about how to respond to online reviews. 

You’ll have a very difficult time trying to get rid of a bad review by trying to have it removed. Good luck contacting Google. What you should do is spend you time not trying to get rid of a bad review but getting 50 new 5-star reviews which will bury the bad one. The key is to have great balance of 40-50 5-star reviews to each review that is below 4-5 stars. In the long run this will result in an average Google star rating above 4.8.

Boosting positive ratings and responding to reviews regularly can build your credibility, increase SEO, and reach prospective patients who are looking for a new pediatric dentist. Highlighting positive reviews on your website and social media accounts is great social proof content. When doing so keep in mind that you need to know the ins and outs of social media HIPAA compliance.

Sometimes the best pediatric marketing content is short, sweet, and to the point. There are plenty of pediatric dental tips and recommendations that you can post about, even if it’s just a reminder to think about the last time you flossed your kids’ teeth.

Sharing oral health facts sets you apart as an authority. A simple example would be to write an article or post on social media about pacifiers. Some of your tiniest patients are lovingly attached to pacifiers and it can be an intimidating thing to break the habit. While avoiding scare tactics, you can provide support and research that encourages parents to start making changes. In the end, their children will be healthier and off to a great start for their oral health.

Oral health educational content is a one-two punch. It’s not only great marketing content but it’s genuinely helpful.

Remember that consistency is the key with pediatric marketing. Pediatric social media marketing, blog posting, SEO and your reputation require consistent effort and focus. Educational content is a great go-t0 when you need to fill the gaps in your marketing strategy.

One of the best SEO strategies is to do something called ‘Guest Blog Posting.’ A guest blog post is when you write an article for someone else’s website. Hence, you are a guest on their blog. The reason that guest blog posting is so valuable is that you’re reaching another organization’s database. You’re now perceived as an authority in oral health to the audience of that organization.

In addition to prestige and authority, comes an inbound link. Inbound links are the primary way that Google gives value to your website and your Google Business Profile. The more inbound links from relevant local companies the better your rankings will be. An elementary school just happens to be extremely relevant in bound link for pediatric dental practice website. Reach out to a local elementary school and see if they have a guest blog opportunity. If they don’t, do the next best thing. Reach out to a local publication to see if they’ll run a story on a collaboration event between your practice and the elementary school (See Idea #4)

One of the biggest challenges of pediatric dentist marketing is ensuring that your posts are seen by people who are geographically close enough to become a patient. One of the best ways to appeal to potential new patients in your community is by working with local businesses that cater to the same type of clientele you want to attract to your office. On social media follow your favorite restaurant, local artists, the business next door and find out if there are guest blog posting opportunities for these companies.  

As a pediatric dentist it’s essential to make your practice visible and easily accessible to potential patients. Google Maps Optimization is SEO technique that helps your practice rank higher and at a wider radius on the Google map.

The first step is to find out how well you’re ranking for pediatric dental keywords. When you run a Google maps ranking report you’ll get a report that looks like this:

Here is what the report means… Your practice will be in the center of the report. Each one of the colored circles is a search for the key phrase “pediatric dentist” from that location. It’s as if you’ve walked around your town with your cell phone in hand searching to see if you show up on the map or not. The number on the circle is where your practice is, in the list of pediatric practices on the Google map. If you’re in the top three is means you’re on the front page. If you’re 4 or below you’re not on the front page.

Getting on the front page of the Google map is a HUUUUUUUGE deal. Pediatric dentists that understand how to optimize their Google Business Profile benefit from tons of new patient phone calls. Let us help your become a baller-shot-caller on Google maps.

As a brick-and-mortar dental practice, your ideal social media audience is the people living in your local community. There are a few ways to make sure your social media content not only gets to more people, but also gets to the people most likely to visit your practice.

Hyper-local Hashtags

Hashtags have long been debated when it comes to quantity, quality, and value. What we do know is that hashtags that are location-specific can be especially useful for targeting your local audience. 

For example, the hashtag #dentist has over 14 million posts on Instagram. That’s going to be a difficult hashtag to rank highly for, but #dallasdentist has just under 30k posts (still a high enough volume to be valuable, but low enough that you could rank well consistently). Additionally, “Dallas dentist” is a very searchable term that social media users may search for when looking for a new dentist. 

It can take a little trial and error to find the right hashtags for your practice to gain visibility. If you’d rather use an all-in-one tool that can create custom hashtags, graphics, and AI-generated content, demo the Dental Social Media Publisher. It’s got everything you need to run a top-notch social media marketing campaign.

Geo-tags 

Adding a geo-tag to your social media posts is pretty straightforward—just select the location option before you hit post. This gives the social media algorithms the green light to share your post with people in the local area, or those who are searching for places/people in your town. Plus, it can even help Google gain more information about the photos posted, thus boosting your dental SEO. 

Our Dental Publisher tool not only assigns region-specific hashtags to each of your posts, but it also integrates with creative tools like Canva and ChatGPT. Your practice will gain access to a full library of pre-made, dental-focused graphics to make creating, scheduling, and posting your social media content ridiculously easy.

Putting virtual pen to paper is one of the best ways to improve multiple aspects of your dental marketing. Consistent blogging naturally improves your search engine rankings, pushing your practice’s website higher up the results page. Your blog also becomes a valuable resource of in-house content that you can repurpose for video creation, social media posts, and email newsletters.

Getting started with dental SEO blogging might even be easier than you think. It just requires a basic understanding of what makes a great blog post and a little consistency. Download these complimentary blog post templates to learn how to blog like the best.

Generating fresh ideas for blogs can be as easy as creating a list of commonly asked dental questions, or oral health practices that everyone should be familiar with. As you’ll read later on, you can even put AI (artificial intelligence) technology to work for you during your brainstorming sessions. See how ChatGPT answers unusual patient questions. 

If your website is in need of larger improvements (maybe you don’t have a blog or need an updated website), take advantage of our two years of free website hosting offer.

Working alongside other local companies is another easy way to connect with prospective patients. While there might be dozens of great options, you want to choose the right local business. 

To find the right local business to collaborate with, look for a business that serves the same demographic (i.e. young families) or in a similar industry (i.e. health and wellness). This ensures your partnership is advantageous for both of you. 

Then take a look at their social media pages. Are they active? Do they post regularly? Do they have a good-sized audience? Are they the type of patients you want to attract? If so, then reach out to start planning a shared post.

You can start with these great dental marketing social media ideas or come up with your own post to do with one another. You could write about enjoying the other business’s products, or highlight stopping by their location. Whatever you choose to post, it doesn’t have to be complex or overproduced. Exchanging posts can be a simple and straightforward way to support each other’s businesses. 

Influencers for oral health? Do those exist? Absolutely! You can find plenty of dental influencers on social media. The type of influencer you might be looking for could depend on your practice, but there are usually dozens (or hundreds!) of local influencers in any given geographical area. Why choose an influencer? Influencers have tight-knit communities with similar interests, and they do a lot of work to create a trust-worthy relationship when it comes to their recommendations to their followers. 

There is a large category of “mom influencers” who regularly share recommendations for products and/or experiences related to parenting and kids. Having an influencer partner with your practice could entail them creating content during an appointment, recommending your practice to their followers, and/or having them chat with you or your staff. 

Most influencers work for more than free swag, so plan on creating a contract or agreement with them for the number of posts to expect, and compensation (this could be discounted or free dental services). Download the Influencer contract template before you get started for a simple plug-and-play way to create an agreement with an influencer. An ongoing relationship with the right influencer can build credibility with their followers and add more value to their recommendation. Finding the right influencer can be a high-value source for new patient acquisition—plus, a source of fun, fresh content for your page! 

Video content used to be intimidating. It used to be complex, requiring high-tech equipment, and heavy editing. It used to be difficult. Thankfully, we are currently in the rise of short-form, authentic video content. What does this mean for your dental practice?

You can shoot 15, 30, and 60-second videos with nothing but your phone, and still create valuable content for your practice. While you are getting started with social media video production, remember anything can be content. From your daily walk around the practice, prepping for an exam, or a tour of the office, just hit record and turn it into valuable content to boost your brand. You could very literally take a video of yourself washing your hands—just add a trending audio clip and a pediatric oral hygiene tip and you’re set. Take a look at these easy dental video marketing ideas to start!

Social media algorithms heavily favor video content. This means incorporating video into your social media content will give your pages a natural boost and get you in front of a larger audience. 

TikTok videos and Instagram Reels especially are great places to see growth for your social media marketing goals. Not only that, but video content can help improve your search engine rankings as well. The more diverse your content is, the better poised you are to see results. 

Both TikTok and Instagram have in-app editing tools that make it easy to add “video editor” to your list of credentials. You can speed up/slow down clips, add special effects, add trending audio, add captions…the list goes on and on. Download our guide to TikTok and Instagram Reels so you can quickly start having fun creating more video content.

Is your creativity well running dry? Put the latest AI tools to work to streamline and spark your creativity! One of the best tools to get started with is ChatGPT. ChatGPT is an AI language model that engages in interactive conversations. Not only can you ask it questions like you would in Google Search, but you can continually build and refine your conversation (or “chat”) to improve the results.

You can easily create a free ChatGPT account and drop your questions and/or prompts into the search bar. These are just a few examples of things you can ask ChatGPT to do: 

• “Write me a list of 10 social media caption ideas for a pediatric dentist”
• “Write a caption celebrating Root Canal Awareness Week.” 
• Change the tone of the responses ChatGPT gives you by suggesting a more lighthearted, clinical, or bubbly tone—or whatever best suits your practice. 
• Get goofy and ask it to write cheesy dental puns or write a poem about brushing your teeth. 

Whether you need a whole month’s worth of content ideas or just some help polishing an idea into a captivating caption, ChatGPT is a great jumping-off point for your content ideation. 

We’ve done the work for you and integrated ChatGPT into the Dental Social Media Publisher with Caption AI. You can now create captions, schedule posts, maximize AI technology, and more, all within this central tool. 

Fill out this form to schedule a demo of the Dental Social Media Publisher and Caption AI. 

If you’re still stumped and looking for more ideas on how to market a pediatric dental office, it’s time to get help from pediatric dental marketing companies like us. At My Social Practice, our branding experts love creating custom marketing strategies that fit your needs exactly. Whether you need a website overhaul or help with social media, we’ve got you covered.