If you have a dental practice and want to know how to promote it to your potential patients, you should start with online marketing. Even if you live in an area that you think does not go online, remember that your competitor is probably online, even if you are not. More importantly, your customers are online looking for your services.
Local online advertising should be done with online marketing so that people coming through your local area searching for dental care can find you. You could lose a lot of potential business if you don’t do this. Online marketing can be created in such a way to reach a more substantial area as well as your immediate geographical area, and their results are apparent.
Below is a checklist of all of the things you need to have in place to be successful with your online marketing campaign. Dentists, just like lawyers, doctors, and retail owners, need to reach their target audience where they are at. Online marketing helps you do that in a big way. See which of these components you are doing now and which ones you need help with — brainstorm ways you can implement them. One step at a time, you’ll get there!
1. A Great Logo
A logo is important because it will be used in every aspect of your marketing strategy. It is composed of a compelling graphic image and lettering that helps build your brand image. You will use your logo in all of your online materials as well as offline flyers and brochures. Once you choose your logo, it will be associated with your brand, so it’s important that you design it carefully. If you already have a logo, but you are not getting the audience you want, you may want to consider redesigning or upgrading your signage. Think about how you want to present your branding to your patients and visitors and include every aspect of that image in your logo.
2. User-friendly Website
If you have never heard the term, “UX,” it’s important that you get to understand this concept. It stands for “user experience” in the tech world and it affects how well your readers will respond to your content. Creating a user-friendly website is the first step toward achieving this goal. Below are some of the most important elements of a user-friendly website:
- First of, Don’t be cheap, a $1 or $5000 website won’t get you 50 new patients per months!
- Dynamic graphics- Graphics should be attractive and compelling to people who are visiting your site. Use colors that represent your profession or something about your brand that helps people understand what you are about.
- Easy navigation and links- Make it easy for your visitors to maneuver through your site and find what they need without stress. Creating a positive UX (user experience) is important when building your site.
- Engaging content- Always strive to make your content as interesting as possible to your visitors and patients. Include a blog that addresses common problems or concerns that customers have and try to answers their questions as best you can. Use video when appropriate to do this.
- Responsiveness- Make sure your site is responsive, which means that it is suitable for mobile devices and adapts well to a number of different platforms and devices. Don’t include huge images that won’t display well on mobile devices.
- Mobile-friendly- Mobile-friendliness is the most important thing besides high-quality content to help you maintain quality and ranking for your site with Google.
- Relevant links- Check your links regularly and make sure they are relevant links to content that complements your site. Don’t include links to competitors’ sites, but reference out to sites that support what you have said on your site or to a complimentary service that is not in competition with you.
Google states that the most important elements (as of their latest algorithm updates) are responsive pages and mobile-friendly content.
All of these elements work together to produce a user-friendly page that will help you reach your target audience and get them to take action on your site. This is the goal if you are going to connect your visitors to the products and services you offer and get them to visit your practice.
3. Mobile First Design
As mentioned before, having a mobile-friendly website is one of the most important aspects of your content. That’s because more people are using mobile devices than ever before. It is predicted that this trend will continue shortly. Statistica.com reports that there are currently 4.68 billion mobile users and that there will be 4.78 billion users of mobile devices by 2020.
More people are using mobile than ever because they are often busy and “on-the-go” when they need information. Some of your potential dental patients may be on vacation when they injure a tooth, or they may need emergency dental attention. These are the kinds of people who need to be able to find you on mobile devices. If you do not keep your site up-to-date to appeal to mobile customers, you will be losing a large portion of your potential audience. This will be even more true in the future.
To make your content mobile-friendly, you’ll need to run some tests to make sure you’ve included all aspects of your web content. Run a test on your content by using Google’s mobile-friendly test. Also, consider creating a mobile app for your dentistry practice which we discuss in more detail later in this guide.
Statistics also show that mobile users have now surpassed the number of desktop users. So it is important that you make sure your site is ready for mobile users and that you consider making it capable of working with multiple types of mobile devices that people might use to access your content.
4. Have a Clear Call-to-Action
The CTA (call-to-action) is one of the most important parts of your online marketing strategy. The CTA is usually included at the bottom of your main page content but it can be included throughout your site, your blog, and even your YouTube channel or other digital properties. The CTA is connected to sales more than your other content, so you don’t want to overdo it. However, it must be there or you may not get the results you want.
Decide what you want your CTA to do. Then focus on this message. Ask visitors to click on the link you want them to click on and tell them what they will receive. For example, “Click here for a free dental consultation,” or “Click here to sign up for our newsletter.” It is essential that you decide what you want your CTA to do before you write it because your goal will be reflected in your CTA statement. You may think people know what you want them to do, but often they don’t. Ask them to do what you want them to do, and you will increase your results immensely.
Remember, you are not pushy to ask them to click a button. You have provided them with high-quality, valuable information. It’s a small favor to ask them to push a button to see what your offer is. They may consider it, even if they don’t follow through and this will give you valuable metrics on what is happening on your sites.
5. Have a landing page for each of your dental services
When creating content for your dental business, you need to have a separate landing page for every service that you offer. This is important because you need to have focused pages that inform and explain to potential patients (and current patients) about every specific technique or service you offer. This way, you’ll be able to market to people who are only looking for that service as well as to your general audience. Keywords that you use for your main page will be somewhat different than the ones used for individual pages. Remember that Google indexes every page, not just one. Therefore, you need to market every page rather than just your main page and include specific keywords that are designed to bring in people looking for specific services.
6. Post at least 1 Blog Post Per Week
One of the mistakes that site owners make is that they think creating a great blog is enough. They have a website and a blog, perhaps a YouTube channel and social media. But they never update their content. What happens when you do this is that gradually, your site will start losing impact and the “bots” that scour your site from Google will lower your rank due to content that is no longer fresh. It will also be considered less relevant since you are not keeping up with the changes or updating your content. Experts say that simply changing minor things on your pages may help increase your ranking because the automatic indexing that Google does on your site pages will consider any new content as more relevant or new than untouched, stale content.
If you post new content on your on-site blog at least once per week, you can increase your ranking due to increased SEO. Your blog posts will be considered a relevant answer to questions or searches they do online.
7. Use Testimonial Videos
Testimonials are powerful tools to promote your business. They usually feature a satisfied customer who tells what they liked about the service or products they got at a place of business or dental practice. These types of videos are easy to do. You can even have someone record themselves talking about your practice and render it to an mp4 and send it in. Alternatively, you can have some of your patients come into your office and do the testimonial there. It only needs to be around 2 minutes or less in length. (This is the average attention span of most adults.)
Once you have a video recorded, you will want to share it to social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter where many potential patients are. Ask social media followers to enable notifications when you post new content.
8. Office Photos
Take great office photos to show what you are doing. Perhaps you have a new dental tool that offers painless tooth repair. You will want to illustrate this with photos and videos so that customers will want to know more about it. Include a call to action when you post these photos such as “Click here to email us for more information.”
Make sure you post the best photos in your photo gallery and even on your main site page if you think it will increase views and engagement for your brand. People are visual and they like to see what you are doing. Words alone are not enough for your main website. Make sure you show them the cool things you are doing in your dental practice so that customers will get excited about it. Focus on safety and painless processes, because that’s what many people want to see most when considering dental practices. Try to match your customers’ needs with what you show them and focus on their needs.
9. Do keyword research
Doing keyword research will help you to know which dental keywords are attracting the best customers. It will also show you which keywords are high competition and which are low competition. High competition words are often the best, but they are much more expensive when you are using PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns. Low competition keywords are less expensive but not as popular as high competition words.
It’s crucial that you keep your ROI working for you by getting the most for your money with your ad campaigns. At the same time, you need to find the most competitive keywords that you can afford to promote your dental practice.
10. On-site SEO
SEO (search engine optimization) should be done both on and off the page to create natural search results. SEO should include specific keywords (both long and short-tailed keywords) that best represent what your dental office has to offer. Creating relevant backlinks and outgoing links also provides additional assets that help searchers to find you. Think like the searcher and include your most valuable keywords in the title, the first paragraph of your main page content, and naturally throughout the whole page. You will probably want to make a list of the keywords you want to optimize for on every service page, as well as the ones you are shooting for on the main page. Also, you should include the following to increase your SEO:
- Meta tags
- Meta descriptions
- Keyword tags
- Description tags
- Alt text
- Links to relevant sites
Use header tags of different sizes to help you communicate with the search engines so that they recognize these key HTML signals. These also help the content be segmented into shorter, readable sections that appeal more to the average reader.
11. Claim and Optimize Your “Google My Business” Listing
“Google My Business” is an extra service offered by Google that allows you to create the kind of branding and impression you want to create on Google by signing up for this free service. The advantages outweigh the disadvantages and the only disadvantages most site owners cited is that you have to monitor it continually and make updates manually so that Google keeps the latest up-to-date information on your pages.
Another perk of this add-on is the ability to upload videos and pictures. With Google Plus going offline now, this might be an excellent alternative to that social media platform that coordinated your information all in one place. Check this out if you have not seen it before and see if it is something you may want to include in your business. Take advantage of any tool that allows you to increase your customer base and improve the quality of traffic you are getting online.
12. Submit your site to other business directories
There are several business directories that you may want to look into to promote your brand. Some of the most popular ones you’ll want to look into are listed below:
-Yelp
-Yellow Pages
-Manta
-Thumbtack
-Angie’s List
All of these directories have their perks. Yelp is a trendy business directory and one that many users go to to find a business that provides help in an area they need. They feature ratings and reviews with personal commentaries from actual customers and location maps so people can find your business.
Bing and Mantra also allow your potential customers to geolocate you on their mobile devices or their desktops. Thumbtack is a neat tool that lets independent contractors find customers in their local area. Dentists can use this tool, also to focus on your local clientele. People who are looking for a dentist in their area can find you better using this tool. Angie’s List is a site created by Angela Hicks who provides one of the most comprehensive lists in the country for connecting services to people who are looking for them. Listing in Angie’s List may help you immensely, especially if you are needing reviews and want to promote your business beyond the confines of your local area. Submitting your website is one thing you’ll want to do with these well-known business directories, but you will also want to ask patients to give honest reviews of your service.
12. Ask patients to Post Genuine Reviews in Google and Yelp
By asking patients to review your dental business within the respective business directories, you’ll get noticed by far more people than you would otherwise. Look at this example of several dentist office Yelp reviews to get an idea of how it will appear to visitors.
As you can see, it can make or break your dental practice with reviews on Yelp, and other business directories so you should be careful who you ask to do this. Always treat every customer with a smile and a positive attitude, too. You never know which one will come back to review your business.
13. Don’t Ignore Google Ads
Some dentists make the mistake of thinking Google Adwords are only for affiliate marketers or retail businesses. They tend to think of Google Ads as something only people who are online all of the time use to generate web traffic. But remember, you are online too, and so are your customers! You can create campaigns that will help you drive new patients to your office, and this can pay off in a big way.
Below are some traits of a good Google ad:
- Well thought-out ads that target a specific audience
- Define your ad goals with every campaign
- Create a targeted landing page for your ad
- Try different versions to see what sticks
- Test and monitor your results
- Rinse and repeat
It takes some thought to get the results you want with your Google Ad campaigns. Google Ads use PPC (pay-per-click) advertising that takes a systematic approach to capture the attention of your key audience. This technique, when coupled with organic SEO campaigns, help you to bring in patients from various locations that are relevant to your niche area or topics.
14. Offer Emergency Dentistry
Many dentists observe standard business hours to drive their traffic. Opening your office at 9 a.m. and closing 5:30 p.m. might be alright for established dentists, but when you are just starting, you need to find a way to stand out with your competitors. One way is to offer emergency dentistry services.
When you offer emergency dental services, you are saying that you will be there for your patients even after regular business hours. When someone chips a tooth in a baseball game, or there is an emergency surgery needed, you’ll be there. This is going above and beyond what your competitors will probably do, which is the idea!
15. Create your own YouTube Channel
Remember we said earlier that it is important to create customer testimonials? That’s very true, but it’s also important to have a place to keep these videos so that they can be accessed often. YouTube is a search engine, as well as a video platform. Many people still do not understand this. People go to YouTube more often than to web searches to look for video content. They often use the same (or similar) keywords that they use in a Google search. So this means that YouTube gives you yet another search engine that people can find you with.
Choose your keywords carefully that you use on your videos and include the most important keywords in your title, description, and meta tags to focus on your target audience. Make sure to connect your sites to your YouTube channel and all of your social media, as well.
You can use your YouTube channel for anything you see fit including instructional videos, video client testimonials, and explainer videos. Always include a Call-to-Action at the end of the video and include the link to the landing page you wish to promote. Be consistent with your content on all of your videos and interconnect them by linking to your other videos as well as your websites and social media platforms.
Remember, branding is the goal. You don’t want just to advertise your practice. You need to focus on making your brand appear everywhere in a positive way so that people will find you, no matter where they are coming from. Additionally, you need to interconnect your online digital assets so that they are all integrated systematically so that your brand image, logo, and message are consistent.
16. Consider YouTube Ads
YouTube ads can help you create another inbound link to your main page, which may improve your rankings in Google and get you more patients. You do have to have over 10,000 views first before YouTube will allow you to advertise on your channel. So get started today and start building your audience.
17. Consider Facebook and Instagram as great marketing tools
If you are not on Facebook or Instagram, you need to think about getting on these platforms. Facebook allows you to place pixelated ads on your website and create photo and video ads to help drive more patients to your place of business.
Instagram is most effective with photos, but you can also include videos to keep them updated on what you are doing in your office if you want.
Facebook allows you to create Facebook ads that target specific demographics, geographical locations, and interests of your target audience. There are so many tools on Facebook to advertise that will maximize your impact on your audience. This can be confusing due to so many options, so learn the best practices by contacting us to discuss ways you can target your audience. Learn how to include fun photos, hashtags, and other simple procedures that will drive traffic fast.
18. Using Offline Marketing: Post Cards and Flyers
With so much emphasis being put on online marketing these days, it would be easy to forget the importance of using offline content. Using flyers, signage, and business cards with your website URL and email contact information on them will help you cross-market your products and services through another method.
Zillow is one example of how direct marketing can pay off. They are prominent online but they also send out postcards to new residents that they find online through real estate channels. This is an innovative way to cross-market your materials so that you get to your audience whether they are online or not. Also, there is some research that shows people tend to keep business cards and flyers until they need them, then they will contact professionals using this method.
Snail mail is still one of the most effective and personal ways to do direct marketing for your dental practice. Don’t forget to include this method in your ad campaign strategies. Don’t forget to flip this technique also and ask your online visitors to sign up for your postcard or real-world mailer so that they will receive updates on your practice through regular mail, as well.
One great technique is to put secret codes that only your real-world mail recipients will see and let them enter the code as a coupon on your site to qualify for 10% off their next visit. This is just one example, but interconnecting your online and offline ad campaigns is very effective in promoting your brand on all fronts while creating a loyal following that may pay off with customers you can depend on.
19. Use a call recording service.
Most employees of a doctor’s or dentist’s office understand that their calls might be monitored or recorded. The purpose of this is so that you can monitor the quality of their customer service. By listening to calls from time-to-time, you’ll be able to monitor your staff’s quality and retrain agents who lose a sale to learn how to convert inquiry calls to customers.
20. Respond to All Reviews in Google and Yelp
Because so many people have access to the Google and Yelp business directories, it is important to make sure you perform reputation management. Your online reputation is important when you are trying to get patients from online sources. You can only keep this positive by answering any and all reviews on important search directories.
If you are the practitioner, you will likely not have the time to monitor all of these yourself, so you may want to allocate a little of your ad money to hire social media managers or part-time posters who can watch for new comments and monitor the comments to keep it as positive as possible. Don’t try to overexplain, but offer a valid statement when customers are displeased and remember, “The customer is always right,” even when they’re not.
21. Reputation Management
Just like fake news, there are several fake reviews out there about businesses. The motive is sometimes jealousy, a frustrated competitor, or someone just up to meanness. Whatever the case, part of reputation management is flagging and reporting any fake reviews that cast your practice in a negative light and report them to Google for immediate removal.
22. Submit posts regularly within Google My Business Pages
As we mentioned previously, using “Google My Business” is an important part of managing your online content to prospective customers. To get the full benefit, you need to submit regular posts within your page.
What should you write about? Here are a few ideas:
1. What’s new?
2. Event posts
3. Offer posts
4. Product/service posts
The “What’s New” posts should have information about new developments or additions you are putting in your business. Event posts can feature an upcoming community event or activity you want them to know about. Offers include specifics such as price, service, and coupons. A product or service post talks about a specific product or service that is too good to pass up.
These are all opportunities to boost your business and brand so make sure and include them as part of your ad campaign. Find out more information on the Google My Business information pages.
23. Optimize your website for SEO
Search engine optimization is the process of speaking to the search engines so that they will connect your site and content to a searcher’s request. We discussed other SEO techniques earlier in this playbook, so be sure to check those out, as well.
24. Market your content in Medium and Quora
The goal of an effective internet marketing campaign should be to put your content in front of as many people as possible. But not just people. People who will respond to your ad and engage with your brand. You can increase the chances of finding these people when you post content on sites like Medium.com and Quora.com. Get found on another site in addition to YouTube, your website, and blog.
25. LinkedIn: Connect to Business Professionals
LinkedIn is often overlooked because it is focused on helping connect job-seekers to potential employers. But one thing it also involves is the networking you can do with similar business owners. You may be able to network with others in your profession who can help you improve your reach.
Additionally, you can use LinkedIn advertising that will help increase your potential audience.
26. Consider a Concierge Service
As a new (or established) dental office, you need to stand out and be competitive with your opposition. One way you could do this is to offer a concierge service so that people from outside your immediate area could also enjoy your services. Announce your special service for out-of-towners in the local paper or in places where out-of-towners will see it and offer specific services in conjunction with local hotel service, for example. This can bring in more customers who might not ordinarily know about you.
27. Use influencers in Social Media
Did you ever wonder how new business owners become so popular so quickly? Part of this is that they solicit the help of people who have more influence than they do as they start out. Even if you are already somewhat established, you may benefit from having well-known dentists or practitioners plug your services on their website, blogs, or social media. Offer to interview them and plug their book or offer a service in exchange for a mention on their website.
28. Create Informational Videos
YouTube can be used for a variety of different types of video content. If you have a YouTube channel, you can have a wide variety of assets such as explainer videos, corporate videos, or educational content. Consider showing a technique that you do in your office or give people free information such as how to properly clean your teeth in exchange for a “like” or “share.”
Some practitioners use YouTube videos to answer popular questions that people have about dental services. Most people would instead find the answers to their questions in video format than on a blog where only text is used.
29. Utilize Schema.org Techniques, Rich Snippet, and others
Remember that, to get positive results and maximize your ROI, you need to speak to the search engines in a language they understand. Using these tactics can help you do this. Ask our staff about Rich Snippet, AMP, and FBIA and how they can help you improve your results.
30. Use Google Analytics and Google Search Console
Google Analytics is a free tool that allows you to perform multiple experiments, tests, and results right on their platform. This is done by placing a snippet code within the HTML section of your webpages that Google’s algorithms will locate when ranking pages.
Google Search Console is a great tool as well. It allows you to monitor, analyze, and work with your page’s search results so that you will know how Google is ranking and evaluating the items on your sites. You can set it to alert you when there are errors found on your pages by Google. You can monitor your web traffic, optimize your ranking, and more using this helpful tool.
31. Offer new patient specials, give the patient a reason to call you!
One of the best ways to get new patients is to offer “new patient specials.” You can offer a free first consultation to get more people to try out your services. Consider implementing a “2nd opinion” for free with a visit to your clinic.
This will appeal to patients who may have gone to one of your competitors but who are unhappy with the results or diagnosis they received there.
32. Hold Free Seminars or Webinars
Getting involved in your local community by holding free seminars is another great way to get new patients and engage people with your brand. Use informational techniques to share relevant information with attendees that will resonate with your target audience.
Some work should be done ahead of time to focus on your desired audience, but you should focus on your intended audience and provide information that will appeal to them. You should bring flyers or information about your business with you to hand out and make sure you bring plenty of business cards with your website and email on them.
You can also hold online webinars as well, to cater to those patients who hang out more online. Provide an entry password through a service such as Go To Meeting or ask us how we can help you find a service to use for this.
33. Create and submit an official press release
If you want to create even more hype for your dental practice, try submitting an official press release. PR Web is one place you can do this. There is a very specific format and technique that you must use to create and submit it, so be sure to read the specifications.
You can use an official press release to announce an important event or addition to your business. This is the only way sites such as PR Web allow you to use their service. As long as you follow directions, you are allowed to include one link at the end to your website as a call-to-action, along with your contact information.
There are other services you can use for a press release. Contact us to learn more.
34. Email marketing
Email marketing is one of the most important aspects of online marketing. Email allows you to contact potential customers directly as long as you have their permission to do so. You can get their permission by using a call-to-action on your website or blog asking them to sign up for your newsletter. This gives you permission to contact them and send them marketing materials, newsletters, or blog links, among other things.
35. Post an offer in Groupon
Groupon is an eCommerce marketplace that allows you to connect with potential subscribers. You can offer goods and services, announce events, and offer coupons, all to help connect to your target audience.
36. Focus on realistic business goals
Having realistic but challenging business goals is important for any dental practice. Always keep your target audience in your mind. For example, if you are focused on an affluent area in Beverly Hills, you might focus on Porcelain Veneers. But focusing on this in a smaller town such as Muskogee, Oklahoma, requires a more practical approach. Also, focus on your target audience and advertise the products and services that they will most appreciate.
37. Purchase a great domain and hosting plan
It is critical that you locate the best domain name and hosting plan. Think about how you want to represent your brand to your audience. Choose a name that is easy to remember but applicable to your products and services. There are many TLDs (top-level domains) available today that were not available in the past, so be sure to check these out. Your hosting plan should include sufficient space, bandwidth, and connection to your social media outlets so that you will drive the traffic in the best way possible to get the best results.
Make sure you look into SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certification. Google has pledged to penalize sites that don’t add this feature sometime this year.
38. Perform AB Testing
Once you get your website up and running, you are not done. You have to constantly monitor your web content and check to make sure you keep it updated. You also need to study your metrics on Google Analytics and other tools and learn how to optimize your site with AB Testing and other means.
39. Analyze and research your competition
It’s not only important to know how your site is doing, it’s important to know how your competitor’s site is doing. How can you find out how your competitors are doing in the rankings? We can help you do that by finding out what keywords they are using and what types of ads they are posting on Google. We can use cutting edge tools to discover what their backlinks are and how effective their ad strategy is. Then you can use this information to outsmart them.
Need to analyze their website. Do they have a newsletter? Sign up for it and see what they are doing. What are they offering to their patients? Free Consultation or discount on dental Implants? you can even call their offer and pretending to be a patient and checkout their customer service.
40. Update your website content
Keeping your website updated with fresh content is important to your SEO and ranking. Google judges content that is updated more often as more relevant than older copy. If you need copywriting services, we can help you keep fresh content on your site that your users will relate to.
41. Include a local citation for local rankings
Local citations give you a way to direct traffic from remote websites to yours in a natural manner. Google wants relevant, important content that has credibility. You can increase your level of credibility by having someone cite (mention) your site name or brand name from another site. Bloggers can do this by mentioning your site within their content if it is related to dental topics. They should include a link to your site.
42. Understand Google Amp and optimize for it
Google AMP is a relatively new tool that Google created to allow you to publish content quickly to mobile devices. With so many people using mobile devices over desktops these days, this is a needed type of technology that will help you compete with your competitors and appeal to your users on mobile devices. Optimizing for AMP requires specific techniques that we can show you when you contact us.
43. Test your website using Google Page Speed Insight
Google has created numerous tools that help you stay ahead of your competition. One of these is the Google Page Speed Insight tool. This tool allows you to test the speed and performance of your pages so that you can make sure your site is fast enough to be optimized for multiple platforms and devices.
44. Create a Dental Tool that Your Patients Need
Use surveys or customer service questions to find out what your patients need. Then make them a tool that allows them to give input on their dental concerns or issues. One example is a dental quiz or survey on oral care. If you wanted to get really fancy, you could use technology tools to create a “before and after” photo of the person based on a photo upload.
45. Have a great FAQ page
Many dentists and site owners forget about their FAQ page, but it is important. Providing an FAQ page for your dental site will cut down on your need for some customer service because you can answer the most common questions in this section of your website.
You can also use your blog to answer questions or answer some of the most important ones with video on your YouTube channel if they require a more in-depth explanation.
46. Hold a Contest in Social Media
People love contests. If you can set up a contest within your social media platforms, you’ll generate new traffic that you would not ordinarily get. Link the contest to a landing page on your website that you designate as your “contest page.” Announce the contest in your newsletter and on social media and other places a few weeks before you launch it. This will generate more interest in your contest before you do it.
The contest can include a free dental screening or teeth whitening treatment for anyone who can answer a dental hygiene question or any similar idea that you come up with. One excellent idea, if you’re having trouble coming up with your own is to have customers tell you how they would use a product if they win it. Then choose the best answer. This kind of contest allows contestants to use their imagination and think of their creative solutions rather than a simple drawing type of competition.
46. Ask other bloggers to write about your business
Remember how we talked about the importance of influencers? Influencers are people who may also work in the dental industry and have a following and can help you reach potential patients. It can be a dentist. But it doesn’t have to be. Anyone who works in the dentistry field can work such as dental hygienists, dental experts, or even dental patients. As long as it is someone who has a following in the field of dentistry, they can mention you to their followers to increase your potential audience.
This will improve your reputation with others online, but it will also improve your ranking in Google search because it will create a citation of your site from another source, increasing your relevance.
48. Add live chat to your website
Have you ever jumped onto a website when a chat icon pops up to ask if you have any questions? This is an onsite chatbot and you can have one of these installed on your page so that it can answer questions your visitors have while you’re away. You may choose to have a real person operate this function instead of an automated chatbot if you wish. There are many different ways you can install and use live chat on your website. The point is to give your potential patients attention immediately when they enter your website. It also creates a log of information about the person so that you can figure out what they want or need and cater to them in your marketing later.
Some of the most important benefits to this are listed below:
-Reduce expenses
-Increase leads and sales
-Learn what customers want
-Reports and analytics
Some of the other benefits of an online chat system are listed at https://www.comm100.com/blog/live-chat-benefits.html
49. Add Before and After Photos
Dentistry is the kind of business that requires obvious results. If you can add “before” and “after” photos of patients that illustrate how you have improved their teeth, this will be a strong selling point. You just need to ask the patients who pose for the photos to sign a release form permitting you to use the photos.
50. Develop an app for your practice
If you have someone on your staff who has a high tech ability, have them create an app for your dental practice. There are ways you can create a simple app through online sites such as Apps Bar that allow you to create an app for your business for free. This could be a way to get started with a mobile app to appeal to your mobile users.
Later, you may want to hire a professional app creator to have a professional app designed with more features and put it on Android and iOS app stores. This will give you yet another search engine to features your content in and it will help you increase your reach with mobile customers in a big way. It will also allow you to appear to be more modern because you are keeping up with mobile technology and reaching customers where they are.
51. Offer Financing
One of the reasons people put off going to the dentist is that they cannot afford it. By offering convenient payment or financing options, you will get more patients and appeal to people who cannot afford to pay for it in full at the time of their treatment.
Offering financing tells patients you are sensitive to their financial situation and that you are willing to work with them to help them pay out their bill in payments that are convenient and easier to do. This can also get you people who don’t have dental insurance plans at work.
52. Use a Patient Relationship Management Software
If you’ve never heard about patient relationship management software, you can read about it on our site at XD Practice.
Solution Reach is a popular dental patient relationship software that helps you improve the relationships you have with your patients through better communication, appointment management, and more. You can read more about it on our site and feel free to ask us about this when you ask for an appointment.
53. Install a TV in your waiting room
What do your customers have to entertain them or keep them occupied while in your waiting room? Consider putting a nice HD TV in your waiting room that features your practice. Use one of the videos that you put together to inform current patients about new services while introducing yourself and your staff to new patients.
You can show techniques you use in the video, as well as offer information about why it’s essential to practice good dental hygiene or other issues. Consider having client testimonials in your video, “before and after” videos, and customer testimonials.
54. Create eBooks
Writing a book about your practice, your knowledge in the field of dentistry, oral hygiene, or any similar topic, will help you improve your credibility and impact in your field. Writing an eBook that will be featured on online platforms such as Amazon Kindle can help grow your brand immensely. You can include links within your eBook to your website (and you should) that help drive traffic to your site and blogs. Include a link to your YouTube channel, also.
Remember that you want to create as many links back to your site as possible and eBooks are a part of the algorithms that can generate more traffic for your brand. Just make sure the eBook is on the topic about your business or a related topic that appeals to your readers. Advertise and promote your eBook on multiple social media sites, blogs, and even consider doing a podcast to expand it further.
Once you get your eBook written, you can also go to http://acx.com to have an audiobook recorded by a professional actor. The audio version will then be available along with your eBook format on Audible.com.
Remember eBooks, as well as all of the other digital assets we’ve discussed in this post, will help you improve your SEO and optimize your site because they will all have links pointing to your website if you have done this correctly.
With so many different ways that you can promote your business, where do you start? It can be confusing knowing which techniques to use. That’s where we can help!
55. Podcasts
You can think of podcasts as 21st century digital radio. Podcasts are free on-demand information which can help growing your practice. Not only many marketers are unaware of the benefits of podcasts but also they don’t know about the SEO benefits of them.
As you may know one of the tactices in SEO is content creation, and podcasts are just another type of digital content which you can share your ideas with your potential patients. It’s also one of least expensive ways to improve your SEO, your organic ranking.
56. Get Involved with the Community, word of mouth!
Have you ever got involved with your community? Have you ever involved in an educational session at schools for students? Why don’t you go to an elemetry school and teach a class about oral health? Such activities can help with word-of-mouth marketing.
57. Appointment Reminders
finding new patient is important, but you also need to invest in your current customers, do you send them appointment reminders and Newsletters? People are busy and they tend to miss their yearly checkups, or ignore a cavity. you can text, email, phone and even send them post cards to maintain your relationship.
58. Biography Page
Create a create biography page(s) of yourself along with your staff. It’s a fact that most people are afraid of dentists, why don’t you create a fun biograohy page. Instead of scary picture of yourself at work, use a fun picture with a happy pateint or even a family picture! Let your patients know you are a human, a fun one!
59. Infographics
What are infographics? It’s simple! information + graphics = infographics! There are many benefits to infographics and can help promoting your content effectively.
A good infographic can help your audiance easily understand ghe content and more importantly remember it. It helps with SEOand to generate more traffic for your website. There are more benefits into infographics, contact XDPractice to learn more.
60. Offer a referral program
Leverage from your current customers to get new patients. Don’t ignore the power of referrals! Offer your existing patient an incentive for referring you their freinds and family.
61. Schedule a free consultation with XD Practice
We hope these tips will help you launch and maintain your dental practice and help you increase your quality traffic and ROI (return on investment). To get the most benefit from these tips, you need some guidance on how to proceed with your online marketing plan.
We focus on helping dentists locate their target audience and orchestrate a winning ad strategy that will help you improve your reach and credibility, create customer testimonials, and focus on your branding.
Arrange an appointment with us soon, and we will show you how you can grow your dentistry practice and reach those customers who need your services.
Contact us anytime at info@xdpractice.com or call 310-279-6195.