Are you a dentist? Check these out.
Have you just opened a dental clinic? Are you looking to kick off your digital marketing campaign and start reeling in new leads?
It turns out that digital marketing for dental clinics is not basically different from other kinds of online marketing.
Nevertheless, there are a few key details on digital marketing for dental clinics to keep in mind. That what we’ll be going over today.
1. Local SEO
Local SEO is exactly what it sounds like: advancing your dental website and online ads to appeal to local prospective patients.
Local SEO is the Chine of digital marketing for dental clinics. After all, people like to visit healthcare providers close to them.
This is not to say that all dental clinics are the same. You probably offer specific services, or use certain tools and technologies, that competing clinics do not.
But remember, most prospective clients don’t know the specific details of specific dental procedures or techniques. They don’t care too much if you’re a world authority on root canal procedures, or how one high-tech sterilization method differs from another.
Instead, most clients like to shop local. They want a friendly neighborhood dentist that will treat them and their family with care and compassion.
Emphasize this intangible local element in your digital marketing. Brand yourself as a friendly, local dental practice and people will learn to trust you.
2. Google Search Ads.
While SEO initiatives are an extremely lucrative way of improving your dental digital marketing in the long term, it can take time to see results. If you’re looking for immediate return, paid media advertising could be a good path for your practice. With advertising you’ll pay for prominent placements directly but will start seeing results as soon as your campaign begins.
One of the most popular forms of advertising is Google Ads search campaigns. With search campaigns, your practice has the ability to appear at the very top of the search results.
With search ads, you’ll be able to leverage the popularity of Google’s ad platform to drive traffic to the exact pages that you want. This helps you connect with customers at the exact moment that they’re looking for your services.
3. Email Marketing.
For almost any business, developing an email list can be a great digital marketing strategy. Email marketing provides a lot of benefits that other digital marketing mediums don’t possess. Emails provide direct access to your core customers and your messaging is less likely to get lost in noisy feeds. Emails are also algorithm independent. Your visibility won’t be at the mercy of major tech companies that make changes to how their algorithms work. Email marketing can help you not only connect with new patients but help maintain your relationships with existing ones.
While how you utilize email will depend on your marketing goals, below are some campaigns that you could consider:
Dental health best practices & tips
Appointment confirmations & reminders
Company news
New service & product announcements
Internal promotions
New patient email sequences
If you’re interested in exploring more, Constant Contact has created a great guide for email marketing best practices for dentists.
4. PPC Advertising.
Pay-per-click or PPC ads are a great and highly cost-efficient way to draw in new leads.
Most traditional forms of advertising charge by how widely the ad is shown. Whether in print, on TV, or online, you pay by impressions—how many times your ad appears. But PPC ads charge for clicks—how many times actual human users clicked on your ad.
This has 2 great benefits:
You pay for results. There are usually no minimum fees, and you can spend as much or as little money as you want on your PPC ads. If your ad doesn’t catch on, you risk very little.
Free publicity. While you pay for clicks, impressions are free! Your dental clinic will get some nice free publicity on social media platforms.
Most social media platforms offer PPC advertising. For more on PPC advertising
For example, a user may have had strong interactions with your website by discovering it multiple times via paid advertising and organic results. However, upon looking further into your business, they may encounter negative results that put them off the path of conversion.
To audit your dentistry’s reputation, perform the following searches on Google:
Company name
Dentist names
Company + reviews
If you’re finding any negative results in those searches, you’ll want to take immediate steps towards improving your reputation.
5. Organic Social Media.
In digital marketing lingo, “organic” means “free.” Organic social media refers to all the free features offered by media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so forth.
Creating a business Facebook page, posting status updates or images, tweeting regularly—these are all forms of organic social media marketing.
And with more people than ever using Facebook to check things like a business’s hours of operation or current services, to ignore social media is to leave a sizeable chunk of free digital advertising on the table.
Your Facebook business page also displays your address, contact details, and so forth, making it crucial for listing your clinic locally (see point 2 above).
Additionally, organic social media is crucial for digital word-of-mouth advertising. Nowadays, 88% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business in person.
With a Facebook page with a few glowing client reviews, your clinic will appear professional and reliable. But without this, you risk appearing untrustworthy. If every local dentist but one has strong client reviews, what does that tell you?
So, even before you build your dental practice website, make Facebook and LinkedIn pages! Snag a Twitter handle. Encourage your friends and family to follow your dental clinic on social media. Start small, and slowly build up your social media presence.
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