When it comes to dental marketing, websites are one of the most powerful tools dentists have. Did you know, for example, that 81% of all people browse online before making a purchase or booking? That means potential patients will be browsing your dental website long before deciding whether they walk into your door or a competitor’s clinic.
So how do you turn your dental practice website into a dental marketing machine?
Think about it – your website is already open for business 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It’s working when your dental practice is closed and is ever-present at weekends, public holidays, and for those nocturnal folk, during the wee small hours when everyone else is sleeping.
Therefore, it makes sense to get it to work for you and start earning its keep.
With this in mind, here are some top tips on how to do exactly that.
Tip #1 – Create content and start now!
You don’t need me to tell you that content is king. Google recognises and rewards quality content – Fact! It’s a vital part of their ranking strategy, and they make no bones about it. Moreover, your dental website is the ideal place to create and store that content. But you need to start now!
Why? Because it can take time for your posts to be crawled and ranked. In other words, the content you write today probably won’t start driving traffic for six months or more.
I won’t go into the ins and outs of how content is the ideal vehicle for dental marketing; just know that it is, and if you don’t already run a current blog, then you really should be. Creating great content should never be like pulling teeth. Simply find out what your dental patients are searching for and write an informative post based on that.
Tip #2 – Optimising your dental practice website
Even as little as ten years ago, you could throw up a dental website, and the chances of it getting found by your target audience were high. Nowadays, however, the dental marketing landscape has changed considerably, and competition is rife.
One of the best ways to ensure that as many potential patients see your dental website as possible is to ensure that it’s fully optimised.
So what does that mean exactly?
Every page on your site is positioned with a chance of getting ranked in the search engines. You can do this by:
- Ensuring all links are active and work
- The copy on each page contains the right amount of keywords without sounding spammy
- Not forgetting to include image alt tags
- Ensuring your content is broken up using sub-titles and bullet points where necessary
- Maximising load speed – According to experts, a one-second delay yields a 7% loss in conversions.
Do these things, and your dental website stands a better chance of being ranked and, by default – will help to accumulate more patients.
Tip #3 – Make it easy
What’s the one thing all good dental marketing websites have in common?
They make it easy for the visitor when they land a page.
When we use the term ‘make it easy’, we’re talking about the user experience (UX for short)
Consider this:
If you could design a dental practice from scratch, I’m sure the patient journey would be right at the heart of everything you do, from the furniture you buy, to where you place your reception desk through to what colours you paint your walls. You consider the patient (user) experience from the moment they walk through the door.
The same rules need to apply to your dental website. In other words, you need to show the visitor what steps they can or should take when they land on your site and why they need to take them.
Remember, every visitor to your dental website is a wasted visitor if you don’t get them to take some degree of action. That could be
- Clicking through to treatment and service pages to find out more about a particular treatment
- Booking an appointment or consultation or
- Signing up to receive a newsletter or monthly blog
So, we need to ensure that they do one of the above. Some ways of making your dental website easy for your visitors are:
- Placing contact details clearly on every single page
- Making navigation simple – remember you want visitors to look through your dental website
- Improving the site layout to make it user-friendly.
- Providing valuable and in-depth information
Oh, and don’t forget to add a visible call to action button!
Do these things, and you will see an increase in bounce rate – the length of time visitors remain on your site.
Tip#4 – Make your dental website conducive to building a mailing list
There’s a common theme amongst the best dental marketing websites in that they all contain tools that enable the dental practice owner to build a mailing list.
Why is this important?
Once you have a list of people, you can use it to
- Distribute important news – It may be that you have a new piece of equipment that allows patients to receive better treatment.
- Promote new dental services or treatments, or
- Use it as a channel to push promotional activity or exclusive offers – e.g. 25% off new patient exams when they sign up before a specific date.
In other words, a mailing list gives you instant avenues or outlets to further promote your dental practice and services. That’s how effective dental marketing works!
Moreover, subscribers are far more likely to open your email because they already trust you by signing up for your mailing list.
So how do you build a list via your dental website?
Simple! Offer the visitor something of value in return for their email address.
Offers can be in the form of a monthly newsletter, a weekly informative blog post dropped directly in their inbox as soon as it’s published, an eBook or helpful guide addressing a common dental problem, or a promotional offer. Whatever works for you, your dental practice – and your potential patients.
Dental marketing websites – The key takeaway
You’ve invested in your website, so it’s only natural that you want it to work hard and earn its keep. Don’t be a dental practice that has a website that contributes nothing. Instead, use your newfound skills to turn yours into a dental marketing website on steroids.
If you would like to know more about this or any other aspect of dental marketing, contact the team at Mediboost Australia. We’re Australia’s #1 dental marketing and patient growth agency and can help you increase patient footfall to your dental practice.
We’re experts at building dental marketing websites geared towards getting you targeted patient leads. Call today on 1300 163 058 or visit our website to book a no-obligation consultation. Trust us when we say you’ll be glad that you did!
