There’s a saying that repeat custom is the lifeblood of any business and it’s true. Take dentistry, for example. While regular patients are undoubtedly your bread and butter, you still need to keep a steady stream of new patients coming through your doors.
So how many patients?
It’s estimated that somewhere between 10 and 25 new patients per month per dentist is a realistic figure to aim for. Let’s face it, any more than that and it’s unlikely that you or your team would have time to adequately diagnose them, let alone treat them.
With this in mind, it’s important to carry out some form of dental patient marketing but where do you start? Here are 9 effective dental marketing ideas that will help to drive the right type of patients
Build An Effective Website
Dentists need to work extra hard to build trust and inevitably, this starts with your dental website. A badly constructed site with little or no detail is likely to turn potential patients away quicker than you can say ‘osseointegration.’ This is the cornerstone of successful dental patient marketing.
On the contrary, a good dental website with a great layout and personable and friendly pictures is a really good start. But while these are important you need to go further – especially if you want to convey the kind of trust that your existing patients already know and love. To do this, here are some proven factors that will improve your site and make it effortless to use.
• Great personable content and blogs giving out information about the various treatments and services available at your dental practice
• Detailed ‘Meet the team’ profiles – complete with photos
• Online booking – make it easy for patients wanting to book an appointment at your dental practice
• Make it mobile-friendly – It’s estimated that around 82% of people seeking a local dental practice will carry out a search via their smartphone.
Dental Patient Marketing On Social Media
If you are looking to get your dental practice noticed, then it makes good business sense to place yourself in front of a large audience. According to Statista, 49% of the world’s population currently use one or more social media channels so you can guarantee that a good percentage of your potential patients are regularly checking in to their preferred social, media channel. This is why social media marketing is such a good dental marketing strategy.
Consider creating a Facebook account where local readers can receive regular updates about what’s going on in your dental practice. You might want to post about new treatments and services, new promotions, new initiatives – going into schools etc.
Involve Yourself In The Local Community
While a dental website is a must for any dental practice, nothing beats old school marketing methods. One great way to spread the word by involving yourself within the local community. Whether this is with a local charity, regular school visits, or attending local festivals before long people will know who you are. So, when it comes to the time that they need a dentist, your dental practice should at least be front and foremost in their mind.
Make Use Of Your Google My Business Page
When it comes to dental patient marketing strategies, updating and optimising your Google My Business (GMB) page is easy to do. Make sure you update your page by adding your
- Location
- Business description
- Phone number
- Hours of operation and your
- Review section
This way, along with a link to your dental website, potential patients can easily and instantly find you. If you’re not sure whether this is worth doing, clicks to your dental website via GMB, account for approximately 44% of all local Google searches.
Dental Referral Schemes
Referral schemes are surprisingly one of the most underused dental marketing ideas, yet they are among the easiest and the most cost-effective to put into action. One way to implement such a scheme is to leverage your existing customers.
Why not run a promotion whereby if an existing customer refers a friend to your dental practice, they get money off their next treatment and the person being introduced gets an introductory offer? According to one reputable source, 92% of people trust referrals from people they know, so it’s definitely one proven dental marketing strategy that works.
Remarketing Ads
There will be people who have visited your dental website or dental practice in the past and for whatever reason have not pursued initial or further treatment. If your dental website or practice collects email addresses, then you can devise a catchy ad on Google Ads and Facebook. Simply upload their email addresses, then create a marketing campaign that would entice potential patients to your practice – maybe a promotional offer for teeth whitening or a dental check-up
Optimise for ‘Emergency’ Keywords
There is nothing that drives customer footfall than intent. It’s fair to say therefore that a client who is in need of emergency dental care has an extremely high intent. In other words, the likelihood of them visiting a dental practice within the next 24 hours is pretty much a certainty. One underused dental marketing strategy is to optimise for ‘emergency’ or ‘urgent care’ keywords where possible.
Naturally, it’s only a good dental marketing idea if you have the capacity to take on emergency cases and provide an easy way for them to contact you, otherwise your dental practice will end up with a bad review.
Social media marketing is, without doubt, one of the dental marketing ideas you really should be using and while Facebook and Twitter are the more obvious choices, more and more marketeers are realising that Instagram can also be a bit of a gold mine.
As well as celebrities endorsing teeth whitening products and orthodontists showing off their before and after success stories, it’s possible to create an Instagram account for your dental practice.
Need some dental marketing ideas? How about posting pictures of happy patients – with their consent of course – thank you letters, and even the odd patient/dentist selfie.
Getting Listed On Credible Dental Sites
The final dental marketing strategy is to get listed on credible dental sites. Think about it this way, sites like the Dentist Hub, Smile Guide, Dentist.com.au and the Yellow Pages already have kudos with the search engines. In other words, they have already done all the hard work so you don’t have to. Anyone trying to rank for a ‘dentist In Sydney’ for example might find it difficult because of the competitive nature of this keyword. However, sites like Yellow Pages invest thousands of dollars for the privilege of beating out the competition. By getting listed on these sites, your dental website is in effect getting a huge boost that could result in increased patient footfall.
As you can see, here are 9 dental marketing strategies that are easy to implement and won’t cost you the earth.
If you need any further advice on dental patient marketing, book a call on us at 1300 163 058 with the Mediboost team. We focus on your industry, so we understand the trials, tribulations, and pitfalls of dental marketing in this area.
