What’s In A Brand?
Your dental practice brand is the sum total of your audience’s experiences with it. It is more than your name, more than your logo and dental website. It is everything you stand for. And this is important because this is your market differentiator.
Think about it for a second. There are thousands of dental practices out there offering the same services and there are millions of patients needing the same treatments. How does the patient know why your practice is the best match if you don’t communicate it?
What’s Your Dental Practice Brand Goal?
How would you like your patients to perceive your practice? Which of their problems would you like to solve? How is your practice different from the one across the street?
After creating a brand goal you can work backward to craft the type of message that will you communicate to potential patients. A good starting point is with a slogan.
Your slogan is used on all your marketing material and will communicate your brand vision alongside your logo wherever it appears in public. It should be short yet memorable but most importantly it should be true. And you should work to uphold it at all times.
Developing Brand Consistency For Your Dental Practice
There are actually very few immovable laws of dental practice marketing but perhaps the most non-negotiable aspect is consistency. You might not have the biggest budget or the loudest voice for that matter, but where you really can get ahead is through consistency.
Have a brand identity guide developed that outlines the usage rules for your brand. In the future, you will work with plenty of service providers, so it’s important that your public appearance is always consistent.
Staff may come and go over time, but your brand can’t go out of the door with them. By documenting how the brand should be handled you ensure its consistent display.
Dental Website Marketing And Branding
Your dental website offers plenty of opportunities for optimal branding. Its overall look should complement your identity and appeal to your target audience. The form and function of your dental practice website should be complementary.
Form
The look of your website certainly influences how a patient feels about your brand. Here are some pointers from our dental marketing experts:
- Your logo should be professional and prominent
- Your site should be well structured and easy to navigate
- Your images should be clear and reflect your target audience
- Make use of subheadings and short paragraphs so your users can scan information to find what they need
- The website pages should be easy to organise by the eye and a patient should be able to follow the flow of the page without much difficulty
- Make use of authentic testimonials that show you living up to your brand identity
- Give every page a call to action so your reader knows what the next step is
- Place forms on the right hand side of the pages, as this is an intuitive position for the manner in which users read websites
- Make your contact details easy to find – don’t hide them
- Your website should be memorable and unique. It might be tempting to copy competitors but how will you stand from the crowd?
Function
The way your website works is also an extension of your brand. For example:
- If you claim to offer patients the latest in dental technology, you need an upmarket and sophisticated website that walks the talk.
- If you want to appeal to today’s tech-savvy audience you should have an online chat function and a contact form that works.
- If you want to establish yourself as an industry leader you need a high powered blog filled with interesting content that no one else has penned yet, and a media section filled with published articles or case studies.
If you truly believe that your dental practice’s welcoming team and customer service is what keeps patients coming in through the door have a great video on your dental website that shows this.
Why Branding Matters For Your Dental Marketing Strategies
There is a treasure trove of marketing activities out there to be used in order to send traffic to your website. Many of the activities involve engaging with a potential patient on a different platform before sending them to your website:
Social media campaigns
Social media campaigns can be used to send users to your website. Those users are using the latest version of Facebook and Instagram, and they want to encounter a similarly high-tech experience when they land on your website.
A user who clicks on a Facebook ad and lands on a website that was built in 2002 and hasn’t been updated since is going to be disappointed.
If you promise your patients a high-quality service, make sure your posts are high quality too. Use clear images and spell and grammar check your work!
Google Advertising
Any user who clicks through from the Google Ads suite of products is also accustomed to a certain level of user experience online. They’ll definitely expect a mobile-friendly website.
Google remarketing should be an extension of your website. This tool allows you to show your audience graphic ads. To be consistent these graphics should contain the same images that are being used on your website and in your social media campaigns so that, when the user lands on your website he or she encounters some visual tie-over and recognises your brand.
Content marketing
A user who has typed a search query into the search engine and found your well-written answer to their problem is also expecting a certain level of online experience. He or she won’t want to read the same article that has been rehashed on the subject online for the umpteenth time.
That user wants to be spoken to in the same voice on your Facebook channel – and over the telephone when your receptionist picks up his or her call. The user will also be expecting that brand to be communicated when sitting in your chair.
Dental advertising might sound like a lot of work but when you work with a professional marketing agency it makes light work of a large project. Mediboost is a specialised dental branding agency and our staff has the experience to get your practice on the digital map.
Contact us and let’s talk branding. Get in touch with us and let’s see how we can make and build your practice: 1300 163 058
