As more people research dentists and dental treatments online, how are you differentiating yourself from your competitors within the digital landscape?
Having a robust dental marketing strategy can help you to stand out from the crowd and become more discoverable to people looking for your services. We have outlined the best marketing strategies for dental practices to introduce this year so that you can improve your online presence as well as grow and retain your patient list.
The best marketing strategies for dental practices
- Improve your website’s user experience
- Optimise your website for SEO
- Set up your dental blog
- Grow your presence on social media
- Share your patient reviews online
- Introduce video marketing
- Get started with PPC
Improve your website’s user experience
Your website is your digital storefront. When a prospective patient lands on it, you have seconds to make a good impression. We recommend that you carry out a website audit to determine ways in which you can improve the following:
- Website security
- Page speed
- Navigation
- Website design
- Web copy
- Photos and images
- Booking information
Your website should instil trust in prospective patients. It also should make it easy for them to find the information that they need quickly. You want their experience on your website to be as seamless and streamlined as possible, all the while making it easy for them to contact you or book an appointment with your practice online.
Optimise your website for SEO
Many searches for new dentists or dental treatments start on Google. It is important to include SEO within your dental marketing strategy so that you can improve your search visibility and encourage more people to click through onto your website.
Our tips for dental SEO include:
- Carry out keyword research – use tools like Ubersuggest to discover the terms and phrases that patients are using as they search for dentists.
- Optimise your web copy – the content on your website should be written for patients but also optimised for Google.
- Update your Google My Business Listing – complete all parts in your Google My Business Listing to become more discoverable in Local search results.
- Get backlinks to your website – getting links from other websites back to your own helps to show Google that you have a trustworthy and quality website.
For more information on the importance of SEO and how to optimise your website for search engines like Google, our latest blog on dental SEO contains tips and advice to help you improve your search presence this year.
Start a dental blog
For many practices, their blog is an important facet of their dental marketing strategy.
An effective blog will help to position you as a voice of authority. And if your blog is optimised for SEO, it can also increase organic traffic to your website from search engines.
When you publish a blog post on your website, there are steps that you should then take for it to reach a wide audience. Share your articles across your social media platforms, add them into your email newsletters and include a link to your blog within your website navigation. This will provide patients with regular reminders about your dental services, straight into their inboxes and onto their social media feeds.
Grow your presence on social media
The average person in the UK spends 102 minutes on social media every day. Setting up business pages on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn can give you the opportunity to market your dental practice to people as they spend time scrolling their feeds.
Here are our recommendations for organically increasing your engagement and follower count:
- Post on awareness days and calendar dates related to your dental practice.
- Use visuals in posts as they will generate up to 94% more views than content without images.
- Use hashtags related to dentistry to make it easier to be found by prospective patients.
- Post on the right days and at the right times to get a good level of engagement. Hootsuite has a fantastic article on the best times to post on social media.
- Respond to comments. Social media will typically rank you higher in people’s feeds if you show that you are active.
- Try to post three times a week. Put a social media calendar together so that you are never left without any ideas of what to post.
It is also recommended that you link to your website on your social media channels. That way, you make clear pathways for people to find out more about you.
Share your patient reviews online
A study carried out by DentaVox found that 86% of patients read online reviews before choosing their dentist.
Collecting and publishing reviews online should be an integral part of your dental marketing plan. It can help you to strengthen your online presence so that you stand out to prospective patients and make a great first impression.
How are you currently going about collecting feedback? At Doctify, we can work with you to digitise your review collection process so that it’s quicker and easier to get feedback from your patients. We can also publish your reviews online, so that prospective patients can learn more about you when looking to find their new dentist or dental practice.
For tips and advice on increasing your patient reviews, read our latest blog on how to get more feedback this year.
Introduce video marketing into your strategy
People are watching more videos online than ever before. In fact, the average person watched 100 minutes of online video content every day in 2021.
What videos would be best for you to add into your dental marketing plan? Here are our recommendations:
- Meet the team – build trust by introducing prospective patients to your practice
- Patient testimonials – people researching dentists will want to hear from your patients
- Advice and education – offer valuable information related to dental care and hygiene
- FAQs – find out what people want to know and answer questions in a video
The videos that you produce can then be used across your website as well as on social media and in emails to your new and existing patients.
For more information, please visit our blog on video marketing for dental practices.
Have you thought about PPC advertising?
PPC advertising on Google gives you the opportunity to stand out in search results. Paid advertising is also available on social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
If you are new to PPC, we would recommend starting with a small budget to test the waters. It is also think about the following:
- Your campaign type – your campaign type should be based on your marketing goals. Read Google’s support page to discover the different types of PPC campaigns that are available.
- Your bid strategy – consider which bid strategy most suits your campaign goal. Do you want to focus on getting clicks, impressions, conversions or views?
- Ad extensions – include additional information such as website links, directions and phone numbers in your ads to increase their click-through-rate.
- Ad groups – create ad groups for your different ad topics. For example, if you want to run ads on Invisalign and Teeth Whitening, these should fall into two different groups. That way you can create unique ads for each group.
- Targeting – target the people most relevant to you and your practice. Focus on people searching for relevant dental keywords and who live nearby.
- Tracking and improving – always track the performance of your campaigns and adjust and improve them as you go. Important things to look at include the total number of clicks, conversion rate, cost per click, form submissions and telephone calls.
If you are uncertain of whether PPC is right for you and your practice, read our guide on SEO versus PPC.
How can Doctify support your dental marketing strategy?
At Doctify, we work with dental professionals and clinics across the UK to support them in improving their online presence. Here’s how we can help you:
- Achieve a consistent flow of patient reviews online – we can digitise your feedback collection process so that you are able to gather and publish a greater volume of up-to-date reviews. These reviews will help you to highlight your expertise, quality and trustworthiness to those researching dental clinics online.
- Secure a better search presence – every professional, practice and clinic working with Doctify has their own professional Doctify profile that appears in Google. Your profile will include your patient reviews and peer recommendations along with your contact details and online booking options so that people can easily get in touch. Your Doctify star rating and reviews will also appear in Google so that you stand out from the crowd.
- Publish patient reviews onto your website – you can embed patient reviews onto your website with Doctify Review Boxes and Trust Badges. These features give you the opportunity to showcase your expertise to your website visitors, which in turn can help you to increase your website conversions.
For more information on how Doctify can support your dental marketing strategy, visit our Provider Centre. Here you can find details of our review intelligence platform and how we can help you to boost your online presence and become more discoverable to prospective patients.
