Seven Online Marketing Tips for Every Dental Office

 

Your waiting room may always be full, or maybe you take only a handful of patients every day. Anyway you will need to have a dental marketing strategy to attract more patients, or keep the current number. As technology provides people with easier access to information, people don’t always take the nearest option when they need a dentist. In fact, dental practices lose about seventeen percent of their active patients each year. Insurance change, relocation and bad experiences are some of the main reasons for this high turnover rate. Dentists also lose some of their time and income to cancellations and no-shows which can be reduced with a proper healthcare marketing policy. 

All these points are enough to make it clear that you must attain some marketing and patient-retention knowledge. That’s why we have gathered a few important points about how to grow your practice, and maintain that growth, by attracting new patients and replacing lost patients with new and returning ones from your location.

 

1. Focus on your healthcare brand

Understand your healthcare business. What is different about you? What makes you stand out from others? The answer to these questions guides you to setting your brand: the focal point of your marketing strategy.

Your brand is the first thing you want to come to a person’s mind when you are mentioned. All the marketing tools and methods should promote your brand. 

It takes some time and creativity to find the best thing for your organization. But when you find it and stick to it, you can make a successful marketing strategy that makes up for your investment.

 

2. Your Website is your online representation

These days fewer people ask their friends and more people ask Google. To show yourself to your potential patients, you must have a website, and it is better to appear in the search results.

Your website is most likely the first part of your office your potential patient views.

To make people stay on it, it must look good, and more importantly, simple. It must have a responsive design to display nicely on mobile screens. 

User experience is important. The average patient must be able to find your addresses and contacts on any page of the website in less than 10 seconds, or they leave your page.

 

3. SEO 

As mentioned, many patients just select one of Google’s first page results. Maybe without checking their website. To be ranked higher on Google, you need to apply Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

There are SEO specialists out there you can hire. Plus you can always try learning SEO and doing it yourself.

You also need a complete Google Business page. Your business info shows when people search for you using Google. Remember that to be ranked correctly by Google, our address on your website and google page must exactly match.

 

4. Ads (in search engines and social media)

The catch about SEO is that it takes more than 6 months before you can see the positive results in your business. To keep up your patient volume meanwhile, You can use paid ads until you are a top search result.

The most effective platforms for paid ads are search engines and major social media websites. Facebook, Instagram, and Google are the top choices. 

To manage the advertisement budget, note that Ads work better when used with specific target groups. If you keep them optimized and be careful with budgeting, they can be profitable.

 

5. Be serious about social media marketing

Serious marketers hold active accounts in all major social media, Including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Nearly every organization out there has at least one social media account where they share their news, events, photos, and videos. These are called organic social media.

However, most people aren’t likely to share your clinic’s events. The only people who do so nearly always are related to you outside social media. To make sure you are widely seen, and by the correct people, most of the time you need to use paid services of social media platforms. Not only do they show your advertisements, but they allow you to decide your target audience.

 

6. Patient feedback and Reviews

Most typical patients don’t give you feedback/reviews. Only people who have received services highly above -or below- their expectations are likely to do so.

One way to encourage your patients to leave a review is making it an automatic part of their visit. You can receive their scores using an office tablet or computer, and then prompt the patients with positive reviews by email, or even calls, to write a review for your website. This being done for patients with negative experiences helps you resolve any issues with them, thus reducing negative reviews out there. More importantly, this enables you to find and solve any problems in your patients which may cause difficulties for your patients.

 

7. Evaluate your marketing plan

Scheduling regular evaluations of your marketing policy help you Find the strengths and weaknesses of your strategy so you can revise it. Check its effectiveness and if it is creating value for you. It also helps to change your budgeting based on the effectiveness of each tool/method you are using.