12 digital marketing strategies for dentists and dental clinics that will draw potential patients to your clinic
As in every business, dentists and clinics need to win new customers regularly in order to keep their commercial life going.
Dentists need to be more careful than other professions when applying digital marketing activity.
What is in this article?
- 12 Digital Marketing Strategies for Dentists
- 1. Create your Google My Business page and be visible
- 2. Improve and optimise your website
- 3. Produce content, do content marketing
- 4. Do search engine optimisation (SEO)
- 5. Build a bond with your followers through social media
- 6. Give weight to video content and marketing
- 7. Register your profile in directories
- 8. Run Google Ads
- 9. Run Facebook & Instagram ads
- 10. Ask your patients for feedback
- 11. Use a CRM system
- 12. Get in touch with your patients regularly
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The reason it is harder than ordinary marketing communication is that the service provided is negative demand. What is negative demand? You can find the detailed answer to that question in this article. To touch on it briefly, we can describe it as the consumer not wanting to receive the service even if they accept paying for it. The other reasons it is hard are legal regulation and certain rules that must be followed in digital advertising.
After all, since health is involved, having certain boundaries is an important step here.
In this article we will give information about marketing and digital marketing strategy for dentists and dental clinics.
If you want support from a specialist on this subject you can get in touch with us right away. You can be sure we will be glad to answer your questions.
12 Digital Marketing Strategies for Dentists
1. Create Your Google My Business Page and Be Visible
Create your Google My Business account so you are visible online. If you have a Gmail account you can create it quickly. You can create your account easily by following the instructions.
Once you have created the account it will suggest alternative methods for you to verify it. Verification is done with a code coming by phone or by letter. The verification code sent by letter takes a few weeks to arrive. After that you will be able to manage your account as you wish.
How will your business look once you have created a Google My Business account?
Filling in as much of the information in your Google My Business account details as accurately as possible will make it easier for your customers to gain accurate information about you.
To optimise your Google My Business page you need to add the following information:
- Category selection: "dentistry", "dentist", "dental practice" and so on.
- Phone number
- A short piece about you
- Opening hours
- Address
- Reviews and so on.
- Posts (posts similar to Facebook posts)
In short, fill in every field completely.
How does your Google My Business profile account look?
You can even create a website in your Google My Business account
https://business.google.com/v/_/07528577448265639171/bf84/_?caid=9564130049
2. Improve and Optimise Your Website
According to research, more than 90% of website users judge a business by its website design. More than 38% of users leave a website immediately if the design is not appealing and not usable.
The reason users form a prejudice based on your website is that they identify the care you show your website with your work.
Website design and usability therefore matter a great deal. It matters greatly that the website is easy to navigate and that you convey the most relevant information about your services to the user at the same time.
When dentists and doctors write content, the content needs to be written in language that is easy for all potential patients to understand. Technical terms should be expressed in plain language as far as possible. Do not use too much medical jargon in your content and prevent it becoming incomprehensible.
Content a dentist's website should hold in order to win new patients
- Detailed information about the treatments provided.
- Content that helps patients protect their oral hygiene and dental health
- Information about the dentists working there
- Professional photography of the clinic and
- The address and phone number being easy to reach,
- Online appointments
- Thank-you messages,
- If possible, an online payment option
- Online invoice payment capability
- A contact form, messaging, live chat
Basic requirements for a good website
- The website should be fast,
- It should be secure (an SSL certificate should be installed)
- The domain name should suit your clinic
- It must be mobile-friendly
- The content you write and your whole website should be structured for SEO, that is, search engine optimisation.
3. Produce Content, Do Content Marketing
You are reading this article right now and you are my potential customer. Even if you are not, one of the dozens of people reading this article could become my new customer. Dentists too can win new customers by producing useful, informative content for users on their website and other channels.
This step consists fundamentally of two parts.
- Producing the content correctly
- Spreading it on the right channels
What kinds of subject can you cover?
- Information about conditions and treatment
- Treatment duration
- Accurate information, persuasive content.
- Trending dentistry treatment subjects
- Recommendations for healthy teeth and mouth
The main channels where dentists can market
- Website and blog
- Social media channels such as Facebook and Instagram
- YouTube
- The posts area in your Google My Business account,
- Newsletters,
- Partner websites (your sponsored content)
- Influencers
- Email newsletter messages
- Spotify podcasts,
You can also read this excellent article to learn the benefits of content marketing.
4. Do Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
It matters a great deal that the content you create is reachable online by your audience — in other words, that it is read by visitors. Content that is not read by its audience is of no benefit to anyone.
When creating content for your website or other channels you should therefore write text that fits SEO criteria and write content around the keywords users search for.
SEO criteria you can apply on your own website
- Your website should load fast. It should load in under three seconds.
- Be mobile-friendly
- Use correctly sized images with completed alt tags
- Be a secure site (HTTPS)
- Offer quality content
- Link to relevant sites in your content.
- Add links to your other relevant content
- Connect your social media channels.
- Share the content you have written with a link.
- Request reference links from relevant websites.
5. Build a Bond With Your Followers Through Social Media
There are millions of social media users. Let us therefore not forget that your audience are social media users too. With the right strategy suited to the channel we can make excellent use of social media.
We should position social media not as advertising but as a tool for communication and building a bond.
Some recommendations for dentists' social media use
- Show that you are reachable. Post at regular intervals.
- Use good graphics to inform and to post. Graphics are fun and can draw potential patients. You can make use of the Canva tool to produce images.
- Categorise your dental treatments. Share content and videos explaining the treatment processes you carry out. The aim here is to show potential customers how professional you are when handling dental cases.
- People generally love seeing before and after photographs. Share before and after photographs for cosmetic dental work.
Always get written permission and a consent statement from your patient before posting. - In line with the channel's dynamics (Instagram, Twitter), use tags suited to the treatment on the appropriate content.
- Produce content that makes positive associations rather than negative ones. What does that mean? Content about the happiness and relief after treatment rather than broken, decayed, painful, sad content…
What else can we do?
- Customer thank-yous
- Frequently asked questions about dental treatment
- Make very good use of Instagram highlights.
- Photographs of the clinic and your team
- Photographs relating to your patients
- The small celebrations you hold at the clinic (birthdays, a gift for a patient and so on)
- Special offers or discounts (provided they comply with the law)
- The training, seminars, trade fairs and online meetings relating to your work that you have attended or given.
6. Give Weight to Video Content and Marketing
Research has revealed that when patients have a problem with their health, 40% go to the doctor after watching a video online.
With a solid dentists' video marketing strategy you can reach our potential patients. You can show how professional and experienced you are with the dental problems they have.
So what kinds of video content can we produce?
- Introduce yourself: information about your purpose, your facilities, your treatment times, your philosophy. See example content.
- Clinic and welcome videos: create video content presenting your clinic and the kind of environment patients will find themselves in when they come.
- Patient opinion or review videos: these videos show patients' trust in your expertise while also setting good examples for your potential patients.
- Dental treatment and process videos: produce suitable content explaining the processes of your dental treatment across every category.
- Educational videos: produce regular informative content about oral and dental health.
- Live streams: by going live you can engage with your potential patients in real time and answer their questions.
- Right and wrong: persuasive, explanatory content about the misconceptions widely believed to be true.
- Frequently asked questions: create videos about general dental procedures, anaesthesia, treatment times and frequently asked questions.
7. Register Your Profile in Directories
Most patients looking for healthcare use search engines. In search engines, directories listing physicians and doctors come to the fore in the first results.
Register with as many directories as possible, filling in all the information you can. When adding your profile information, write it in line with general SEO rules and, if there is a field for linking to your website, link to your own website. Make an effort to keep your profile information up to date at regular intervals.
Here are a few directory sites you can add
8. Run Google Ads
Dentists should consider Google Ads in their digital marketing strategy.
To repeat, by doing SEO work you can rank at the top organically in Google and similar search engines. That work is a long-term strategy. The other way of ranking at the top in search results is advertising on Google Ads.
How does Google Ads work, and what should dentists and dental clinics pay attention to when advertising on Google Ads?
- Google Ads appear above the organic search results according to the competitive ranking.
- Potential patients make search queries with keywords
- Your ads appear in the queries matching the words you have chosen.
- You can direct a person who clicks your ad to your website or your social media page.
A few tips on what to pay attention to when advertising on Google Ads
- Keywords should be relevant to you and your work.
- Use your budget effectively by focusing on long-tail terms with less competition.
- Use negative keywords to prevent irrelevant clicks. (There is no point in your ad appearing for the query "dentistry entry exam scores", for example.)
- Limit your ads to the location you are in.
- Check the search terms every day and check whether users are reaching you with the queries you wanted.
- Make your ad copy fit the search queries. For example:
… write a compelling headline for the teeth whitening query. (See the example image) - Create ad extensions. Be sure to use call extensions in particular, setting them for working hours. Potential patients can then call you with a single tap.
- Optimise your ad budget according to conversions.
- Test alternative campaigns and ad copy.
- Advertise in a way that complies with the law.
9. Run Facebook & Instagram Ads
You will have seen that Instagram ads are quite popular among dentists. Instagram and Facebook ads work with a slightly different method from the Google Ads type. But both advertising models ultimately let you find more potential patients.
Instagram and Facebook ads let you advertise not with keywords but using users' demographic and behavioural information, getting your promotional content shown in their feeds.
Note: getting support from a specialist on Google Ads and Instagram ads matters for your budgets being managed correctly. If you have no knowledge of advertising and cannot give it time, you may simply waste your money.
10. Ask Your Patients for Feedback
Your patients are an excellent reference for other patients. Most potential patients read other patients' reviews before getting in touch with you. Reviews and feedback are the best marketing content for dentists and dental clinics.
11. Use a CRM System
CRM is customer relationship management. Businesses or individual practitioners make use of CRM software to track customer records and manage workflows.
As the number of your customers rises, tracking them manually becomes quite hard. With a CRM application you understand your customers better and hold the information needed to attend to each of them individually.
12. Get in Touch With Your Patients Regularly
Reminding your patients of yourself at regular intervals strengthens the communication between you. Special days, public holidays, birthdays and post-treatment satisfaction feedback are excellent opportunities for getting in touch.
To get in touch with your patients directly you can use channels such as phone, email and SMS.
You can read this article for detailed information about email marketing and the software you can use.
For general healthcare organisations and hospitals: 13 Digital Marketing Strategies for Doctors. This article focuses specifically on dentists and dental clinics.
