The old adage goes something like, “When it comes to marketing, nothing beats a good smile.”
So, we’re going to share with you the top 12 dental marketing strategies so you can put a smile on your clients and your bank account today.
Let’s get started and make sure your healthcare marketing strategies are as white as your veneers.
Enjoy!
1) Sponsor Local Events
Sponsoring local kids’ events is an excellent way to organically promote your dental business while not looking promotional at all.
For example, two teams of kindergarten children play a football match.
One team is clad in green like Robin Hood, while the other boasts garments white as the snowy peaks of the Himalayas.
They wear different colors and play against each other, but two things they have in common is that they both want to win, and they both wear football shorts and dresses emblazoned with a logo of a local dental practice that sponsored the event.
In case you were wondering, it’s a picture of a smiling toothbrush with a pearly white grin on its face, followed by the name of the company and a phone number.
Sponsoring local events for kids as a dental marketing idea works because you’ll be targeting the market in dire need of proper dental care (children) and their caring mothers will go through any expense needed to give their children perfect smiles and also teach them proper dental hygiene from a young age.
2) Patient Review Web Sites
Did you know that 72% of users use reviews on trusted doctor reviews sites as their first step in choosing their new health care provider?
And that 60.8% of web users will not see a doctor that has gotten a plethora of bad reviews on such websites?
Yes, doctor review sites have the power to either boost your dental business, or severely hamper it, and in worst case scenario destroy it.
We live in the digital internet age where all the info you need is only a few seconds and a single Google search away.
If you want more business you must be vigilant and proactive about upkeeping your reputation. In other words, you need to claim profiles on the trusted doctor review sites on the web.
For starters, I recommend you target Healthgrades, Vitals, and Dr. Oogle.
The first 2 are general doctor review sites that also feature dentist’s profiles, while Dr. Oogle focuses solely on the dental industry.
It’s a must for you to be featured there.
3) Online Reputation: Get Positive Reviews
This tip goes hand in hand with the previous one. It’s not enough to just have profiles open on top doctor review sites.
Instead, you need to populate them with good reviews.
I don’t recommend you do something underhanded such as paying for fake reviews. That usually comes back to haunt those who did it.
Instead, I’ll give you a simple, evergreen formula that always works.
First, actually give excellent service. Yeah, no surprises there. Go above and beyond in delighting your customers as this will get them talking positively about you to their friends and family,+ they’ll be pumped to leave you a positive review on a doctor rating site.
Especially if you politely nudge them and maybe incentivize them with a coupon or a discount on their next visit.
Second, ask them to spend a minute and leave an honest review on a doctor rating site.
Don’t tell them to say good things about you because that’s very off putting. They just had an awesome experience with your dental practice, so of course they’ll say nice things about it.
Instead, simply ask them to share their experience and they often will.
And if they say something like:
“My experience with X dentist was 98% good. I wish I could say it was 100% and perfect but I can’t because this Y thing bothered me. It’s no big deal, I know I’m nitpicking but that’s how I feel”.
A genuine review like that one reeks of honesty and potential customers will gobble it up like ice cream.
4) Use Video to Your Advantage
Using videos is a super powerful way to build social proof.
Here are some ideas:
On your site’s homepage, you can have a mini-interview with a client where you talk with them about their experience with your practice, what problem they had, and how they solved it.
While you’re talking, the video will show the before and after screenshots.
This is powerful and video testimonials from real people and ex-clients would work well to convince those who’re on the fence about your office.
And don’t worry, while most folks are shy about their mouth problems, ask enough of them and you’re guaranteed to get a yes.
Second, on your “about us” page you can have videos showing all the awesome equipment you’re using to restore the dental health of your patients.
And finally, you can have interviews with your main doctors talking about dentist stuff. I say “talking about dental stuff” because that’s the point. Most normal people are totally illiterate when it comes to dentistry and they don’t need to understand what a dentist is talking about.
But they do need to see their potential new dentist talk with confidence about how they did X Y Z and how they got awesome results with it.
This builds massive trust.
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Image 2 image source
5) Use Instagram to Show off Your Results
Dentistry and Instagram. Who thought they didn’t match?
You did?
Well, you were wrong.
I don’t recommend you take pictures of patients during operations as those will probably have lots of blood on them. And might also be a serious HIPAA violation.
But I do recommend you have pictures of your smiling team, of your delighted patients after they’ve successfully finished their treatment, and of your shiny modern equipment.
Finally, the real power of using Instagram for dental promotion comes from the “tagged” section.
Invent a hashtag for your brand for example #brandXsmile and encourage your customers to show off their result by tagging you and using the hashtag..
This is powerful proof of what you can do and will convince many to give you their trust.
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6) Use Quora to Show Expertise
Quora is a hugely popular website with millions of visitors per month.
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There, questions abound on any topic imaginable and you can use Quora to get your name and business in front of people who never heard of you, who want to learn about what you do, and perhaps where you’re located so they can schedule an appointment.
Here’s how to get the most out of Quora.
First, let’s say you’re a cosmetic dentist, and you specialize in outdoing nature in giving people beautiful smiles.
So, you first need to go to Quora and find all questions related to cosmetic dentistry.
Then you need to answer them. When giving answers, be detailed, unique and use lots of images from your office to explain how you do X, Y and Z. Also link freely to blog content on your website that supports and expands on what you’re saying in your Quora answer.
Remember, people don’t read dentistry information because it’s a fun pastime for them.
They read it because they have a problem. Maybe at that moment they’re in pain and are feverishly searching for the best dentists that can help them.
So demonstrate your knowledge and don’t skimp out on quality answers
Second, in your author byline beside your name say you’re a dentist and (this is crucial) specify your location.
For example, you’re a dentist in Miami, Los Angeles or New York.
You want people reading your answers to know if they can reach you quickly or not.
Quora as a website is present globally so your potential audience will also be from all parts of the world, but many will be relatively close to you and if you impress them enough with your answers, they might choose to give you a call.
Finally, in your profile, you can link to your website. So do it and also list the address, office hours, workdays, etc. Make it insanely easy to find you and contact you.
Pro tip: Quora marketing appears slow when just starting out, but if you can crank out 4-5 answers per day for a few months, you will have a real promotional asset on your hands.
So don’t give up if you get no leads for the first few weeks. Like with every other legitimate form of marketing, it takes time and patience to see results.
7) User-Friendly Website
Seems basic, I know, but it needs to be said for all those who think they can go without a website in the 21 century.
You can’t and you need to stop trying ASAP. It’s so easy and simple to create a simple WordPress site to showcase your practice online that it’s a disgrace not to do it.
If you’re still unconvinced about the need to have a business website, Google the names of your local competitors and see what comes up.
If you find them, that’ll convince you to invest a little bit of time and energy into building a solid online presence, and a home base.
8) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Local SERPs (search engine results pages) are relatively noncompetitive, but that doesn’t mean you can do zero SEO and expect to rank for your target queries.
You still need to do basic SEO and the good news is that it’s pretty easy
On-page SEO does most of the heavy lifting in local SEO, especially in uncompetitive areas.
So make sure you optimize your website’s title tag and homepage by including relevant key phrases in your location.
For example, if you’re a dentist in Boston, you’d write:
- Boston dentist;
- Dentist in Boston;
- Dental practice in greater Boston area;
- Best dentist in Cambridge, Boston;
- Etc.
When it comes to off-page SEO for these uncompetitive SERPs, you only need a little bit of link juice to speed up the ranking process.
I recommend guest posting on a few sites from your niche, or from related niches.
As a bonus point, by guest posting on relevant, high trafficked publications, you’ll be getting your name and business in front of interested eyeballs, and this too can lead to referrals and new business opportunities.
9) Dental Content Marketing
Do potential customers have questions to ask you?
I’m sure they do, a whole ton of them.
And they probably send you those questions via email, right?
And you spend countless hours responding and giving one-to-one help.
Right?
That’s noble of you, but it’s also a total waste of your valuable time.
Why not instead help everyone at once, and forever?
I’m talking about forming a blog within your business site and then filling that blog with lots and lots of useful information.
Not only does this help your future customer but it also demonstrates your expertise which will make it easier to attract new clients.
How about an example?
I searched for “what is a sinus lift” in Google and besides household names like Colgate, I also got served a blog post from this site about sinus lifts.
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Image source- Google
So I clicked and saw a very detailed article (pros, cons, cost, procedure tutorial, everything) about this common dental procedure.
I’m convinced this doctor knows what they’re doing and if I was ever in need of sinus augmentation, their name would be the first to pop up in my mind.
10) Do Something Press-Worthy
A large reason why you aren’t swarmed with customers all the time is that most people in your neighborhood don’t know you exist.
Sad reality, but true.
However, if your practice got featured in your local newspapers, and nearly everyone reads those, then you’d quickly get on everyone’s radar and more business would quickly follow suit.
Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be expensive, you can do a guerrilla marketing campaign that will get people talking.
I’m sure you know, but just in case… Guerrilla marketing is when you market your business in a nonconventional way so that everyone exposed to your campaigns is first flabbergasted by it, and then realize the genius of it, and then is seriously warmed up to your brand
Don’t know where to start? Read this article for some inspiration.
11) Waze Ads
In case you don’t know, Waze is a GPS navigation software app developed by Google that works on mobiles and tablets that have GPS support.
Waze gives users turn-by-turn support and detailed travel and route details.
And it’s possible for local businesses to advertise on Waze
Potential customers that are near your business will see your business’s digital billboard jump out on their screen, and then they can either navigate immediately or save the location for later.
12) Google Remarketing Ads
Remarketing is often referred to “as easy money” in the advertising industry.
It’s because you’re re-engaging with leads that are already lukewarm and don’t need a lot of convincing to in turn re-engage with your business.
You can remarket to users who visited your site on both Google and Facebook.
Facebook is cheaper but has a smaller audience, while Google’s audience pool is much larger, their remarketing campaigns cost more, but they also send more relevant traffic.
I advise you to experiment with both, but definitely try and you will be positively surprised.
Conclusion
Don’t sleep on these dental marketing ideas, as it’s powerful stuff.
These top12 dental promotion ideas will put you on the top (pun intended) of the dentist-to-visit list for many a neighbor in your neighborhood
And once you follow my advice and achieve sparkling results, don’t forget to award the writer of this blog post with a free checkup.
He’ll be most grateful:)
