Using effective Dental Digital Marketing techniques produces a strong online presence for your business essential to attracting new patients and growing your dental practice, but how do you stand out amid your competition? As someone who’s dedicated your time, energy, and money to your dental care, dental digital marketing pushes your practice forward, but the environment of today’s digital age is constantly changing. This guide’s here to help keep you up to date on some of the latest, most reliable techniques that deliver results for new and growing practices:
What’s Changed With Dental Digital Marketing?
The last few years of marketing have expanded greatly, making the dental digital marketing landscape ever more complex. With the introduction of various new techniques, these features have become part of the toolsets of many web designers and social media marketers looking to improve their client’s brand awareness and conversion rates. Here are some of the most impactful trends as of late:
- Telehealth and Teledentistry: Telehealth services have been widely adopted across various healthcare sectors. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, teledentistry has become a vital part of many dental digital marketing strategies, as they offer convenience and accessibility for patients to consult with dental professionals from the comforts of home. These services have also expanded the reach of dental practices, allowing them to attract patients outside their local areas and meet the evolving needs of patients.
- Multilingual Advertising: Multilingual advertising has become a prominent trend in recent years as it works to acknowledge the diverse and multicultural nature of our world. Multilingual advertising has also helped foster trust among patients from different cultural backgrounds and has allowed many dental practices to overcome language barriers to make healthcare more accessible for people.
- Video Marketing: The upheaval of social media platforms such as TikTok has made video marketing an ideal form of sharing educational content, patient testimonials, and other ways to help capture the attention of potential patients. Visual content has become more favored online, and many dental digital marketing campaigns now work to incorporate videos that can convey the practice’s services and trustworthiness.
- Artificial Intelligence and Chatbots: Most of all, the advancement of artificial intelligence with the introduction of LLMs such as ChatGPT has become a highly universal, valuable tool for businesses within the healthcare sector. AI-powered chatbots can now effectively answer patient inquiries, schedule appointments, and automate other valuable systems to help free up dental practices to focus on more complex tasks.
The Core Functions of Any Good Dental Digital Marketing Strategy
While the latest trends continue to thrive amid our ever-changing climate, dentists looking to start their expenditure towards improving patient retention for their practice should always go back to basics.
Website Optimization
Website optimization is a vital aspect of any dental digital marketing strategy. A well-optimized website serves as an online greeting place for your practice, giving your patients the impressions you want them to have. The goal of creating a website is to make it visually appealing, user-friendly, and highly functional.
- Modern, User-Friendly Design: Your website should have an intuitive, easy-to-navigate design, with well-organized service pages and a clear, uncluttered layout. Your website should reflect your brand’s imagery and color scheme, all of which work to create a welcoming and professional look.
- Mobile Responsiveness: Most of your web traffic will come from mobile services, so your website must be mobile-friendly. This means that your website should look and function well on devices of all sizes.
- High-Quality Content: Content is your key to dental digital marketing. Your practice will only succeed if your website informs and educates people. Use blogs, videos, and infographics to provide valuable information about dental health, treatments, and tips to improve your website.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is one of the most reliable methods to improve your website’s visibility in search results. Use relevant keywords, optimize meta tags, and ensure your content maintains its quality.
- Keyword optimization: Keywords are specific words that people search to look for specific sources of information. By tracking keywords relevant to your business, having relevant keywords throughout your website can help optimize and improve your website’s relevance to your audience.
- Backlinks: Backlinks help users on other websites return to your website. Also known as inbound links, they help redirect users to your website and reinforce its sense of authority on topics.
- Local SEO practices: What’s most relevant to your audience is likely local. Local SEO keywords are essential for dental practices as they help provide your potential patients with your contact information.
Social Media Marketing
Social media remains the best way to date for dental practices to connect with their audiences and build brand awareness. Every social media platform has its structure for engagement, and dental clinics can engage with their communities and attract new patients by choosing the right platform to work with.
- Platforms: Social media platforms such as X(Formerly Known as Twitter), Facebook, and LinkedIn all have unique ways of approaching storytelling and engagement. Whether you choose one for visual aesthetics, to provide quick updates, or to tell a story about your brand, each platform will provide detailed, informative content to your audience.
- Organic and paid strategies: Organic strategies involve more manual labor to ensure your practice across all platforms is consistent and engaging. In contrast, paid strategies work to target audiences through demographics and advertising campaigns. These options work in tandem with each other to produce ways to reach potential patients.
- Engaging content: Engaging content can appear in many formats, including visual content, story-telling, and interactive posts, all of which work to humanize your practice and make your content relatable.
Email Marketing
Email marketing can establish more personalized communication with your patients and help promote your services. Excellent email marketing campaigns revolve around robust email lists, helping to engage subscribers in newsletters and promotions.
- Building Email Lists: Curating your email lists can involve multiple methods, including opt-in forms on your website, in-office signup sheets, and using your social media platforms to invite followers to subscribe to your lists. Gradually building your email lists over time, you can establish more personalized newsletters and content for your patients.
- Newsletter Campaigns: Creating schedules for newsletters can help provide your patients with news about your practice, new services, and changes in office hours. Most of all, newsletters can be an excellent way to provide valuable information about oral health, new research in dentistry, and answers to common dental questions. Using your subscriber’s name and tailoring their content based on interactions with your practice can help build stronger relationships with your patients.
- Promotions and Offers: Another way to build up your email lists is by sending out special offers, discounts, and other types of offers to your subscribers. Use seasons and holidays to create timely promotions, and encourage patients to refer your practice to friends and family through email to grow your patient base.
Pay-Per-Click and Google Ads
Pay-per-click advertising, specifically with Google Ads, is a potent tool for dental practices looking to increase their visibility online. As an online advertising model, it reinforces visits to your site every time the ad is clicked on. While you pay a fee for each advertisement clicked on, these ads will redirect your visitors to your website and encourage visitors to learn about your practice or call to make an appointment.
- Targeting and Optimization: Advertising works best when it’s targeted toward the audience you want to engage with, and there are methods for optimizing these campaigns. Geotargeting works to display your ads to users in your specific geographic area, and these advertisements can be monitored using ad scheduling methods and performance tracking with Google Ads.
- Budgeting and Bidding Strategies: Determining the budget for your PPC campaign can help you control the budget for your dental digital marketing, and bidding strategies help further expand your options for controlling how much you spend, such as cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM).
- Remarketing: Remarketing can help reach individuals who have previously visited your website but have yet to take action to schedule an appointment. These ads help remind previous visitors of your services and help encourage them to return to your website.
Reputation Management and Reviews
Reputation management and handling reviews directly influence your practice’s perception. Through reputation management, it can impact how much you acquire patients and retain them throughout the entirety of your business.
- Actively Seeking Patient Reviews: Encourage satisfied patients to leave reviews on platforms like Google, Yelp, and Facebook. This can be done post-appointment through follow-up emails or in-office signage.
- Responding to Reviews: Always respond to reviews, both positive and negative. A thoughtful response to any negative review can demonstrate your commitment to patient satisfaction.
- Professionalism: Keep responses professional and empathetic. Acknowledge any issues raised and offer to resolve them offline.
Most of all, beyond all these tips, building strong patient relationships is the cornerstone of any successful dental practice. Leveraging these dental digital marketing techniques is essential to attracting new patients and ensuring your practice thrives. Dental digital marketing allows you to create an online digital presence that matches your in-office experiences and helps you form the backbone of your practice. Discover how to identify the best dental marketing company for your practice.
