Perfecting Your Dental Marketing Strategy
Is your appointment book looking a little too open? In a crowded market, making your dental practice stand out can feel like a daunting task. But what if the game plan for attracting a steady stream of new patients was simpler than you think?
In theory, the game plan for getting new patients is straightforward: gain visibility in front of your target patients, educate them on the problems you solve, and have them choose you for their needs. However, to get this right, you first need to figure out your niche.
However, making this work isn’t about shouting the loudest. It’s about speaking to the right people. And, the first and most crucial step in doing this is defining your niche. Once you identify the patients most likely to respond to that niche, you can create a marketing strategy that directly targets them.
To help you get started, we’re covering some of the best tactics for different types of practices and providing answers to the crucial questions on every practice owner’s mind.
For Medicaid-Driven and Low-Cost Dental Practices
If your practice is in a low-income area, you likely see more patients who need routine dental cleanings and tooth fillings and live near your office. These patients aren’t looking for all the bells and whistles, just accessible, affordable, and essential dental care. Their main concern? Finding out if the practice is affordable, close to their home, and if they accept Medicaid.
Another thing to know: The vast majority of patients in low-income areas use the internet to search for nearby dental practices. This means that the best dental marketing strategy for your practice is using pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
An advantage of using paid ads, such as Google Search ads, is that you don’t need to have a high organic visibility, a long digital history, or an active social media presence to see results. With this strategy, you pay for the clicks on your ads rather than the impressions. And, your ads can be filtered by location, age, and keywords.
When people search “dentists in my area,” your ad, with a link to your landing page, will appear on the top or bottom of the search results.
For High-End or Fee-for-Service Practices
The patients your practice serves demand quality care and flawless results. They want the best of the best dentists and oral surgeons to perfect their smiles, and they’re not necessarily looking for the closest and most affordable dentist. Their approach to choosing a dentist is more research and referral-based.
These patients invest in the top-rated dentists—whether that dentist is based in their neighborhood or beyond. They are reading reviews and scrolling through before and after photos of your porcelain dental veneers and dental implants. Because these patients want to work with industry experts, they care about three things when choosing a dentist: credibility, personality, and reputation.
To showcase your brand’s unique value, we recommend leaning heavily into a video marketing strategy.
Why video marketing? Visual storytelling can make a potential patient like, know, and trust you and therefore want to work with you. It also helps you create a strong emotional connection between you and potential patients, so they can feel like they’ve already met you before stepping a foot inside your office!
Talk about your favorite patient cases in a brief video. Have a patient share their smile transformation in a patient testimonial video. Highlight your staff talking about why they enjoy working at your practice. Content creation of any kind is effective, but video marketing is one of the most powerful ways to show your personal brand as a dentist and your practice’s unique value. Then, post these dental videos on several social media platforms, such as YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.
Remember, since patients don’t mind driving to see someone they consider the expert in crowns or veneers, you need to demonstrate who you are, what makes you the best, and what past patients say about you.
For Pediatric and Orthodontic Practices
Community, community, community. For you, it’s all about connecting with families in your community! Since your patients are usually families and children, it’s important to establish yourself as the orthodontist parents take their kids to for healthy smiles. This means you need to get in with the parents in your neighborhood.
Before you can sell them on your pediatric dental services, you have to sell them on your warmth, friendliness, hygiene, and excellent work.
Establishing trust with the parents of your patients is the key to boosting your reputation. But, how do you connect with them? Well, they’re hanging out on local Facebook groups for moms and neighborhood social networks such as NextDoor. Be active in these social groups. Once you connect with a few, a ripple effect will occur as they start to refer your pediatric practice to other moms. Word-of-mouth marketing works wonders for orthodontists!
Usually, each group will have rules for when a business can post advertisements. When allowed, we run contests or giveaways for our clients with prizes such as Kendra Scott Jewelry or a gift card to a local business. To enter the giveaway, participants might share the dental practice’s flyer, tag a friend, or post their best Halloween costume to their Instagram account and tag the dental practice. These types of posts and giveaways build brand awareness and bring new traffic to your online presence, making them a great return on investment.
The Best Strategy for Every Kind of Dental Practice
The most effective long-term marketing strategy, no matter the kind of practice you run, should prioritize building genuine human connections. Our unique approach to SEO, which we’ve called StoryEO, prioritizes this by using authentic storytelling to convert website visitors into loyal patients. Your long-term marketing strategy should include StoryEO efforts so you can invest less in the long run.
Your Practice is Unique. Your Marketing Should Be, Too.
Every dentist we’ve worked with wants a fully-booked schedule. But while a University Park-based prosthodontist and a Medicaid-driven dentist might both share a desire for a crowded waiting room, that’s where their similarities end. At least when it comes to dental marketing.
If you’re looking for a custom, data-driven approach to marketing your practice, look no further. Contact us directly for advice tailored to your practice’s needs.