What strategies do the best dental marketing companies use?

When it comes to marketing your dental practice, hire an agency that deeply understands the industry, your practice, and your patients. The best dental marketing companies take a holistic approach to drive new patients through your office’s doors. That means, before getting your team photoshoot ready for headshots and marketing videos, they consider other aspects […]

dental marketing report being presented to a client

When it comes to marketing your dental practice, hire an agency that deeply understands the industry, your practice, and your patients. The best dental marketing companies take a holistic approach to drive new patients through your office’s doors. That means, before getting your team photoshoot ready for headshots and marketing videos, they consider other aspects of your practice such as your business operations. They listen to and collaborate with your team. They understand that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to dental marketing. Before selecting a dental marketing agency, know what strategies the best dental marketing companies use.

Below, we share four telltale signs that you’re working with a good marketing agency. 

Do they integrate operations with marketing?

One of the first things the best dental marketing companies look at is your practice’s operations. It might not seem like it at first glance, but operations have everything to do with dental marketing. Your team’s customer service should be top-notch so that you can impress patients with your friendliness, compassion, and professionalism. All of the Google ads in the world won’t make up for bad customer service. 

An underestimated marketing tool: your front desk person

That is to say, the attitude of the person at the front desk can make a huge difference in your marketing results. The receptionist is the first impression of your dental business. She or he greets patients in the waiting room, answers the phone, and schedules appointments in your preferred time slots. In a sense, the front desk person represents your dental office. If your dental receptionist seems bored or agitated when answering the phone, marketing will flop.  

Of course, receptionists also perform a host of other operational tasks: office management, scheduling, and completing health insurance forms. With so much on their plate, sometimes attracting new patients and booking appointments might be the last thing on their minds. But ignoring just how significant their role is in establishing your brand’s image is a mistake. 

A good dental marketing agency might offer feedback on ways to refine your operations when such an improvement might make your marketing more effective. For example, they might suggest that you incentivize your dental receptionist on patient growth. Rewarding your receptionist based on the number of patients they book can motivate them to greet each caller or visitor with a friendly tone. (This approach has pros and cons, so work with your agency to know if it’s a good strategy for you.) They might implement a tool like CallRail to help you understand how digital marketing efforts are converting to phone calls–and appointments booked.

In conclusion, operations and marketing work together in dental practices, and the best dental marketing companies understand how. 

Do they get to know your dental practice?

Before running Google ads, redesigning your website, and filming patient testimonials, a good agency gets to the heart of your practice. They will ask questions to learn more about your brand’s voice, patients, and goals. Why would a patient visit your practice versus another one down the street? What about your practice is special enough to talk about? 

If you don’t know what your brand’s unique value proposition is, they will help you by asking questions:

  • What do you want to be known for?
  • Do you receive compliments from your patients? What are they?
  • Which of these ads reflects your style?
  • Are you serious or funny?
  • Emojis or no emojis in your social copy?
  • Holistic healthcare or cutting-edge technology? 

All of these things tell a story about how you want to be seen, and what kind of patients you want to attract. A good dental marketing agency will also build your dental website around your responses to these questions as opposed to creating a generic website. 

In short, defining what makes you different from your competitors lets you develop a foolproof marketing plan of attack. The best dental marketing companies use this information to share a message about your practice, to learn who your patients are, and to target them. Look for a marketer that tailors their strategies to your brand.  

Do they collaborate and communicate with your team? 

Imagine paying a company to engineer a marketing strategy for you and never seeing or hearing from them again. Then…voila! You have a new website, blog, and social media accounts, without having to hop on any calls or monthly meetings with them.

It might sound perfect for a busy dentist–until you realize that none of the marketing is “you.” It is clean and professional, but there’s none of your personality in the cadence of the copy or the style of the graphics. Moreover, you’re not attracting your ideal patients. A laissez-faire attitude to dental marketing is bound to be ineffective.

A marketing agency’s job is to amplify your dental practice’s voice and get your message to the world. It is a collaboration, after all. Paying someone to take over marketing any involvement on your part won’t work. For marketing to be successful, the marketing agency and the client need to be in communication. When this type of synergy happens, it can lead to other advantages.

We recently worked with a client whose dental receptionist was instrumental in informing our local marketing strategy for the practice. She had grown up in the area near the office and knew the community and the hangout spots. She pointed us to key organizations and businesses that our dental client could partner with or sponsor for community events and ad placement opportunities. Had we not gotten to know the practice and the people there, we would have overlooked the valuable insight she brought that helped us drive our strategy.

Are their marketing strategies effective for you?

Many dental marketing agencies jump straight into website development. This is often a big-ticket, time-consuming marketing item for dentists. However, it’s not always the first thing an agency needs to tackle to be effective.

Instead of spending the first months of a marketing engagement designing a new website, take a step back to evaluate.

A great agency uses the initial months to learn about you and audit your existing materials:

What marketing techniques are working for your practice given your location, your patient demographics, and other factors?

What’s not working?

How are patients learning about your practice?

When it’s time to address the website question, there are a few things you can do before trashing a website and starting anew. For example:

  • Through analyzing your statistics, you can see what areas of your dental website people are currently performing well. Are people watching certain videos or visiting certain pages? A great dental marketing agency preserves the things patients care about.
  • What needs to be improved? Functionality? SEO? Load speed? Photography? Branding? What steps need to be taken to address these features?

The best dental marketing company looks before they leap. They spend time getting to know you, your practice, and your patients so that they can come up with the most effective long-term marketing strategies.  

Hiring a Dental Marketing Agency

So you’ve finally decided to hire a marketing agency. Maybe your appointments are stagnant. You are not seeing the revenue you’d hoped for this quarter. Or, perhaps you want consistent marketing results instead of your marketing being hit or miss. Regardless of your reasoning, you’ve made a great decision! Contact us today to learn how we can help you grow your dental business.