Dentists’ Marketing: Top 5 Dental Marketing Techniques

Five winning techniques to enhance patient acquisition and retention.

Dentists help us maintain good oral health. Although 95% think it is an integral part of one’s well-being, almost 80% of all Americans suffer from gum disease. Yet, less than 60% visit the dentist at least once a year. It means more than 40% of the adult population may need some convincing to become a dental client. Dentists’ marketing can help in this objective as well as grow your profession.

What is Dentists’ Marketing?

As we have noted, there is still a good percentage of adults that your dental practice can tap, which you can with dentists’ marketing. Dentists’ marketing is a marketing strategy employed by dental practitioners to attract new patients and keep them. Like digital marketing for any industry, dentists’ marketing also uses a multi-channel method that includes email, web, social media, and mobile, among others.

While many strategies are employed in dentists’ marketing, we picked five of the best you can use, whether you have just started your dental career or have been in operation for quite some time. By attracting more patients, you are also promoting oral hygiene altogether, which can only benefit customers.

1. Turn up your website. Before you even embark on your marketing campaigns, take a good look at your website. Does it represent your profession very well? Maybe your homepage needs a makeover? With fleeting trends and visually-oriented users, it seems imperative to refresh your web design after every few years. You know how users are impressionable when they first stumble upon your site. It is not only about aesthetics; you would want the website to have smooth navigation, fast loading pages, and be easy to use overall.

When a visitor lands on your site and finds that even a small image or short video takes minutes to load, you have already lost your customer. Hence, having a rock-solid web foundation can already make a difference in how turning your leads into conversions can be much easier.

• Share personalized content on social media. As most of you may have noticed, social media already makes so much noise. Business accounts constantly battle for your attention, promoting their products and services using the most enticing creatives. As a business, how do you break through the circus? One simple way to do dentists’ marketing is to get up close and personal with your audience.

What social media has done to break the barrier between the creator and the market has opened up elusive personalities and specialized knowledge. Presenting your industry behind the scenes allows your audience a sneak peek or first dibs on your product. You then become not only more visible but also more relatable and trustworthy. For instance, you can show the work behind veneers that look natural when worn. Or how a short clip of a painless tooth extraction encourages others who are apprehensive about it.

• Consider SEM. The dental industry is highly competitive in many aspects. In dentists’ marketing, you have a tug of war over keywords with thousands of other dental clinics in your geographical era. So how do you one-up your contemporaries? Investing in paid advertisement can. While organic traffic is most ideal, the truth is that it is a challenging endeavor. Search Engine Marketing or SEM focuses on paid marketing tactics such as Pay-Per-Click advertising or PPC via Google Ads, Facebook ads, etc., which enable them to capitalize on a bigger market of potential patients. Google Ads, for instance, can help dentists get faster and more targeted results than organic SEO.
• Offer next-level services. A dentist’s marketing strategy that does not necessarily require a lot of investment is enhancing your delivery of services. Nowadays, people opt for remote transactions out of convenience. One way is through teledentistry which uses audio and video communication during a consultation with a patient. Teledentistry broadens your reach since you can cater to patients outside your locality when providing diagnoses when they can’t visit your clinic. For instance, an existing patient is temporarily relocated to another country. Instead of this patient going to another dentist near them, they will still prefer your services, especially if it is something that teledentistry can address.
• Promote patient loyalty. Some marketing endeavors are too honed in on acquiring new clients that they take existing patients for granted. While the acquisition of clients should be a continuous process, current patients are the ones bringing profit to your business by availing of upselling and cross-selling services. To boost their business, you can offer a loyalty program that provides discounts on more expensive treatments. At the same time, you can include a patient referral system which can also be a good source of strong leads. Some people would prefer taking a friend’s recommendation over an ad they saw online.

Planning Your Dentists’ Marketing Strategies

When it comes to dentists’ marketing, there is no such thing as winging it; you’ve got to lay out your plan, which will serve as your guiding light from start to finish.

Here are some elements you need to consider:

• Your market. Ask yourself these questions: Whom are you marketing to? Who is your competition? What is your unique selling proposition?

For example, you wish to promote a new dental technology that can whiten teeth in one quick procedure. You are likely to target young adults who are more conscious about their looks. Then, check out other dental clinics that young adults go to for teeth whitening, what procedures they use, their price points, etc. This comparison can help you decide how to proceed with your marketing ploy.

• SMART goals. When you have a goal, there is a target. Smart goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely, concepts that are pretty easy to understand and make any goal worthwhile. With the previous example in mind, the target is to get new customers for the new teeth whitening procedure. Make sure this goal observes the SMART criteria.
• Budget. Aside from your goals, the amount you can allocate for your dentists’ marketing will depend on your revenue, profitability of your chosen strategy, location, and previous results (if any). While establishing your budget, you also have to have a bit of flexibility in case other opportunities come up that should not be missed.
• Dentists’ marketing strategies you will use. The tactics you will execute are dependent on your budget. So, if you plan to improve your technical SEO, ensure your budget can accommodate it. Other strategies will also require defining your channels (email, social media, etc.). Map them out in advance and use them as a framework. This calendar will help you stay aligned with your marketing plan.
• Results. This part is where you try to see if there is a difference between the before and the after. Did you get more web traffic when you enhanced your web design and made it faster? How about dental inquiries? More importantly, did you achieve the SMART goals you set out? Make sure you have defined the metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) based on whether your strategies have worked or not.