Digital dentist marketing is essential for dental practices to grow. Digital dental marketing can introduce your facility to new patients, helps you keep your current patients, and spreads brand awareness. Furthermore, with the right digital marketing strategies, you can target the audience you are trying to reach for your dental website.
While traditional marketing can be helpful, it is not nearly as effective as digital marketing. Digital dental marketing allows prospective patients, and current patients to have access to resources regarding your dental business at any time of the day.
A marketing postcard that is thrown into mailboxes most likely doesn’t make it very far before it is thrown away. Digital dental marketing is more effective than traditional dental marketing because prospective patients are utilizing the internet to find the best dentist with the best services. Your dental website can reach your intended audience and can provide patients with important information after hours. Continue to read this article to review a beginner’s guide to digital dental marketing.
Digital Dental Marketing for Beginners
Digital dental marketing is a huge commitment because of the amount of time and effort it requires. However, it can largely grow your dental practice. Prior to beginning digital dental marketing, follow these steps.
Define Your Brand
Consider what makes your dental brand unique. Is it because of your work ethic, dedication to patients, or friendly environment? Defining your dental brand will help you figure out what type of audience you would like to target, what type of content should be on your website, and who your competitors are. Defining your brand may also help you decide on a website design because you get a better understanding of what your targeted audience is looking for while browsing the web.
Identify Your Targeted Audience
It is very likely you have identified who your targeted audience is. It is also very likely you haven’t considered who your targeted audience is because you have loyal patients and have never considered expanding your list of patients. How can you expand your practice and exactly who are you specifically trying to reach when it comes to new patients? Is it a specific age group, patients in a specific city? This will matter when it comes to choosing the right marketing strategies.
After you have identified your targeted audience, consider what they commonly ask, what dental services they are typically interested in or in need of, and any other common dental needs. Then consider how you can best reach them through digital strategies. Do they watch videos, search on social media channels, or jump straight to websites? Additionally, consider what content would be most engaging for them.
To take it a step further, conduct extensive audience research to see if there are other audience groups you can be targeting, but would have never thought of. To do this, research competitors, and review what tactics they are using and how patients are responding.
Learn the Language of Digital Marketing
When entering the world of digital dental marketing, you will quickly realize how many different terms and words are used. It is important to learn the lingo so you aren’t completely lost when first starting. Additionally, learning digital marketing terms can introduce you to new and effective marketing methods for your dental practice.
Research Your Competitors
As previously mentioned, researching your competitors will give you insight into what is working and what isn’t when it comes to digital marketing for your dental practice. Closely consider the content they are creating, the social media platforms they are utilizing, how they are responding and interacting with patients, etc. Do not steal the ideas of your competitors. Instead, learn from them, and adapt their strategies to make it your own.
Create a Dental Marketing Plan
Once you have crossed off the above-listed preparation tools, you can create your dental marketing plan. Set realistic goals for your dental business and set a specific date of when you would like to review the plan and see how effective the marketing strategies are, and how far your dental business has come since implementing digital marketing strategies. Ensure you also choose a goal for your budget as digital marketing can get pricey.
Digital Dentistry Marketing Essential Components
Now that we have reviewed the steps to take before getting started on digital marketing for your dental practice, we can now review effective digital marketing strategies for your website. All of these digital marketing components are just as important as the others. They work together to effectively market your dental practice.
Website Optimization
Creating a website for your dental practice is the first step of effective digital marketing. There are many other strategies to implement into your website in order for it to reach your intended audience. To reach your intended audience, your website needs dental SEO keywords, site speed, and a user-friendly environment. All of these website components are essential and will allow search engines to recognize your site and display it for prospective patients.
Online Presence
Enhance your online presence to increase the number of times prospective patients come across your name and dental practice. Of course, you can be present on social media platforms and your own dental website. Additionally, there are many other websites to increase your online presence and connect with new patients.
Research where your targeted audience is most digitally present and make sure you and your practice are also there. Get listed on relevant dental and healthcare directories and local directories. Ensure your information is accurate and up to date. Accuracy and consistency can increase your chances of ranking on local search engines.
Valuable Content
Regularly posting content is very important for dental SEO. Post content on your social media accounts, but more importantly, post content on your dental website. Posting valuable, high-quality content is crucial for online growth. Engaging content will help with your online presence as well as your keyword rankings.
Ranking for specific words and terms can help your targeted audience find your dental website and further their patient relationship with you. Additionally, following a content schedule will allow other businesses to find you and mention or reference you within their business or website.
Optimize Your Local SEO
Working in the dental field most likely means that most of your patients are local. Though dental patients rarely travel to another state for dental services, most stay within the city they live in for their dental needs. For this reason, local search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for dental businesses.
Local SEO allows dental practices to be listed as a search result for searchers who search nearby on Google. For example, if a prospective patient in Boulder, Colorado searches “Dentist near me” a list of results will display. The list contains dental offices that are nearby the area that the searcher was in when they entered a search query. This list of dental search results is indeed closest to the searcher, however, not all dental practices that are nearby will display. Only the dental offices that are nearby the searcher and use local SEO strategies will display.
Local SEO can be less competitive as you are no longer competing will all dental offices, but rather a select few. Local dental SEO can be a very effective marketing tool that can increase the number of dental patients you have.
Online Patient Reviews
Online patient reviews also play a huge role in digital dental marketing. Online patient reviews can help your dental facility attract new patients. When prospective patients search for the best dental office, they go straight to their reviews to see how the experience for former patients was. Online searchers trust patient reviews and will decide if they will pick your dental office based on reviews.
With online reputation management and positive reviews, you will begin to notice your list of patients gradually increase. Encourage patients to submit online reviews regarding their services at your dental facility, and manage the reviews you have by solving the problems to the negative ones and responding to the positive ones.
Get Started with Digital Dental Marketing
Dental digital marketing is complicated and will continue to grow and evolve. Though it is complicated, it can largely grow your dental practice. If you try digital marketing and find it is too complicated, consider hiring a digital marketing agency that specialized in healthcare practices, such as dentistry digital marketing.