Something to smile about: 7 dental marketing strategies
All businesses need customers to have a smile on their face. And that’s why you need the best dental marketing strategies for yours.
One great thing that you have going for yourself is that there is always a need for dental services, no matter where you are. The demand will always be there. Now the trick is to attract potential patients and make sure they choose you over the competition.
A dental practice is generally considered successful if it attracts up to 50 patients per month. So if that is your goal, how are you going to come up with that number and maybe even beyond? Like we said above, you need some good dental marketing strategies. What is it then!
First of all, people need to know about your dental practice. If they’re looking for solutions to their dental problems, they need to know about you. Once potential clients learn that your practice exists, expect a surge in business. Then they need to understand what makes you different and better than the competition. This is where our dental marketing strategies come in.
So let’s take a look at the following 7 proven dental marketing strategies. Pick one or even more that you think can help your own practice thrive and attract more clients than ever before.
7 dental marketing strategies that work to attract new patients
1. Who is your audience?
You need to know your audience. This is the very first step in creating successful dental marketing strategies. You need to identify your audience in order to target them correctly.
Do you want to become more of a family dentist who offers affordable products and services? Or do you want to be more of a high-end dentist who caters to a higher paying clientele?
You need to know your audience. This is the very first step in creating successful dental marketing strategies. You need to identify your audience in order to target them correctly.
Do you want to become more of a family dentist who offers affordable products and services? Or do you want to be more of a high-end dentist who caters to a higher paying clientele?
You have to decide from the start so you can plan your dental marketing strategies accordingly. Although you can use various types of long-term customers, it is wise to target a specific audience when you initially develop your dental marketing strategies. A good example of your audience is learning to keep in mind that women made up more than 90% of each tooth socket buying decision.
So if you are targeting families, this information indicates you to target your marketing efforts with moms! This is huge and shows how a specific segment of your audience can have power. But again, this is just one example of understanding your audience. To be truly accurate in identifying your specific audience you need to do some research and reflection. Identifying your target market is a crucial step in developing your dental marketing strategies. It tells you who to target and guide your approach on how to market them.
2. Know your competition
Just as important as knowing your audience is knowing your competition. Knowing your audience means knowing how to target them correctly. On the other hand, knowing your competition is understanding what practices and what your audience offers, it is choosing between. If you know what other dental offices have to offer, you can respond by creating your own unique offers. One strategy is to improve what they already offer. Another is to bring something totally new to the market.
Either way, you will have to learn how to improve the competition. You may have to beat them at their own game to do so.
Consider using these strategies:
- How do they advertise their services and products? If they offer discounts, maybe you can come up with a better deal or better value.
- Does it accept patients without an appointment or only by appointment? You can offer both services plus on weekends by appointment.
- Google is of course a great way to research the competition. Use it to your advantage by looking at what they offer.
- Vous pouvez également consulter les commentaires qu’ils reçoivent pour voir ce que votre marché cible partagé aime et n’aime pas dans sa pratique!
- You can also hire a digital marketing company to do competitor analysis for you.
You have to learn everything you can about your competition to create your dental marketing strategies.
3.You can’t beat a solid offer
Who can resist a strong offer? Not a lot, if you do it right.
A strong offering will get your business noticed and help attract people to your practice. Whether you are targeting a low, middle, or high income audience, everyone is budgeting. Everyone likes to cut the cost of necessities where they can without reducing the quality. Show them that your practice can help them. You can tailor your offers to the audience niche based on the research you’ve already done in Steps 1 and 2.
There are several ways to implement this. Look at the following offers as examples:
- Discount package for families of four or more who book an appointment for cleaning or any type of service you wish to include.
- Special mover offer that is sent to people and especially families who have just moved to the area.
- Offer free cleaning at every dental medical appointment.
Be careful in choosing the type of offer you are going to make. Offers are not effective if they don’t appeal to the person to whom you are making the offer. For example, it doesn’t matter how many times you go back and cut prices on a family discount that your firm applies if your target audience is predominantly single men.
Make smart and strategic offers to create the most effective dental marketing strategy.
4. Custom content
Let’s talk about some figures from the dental industry. Keep in mind that numbers don’t lie, so you can base your dental marketing strategies on them.
Did you know that over 50% of potential dental patients go online if they want to find a new dental provider? This is a significant number! Another meaning of this number is that it proves that most people rely on the Internet for information and services.
About 47% of those same potential new patients would like to read up to 5 online reviews first before choosing a dental provider. Now, this shows that people are confident in what other people who have been through something similar have to say. It requires more personalized content that targets these potential customers to get them through the sales funnel.
To use this content to build trust between your business and potential customers, you can:
- Target names, emails, phone numbers that are in your database.
- The next step is to provide prospects with access to exclusive or in-depth content to get more information.
- Add value to the visitor experience by making sure any issues or weaknesses of these potential customers are addressed.
Content is therefore king. Always keep in mind that this is one of the most powerful dental marketing strategies you can use.
5. Better branding and value
With all the information from the research you’ve done in your hands, it’s time to build your brand. You have to take inspiration from it to find a better branding image than the one you started with.
Better branding means that your brand is able to meet a need that no one else can. This gives you a small, however slight, advantage over your competition. And all of this also leads to better overall value.
Better branding also means that people recognize your logo and business and associate it with that value. The value proposition is pushed to a high level and that’s what you want to see. For example, suppose you have affordable packages for families. The value proposition is to include family discounts and more. The discounts and affordable prices aren’t the only things that can be considered a value proposition, however.
Superior quality procedures using the latest dental technology can also be included. Ultimately, the enhanced brand and value is more than a welcome addition to your dental marketing strategies.
6. Keywords are essential
Choosing the right keywords is important, even for your dental marketing strategies.
What are the keywords you ask?
Keywords are words that people search for in Google, and your practice may pay to rank them (with SEA) or rank them organically for them (with SEO). When we say “ranking” we mean appearing in the top list of results when someone searches for that keyword on Google. Remember when we said that over 50% of potential dental patients go online if they want to find a new dental service provider?
This is where it becomes important again. You want to make sure that your website is in the top Google results when people search for “dentist near me” and so on.
7. Social media marketing for dentists
Social media has become such a powerful marketing tool for all industries these days, including dentists!
Over 40% of people say they rely on the information they find on social media before making a decision about their dentist. The same goes for 22% of parents when it comes to finding a dentist for their child!
This tells us that you really want to include social media in your dental marketing strategies. Some things to consider for your social media marketing plan:
- Patients expect consistent messaging and meaningful cooperation across all your marketing platforms, including social media.
- Your social media content needs to empower the reader to keep them engaged and following you.
- Facebook continues its run as the world’s leading social media network. It has over 2 billion people using it every month, so you need to make sure your practice has a well-established Facebook business page!
Social media should help portray your practice in a professional yet enjoyable light that helps push the potential client towards closed clients.
Examining any of these dental marketing strategies shows that there are many tools you can use to be successful. Use one or all of these dental marketing strategies correctly and you will have as many reasons as your patients to flash those pearly whites more often !!