Marketing is an important part of growing your dental practice. You may not have a lot of time to focus on marketing, but there are some simple marketing tips that can help you reach new patients and grow your business. In this article we will explore some helpful marketing tips for dentists.
Why is marketing important for dentists?
Marketing helps dentists reach a wide audience in their local area. It helps to grow and sustain your business. Many dentists focus solely on internal marketing or marketing to other practices for referrals.
Internal marketing and referrals are not bad ideas and should be fully utilized.
However, most practices don’t see substantial growth with those methods alone. Even if they do, you leave yourself susceptible to the whims of others to impact your business greatly, for better or for worse.
Creating new channels of external marketing makes your practice more independent and capable of more growth through the means of internal marketing as well.
With that out of the way, let’s discuss some of the ways you should be marketing your dental practice.
Utilize your Google Business Profile to it’s full extent
Your Google Business Profile (GBP), formerly Google My Business, is a free listing on Google. It contains all of the info that Google has on your business to help potential patients to find a dentist (or any local business) that suits their needs. In most cases, hundreds, if not thousands of potential patients will see this listing every month.
Make sure you have control over your Google Business Profile. Once you have control of it, be sure to do the following:
- Make sure your business listing is complete, accurate, and filled out to the highest degree possible.
- Add a lot of pictures on your profile
- Post regularly
- Encourage patients to reviews for you there when they have a positive experience.
- Optimize your business description for search engine optimization (SEO).
Optimize your Website for SEO
Your Google Business Profile might be more important than your website, but you shouldn’t settle for that alone. A good website is going to help your marketing efforts in many ways.
It can benefit and bolster your Google Business Profile, and it can stand on it’s own as a way to get in front of more eyes. In order to do this, make sure that you website has the following features:
- Optimized for mobile
- Easy to navigate
- Clear call to action (call now button is also highly recommended)
- Fast loading speed
- Add as much information as possible for patients to access
- Add video to your website
- Continue adding and updating content on the website
One of the best ways to add content is to start a blog and add to it weekly. However, even if you only write one blog post per month, you are doing more than more dentists.
If you need help with writing, consider using a platform such as Jarvis, which is an AI writing tool. It can help you get past a lot of writer’s block and come up with new ways to say things or come up with the next bullet point or topic.
A good SEO company will be able to assist you with adding content and getting your website ranked higher in the search engines as well.
Pay-per-click ads
Also known as PPC, these can be incredibly effective for dentists. Google Ads, formerly known as Google AdWords, is particularly useful and cost effective. A helpful marketing tip for dentists is to leverage Google’s search power for your practice.
Benefits of Google Ads
There are some great things about Google Ads. Here’s a list of the advantages they can offer:
- You only pay when someone clicks on your ad
- Can be very cost effective if done correctly
- Often a very fast way to see results
- Can be targeted to very specific demographics, interests, and even locations
- Budget can be controlled and changed easily
The key with Google Ads is to not get discouraged if you don’t see immediate results. It can take some time to fine tune your campaigns, but if you are doing it right, it should get better with time.
It’s also important to understand that you will need to spend some money to see results. Just like any marketing campaign, there is going to be an investment required to see a return on your investment (ROI).
Cons to Google Ads
The downside with Google Ads and other PPC platforms is that it can be difficult to get started and be effective without help. You need to have a solid understanding of marketing as well as some experience with using each platform.
If you don’t have that experience and knowledge, you can get frustrated, confused, waste quite a bit of money, and even fail to see any results from it.
So, it is often best to leave it in the hands of a professional to help you manage it or at least get started.
Hire someone to handle your Google Ads
If you want help with Google Ads, reach out to a marketing agency that specializes in dental marketing. They will be able to help you get started, set up your campaigns, and get results.
Last marketing tip for dentists – Add multiple marketing channels
Your final marketing tip for dentists is to do all of these together.
When you are doing a whole lot of marketing simultaneously, it’s hard for patients to see your competition. When you are everywhere, you become the obvious choice for patients in the area.
So, don’t settle for one or two marketing strategies if you really want to grow your practice. Go all in.
This is what separates the thriving practices from the ones that are just getting by. If it were easy, everyone would do it.
By utilizing some or all of these marketing tips, you can reach more patients, grow your business, and achieve your financial and business goals.
There are many other marketing platforms and methods out there, but these are some of the most effective marketing tips for dentists. If you want to see success, start implementing these marketing ideas into your dental marketing strategy today.