Standing Apart from Other Dentists and Staying Top of Mind
Why Your Practice Needs to Be Unique
To successfully develop your practice online, you need to consistently distinguish your dental brand and share that unique brand with people living 7-10 miles from your office. The formula for dental marketing success is really that simple, and yet most practices are still using the same type of tired advertising and doing little to pursue the digital marketplace.
The world is moving faster and faster these days. Trends come and go very quickly. Popular actors seem to disappear after a few films, replaced by newer, younger versions. Once popular companies create a buzz for a short time, only to leave empty stores with “For Lease” signs in the windows. Competition has never been so fierce, and demand from consumers to continually impress has never been so insatiable.
Just ten years ago, it was enough to come up with a creative name for your dental practice, get a professional logo, and launch a website. Eventually, the phone started to ring. Most dentists left their websites untouched and did little to enhance their web presence. Today, however, dentists are beginning to realize that investing online translates into a larger share of the market, and not competing online eventually marginalizes your dental practice and reduces the number of new patients who call each month.
So the race is on to get more Google reviews, post more on social media, and spend on digital advertisements. Forward-thinking dentists understand that people today are connected to their smartphones and rely on them to make important decisions, like finding the best dental care. These practices also understand that being a unique dentist and staying top of mind on social media is key to building up a consistent stream of new dental patients.
Different Dentists Attract New Patients and Build Successful Practices
Why Your Dental Team Must Stand Apart from the Crowd “Different Is Better Than Better” — Sally Hogshead I’ve always believed it is good practice to reduce complex ideas into concentrated, general truths. In this way, it becomes easier to apply grand concepts to everyday scenarios, which are always unpredictable
The Slow, Hesitant Evolution of Dental Marketing
Like most areas of our modern world, marketing has improved over the years. Dentists have gone from a sign and word of mouth to grow their practices to the Yellow Pages and bulk mail postcards. When the internet came along, dentists created websites. With each advancement in technology came the ability to reach more new patients and grow. But with each leap forward, it took time for the majority of dentists to embrace these changes and to understand how they distinguished a dental brand and attracted more new patients.
Early dentists might have laughed at the guy who spent money to place an ad in the newspaper and distinguish his dental brand—that is, until his office was filled with new patients (quickly covering the ad cost and building a solid patient base). Likewise, dentists might have resisted the high price of advertising in the Yellow Pages until they realized that without a listing, they were at a severe disadvantage. Then dentists had the option of a website and no doubt wondered if this “internet thing” was going to stick around; was it really worth the trouble? Dentists quickly realized that without a presence online, they were going to miss out on a lot of opportunities, especially with the major leaps forward in mobile phone technology. Soon, virtually all people were carrying the internet in their pockets and using it to find products and services. Then dentists had to make some choices about social media. How much time should they invest in posting on these platforms?
Social Media Is the New Frontier in Dental Marketing
As with each step forward in dental marketing, there are the pioneers, the dentists who pursue the opportunities before the crowd. When it comes to the newest advertising platform, social media, most dentists are at least making an attempt to post content, or they contract with a large dental marketing company to post material to their social accounts from time to time; this content is largely generic and gets little engagement, but it’s at least something.
Then there’s a group of dentists who see that social media is important and really try hard to be creative and genuinely connect with the community. They post pictures of the team going out to dinner and celebrating birthdays. These posts do well with existing patients who provide positive comments and emojis. These offices also include some oral health advice and dental trivia too. Occasionally, the office will boost a Facebook post and run a simple ad, which usually promotes a special offer like in-office whitening.
The last group of dentists stands apart from other dentists because they understand how powerful social media can be and invest considerable time creating effective and engaging content to share online. These dentists work with a media professional who makes sure that the office is regularly posting videos and creative, scroll-stopping material. These offices have large followings and experience plenty of genuine engagement; they may even get a post to go viral from time to time. In these offices, the dental teams are encouraged to be creative and suggest material for social media. With all this online activity, the algorithms begin to favor this practice and reward it with larger organic reach and premier placements. This leads to more new patients and more good reviews and more referrals. Collectively, all of this leads to a dental practice that dominates an area. When people think about dentistry in these places, they think of these dental offices.
How to Distinguish Your Dental Brand
It’s getting harder and harder to stop people from scrolling long enough to appreciate your dental brand. Posting generic content won’t work because people expect to be wowed with engaging videos. People today see a mountain of creative and engaging material come across their phones all day, and your job is to grab their attention somehow long enough to remind them that you’re the best dentist in town and that if they need a dentist, you’re the one to call.
In 2021, consider hiring a digital media marketer, at least part-time. There’s too much happening in the office to expect the front desk to be creative while juggling insurance forms and orchestrating the schedule. The clinical staff is too busy delivering the best dental care. You need someone who can stand back and focus on creating material that’s unique enough to 1) grab people’s attention and 2) highlight and imprint your dental practice brand.
Look for a digital marketing specialist who is both creative and technically skilled. This person should be able to come up with great ideas that distinguish your dental brand, generate video content, and understand how to promote it most effectively. Your office needs to be making and posting videos several times a week and keeping an engaging ad circulating in your local area. Social media is the new frontier in marketing, and the dentists who embrace this change will be the ones who see their practice brands growing into the future.
