Strategic Marketing That Maximizes Your Results and Budget
Brick by Digital Marketing Brick
The famous quote by Roman Emperor Hadrian “Brick by brick…” is a good way to think about your digital marketing efforts. You have a dental license, a practice, and a mountain of competition. You understand the importance of marketing your practice but don’t know where to begin. Should you just start laying “marketing bricks” randomly, maybe buy ad space in a local publication or purchase Google ads? Or, is there an optimal way to lay down specific bricks in a particular order to make the best use of your time and resources?
The beginning of any digital marketing effort is overwhelming, so it’s important to remember that it takes consistent effort and time to produce results. That said, you can significantly improve your results and growth by prioritizing digital marketing correctly and allocating your time and resources wisely.
Step 1: Audit Your Digital Footprint and Analyze the Competition
As with all journies, it’s wise to establish a baseline and location. Where are you starting? To measure progress, you’ll need to understand where you began. Next, get access to all your analytics, and create a weekly progress report that includes the basics: web traffic, social media followers/engagement, and Google business page analytics. You’ll want to review this information often to judge the effectiveness of your digital marketing plan.
Your dental practice is in competition with those 7-10 miles from your office, so it’s wise to review their websites and social media. What are they doing well? What can you do better? Ultimately, you want to create contrast, so your dental team stands out. In a digital age, even a fledgling practice can dominate an area with a unique and engaging online presence.
Dental Marketing Audits [5 Step Plan]
Why You Must Examine Your Dental Practice Before Designing a Marketing Plan Dental Marketing Audit in 5 Steps When facing challenges, we often feel compelled to immediately charge out and do something, anything; it’s just comforting to know that action is being taken. And while it’s always good to produce
Step 2: Polish Your Dental Practice Website
Your website is a hub that links all of your digital traffic, so it must represent your brand effectively. If you’re working with a designer, insist that your site reflect the practice mission statement and treatment philosophy. A good site not only delivers information, but it represents the spirit and energy that you and your team commit to quality dentistry.
On a technical level, it’s also essential that your site responds to different screen sizes and operating systems. Check your site on various monitors, laptops, tablets, and phones. Make sure all the links are working. Be sure that all text and images look correct. Have your team review the site and look for issues on different devices. Check website loading speed at different times of the day; speed contributes not only to user experience but also to Google ranking.
Prioritizing digital marketing requires viewing your website daily and looking for ways to improve. Unfortunately, many dentists publish a site and forget about it. This decision is better than not having a website at all, but it’s certainly not the way to remain competitive in our digital marketplace. Instead, your site should grow with the practice. Think of your website as a dental practice portfolio. Every week, you’re adding more educational blog posts and videos, before and after pictures, and practice updates.
A Dental Practice Website That Attracts New Patients
Building and Maintaining an Effective Website that Grows Your Practice How Important Is Your Website? Your dental practice website is like a storefront on the internet, and it functions as a hub to which all your efforts are linked. Most importantly, your website domain is the way search engines understand
Step 3: Drive Traffic with a Scroll-Stopping Social Media Ad
Success for local small businesses comes down to one thing: traffic. More traffic equals more views, more opportunities, and more new patients. A creative, scroll-stopping social media ad is the most effective way to kickstart web traffic. Ask your team for ideas. You’re looking for something out of the box, something unique, something so creative that it gets the attention of people who are overstimulated with media. Yes, it has to be that good.
A tired dental ad with patients smiling politely across a front desk is not what you’re looking for. That boring ad is what the competition is using. You need to think big. Have a creative meeting with your team and come up with an idea that really captures attention.
Facebook and Instagram Ads for Dental Practices
Using Creative Social Media Ads to Increase Website Traffic and New Patient Calls Best Social Platforms for Dentists Despite the growing number of social media platforms, Instagram and parent company Facebook (or Meta) command the largest user base because they have developed a variety of free services. Not only do
Step 4: Design a Short and Long-Term Marketing Plan
Once you’re driving traffic, it’s time to plan. You’ll be doing many things at once, so it’s important to have clear goals. Prioritizing digital marketing means setting weekly and monthly objectives. Consider using checklists. When you begin marketing your practice, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and distracted. You’ll stay on track by writing down your goals and creating concise objectives.
In the short term, focus on getting your social media calendars filled out. If you don’t already have a motion graphic artist/graphic designer, find one; if this person also creates professional copy, even better. Establish fixed weekly marketing meetings. Get your data in order and let it guide your decisions. Establish the systems and protocols that will facilitate your long-term goals. For example, you want to build a robust portfolio. What procedures are necessary to capture these images? Do you make it part of your computer notes (like a popup window)? What about reviews? Collecting Google reviews is time-consuming, so it’s best to start immediately.
Long-term, your digital marketing priorities should concentrate on the heavy content that will keep your Google listing in a prominent position. Start blogging on various dental topics. This will put some serious muscle on your site. The Google algorithm judges text (keywords) to decide ranking. By developing a library of relevant content, Google will view your site as an authority and list you above the competition. Build up your portfolio. Showcasing a collection of before and after work is like having a sales professional working 24/7. Whenever people visit your site, they will actually see your amazing dentistry. Then they will see themselves with the same smile, which leads to more new patient calls. Videos also need to be a significant part of your strategy moving forward. Create video versions of your blogs. Be creative with your video content. Show your audience how instruments are sterilized. Video record a bloodless procedure (like a debonding and smile reveal). Record a restorative procedure and share it sped up to reveal the improvement. All of your videos should be hosted on YouTube and embedded on your site.
Dental Marketing Plan [How to Avoid Burnout]
Incremental Planning that Focuses on Marketing Fundamentals When It Comes to a Dental Marketing Plan, Play the Long Game So often dental practices charge off without a long-term dental marketing plan and decide one day to mail a postcard or launch a Facebook marketing campaign or hold a drawing to
Step 5: Gather Digital Real Estate with Quality Content While Monitoring Analytics
All online marketing seeks to acquire more digital real estate. The more digital real estate (social media engagement, web traffic, email subscribers, etc.), the more opportunity, traffic, and growth. The ultimate goal of your prioritizing digital marketing is to grow your online footprint, in a sense, to acquire more and more digital real estate. All traffic is good traffic. Mainly focus on your social media accounts, Google business page, YouTube, and website. Push your content to as many people as you can. Think of your practice as a media company that also does dentistry. Promoting quality content takes considerable effort, but long term, dental practices that share the most and best content will dominate the area.
Engaging, High-Quality Video Content Is the Future of Dental Marketing
Why Your Dental Practice Needs a Media Specialist The Past and Future of Dental Marketing Marketing a dental practice has certainly changed over the years. Early in the twentieth century, dentists built their practices with door signs and satisfied patients. Referrals were the primary practice builders back then, so growth happened
