8 Effective Ways to Market Your Dental Practice

While fundamental dental procedures have not changed, the notion of dental aesthetics has gained immense popularity. More people are interested in teeth whitening, dental implants, ceramic crowns, veneers, and cosmetic fillings.

No matter how unique your dental procedures are, you need to be acknowledged and able to reach your target clientele if you want your practice to succeed. This requires attracting new patients and maintaining good relationships with existing customers. This is where dental marketing comes into play. Keep reading to learn what dental marketing is and discover some effective ways to market your dental practice.

What is Dental Marketing?

Dental marketing refers to practices, strategies, and tactics dental clinics use to attract new patients and retain old ones. These strategies are aimed at increasing brand awareness and creating a good reputation.

The increasing use of smartphones and the internet has opened new avenues for dental practitioners to promote brand identity and create a larger customer base. Dentists can now use a variety of digital marketing techniques to reach prospective customers and turn website visitors into loyal patients. Loyal or long-term clients serve as business ambassadors and engage in word-of-mouth marketing, bringing in additional patients to the dental clinic. Dental Marketing Australia offers comprehensive strategies and innovative solutions to help dental practices thrive in the highly competitive Australian market.

It can be difficult for dentists and clinic staff to carry out marketing campaigns while managing patients, handling appointments, and engaging in time-consuming dental procedures every day. This is where digital marketing agencies like Gilleard dental marketing can help you. Whether it’s dental implant marketing, periodontist marketing, or general marketing for dental clinics, they can augment your existing digital marketing initiatives and establish winning marketing plans to attract new patients who are ready to start their treatment.

Ways to Market Your Dental Practice

Dental marketing strategies typically focus on various methods to attract new patients. Here are some of the most effective ways to market your dental practices and bring in new patients:

1. Create and Optimize Google My Business Profile

Since dental clinics operate locally, they need to be more visible in local searches. When a prospective customer enters a search query, the search engine first shows related featured ads followed by local searches or map search results. This is why you need a Google My Business profile.

Make your business profile up to date and optimize it to increase its visibility in local searches. If you make good use of SEO best practices, your business profile will rank in the top 3 local searches, making it more likely to be clicked by searchers.

2. Create a Website with Informative Content

Creating an online presence with websites and social media accounts has become necessary for every business, and dental clinics are no exception. A website serves a plethora of advantages for your dental business. Patients can find information on your services, get to know about your staff, schedule appointments, and subscribe to your email listing. Moreover, a digital interface with relevant and informative content improves your business’s visibility in search results.

For this purpose, try to create an engaging website with outstanding visuals and informative customer-centric content. Use SEO best practices to create content around the user’s search intent. Include contact us forms and online appointment scheduling features to facilitate your prospective customer. Add links to your social media profiles to increase your website’s authority. Keep your content updated, and post new content at least once a week to keep your customers engaged.

3. SEM and Paid Ads Campaigns on Social Media

Search engine marketing involves techniques to increase a website’s visibility in search results through paid advertising. It can be difficult to rank your dental website higher in search results through SEO practices alone. SEO and SEM are used in combination to drive more traffic to a website. Many dental practices take advantage of paid ads on search engines as well as paid ad campaigns on various digital platforms like:

• Popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter
• Video streaming platforms like YouTube
• Visual discovery engines like Pinterest

There are various pay-per-click or paid ad methods, each targeting customers differently. You can use a combination of these methods to promote your dental practice business and increase web traffic. 

4. Post Engaging Blogs Regularly

Search engine optimization alone cannot rank your website in the top 10 search results. Website ranking in search engines heavily depends on the quality and usefulness of the content now. For this purpose, you need to draw your audience’s attention with informative content they may be looking for on the internet, and creating blog posts is the best way of doing that. Write on generalized health and dental aesthetics topics to build their trust in your dental practices. You can create blogs on:

• Healthy diets to promote tooth health
• Oral hygiene practices
• Tips for a winning smile
• Things to consider before a dentist appointment
• Targetted topics your prospective customers may be searching for over the internet

However, don’t over-emphasize promoting your business in the blog. Leave this for your paid ad campaigns.   

5. Encourage Reviews from Patients

Business profiles for local searches can benefit from customer reviews as Google now ranks local businesses based on customer reviews and ratings. It also allows potential customers to find out about your services. Encourage your customers to rate and write reviews on your Google business profile, website, and your bio on social media. You can also offer them special discount coupons for writing reviews. Guide your customers verbally or through handouts on how to review your service on Google. However, forcing them to write positive reviews violates Google and Yelp regulations and will damage your reputation.

6. Offer Discounts and Memberships

Increasing your website’s traffic is not enough to create new patients. You need to drive your prospective customers to book appointments and schedule treatments. To make new customers, try offering various incentives such as discounts, limited-time offers, free memberships, and giveaways. For example, you can offer free tooth X-rays, free dental checkups, gift cards, fee discounts, etc. For new dental clinics, offering limited-time deals can draw in more new patients.

7. Create Educational Videos

Visual content has a powerful influence on the audience. Try to incorporate educational videos on your website and share links to your videos on your social media accounts. Web traffic increases when more people see your videos and will increase your business’s visibility on social media and video streaming platforms. YouTube videos are also effective in ranking you higher in search results. Make your videos more interesting and enlightening rather than promotional.

8. Try Before and After Dental Marketing

Before and after marketing technique continues to be a major hit in medical, aesthetic, and dental practices. People are more likely to choose you as their dentist when they see the amazing results of your work. You can use before and after pictures in your brochures, email marketing campaigns, social media posts, blogs, and your business website. However, get permission from your patient before taking photographs and avoid posting them online without the patient’s consent.

Bottom Line

Marketing tactics, both digital and traditional, have a direct influence on the success of your dental practice. You won’t be able to attract new patients and grow your dental business unless you have a marketing strategy in place. The approaches listed above serve as a road map for developing a successful marketing strategy for your dental practice. It’s important to make your marketing goals explicit and quantifiable so you can assess their outcome and measure success.