As a dentist, it can be challenging to stand out in the marketing landscape these days. If you're not well-versed in modern marketing practices, you may struggle to find dental marketing ideas that bring about noticeable results. Not to mention that working on your practice's marketing is a time-consuming endeavor, and you may find yourself unable to fit it into your busy schedule. You may not have the leeway to trial several different ideas with your limited time and money - you want a marketing strategy that you can be confident in. That is why we've compiled some effective dental marketing ideas that will help bring new patients into your practice this year.
Every marketing campaign needs clearly defined objectives, and if your goal is to bring patients into your practice - you need to consider what kind of people are most likely to become those patients. When establishing your target audience, the first dimension you should consider is geographic. People who live closer to you are generally more likely to become your patients - but you should also consider who you are in competition with. To some, it may be worth driving an extra 15 minutes for appointments if you offer lower rates than other dentists in the area or have specialized services not found elsewhere nearby. If you own a pediatric dental office, then you will want to market exclusively to parents - it will be worth your while to examine residential areas close to schools and compile a list of zip codes for direct marketing. Adequate market research is essential to getting the most out of your ad spend - so carefully examine your practice's offerings as well as the demographics of your existing patient base to find what specifics are worth leaning into.
When it comes to dental marketing, the advantage of the industry is that the majority of Americans still visit the dentist on a yearly basis. So most people seem to consider dental services a necessity. This means that there are plenty of people who are open to receiving information about dentists in their area - all you have to do is find the right channel to present it through. This is where direct mail comes in. According to U.S. Data Corporation - 39% of consumers have tried a new business at some point because of a direct mail advertisement they've received. Direct mail is an effective way to get eyes on your brand - as the more intentional and focused process of opening mail naturally emphasizes the marketing materials your audience receives. In other words - direct mail is more difficult to ignore than other media advertisements. In particular, the postcard - a type of mail that does not require an envelope - boasts an extremely high visibility rate as it puts your brand in the hands of its recipient with nothing to block out your message.
While many people have a regular dentist that they visit, a person's needs can change over time. They may find themselves in need of a new dentist if they need some kind of service that their current one does not provide. Or, they may need a new dental service provider after moving to a new city or state. It's imperative that your direct mail postcard design emphasizes the name of your practice - so that it makes an impression on its recipients. This will help them recall your practice when they're considering their options for an appointment. If you offer specialized services, such as aligners, be sure to feature an image that's easy to comprehend at a glance. Visual cues such as these will help the brain form connections between your brand and the services that you provide. Special offers are another method you can use to entice potential patients. If you include a coupon or special discount code on your mailer, it will incentivize the recipient to hang onto it until they come in for an appointment. Your postcard may end up hung on a refrigerator or left in a drawer - but either way as the recipient goes about their daily activities, they will have repeated exposure to your brand from a single campaign investment.
Having a strong, functional online presence is an important baseline to achieve if you want to stay competitive in the dental market. Start with ensuring that your website provides a good user experience - with fast load times and no 404 errors. A dysfunctional website will result in user frustration and lost conversions - so stay on top of your site maintenance. Additionally, make sure that your site is easy to navigate with clearly marked buttons. Your sitemap should make hierarchical sense to visitors, with appropriate pages under each category. Link to conversion pages with clearly-marked calls to action that align with the actions you want them to perform.
Once you have an attractive and well-functioning website, you can start expanding the reach of your online presence to social media platforms. Instagram and TikTok are ideal for posting regular short-form content. For example, you could create a series of educational videos discussing various aspects of dental health. You could also use either as a way to engage with patients and address concerns or questions they have about their own teeth. While there may be a limit to how much consulting you are willing to do for free, offering your expertise to the less knowledgeable can help build community trust that can turn into conversions and even repeat customers. Social media can also be instrumental in helping you get the word out about your special promotions. Be sure to make use of the pin feature on Instagram so that your posts stay visible on your profile page for the duration of your promotion.
While TikTok and Instagram are good for short-form content, creating a blog on your website can be great for providing a more in-depth look at certain topics. On Google, users make a wide variety of search queries every day - and naturally there will be people looking for answers to dental questions. Not all of these users are looking for a new dentist in the moment, but being the site that comes up as the answer to some commonly asked questions about tooth hygiene can boost your brand's visibility. It can also build authority if other sites find your blog content, and link to it, creating a backlink. Becoming a more authoritative website will positively affect your search ratings and ultimately bring more visitors, so it's a worthwhile investment. Consider creating custom videos and infographics for your site too, as Google tends to value original content. Establish a content schedule with regular posting intervals - and be sure to go back and update older posts with new and relevant information when available.
As mentioned earlier, your target audience as a dental practice is going to be geographically limited. People want to go to a dentist that they can conveniently commute to, so your marketing efforts should be largely directed towards your local area. One tool that you can take advantage of is Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business). This free tool lets you modify the way that your dentistry appears on Google Search and Google Maps. When a user makes a location-specific query for dentists, your business profile as well as the profiles of other nearby practices may come up at the top of the search results page. This unique type of search result will display a map showing the locations of the featured businesses, as well as some information next to each of the top results. Chances are that even if you haven't interacted with your GBP, some auto-generated information will still appear about your practice for these types of search results. You can claim this unverified listing, or if no profile exists you can create one from scratch. Either way, it serves your local SEO efforts to have this profile as fleshed out as possible. Add information such as your operating hours, services, and a link to your website so that searchers have everything they need to be confident in scheduling an appointment with you.
In addition to Google Business Profile, there are a wide variety of local business directories that you can create and manage your own listing on. Use these business directories to leverage searchers across different sites, apps, and search engines. In addition, your Google Business Profile prominently features reviews from real customers who have experienced your services in person. Reviewers can score your practice on a scale of five stars, and the average of these scores will appear next to your listing on Google. Not only is it preferable to have a high score on average, but you'll also want to have a high volume of reviews - as it will build trust in users that many have tried and been satisfied with your services. It's worth reaching out to your active patients and requesting a review online, or bringing it up after an appointment. You can even directly link customers to the review page via email or on your website - so all they have to do is type it up and hit enter without having to navigate to the right profile.
Since local brand awareness is the lifeblood of your marketing efforts as a dentist - you should consider what opportunities you have to engage with your local community. Participating in, hosting, or sponsoring local events is a great way to increase brand awareness in your area. If there are any annual fairs or markets for example, see if you have the means to setup a booth where you can give away free branded goods. Maybe see if there are any local sports teams that you can sponsor - especially school sports which will give you a higher chance of getting your brand in front of parents. Or you could partner with local schools to provide some dental health education as a guest speaker.
Additionally, consider organizing workshops or informational sessions that are open to your local community. Maybe try an open Q&A style panel where interested community members can ask you questions directly. Doing this will help you build rapport with your community and enhance public perception. Oral hygiene classes for parents & kids are another way you can go about introducing yourself as a trusted expert to potential patients. Be sure to prepare some business cards to hand off to attendees as you introduce yourself. Be prudent and professional in your appearances and before you know it, you'll become a household name within your community.
While it's important to invest in marketing efforts to attract new clients - your existing patient base is important to pay attention to as well. You want to keep patients coming back for the long term and ensure that you are their go-to provider for their dental needs. This is why you should invest in rewarding your long-term patients - so that they don't feel neglected and decide to take their business elsewhere. Loyalty programs are the best way to incentivize patients to continue utilizing your services. Allow patients who have made a certain number of appointments at your practice to opt-into a loyalty program where they can receive various benefits. Give them access to exclusive discounts or priority scheduling. Consider creating a points-based reward system in which they gain points in exchange for the services they purchase from you. At certain thresholds, they can exchange their points for more discounts, benefits, or even freebies. This will incentivize long-term loyalty and repeat visits from your existing patients.
Referral programs are a great way to bring in new patients while simultaneously rewarding your longstanding ones. Set up a system in which your patients can refer someone that they know who may be interested in your services. When the referred customer comes in for an appointment, they can mention who referred them, and then in exchange you can offer various rewards to that existing patient. You can offer incentives such as discounts, free services, or even gift cards to local chain restaurants and such. You can even create a kind hybrid reward - in which you give a discount to both the referrer and the referred, so that the new patient has even more incentive to make a first-time appointment.
Lastly, in order to retain patients for the long term, it's important to make your regulars feel heard by asking for and responding to feedback. Going to the dentist isn't something most people do for enjoyment, but taking the time to show some empathy and respond to their concerns or issues will make you stand out. It may help you net more referrals and recommendations as well. Start with something like a feedback form that you can have your patients fill out after an appointment. You can keep physical forms in your office or send a digital survey via email. Keep the survey short and succinct - most feedback forms stick with simply asking for the positives and negatives of the customer's experience. If the survey takes too long to complete, some respondents may give up on it before they finish. If you have the resources to, you could also consider conducting follow-up calls with your patients to hear their feedback directly.
If you're looking to bring in more website visitors, you may want to invest in some paid advertising on Google. Optimizing your website and creating blog content is good for generating more organic traffic while raising your site's overall authority, but paid ads can broaden your reach even further. Search and Display are two types of paid ad campaigns that you can utilize to bring in more traffic. Search ad campaigns target Google users that are actively searching for queries related to your business. Google Search results use a live auction system to determine who appears at the top of the results page. You can run a Search ad campaign to bid on certain keywords, improving your chances of appearing in one of the top spots for queries that include those words. You can use the "pay-per-click" bidding strategy - so that you only actually pay for patients who click through to your landing page. Display advertising campaigns allow you to place advertisements on the Google Display Network - a collection of over 2 million websites from across Google. This method allows you get your brand in front of internet users as they read their usual blogs and news sites. It's important to note that both of these campaign styles allow for geographic targeting - so you won't have to worry about ad revenue wasted on unlikely customers.
Facebook and Instagram are also great channels to reach more potential customers through. As always, consider your target audience before selecting which channels to prioritize. Facebook has a larger share of users aged 40 and up, whereas Instagram users trend younger. Of course, geographic targeting is also a must to ensure you only spend money on users within a reasonable distance from your practice. On Facebook, you can create Image or Video advertisements that will appear in your selected audience's feed as they scroll through posts. Ensure that your ad creative is eye-catching without being overly crowded with text and graphics. If you're running a promotion - make sure that your offer is prominently displayed and easy to read. For video advertising - make sure you get straight to the message to avoid having viewers tune out before you give them the value proposition. For both Facebook and Instagram - be sure to link to an appropriate landing page that aligns with your ad's call to action. It should be a webpage that users can perform that specific action on.
Remarketing is a method of Google ad targeting that allows you to show advertisements to Google users who have already visited your website. You can even narrow down the targeting to people who have performed specific actions on your site - such as users who have visited specific pages or abandoned an appointment form. This is helpful for netting more conversions - as an interested patient may be unsure of whether they want to commit to your services or not, even after their first website visit. Remarketing ads allow you to remind previous website visitors of the services they were considering but may have forgotten about. You can even include a special offer exclusive via these ads to give them even more incentive to convert. Remember that before this targeting method becomes available, you must fist implement a remarketing code snippet on your website that will track visitors and register when they meet the requirements for receiving remarketing ads.
Emails are a great way to communicate directly with your patient community about events, special promotions, holidays or other important information. Growing your email list can help you reach not only your existing patients - but new ones via outreach. You can create an email list of non-patients for marketing campaigns - and send them exclusive promotional material to encourage them to sign up for their first appointment. Collect email addresses for your list by offering incentives through your blog content or social media feed. For example, at the end of your blog articles, you could advertise a free oral hygiene guide (or something similar) to download in exchange for entering an email address. Or on your social media profile, you could run a sweepstakes contest in which you randomly select one individual to receive a free or discounted service - with email required for signup. Of course, don't forget to collect the email addresses of your patients after their first appointment so you can keep them informed.
When writing promotional emails - be sure to make them short an succinct. Few people enjoy reading emails that drag on for too long. Make sure your email contains a subject line that communicates what the email is about. An email with no subject line may be mistaken for spam and sent to the trash before its even opened. Consider content personalization, such as using the name of the person registered to the email address - it will catch the recipient's eye and make them more likely to open and read it. Be sure to include a clear call to action at the end of your email as well as a link to the webpage where they can perform that action. Save your recipients the trouble of having to navigate to where you want them to go - many won't do it immediately because they're in the middle of reading emails and many won't remember to do it later so make it easy.
As previously mentioned, you may want to consider making multiple email marketing lists by segmenting your audience. Break your list into groups based on elements such as patient behavior and preferences. For example, you could have an email marketing list specifically for parents - and send them exclusive emails about back to school month and other related promotions. One recommendation though, is to try and limited the number of email lists you have an individual patient on, as it could result in them being bombarded with way to many messages in a short amount of time. Think about the information that is most relevant to the audience segment you are mailing to - and keep your email content limited to that.
As you can see there are a wide variety of ways to invest your marketing budget as a dentist. It may seem overwhelming at times but remember to tailor your marketing strategy to your unique circumstances and make adjustments when needed. Remember the importance of determining your marketing goals and target audience before starting a new campaign. Also consider working with a professional agency if you want to break into a new area of marketing but aren't sure where to start. Cactus Mailing has over 22 years of experience in the direct mail marketing industry and has completed over 50,000 campaigns.
If you're interested in what direct mail can do for you, get in contact with one of our professionals today.