Marketing Tips for Orthodontists

With increasing competition and ever-evolving patient expectations, orthodontists must go beyond traditional methods to attract new clients and maintain patient loyalty. From showcasing cutting-edge treatments to emphasizing patient satisfaction, a well-crafted marketing strategy can help your practice gain visibility, build trust, and thrive in today’s market. This article delves into practical and effective marketing tips designed specifically for orthodontists, ensuring your practice stays ahead in this dynamic field.

Optimize Your Website

The internet is where most people go when they want to search for information about services, so you should ensure that your website is attractive and well-functioning before perfecting other areas of your marketing strategy. This starts by ensuring that your loading times are optimized, your webpages can adapt to mobile, and your site is generally free of 404 pages and other errors. These technical optimizations will help reduce your bounce rate—the percentage of users who click through to your site only to leave without interacting with anything. A lower bounce rate, fast loading times, and redirected 404 pages are positive signals to search algorithms that help boost your position in organic search rankings.

Site layout plays a major role in maximizing your conversion rate. Your sitemap should be laid out logically so that users can easily find the content that they want with minimal frustrations. Additionally, you should include an internal link to a conversion webpage (a page on your site where users can perform actions that fulfill your marketing goals such as signing up for consultations, etc.) on each of your content pages, so that users are able to quickly move on to the next phase of the marketing funnel.

Utilize SEO Strategies

You can bring more searchers to your website by creating content that answers a wider range of queries. People will often search for answers to questions like "should I get an aligner or braces," so by creating a blog with articles that answer these queries related to orthodontics, you can rank for more phrases and ultimately get more visitors. Don't forget to link to a conversion page at the bottom of each article so that visitors can make an appointment when they're finished reading.

Engage Patients With Social Media

Social media is a great place to establish a positive reputation for your practice. You can use before-and-after photos of patients to show the effectiveness of your services. You can also publish some diagrams or explanatory videos about conditions that are treated by orthodontists, such as overbite and underbite. Creating this kind of content will showcase that your practice is run by knowledgeable specialists while instilling confidence in your future patients.

Behind-the-scenes content can also be good for building rapport with your followers. You can give a video tour of your office or interview staff members to add an extra degree of humanization to your marketing. Tips for maintaining dental hygiene or information about braces or aligners will show that you have an interest in helping patients achieve the best level of health that they can.

Implement Targeted Direct Mail Campaigns

A direct mail campaign is a great way to enhance outreach to your local audience. You can use a postcard to send a marketing message directly into the hands of potential patients. This postcard can feature before-and-after images of your work to show the effectiveness of your services, and contain special promotional offers to encourage immediate appointment booking. With no envelope to obstruct the reader's line of sight, there's a higher likelihood of your marketing message being seen than if it were sent via letter or email.

The targeting capabilities of direct mailing lists allow you to narrow down your postcard's recipients to those who best resemble your target audience. This includes not only geographic targeting by zip code or distance from your practice, but also demographic targeting by factors like age, income, or family status. You can target households in nearby neighborhoods that contain parents whose children may be in need of braces or other orthodontic work. Or you could target the age and income demographics that make up the majority of your client base for specific services like aligners. In the end, it comes down to the marketing goals of your campaign.

Use Google Ads

Google Ads is a digital tool that can enhance how you market to search engine users. You can utilize search ads to bid on keywords and enhance your ranking position for certain queries. Specifically, you should focus on high-intent keywords such as "Invisalign provider" or "affordable braces" because appearing on the search engine results page will help you capture users who are actively searching for the solutions that you provide at your practice. Since they're already considering treatment, they're significantly more likely to convert into patients.

Google display network is a collection of more than 2 million websites, videos, and apps across the internet on which display ads are able to appear. You can create a set of visual banner advertisements that when activated via your display ads campaign will automatically be served to users in display network locations. You can control the demographic and geographic factors that determine who the ads are shown to and you can even make use of ad retargeting which allows you to serve ads to individuals who have already visited your website. Making use of these targeted audience controls will help you make effective use of your budget by serving your display ads to those who are most likely to convert.

Create Referral Programs for Customer Loyalty

A referral program can help you bring in new clientele while also reinforcing your existing patient base. Create a program in which you offer rewards to patients who refer new clients to your practice. The rewards can be discounts on services at your practice or even gift cards to local businesses and restaurants. You can even escalate the value of the reward based on how many clients the patient refers. Be sure to check with the laws and regulations before implementing the program to ensure that your program complies with the legal guidelines for your industry.

Reach Out to Your Community

Hosting events or supporting functions within your local community can increase awareness of your brand and potentially bring in new patients. Research the organizations and events in your area to see where you may be able to give some financial support or appear as a guest. Education is a great place to start, you can appear at local schools for education nights and give short lectures to parents about factors that influence jaw and tooth structure. This kind of event will allow you to connect and network with parents who may be in the market for your services.

Charity functions, sporting events, and local fairs are also great options for marketing via community outreach. At these kinds of events, you can set up a table or booth distributing branded goods and promotional material like brochures to attendees. If you give participants something to take home, the physical material spends more time in the possession of your audience than a digital ad, improving brand recall.

Track Marketing Results

Every marketing campaign that you conduct should be planned around a specific marketing goal. Your marketing goal should be measured using a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that quantifies how many successful conversions occurred from your campaign efforts. For example, if you want to increase appointment bookings via a direct mail campaign, you should utilize a QR code to link postcard recipients to a special landing page for appointment bookings. Then, you can track the results by counting the number of conversions via the special landing page or even through the number of QR code scans.

Conclusion

Your marketing strategy requires deep analysis of the channels you have available and how they can be used to achieve your goals. Managing your marketing strategy while dealing with the day-to-day operations of your practice can be overwhelming. You can enlist the assistance of a trusted marketing agency like Cactus Mailing to handle your next direct mail postcard campaign. We handle every aspect from mailing list selection to postcard design to printing and distribution, leaving you time to focus on running your business.

Contact one of our direct mail experts today and start enhancing your marketing strategy!