The Internet as we know it is a 21st-century phenomenon, and the pace at which it changes is the stuff of science fiction.
Compare that to traditional marketing: radio and TV, newspaper, direct mail, and outdoor boards. Sure, there have been some advances in what you can do – better image quality and graphics on TV, more radio and TV channels, “rotator” electronic billboards, and so on – but traditional advertising at its core really hasn’t changed that much over the last 30 years. And neither have the “rules” for doing it well.
Move into Internet marketing and it’s a vast, bewildering new ball game.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for successful marketing online, and SEO is vast and bewildering all by itself. And there’s probably no other area of Internet marketing that changes as often. You can learn the “rules,” or best practices, for SEO, but what you learn today will almost certainly be out of date six months from now, or even next month in some cases.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is its own Internet specialty, and while not quite as bewildering as the entire subject of SEO, PPC undergoes huge changes as Google decides to shift its emphasis. That happened fairly recently, with Google eliminating right-side paid ads and adding PPC ads in the first page of search results. The competition for those few remaining “organic” first-page listings is hot and getting hotter.
Then there’s the entire subject of website design. What’s the best design to reflect your practice’s brand? How should the content be presented to best convince prospective patients to choose you? What Calls-to-Action (CTA) work best to get patients to pick up the phone?
Don’t forget email marketing to your prospects. How often should you contact them? How do you consistently send the right content to the patients who are interested in it?
If you’re feeling overwhelmed already, it’s completely understandable. You didn’t spend all those years in dental school to learn Internet marketing. And unless you’re one of the few dentists who truly enjoy the ins and outs of getting found online, you’d much rather get back to doing what you love – making a difference in patients’ lives.
In fact, most dentists, particularly those in highly competitive markets, shouldn’t do their own marketing. It’s a waste of their time and all too easy to throw marketing dollars into areas that don’t work.
If you’d rather focus on what you went to dental school to learn to do, contact us.
Go to www.smartboxwebmarketing.com/blueprint and schedule a Patient Attraction Blueprint™ session. They are free to serious dentists who want to see a patient attraction system that can double their practice. You can get more patients, more profits, and more freedom.
We’re using our proven Patient Attraction System™ on behalf of over 550 dentists, freeing them up to handle the cases they love, improving their financial futures, and letting them practice their art and their science to change lives. We can do the same for you.