It’s an internet-driven world, and dentists who don’t show up online won’t get the new patients they need to grow their practices.
Today’s dental prospects are spoiled for choice like never before. With just a few clicks, they can discover everything they need to know about nearly every dentist in their area. However, few prospects have the resolve to do that much research.
The level of competition on the internet is astronomical. If your website isn’t high in search results, many potential prospects likely won’t see it.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital your new patient recruitment efforts, but it’s hardly the only thing that dentists need to succeed these days.
Dentists Thrive With A Strategic And Integrated Marketing Approach
By one estimate, a solo dentist needs roughly two dozen to four dozen new patients each month to grow. Depending on the level of competition in your market, those numbers may be hard to come by.
If you’re going to get the new patients you want and need, you can’t afford to miss a trick with your marketing. Half-measures simply won’t do, and neither will uncoordinated marketing campaigns.
For maximum effectiveness, you need a strategic marketing approach implemented by a coordinated and comprehensive marketing system. At a minimum, your marketing system should include:
- A website that focuses on dental patients problems, the solutions to those problems, and the benefits of choosing you rather than a competitor.
- Up-to-date and ongoing search engine optimization (SEO) and local search optimization to keep your practice high in search results.
- Ongoing content marketing to boost your SEO and to inform and engage your prospects.
- Consistent social media marketing to build name recognition and increase engagement.
- Carefully considered online paid ad campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Pinterest.
- Opt-in opportunities for prospects to provide their emails addresses in order to receive a white paper, and article, or an ebook that speaks to their dental issues.
- Dedicated email streams for each service you offer to keep you top-of-mind with prospects until they choose you.
- Judicious offline marketing to support your online marketing efforts.
- Phone tracking to determine which marketing efforts are returning the most new patients so you can adjust your spending to put more patients in your chairs.
If you’re using an outside firm to handle your marketing, are they delivering coordinated marketing through all the channels listed above? Most importantly, are they delivering enough new patients every month?
You Can Get Your Act Together, But Can You Lift It?
It’s possible for a dental practice to implement the kind of strategic marketing described in this article, but it’s a heavy lift. It demands a number of specialized skills that you may not have in your practice. And every minute that you or a staff member spend on marketing is a minute that you’re not seeing patients.
Dental practices make money by seeing patients and solving their dental problems. Period. This may sound harsh, but marketing doesn’t directly make you a single dollar. Dentists’ time, and that of their staff, is best used to treat dental patients.
SmartBox works with thousands of dentists on three continents to help them get more of the better patients they want. Better patients represent higher average case values because they have the means and willingness to pay more the treatment they want from the dentist they choose.
Discover what’s possible for your practice by reserving your Roadmap call. It’s a free, no-obligation consultation that will show you what’s possible for your practice. And it takes about as long as you need to place a single crown or dental implant.
Following the call, you’ll receive your customized Roadmap to success.
It’s an internet-driven world, and busy dentists will do well to select a dental-practice specific marketing firm to provide strategic, coordinated, and comprehensive marketing services. That frees you and your staff to make money by seeing patients and solving their dental problems. And isn’t that why you became a dentist in the first place?