Marketing a dental practice in today’s highly-competitive market can be tough.
Despite this, demand, revenue and profit in the Australian dental market is rising so there’s plenty of possibility for growth – with the right strategy. So what can you do to take advantage of this trend? How can you stand out in a sea of generic dental clinics and get more patients through your door?
Based on current marketing best practices, here are some smart suggestions you can employ right now to start bringing in new business.
It’s easy to get stuck in a marketing rut, doing the same old thing you’ve always done. You’ve got a website, you produce a new practice brochure each year and you advertise in the local paper and on the radio – surely that’s sufficient?
While this strategy may have worked in the past, both the market and your patient needs and expectations change so it’s important you do too. Take some time to review each of your current channels to see if they’re working, make improvements and look at what other dentists are doing and succeeding at.
Strong, unique branding is essential to attracting new patients, as well as to maintaining the loyalty of existing ones. So if you’re failing to stimulate interest, it could be that your current branding no longer resonates with your target audience, or perhaps it wasn’t very strong to start with.
To effectively rebrand you need to make sure you do some solid brainstorming to work out who are as a practice, what your unique selling points are, as well as what you want your brand personality to look and sound like. Importantly, don’t just focus on your visual identity such as your logo and comms, consider all touchpoints from customer service to practice décor.
Related: 7 things to consider when rebranding
As well as making changes to your marketing communications, look to your wider marketing mix and consider introducing something new to your service or service delivery. Is there a new treatment or procedure you could offer or some innovative tech you introduce such as self check-in?
In addition, think about how you could make the experience more enjoyable. Could you add TV screens in the waiting room or over the chair? Perhaps you could start selling products such as healthy snacks or cookbooks as well as the usual toothbrushes, or maybe even run a course for people with dental anxiety?
When done well content marketing can help you make significant gains in growing brand awareness and attracting new patients. Why? Because it taps into buyer needs at the decision making stage. By providing people with useful information on health-related topics you can yourself set up as the expert, leading people to your site and practice.
If your current content efforts involve uploading the odd averagely-written blog post every now and then, you might want to try a bit harder. The best content marketers have a written strategy and create a range of relevant quality content, from infographics and videos to e-books and how-to guides. They also actively promote it via email and social media.
Related: 10 content ideas for your medical practice blog
SEO in today’s competitive marketplace is an uphill struggle. With so many other dental practices out there ranking for the same keywords it’s hard to get seen. One way to overcome this and to increase your visibility right now is to start focusing your efforts on local SEO.
First ensure your business features on all local listings sites such as Google My Business and Yelp. Next add local long-tail keywords for example, Dentist, The Junction, Newcastle to your home, about and contact pages as well as in your titles, subheads, metatags. Do the same on your social media pages. You could also look to create some locally-focused content.
Dental practices have a knack of coming off as clinical and unapproachable, so start showing people there’s more to you than just check-ups and treatments by offering to give free oral health talks at local schools. As well as getting your brand out there, it also shows your community spirit which can be a strong emotional draw.
Encourage active discussion as you talk through good teeth brushing practices, healthy eating habits and other aspects of dental health, using props where relevant. Also take along some freebies to give out at the end such as toothbrushes, timers, stickers and activity sheets. As well as getting your name in front of parents you’ll also be helping kids form good habits.
While SEO should be your long term digital marketing strategy, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, such as Google AdWords, can be a great way to attract more patients right now. Simply create your ad, set your budget and you can get yourself in a prime spot on the search engine results pages for increased visibility and more clicks.
One of the best things about PPC advertising is, as the name suggests, you only pay when people click on your ad, so you’ve nothing to lose. To get the most from it make sure you talk benefits not features, include your keywords and have a clear CTA. Plus don’t forget to regularly monitor and tweak your campaign for best results.
People have a fear of the unknown, especially when it comes to dentists, and this could be preventing them picking up the phone. The solution? Hold an open day at your practice and invite potential patients – as well as existing ones – in to have a look around and let them see who you are and what you do.
Adequate preparation and promotion is key to ensuring your event is a success. Assign jobs, work out a schedule and spread the word using posters, leaflets, social media and local radio. On the day, as well as providing marketing material and refreshments, hold dental and equipment demonstrations plus short talks on dental advice. And don’t forget to take pictures.
Reviews and testimonials can be extremely influential when it comes to purchase decisions. If people see that previous patients have had a great experience with you, then they’re more likely to seek out your services. So take advantage of this and start generating them for your practice.
Ask patients face-to-face. Link to your local business listings review pages from your website and social media pages and include requests and prompts in your patient comms such as bills, emails and SMS. You can even try offering small incentives in the short term such as a % discount or giveaway.
While it may not be the most innovative marketing tactic, vehicle wrap advertising can be extremely effective in getting your business noticed and generating more leads. By turning your car into a moving billboard, you can reach thousands of potential new customers each day as you drive and park around town.
Not only does it demand minimal outlay at a cost of around $2000 for the design and printed vinyl, but it also makes you look more professional, is non-intrusive and can even protect your paintwork. The key to success is ensuring you have a strong but simple on-brand design and a clear CTA.
Related: Why your business should consider vehicle wrap advertising
Facebook can be an extremely effective tool for marketing your medical practice.
Not only does it have the power to boost brand awareness, attract new patients and build trust and loyalty among existing ones but it also has huge reach, with over 75% of Australians (approximately 15 million) logged in (Source: Digital in 2017). In addition, Facebook is now the fourth most accessed online resource for health information (Source).
However, while its potential benefits and viability as a medical marketing channel are pretty convincing, getting the most out of it requires time, effort and some essential know-how about what you should and shouldn’t be doing to get it right – and here it is.
While this is true for any business, when you’re working in the medical profession, you need to pay extra attention to maintaining that personal/professional divide. The first step to doing this is setting up a separate business Facebook Page instead of using a personal account to promote your practice.
With a Facebook Page you can only connect with people through ‘likes’ and ‘follows’, you don’t become ‘friends’. This means you can’t see the personal information of your patients and they can’t see yours. Because of this you can avoid a range of potential legal and ethical pitfalls.
Don’t see your Facebook Page as a static billboard. To make it a successful marketing tool for your practice, you need to be posting updates often in order to stay in the minds of existing patients, and to get in front of new ones. Twice a day is recommended but a few times a week should suffice.
Knowing what to share beyond practice updates can be a sticking point. Latest health news; advice on healthy living; tips on managing certain conditions; upcoming dates and events – think about what will engage your patients and what they’d be looking for online. Mix it up with both original and shared content – but be sure any shared content is from a credible source.
Related: 10 content ideas for your medical practice blog
The great thing about social media is that it’s social, which means it’s designed to facilitate two-way conversations. So instead of just pushing out information to your practice’s Facebook Page followers, craft posts that are going to actively engage them. This means asking them questions and encouraging them to take action.
For example, you could ask what they think about a recent change at your practice e.g. new opening times etc. In addition, ask them to ‘like’ a post if they agree or describe a photo in the comments. These can all provide you with valuable feedback and insights into your customers and their preferences which you can act upon.
Trust is critical when it comes to healthcare because of its huge personal importance – people want to know they are in safe, capable hands. As well as demonstrating your authority on your Page with useful, quality posts, you also want to make people feel comfortable and that they can relate to you.
In addition to sharing your story and information about your team on your website, your Facebook Page is a great place to get your philosophy and personality across. By injecting approachability, friendliness or even humour into your posts you can give people a better insight into who you are and, in turn, build deeper relationships.
As with anything online, to get your Facebook Page seen by the right people you need to SEO. When you set up your Facebook Page you can automatically link it to your practice website – this in itself boosts your SEO rankings. In addition to this, you should be optimising your Page and the best way to do this is using local SEO.
Local SEO is critical in general practice as the majority of your patients will come from your surrounding geo-location. What do you need to do? Firstly, include some local keywords e.g. GP Bondi Junction in your ‘About’ section, ‘Page settings’ and your short and long Page descriptions. Secondly, post about local businesses and events and include local hashtags.
Facebook Insights, accessible from your account, lets you track user interaction with your Facebook Page e.g. number of visitors; days and times of visits; potential number of people you can reach (friends of your followers); number of likes and shares per post.
By monitoring your insights on a regular basis you can start to identify trends and patterns. For example, you can see the demographics of who is engaging with your post, figure out what types of posts are most popular as well as when the best time of day is to post. You can then use this information to guide your Facebook marketing and improve engagement.
As well as ensuring your Facebook Page is regularly updated and monitored, you should also be proactively promoting it on an ongoing basis in order to attract new ‘likes’ and ‘follows’. The bigger your audience the greater your reach, which means the better chance you have of asserting your authority and bringing in new patients.
There are a number of ways you can do this. As well as sending requests to your friends, family and contacts, add links to your practice’s Facebook Page on other communications such as on your website and in your email signature. You can also try posting in Facebook Groups where you target patients spend time, or even use the paid promote posts feature.
When executed well, your medical practice Facebook Page has the potential to really drive and grow your business. However it’s important you see it as only one part of your wider social media and overall marketing plan.
