Are you tired of waiting for the phone to ring?
It’s time to stop waiting for the patients to come to you. With these 15 dental marketing strategies, you can start drawing in the patients in no time at all.
Managing dental marketing strategies isn’t always easy. You need to find the perfect balance.
Make sure your current patients are satisfied with your service. But at the same time also getting out your marketing message to attract new patients to your dental practice.
It’s certainly the case that effective dental marketing strategies are an essential part of any successful dental practice. By following these 15 tips you’ll have the phone ringing off the hook.
Let’s take a look at the 15 dental marketing strategies to increase phone calls at your dental practice.
Have you ever thought about getting more involved in your local community?
By volunteering at local sports events, or donating branded merchandise to charity events, you’ll increase your presence around the community and get to know people.
If people get to know you outside of your dental surgery, they’re more likely to feel connected to you.
It’s especially important to make connections with a new residence. If someone moves into to the neighbourhood, make sure you send a greetings card introducing yourself and your practice.
New arrivals will often be searching for a family dentist. Make yourself known and you’ll add new patients in no time.
What time of day is best to brush my teeth? Which is the most effective toothpaste on the market? How often should I floss?
These are just a few of blog posts ideas you could include on your company website.
Potential patients are always looking for advice on how to keep their mouth clean and healthy.
By offering interesting and engaging information on your blog, you could help get the word out that you’re a dentist with know-how who can be trusted look after teeth.
One of the most effective dental marketing strategies is SEO techniques. With so much competition from other dental practices, you can’t afford to have an SEO-optimised website.
By selectively using keywords or writing SEO-optimised content you can maximise your position on the ranking of search engines such as Google.
For more information on SEO, check out our ultimate guide to SEO for Dentists.
Offering deals and freebies is another great way to get people calling begging for an appointment.
You could consider offering new patients discounts on their first checkup. Maybe you could throw in a free toothbrush for a limited time only.
However, make sure you don’t simply offer the same deals as your competitors. You need to make sure your practice stands out from the crowd.
Some dental practices have problems with patients not showing up for appointments. This can also be solved with a juicy deal.
You could offer patients the chance to get a 10% off if they make the payment upfront. This way you don’t just attract patients on the lookout for discounts. You also increase the probability of patients turning up when they said they would.
Nowadays, it doesn’t matter what business you are, you can’t avoid social media. But it’s also a great way to engage with your existing patients and reach out to potential patients too.
Although it’s important not to spread yourself too thin, make sure you have social media presence on at least one of the following social media platforms:
Of course, it’s important to keep in mind that every social media platforms require a different approach. But every Tweet, Facebook post, and uploaded photo needs to offer your online users a way to engage with you.
Keep your content relevant and interesting. Try creating posts that your users want to share on their own social media platforms. This could include one of your latest deals or a recent blog post you wrote.
Facebook can also serve as an excellent way to promote your dental practice. Your patients can write up reviews of your dental work for other potential patients to see.
Social media is also another great way to remind your patients that they have an appointment coming up soon.
Have you ever visited a barber that recommended a drugstore? Or, a pet store worker who recommended a trustworthy dog-walker?
By developing cross-referrals with other businesses you can definitely increase the number of calls coming into your surgery.
There are many benefits to working on creating a network of other local businesses. However, make sure you do your research before recommending your patients to a specialist or a doctor that isn’t up to scratch. This could seriously backfire if not done properly.
Have you ever had a happy patient recommend your dental practice to a friend or family member?
Wouldn’t it be great if this happened all the time? Well, there’s a way to achieve this with referral incentives.
By offering your current patients discounts and freebies for referrals to friends and family, you can drastically increase the number of the patients visiting your practice.
Patients don’t want to visit any old dentist. They want to come to visit an expert in their field. By developing and promoting your expertise you can show your patients they’re being cared for by the best of the best.
One way to do this is by writing medical articles in magazines or journals. You can then promote these around the dental surgery offices and on your website.
Whatever you’re trying to market, designing a great logo is one of the first lessons of any aspiring marketer.
A great logo allows you to promote a consistent message and show off your brand to potential patients. This way they’ll recognise your dental practice when they see a social media post, or when they walk past your surgery on the street.
Sending out a regular e-newsletter is another great example of dental marketing strategies. It’s important to keep in touch with your patients and branch out to new patients.
Let your patients know about any business developments, interesting and useful mouth care tips, and emerging products on the market.
Keep it SEO optimised, chatty and light-hearted. It’s always best if you include pictures.
Always include a call to action in the end that urges your patients to book another appointment to make sure they keep their mouth clean and healthy.
Before they give your dental practice a call, patients are likely to check out the reviews online. Reviews and testimonials from current and former patients are becoming increasingly common in every business.
If potential patients find your dental practice online but there aren’t any reviews, they may reject you immediately out of hand.
You can avoid this by kindly requesting your patients to write reviews on Google reviews and sites such as Yelp.
If someone reviews your surgery, remember to respond to every review. It doesn’t matter if it’s positive or negative. It always looks better if you respond.
The days of people only using their laptops and computers to use the internet are over. Nowadays, people search on their smartphones and tablets more than they do on computers.
This means that you need to make sure your website is compatible with smartphones and tablets. Make it easy to navigate and find the information the user wants.
If your website doesn’t work on a smartphone, people will quickly get tired and find another dentist.
The potential and current patients who aren’t willing to read your e-newsletter or blog posts might have the time to watch a quick video.
Videos are another fantastic example of dental marketing strategies. Have fun by creating your own videos promoting your dental practice.
You could urge patients to book an appointment with you or show off your new surgery facilities. Keep videos brief or people will quickly lose attention. Post them on Youtube to get the most views possible.
Another way to promote your dental practice through dental marketing strategies is by focusing on results.
If you want to get people to pick up the phone to call you, you have to offer something patients want. This may be a gorgeous smile or whiter teeth. This is much more attractive than the prospect of another cavity filling.
SEO marketing is an affordable way to promote your dental practice. But targeted marketing with Google Adwords is also an effective way to drive traffic.
With successful use of Google Adwords, you can make sure when someone searches for “dentist [location]” your practice comes up on the search engine results.
With these 15 dental marketing strategies, you can make sure you’re increasing the number of calls you receive.
If you found this blog post useful, then consider checking out our free resources for more help on marketing.
For more advice and information on how to market your dental practice, get in touch with us today.
