As with any other business, a dental clinic needs a consistent stream of clients and the ability to retain them. An inflow of patients is crucial to keeping your dental clinic running. While it is easy to assume that patients who need immediate dental attention will walk into your practice, the dental industry competition is real. Dental patients take special care to research their options before deciding on where they want their oral needs met. You have to carve a niche for yourself in the market and make it easy for dental patients to choose you. A digital marketing strategy for dentists and a solid online presence make this possible.
With the right digital marketing plan in place, you will attract your next patients and it will help you retain them. A marketing strategy for dentists should target patients within your locality and provide them with all the information they need about your clinic. It should contain testimonials and educational content that exposes potential patients to your procedures, equipment, and expertise.
Here are the top 7 aspects to prioritize in your digital marketing strategy for dentists
As a dental practice, creating a digital marketing strategy might seem overwhelming but it is necessary to help you achieve your business goals. To help you get started, we’ve collected the top dental marketing strategies that will help you reach more patients.
Let’s take a closer look.
1. Local digital advertising
The patients who will come by your dental clinic are usually within your location. This means that creating a local ad strategy for your digital marketing is very important.
The biggest benefit of being found by more people within your locality is that these people can easily walk into your clinic for their dental needs, turning this into a convenient relationship for everyone involved. In fact, when searching for dental services, people typically use the keyphrase “dentists near me” and similar search terms to ensure they are getting suggestions for dentists around them. Therefore, clinics that implement local advertising will get a bigger share of the search results and of in-person visits from prospective patients.
In order to target this local audience, there are two advertising platforms you need to prioritize: Google ads local campaigns and Facebook local ads.
a) Google Ads local campaigns
Although it might be tempting to target worldwide traffic, the most effective PPC campaigns are local. With paid advertising, your dental practice can get seen faster, but in order to achieve that you need to create the right campaign; if you set up a more general Google ads campaign, you will be wasting most of your ad spend. When you implement local campaigns, they target patients within your neighborhood, many of whom are looking to patronize dental services right away.
These are just a few of the benefits you can expect:
- Creating a local Google ads campaign will help you reach your target audience quickly, drive valuable traffic to your practice and cause you to spend less on advertising.
- Local PPC campaigns ensure you are getting seen by people in the area where your practice is located.
- The competition for keywords is not as hard when you are running a local ads campaign.
Create a local Google ads campaign
To set up a local Google ads campaign, you should follow these steps:
- Sign in to your Google Ads account
- Click on “Campaigns” in the left-side menu
- Click on the add (+) icon and select “New Campaign”
- Choose local store visits and promotions (if you have a Google My Business account. If not, skip this step.)
- Choose Google My Business to select your store locations or choose affiliate locations to select your product stores.
- Select “Use all locations in your linked Google My Business account” and uncheck locations that you don’t want in your ad. You can also use an existing location group if you have created one.
For affiliate locations, select the chain window option and click the country of your location and the location’s chain.
– Google ads will target locations within the geographic radius of the business locations you have specified in your campaign. If you do not want this, you can exclude certain geographic locations.
- Click on Continue
- Enter a name for your campaign
- Add the text and images that would accompany your campaign
- Add your budget, bidding amount, demographics, and update other settings
- Click on Save and Continue
- Review your campaign and its settings
- Publish when you are ready.
b) Facebook Local Ads
Facebook is a great place to reach potential patients. By setting up a Facebook business page, you can interact with dental patients in your area and update them on things like your business’ operating hours and current services. Clients can also leave you reviews on Facebook which will help your clinic look more reliable. You can take this a step further by conducting ads on Facebook.
Like Google ads, Facebook ads can help you reach people who are looking for dental services in your locality. When conducted properly, Facebook ads can increase your local brand awareness and build your clinic’s authority as the go-to place for the dental services that you provide. When you are setting up your Facebook ads for local awareness, you have to choose store traffic as your campaign objective. This campaign type ensures that your ads are shown to users within a desired proximity to your clinic’s physical location.
Here is a guide on how to create Facebook ads campaigns.
1. Access the Facebook ads manager
You need to access the Facebook ads dashboard to create a Facebook campaign. Log in to your business Facebook page and navigate to the ads manager. You can do this by clicking on the “manage ads” option in the dropdown menu in the upper right corner of your Facebook homepage.
2. Create a new campaign
Once you’re in the ads manager, click on the “create” button to start a new campaign. You’ll be prompted to select your campaign objective. This includes driving traffic to your website, generating leads, or increasing brand awareness. The objective you choose will determine how Facebook optimizes your ad. Fill in the required information and all fields.
3. Defining your target audience
The Facebook ads dashboard provides a range of options you can use to define your target audience. These include demographic data, interests, behaviors, and more. You can also create custom audiences based on your customer data.
4. Set ad placements
Choose where you want your ads to be shown, such as Facebook newsfeed, Instagram stories, or Messenger. You can also select automatic placements to let Facebook determine the best placement for your ad.
5. Create your ad
Choose your ad format. Facebook offers a variety of ad formats, including image ads, video ads, carousel ads, and more. You can choose the format that best suits your campaign objective and creative needs.
6. Set budget and schedule
Determine the amount of money you want to spend on your ads and choose a start and end date for your campaign. You can choose between a daily or lifetime budget and select the dates and times you want your ads to run.
7. Placing your ad
Once you’ve completed all the steps you can click on “publish.” Facebook will review your ad to ensure it meets its advertising policies before it goes live.
8. Set payment method
If you haven’t set up your ad account yet, you’ll need to do so at this point. You’ll be asked to enter some basic information about your business, such as your name, address, and payment method.
9. Monitor performance
After your ad has been approved, monitor its performance in the ads manager dashboard. You can track metrics such as impressions, clicks, and conversions and adjust your ad to optimize performance.
Setting up your ads campaigns might seem daunting but we promise it is a very necessary step to improve your dental practice’s online visibility. If you find yourself struggling with this step, we can help you create, manage and boost your ads campaigns regardless of the platform of your choice. Contact us to receive your tailored ads campaigns.
2. Dental website development
Once your Facebook business page and other social media pages are up, the next step you want to prioritize is your practice’s website. Your dental website is your clinic’s home on the web, one that you have total control over. For it to yield the expected results of getting new clients and increasing your clinic’s income, it has to be attractive and functional. In our professional opinion, WordPress is a great website development tool and it’s a great resource not only for dental websites but for many different industries. It’s the platform we’ve used to develop many different dental websites in the past and we firmly believe it can help you develop the best website for your company.
Here are our professional tips to help you get started:
- Your website should be interesting enough to draw in new clients but it should also be functional.
- Potential patients should find it easy to navigate your dental website, book appointments, and find what they are looking for. You can do this by adding sections for clients to get to know your dental practice, understand the services you provide, and easily book an appointment.
- When developing a website for your clinic, a good rule of thumb is that it should be as easy as possible for your potential customers to use and understand.
- Must-have sections on your dental website include a page showcasing the services you offer, online reviews and patient testimonials, online chat assistance, bill payment integration, and an appointment booking feature.
- Your website should also have a team section where patients can get to meet the dentist, dental hygienist, and other members of staff.
- Ensure that your dental website provides as much information as possible. You can do this through blog posts and by implementing content marketing.
- If possible, showcase your equipment, the interior of your clinic, and videos of dental procedures you perform.
- All of these resources are meant to help patients be familiar with your clinic and team and therefore more comfortable with your practice.
Given that your website is your first impression to potential dental patients, we encourage you to make it as user-friendly, functional, and eye-catchy as you can and we hope our tips can help you get started. If you struggle to do this on your own, you can always reach out to us to check this important aspect of your list.
3. Local SEO for dentists
As a dental clinic, attracting customers within your local community is essential to growing your business. Apart from building local ad campaigns, local SEO strategies can also be a game-changer for your clinic and they would work even better if done in tandem. Creating an SEO campaign entails researching the proper keywords you need to make sure you are reaching the right audience, meeting their needs and queries, and converting them into clients. Once you have the necessary keywords, the next step is to add them to your newly developed website and you can also add them into your ad campaigns to give them an extra boost.
SEO keywords for dentists
Finding SEO keywords for dentists begins with the right keyword research. Start by thinking about what your clients may be searching for and use those words as seed keywords. In your Google Search Console account, you can also find the actual search terms with which users find your practice. You would be able to find this under the Performance report. SEO keywords for dentists allow search engines to understand your services and suggest them to dental clients whenever they input corresponding search terms in their queries.
To ensure that your SEO keywords capture all your services, you can input these seed terms into keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, and Moz Keyword Explorer. Choose the keywords relevant to your clinic from the results and use these on your homepage, service pages, your blog (if you have one) and anywhere else you think might be relevant for your patients.
4. Google My Business for dentists
Having a Google My Business listing can significantly boost your search engine rankings and improve your local brand awareness. Dental clinics with a Google My Business listing would typically rank higher in search engines than dental clinics without one. A GMB profile also helps your clinic collect online reviews. Prospective patients read through the reviews of different clinics before choosing one, which means it a GMB is an important factor in their decision-making process.
Just like Google Ads local campaigns, Google My Business listings show up for searchers within the geographic radius of the business’s physical location. So, with a Google My Business account, your dental clinic would show up in certain local search results, helping you to target your local potential clients.
If you don’t already have a Google My Business profile, start by creating it. If, on the other hand, you already have one but it’s not yielding the desired results, you might need to optimize it. To do this, ensure to set the proper categories for your clinic, choose locations near you and claim your business on Google Maps. You can then proceed to review the information about your business to ensure accuracy.
5. Social media for dentists
Social media advertising is an easy and free way to connect with potential clients, and the fact that there are different social media platforms you can use is definitely an advantage you need to master. Social media is constantly evolving so you need to stay on top of the trends. Checking what other dentists are doing can help. Start by opening Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn pages for your business.
When using social media to promote your dental services, the most important thing is consistency and keeping in mind the public you are trying to reach:
- You should update your clinic’s social media channel regularly with social media posts about what is happening at your clinic and the services that you offer.
- Creating informational posts about your procedures or videos is a great way to interact with your followers.
- Social media allows you to get personal with your potential customers and respond faster to their inquiries.
6. Video marketing for dentists
Video marketing is also a great asset and dentists are not excluded from the complexities of reaching customers through video. As much as you want to post regularly to your blog, social media accounts, and engage clients with text and images, videos are also essential to your digital marketing success.
- Videos keep the attention of your current patients and help you reach future patients by providing entertaining, informative and easily digested content.
- The more engaging your video is, the more likely viewers are to remember your clinic when they need dental help.
- You can use video marketing to promote your clinic in a variety of ways including educating your followers on dental issues like dental hygiene, showcasing a specific procedure, and much more.
7. Email marketing for dentists
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to maintain communication with your clients. Once you have your website up, are creating engaging content on social media, and have begun conducting ads, the next thing that you’ll want to consider is creating an email list. It gives you a closer channel to keep in contact with them that feels more personal than a social media post.
- Collect potential patients’ emails in exchange for something valuable (could be a 10% discount on their next check-up).
- Then, start to create relationships with them.
- Maintain regular contact with your subscribers and provide them with relevant and helpful information.
- Make sure to introduce your services to them, manifest your relationship with the local community and position your office as the best option for patients all around your area.
Launch your internet marketing strategy for dentists
Having a structured digital marketing strategy can thoroughly improve your dental practice. It can attract more leads, increase local brand awareness and get your clinic to land more in-person visits. At Nomadic Advertising, we are a digital marketing agency that provides dental marketing services. We have worked with many dental clinics on a strategy that improved their practice significantly, which means we know what we are talking about. Reach out to us by booking a FREE 30-minute consultation with us and let’s start working on improving your online presence. You have all our digital marketing efforts at your disposal so that together we can take your dental practice to the next level.
FAQs
1. What is digital marketing in dentistry?
Digital marketing in dentistry is an online advertising model by which dentists find clients for their practice by harnessing different marketing channels such as social media, website development, PPC ads, and creating an SEO strategy.
2. What is local SEO for dentists?
Local SEO for dentists is search engine optimization tailored to a dentist’s immediate area using location-centric keywords and optimizing for local brand awareness.
3. How do I advertise my dental services?
You can advertise your dental services through digital marketing channels which allow you to meet more clients within and beyond your locality. You can implement a local ads campaign, a local SEO strategy, and build or redesign your website to ensure it is modern and functional. You can also have a professional social media profile to inform potential customers of your services.
4. How do I get Google ads results for dentists?
You can get Google ads results for dentists by implementing Google ads local campaigns which allow you to reach local clients and attract more of them to your dental clinic.
5. How to get more dental patients?
You can get more dental patients by implementing digital marketing campaigns that target them. You can start by including optimized keywords into your website on your service pages and homepage, and make sure those keywords respond to your local community.
