Dentist Marketing Services
Outshine The Competition
In today’s competitive marketing landscape, it is important for dental practices to use a variety of approaches to widen outreach to potential patients. Both traditional advertising and online marketing for dentists should be utilized to reach a diverse audience that receives information in a variety of ways.
Just like dental care offers preventative (rather than reactive) strategies for your oral health, a healthy & comprehensive marketing plan can establish and maintain an online presence to allow your practice to position itself in front of your ideal patients.
In today’s competitive marketing landscape, it is important for dental practices to use a variety of approaches to widen outreach to potential patients. Both traditional advertising and online marketing for dentists should be utilized to reach a diverse audience that receives information in a variety of ways.
Just like dental care offers preventative (rather than reactive) strategies for your oral health, a healthy & comprehensive marketing plan can establish and maintain an online presence to allow your practice to position itself in front of your ideal patients.
Getting Started with Dental Marketing
Taking care of your teeth and gums is important to preserving a radiant smile, and similarly, it is important that you curate a strategy that is responsive to your patient base. When it comes to developing a marketing plan, there are also a variety of practices and methods that you should utilize in your communication and advertising methods in order to reach and serve your patients.
We’ve moved past the times when a listing in the yellow pages and (maybe) a basic website would grow your dental practice. Patient expectations have changed, and many are doing their research online before choosing a dentist. Boosting your presence with our online marketing services for dentists, you can create a multi-faceted marketing approach to grow your practice.
Benefits of Dental Marketing
The Top 5 Pillars of Dental Marketing
Websites
Your practice’s website is an opportunity to combine the information that patients expect to see with the information they need to see to gain valuable information about your practice. Your website needs to be easily viewed on a computer monitor or laptop screen, but even more importantly, you need to optimize your site for viewing on smartphones, since more than 70% of today’s web traffic is coming from mobile devices.
Realizing that the average shelf life of a website is only 3-5 years, it is also important to maintain your site regularly to provide up-to-date medical information (since recommendations are constantly changing) and stay in tune with online marketing technology (that is constantly changing) that affects your site’s responsiveness to searches.
Website Landing Page
Your landing page is a vital part of attracting patients to your facility and should be the most dynamic. Highly engaging (and changing) content and graphics coupled with readily-accessible information, special offers, and a call-to-action capture the attention of potential patients and encourage interaction within your site. Showing the latest and greatest of what you have to offer, special announcements, and even promoting community engagement allows current and potential patients to quickly learn about the personality of your practice.
About the Practice Pages
Let the community know who you are! Use this page to provide general information about the services you offer and the staff they will be interacting with. Photographs of team members and details about their experience are a personal extension of your practice and can help to reduce some of the anxiety that runs rampant among dental patients.
Services Page
Detailing the services offered by your practice increases exposure to patients who may not realize the full scope of treatment and services available, especially if you provide any of the 9 dental specialties recognized by the American Dental Association.
Patient Reviews Page
Whether incorporated onto your Landing Page or a page all its own, it is important to allow potential patients to read about the experiences of others who visit your practice. When researching, 84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.
Contact Us Page
Make it easy for your patients to ask questions by including a Call-to-Action on your Contact page that allows them to easily call or message the practice. Recently, automated chat boxes have been utilized to help patients find answers to the most commonly asked questions. This page should also contain your practice’s location information and hours of service. Bonus points for including a photo of your location for easy identification or downloadable New Patient paperwork to make the intake process quick and easy.
Search Engine Optimization
With over 40K searches happening on Google PER SECOND, implementing proven SEO techniques throughout your website’s content allows you to position your practice among the eyes of those conducting internet searches for dental practices. Since 75% of users never click past the first page of search results, well-utilized SEO using keywords that will drive your website to the top of search results is of vital importance to avoid missing prospective patients.
Your SEO integration throughout your website is integral in creating response through internet searches, and a dental SEO expert strategy should combine both Organic SEO and Local SEO techniques to broaden your reach and direct patients to your practice. In addition to your website, your Google My Business listing and social media presence are also drivers in your SEO results.
While both organic and local SEO are important to a successful marketing strategy, search engine’s generate 300% more traffic for websites than social media, making well-researched and effective keywords and SEO strategies crucial to landing your website among the top search results.Through Local SEO that combines up-to-date Google Business Profile and Google Map listings, location-specific keywords will rank your practice higher in searches, while website loading speed and ease of use will keep patients on your site.
Social Media
One of the most responsive, rapidly changing avenues to engage your target audience, an effective social media strategy brings your services to an already-engaged audience, with over 53% of the world’s population active on social media.
Engaging your community with real time content, your social media accounts should include content that establishes your practice as a source for relevant information for both current and prospective patients.
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter have among the highest user engagement statistics but it’s important that you know your audience and choose a platform that makes sense for your area. Knowing who your audience is, what channels they are browsing, and what times they are active help to create a strategy that results in heightened engagement. By using various social media platforms that drive patients back to your website, social media for dentists allows you to reach your patients on a personal level.
How to Succeed on Social Media
Effective Social Platforms for Dental Practices
Facebook is the most widely used social media platform worldwide, spanning all patient demographics, with 79% of its 2.9 billion users active daily. Allowing you to build an online community through likes and followers, your Facebook page extends the reach of your website in a conversational manner by providing real-time engagement. Taking advantage of Facebook’s extensive Ads platform, you can diversify your marketing strategy with posts directly aiming at
various members of your patient base.
A highly visual platform for businesses, over 200M+ Business accounts visited every day on Instagram. You can create interaction with a variety of videos, infographics, tips, and other content. Pioneering image and video marketing, it is important to create content that gets aimless scrollers to stop on your posts. Allowing you to share your practice through images, hashtags offer categorial searching that expands your reach.
YouTube
Video content is dominating content marketing, with engagement capturing 82% of all consumer internet traffic and rising. YouTube is the second most popular social media platform and the second most trafficked website after Google, so taking advantage of this platform allows you to upload longer format videos that can include office tours, videos explaining procedures and other dental tips and much more.
With a character limit defining the length of posts,Twitter serves as a gateway to more in-depth articles and information, and is heavily reliant on links and hashtags, whether linking to other social media posts or directly back to your website. Whereas Instagram and TikTok capture a younger demographic, 63% of Twitter users are between the ages of 35-65 years old. Beneficial when attending events or hosting Q&A sessions, Twitter provides rapid access in real-time to bring information to your audience.
TikTok
TikTok has been rapidly increasing in popularity, with over 138 million active users in the United States. These short-form videos, generally taken with a mobile device, can be used to engage current and potential patients with short, funny dental videos, how-to or how-not-to videos, and other fun content that adds personality to your practice.
Do What Works for You
It is not necessary to maintain a presence on every social media platform in existence. Rather, a curated group of accounts and quality messaging is more effective. Allowing you to engage your community on a personal, approachable level, social media requires interaction to be successful, so don’t stretch yourself too thin with an overabundance of generic accounts and posts.
Advertising
A well-developed marketing strategy that takes advantage of a combination of Digital and Traditional Advertising methods allows you to make the most of your marketing budget and reach a diversified patient base. Although the distribution of advertising focus has transitioned to favor digital marketing, traditional advertising should not be abandoned as part of your marketing strategy to reach your patients across multiple information streams.
Digital Advertising
Providing variety in your ad spending across several platforms can increase your reach, with 75% of people saying that paid search engine ads make it easier to find the information that they seek. Considering many people will not look past the first page of search results, display ads and PPC (pay-per-click) marketing are a fast-acting digital tactic to generate new patient leads and increase your visibility using demographic or interest targeting, that allow you to place ads within a group of sites that fit within your chosen focus. Display Ads are advertising campaigns most commonly seen as banner ads that increase brand awareness and recollection, while PPC Marketing, your advertisement will appear alongside search engine results and you are only charged per click that directs patients to your ad site.
Traditional Advertising
Traditional marketing is not obsolete, and there is a time and place for Business Cards, Brochures, Radio, Television, and Print Ads. Providing information on everything from special programs to treatment options and preventative strategies, utilizing tangible items such as brochures and flyers literally puts your information in the hands of your patients.
Reputation Management
For healthcare providers across all specialties, reviews and testimonials are an integral part of growing a practice. As many as 51% of patients consult doctor reviews when choosing a new provider, making reputation management an important aspect of patient interaction and follow ups. Promoting the benefits of a good dental routine, sharing patient successes, and responding to some of the most (and least) commonly asked questions can establish you as a leader among dental practices.
Let’s Talk!
Working with a dental marketing agency allows you to grow your practice and keep up with changes in the digital realm through innovative, targeted strategies. Firefly Marketing is your marketing partner through it all, using the sites and platforms that your patients are regularly engaging to allow you to reach current and potential patients on their own turf. Let’s Talk!
Get a Free Quote Today
I can’t say enough about what Firefly has done for our online presence. They gave us a flawless start-up plan and through the years have continued to meet all of our needs. I am not a website/online expert by any means, but they have given us a product which has allowed us to rate among the top online entities in our industry. They are easy to work with and extremely capable when it comes to understanding and exceeding our goals.
The folks at Firefly were able to not only create a website that functions in the ways that my brand needs, but they were able to make a site that actually celebrates my body of work. They created something that really made my work sing in a whole new way. I really can’t praise them enough.
I’m so grateful for my fabulous website & even more so for the care and attention it gets for critical updates to keep looking so good! Y’all are the best!
Phew!!! You guys got a lot done in a short amount of time. Thanks so much for helping us meet this deadline.
Laura & the Firefly Group have been great to work with! Professional and responsive, they’ve always helped with great suggestions in raising the bar with our SEO Profile.
The decision to go with Firefly to manage our social media and our webpage has not been regretted for one second! They do an outstanding job!
Firefly came on board pre COVID-19 shutdown in March, right as our biggest fundraiser of the year started. As a non-profit we rely on fundraisers to sustain our association. The event quickly had to convert to virtual for the public to access it, Firefly did an amazing job during the transition. We are thrilled with their dedication to their clients, the great teamwork they demonstrate and the willingness to work with us on our needs. Firefly is very positive note for our association during this uncertain 2020.
I can’t say enough about what Firefly has done for our online presence. They gave us a flawless start-up plan and through the years have continued to meet all of our needs. They have given us a product which allows us to rate among the top online entities in our industry. They are easy to work with and extremely capable when it comes to understanding and exceeding our goals.
The folks at Firefly were able to not only create a website that functions in the ways that my brand needs, but they were able to make a site that actually celebrates my body of work. They created something that really made my work sing in a whole new way. I really can’t praise them enough.
I’m so grateful for my fabulous website & even more so for the care and attention it gets for critical updates to keep looking so good! Y’all are the best!
Phew!!! You guys got a lot done in a short amount of time. Thanks so much for helping us meet this deadline.
Laura & the Firefly Group have been great to work with! Professional and responsive, they’ve always helped with great suggestions in raising the bar with our SEO Profile.
The decision to go with Firefly to manage our social media and our webpage has not been regretted for one second! They do an outstanding job!
Firefly came on board pre COVID-19 shutdown in March, right as our biggest fundraiser of the year started. As a non-profit we rely on fundraisers to sustain our association. The event quickly had to convert to virtual for the public to access it, Firefly did an amazing job during the transition. We are thrilled with their dedication to their clients, the great teamwork they demonstrate and the willingness to work with us on our needs. Firefly is very positive note for our association during this uncertain 2020.
LEARN ABOUT THE PROCESS
Dental Marketing FAQs
The top platforms in 2022 consist of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter. While there are numerous Social Media platforms available, it is not necessary to create a presence on every one, but rather choose the right platform for your practice.
Display Ads are most commonly seen as banner ads that increase brand awareness and recollection by running an ad on an affiliated webpage and directing patients to your website and social media platforms. Customizable with demographic or interest targeting, you can place ads within a group of sites that align with your chosen keywords.
It is important to monitor your online reputation to understand what patients are saying about your practice and respond to those whose experience was unfavorable. Take time to also thank those who have responded in a positive light. Your online reviews and testimonials act as your digital first impression. Be proactive about your online reputation and take control of the marketing power of the internet. Within 7 seconds of an in-person meeting, people begin to develop their impression of you, and when you take that interaction online, the time is reduced dramatically.
Widely considered the new word-of-mouth advertising, social media helps to influence up to 41% of patients looking for new healthcare professionals. Both versatile and budget friendly, social media ads allow you to engage both current and potential patients.
We know it isn’t easy asking for reviews, but there are ways to make this process easier. Create a script/prompt for your staff to use when completing check-out processes. Print reminders on your appointment cards, mail-outs, and any other materials. Place call-to-actions throughout your website and email signatures. SMS text reminders are another great way to remind patients to leave reviews. No matter what methods you choose, remember to make it as easy as possible for patients to leave reviews.
Social media is all about communication and connecting. It is a powerful tool that can help you showcase your services, your people, and your culture. In addition to sharing your services, you can create beautiful infographics or engaging videos to help inform and educate your audience.
Healthcare marketing is all about educating and connecting with your audiences. In 2020, healthcare marketing is focused on creating informative and engaging content and video and distributing that content through your website and social media channels.
Whether you’re trying to attract patients, doctors, or donors, email marketing helps to keep you connected to these audiences – keeps you top of mind.
Who We Are
About Firefly
Firefly Marketing, pioneers of the digital marketing era, has provided brilliant marketing, advertising, creative and digital services to clients since 1998. We have gained an unprecedented level of experience and expertise in everything from website development to traditional advertising and marketing, PR, mobile marketing, social media – virtually any and every type of marketing imaginable.
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