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The Best Dental Marketing Ideas You Can’t Afford To Ignore

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For your dental practice to survive and thrive, you need new patients – and this list of some tried-and-true best dental marketing ideas 😉

Lack of growth and low patient counts are the most common reason that dental practices end up failing.

Sadly, it usually has nothing to do with the ability of the dentist.

Most busy dentists know they should be doing some type of marketing, but aren’t sure how to proceed.

Often, they end up doing no marketing at all.

If this sounds like you or your marketing efforts are falling short, then the prospective patients you want to attract probably don’t even know you exist.

And even if they do hear about you through a referral or something else, it’s possible they won’t convert into prospects if you aren’t using proven conversion strategy.

So keep reading to discover some of the best dental marketing ideas that are designed to attract the right people, convert them to patients, and keep them coming back.

For the record, a lot of these strategies aren’t new, but THEY WORK. Here’s a case study where we delivered 143 new patients to a practice in 90 days – in a community of 19000 people!

#1 – A Website Designed for Conversions

This may seem obvious. But one of the best dental marketing strategies for dental practices that often gets overlooked is your website.

This is shocking. Your website how you represent yourself and your business. It’s likely your #1 lead source. As your digital foundation, you need to take it seriously if growth is your objective.

Simply throwing up a few pages with your contact information isn’t going to turn visitors into patients.

In fact, a poor website can often have the opposite effect.

The goal of a website should be to deliver qualified leads to your practice. This means you need a high-conversion website with content that has been PROVEN to get results. The goal of a website is never to “have a website”.

You market to get leads, not to check the latest marketing tactic off your list.

In fact, a great website will help with ALL your marketing efforts.

TRY IT YOURSELF:

Take 10 minutes to review your current website from the perspective of a potential new patient. Is it easy to find information about the services you deliver? Is it easy to call your practice? Are there lots of opportunities to contact you? Do you cultivate trust with the prospect quickly?

#2 Integrated SEO Campaigns

Search engine optimization can be complex and includes many variables. But it is the best way to drive FREE organic traffic to your site. With a solid SEO plan in place, you’ll be able to rank for keywords that are related to your practice. When prospective patients Google a keyword that you rank for, they’ll end up on your site.

And now that you have an amazing website that converts visitors into prospects at a high rate, you’ll be regularly getting new leads 😉

There are also specific tools and techniques pertaining to local search, which should play a big part in any dental practice’s online marketing plan.

TRY IT YOURSELF: 

Google a keyword you want to rank for from a desktop computer or mobile device. Say, “dental implants + your city” or “family dentist + your city”. Are you easy to find in the organic search results? * Note: we’ll review the role of paid advertising in a few paragraphs…

#3 Make Your Site Mobile Friendly

Want a quick win? One of the best dental marketing ideas is to make your website mobile friendly – and while you’re at it, make it fast.
More and more people are searching for a good dentist on their mobile device. In fact, for our dental clients an average of 48% of their website traffic comes from mobile. This number will only go UP. If you haven’t thought about this already, you need to starting NOW.
If your site is not optimized for mobile, you’ll miss out on scores of patients because they won’t have a pleasant browsing experience when they try to visit your website.

TRY IT YOURSELF:

Pull out your mobile device. Type in your website address. Does the site load quickly? How does it look on your mobile? Try and research a service, then book an appointment through your front desk. How did it go? Could it be easier? How could you improve a prospect’s experience?

#4 Paid Search Campaigns

We think this is the best-of-the-best dental marketing ideas. We’ve had incredible success with paid search for our clients.

Organic traffic is great, but it also takes some time to implement and get noticeable results in organic search rankings.

With paid campaigns like Google Ads (formerly Adwords) and Facebook Ads, you can get qualified traffic to your website quickly, and you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

Paid ads are a fantastic way to grow your business. Here’s why:

  • You can measure your total cost per lead (it’s much lower than you think).
  • You can predictably calculate ROI.
  • You can record the phone calls from paid ads to see how your front desk manages calls. Customer service needs to be exceptional.
  • As a bonus, you can measure the rate at which your team answers calls (or misses them). Those missed calls are costing you a small fortune in Customer Lifetime Value.

TRY IT YOURSELF: 

Google a keyword you want to rank for from a desktop computer or mobile device. Say, “orthodontist + your city” or “dentist + your city” or something like that. Are you easy to find in Google Ads? If you’re not there, you need to be. It’s likely there’s 4 ads showing at the top of the search results page – and I bet one of them is a competitor you know. While it’s true that lots of people don’t click on ads, LOTS of people do. You can’t afford to miss those prospective patients.

#5 Test, Track and Measure

If you have a goal in mind for your practice, you’re lost without measurement. You need to know what’s working and what’s not.

Digital marketing allows for in-depth testing, tracking, and measuring to ensure each campaign is getting the best ROI possible.

Whether it’s your website, paid ads, social media channels or email campaigns, the tools are available to see what decisions people are making at what times, giving you insight into which tactics are working and which aren’t.

TRY IT YOURSELF:

Can you gather the following data? How many people visited your website last month? How do you rank in Google for 10 keywords you think your prospects would search? How many phone calls did your website generate last month? How many new patients did you acquire? If 100 people visit your website, what percentage of them call or email your front desk? If you don’t know all of these numbers, you need start monitoring data points like these. If you don’t know how, you need help… which brings us to our next point.

#6 A Dedicated Marketing Partner

The key to making these and other dental marketing strategies come to life is finding a marketing partner that is knowledgeable and dedicated to your success.

When you have a digital marketing expert in control of your campaigns, you can focus on what you do best and feel confident that new patients will continue to come through the door, month after month.

This isn’t a shameless pitch. We’re just saying that it’s very difficult to stay up-to-date on digital marketing trends AND run your practice. In fact, it’s not possible. If you’re managing your marketing and your practice, you’re leaving revenue on the table – period.

At Canopy Media, we specialize in delivering successful marketing strategies for dental practices. We belong to a vast network of over 1,000 digital marketing agencies from 80 countries, and we have the resources, experience, and knowledge to take your dental practice to the next level.

Feel free to get in touch with us to learn how we deliver “off the chart” ROI for our dental clients. We offer a free consultation that guarantees 3 valuable takeaways whether you work with us or not.

If you’re interested, here’s a case study where we generated 143 new patients to a small-town practice in 90 days.