Whether you’ve just opened your dental office and you are looking for patients or you would simply like to increase your dental leads, you’ll want to have a better understanding of what goes into a dental marketing campaign. There are a lot of different ways you can go about growing your practice, and often the best solution is a mixture of multiple methods.
How to Get Dental Leads
To get dental leads, there are some marketing methods and practices that you’ll want to incorporate into your overall lead generation campaign. Below are some of the different types of marketing you can take advantage of to grow your business, as well as some best practices to ensure your campaign is successful from beginning to end:
Perform a Brand Audit
The first thing you will want to do is consider your current brand. If you are a new practice, consider working with a marketing company that specializes in branding, or look up forms you can fill out to establish brand guidelines. The better you can understand what your brand looks like, the better you can tailor your advertising and web copy to bring in the right patients.
Traditional Marketing
While there are a lot of newer marketing methods that you’ll want to take advantage of (that we’ll go over in a moment), you still may want to consider more traditional marketing methods. What are these?
- Billboard
- Radio Ads
- Print Ads
- Local Television Ads
These methods are tried and true. With that said, they may also cost more than other, more modern options. If you have the budget, mixing modern with traditional marketing is a good way to expand your reach.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing isn’t just for products. Service providers (like dentists) can also benefit greatly from social media marketing. A presence on social media shows that your business is active and engaged. It can also help drive traffic to your website and your business.
Make sure you have a good amount of positive reviews on your Facebook page and encourage patients to leave both Google and Facebook reviews. Once you get enough reviews on Facebook, it will show an average rating. At that point, you just need to keep your average around 5 stars. You’re a great dentist, though, so that shouldn’t be a problem!
SEO Campaign
SEO has become an extremely important part of marketing. If you aren’t aware of what SEO is, it stands for “Search Engine Optimization.” To put it simply, SEO is getting your website higher in the Google and Bing rankings. With good SEO, when people search for your business or dental practices in your area, you’ll pop up near the top. With poor SEO, you’ll get buried and your competitors will show up above you.
While SEO is a whole art in and of itself, some things you can focus on are content creation, keyword research and implementation, and getting rid of dead links/pages on your website. That isn’t all of it, but it’s a good start.
Content Creation
Speaking of content creation, it’s an excellent and low-cost way to drive traffic to your website and your practice. So, what is involved in dentistry content creation? There are actually a few things you can do.
One simple thing you can do is create a blog. A well-written, engaging blog can drive traffic to your site, establish you as an expert, and make you stand out in your local market.
Another option is videos on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. These videos don’t need to be very intensive or long. You can make brief, engaging content on a low budget. Check out my social for some examples!
If you aren’t a great writer and/or you aren’t comfortable in front of the camera, you can hire experts to help. The goal is to get a good amount of content out there that is high-quality.
Paid Ads
Like with traditional marketing, you can pay to market online as well. This is done in the form of paid ads. While you can run video ads, you’ll want to focus your efforts mainly on written ads. This includes Facebook, Google, and even Bing.
The Google Ads dashboard can seem intimidating at first, but there are plenty of videos online to help walk you through it. Facebook is a little easier, and it even gives you the option to boost your posts so more people see them!
It’s good to mix up your paid advertising. While it’s a good idea to spend most of your money on Google (so people find your practice when they search for dentists in your area), some Facebook advertising will also drive traffic and build your social media presence.
Update Your Website
When was the last time you updated your website? If it’s been a while, you’ll want to take an objective look…
Is your website dated? Slow? Do some of the links not work? If so, you need to put some time aside to update your website or hire someone to do it for you. Your website is the first thing your patients are going to land on when they look into your business. It’s almost like a business card. Imagine handing someone a dated, ugly business card. You wouldn’t do that, would you? The same goes for your website.
Your site needs to be modern, clean, easy to read, and engaging. If it isn’t, it’s time to address that.
Encourage Referrals
Word of mouth is the oldest form of advertising and it is just as important today as it was hundreds of years ago. Be proactive with encouraging referrals. Ask your patients to refer friends and family members if they enjoyed their services. It never hurts to ask!
If you take advantage of these tips, you’ll be getting more dental leads than you know what to do with!
