Marketing For Dentists: 7 Strategies To Attract New Patients

For sustained growth and success as a dentist, you need to enroll new patients every month. But how and where do you find these patients? Competition is rife in the dentistry industry. Single-practice dental clinics are being opened every other day, leaving practitioners competing for patients.  

The good thing is that, with some effort, you can properly position your practice to the target audience and attract many patients. Read on below for seven dental marketing strategies.

Your brand helps convey a sense of your dental practice. It’s never enough to have a fancy name, logo, and perhaps a color scheme for your practice. While these are essential elements of branding, you need to do more. Create a strong brand that patients won’t struggle to remember.  

Have a unique selling point as part of your dental marketing plan. Find something that differentiates your practice from others in your locality. This gives you a competitive edge and should make patients choose you over the others. 

For instance, you can set up yourself as an eco-friendly dentist, where you prioritize sustainability and eco-friendliness through using biodegradable products, energy-efficient technologies, and reducing waste. Or you can invest in advanced technology and treatments like laser dentistry, 3D imaging, same-day crowns.

An experienced dental marketing agency can help you with branding, creating brand awareness, and many other marketing ideas for dental practices. Outsourcing the marketing tasks lets you leverage expertise while you focus on core aspects of your dental practice. 

Setting up your Google My Business profile will help you appear in local search results. A greater majority of patients go online to search for dental services and will often use the terms ‘near me’. With a properly optimized GMB page, you’re likely to show up in such searches, increasing your chances of getting new patients. 

Use your Gmail ID to create your GMB profile. If you have several branches, create a different GMB profile for each of them. Next, verify your ownership of the business by postcard or phone call. This takes a few days or weeks. Then, detail the services offered, hours of operations, and add convincing photos showcasing improvement of your patients. Remember to fill out each section to fully optimize your page. All info you input syncs into Google’s Local Map pack, increasing your ranking on Google search results.

As mentioned before, the majority of patients go online to look up dentists. And they’ll judge your practice by your website’s appearance and performance. If they find it unappealing and difficult to navigate, they might leave and never come back again. Worse still, if you don’t have a functioning website in this digital age, it might be difficult to win their trust

So, create a good-looking dental website for content marketing for your practice. Make sure it has the following:

• A captivating home page summarizing what you offer
• Easy-to-follow online booking system
• Dental SEO content that portrays you as a thought leader in the dental industry
• Concise calls-to-action (CTAs)
• Superb videos and photos of your dentists, staff members, and the clinic itself
• Live chat capability

Moreover, for search engine optimization, ensure page loading speeds are high and the design is mobile-responsive because many access the internet using smartphones. 

Patients aren’t mere profit-making objects. They’re humans with feelings. They desire a company that interacts with them often, not just on dental issues, but also everyday topics of interest. You can do this by setting up dental social media pages, where your patients typically hang out for socialization. 

Below are some best practices to keep your social media followers engaged:

• Post patient testimonials, both written text and before-and-after photos
• Share helpful dental tips
• Ask questions
• Respond and react to comments
• Host live question and answer sessions
• Advertise promotions
• Share behind-the-scenes clips from your dental practice to give your audience a feel of your day-to-day operations
• Run paid social media ads

All this gives them a sense of belonging and can go a long way to winning their loyalty.

People trust recommendations from their icons to a great extent. So, don’t do all the outreach yourself. Partner with influencers who can push out your products and services to their followers, reinforcing your social media marketing efforts. Their endorsements can translate into new patient leads. 

Start by finding the right influencer. You’d want someone that matches your values. For instance, you may want your practice to come out as family friendly. In this case, don’t partner with influencers known for adult only or age-inappropriate content. 

Their audience should also align with your target demographics. Don’t work with someone whose majority of followers come from a city you don’t operate in. 

Don’t just look at the follower count. An influencer with a small engaged audience can attract more patients than one with many passive followers. 

The majority of today’s consumers read online reviews before making a purchase decision. Knowing how other customers fared with a particular company guides their expectations. The more positive reviews you have, the more credible and trustworthy you seem. Equally, having very few or no reviews portrays your practice negatively. People will think that patients hardly visit your clinic.

So, make a deliberate effort to gather as many reviews as possible from patients you treat. You can send follow up emails after a visit with instructions on how to leave a review. Also, train your staff to request reviews from patients right at the dental office as soon as they’re attended to. 

Display the reviews on your website and social media pages, so every visitor reads about how other patients view your practice.

Word-of-mouth is still a powerful marketing tool. People often trust recommendations from their close relatives and friends. So, you’d want to offer incentives to patients who refer others to your practice. 

First ask your patients for referrals. They’ll rarely take the initiative on their own unless you prompt them. Examples of incentives you can promise are as follows:

• A free whitening or teeth cleaning procedure for every referral
• Branded items such as travel mugs, water bottles, t-shirts, or backpacks with your company name and logo
• Free entry to events organized  by your dental practice

Referral programs are often much cheaper than mainstream advertising. Moreover, you only spend money on guaranteed leads. 

Conclusion

Effective marketing for dentists is your way to constantly attract new patients to your practice for sustained growth. Remember, nobody out there will know about your existence until you tell them. Use the dental marketing strategies outlined herein to reach out to your target audience and promote your services. Dental marketing agencies can help you achieve your advertising goals as you concentrate on core business aspects.