Digital Marketing for Dentists: 28 Genius Ideas and Best Practices

Name: Adaptify
Brand: Adaptify
Rating: 4.8 (78 reviews)

October 3, 2023
Published: September 16, 2020

Content

By 2021, the dental industry is estimated to be worth $37 billion. If you want your dental practice to be profitable, it’s essential to have a digital marketing plan for your industry.

For the longest time, dentists have relied on reputation and referrals to build and increase their customers. In 2020, it is more likely that your audience is on digital media. Whether it’s blogging, social media ads, YouTube marketing, or Google ads, you have to learn digital marketing for dentists.

There are numerous ways to attract, retain and market to your patients. If you are looking for an extra push, this article is for you.

Let’s get started.

Why does digital marketing matter for dentists?

Although digital marketing for dental practices is in early stages of adoption, more dentists are seeing the power of online and social media marketing.

As compared to other industries, dentists are in a different position. In other businesses, brands need to convince their people that what they’re selling is worth their money. On the other hand, dentists don’t need to convince people to get their teeth cleaned and checked. Everyone knows when they need a dental visit.

Most dentists need people to remember to schedule their appointments and help them overcome the anxiety of visiting dental clinics.

Ultimately, it boils down to earning the patient’s confidence and building trust.

For a dentist, digital marketing is a great way to build relationships and convince the audience to feel more comfortable even before they visit your clinic.

To let them know that they are in safe hands, showcase your authority, track record and experience. Give your practice an interesting personality so that your patient looks forward to their visit.

Informational content posted by the dental clinic Jacaranda Smiles on Instagram.

Digital marketing gives you platforms where you can connect with your existing and prospective patients. You are selling confidence, trust and a good experience.

The benefits of digital marketing for dentists

Online advertising is the way to gain new customers. Knowing that hundreds and millions of people use digital and social media platforms, they are a great place to interact with prospects and build your brand.

Here are the 3 ways digital marketing benefits dentists:

#1. Establishes better relationships – Marketing on social media provides you a chance to show customer testimonials, client experiences and, most importantly, the results of your work.

For example, answering a question about dental care on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram shows your knowledge. You want to show that you care for your audience and that you are there to help.

#2. Attract new patients – More than half of the people turn to Google to find a dentist. However, 15% of people said their #1 reason for not booking a dentist appointment was trouble finding the clinic.

When your prospective customers start looking for a new dentist, they are going to do their research. You need to be there.

#3. Showcase your expertise – The viral nature of digital platforms makes it easy to spread information about your practice. Demonstrate your knowledge by writing articles, posting videos and sharing information in the form of visual imagery.

When you have proof to back your claims, people will trust your brand. That in turn helps you become a leader who attracts new patients and peer attention.

Best digital marketing strategies for dentists: 28 Ideas worth trying

As you will soon see, there is so much that goes into creating, launching and optimising a digital marketing campaign. Let’s dive into the best practices and know what works best for your dental business

A tip – Focus on one or two channels initially rather than increasing your marketing on all the platforms simultaneously.

#1. Building a high-converting website for your dental practice – A high-quality website is the heart of every digital marketing campaign.

When people come across your practice for the first time, they will judge you based on your website. If you are looking to create a positive first impression, invest in developing a clean, modern and unique website that best represents your practice.

There are two ways to create a striking dentist website design.

You can use a website builder to create your dental practice website. It is easy and convenient. The issue with website builders is that they don’t allow you to create a unique website. You cannot customise it to stand out from competitors.

Because the website is built based on a template, it will look like hundreds of other websites built on the same platform.

If you want a unique website for your dental practice, build a custom site. This unique website fits your businesses, helps you build brand recognition and captures more leads.

Your dental site should be easy to navigate and quick to load. Ensure that it is optimised for all devices, including mobile phones and tablets.

Hire a website design and branding agency to create an unforgettable dental brand.

#2. Boost your dental website’s ranking with SEO – Having the best website doesn’t mean that patients would find your site straight away. You will have to optimise it for search engines. This way, people searching for dental services can easily find your practice on Google.

When you know that 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine, it only makes sense to invest in SEO services for your dental website.

People use search engines to find information about products, businesses and services. If you want potential leads to find your dental office, consider integrating SEO in your dental digital marketing strategy.

Search engine optimisation involves adding relevant keywords to your website copy that reflect your specialties, location and other details. In today’s digital world, you cannot afford to miss out on SEO for your dental practice.

The SEO checklist as per Neil Patel.

Improving your online visibility in search engines involves improving the page speed, adding meta-description and getting links from other credible websites. Numerous components make up an SEO optimised website.

Optimise your dental practice to reach more patients by investing in SEO. Remember, SEO in 2020 takes time to show results. Ranking organically is worth the wait because it will boost your website traffic. You will get more patients when your website ranks higher on search engines.

#3. Target long-tail keywords for better visibility

Long-tail keywords are detailed words and phrases that are directly related to your service and your location. They drive valuable traffic to your website because people that are searching for them are more likely to convert.

These keywords are easy to rank for since fewer people are searching for ultra-detailed terms. Also, all practices do not provide a specialised service which is why you will have less competition. They could be as specific as “Root canals in [your city]” or “how much do dental implants cost in [your city].”

The benefit of using long-tail keywords is getting quality traffic to your web pages. They attract more qualified patients because you are directly speaking to the audience that specifically needs a service.

Hundreds of other dentists around the world are trying to rank for keywords such as “dental practice”. With long-tail keywords that target users in a particular location, you cut down on general traffic.

Targeting long-tail keywords for SEO for dental clinics.

You can use tools such as Google Keyword Planner and Ahrefs to find relevant keywords that are worth targeting.

#4. Local SEO – An excellent way to increase traffic to your dental office is by local SEO. It ensures that your dental office shows up in front of the audience in search engine result pages (SERPs).

Google local search results rank even above organic search results. Creating an informative profile about your dental practice and clinic on Google My Business (GMB) increases footfall to your clinic.

Last year, when Moz conducted its annual “Local ranking factors study”, Google My Business profile was the #1 ranking factor in the local SEO.

Last year, when Moz conducted its annual “Local ranking factors study”, Google My Business profile was #1 ranking factor for local SEO.

You can leverage social proof by encouraging people to post reviews about your practice.

#5. Claim your clinic’s GMB listing – As a local practice, the best digital marketing idea for your business is claiming the Google My Business listing. To find a dentist in their area, people conduct local searches on Google. You would want your practice to appear to these searchers.

Your GMB listing helps local leads discover your practice. When users search for a local business, they will see three GMB listings that fit a user’s local search query. Also called local SEO 3-pack, it is easier to rank for, as compared to traditional website SEO.

The local 3-pack SEO as demonstrated by Backlinko.

Start by claiming your GMB listing. Fill out all the information on it including, the official name of your clinic, the accurate address, specialities, hours of operation, photos and link to the content to make the listing more engaging. Ensure that your listing provides all the information the audience needs and is up to date.

If you are wondering how to market your dental practice to local leads, Google My Business is your answer. Claiming your local listing gives you a high ROI for your digital marketing practice.

#6. Adding genuine reviews about your dental practice – Be it a good experience or a bad one, people share their opinion about your dental practice. They usually go to your GMB listing or your Facebook page and leave comments about their experience. Reviews influence people’s buying decisions. Your potential customers will read reviews before choosing your business.

Invest in reputation management. Build your brand on positive testimonials. While you cannot control what people have to say about your business, how you handle feedback is in your hands.

Thank people for positive comments and handle the issues in negative reviews. How you approach and respond to negative reviews shows that you are willing to work with them if things go wrong. When you build a better image of your dental brand, people will feel more confident in choosing your practice.

Social media marketing

#7. Facebook marketing for dentists – With billions of daily active visitors, Facebook is one of the broadest social media networks for the dentist.

Use Facebook marketing for dentists to build deep and trusting relationships with your audience because it’s a virtual platform used by friends and family members. You can try posting following types of social media posts:

● Share happy photos of your clients, team and office
● Link to new articles in your industry and relevant blog posts on your website
● Provide regular updates about your practice and ask patients for inputs
● Run promotions and contests
● Share a video of patients sharing their experience
● Run Facebook Q&A sessions
● Provide dental tips and answer customer queries

An important thing to remember about Facebook is that it’s about connecting with people. To elicit a response, create posts that get people to click, share or comment.

Facebook marketing by Uveneer dental practice.

For increased engagement, ask them questions regarding your patient’s oral health habits. Include a compelling call to action to encourage them to get involved.

#8. Marketing your dental practice on Twitter – Like Facebook, Twitter is an effective social media platform for dentists because it appeals to a wide range of customers. The messages you share on Twitter will be more refined and brief. Use branded hashtags to attract the attention of clients and engage with them.

What can a Twitter marketing plan for dentists include?

● Use hashtags related to the dental industry to draw attention, such as #TeethWhitening
● Share relevant content created by industry peers
● Live tweet from dental conferences
● Handle frequently asked questions and customer queries

Twitter marketing for dentists.

Your aim is to convince clients that you provide a comfortable experience. Try not to get too technical (or clinical) with your posts for social media marketing. For a personal touch, you could show the before and after photos of your patients.

Keep in mind the HIPAA guidelines while posting dental content on social media.

#9. Instagram marketing for dentists – When you give your patients a photo-ready smile, where would they show it first? On Instagram, right? Instagram marketing for dentists is an effective platform to demonstrate the visual side of your practice.

Aim to appear professional and authentic. As a dentist, you can explore the following confidence-boosting visual posts:

● Reposting pictures of the patient’s in your office
● Behind the scene pictures
● Showing the before and after treatment images (of course with patient permission)
● Photos of events
● Branded hashtags
● Running competitions with branded hashtags

When people come to dentists, they also want to know about what they can do to protect their teeth. This means when you post on social media, give valuable tips on dental hygiene.

Instagram marketing by Life at Aspen Dental.

When people find your posts helpful, they will be more likely to share them with their network. The result is more engagement for your dental practice on social media. 49% of people say they share informative and valuable content with others. Content allows you to show your knowledge of the industry.

#10. YouTube marketing – For a dentist, it becomes essential to rely on the visual impact of their practice to attract more patients. Marketing on YouTube, which focuses on video content is an obvious choice. The trust-building range of content a dentist can share on YouTube includes:

● Clinic tours
● Question and answer sessions
● Patient testimonials
● Demonstration
● Oral hygiene tips

YouTube marketing for dentists.

Sharing educational and entertaining information in the form of videos will help you build trust with your audience. Don’t miss out on using video marketing, because brands with videos get 41% more web traffic than their non-video competitors.

#11. Leverage live videos – Called the most exciting trend on social media, live videos are in rage right now. Leverage them to engage with your audience to expand your credibility. You can pick from Instagram stories or Facebook live to go beyond ads and create genuine conversations around your dental practice.

Facebook live videos by Singing Dentist.

#12. Creating a blog with helpful information about oral care – As a dentist, you have an abundance of knowledge about oral care. Chances are, people in your audience are searching for the same information over the internet. Websites (like yours) that provide advice and tips through blogs are more likely to get repeated visitors.

Make use of this opportunity to provide valuable information on your blog that your audience is seeking. Once or twice a month, write long-form blogs relevant to your target market. You could start by writing about FAQs and home dental care tips. Over time, you will build blog readership, credibility and authority while getting a steady stream of inbound traffic and leads.

Blogging for dentists is also helpful for SEO. Blogs drive relevant leads to your page and keep them on your website for longer. This sends a positive signal to Google that your content is relevant, as a result, they will rank your website higher and increase its visibility.

The simple blogging template for dentists worth trying.

If you do not have a budget for digital marketing, you can do blogging yourself as a starting point. As you start getting new patients, you can invest in hiring a digital marketing agency to manage online campaigns for your dental practice.

13. Publish infographics – Besides blogs, infographics share information in a visual format that makes it easy for your audience to grasp.

Because most of your readers prefer consuming visual content, it is an excellent format for your dental clinic. You can share dental facts to generate the interest of potential patients. Infographics can boost your website traffic by 12%. Also, articles with infographics get 178% more traffic than their counterparts. Infographics get three times more shares on social media than other content formats. Indeed, diverse content formats are an excellent way to increase your brand exposure.

Infographic templates for dentists as shown in Visual.ly.
When you have statistical information or a process to share, infographics make it easy to understand. You can create them by using infographic maker tools such as Venngage or Visme. Alternatively, you can hire a digital marketing agency to create the infographic, publish it on your website and promote it on third-party publications.

#14. Using email marketing to build your dental brand’s reputation – Email marketing is known to be one of the most effective digital marketing strategies. You can connect and share valuable information directly with your newsletter subscribers.

Email marketing statistics.

With 293.6 billion emails being sent and received daily, use email marketing to stay connected with the patients. You can leverage emails to share the billing invoice and send appointment reminders. Every time you change a policy, publish a blog or organise special offers, let your email subscribers know about it. To get them to engage with your newsletter and to build brand loyalty, personalize your content for the readers. Send them information that is relevant to them. Consider integrating your CRM with email marketing to automate sending reminders, followups and occasion-related offers.

#15. Building an email list – When you start with email marketing, you will have to create a list of subscribers. The easiest place to do so is through your website. For people to sign up for your newsletter, integrate an email signup bar at the bottom or top of your website.

You could consider buying email lists. However, you may end up wasting your money on buying leads who are not valuable for your business. They will block or delete your emails.

When you put in efforts to obtain the emails organically, you get a list of email subscribers who want to hear from you. You can then nurture these leads regularly to convert them into customers.

You can ask people who visit your clinic to share their email address where you can send them healthcare tips, offers and updates about your practice.

#16. Utilize dental video marketing – It is predicted that by the end of 2020, an average adult will be watching nearly 100 minutes of videos daily. If you’re not using videos to market your dental practice, you are missing out on the most powerful marketing tools.

Video marketing shapes a consumer’s purchasing decisions people’s purchasing decision by impacting how they view and interact with brands. When you combine the fact that people love watching videos and deliver content through a medium that they prefer, it’s a win-win situation.

Your audience is 10 times more likely to interact with a video as compared to a block of text, videos are incredibly useful in providing valuable information and keeping the audience engaged.

Consider creating videos and posting them on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. You can even integrate them in your newsletter that is sent to the email subscribers. Some dental marketing video ideas worth trying are:

● Share dental health tips
● Office tour
● Client testimonials
● Commonly asked questions about your practice and procedures

When a viewer watches these videos, they will learn more about your dental practice and it will nudge them to convert into patients.

Paid advertising for dentists

#17. Local awareness ads for Facebook – While spreading the word about your dental practice, being specific about whom you want to market your service to, is essential. You don’t want to show ads for your dental business outside of a 50-mile radius. If your clinic is in Sydney and someone in Brisbane sees your ad, it doesn’t do any good.

Facebook local awareness ads.

Local awareness ads on Facebook are a great way to reach a local audience. Facebook allows you to share locally relevant details about your dental practice such as distance, hours of operation and get directions. Your CTA can be “call now”, “get directions”, “send message” and “learn more”. Prompt them to make an appointment.

#18. Click to call ads on Google and Facebook – For a dental practice, the main goal behind digital marketing is that patients and prospects book an appointment. They would usually pick up their phone and call the office. Facebook and Google AdWords provide click to call ads for desktop, mobile and tablet. You can either create a call-only campaign or add an extension to the existing ads.

#19. Mobile call-only ads – According to Google, one in twenty Google searches is for healthcare-related information. In today’s world that is connected by mobiles and smartphones, many advertisers want customers to call them. For those customers who want to solve a complicated customer query, order takeout or book an appointment, a phone call is a convenient option.

You can create the call-only campaigns through Google Ads that include a phone number and a visible “call” button for customers to call the business directly.

#20. Facebook demographic targeting for dentists – You would already be aware of the demographic targeting available on Facebook. This lets you target potential customers by their interests, language, relationship status and employment. Research shows that regardless of the area you are targeting, women make 90% of dental buying decisions.

Get in front of the crowd by taking advantage of targeted ads on Facebook.

#21. Google Ads income targeting for the dental clinic – In theory, everyone should floss regularly and go to visit the dentist for their annual cleaning. In reality, most people don’t do so. Using Google Ads, you can target demographics based on their income level.

In the settings tab, select “advanced location.” You will see the following menu:

When you click on the locations tab, you will notice the first three options. Click on “demographics.”

Here, choose the household income segment that you are interested in advertising.

You can use this to market different services to each of the income tiers. For example, for a higher income group, you can target ads for teeth whitening. Mid-income levels may be interested in maintaining essential dental health.

#22. Remarketing ads on Facebook and Google – Also described as “easy money”, remarketing ads help you reach people who have already visited your website or clinic. These ads are focused on recapturing potential visitors and customers.

If you are collecting email addresses at your practice, leverage remarketing ads through “Customer Match” on Google and Facebook. Upload the email addresses to create a remarketing audience with an ad that would make the visitors want to revisit your clinic. It could be a reminder for a dental cleaning.

#23. Facebook Messenger ads – With 1.3 billion users every month, Facebook Messenger is the top app in the world. There are two different ways in which you can advertise on Messenger:

● Click to Messenger – Use them to acquire leads, customers, answer queries and to provide customer support.

● Sponsored messages – These ads show up in your Messenger inbox. They include photos, videos, carousel and dynamic ads. You can use them to send an offer or to take them to a landing page.

#24. Google Map Ads – An ad on Google Maps will lead a potential patient searching for a dental practice to your clinic. For example, when they enter “dentist” in the search bar, Google Map ads are visible to them. On mobile, they include directions to your clinic and a CTA.

#25. Emergency keywords – Bidding on keywords such as “emergency” and “urgent” is an easy way to appear in front of clients with immediate needs. As they are high intent keywords, the return on investment for those keywords would be great. While targeting emergency keywords, ensure that you can take up emergency cases. Add your contact number to the ad; otherwise, you may risk getting a bad review on Google.

#26. Use marketing tools to manage the digital marketing campaigns – Invest in marketing tools to manage and track dental digital marketing campaigns. When you are running campaigns on multiple channels, it is challenging to keep track of the progress on each of them. Marketing tools will help you stay organised.

For example, you can use a social media monitoring tool such as SocialPilot to know what people are saying about your brand on social media.

MailChimp allows you to automate email marketing.

Each of these tools makes it easier to manage the campaign and drive new leads to your business.

#27. Monitor your campaigns for a significant ROI – Monitor your digital marketing campaigns so that they drive results. Each channel and method has its metrics that you would have to track.

Track data such as click-through rate, impressions, conversions, dwell time and leads. This information helps you know the parts that are working and ones that need improvement. You can optimise well-performing channels.

#28. Monitor your competitors – In your area itself, many dentists are competing for the same patients. Know how they are reaching new patients. It is an excellent opportunity to discover new channels to grow your business.

By observing them, you can learn to produce a more effective digital marketing campaign that drives better results for your practice.

To gain a deeper understanding of various marketing terms, we kindly invite you to explore our blog post titled “2023 Madness & Marketing Terms Explained.“

Why do dental practices need digital marketing?

Sure, you have a full schedule every week and your revenues are steadily increasing. However, with digital marketing, you will continue to see results over long-term. These marketing ideas for dentists are lucrative and will determine the success of your dental practice.

About Adaptify – Adaptify is an Australian owned and operated web solutions and digital marketing agency. Our HQ is based in Melbourne. We also service clients in Sydney, Brisbane, Gold Coast and other metro locations.

We enable ambitious businesses to amplify visibility, growth and profitability through highly effective and adaptive digital strategies.

Our holistic digital offering extends right from helping small to medium businesses drive maximum qualified leads and sales by building and marketing an online presence through to designing, integrating and managing complex web solutions for larger businesses all backed by our industry-leading IT support and customer service.

We offer dental digital marketing services to dentists in Preston, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth, Gold Coast, and Sydney.

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