Ready to overcome the havoc that the COVID 19 pandemic has wreaked on the dental industry? It’s important to continue to focus on marketing initiatives to build trust and attract new patients during this turbulent time. Here are 9 online marketing for dental tips that will help you reestablish the value of your business amidst fierce competition.
Safety is of paramount concern as patients start revisiting dentists. Be it offering telemedicine options or ensuring patients about safety; it is time to make your dental business visible to those searching. Adopting the right marketing techniques at this time will help your prospective patients to feel comfortable and overcome fears. Let’s start without further ado with 9 ideas for online dental marketing.
Increase Visibility With Local SEO
Want to stand out in your suburbs? Local SEO is the way to go about it. In fact, businesses using ‘near me’ often appear more on mobile searches. And, that’s why you shouldn’t miss out on including local SEO in your dental marketing plan. Local SEO helps local people discover your clinic and therefore increases your chances of getting the local business. Here are some of the best ways to nail local SEO.
Including geo-targeted keywords helps you to rank and appear to those in need.
- Leverage Geo-targeted Keywords: Your patients aren’t merely looking for a dentist. While searching on Google, they enter their location along with the service they are looking for. That’s why it is crucial for you to target geo-targeted keywords. For example, suppose one of your patients searches for ‘dental filling Victoria.’ In that case, they won’t find you unless you include this phrase in your content. These keywords are known as geo-targeted keywords and help your patients to find you quickly.
- Rank Locally With GMB: GMB or Google My Business is an essential part of Local SEO strategy. Many businesses changed their timings to ‘temporarily closed’ because of COVID-19 restrictions. Update the new timings and let prospects and patients know that your dental business has reopened. Also, focus on consistency across business directories to improve your chances of being discovered.
- Optimise Content Regularly: There will never be a better time than now to optimise your content. Patients are searching online and doing their research before reaching out to you for an appointment. Be it blogs or marketing collaterals, you have to optimise your content to engage with these patients.
Marketing for Dentists With A Responsive Website
If you stopped investing in your website during the last 3-4 months, now is the time to make it ready for your future patients. The need of the hour is to build a responsive website that people can access easily on any device. Be it making your website SEO-friendly or responsive, the time to sitting on the fence has come to an end. Here is how you can leverage your website for dental digital marketing.
- Build A Responsive Website: Will you ever stay longer on a website that is difficult to navigate? Your patients are already distressed. The least you can do is to make them feel comfortable as they search for information. If you already don’t have a responsive website, it’s time to make one so that your site easily adapts to the screen it is being accessed.
- Make Your Website SEO-friendly: Building SEO-friendly websites help you to appear in search results and therefore increases chances of getting more business. Consider different factors like internal links, loading time, meta tags, URLs and site speed, while building or optimising your website.
Drive Patient Acquisition With Search Engine Advertising
Leading dental businesses across Australia fuel their growth engine with Search Engine Advertising. Do you see the results that appear even before the organic ones on search results? They are Search Engine Ads that can be easily created with Google AdWords. Not only do these ads increase your visibility but also help to acquire new customers.
Ranking for relevant keywords on Google Ads helps you to drive traffic.
Combine Search Engine Marketing with blogs and infographics that provide your patients with relevant and useful information. Here some tips to help you nail these ads:
- Leverage competitor keywords and use them in your ad title
- Create compelling ads that draw attention and persuade the patients to click
- Spend time creating a landing page that converts
- Use expanded ads that let you use longer ad copy
- Don’t waste money on ads that are not performing well
Monitor Your Online Reputation With Effective Review Management
Do reviews influence your decision of which service provider to choose? Well, your patients are no exception. Reviews can persuade your potential customers to choose you and vice versa. The way to go about it is to keep an eye on reviews and handle complaints effectively. Here are some of the ways that you can adopt to bolster your online dental marketing reputation management efforts.
Patients often choose a dental service based on the reviews it has garnered.
- Monitor Reviews: Start by promoting positive reviews and talk about the seamless patient experience. Take your time to look into the negative ones and do the needful to eliminate those. You can also delete spam reviews. This will help you to build trust among your potential patients and establish brand credibility as well.
- Be Present On Social Media Channels: Be it creating share-worthy content on Facebook or compelling images on Instagram, you can’t simply ignore the importance of social media channels. Social media marketing allows you to start conversations around the marketing messages and therefore enhance engagement.
Promote Online Dental Marketing Videos
Did you know that people spend up to 100 minutes every day watching videos? And, leverage this fact, especially when people are trying to find information that reassures them of safety. Visual media has a greater impact on purchasing decisions in general.
Useful and relevant video content helps you to convert patients into paying customers.
Magic happens when you combine persuasive video content with useful information. You can easily garner engagement by posting these videos on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Videos sharing dental health tips, commonly asked questions, and client testimonials often get better traction in online dental marketing.
Create Call-Only Ads
Most of the patients are looking for suitable dental services from their phones. Be it scheduling an appointment or reaching out for a query; they prefer to do it from their phone. Google Ads for mobile lets you create call-only ad campaigns. Your patients can simply click on the call button and reach you directly.
Call-only ads help your prospects to reach you over the phone directly.
By including call-only ads in your dental marketing strategy, you can minimise the steps that a patient needs to go through to reach you. Along with boosting convenience, it increases conversion.
Target ‘Emergency’ Keywords For Your Ads
Adding emergency keywords in your Google Ads can help you reach those in dire need. For example, keywords like ‘urgent’ and “emergency’ help you to stand out to those who need to see a doctor immediately.
Including ‘Emergency’ keywords in ads helps you to convert those patients in need.
You must understand that these keywords are high on intent and can drive conversions. You may want to add a phone number on such ads as that will help people to connect with you immediately.
Use Long-tail Keywords To Improve Search Results Ranking
A marketing idea shouldn’t miss out on during these uncertain times is the inclusion of long-tail keywords in your content. Long-tail keywords are detailed phrases connecting your services and locality. Since people are searching for detailed services more often, you can expect to gain valuable traffic from it. Moreover, not all of your competitors will be providing such services. That way, you get to gain a competitive advantage and drive relevant traffic at the same time.
Run Remarketing Ads To Convince Patients
Some patients might have already visited your website but aren’t sure of visiting your clinic. Remarketing ads are designed to persuade them and recapture their interest. Suppose you already have the email addresses of your past patients. In that case, you can also retarget them on Facebook and Google using Customer Match. Upload the list of emails along with the ad. Dental retargeting ads do well when you promote a service that your patients have availed before and should avail again for their wellbeing.
These online dental marketing ideas can help your dental clinic with sustained growth over time. Ideally, you should start by creating a responsive website, followed by blog creation and marketing ads. Adopting these digital marketing tips will make your dental practice successful even during these uncertain times.
For more ideas on online marketing for dentists strategies ‘to do’ check out these recent Marketing.com.au articles:
- How Medical Practitioners Can Boost Website Traffic and Gain Attention in a Global Market
- SEO And SEM Strategies For Online Marketers
- Beginner SEO Tools
- What Is Online Reputation Management?
- 5 Ways to Make Your Website Load Faster
Indrajit Das
Latest posts by Indrajit Das (see all)
- Online Marketing Tips for Dentists - February 15, 2020
