2020 has been a challenging year for many dental practices as the options for driving new patients to your practice have been temporarily hindered. You may have been promoting your practice at invitation events like Halloween or by getting out into the community to help others, maybe special promotions for patient referrals, outreach with social media, maybe a newsletter? Am I close?
All of these methods are or were a great way to get new patients but with changes to marketing options created by the COVID19 pandemic, you may have to consider other means to attract new patients to help your practice continue to grow.
Have you considered upgrading your website and marketing to new patients with digital marketing; primarily search engine optimization (SEO)? Have you also considered hiring a professional website deign/build and digital marketing company to take your digital presence to the next level of ROI?
Why SEO for dental practices?
People still have aches and pains in their mouths that need dental intervention. People may have an ache or pain that they do not even realize a dentist can fix. People may be asking friends for a referral to their dentist or many people look online for the symptoms they have and discover they need to get to a dentist for the pain to stop.
If you want to attract these new clients, you must add content to your website that will be found by new customers searching online. This is where SEO comes in as a big part of SEO is the content we create for our clients.
We know that a new patient is willing to travel up to 15 – 20km to find a new dentist, (The Wealthy Dentist study) so we limit our focus to attracting people who are in this radius around your practice. We want to make a good first impression on a potential customer and your practices first impression is likely to be created by your website. That is why updating your website and digital marketing is a great way to find and attract new patients.
Ultimately, for your digital marketing to be most successful effective at driving new opportunities to your practice, you need a strategy and a means to audit and change the strategy as you learn more about what is most effective for your practice from the marketing we do. The over all goal is to get multiple qualified leads every day
Check out my Complete Guide to Search engine Marketing (SEM) for more ideas of how digital marketing can bring in new patients and build value in your practice or in any business. Your website must show your professionalism and highlight your skills while addressing common concerns people have about visiting the dentist. Comfort, pain management and ease of access: people need to know they are getting the highest level of care that can be offered.
Once you have figured out what you want to market in your dental practice, you can determine what kind of results would be most suitable for your online marketing campaign. This will help you determine the best way to spend your time when it comes to extend the reach of your branding for your dental practice on social media.
If you are unsure of where to start or would like to learn more about how to structure a successful SEM campaign for your business, please contact me. Together, we can work out exactly what you need to get to the top of the search results pages and watch your business grow from there.
Rob Dunford is a Marketing Consultant in the Great Toronto Area with over 25 years of experience in implementing marketing plans for small businesses.