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A strong digital marketing strategy is a great way for dental offices to stay competitive. Using both an unpaid and paid digital advertising strategy is an effective way to stay in the game. “Paid digital advertising strategy” most often refers to online ads — those ads you see near the top of search engine result pages (SERPs).
For example, Google Ads uses a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising technique, which means you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. By developing a focused PPC ad campaign, you can drive targeted traffic to your dental website and generate more new patient appointments and retarget current patients.
When utilizing digital advertising in your marketing strategy, it’s important to track your ad performance to understand which campaigns are converting — that is, which ads are actually reaching potential patients and getting new patients in the door. One way to do this is to use call tracking. This feature provides a dedicated phone number, making it easy to track how many calls and new appointments your dental practice received as a result of clicking on a paid ad.
Another part of your digital marketing strategy should be A/B testing, also called split or bucket testing. A/B testing is the comparison of two ads, landing pages, apps, etc., against each other to determine the higher performer. If you use Google Ads, you can execute A/B testing by making changes to the following factors:
- Ad copy: headline, URL, call to action, description, images, colors, and ad extensions
- Targeting: demographics, ad groups, and devices
- Final URL (landing page): test alternate landing pages for specific ad groups
To enhance your digital strategy and marketing efforts, we’ve put together a list of search engine marketing do’s and don’ts for dental practices.
Don’t Ignore Your Target Audience
Identify and focus on the target audience for your search engine marketing campaigns. For instance, two distinct target audiences for a dental practice are often:
- Adults between the ages of 27-39 who are concerned about their appearance. The average income is over $45,000 per year and includes professionals and stay-at-home parents who don’t have full-time jobs outside the home. This group is likely to consider cosmetic procedures but is also health-conscious.
- Seniors have more time and money and are also interested in improving their appearance. Average income is over $50,000, usually retirement income, and they don’t have the busy schedule of younger adults with full-time jobs.
Do Invest Money and Time
Yes, the internet and social media platforms are free to use, but gone are the easy days of getting in front of your target audience. With all the competition taking over the web space, investing money will help you not only get eyes on your content but will allow you to streamline and target who you are reaching and where the best place or device to reach them is.
Paid investments such as Google Ads and Facebook ads allow you to send a strategically placed message to your target audience at a time and place where they are already spending their time.
A dental office’s paid search strategy might involve targeting patients who are searching for dental services like teeth whitening, emergency dental care or pediatric dentistry to enhance their search engine marketing efforts.
Don’t Skip Social Media
People are highly influenced by a recommendation from someone they know and social media posts are one of the best ways to leverage word-of-mouth advertising with ratings and patient referrals. Encourage patients to follow your practice on Facebook or Twitter and check-in by posting reminders in your waiting room or including it on appointment reminders or business cards. On Instagram, encourage patients to “show us your smile” and tag your practice in their smile photos. Post video content on a regular basis and integrate personal video marketing and content with dental-related information to increase engagement and help with search engine marketing efforts.
Do Create Quality Content
The most important rule for online marketing on social media is to create quality content your followers want to see, matched to clearly defined objectives in alignment with your marketing strategy. If your objective is to find more patients, your content should reflect how your practice stands out from your competitors and utilize positive patient reviews and online reviews from past clients (Yelp). On the other hand, perhaps you want to increase interest in your cosmetic procedures. In that case, provide content that makes patients and prospective patients aware of the services you offer. Keep your target audience in mind and ensure your content defines how your practice will meet their needs.
Consistent blogging can help to establish you as a thought leader and attract new patients by demonstrating that your practice has the knowledge and expertise they’re looking for to solve their particular problem. Ensure that your posts include keywords (dental practice, teeth whitening, dental implants, etc.) to improve Google search engine rankings. To find keywords, do a search for words or phrases related to your services. Google Ads and keyword.io provide tools to help you find the right keywords. Or, you can ask for SEO help. Once you’ve selected the words you like, you can add them to your content, working them into the title, text and description of the post.
Examples of blog post ideas include dental tips, end-of-year reminders to use insurance benefits, issues your older patients should be aware of and the different types of dentists and dental specialists, to name a few.
Do Use a Landing Page to Capture Visitor Information
A landing page is the destination of a lead that has clicked on your digital ad. Effective landing pages provide the lead with information promoted by the ad, info about your business, and a form, where they enter information that your business wants to capture, and an effective CTA (call to action). Examples of landing pages include:
- An appointment request form
- Contact Us form
- Promotional offers
- Blog or newsletter sign-up page on your website
- Downloadable material, such as a “Guide to Cleaning Your Braces” or “How Invisalign Works”
Don’t Overlook SEO
It’s important to develop effective marketing strategies for your dental office, including search engine optimization (SEO), to increase your website’s online presence. Improving your Google ranking is critical. Effective SEO can help you rank higher when people search the internet for the services you offer. When searching for a new dentist, more than 70 percent of people use Google, but they rarely look beyond the first page of search results, so you want to make an effort to rank on the first page.
On-page SEO optimization is essential for targeting a local audience. Ensure that your website design makes it clear where your practice is located. Include it on your homepage, contact information page, and other website pages. Identify and use keywords that help reveal your dental practice in organic search results. Utilize keywords and phrases like teeth whitening, cosmetic dentistry, dental implant costs, cost of braces, etc; however, be careful not to overdo it, so your content stays relevant rather than obvious “keyword stuffing.”Use variations of phrasing to optimize for keywords. For example:
- Dentist in Virginia Beach
- Virginia Beach dentist
- Virginia Beach, VA., dentist
In addition to effective SEO, be sure to accurately complete Local Business Claiming for all of your dental offices.
It takes time and effort to attract new dental patients. Ensure that you are deploying your resources most effectively for both organic and paid search by developing a strategic search engine marketing approach.
Get Started Today!
Need help with your dental office marketing plan? Contact your local Valpak representative today. They’ll walk you through how you can reach thousands of local consumers with a solid dental marketing strategy.
