Growing a successful business doesn’t come easy to any business owner, but takes effort and practice. Most dentists today are well trained and equipped to provide all the essential dental services, but rarely have the time or knowledge to tap into dental marketing. This article provides various dental marketing strategies for the professional dentist, including the ways to manage particular marketing strategies and measure its current effectiveness.
Getting Started With Dental Marketing Strategy
Before getting into the strategies, there are certain fundamental marketing steps you need to review, and questions you need to answer. Reviewing these steps will help you measure how suitable and effective marketing strategies may be for you.
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Who is your Customer– What people do you want to target?
A concise description of the type of patient you’re seeking to target needs to be included in your dental marketing London. If you’re seeking to make your income from providing dental services to the upper-middle-class patients, then you probably will target professionals like doctors, business executives and lawyers; if creating a smaller discount dental office and seeking income from massive appeal, then middle-class families and older citizens will be the best customers to target.
When picking your customers, it is a good idea to take note of the location of your dental clinic. If in a residential area, it is advisable to target families instead of businesspeople.
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Setting goals – How many new patients per month?
What comes next after deciding on the customers to target is making up the goals to measure the effectiveness of your marketing. Set a realistic goal on how many new patients you want a month. Setting an easy goal won’t offer you much motivation, but an unrealistic one will frustrate you and drain much of your energy and spirit. So ensure your goal can be reasonably achieved.
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Testing your Marketing Ideas – Discover what strategies are working
By now, you should’ve known the people you’re targeting and your goals for new patients. What you need to do next is to measure the success of your marketing ideas by employing any of the concepts below:
Concept 1: Lifetime Value (LTV)
Figure out how much each patient is worth over time to you. Knowledge of the lifetime value for every patient will help you set aside a figure that can be comfortably spent on acquiring a customer. This value can be calculated on average.
Concept 2: Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
This covers the cost of getting one customer. This cost should include only what it takes to get the customers through the door, and not your operational costs.
Concept 3: Tracking success
Employ web analytics software like google analytics to track the effectiveness of your online marketing, and measure the results of your website. For offline marketing, tracking takes a lot more effort but can be done using promotion codes.
So What Are These Dental Marketing Ideas?
- Have an Online Presence
- Get yourself a website; this is a must-have. It shouldn’t be special, but make it look modern and appealing. Include your address and contact info, and any specific services you provide. Fail to do this and customers might just write you off.
- Learn the basic of search engine optimisation (SEO), and use it to make your website rank higher on search pages.
- Update all of your profiles on the different social media platforms, and make it easy for new patients to find you. Ensure existing patients can also share your info on sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Get involved in the Community – Network and get to know people
Participate in events taking place in your community; ensure you and your business become well known in the area. Earn your neighbour’s trust and respect by offering help and being friendly. By gaining their trust, you go to the top of their list if ever they need a dentist, or want to recommend one for a friend or family member.
- Have your current customers provide referrals to get new customers
Word of mouth is a powerful strategy. For some small businesses, referrals account for the majority of new patients they get every day. You can use an incentive-based program to keep track of new customers and referrals.
- Take advantage of Email marketing to remind them you are here
Email addresses provide you with a direct communication line to your patient. If correctly done, it can help grow your business greatly. The rule here is not to send spam, but only relevant patient information.
- Get involved in your community online
Most communities have local forums and groups you can join and interact with other people residing and working in that community. Through these online communities, you can build relationships with potential customers and grow your business even further.
- Partnership Referrals
Seek non-competitive partners, especially within your locality, and have them provide you referrals to the customers you’re targeting. These partners could be local realtors, or local schools even.
This is a great resource in many ways; Facebook offers you one of the largest and most innovative platforms to advertise your services to the world. Ensure you share content relevant to your target customers. Make your content interesting and fun to draw the attention of potential customers.
- Employ guerilla marketing – create press-worthy news
Doing something that will be picked easily by the local press is a good way of drawing attention to you and your business, both online and offline. When designing your guerilla tactics, you can get inspiration from persons who have utilised this strategy successfully.
- Utilise Content Marketing
Set up a blog and continuously share relevant and interesting content on it. Be consistent with this, attract new readers and build long-term relationships.
- Use Team Marketing
Don’t place the work of getting the word out for you on the shoulders of one person alone, but make use of the entire team. When more people contribute towards the marketing efforts, you get more ideas for your dental marketing in London. Also, the reach and content are greater with the whole team sharing and promoting your content, website and social media pages to their friends and families.
- Offer An Exclusive Offer That Can’t Be Matched
This could be a complimentary free teeth cleaning or teeth whitening for new patients, or discounts for existing patients. It doesn’t need to be expensive or take a lot of time; you need only a few simple options for this.
- Send A Post Card
This is a strategy that is not only old, but also practical and easy. It won’t cost you much money, and it will keep you in the minds of potential new patients. You can create inexpensive postcards and send to your neighbourhood, and maybe into the hands of someone that needs a dentist.
- Get Yourself Some Reviews
Have your patients provide reviews on your website and google business page. Good reviews are one sure way of getting new patients, so put effort into asking and getting reviews. Send an email with a link to your customers to make these reviews, or include it as a part of the checkout process from your dental office.
- Retargeting new customers
Target the people that have visited your dental office, and returned to your website and Facebook page. It is an inexpensive option for reminding people of your presence and services, and getting them to return to you.
- Be Labeled As An Expert
Everyone wants to know that whenever they visit a motor repair shop, a lawyer or a hospital, that they are in good and capable hands. So it is with customers seeking a dental office. Be current with the latest advancements and information in your field, so your patients know they can trust you for their dental needs.
- Use CTAs Where You Can
Place a call to action on your website and blog, so potential patients can easily contact and connect with you.
- Show Off Your Results
Don’t just tell people about your services, but talk of your results also. Let potential patients see the results; the healthy mouths and fine smile of former patients, and they’ll be encouraged to offer you a try.
If you need further advice or recommendations on the best effective marketing strategies available, you can reach out to our dental marketing agency to help you build stronger relationships with your patients, and promote and grow your dental practice. At DubSEO our experienced professionals are dedicated to discovering and implementing the tactics that are right for you and your practice.
Contact us to learn more about our professional dental marketing services today!
