Generating new patients and operating a dental practice concurrently is truly a challenge.
We understand how much effort goes into running a full-fledge dental practice.
But in between keeping up with the daily operational activities, optimising the marketing effort can often be easy to forget or the least priority.
This means you are losing out on new patients if you are not making an effort to develop successful marketing strategies.
Whether you are running a new or established dental practice, marketing is undoubtedly a must. Research shows that about 7-8% of your total revenue should be spent on marketing.
However, there’s often a misconception that pumping more budget into marketing is a solution to generating more appointments. Rather, the existing budget should be well optimised, spent only where there’s the scope of quality results.
In order to make sure that your investment and results are achieved, the best way is to involve a trusted dental marketing agency like 360° Dental Marketing. This will not just save your time and let you focus on your patients, but also help you with contemporary market expertise.
Here are 7 major areas to focus for generating more new and recurring quality patients:
1. Website development
A sophisticated designed website does not help generate appointments unless it is conversion friendly.
In today’s fast pace world, your patients and prospects would be looking for quick ways to book appointments.
But, if your website load time is too slow, or the layouts are confusing, the contacting methods, services, are not clear, there’s a greater chance that a person would land up to your competitor’s website.
Plus, is your website mobile-friendly? These days almost everyone is hooked to their smartphones. In such, if the website is distorted or is difficult to navigate, this also means a lot of room for improvement.
2. Build social media profiles
Most professionals find social media to be distracting and therefore try to minimise the usage.
But, if you are avoiding / reducing the social media marketing for your practice, this can be a blunder.
This is simply because this is where your target market is, so this is where you would like to display your offers, services, community interactions and engagements.
Amongst the social medias, currently, Facebook is the most effective one for dental marketing. Facebook ads and posts are great ways to aware about your services, reach out, demonstrate your expertise.
Simply put, it is the best way to constantly remind your community that you exist and if they are in need of dental treatment, you are the go-to.
Therefore, it is imporant to be proactive on social media.
3. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Since dental services are location-based services, it is very much important that your practice is locally found.
Having a conversion friendly website is one part, and using that website to effectively drive appointments is another part. If your website is not found on 1st page of Google, the number of enquiries and appointments can be a nightmare.
Google has become a go-to place to search for any service provider. And people usually browse through first few searching for treatments they’re after.
Better optimisation means effective use of strategies which demands expertise that can understand and work as per Google’s changing algorithm.
4. Email marketing
Hesitating to email your patients? Concerned that your emails will be looked down as a spam?
But if you are updating and is value-giving, clearly they won’t be annoyed particularly when your emails offer valuable content as your patients are more than likely to forward it onto their friends and family.
What could be more beneficial than this? Improving your relationships with your existing patients as well as gaining new patients.
5. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
PPC is one of the best, effective and budget friendly marketing tools for any business. You only pay for ads if someone clicks on your ad.
Just with proper keywords and ads strategy, your campaign is ready to appear on the 1st page and 1st position of Google. It obviously takes an expertise and constant monitoring and tweaking if and when needed.
6. Maintain reviews
Do you check the reviews from certain businesses before using their services?
Requesting your patients to leave a Google review or in social media pages will add more value to your business. People trust reviews, so this will improve your credibility and influence booking appointments. With more and more patients turning to local search Google is event starting to automatically filter out local businesses with less than a 4-star rating.
7. Referral marketing
Businesses today rely on referral marketing to gain new patients. It is an excellent way to promote the number of referrals received from satisfied patients as word of mouth has proven to be the most effective way of advertising and gaining new patients.
Marketing your practice is vital today to inform your customers about your services. The above dental marketing ideas is a basic guideline for developing your marketing strategies to attract more patients.
Seeking for more information on how to gain more patients and grow your practice?
Book your 30-Minute FREE Consultation today at http://bit.ly/2JWuyR6 or call us on 1300 777 847
