If you have recently made the leap and left a dental practice to set up your own, you might be feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of building a customer base from scratch. While you might have a few clients from your previous practice who remain loyal to you, you will no doubt also be keen to grow your dental brand and find new customers.
While the thought of this might be overwhelming, remember that marketing your dental practice is really not much different from marketing any other small business, with a few additional dentistry-specific points to keep in mind. To help you out, here are some marketing tips and tricks that you can use to help you grow your dental practice and brand.
Lead generation
Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting interested parties into customers – or, in a dentistry sense, enticing patients to choose your clinic for their dentistry treatment over another. Before they ever step foot in your clinic, potential customers will be researching the dental procedures and treatments they want to find a clinic that is appropriate to their needs. They might, for instance, be keen to find a dentist that offers Invisalign to straighten their teeth without the visible evidence of braces. Or, they might simply have a fear of the dentist and be searching for a friendly, sympathetic practitioner to carry out an essential dental check-up. A key point for successful lead generation is to provide your potential customers with all the information that they require. Clear information on your website and social media platforms about what a procedure entails, along with patient testimonials and a price list, can help your interested parties to make an informed decision and become loyal customers.
Reviews and testimonials
Word of mouth is one of the most powerful marketing tools that a business can harness. A happy patient spreading the word might only reach a handful of people in their immediate sphere, however, so what can you do to make word of mouth go further and reach more people? The answer is to regularly post patient reviews and testimonials on your website and social media pages. These will demonstrate to potential clients who are browsing your site that you continue to provide a high quality of care and leave patients feeling entirely satisfied with their treatment. You could also supplement these testimonials with before and after photographs and videos to further demonstrate to would-be patients the success of certain treatments on various conditions.
Hire a dental marketing expert
With the responsibility of running a full-time dental clinic and carrying out procedures, you may not have enough time to dedicate towards fully carrying out an effective marketing plan for your clinic. If this is the case, you might consider hiring a dental marketing expert to take this responsibility. As marketing experts, they will have the specialist knowledge that you may not necessarily have, meaning that you are safe in the knowledge that with their assistance, your dental practice will receive rigorous and effective marketing. Furthermore, dental marketing experts will help you craft a marketing plan whether your clinic is focused on cosmetic dentistry or more traditional treatments. This is the cosmetic dentistry marketing article you’re looking for if you would like more information.
Advertising
A perfectly placed advertisement can work wonders for getting your dental practice and brand out there and noticed. Consider carefully which advertising options would suit which demographics. If you would like to increase engagement in your local area, for instance, consider issuing informative flyers through the mail or paying for an advertisement in your local newspaper. Or, if your aim is to draw patients in from out of town to access your top-of-the-range treatments, you might consider advertising online using emails and social media advertising. For example, Facebook advertising is cost-effective and reaches a large number of potential customers. Once interested parties have been persuaded by advertisements to access your website, the trick is to then keep them engaged with interesting content.
Maximize your content
Interesting and meaningful content is key for keeping customers engaged with your brand and converting interest into a loyal customer base. Many people dislike an impersonal, corporate image, preferring instead to use services that really take an interest in their client base, seeing them as individuals rather than simply walking paycheques. Therefore, it is important that you engage positively with followers on social media instead of simply sending out reams of blatant marketing materials, which can get annoying and spammy. For example, provide potential customers with detailed information regarding the dental procedures that you offer and the treatment of various mouth ailments that they might be suffering from. You could also take your meaningful, value-rich content further and produce a number of educational articles about ensuring top dental hygiene, such as brushing techniques and how to choose the most effective toothbrush.
Upgrade your website
A website that is poorly designed, being hard to navigate, and appearing amateurish, can all too easily put off potential customers from contacting your clinic and booking a consultation. Dedicate some time to overhauling your website, ensuring that it is attractive and easy to use for customers, as well as providing all the information that they need to make an informed decision on their treatment plan. For peace of mind, hire a professional website developer to improve your website and bring it up to industry standards. Then, make sure that you direct customers to your new and improved website for further information on all social media posts and correspondence.
As you can see, most of these marketing tips and techniques are not solely for dental practices and can be applied to almost any small business. Consider your marketing plan in terms of what you specifically need to drive customers towards your business; in this way, you will build a successful plan that reflects your brand and draws in new business.
