Hey all! I guess all are doing great and welcome to DentalFry’s exclusive post about “Dental Marketing Ideas”. First of all, I would like to tell you that this article is going to be very long and informative. If you just read the headings and move on you will get a small idea about the dental marketing tips. So, I suggest you read all post completely.
If you are not looking for an informative guide about dental marketing and looking for my dental marketing service, you can click the link below.
Also Read: Features of My Dental Marketing Company
Here I will be giving you both offline and online dental marketing ideas, which will surely help you grow your practice. The dental marketing ideas given here will also be useful for marketing a new dental practice.
If you are starting a new dental clinic then you can check my trendy dental clinic name generator and also my dental clinic design service in India. 😀
1. Google My Business
Google has a service that most of you know, called Google My Business. You can use your Gmail account and create a business listing with all your practice details.
When someone near your locality searches for a dentist your listing will be shown to the patient. The patient will then check your listing, especially patient ratings, facilities, and photos.
Make a Google My Business listing that is attractive to the patients with all the details. And make sure you have marked your clinic in Google Maps precisely. Most of the patients use Google Maps to find your dental clinic.
I am 100% sure that there will be a great response through GMB if you also add their paid ad service. There will be a lot of dental clinics in the app, and people will opt for the top 3 of the listings.
If you want to be on the top of the listings, then there is a paid business ad service from Google, which will show your dental clinic on the top of the listings.
Things to keep in mind while listing your practice in Google My Business:
- Provide all the information correctly.
- Having a website for your dental clinic will be an advantage.
- Pin your clinic location in Google Maps precisely. Or else all your hard work will be of waste.
- Provide high-quality images of your dental clinic. You can use professional photographers if you need them.
- Clinic timings should be given correctly. There are many cases in which people return back after coming to the clinic.
2. Website and SEO
A website is the online presence of your clinic and practice. You might have read reports that there is a hike in internet users from the past 5 years. A dental website is a great marketing tool for your dental office.
You must have a professional website that gives all the information about your dental clinic. Your website must have the following pages to impress your patient:
- Eyecatching logo.
- Attractive homepage.
- About page, where you can write the whole story of starting your dental clinic and the owners.
- Doctors page, if your dental office has any consulting specialists.
- Treatments page, where you will give complete details of the treatments you provide. Highlight the specialties of your dental clinic.
- Testimonials page, showcase testimonials of all the patients you have treated. It will be great if you can take quality videos of the testimonials.
- Gallery page, where you must list all the images of your clinic and treatments. Make two sections, one for showcasing clinic images and other for treatments.
- Contact page, here provide all the contact information including social networks, You can also add a contact for to book appointments and also a Google Map showing the location of your dental clinic.
- Blog: Most of the dental clinic websites don’t have a blog section. You must have a blog section on your website where you must update about the treatments and other information in dentistry. This will surely give you a great boost to your dental clinic.
As I told you, the power of a professional website for your dental office is unlimited. It can give you great growth in practice and branding.
I would also like to tell you a few features of your dental clinic website must-have. If you have a website for your clinic, it must have the following technical features:
- SEO Friendly.
- Mobile-Friendly.
- The website must load very fast.
- SSL certificate.
- Appointment booking facility.
- Click to Call Buttons.
- Subscription forms for your blogs.
3. Blogging
Dental Blogging is one of the best streams to get patients. The process if slow, but it will give you jaw-dropping benefits for sure.
As I mentioned before, it will be great if you have a blog section for your dental website. In the blog, you must write about topics for which patients in your area search for. If you are into dental tourism, blogging will surely give you a great number of patients.
For example, there are more than 5000 people searching for “teeth whitening in London” on Google per month. If you write a blog post about the same term and rank in Google in position one, then think how many new patients will you earn? Take it as a 1% conversion rate, that gives you around 50 new patients. 😀
Blogging is very powerful and your dental website must have a blog section and SEO optimized content in it.
4. Dental Marketing through Facebook
Do you know that Facebook has more than 1 billion active users in it? Yes, that’s huge and if we market your practice through Facebook correctly, then you see an increase in patient footfall.
First of all, you must have a Facebook page to market your dental clinic. Create a Facebook page and submit all the details about your dental practice.
There are two uses of Facebook for your dental practice:
- Branding.
- Lead Generation.
For branding your dental clinic, you must promote your dental clinic through Facebook daily. I won’t suggest you spend a lot of money on it, spend the minimum budget on this. You must target the audience correctly, or else it is of no use. Use Facebook Ads Manager for targeting your audiences correctly.
For lead generation, you must run a campaign through Facebook Ad Manager. There is no use if you create a lead generation campaign without a selling USP. Create campaigns on specific treatments, new technologies, etc.
For example, create a campaign about teeth whitening and promote it. This will give you clients who are specifically in need of teeth whitening. Creating a Facebook marketing strategy without having knowledge about targeting an audience will be a waste of time and money. 😛
Engaging your Old Patients with Facebook Posts
The above steps are for getting new patients. But, you must never forget your old patients. To keep them engaged with you, you must update your Facebook Page with informative content every day. If you are not able to update it every day, do it at least 3 days a week.
Now you might be thinking, what you must post on your FB page. I had listed down a few ideas which will help you create engaging posts for your dental clinic.
- Facts about dentistry: There will be thousands of facts available online about dentistry. You can make a list of it and post one fact a day.
- Posts about maintaining dental hygiene.
- Wish your patients: Think it is Christmas eve, then make an elegantly designed image that wishes all your patients through Facebook.
- Anniversary:Â You can update the first anniversary of your dental clinic. Do this every year.
- Before-after photos.
- Patient testimonial videos: People who search about your dental clinic, will surely do a small research about you. So, the patient video testimonials will surely help you in gaining trust easily.
- Events: If you are conducting or sponsoring any events let people know about it.
- Share other people’s posts: Think an influencer in your area posted something informative, then share it in your page and tag the person.
- Â Ask questions:Â Ask engaging questions on your page. For example, How Many Of You are Afraid to Visit a Dentist? or How many times have you visited a dentist in the last year? Keep your patients engaged with you.
- Ask for advice: If you are coming up with an idea or technology or event, then ask people for advice. For example, We are planning to conduct a Free Dental Checkup Camp in the city, Where would you suggest us to conduct it?
- Funny pictures related to your dental clinic.
- Create suggestion polls:Â For example, How many times do you brush daily? and give them a few options.
- Complete the sentence:Â
- Inspirational and motivational quotes:Â Only create a positive and inspirational post. Don’t post attitude and double meaning posts.
- Share milestones and awards: Make a post when you crossed 1000 patient mark. Do this for every 1000 patients or 100 patients. Also, share awards or recognitions you earned.
- Post selfies:Â Think if a cute pedo patient visited for treatment, then take a selfie with him and post it in your Page.
The best time to post on Facebook is at 12 PM, 3 PM and 7 PM. So post your content on Facebook during this time. These are just things you must keep in mind when managing your Facebook page.
5. Instagram Marketing
Instagram claims to have 500 million active users in its app. As you know, Instagram is an image-based social network, you must have quality designed images to market through Instagram.
You can also use Instagram Ads, which is already synced with Facebook Ad Manager. The marketing technique for Instagram is almost similar to Facebook.
Pro Tip: You must at least post one Instagram story a day to being engaged with your followers.
6. Re-marketing or Re-Targeting Ads
Re-marketing or Re-targeting is a kind of digital stalking. For this, it is necessary for you to have a website with a built-in blog.
You might have noticed that when you search for a product on google and check the product, but you don’t buy it, the same product or related products will be seen again and again on your Facebook or Instagram wall. Have you noticed it? If not you can check it once.
You can search on google for a mobile phone and mostly you will land on Amazon. Just check the product for 30 seconds and leave it. After that, you can see ads of the same mobile showing, again and again, n Facebook. This is re-marketing or re-targeting.
How Re-marketing is useful for Dental Clinic?
To use this marketing strategy you must have a website and blog which have great on-page and off-page SEO.
For example, think your website is ranking in number one in google for a keyword say “teeth whitening in London”. Someone searches for the same keyword and lands on your website. Now there is a special code pasted on your website which will track the user. Don’t worry even if the patient didn’t take any action on your website.
When he will be logged into his Facebook profile and he will start seeing your ads again. This increases your brand value and the name of your clinic is stamped into his mind.
Not only on Facebook, the same will happen when he login to Instagram and also show as ads when he uses other websites that have Google ads enabled in it.
7. Google Ads for Dental Marketing
I don’t think I have to explain to you a lot about Google Ads. If you have a professional website for your dental clinic, then you can give paid ads on Google and Google My Business.
When someone searches for the best dental clinic in their area, you can show your website on the top of the results. For this, you have to pay Google for every click. yes, if someones click on your link then you have to pay them.
The cost per click depends on the area and the competitiveness for the ads. If you are thinking to invest 10$ and see the results it is a waste of time. If you want to see great results you must invest more.
But the response to this marketing strategy will be excellent as it is completely targeted.
Google Ads or SEO?
If you use Google Ads, your ads will be seen on the top of the search results quickly as you are paying for every click. You have to invest every month to see the results.
But in the case of SEO, once you rank for the keyword you will stay there forever if you do proper SEO and keeps your website updated. You don’t have to pay for SEO. If you are not able to do it you can hire a dental SEO expert like me and pay for the term.
8. Video Marketing
This is the future! People love to watch videos and Youtube is the best channel for that.
If you want excellent results, then you must make high-quality professional videos and market it. You have to make a Youtube channel, Facebook Page and Instagram profile for it and publish in all these platforms.
Now you might be thinking about what kind of videos you have to promote. The type of videos you must promote for your dental practice are:
- Trailor of your dental clinic and practice: Showcase every single corner and features of your dental clinic. Keep it short and attractive. I would ask you to keep it not more than 3 minutes. Use this video in Youtube introduction and Facebook cover.
- Testimonials:Â Record as many testimonials as possible from your patients. And share these videos on the Facebook page, Youtube Channel and Instagram. First, post it as a story on Facebook and Instagram and later add it to the timeline.
- Events:Â If you have conducted or sponsored an event share those.
- Announcements: If you bought new equipment or introduced a new technology make videos about the same and share it.
Note: Try your best to make high-quality videos. For testimonials, you can buy a tripod which can support for mobile phone and microphone for audio.
9. E-Mails for Dental Marketing
Most of the dentists think e-mail marketing is dead. It’s just a myth! If you use e-mails properly then it would give you great results.
E-mails are not just for marketing and telling your patients about offers and related things. Use e-mails for:
- Patient registration.
- Appointment Reminder.
- Holiday e-mails.
- Birthday e-mails.
- Thank you e-mails.
- Notification to visit your clinic, every six months.
If you are looking to get new patients through e-mail marketing, it won’t be a good option. But you can expect at least a 25% increase in patient references but taking care of your old patients.
Note: Don’t forget about your old patients while finding new ones. 😀
10. Local Directory Listing for Dental Marketing
List your dental practice in every local directory in your area. You don’t have to go for paid options in these directories. But, when you post about your clinic you must give all the details correctly.
You must add photos, websites, and videos. If you have 100 local directories in your area, then post in all of them. It would at least give you 10 patients free of cost, who can refer you more patients.
Most of the dentists don’t do this as they are lazy to submit in all the directories. It’s true! 😛
11. Medical Appointment Directory
There are many medical/dental directories in the world. You must list in each one of them. Post in these websites for free of cost.
If you have a well established medical directory in your area, then you can use the paid service. In my place the one is Practo. You can also list your clinic in WhatClinic.
Online medical directories or appointment apps works mainly on user ratings and images you provide. Treat the patient well and ask them to give a 5-star review. There should not be a low-quality picture of your clinic anywhere on the internet.
12. Pamphlets for Dental Marketing
The old school style dental marketing right? I don’t want you to print a lot of pamphlets. You can print them when needed. But the design of the pamphlet must be attractive, simple and informative.
When to distribute pamphlets?
If you distribute your pamphlets continuously it will affect your credibility. So distribute them only when you feel it is needed. You can send pamphlets if you are:
- Conducting or sponsoring any events.
- Holding a charity function.
- Conducting any camps.
- Celebrating anniversary. You can send a “Thank you for the support” pamphlet during the anniversary.
13. Direct Mails for Dental Marketing
Now the first question which came to your mind is “Will it work?” right?
Of course, it will work and it had been working. Its been months since I had received a letter or postcard from someone. You know everything is digital nowadays.
Now when the postman comes asking for me, I feel thrilled to know who had sent me the letter. But, I only receive my Amazon orders via post or courier. 😛
Send one letter to your old patients every 3 or 6 months. Make a reason to send them a letter. It can be a birthday card or just to ask them how they are doing.
This makes the patient feel special and they will surely love it. Send the letter with a logo of your dental clinic on the post cover.
14. Conduct Local Surveys
All these dental marketing tips listed here are 100% working and you must definitely try it.
I would suggest you conduct a local survey every six months. You must conduct is online as well as offline. Yeah! You heard it right, conduct the survey offline too.
For this, hire a part-time worker for a few days and give him a questionnaire to ask the people in your locality. The surveyor must be wearing a decent dress. The surveyor must have the name of your dental clinic on his Shirt or T-shirt.
What must the surveyor ask the people? What do you think?
“Good morning mam, I am John from ABC Dental Care and I am here to take a quick survey from you.”
You can make a custom questionnaire that will impress them. Few questions I would like to ask are:
- How many members in your house?
- Have you visited a dentist in the past 6 months?
- If not, what was the reason you didn’t visit?
- If yes, what was the treatment you have done?
- From where did you do your previous treatment?
- Is anyone in your home having any dental problems?
At last, give them a pamphlet with tips on how to maintain oral hygiene and of course your pamphlet must have your dental clinic name, address, website, phone number, and timings.
15. Reception Marketing or Up-selling
This tip is not for bringing in new patients, but to make the patient who is waiting in your clinic to option higher treatments.
You must market your clinic everywhere, wherever you feel you can you must. Even inside your clinic.
When a patient comes and waits in the waiting lounge you must try your best to up-sell your service. The patient might have just come to do a general checkup, but you must convert the patient for higher treatments that are needed for them, like teeth whitening.
For this what I suggest is to place objects in the waiting lounge and passages to make the patient think. You can place an album of before-after images in the waiting area. Every single magazine placed there must be a marketing piece.
Most of the clinics have a TV and they run unrelated videos on it. Make custom videos showcasing your work and changes the patients had. You can run testimonial videos, the technologies you use, etc.
16. Appointment Reminders
In the busy schedule, most of the patients forget to reach for the booked appointment. Remind the patients using Call, Bulk SMS, WhatsApp messages, E-Mail, and Google Calendar reminders.
If the patient cannot reach on the date, then ask him when he would like to come to the clinic and fix the appointment.
You can automatically do all these using a dental software called Bestosys. They provide a special discount for my readers and you can use them. I strongly recommend using this software.
17. Check-in Discounts
This won’t work out in all the places. But, in 90% of the areas, this will work.
Ask your patient to check-in to your dental clinic using Facebook and that you will provide them a discount or free checkup or anything you can provide.
What will be the result?
When that patient checks in to your clinic and assumes the patient has an average of 500 friends in their Facebook friend list. All the patient’s friends will see that they have taken treatment from your clinic.
It is a kind of word of mouth.
How to execute this technique?
Place a poster on the notice board in the waiting room about the Checkin offer you are providing. I suggest you not to ask them personally to check-in.
18. Promote Video Testimonials
I had told you about this in the video marketing section. Record video testimonials from your patients using a high-quality camera and use a tripod.
Share it in your Facebook page, Facebook story, Instagram and story, Youtube Channel and Whatsapp status. 😀
19. Market your treatment results
This is the same as before-after results of your treatments. To keep it more professional, you can take a short-term course of dental photography.
Make videos and photos of the treatment results. And you must share it in Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and your official website.
20. Send Birthday cards
Care for your patients and they will return back with 10 patients. Give your patients special care, make them feel special.
You can do that by sending them Birthday or Anniversary cards. You can design a great birthday card and post it to your patient. Never forget to have a logo of your dental office on the post cover.
21. Send handwritten “Thank You Cards”
The same thing again, make your patients feel special. If a patient took treatment from the dental clinic, send them a thank you card after a few days.
It will be awesome if you can send a handwritten one. It will make a personal feeling towards you. In the same letter, you can ask the patient to review your service on social media and Google My Business.
22. Sponsor Events
You can also sponsor events in your locality. For example, you can sponsor a school football tournament in your locality. Research a bit, which sport or event has many followers in your area.
Before sponsoring keep in mind about your target audience. If you are targeting teenagers, then you have to go for sports or related.
23. Conduct creative Events
This idea has been used by a dentist I know. He used to conduct a show for finding the best smile and will be awarded Mr.Smile and Miss. Smile.
In this first, it was not that successful and in the second year, it was a huge hit. You can also add categories for kids and teenagers. This is just an example.
If you have got better creative ideas for events then you can move forward with it. Please do share your ideas in the comments section, please. 😀
24. Hold a charity event
You can also conduct charity events on your banner. While doing charity events don’t over market your practice, it will put a negative image on your clinic. Conducting a charity event will bring a positive image on your brand and even you will feel good in serving them.
You can conduct or sponsor charity events in:
- Orphanages.
- Old age homes.
- Blind schools etc.
25. Partner with a Boxing or MMA Club
This will give your clinic great exposure and patient growth. There is a different fan base for martial arts, boxing, Mixed Martial Arts, etc in every locality.
Partner with a Boxing club and be their dental partner. If possible you can provide a discount or a different treatment package for them.
How it benefits?
Every year these will be participating in 2-3 tournaments in different places in your city. During the tournaments, you can personally or appoint someone to take care of the injured people of your team.
I would suggest you wear a T-Shirt with your dental clinic’s logo on it. Give basic first aid from there and later refer to your clinic. It’s been a huge hit for clinics in India.
It completely depends on the financial capability of the patient.
26. Join a Health Club or Gym
This is pure networking! Join one of the reputed gym or CrossFit centers in your locality. I would ask you to join where you know people who can afford your treatments are already working out there.
Interact with people, the trainer and everyone. It will give you a few patients and also keep you healthy.
27. Partner with a Physician
If there are good general practitioner nearby, go meet him personally and tell him about your dental clinic. If possible refer patients to him if any patient needs his attention. Call him and let him know, you had referred a patient to him.
28. Partner with a medical store and laboratory
This is also kind of the same as partnering with a physician. Choose a medical store and laboratory which is really successful. Meet them personally and ask them which all medicines do they store and is available.
Ask them questions, whether they can deliver it to you if you inform them etc. Ask the laboratory chief about the equipment they are using, the facilities they have, etc. Tell them in detail about your practice, how it is going, network, network with people who can give you patients.
29. Rent a Booth in Trade Show
Is there a trade show going on near your locality? Then rent a booth there.
But, the booth should not be for your dental store. Tie-up with dental lab or dental product manufacturer. I would suggest “Invisalign”.
Showcase the products, features, and, benefits of the product. And this product must be available only in your clinic, in your locality. And when the interested people ask you “Where can I get these?”, tell them it is available in your clinic. This trick really works only if you research a lot about the product.
30. Make membership plans and packages
Memberships and packages work with people who take care of their teeth very well. Or parents would book a plan for their kids. Promote your patients to take membership and packages.
You must be very careful about pricing the packages. Higher cost for a single treatment and little discount when going for two or three treatments. You can also make custom packages as per patient request.
31. Use your employees for promotions
Treat your employees well and they will surely make you rich. While recruiting employees, choose people near your clinic locality.
If you have consulting specialists, treat them well. Give them freebies and bonuses during holidays, when needed. Celebrate your clinic anniversaries with your employees too. Invite their families too for the anniversary party.
This will surely increase your goodwill and bring in more patients.
Wrapping Up
All these dental marketing ideas and tricks will take at least 3-6 months to show you results. But, results are guaranteed and these dental promotions do work. What most of the dentists don’t do is market their clinics. They just open a clinic and sit idle, waiting for patients to come.
People should know about you, your clinic, your treatments, your specialities, and everything.
If you need to hire me and take my dental marketing service, you can check this page here. I will take the commitment of marketing your dental clinic only after detailed research about your locality and the facilities you provide.
Many dentists contact me and are ready to pay to promote clinics that are underrated and with zero facilities.
I think I had tried my best to provide you with all the information related to dental marketing here. If you loved this content, then please do share it with your friends and people in need. If you got any questions or suggestions, then please comment below or use the contact page or send me an e-mail to dentalfry@gmail.com.
This post can be useful for people who are searching for marketing for dental practices, dental marketing strategies, best marketing ideas for dental offices, etc.
