11 Dental Practice Marketing Strategies to Attract Patients

When marketing a dental practice, agencies providing dental marketing services have efficient methods to influence your patients’ impression of your dental practice and decision-making. Here is an overview of some innovative dental practice marketing ideas.

1. Comprehensive Teledentistry Marketing

Many dental practices are offering teledentistry services allowing patients to connect with their dental care providers and discuss their treatment from the comfort of their own home. Teledentistry is secure, convenient, and accessible. If you are a dental practitioner providing teledentistry services to your patients, your marketing strategies should:

• Educate your patients about teledentistry service and its advantages.
• Make it easy for patients to schedule their teledentistry visits through your website.
• Promote your teledentistry services to optimize your online visibility and reputation among patients.
• Highlight teledentistry services to attract more patients and to improve patient satisfaction.

2. Dental SEO

88% of patients use online searches to find healthcare services. According to Google, one in 20 Google searches are for health-related information. On the first search results page, websites get 92% of traffic, while those on the second page barely 6%. If you want to improve your rankings, then incorporate the following elements in your digital marketing strategy:

• Incorporate service-related keywords in your website content.
• Optimize your website content to increase online visibility and trust value.

3. Social Media for Enhanced Patient Engagement

Social media marketing enhances your brand visibility to potential patients. Patients often get information on healthcare services online. According to Pew Research, 74% of people online engage in social media, and nearly half are searching for health professionals. If you are a dental practice, these steps can help you reach out to patients and develop the brand as a dental care influencer. Social media marketing elements to enhance patient engagement includes:

• Ensuring your brand’s presence on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google My Business, Instagram, and Yelp.
• Engaging your audience in topic-specific group conversations on Facebook.
• Building appropriate brand hashtag chats on Twitter connecting patients.
• Networking with local dentists and dental specialists using LinkedIn.
• Building a dental referral pool through Twitter-based networking.

4. Improved Referral Networking

Well-known dental practices need to capitalize on their current patient base and increase patient referrals. You can reward patients referring your practice to a friend with discounts or dental products if their referred friend or family visits your clinic. Your marketing plan should incorporate the following activities for increased referrals:

• Engage both old and new patients through efficiently executed referral programs for your practice.
• Offer incentives for referrals and build a rewards program.
• Use feedback management software to collect patients’ feedback to plan a future strategy.
• Analyze patients’ data using AI to determine their trust levels in you and your practice.
• Organize outreach campaigns for repetitive patients and those expressing strong positive reviews.

5. Dental Reputation Management for Improved Patient Experience

Patient reviews and a positive web presence build a strong and trustworthy brand. Having an online patient review and grievance reporting system positively impacts your service reputation. Your patient feedback system should incorporate the following steps to enhance your brand reputation:

• Ensure genuine positive reviews from your happy patients and encourage them to share their experiences online.
• Use reputation management software to identify unhappy patients by their feedback and ensure a quick response to patients’ concerns.
• Conduct region-based patient satisfaction measurement and emerging trend analysis for multi-location services.

6. Content Marketing to Build Credibility of Your Dental Practice

Dental content marketing is a proven strategy to keep your website relevant. Your dental practice marketing strategies should focus on content that improves search engine rankings, attracts more site visits, and improves patients' chances of using your dental services. Your content marketing plan should focus on the following activities:

• Use content to highlight your unique services and capacities.
• Optimize your dental website content for mobile devices to improve its accessibility.
• Incorporate photos of your team, satisfied patients, office, and equipment to give a realistic overview of your services to your potential patients.
• Update content accordingly. e.g., informing patients about your brand’s safety norms during a pandemic.
• Include an online call to action in your content.

7. Women-Centric Marketing Campaigns

With increasing professional independence, 80 percent of healthcare decisions in households are made by women. Dental practices can maximize returns from this trend by designing marketing campaigns that target women. Your campaigns should include the following elements:

• Have accurate and informative content on your website and all promotion mediums.
• Understand how the female market, with its varying demographics, works, especially for dental practices.
• Design social media campaigns based on peer-group activities that influence female markets.
• Create a marketing campaign focused on helping rather than selling.

8. Dental Video Marketing

Healthcare video marketing is emerging as an engaging and innovative communication channel. Include the following activities in your healthcare video marketing plan to get maximum returns from it and enhance your brand credibility:

• Create videos as a part of your SEO and social media marketing campaigns.
• Share your expertise in treatments and procedures using video marketing.
• Design customized videos for your dental practice.

9. Email Marketing for Dental Practices

Professionally designed and strategically implemented email campaigns are effective ways to build a solid referral base. Your email marketing campaigns should incorporate the following elements to get maximum returns:

• Share blogs via email to inform your patients about your services, success stories, and new technology.
• Build an email list and craft a strategic email campaign with a clear message.
• Design newsletters, holiday greetings, and targeted campaigns for your dental practice in advance.

10. Dental Website Analytics

To create a strategy matching your practice’s business goals, you need robust healthcare analytics. Dental brands should focus on some specific areas for meaningful data analysis, and your marketing strategy should use the following website analytics steps:

• Use tools like Google Analytics, Social Media Analytics, etc. correctly and efficiently.
• Track lead conversions through calls and forms.
• Use data-driven analysis to ensure a better patient experience.
• Ensure the correct installation of the analytics code to capture your data as needed.
• Analyze your data and create reports to provide you with insights to make better decisions.

11. Demographic Analysis

Understand how your target patient base is served in specific areas, and decide the best location to promote your specialty. Your marketing strategies should incorporate the following demographic analysis elements to enhance the profitability of your practice:

• Analyze your services to find your target customers and potential customers. It can find your target age and income groups, gender, etc.
• Know your target patient to gain a competitive edge. Your timings, workdays, team behavior, service costs, website, and newsletter content, etc. depend a lot on the targeted patients.
• Analyze patient data to find current trends and predict future ones, e.g., wellness marketing campaigns designed during festive seasons concerning high intakes of sugary and sticky foods.
• Interpret your data to optimize your clinical performance through tailored Google Analytics solutions, and social media analytics help you.

To conclude, along with an efficient dental practice marketing strategy, you also need an effective team to execute your strategies. Your team should know about your practice objectives to ensure patient satisfaction and to help acquire more patients.