Dental Marketing Strategies

Google gives your business a chance to feature prominently before your audience. You might as well take the search engine up on their offer. Your business likely has a GMB page. If you have not claimed it, do so. If it’s not optimized, here are some pointers to help you improve GMB lead generation.

Completely fill out your profile page, leaving no spaces unfilled. That includes media like photographs and videos. That media is a chance for potential new patients to experience your dental practice without having to step through the door.

Your GMB needs to include your name, address, and office hours. Write a thoughtful description of your dental practice, mentioning those elements that make your business stand out.

Keep in mind that you could have a perfectly optimized GMB page and people will still pass you by without positive reviews. Send all your happy patients to your GMB page. The more 4 and 5-star reviews you have, the more local eyes you will attract to your online profile.

Ideally, people visiting your GMB profile will convert from that page. They can either use the phone number and call or use Google Maps directions to visit your office personally.

Those who don’t convert immediately will click on your website URL to learn more.

A general dentistry website needs to be attractive and well-laid-out. Use your office brand colors and ensure the menu is laid out with a hierarchy based on patient needs.

For instance, patients visiting your office might visit your ‘home’ page. They want to learn more about your office, so they click the ‘about’ link in the menu. Then, the ‘services’ page, the ‘frequently asked questions’ (FAQ) page, and ‘contact’ page. Your website may even have a ‘blog,’ which adds yet another menu item.

For your dental website to be successful, the layout and choices for information should be intuitive. Everything new and returning patients might need is laid out in a thoughtful manner, with the end goal of closing more online lead conversions.
Patients may click on any page, but every aspect of your website needs to have a purpose. Every paragraph needs to be written with descriptive and helpful language that guides the reader further down the page. The website content should point your audience toward a button, form, or phone number whenever possible to entice people to contact your office staff.
Your blog is another way to drive more traffic to your website. The more blogs you publish, the more information Google can spread around to your audience. Only publish blogs that offer value, and that leave readers with something to take away.

Email newsletters sent out each month can keep your patients abreast of current events in your office, new special promotions, and services when you want to improve case numbers. Your newsletter can also drive traffic to your general dentistry website, as well as function as a billboard for every one of your blog posts.

PPC ads can eat into your ad budget if you aren’t cognizant of the ways of pay-per-click marketing. With a well-crafted dental marketing PPC campaign, however, you can drive targeted leads to your website, and ultimately to your practice. PPC done right is like turning on a fire hose of quality new leads.

If you can manage to close the leads you earn from PPC Marketing, the return on investment (ROI) makes this form of advertising an affordable and powerful marketing vehicle in the long run.

Your office staff should be trained to respond positively to every lead that calls or visits your office. Scripts can help staff use the same greeting and answer frequently asked questions, as well as guide callers into an appointment.

A good tip to use is to give callers a choice of appointment times. Instead of asking if they would like to schedule, which invites a yes or no answer, offering multiple times gives callers an obvious choice. For example, your staff might tell a new caller, “I have a 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday or 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday. Which would you prefer?” A slight tweak in your staff’s phone habits like that can improve your close rates significantly when used consistently.