Marketing for Periodontists

Boost your receding patient numbers and grow your practice with the power of digital dental marketing!

Are you having trouble attracting new patients to your periodontal practice? Are your referrals from general dentists drying up? Sadly, you’re not alone. We have seen a major recent shift in the general dentist-periodontist referral partnership, but there is hope.

Using the power of digital dental marketing, you can drive more patients through your door while simultaneously improving the relationship between you and your referring dentists. Sounds impossible? Keep reading and prepare to have an epiphany that can only spell great things for your periodontal practice.

What Happened to All Your General Dentist Referrals?

There is a dilemma affecting periodontal practices like yours and it has to do with the placement of dental implants.

The problem is that many general dentists are placing their own implants these days. Not only does this rob you of a lucrative service, but it reduces the dependence general dentists used to place on you – their local periodontist. The referral model that worked so well for so many years is now broken – but that’s only part of the issue.

Your first instinct may be to aggressively compete with your referring dentists. Sure, you could advertise dental implant placement, but you also don’t want to bite the hand that feeds you. What if your remaining referrals dry up completely?

There is a solution for periodontists like you that also benefits general dentists and new implant patients. Would you like to hear it?

If you were thinking of advertising the placement of dental implants to drive traffic from your referring general dentists, you are on the right track. There is an opportunity to generate more new implant patients via digital dental marketing. We’ll dive deeper into how to do that in a moment.

By attracting dental implant patients to your periodontal office, you then have a side opportunity to offer partnerships with your favorite referring general dentists. This changes the partner dynamic in two important ways.
For one, instead of relying on referrals, you – the periodontist – become the referrer. The power is placed in your hands. Instead of referrals only going one way – in your direction – you have now successfully created a two-lane street where business flows both ways, either to or from your business. This makes your services more valuable for your general dentist partners.

Second, you gain the lucrative business related to implant placement and pass on new crown production to your general dentist partners who now have an additional opportunity to gain a long-term patient. Think about it: those patients will require ongoing dental care, as teeth don’t usually vacate healthy mouths!

This creates a natural balance from a procedural point of view. The placement carried out through your periodontal work occurs before the restoration by the general dentist. That means YOU get paid first – which is only fair. You generated the lead.

The general dentists you partner with then get paid for the restoration several months later after osseointegration occurs.

This is also beneficial to general dentists because many of them complain about the time (and production) lag of up to 6 months that needs to pass before crowns can be placed

Apply this new system to your periodontist office, and watch your practice be transformed.

But how do you attract dental implant patients to your practice when your current numbers are receding?

Use Digital Channels to Convey Value

You can attract more dental implant patients to your periodontal office by adopting an omnichannel approach.

As a periodontist, you have several digital channels at your disposal. For immediate results, we recommend implementing a Google Ad campaign first and foremost. A precision-targeted digital advertising campaign can deliver periodontal patients to your practice quicker when compared to organic SEO, which takes a bit longer to gain traction.

With regard to organic search, there is your Google My Business (GMB) page, your periodontal practice website, email marketing, a blog, and social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Each of these channels represents an opportunity to get in front of your audience with dental implant targeted messaging.

Let’s explore each in greater detail.

Google Ads

The Google Ads platform gives you the opportunity to catch the attention of the potentially thousands of prospective patients who may be searching for periodontal services or dental implants in your geographical area.

Unlike organic SEO, which doesn’t require you to pay Google to gain attention and clicks, you do need to pay Google to initiate a digital advertising campaign. An ad budget will have to be created on the platform before your ads can go live. You will then pay for each click your ads receive. The cost per click (CPC) depends on the competitiveness of the keyword being implemented. For dentistry-related terms like gum grafts and dental implants, the costs can be in the $2 to $10 range or higher.

There is a learning curve to using the Google Ads platform. Your ad budget can be eaten away by errant clicks and misused keywords if you’re not careful. This is why it pays to work with a dental marketing team like Web Marketing for Dentists, who can target your ads effectively right out of the gate. From the right keywords to use and the messaging that triggers prospects to want to buy from you, we can deliver digital ads that attract viable leads to your practice the moment they go live.

The Google Ads platform offers a variety of tools that help to make your ads more effective. Using those tools, we can find out how many prospective patients are searching for a professional like you in your area. We can even find out how far people are willing to drive from out of town to visit you. For a service like dental implants, people may be willing to drive an hour or more due to the high cost of the service.

Digital ads are most effective when they send prospects to a dedicated landing page. That page can be used to capture the contact information of prospects interested in your services. Just make sure your front desk is standing by the phone or ready to communicate digitally with anyone who may contact your office, or your digital advertising efforts will have been wasted. We can help your team close the leads that come in from your Google Ads as part of our dental marketing services.

Google My Business (GMB)

Google gives every business a free GMB profile that can be used to target search engine users. Use this to your advantage by optimizing your GMB profile so that patients make no mistake that you are the one to call for dental implants done right.

Your profile should include the basics, such as your name, address, and phone number (NAP). The About section is a unique opportunity to set your practice apart. Focus on benefits and value. Let patients know that your practice can resolve gum and bone disorders, allowing dental implants to stay put and look their best.

You might also spend time comparing dentures to implants by proving that the latter is the much better investment, focusing on things like gum wear and uncomfortable slippage. Implants, by contrast, won’t fly out of your mouth with an impromptu sneeze, laugh, or cough.

Implants also let you eat indiscriminately. The same can’t be said for dentures, unfortunately.
You can also focus on your education and background, as this is often enough to convince fence-sitters and tire-kickers that you’re the right professional for the job.

Don’t forget to focus on customer service while talking your office up. Patients should be able to expect a pleasant experience while improving oral esthetics and function using your periodontal services.

You can dress-up your GMB with high-quality photos and videos. Using before-and-after photographs of dental implant patients is a powerful technique that can drive more business your way. Better yet, get your implant patients to film video testimonials of themselves and let them rave about how much their lives have improved thanks to your skill as a periodontist who also places implants.

Finally, make sure you send every dental implant patient you treat to your GMB to leave a review. Even the most attractive and well-optimized GMB won’t get the attention you want unless you have a healthy collection of 4- and 5-star client reviews. That’s how you stand out in the 3-Pack, which is the coveted section of search engine real estate that all periodontists want to capture. We’re betting you’re no different.

If your office is located in Los Angeles, California, for example, you want your periodontal office to show up first in the 3-pack whenever patients search for “dental implants in Los Angeles, CA,” like so:

Optimizing your GMB could have patients converting directly from Google. That means they see your profile and call your practice or use Google Maps to visit in person.

The ones who don’t convert will visit your practice website, which is another opportunity to highlight your skill as a periodontist and dental implant expert.

Turn Your Periodontal Practice Website into a Patient Acquisition Machine

Your practice website is an excellent opportunity to educate prospective patients on what you do. Most people in your area may assume that all you do is gum disease treatment and bone grafts. They may not know you perform implant placement at all. Show them you do by implementing a dental implant advertisement front and center, and above the fold, so prospects don’t have to scroll to find what they need.

Your blog is another opportunity to inform patients about your dental implant services. Patient stories can be powerful as blog posts. You might tell the story of a patient that required a bone graft, gum graft, and implants, and how your practice performed everything under one roof.

Educate Your Patient Base with a Well-Written Blog

Create Social Media Posts That Make Periodontal Patients Take Notice

Research can tell you where your prospects tend to hang out online, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Use the proper channels to spread before and after photos, video testimonials, and your educational blogs.

Email Marketing Can Be Used to Attract Patients and Generate Dental Partnerships

Using your website and social media to attract email signups can be another fantastic way to educate and inform your audience. Regular newsletters that discuss the difference between dentures and implants, the benefits of implants, and the process of obtaining implants can sway patients who otherwise would have chosen a general dentist for their needs.

Email outreach can also help you expand your network of referring general dentists and prosthodontists. When reaching out to other dental professionals, you can discuss the two-way referral street we mentioned earlier, helping you potentially form new partnerships all over town. This would have you referring patients out and getting new referrals in – all the while growing your practice one new patient at a time.

Want to put this plan into action but not sure where to begin? You can start right now by working with Web Marketing for Dentists. We collaborate with periodontists like you to grow your practice using advanced digital dental marketing techniques, just like the ones you read about here.

FAQs

How much does digital dental marketing cost?

The moment you decide to work with us, we analyze your current digital marketing efforts and the size of your geographic area. We want to know the channels it would pay for you to invest in, as well as the techniques that would be most effective at getting new patients through your door.

So far, we have only discussed organic search engine optimization (SEO) to enhance patient engagement. That’s the kind you don’t have to pay companies like Google for. There is also pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, which is like turning on a firehose of viable leads when done properly. We can get you started with both paid and organic SEO, but fees vary widely. We can provide you with a detailed quote with no hidden charges or surprises ASAP.

How will I know when my digital marketing efforts are working?

If you’ve ever worked with an SEO company before, you know all about the reports those agencies tend to send out. They’re full of graphs and fancy figures, but oftentimes it’s hard to decipher what’s what. We don’t work that way. We only work with results.

You will know your efforts are bearing fruit when the phone rings and the lobby bustles with the patients YOU want. That means if you want more dental implant patients, and referral patients from general dentists, that’s who we will target. You’ll know it’s all working when your chair fills up throughout the day, and your schedule is packed throughout the year.

How do I get started?

Getting started is easier than you might think. Click the button below to set up a call with one of our founders. Right now, there are patients searching for dental implants in your area, and they might not know that periodontal work is the first step to getting there. Educate your patients and drive them your way by acting now.

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