I’m going to say it straight up.

Marketing is the most important strategy to know!

If you don’t have a plan, you plan to fail.

As a Dentist, we spend most of our work day treating our patients. When gaining new patients as a Dentist, you may not know where to start.

We were never taught Marketing and its importance in our Dentistry studies. This was certainly at least, the case for myself.

In a world of such large online connectivity, there is no doubt that in order to remain competitive, you require an established online and offline Marketing Strategy. This strategy, by far, is to involve social media, online reputation management, and search engine optimization amongst other digital elements.

You need to aim for what you want. You need to make a game plan to achieve it, test and measure what did work and what didn’t.

For a Dentist, Digital Marketing is a great way to build relationships and convince your current and prospective patients to feel more comfortable even before they visit your practice. As a way to display that they’re in safe hands, showcase your authority, track record and experience and give your practice an interesting personality, as a means for your patients to look forward to their dental visit.

Marketing is often a challenge for most Dentists. This article will guide you, as a Dentist, through some of the basic and even a bit more advanced steps necessary to get a successful marketing strategy underway.

The first time a prospective patient views your ad whether on Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or whichever platform you utilize, they may not need a Dentist at that given moment. However, when they see your practice over and over and become more familiar with you, who do you think they will remember later when they do need a Dentist?

You!

Has your Dental Practice hopped on the Digital Marketing bandwagon?

Let’s begin with your website.

Your website reflects you as a practice owner and professional. ​What most practice owner heavily underestimate is how quickly a potential patient moves on from a website that is either non responsive or not appealing. It takes every person mere seconds to decide whether or not they want to browse on the website and ultimately get in touch, or move on to the next page. These crucial few seconds are the make or break of your success. They determine the difference between getting 50 or 100 or 250 new patients a month.

Did you know:

• 80% – 90% of people use Google to find their local Dental Practice
• You will grow your practice enormously if you have a highly-optimised and engaging website.
• Majority of your prospective LEADS from AdWords, Google and Social Media, will come through to your website.

I have noticed that websites which are very poor to average, undoubtedly, get poor to average results. If you do not produce a great website, then you’re missing out on hundreds of patients a year. Hundreds! Dentists, you must understand that most patients ringing your phone are coming from your website. If you are getting 10 patients calling you per week, how many are not calling you? I see this day-in-day-out.

There’s a super important phrase I want you to learn. It’s called ‘Conversion Rate Optimization’.

This process involves improving the percentage of website visitors that make contact with your practice. For example: if 3% of your website traffic makes contact with your practice, that is your conversion rate. Imagine if you could optimise your website to be 6%, 7%, 8% or even 9%? Visualize and feel how great it would be to increase your revenue threefold and how much more business this would bring you! This is the essence of a good website.

However, the reality is, for a website to achieve this, you need THESE 9 crucial lead-generating elements that will help convert an interested lead into a patient in your chair.

• Copy-writing that influences a person TO TAKE ACTION
• A friendly design that makes FINDING INFORMATION EASY and makes your website look PROFESSIONAL on every device.
• An “About Us” page with real and personable information
• SEO performance that makes you APPEAR AT THE RIGHT TIME
• A website design that CONVERTS TRAFFIC AT A HIGHER RATE
• Real visuals of you, your practice and your team that inspire your traffic to be PART OF YOUR BRAND IDENTITY
• Video Content that makes it easy for prospective patients to SEE, LISTEN TO and GET TO KNOW YOU AND YOUR PRACTICE.
• Lead Capture Forms to CAPTURE LEADS not yet ready to book an appointment
• INSPIRING Reviews with Graphics and Testimonials.

These factors are what prompt an interested prospective patient to take action ​and get in touch with your business. This is what causes your practice to grow. This is how, after years of trial and error on my own practice website, we now see 220 New Patients monthly.

So, one way to start to boost your new patient numbers, would be to ask yourself the following 5 questions:

• What critical mistakes is my website currently making ​and when have I last updated it to show the reality of my practice and procedures?
• How can I increase the amount of people calling my practice?
• How do I improve SEO and optimise it for my locality?
• How do I create a better User Experience for my patients?
• How do I implement more influential features into my website?

Dentists, this isn’t rocket science, it’s a simple and proven procedure.

Think of it this way…your website is the introduction between your practice and the outside world. It’s like welcoming a new guest into your home. Is it welcoming? Does it make a good impression? Or is everything dusty and outdated? Are you doing enough to make the most of it?

No matter what you start with, this is how you succeed. Be consistent and commit to marketing, track your results, reinvest into the strategies that have proven their success, and repeat, repeat, repeat! That’s the real core of any successful Dental Marketing Plan and now it’s at your fingertips.

Most Dentists are wasting a lot of time, effort and money on SEO, AdWords and Social Media Marketing, (which of course, are all very crucial), without first, getting their websites right. Once you realize that your website is your mothership and getting it right is of absolute essence, the above strategies will be more successful.

On a final note, the ultimate purpose of Marketing is to have new patients calling your practice. So, I’m excited to share with you, the second strategy ‘Top Telephone Techniques’ in next month’s edition!