Dental Practice Reporter

By Tyson Downs, owner, Titan Web Agency, a dental marketing agency. 

Growing a dental practice can be hard work. In fact, it takes more than just being confident in your abilities to grow and manage this type of business successfully – you need an understanding of the strategies that are crucial for creating patient relationships as well as dental marketing strategy.

A dental practice needs to be proactive in order to thrive. It’s not enough that they have the best equipment or services and provide high-quality care each day; marketing is just as important if you want people coming into your office on a regular basis.

There are many strategies for marketing with varying results, but using combination methods will yield better outcomes than trying one strategy without another complementing it effectively.

Here are three dental marketing strategies:

1. Ask your patient for reviews
Online reviews have been a key part of making business decisions for some time now, but the importance is growing. More and more people rely on online review sites when looking to buy products or services; this includes dental care providers. Google weights Maps search results based on review ratings – making it a key advantage (or disadvantage) for your SEO.

If you have an average 3.2 star rating on Google, and a competitor has a 4.7 rating, they’ll have a better chance of ranking above you. In addition, maintaining positive reviews can help build customer loyalty and attract new patients by improving brand perception in their eyes; however, negative feedback could hurt both current and prospective patients.

2. Start a Google Ad Campaign
Google Ads is a platform that allows you to have your ad displayed when someone searches for certain keywords e.g. dentist in + location. When using this type of advertising, it’s important not only do you target location-based keywords but also use descriptions and headlines to highlight unique offers or other features about your practice which set you apart from others.

3. Sign up for competitor emails and newsletters
You can learn a lot about your competition by listening to the way they communicate with their customers. You might be surprised at what you hear. On average, how often do they follow up after phone calls or emails? What type of promotions and discounts do these other dentists offer to prospective patients—do they have any loyalty programs set up.

Another important question would need answering here: “How does this particular office make referrals?” Is there an app involved somehow – maybe something like Groupon where people get discounted services instead-or just word of mouth alone?