Dental Marketing Strategies: 5 Best Strategies for Growing Your Dental Practice

Top dental marketing strategies to attract new patients and boost retention with website design, SEO, email marketing, social media, and dental software.

Dentistry is a broad specialty with several different focus areas and patient types. 

Crafting an effective dental marketing strategy will help you cut through the noise of the digital landscape and set your practice apart from competing practices. It’ll enable you to attract, convert, and engage with current and prospective patients, as well as build your reputation. 

A smart, integrated marketing strategy could do more than just bring in new patients. People may desperately need treatment but don’t know how or where to begin looking for a trusted, reputable dentist who can provide the services they need. It can attract patients with specific needs and who haven’t been able to find a practitioner who meets their unique requirements. 

With studies showing that over 80% of Americans searching for a dentist or researching dental services doing it online, the key to driving practice growth is optimizing your digital footprint. 

What you’re looking for are the best dental marketing strategies that showcase the unique personality of your practice so you can increase your profitability.  

1. Boost Online Presence With a Great Dental Website Design

Attractive, functional, responsive, and relevant – these are just a few defining features of a well-designed and dynamic website. It also needs to deliver results, raise your practice’s online visibility and market it to the right people in the right way. 

Develop a Responsive and Mobile-Ready Website

Websites were originally built with a desktop interface in mind. But as mobile phones became more ubiquitous, website designers began developing separate websites to optimize functionality for mobile and desktop users. If that sounds complicated, it is, or rather, it was. Contemporary digital design has evolved to the point where you’re able to prime one website to offer the ultimate in-user accessibility and experience, no matter what device it’s being viewed on. 

In excess of 6 billion people currently use smartphones worldwide – some 270 million in the US alone. In 2020, 61% of US website visits originated from a mobile device, compared with 57% in 2019. 

Desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile; a responsive website design ensures an equally memorable experience on any device. Does the layout, text size, and design automatically adjust according to the size of the device? What about drop-down menus and contact fields? Everything should work optimally. If not, your website really isn’t mobile-friendly. 

Eye-catching website design that’s functional and responsive helps to keep active patients engaged while also bringing in new patients to your practice. And if that isn’t good enough already, Google actually rewards mobile-ready and responsive websites in its search engine algorithms. 

Mobile-first indexing bases ranking and indexing from the mobile version of a site, as opposed to the desktop version. Websites that are optimized for smartphones will find their status elevated in Google’s local search rankings. That’s great news, and means it’s a lot easier for new patients to discover you on the results page. 

Another bonus is that a website with responsive design is super flexible, letting you make updates and alterations swiftly and simply. A boon for smaller practices, as they’ll find updating their dental website is straightforward and eliminates the need (and the expense) of bringing in a third party. 

Ensure You Have All Critical Elements of a Dental Website

To thrive in the competitive dental marketing environment, your dental website must not only be mobile-friendly, but it must also be:  

• Quick to load 
• Easy to read and navigate 
• A seamless user experience 
• Excellent image resolution 
• A streamlined user analytics reporting and tracking

A carefully constructed website is the lynchpin of your dental practice’s marketing strategy. It’s the face you present to your patients, your community, and the world.  

Does it make the right impression? Are you really doing everything you could to ensure it’s achieving your goals? Even if one of your regular patients refers a friend to your practice, chances are they will still go to check you out online before making a booking. 

Use the website as your unique platform, a place to tell visitors everything they need to know about your practice. Create content that’s relevant, informative, and professional. Check that it’s clearly laid out and comfortable to read; big blocks of dense text are not the way to go! Don’t forget to use headers, keep sentences concise, organize topics logically, and arrange points in list form. 

Visual appeal and engaging content go hand in hand when developing a website. Images should load quickly and have a crisp, clear resolution. Videos are another excellent medium for showcasing your services and products. It’s probably worth investing in professional photos of your dental practice. Staff-generic images lack character and can be a big turn-off for prospective patients. 

Check that you’ve followed these basic guidelines for creating a well-designed dental website:

• Ensure that navigating your dental website is simple.
• Information on treatments and procedures should be
  easy to find.
• Provide relevant prompts and handy links on every page.
• Include all contact information on every page.
• Make it easy for patients to get in touch with your practice, whether by phone, email, or online.
• Ensure your phone number is clickable from any type of device.
• Set up a user-friendly online booking facility.
• Include a dental emergency number.
• Provide clickable calls-to-action (CTAs) buttons, such as “book an appointment now” or “call us.”

Your dental website now has all the bells and whistles. It’s engaging, visually pleasing, educational, and full of helpful hints. Great! But what’s its purpose? What exactly is it that you’d like visitors to be doing here? Providing answers to these questions will increase conversion rates, helping to turn visitors into new dental patients. 

Websites are also super important for creating trust, making connections, and forming personal relationships. Online reviews and testimonials are a huge factor in establishing your credibility. And it’s even more compelling to show than to tell. That’s why photos and videos of your practice, friendly staff, and smiling patients can have a massive impact. 

In addition, think about what you’re able to offer your prospective patients. Do you have any unique service propositions that set you apart from your competitors? Consider what would be most appealing– perhaps favorable financing terms, after-hours appointments, or advanced procedures? 

Everyone loves a good deal, and a range of special promotions could be a key component of your practice’s value proposition. What about extending free consultations to boost cosmetic dentistry uptake? Whether it’s about orthodontics, teeth whitening, or dental implants, well-targeted campaigns will draw the right people to your practice; especially those seriously contemplating a corrective or aesthetic dental procedure. 

Check out some of the best dental website design ideas for 2021. 

2. Increase Web Traffic Through Dental SEO

A comprehensive dental SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy will drive traffic to your dental website and go a long way towards boosting your visibility online. Smart dental SEO tactics must factor in Google’s revised ground rules for keywords, links, title tags, meta descriptions, and other elements. Otherwise, your website could be doing your practice more harm than good. 

Use Relevant Keywords as Your Content Guide

How well does your website fare in the ongoing and fierce contest for search engine rankings? Lots of people might Google dentist, but will they be directed to your practice’s home page? Knowing which keywords to use will make it that much easier for patients to find you in online searches. Take a closer look at all the benefits of a high-performing, tailormade dental SEO campaign. 

Fresh, engaging, and keyword-optimized content is your ticket to the big time! Your practice deserves its own voice, a compelling vision of your unique brand, and everything it offers a prospective patient. 

Google Auto-Complete

Searches by people looking for a dentist or a special type of dental procedure can help you determine the most effective keywords to use. Try out Google’s auto-complete function, and start typing in a query (like “dentist for …”). The results will help you establish popular keyword variations. These will be your touchstone for developing engaging content and optimizing your website’s appeal. Utilize keywords strategically in populating pages, headings, copy, and backend tags, as well as the site’s meta description. 

Google Search Console

Other research options include Google Search Console, which checks various aspects of your website’s functionality, including search query data. For best results, add the Chrome extension “Keywords Everywhere.” Also look at paid tools, including SEMRush, Ahrefs, Moz Pro, Ubersuggest, KWFinder, GrepWords, Keywordtool.io, and SpyFu. 

Google Trends

Which dental SEO keywords are hot right now? Google Trends analyzes popular search terms. It’s customizable too, so you can focus on particulars such as time period, country, and category. Pretty handy, since the questions people ask are changing constantly. For example, since the pandemic, there’s been an upsurge in key phrases related to dentists with extended treatment hours, as well as those accepting Medicaid and open to payment plans.  

Focus on Local SEO to Attract Loyal Patients

Dental practices should be aware of the key factors that Google evaluates when rating a website. 

Local SEO focuses on attracting new patients to your dental practice—particularly those who live nearby and are within driving distance of the office. That means focusing on raising your website’s ranking in local search engine results pages (SERPS) so people in your community looking for dental services are able to locate you with ease. 

Geographic Specific

Highlighting geo-strategic information on your website—your practice’s suburb, city, and county—is part of creating greater visibility. Focus on keywords for specific, high-value procedures. Here are a few examples: [your town] implant dentistry, or [your town] braces, or [your town] teeth whitening. 

Google My Business

Activating your Google My Business (GMB) listing is a cost-effective way to raise your profile on local searches. This determines how prominent you are on Google Maps, Local Search, and Knowledge Graphs. The listing requires a detailed description of your practice and its services. GMB is also great for dental reputation management, so remember to actively solicit patient reviews that help to establish you as a reliable and professional practitioner. 

Dental Blog

Since Google rewards in-depth content, blogs are valuable in demonstrating a dental website’s credibility, capability, and authority. Likewise, superior-quality content is important for gathering inbound links from reputable sources. Backlinks that are naturally obtained from well-regarded websites help search engines recognize your site as a trusted source of information. Citations as well as links from educational sites, local media, and community business organizations, can all drastically improve your search engine profile. 

Check out our mini-masterclass webinar to find out more marketing tips and techniques that increase patient acquisition and retention. 

3. Attract New Patients with Dental Social Media

Dental social media offers valuable opportunities to advance patient engagement as well as to attract new people to your practice. 

A sound social media marketing plan for your dental practice can be the difference between a business that’s simply ticking over and one that’s going stratospheric! 

Social media channels are where connections are made, reputations built (or broken), and trust established. These networks are the virtual villages of the 21st century, and you can be sure that digital word-of-mouth is spreading fast! Whether it’s via podcast, video, blog, or advert, make sure your message is interesting, engaging, and authentic. 

Remember that you don’t need to have an account on every social media platform; it’s probably better to concentrate on two or three. What about conducting a patient survey to see which social networks they prefer visiting? 

Showcase the practice through appealing photographs and videos of successful procedures, welcoming dental staff, and smiling patients. This is also the right location for patient testimonials and reviews, sharing interesting links, and answering dentistry-related queries in a friendly and professional manner. Live videos are another excellent tool for increasing your visibility, encouraging patient engagement and establishing integrity. 

Understanding your target audience will help you create the most effective dental social media marketing strategy. Post helpful content about your practice, address and contact details, available treatments and products, and any areas of specialization. The more valuable and informative your posts, the better chance there is that people will like, comment, and share. 

Stay active, post frequently, engage with people and help them find solutions to their dental challenges. And when someone turns to Google or social media to find a new dentist, you’ll be there for them. 

Check out this webinar to learn all about the how-to’s of social media video marketing with RevenueWell. 

Schedule a RevenueWell demo today and see how you can run a more profitable practice with less effort using RevenueWell. 

4. Engage Existing Patients Through Dental Email Marketing

Dental email marketing offers vast scope for building relationships and increasing patient retention for your dental practice. This channel has in recent years proven extremely successful in driving patient conversion rates as well as generating revenue. 

Know Who to Email Using Patient Segmentation 

Keeping in touch with patients isn’t as simple as sending them the occasional generic email. 

A powerful dental email marketing campaign relies on patient segmentation to deliver messages tailored for particular audiences. This dental marketing strategy has transformed dental email marketing in recent years, making it far more relevant to dental practices and their marketing goals. 

According to HelpScout, 30% of email revenue comes from segmentation, while segmented email campaigns show a 50% higher click-through rate than untargeted campaigns. 

Ensure effective and streamlined communications in your dental office with the PBHS Secure Email Platform, which integrates directly into Microsoft Outlook. 

Segmentation involves categorizing patients on your practice’s email contact list and creating logical subgroups according to a set of common characteristics. In marketing terms, the distinct subsets are differentiated according to the following indicators: 

• Demographic: related to age, race, and sex 
• Geographic: determined by where your patients live 
• Psychographic: specific psychological characteristics based on opinion, values, personality, and attitudes
• Behavioral: based on a patient’s patterns of behavior and actions related to your practice 

Observing behavioral patterns is particularly useful for market segmentation as it helps in the creation of additional subgroups. For instance, in differentiating between new and established patients, those who have recently visited the practice versus those who are due a checkup or need a follow-up appointment, patients with and without medical insurance, and patients who have benefited from dental procedures in the past and might be keen to try out new procedures in the future. 

These insights can help you develop an appropriately customized range of emails for your dental marketing campaign. 

Build Better Connection with Personalized Emails 

Personalization is at the heart of any successful marketing campaign and personalized emails are no exception. 

In fact, 72% of consumers in 2019 only engaged with personalized marketing messages, while 51% of digital marketers say that personalization is their number one priority. Furthermore, according to Experian, birthday emails have a 481% higher transaction rate than promotional emails, as well as a 342% higher revenue per email and 179% higher unique click rates. 

The most successful dental email marketing campaigns recognize that every patient is unique. By identifying your patients’ personal details, interests, and treatment options, you’ll be able to create emails that deliver a more relevant message, forge stronger ties between patient and practice, while also building loyalty and trust. 

Start by subdividing your email list according to these metrics: a patient’s profession, previous dental procedures, new treatments they could benefit from, whether they’re new to the practice or established patients. 

RevenueWell offers a sophisticated marketing platform capable of advanced email automation features that allow you to personalize patients’ emails with targeted promotional material; perhaps new dental services, or information related to past treatments. 

A solid marketing platform helps you send patients automated emails, triggered by specific dates or activities. These could be welcome emails to new patients, appointment follow-ups, or friendly reminders about forthcoming treatments, and birthday/anniversary wishes. Invite feedback, either via return email, social media, or through your website. If you haven’t seen a patient for a while, make a point of sending them a personal message and/or a special promotional deal to draw them back to the dental practice. 

Here are some additional email tips to keep in mind:  

• Always use your patients’ first name in the subject line as well as the body of the email.  
• Address patients directly. 
• Get the conversation going by asking questions such as: “Have you heard about our newest treatment service?”  
• Keep it short and to the point.  
• Use eye-catching images and design.  
• Steer clear of trigger words such as “save” or “free” in the subject line as these words may be identified as spam and end up sending your email straight into the junk folder.  
• Include contact information, practice name, and logo.  
• Add hyperlinks to lead them to your website or social channels.

RevenueWell is a leader in dental practice marketing, offering an all-in-one dental marketing software and patient communication platform. Try out these additional tips to help you improve your patient emails. 

5. Manage Your Campaigns with Dental Marketing Software 

A well-designed website, optimized web traffic, engaging patients through email marketing, finding new ones via social media, improving your patient relationship management strategies. These are all critical factors for attracting more patients and growing your dental practice. 

It’s crucial that your marketing plan takes advantage of the latest dental marketing software and strategies to optimize your campaign management tactics. And you’ll realize a greater return on investment too. It’s the platform you need to streamline work processes, enhance dental services and treatments while reaching out to more patients. 

Advantages of dental marketing software include:

• Getting more done by automating time-consuming tasks 
• Utilizing the right tools to keep the front office running smoothly 
• Keeping in touch with patients via a range of communication channels 
• Generating automatic follow-up emails encouraging patients to leave online reviews 
• Streamlining digital interfaces and facilitating appointment scheduling to enhance patients-practice interactions