Using internet marketing for dentists can be effective in gaining new dental patients but can also present unique challenges, as all dentists know. After all, not many people want to go to the dentist and many simply avoid thinking about it. How can you keep new and repeat patients coming into your dentist office? How can you guide patients away from your competition? And how can you do all this without taking up all your time or stressing your staff?
There are many relatively new ways for you to stay in meaningful contact with your patients as well as reaching out to new patients through internet marketing for dentists. Do you know how to use these communication strategies effectively? Did you know you can get a simple yet powerful all-in-one marketing solution that allows you to reach your patients through social media, text messages, email, online surveys and more? Do you know the tips and tricks that will minimize patient falloff and keep them engaged with your newsletters and emails?
Let's review some of the latest tools for internet marketing for dentists, then you can decide if you want to go with an automated solution or do it yourself.
Establish a Strong, Trusted Presence on Social Media
Social media may seem ill-suited when it comes to internet marketing for dentists, yet it can be your secret weapon to gaining patients who would have otherwise gone to other dentists. Many patients turn to social media in order to get the inside scoop on dentists before they decide which one to give their business to. On social media, actual current patients can post comments about their experiences with your dentist office. A member of your dentist office staff should respond to patient comments promptly so that you can show potential new patients that you value your patients' opinions.
If a patient posts a positive comment, thank them for their opinion and their loyalty. If a patient posts a negative comment, respond to their complaint and let the patient know that you will work to resolve the issue. Ensure that you don't post any frustrated or inflammatory comments on social media. As a trusted dentist, such comments can be devastating for your practice. Whatever you say on social media will likely be spread around online, so be cautious.
Provide Dental Health Tips
Focus on providing preventative dentist tips, which helps build trust among patients and potential patients. In order to lessen people's fear of going to the dentist, provide messages that inform people how to care for their teeth, foods to avoid, how often to visit the dentist and so on.
You can share these messages on social media to create more engagement on your Facebook and Twitter pages. Create a series of messages ahead of time and schedule them to post to your pages over time, making it look like you are manually updating them all the time and keeping patients interested.
In addition, enable patients to sign up for dentist tip campaigns that will be sent to their email or mobile phone through text messaging. This not only allows you to stay in touch with your patients, building trust and interaction, but it also keeps your dentist office in the front of patients' minds so they know who to turn to when they need dental services.
Automated Dentist Appointment Reminders
How much time does your staff spend each day trying to get in touch with patients to confirm appointments, notify patients that they are due for an appointment and follow up with patients after their appointments? Be honest...
By automating appointment reminders and dental notifications you can save hours every day, increase convenience and satisfaction for patients and reduce the amount of patients who miss appointments, show up late or just never come in.
Optimize Your Website for Search Engines
Many people find their dentist by searching for dentists in their area online. A great way to boost the visibility of your dentist office online is to focus on SEO (search engine optimization). With a combination of paid (PPC, pay per click) and non-paid efforts, you can make your dentist website appear more readily when people search for local dentists.
Send Out Surveys and Ask Your Patients to Post Reviews
People will never trust the opinions of you and your staff as much as they will trust the words of other patients who have actually used your services. It's not that difficult to get great reviews if you do great work and offer superior patient care. In many cases, you simply need to ask. After each patient's appointment, set up an automated survey to go out to the patient, asking them about their experience and allowing them to leave a comment.
The survey serves several purposes. It allows you to gather additional data from your patients, enabling you to better market to your clientele. It provides data and feedback that can help you improve your services and attract more patients, based on what people want and need. The other thing that you can use surveys for is to gather reviews. By including a text box where patients can leave comments, you can collect positive reviews.
Tell your customers that their comments may be used on your website or on your social media pages, and ask them to check a box to indicate that they have given you their permission to publicly use their comments. Not everyone will agree, and not everyone who agrees will write positive comments. However, many patients will have had great experiences and many will leave comments that you can use as positive press for your dentist office.
Use Automation Can Help Internet Marketing For Dentists
Automating manual processes of marketing and communication can save you hours of time every day and a whole lot of hassle for your staff. Using marketing automation, you can keep your social media pages fresh, and reach out to patients with targeted text messages, voicemails and emails.
Want to see the difference automation can make for your dental office? Check out the SimplyCast 360 platform and request an interactive demo to see what it can do.
