How to Market Your Dental Practice

Whether you are just starting up your practice or looking to grow, marketing can be confusing. From social media to websites, postcards, and online reviews, you may not even know where to begin. Below we have some tips that can help you connect with more consumers.

1. Create a smart website

Today, most businesses have a website so consumers can find them and learn more about the type of business they run. However, just because you have a website, doesn’t necessarily mean it's doing the best job reaching potential customers. SEO, search engine optimization, is key to online success. In short, the content on your website gets run through search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo), and based on the keywords you have on your website; you’ll get pulled up higher on the front pages of these search engines, making it easier for prospective customers to find you. If your website isn’t built with SEO in mind, it’s going to be challenging for people to know you exist. One great resource for improving SEO efforts is to read the Beginnings Guide to SEO from MOZ.

2. Stay social

Social media shows no sign of going anywhere. With new platforms popping up and changes happening to existing channels, it’s important to get involved and stay up to date on the latest things happening in the social world. Each social media channel serves a different purpose, so you want to have different content for each. Twitter would be good for news, and dental gifs/memes, Facebook best for sharing content and videos, and Instagram is great for images and quick video clips in Instagram Stories. If you have any deals, employee news, new services, be sure to share that information to your social channels.

3. Get involved

Joining a community as a small business owner is a big deal. If your dental practice is in a small town, this is especially true. Maybe you can sponsor a local sports team, or partner with other business owners to offer deals and get more traffic in the door. Summertime tends to be a big time for festivals, so maybe you can get a booth at one and promote your business. While you may be in a smaller town, the options for promoting your business are not small, and there are plenty of ways to get connected with new customers.

4. Don’t ditch paper

More traditional forms of marketing can still be effective when promoting your dental practice. Perhaps you send out postcards or take out an ad in a local newspaper. It’s important to remember that not all of your customers are going to learn about your business in the same way, so variety is important to make sure you’re casting the largest net you can to attract new people.

5. Word of Mouth

While all of these are great tips, one is going to be extra crucial to the success of your small business, and that is what people have to say about you. Word of mouth and online reviews, especially negative, can either help a new small business thrive or become damaging the business reputation. Offer incentives for customers to leave positive reviews online about your business, such as a percentage off a service like teeth whitening. Additionally, just checking in with your patients during the year outside of their annual visits, can help strengthen bonds that lead them to promote your practice positively.