Our dental office marketing strategy focuses on using conversion rate optimization and best SEO practices to help build a foundation of trust to attract new patients.
Trust. It’s the key principle when it comes to choosing a dental office. Patients are looking for a team of dental professionals they can trust. They need to trust them to take care of their teeth safely while working under sedation. Trust them with their smile. Trust them to enter their personal space. In reality, the entire dental experience is quite intimate. Therefore, the relationships between patients and their dental professionals are more personal than those with other business service providers, such as mechanics for example. As dental marketing professionals, our job is to help dentists and their offices create this trust with the public by putting their greatest benefits and guarantees at the forefront of our marketing efforts.
At Webdirexion, we have a long history of working with clients in the healthcare industry. As such, it was a natural acquisition when we began digital marketing work with dental clients in 2016. I personally began working intensively with dental clients more than a year ago, so I was eager to work with both Padden Dental and Cascade Dental with Webdirexion.
As a team, we decided it’s time we provide an update on some dental clinic marketing work we have been up to this last year. In this article, we will review some of the things we’ve learned with an eye on lessons that could apply to other businesses as well.
Dental Practice Branding Strategy
We often collaborate with Steve from Smith Creative Group to develop a branding strategy and website design for larger clients. Steve has strong experience in creative and brand direction, and he has worked with us on both of our active dental clients.
I reached out to Steve to ask him specifically how he approaches the branding strategy in regard to dental clinic marketing clients. Steve describes what it’s like for patients to visit the dentist office.
“Our personal space is sacred territory and allowing someone in a space so close requires breaking down those barriers the moment a patient walks in the doors and particularly, once they are in the chair.”
Steve explains that price matters to many, however, just as someone might visit your practice because you are a bit cheaper, if the experience is not pleasant, they will leave just as fast. A friendly relationship is the key foundation needed to establish a long-tern relationship with a patient. Likewise, people are inclined to drive the extra miles and pay a bit more if they know that their time in the dentist chair will be spent with people that they like and trust. Therefore, it’s important to build that trust so patients know that you have their best interests at heart. According to Smith:
“It’s the chair-side manner that makes a first time patient into a long time friend. Our marketing tries to focus on imagery and messaging that underscores the benefits that come through our patient/professional relationships.”
Dental Clinic Marketing Recent Campaigns
Screenshot of the wall of pets from the pet smiles campaign with Cascade Dental.
With Cascade Dental, we have had the privilege to collaborate with Stephen Smith, as well as the group at Cascade to help promote advertising campaigns meant to bring more patients to the practice and create a higher community awareness of their dental practice.
In tribute to February’s National Pet Dental Health Month, we worked alongside Steve as he put together a branding campaign to promote teeth cleanings for entire families, including pets. This promotion was in collaboration with a local dental clinic, Hearthwood Dog & Cat Clinic, in which a coupon was awarded to Cascade Dental patients to receive $50 off their pet’s dental cleaning after they scheduled their family’s annual cleanings at Cascade. Part of the fun of this campaign was allowing users to submit photos of their pet online or on Facebook, and we added them to the “Pet Smiles” archive on the Cascade website.
Another marketing campaign we are helping promote at Cascade is their free tooth whitening special for all new patients. This popular promotion is designed to bring new clients to the practice and will run until the end of summer.
Practice Specific Content Creation
What is the goal of your dental practice? Do you want to provide general information to the public that is informative about the best oral hygiene practices? Or, do you want to give practice-specific information that tells people more about the services you offer at your office?
Truth is that you are probably going to want to do a combination of both. While it’s important to let the public know what you provide and what a great service you are, you also don’t want to come off as overly-promotional. It’s best to deliver a soft-sale approach by creating informative content that is useful, and tie-in information about your practice and how your services relate to the specific content you are talking about.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) – Driven Marketing
Online marketing efforts can easily get consumed by the focus of SEO. Unfortunately, many digital marketers make the mistake of overlooking conversion rate optimization or CRO. Oftentimes, they get too focused on rankings and lose site of actions taken once visitors make it to the website. Our actions are goal-oriented and drive more qualified leads for our dental clients.
Scott Frangos, Webdirexion’s chief optimizer and author of the Marketer’s Concise Guide to CRO, explains how we use the concept of CRO with these types of clients:
“We enjoy continually increasing the effectiveness of our Dental Practice client websites by looking for increases in engagement as a ‘conversion’ we can affect. For example, we noticed one site had a higher engagement rate for people who entered on the home page than another Dental client. More people were landing on home, then proceeding into the site. We ran two tests so far on different content elements — first a module about a quarter of the way down the page that linked to the specials page, then the top of page header itself. For the specials module, we tried a simple switch in one headline word from ‘Save’ to ‘Specials’. More people were interested in ‘Specials’ and then clicked through to the Specials page. For the top header, we did an A/B test of a header showing a patient that achieved a nice smile, versus a picture of the five Dentists in the practice which also showed a recent award the business had won. Again, the B version — five smiling Dentists and award — ‘won’, meaning more people read down the home page and clicked into the site. We call this conversion an ‘engagement conversion’, since it takes them a step closer to becoming a new customer (patient, in this case).
Does Your Dental Practice Need More Qualified Leads?
What’s better than getting more leads for your dental practice? Getting qualified, or warm leads. Leads that are already looking for the type of services you provide are more likely to do business with you. We can help your business achieve these types of leads and promote the growth of your dental office.
Want to learn more about dental office marketing with Webdirexion? Take a look at our services page to see what we can do for you – or – get in touch! We would love to hear from you. Contact us today to get a free quote or tell us more about your marketing goals.
