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My Dental Office Received a Negative Review! Now What?

December 11, 2015 by admin Leave a Comment

So you logged into Yelp, Google+ or another review site and found that somebody has left bad review on your listing. This is a common occurrence which every dentist would experience at least once in their professional career. But what do you do next? There is no need to panic because this post addresses that exact question.

Ignore Completely

The most obvious thing you can do is not do anything. If you already have dozens of positive review on your profile, a couple of negative reviews will not affect your overall rating. In fact they may even make your rating more legitimate. Let’s be honest, it is rare for a dental office to get perfect 5 star rating from all its patients. Thus if you already have a high number of positive reviews, you can ignore a few bad reviews. They will make your ratings appear more natural and legitimate to a prospective dental patient.

Contact the Website

If you believe the review is unwarranted, malicious or mistaken, you can request the website authorities to take manual action. Most local business directories allow businesses to flag suspicious reviews posted on their profile. They may request the review poster for proof of payment like a billing receipt and if the review was found to be fake, you will be able to have it removed from your listing. This is not easy as it sounds because the process can take a long and is often unsuccessful. However, if you have the time and patience to go back and forth with the website authorities, you can get fake negative reviews removed.

Respond Politely

Replying to negative reviews correctly can neutralize the damage done by them. At the same time, a bad reply can make you look defensive and immature. Some patients are genuinely angry or hurt and responding to their review no matter how politely could provoke them even further. They may take your response personal and become vengeful – posting bad reviews on your other local listings. Ignoring such reviews is recommended.

The first thing you must do in your reply is to acknowledge the problem. Whether it was the waiting time, cancelled appointment, billing issue, quality of dental work or anything else, make sure you identify the problem and explain how your dental office minimizes such incidents. Next try to reconcile the with the patient by suggesting a full/partial refund or free/discounted corrective treatment or a free consultation. Try to keep your reply brief and too the point using a polite, diplomatic tone. The aim should be to take the issue offline so that you can resolve the issue without heading into a back and forth argument on your local listing.

103 Post & Status Ideas for Your Dental Facebook Page

December 10, 2015 by admin Leave a Comment

Facebook is a great marketing tool for dentists. However, having a facebook page and loading it with generic content and status updates won’t get you anywhere. You need to invest in high quality engaging content to attract likes and new patients. If you have run out of content to post on your dental facebook page, fasten your seat belts because we are giving away 100+ unique ideas to engage facebook users.

Promotional

New Treatment Procedure
Discounts
Payment Plans
Price List
Before & After Images
Equipment Showcase
Testimonial Videos
Success Story from Customers

PR

Educational Qualification
Industry Event Participation
Training Workshop Attendance
Press & Media Coverage
Charitable Contributions
Community Involvement
Local Sponsorships
Staff Member Profiles
Awards
Achievements
Certifications
Behind-the-scenes photos
Take a trip down memory lane

Announcements

Job Openings
Office Announcements
New Hires
Equipment Upgrades
Office Policy Updates

Funny

Dental Memies
Dental Jokes
Dental Comics

Informational

Articles
Activities
Dentist Quotes
Dental Tips
Treatment Video
Compare and contrast two procedures
Info-graphics
Research Statistics
Share a Helpful Resource
Offer a free e-book

Interactive

Quizzes
Riddles
Polls
Surveys
Games (e.g. here)
Give-away Competitions
Fill in the Blanks (e.g. here)
Photo Caption Contest (e.g. here and here)
Hold a Smile Photo contest
Hold a Q&A session
Post a ‘truth or fiction’ Question (e.g. here)
Patient of the Year/Month/Day/Week
Introduce High Profile Patient
Celebrate a Dental Specific Day (e.g. National Toothache Day, National Tooth Fairy Day)

Important Days

Anniversaries
Staff Birthdays
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
Boxing Day
New Years Eve
New Year’s Day
Memorial Day
Luther King Day
Independence Day
Labor Day
Thanksgiving Day
Columbus Day
Veterans Day
St. Patrick’s Day
Super Bowl Sunday
Halloween
Valentine’s Day
Good Friday
Palm Sunday
Easter
International Women’s Day
April Fools’ Day
Earth Day
Children’s Day
May Day
Mother’s Day
Father’s Day
Black Friday
Parent’s Day

Seasons

Summer
Autumn
Winter
Spring

Day of the Week

Weekend
Saturday
Sunday
Monday

Months

January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

Website Architecture: How to Structure Your Dental Website

December 9, 2015 by admin Leave a Comment

Before hiring a website design company, you should develop a sitemap to get an idea of how many pages you need and what purpose each page will serve. This will help streamline the web development process, reduce the number of revisions and ensure a faster launch. In this article, we discuss how to plan your dental website to improve SEO and deliver a positive user experience.

dental website layout — Website Pages Organized into Main Sections & Subsections.

Default pages

These pages should be present on any website and the website would be incomplete without them. This includes About, FAQ, Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. The about page can be further expanded to create an About Us section that covers your dental office in detail. Here is an example of what a typical About Us section may include

About – An overview of the dental office including some history and services offered.

Meet the dentist(s) – An about page for the dentist to discuss their education, experience, achievements etc.
Our Staff – A page introducing your staff to prospective patients
Vision/Mission – A page for your vision/mission statement
Awards/Honors – A page to display the awards, achievements and honors won by your dental office
Media/Press – A page to publish press and media mentions

Treatment Procedures

Take some time to think and list down the services and procedures offered at your dental office. Then group the related procedures together into categories making sure you do not leave anything out. Each category represents a separate section on your website so make sure you assign the most suitable category to each procedure. Here is what your procedure list may look like

Cosmetic/Restorative Dentistry

Porcelain Veneers
Snap on Smile
Teeth Whitening
Clear Braces
White Restorations
Dental Implants
Prepless Veneers
Porcelain Crowns
Six Month Smiles
Cosmetic Recontouring
Cosmetic Bonding
Bridge Restorations
Onlays/Inlays

Endodontics

Root Canal Retreatment
Cracked Tooth
Root Amputation
Apicoectomy

Prosthetics

Snap on Smile
Implant-supported Dentures
Traditional Dentures
Permanant Dentures

Orthodontics

Clear Correct
Six Month Smiles

Dental Fillings

Air Abrasion Fillings
Tooth-Colored Fillings
Silver Filling Removal

Preventative and General Dentistry

Oral Cancer Screenings
Oral DNA Testing
Fluoride Treatments
Cleanings
Digital X-Rays
Scaling and Root Planing
Laser Periodontal Treatments

Sedation Dentistry

Oral Conscious Sedation
IV Sedation
Nitrous Oxide (Laughing Gas)
NuCalm

Sleep Apnea and Snoring

Sleep Apnea Therapy
Snoring Therapy
Home Sleep Testing
Acoustic Airway Testing

TMJ

TMJ Therapy
TENS Unit
Mouthguards

Each category and procedure page can be used to educate visitors about the treatment and encourage them to call or set an appointment to discuss their options with a dentist.

Reviews

Patient reviews improve your credibility and reputation. Therefore, having a separate section for patient reviews is recommended. In this section you can also include video testimonials, before and after photo gallery. Here is how you can organize your patient reviews

Reviews – list patient reviews and references

Video Testimonials
Before and After Gallery

Contact

The purpose of the entire website is to get visitors to contact you and therefore the contract page is very important. However, in a dental website a contact page is more than a form and address. You should include location map, driving directions and operating hours. You must also include new patient forms and payment information. Here is how you can structure your contact us section.

Contact us – contact form, address, phone number, operating hours and map

Payment and Financing – Payment methods, Financing options, Insurance Plans, payment plan
New Patient Forms – Downloadable pdf for new patient forms and office policies

Special Offers

No dental website is completed without a special offers page. This page includes information about the various promotional offers and discounts you have been running to attract new patients. Many websites run special offers in the sidebar. Having a separate page allows you to share the link with prospective patients so they can easily go through all the discount offers.

Home Page

The homepage is the most important page in your dental website since most prospective patients will see this when they find your website. It is important to make a good first impression. Therefore, try to feature the best content and the most important procedures on the homepage.

If you are having trouble brainstorming your website architecture or need help with dental website development, do not hesitate to contact us for a free consultation.

5 Google Adwords Ad Extensions Every Dentist Should Try

December 8, 2015 by admin Leave a Comment

Google Adwords text ads are limited to just 25 characters in the headline and 2 lines of 35 characters for the description. It is impossible for a dental practice to convey all the important information in such a short character limit. This is where ad extensions come in and help extend your ad with more useful information. These ad extensions are absolutely free and help improve your ad’s visibility in search results because an extended ad covers a larger area. Ad extensions can also improve your ad’s CTR, leading to higher quality score, lower cost per click and thus a better ROI on your ppc advertising spend.

Google has introduced many ad extensions to help business enhance their ads with more information. In this post we look at 5 adwords ad extensions that you can use to improve your dental adwords campaign performance.

Location Extension

This extension ads your dental office address below your ad so patients can quickly see where your office is located without having to click your ad to find out. This helps to save you money as only people near your office will click your ad for further information and somebody who is to far away from your office will ignore your ad. You can use this extension by connecting your Google My Business account with your Google Adwords account. Location extensions are very useful and every dentist must take advantage of this feature.

Sitelink Extension

Sitelink extension expand your ad with links to different pages of your website specified by you. These site-links only appear under your ad, if your ad shows above or below the organic listings. Site-links do not show on ads appearing on the side even if you have added them through your account. These extensions have to be manually added as you must specify the links you want to show under your ad and the anchor text for each link. You can also specify 2 description lines of 25 characters each for every sitelink.

Site-links extension helps you direct patients quickly to the most important pages of your website, such as the about page, contact or request appointment page, testimonials page, discount offers page, before and after photos page etc. This allows a person to click on the contact page directly from your ad and request an appointment.

Call Extension

Call extensions extend your ad with a phone number allowing patients to dial your number without clicking your ad if they are on a desktop or clicking the ad to dial your number if they see your ad on a mobile device. In most cases calls are more valuable than clicks and therefore, your dental ppc campaign is incomplete without call extensions. Call extensions will continue to become more important as more and more people use mobile devices and smartphones to look for local dentists. Google also provides free tracking numbers to track the performance of your call extensions.

Callout Extension

Callout extensions help expand your ad with more information about your dental office and treatment procedures. You can use callout extensions to add unique information that distinguishes your dental practice from the competitors in the area. Note that callout extensions only appear if your ad shows above or below the organic listings and do not appear for right side ads.

Structured Snippets

Structured snippets are similar callout extensions except that you can only use structured snippets within a category or header. Google will only show snippets of one category at a time. Again, structured snippets only appear on ads showing above or below organic listings and do not appear on right side ads. Here’s a list of available headers:

Amenities
Brands
Courses
Degree programs
Destinations
Featured hotels
Insurance coverage
Neighborhoods
Service catalog
Shows
Styles
Types

Immediately you can see that amenities and insurance coverage are relevant to any dental adwords campaign.

Now that you know what ad extensions to use, why not try them out on your dental adwords campaigns. You can learn more about all the Google Adwords ad extensions here. If you need any help with Adwords ad extensions or anything to do with PPC advertising, please request a free. consultation.

Owning vs Leasing Your Dental Practice Website

December 6, 2015 by admin Leave a Comment

A modern dental website can cost upwards of $2500. However, while most dental web design companies charge a one time fee, some firms offer websites for a nominal monthly fee. They put you on a 12 months contract that includes the website development, hosting and maintenance fee billed every month. Both these pricing structures have their advantages, but the key difference is control and ownership of the website.

Domain Name Ownership

You should always retain ownership and control of the domain name of your dental practice. Your domain is part of your branding and you have mentioned it in your advertising and marketing campaigns. Losing your domain name would render a lot of your printed marketing materials useless. All SEO work done on your domain will also be lost. If you have emails setup on your domain then you lose them as well if you lose your domain.

Therefore, in order to avoid any problems, you should always register the domain yourself and retain full control of your domain at all times. You never know when your web design firm goes out of business or you have a dispute with them or your contract is over and you want to switch to a new company. By retaining control of your domain you can simply direct it to a new web host and have a new website up and running within hours.

Website Code and Design Ownership

Your website uses some programming code to render the website layout, images and content to users accessing your domain name. You must own the rights to the entire website code so that you can edit the website as needed. This will allow you to edit your website design and code, use the same design for another office location and basically use your website as you wish without needing permission from anyone.

When you lease a website for a monthly fee, you do not have any ownership of the website design and code until you have paid the entire amount of the contract. This can be a problem in certain cases where you want to end the contract with your web design company.

Website Content Copyright Ownership

The content of your website includes all text, images and videos on your website. Make sure that you own the copyright of all your website content so that nobody else can use your office images or your website copy. This will also allow you to edit the content as needed.

In conclusion then, it is always better to get ownership of your dental website even if it requires a substantial upfront cost. You can always hire a company to maintain your website and manage SEO.

101 Awesome Dental Promotional Giveaway Items Under $1.00

December 5, 2015 by admin Leave a Comment

Every dental office needs promotional gifts to distribute to patients and dentists spend thousands to purchase branded giveaway items to promote their dentistry. If you are looking for promotuonal products for your dental office, you have arrived at the right place. While we don’t sell promotional gifts, we have prepared a list of 100+ dental promotional products that cost less than $1.00.