Dental Marketing Direct

Digital Marketing for Dental Offices

New Patient Marketing

3 Online Marketing Ideas to Get New Dental Patients Fast!

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Are you in a hurry to increase your patient base? Are you fed up of being lied to about dental marketing? If the answer is yes, then this post is jut for you. Online advertising is one of the fastest ways to get more dental patients. Unlike offline advertising like radio, TV or direct mail, online advertising offers a better ROI in a shorter period of time. Another great thing about advertising on the we is that most ad networks will charge per click and therefore it is often called pay per click or ppc advertising. In this post we describe how you can utilize 3 of the biggest online PPC advertising networks to get new dental patients fast.

get new patients fast

Google Adwords

Google Adword logo

Google is by far the most popular search engine and also has the biggest online advertising platform called Google Adwords. It offers both search and display advertising options. If you want new dental patients quickly, you must try search advertising and ignore display advertising – at least in the beginning. Search advertising is one of the most effective ways of generating dental appointments by showing your ad to local residents searching for dentists on Google.

Using the free Google keyword tool you can quickly check how many people searched for dentists and dental procedures during the past 12 months which will give you an idea if there is enough demand for your dental service in your local area. Try searching for a ‘dentist [insert your city/town name]’ and look at the search results. If you see ads from other dentists then it is a clear indication they are getting dental patients from Google Adwords. Therefore you should also start advertising to get your ad up there to start attracting new dental patients.

Bing Ads

bing ads logo

Similar to Google, Bing has its own advertising platform called Bing Ads. It serves ads on both Bing and Yahoo search results helping Bing Ads reach approximately 1/3 rd of all searchers in USA. While this may not sound like a lot, you can still get enough search volume for your dental services specially if your office is located in a densely populated area. You can easily check the estimated monthly search volume (number of searches made in a give period) for the dental procedures and treatments you offer using the bing ads keyword research tool. If you find there is enough search volume then go ahead and launch a search advertising campaign in Bing Ads to show your ad to prospective dental patients.

Facebook Ads

facebook ads logo

Facebook is one of the most popular websites in the world and over 70% of online adults use facebook. This offers a huge opportunity to get your message across to users who might be interested in dental work. In Facebook ads you do not have keywords to tell you who is looking for dentist but instead you have to use likes, interests and demographic data to target audiences that may be most interested in getting a dental procedure done. In addition you have to create an offer to grab attention of the users and compel them to take action since most users on Facebook are there to have fun and don’t want ads distracting them. For e.g. you could target single moms who have liked the facebook page for Dental Dental (or another insurance your dental office accepts) with an offer of discounted teeth whitening. By testing different offers with different audiences you can quickly find a few winning combinations before scaling them up to generate new patient appointments consistently.

If you are interested online PPC advertising with any or all of the above platforms and need expert advice and assistance, don’t forget to request a free consultation!

Google Adwords Express for Dentists – A Good Idea Gone Bad

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Google Adwords Express is a simplified version of their advertising platform Google Adwords, aimed at local business and service professionals like dentists and orthodontists. The main benefit of Adwords Express for dentists is the automation and simplicity it offers over the default adwords campaigns. You can get started quickly and do not need professional to setup a Google Adwords Express campaign. Once you have specified a budget, bid, business category and created an ad, Google handles the rest. However, as we look a little deeper, we find that by removing the granular control over keywords and bids, Google has taken away the primary factors that make PPC advertising so effective.

Adwords Express for Dentists

If you are just testing the waters with ppc advertising and what to assess its performance quickly, Adwords Express may be right for you. However, if you are serious about PPC advertising and are willing to allocate a substantial amount of your marketing budget towards it then you must use the full Google Adwords account. Perhaps that is what Adwords Express is meant for – a stepping stone to Google’s full-fledged advertising program.

My main gripe is that Adwords Express will not produce the best ROI. Since most dentist who opt for this program do not have a big budget, they need a high ROI to justify increasing their spend. But if they do not hit right numbers, they may in fact be turned off by PPC advertising altogether. Then as a dental marketing company it becomes difficult for us to convince a dentist, who has had a bad experience with Adwords Express, that PPC advertising is worth doing.

The main reason why search advertising is so effective is because you can show your ad to qualified searchers only by bidding on selected keywords and excluding irrelevant searchers with negative keywords. This means at that a lot of wasted spend is saved and the campaign can be optimized over time as you gain a better understanding of your audience and expand your keyword list. However, in Adwords Express, you are at the mercy of Google’s algoritms as they decide which searcher is qualified to see your ad. You can only choose your service category eg. dentist. and then try to differentiate yourself with your ad. This can often result in a lot of wasted spend.

But, the worst part of Adwords Express is that you cannot do anything to optimize the campaign and to stop wasting money on unqualified clicks. This means that you will be continue to waste money on irrelevant clicks for as long as you are advertising as there is no negative keyword feature to stop your ad from appearing on irrelevant searches. This is where you lose the main advantage of PPC advertising and then it becomes a bit hit and miss like all other forms of advertising.

If you are considering Google Adwords Express, by all means do it but don’t be surprised if the results are ordinary. In that case do not blame search advertising because PPC advertising on Adwords Express is like a bird without wings.

13 Discount Offer Ideas to Promote Your Dental Office

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Special offers are a great way of attracting new dental patients. However, in order to stand out from the crowd you must come up with something different from the other dentist specials in your area. In this post we discuss 15 special offers you can use to acquire more dental patients and increase production.

Dental Offer Ideas

Free Consultation

A free case evaluation or consultation is a simple but very effective offer. If you are a start-up dental practice and have more time than money, then start offering free consultations to get more new patients. You can also combine this offer with high value procedures like Invisalign braces.

Free Teeth Whiting

This is the most popular discount offer and virtually every other dentist offers some kind of heavily discounted teeth whitening. Some dentists even offer free whitening for life with high value procedures like dental implants. In fact, this offer is best used as a free add-on.

Discount Dental Exam, Cleaning and X-Ray

This is another overused discount offer that has lost it’s effectiveness simply because every other dentists is offering it. If you are just starting your dental office, you may want to join the crowd but do not expect to get much traction.

Promotional Discount on Specific Procedures

If you want to grow your patient base for a certain type of treatment procedures eg. emergencies, implants, braces, dentures etc. then you can try offering a discount on specific procedure. This will attract patients who have already been diagnosed and recommended a specific procedure and are now comparison shopping for the best price.

Patient Referral Discount

Every dental office should have a patient referral program. In order to get more referrals from your existing patients, you can reward them a nice discount on their next dental appointment.

Group/Family Discount

Similar to patient referrals, you can give discounts to patients that visit your office in a group. That could be a group of college friends or work colleagues. You can also extend this discount offer to attract families with children.

Back To School Discounts

If you run a kids dentistry or accept pediatric cases then January and August present a great opportunity to attract more families kids to your dental practice by offering a back to school offer like free exam and discounted cleaning. This offer will give your office production a nice boost at least twice a year.

Student Discount

Is your dental office located near a school, college or university? If the answer is yes then you must test some student discount offers. These offers can be done in collaboration with the school/college or you could create a group discount for students.

Senior Discount

If your office is located in a retirement destination or a neighborhood dominated by seniors, you can introduce a senior discount aimed at attracting older patients.

Veterans Discount

Is your dental office located near a military base or a neighborhood dominated by retired veterans? You can take advantage of this situation by offering discounts to military vets.

Advance Payment Discount

Cash flow can be difficult to manage sometimes so what better then encouraging your patients to pay upfront. You can do exactly that by offering a discount on upfront payments. While this may not bring many new patients, it will help improve your cash-flow.

Loyalty Discount offers

Good dental practice management demands that you reward existing patients regularly to improve patient retention. A loyalty discount offer or card is a great way to improve patient retention and encourage repeat visits from long time patients.

Dental Plan Discounts

Another way to improve cash-flow of your dental practice is to introduce an in-house dental plan. In order to encourage more patients to buy your annual dental plan, you can offer large discounts on expensive dental treatments to make them more affordable for your dental plan members.

As you can see from the list above, creating special offers is not rocket science. Just a little bit of creativity goes a long way in making your discount offer stand out from the crowd and grab the attention of prospective dental patients. I hope this list will help your imagination going and so you can come up with a great offer to attract more patients to your dental practice.

Dental Practice Marketing: DIY vs Professional Help

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As a dentist you need new patients to grow your practice and to get new patients you have to promote your dental services to the local residents. You can manage your marketing campaigns in-house or hire a dental marketing company. You can also manage only some aspects of the campaign yourself and outsource other aspects to freelance designers and marketing consultants. All 3 approaches have their benefits and drawbacks so lets discuss each of the 3 in detail.

DIY dental marketing

Do-It-Yourself

This is the most straight forward method and also the cheapest if you know what you are doing. Most dentists do not have any formal marketing education so there is an issue of lack of expertise as well. If you want to market your dental office yourself, the first thing you should do is take some courses on dental marketing and practice management. This will help you avoid rookie advertising and sales mistakes and so you can make better use of your marketing budget to grow your dental practice.

The main advantage of doing your own marketing is that you are in control of all aspects of your campaign. Nobody knows your patients and treatment procedures better than yourself and therefore you have a distinct advantage over marketing companies and consultants. However, most DIY marketing are still not very successful because dentists are too busy with their patients to give due time and attention to their marketing campaigns. Another major reason for failure is the lack of marketing education and expertise among dentists. Consequently they fail to track, analyze and optimize the ROI of their advertising and promotional campaigns like a professional agency would.

Hiring a Dental Marketing Company

Since most dentists do not have the time or expertise to handle their own marketing, they usually turn to dental marketing firms for help. There many dental marketing companies out there offering a range of different service including, online, SEO, direct mail, billboard and full service marketing. It is better to hire a marketing company that specializes in a particular type of marketing like dental SEO or dental post card as they will be able to offer better rates and usually a better marketing ROI than a do-it-all agency.

The benefit of having a marketing company promote your dental office, is that you save time and have experts handling your marketing. You just have to monitor their ROI, and if the company doesn’t provide satisfactory ROI you just fire them and find a better one. Make sure you do not sign a long term contract with any agency until they have proven mettle by providing consistently good results over several months.

Using Freelance Consultants

You can look at this option as a combination of the 2 options above. As a dentist running your own practice you meet and talk to patients every day. You know their issues, fears and desires better than any marketing person. Therefore, you are in the best position to create and manage an effective marketing campaign. However, you don’t have the time nor the technical expertise to execute your marketing strategy. This is where freelance designers, developers, copywriters, videographers and SEOs come in. Let’s say you have researched and shortlisted 10 keywords you want to rank for. You find an SEO to do it for you and monitor their progress. Or you have surveyed your patients and come up with a special discount on dental implants. You hire a freelance designer and copywriter to design a postcard for this offer. Then you simple get them printed in the required quantity and use Fedex to deliver these postcards in your target zip codes.

In short, you create your in-house marketing department comprised of contract based workers who provide on demand services if and when you need them. You can even hire a marketing consultant to discuss various marketing strategies and create a marketing plan for you dental office. You can then review it every few months to make sure you are executing the plan correctly and improve it if necessary.

Depending on your budget, marketing expertise and time availability, you can select one of the above approaches to promote your dental office. In case you decide to hire a dental marketing company, please do not hesitate to contact us for a free, no-obligation consultation.

5 Proven Ways to Improve Dental PPC Campaign ROI

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PPC advertising is a great way to generate new dental patients online. However, if done wrong, your ppc campaign can become a nightmare and burn through your marketing budget quickly. Therefore, it is important to achieve a good ROI for your PPC campaign before scaling it further. In this post we have identified 5 proven tactics to improve the ROI of your PPC advertising campaigns.

Dental PPC ROI

Add Negative Keywords

Negative keywords help prevent clicks from irrelevant and low quality searches. If your dental office is open from Monday – Friday, you don’t want your ad to appear for searches like “dentists open on Saturday” or “dentists open on Sunday”. In this case adding negative keywords like saturday, sunday and weekend will prevent your ad from showing up on such irrelevant searches.

A/B Split Test Ads to Improve CTR

CTR (click-through rate) is the most important component of quality score. A higher CTR means a higher quality score. Ads with a high quality score will have a lower cost per click and a better ad position than other ads bidding on the same keywords. Therefore, improving CTR will directly reduce the cost of your PPC campaign and thus improve its ROI. The easiest way to improve CTR is to create multiple (2 to 4) ads in the same adgroup and rotate them evenly. Then every week revise ads with the lowest CTR with new verbiage and offers until you can beat the highest CTR ad (called the control).  When that happens, you revise the previous comtrol until you can beat the new control. This procedure of testing one ad against the other is called split-testing. Using split tests, you can  improve the average CTR of your campaign over time.

Use conversion optimizer or CPA bidding

In adwords, if you get more than 15 conversions in past 30 days, you can enable conversion optimizer. Doing so will help you optimize the campaign for a target or max CPA (cost per acquisition of a new patient lead). For e.g. if you need 50 leads at $70 each to meet your ROI target and your campaign has an average CPA of $80 with more than 15 conversions in past 30 days, you can enable conversion optimizer with a target CPA of $70. Google Adwords will then automatically adjust your CPC bids on each keyword taking into account the expected conversion rate for a click from each keyword. Thus achieving a maximum number of conversions at your target CPA of $70.

A/B Split Test Landing Pages to Improve Conversion Rate

Landing pages are a vital component of any successful PPC campaign. Once a searcher clicks your ad, all the work you did in optimizing the campaign is over and the conversion now depends on your landing page. A lot of dentists do not use dedicated landing pages for PPC advertising which can kill their campaign ROI and they end up shutting down the campaign. One of the quickest ways to improve the ROI of your PPC campaign is to improve your landing page conversion rate. This can be done through A/B testing of landing pages similar to ad split tests described above. However, with landing page split tests our goal is to improve conversion rate of clicks into leads (form submissions or calls).

Improve Call Handling Performance

The purpose of any PPC campaign is to generate leads in the form of calls and appointment request form submissions. However, you need to convert these leads into confirmed appointments and office visits to earn a profit from the PPC campaign. This is where call handling skills of your front desk come in. Often ignored by most dentists your staff’s call handling performance can make or break your PPC campaign ROI. Therefore you need to ensure that your receptionist is giving due attention each inquiry generated by the PPC campaign. The more leads they can close, the higher will be the ROI of your PPC campaigns.

In order to improve call answering performance, you need to record all inbound and outbound calls so that you or a sales expert can listen to these recordings and identify any shortcomings. These issues can then be addressed with some training sessions so that the a better closing rate can be achieved in the future.

As you can see from the discussion above, you must optimize a PPC marketing campaign through all stages of dental patient sales cycle – from the ad impressions to clicks, from clicks to leads (calls or form submission) and from leads to confirmed appointments. This will give you a high ROI after which you can increase your PPC campaign budget to generate even more dental patients for your dental office.

The Truth About Social Media Marketing for Dentists

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Dental Patients from Social NetworksSocial media marketing is a the most challenging way to get dental patients online. Many dentists who jump on the social media bandwagon, trying to find new patients learn this fact the hard way. They invest in a great page/profile, post a few updates, run some ads and then wonder why nobody is listening to what they have to sell. Well let me break it down for you –  nobody logs on to twitter, facebook, youtube or any other social network site to buy stuff. Social media is like this big party where everybody is invited to have fun, gossip around, stalk others and maybe relax after a busy workday. I mean you could setup shop on a table in the corner of the ballroom but dont be surprised if everybody ignores you. Social media marketing is all about joining in the fun, making new friends, sharing stories, discussing problems and then maybe giving out a business card to people who need help. However, before you get the opportunity to give away your business card to interested individuals, you need to start a conversation. 

There are many ways of getting people talking to you but some are more effective than others. You just have to ensure that you offer something of value that will distract people enough to take you seriously. Below I discuss 5 ways how your dental office can draw people’s attention on the various social media networks.

Social Proof

Facebook Marketing for DentistsWhether it’s facebook, twitter or youtube, the first thing people notice when visiting any page or profile is the number of likes, followers, subscribers  and comments activity you have. This is second nature to all social media users because we quickly want to assess the social value of the page or profile. You need to get a high number of likes, followers, subscribers and comment activity to grab people’s attention. The greater the followers count and activity level of your page, the easier it will be to attract more patients.
This is why it can be incredibly difficult to get a new page or profile going. Why would anyone like a page that nobody has liked before or commented on? Therefore, you should invite all your friends, family, relatives and patients to like or follow your dental office page when it is first launched. You can even offer a small discount or free whitening in return. You can also advertise your page to generate likes. But the point is that you need social proof to get new dental patients from social media.

Create Useful Engaging Content

Now that you have a decent number of likes and followers, you need to leverage that following to promote your dental office in their friends and social network. This is where you need to produce content that will grab the attention of your fans and followers and compel them to engage with your page and profile. Let’s be honest, nobody on social media will participate in anything that is boring so you have to make extra effort to make your content fun, original and interesting specially since dentistry is such a dry subject. But you can still post some jokes, memes, quizzes, surveys, studies, animations, videos, success stories and social experiments about dental related topics.

When your fans and followers like the content you produce, they will share it with their friends and social circle and thus take your office name further. The content will want people to visit your page and for more cool stuff you have to share.

Discount Offers

Discount offers specially limited lime offers work very well in a social media setting. The main reason for it is limited time – people believe they stand to lose something if they don’t act and this leads then to claim the offer. For e.g. If somebody who has not visited the dentist for over 6 months, sees an offer for a $49 exam + xray, they would be happy to give it a shot.

However, you do not want to overdo this stuff because then people will be turned off by the number of offers you are sending out every month. Your promotions to content ratio should be very low around 1 promotional post for every 20 educational/informational/fun posts.

Reviews and Testimonials

This is again connected to social proof because most people do not want to risk going to a new dental office. Reviews and testimonials help people convince people that your dental office is the real deal and that you have several satisfied patients who recommend your services. This conviction then helps patients make the decision to contact you for professional help or claim one of your discount offers. Without some positive reviews you will have a hard time convincing people on social media to visit your dental office.

Before and After Photos

These photos act as proof that your services work and are powerful in grabbing attention of prospective patients. They help prospective patients see the transformation in black and white. Social media loves these kind of photos since a many the users suffer from the same or similar dental problems. and these before and after photos offer people something they can relate to. Seeing someone else overcome the same dental problem that you are suffering from is a very effective in attracting new patients.