Startup Marketing

Top 7 SEO Scams Every Dentist Should Avoid

December 20, 2015 by admin Leave a Comment

With the growing use of search engines to research local businesses, search engine optimization (SEO) has become necessary for any modern dental practice. Unlike dentistry, marketing and specifically SEO doesn’t require a license or even a degree to prove your qualification. This distinction coupled with the rising demand for SEO has resulted many self-titled ‘SEO Experts’ popping up. Dentists are usually their first target and dental practices across the country receive at least a dozen or so emails, cold calls and direct mail pieces selling SEO. In this post we cover some of the most bizarre claims made by SEOs looking to make quick buck.

Guaranteed Ranking

This is one of the most common SEO scams and one which Google has specifically warned about in their webmaster guidelines. No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google and anyone claiming to do so is obviously lying. Do you really want to do business with liars?

Free SEO Trial

This is one of the more bizarre SEO scams that reeks of desperation. SEO involves a lot of custom work performed separately for each client. Make no mistake SEO is hard work and hard work costs money. It is not a software or asset that you can free access so clients can try it out. No legitimate SEO company would give free trials of their SEO service. However, you can expect to get a free SEO audit or a free consultation.

Secret SEO Strategies

Obviously every SEO company has their own processes and methods which they would not reveal. However, any legitimate SEO firm should be able to outline the work they will perform including activities like keyword research, website changes and link building. If an SEO claims to have some magic trick or secret method that they cannot share, they are most likely using black hat SEO (SEO methods that are against Google Webmaster Guidelines) and can get your website penalized.

Submit Your Website to Thousands of Search Engines

Ok let’s cut the crap here because this claim is the definition of the word scam. If you are dentist in USA, only 3 search engines matter: Google, Yahoo and Bing – so you can ignore the rest. In fact for all practical purposes you can ignore everyone except Google since it is the by far the most popular search engine used by almost 70% of online users in the USA. In short, get your website to rank well in Google and you are good.

1st Page of Google in 48 Hours!

The only way to get your website on first page of Google within hours is using Google Adwords i.e. Google’s PPC advertising program. The funny thing is that anybody can do that by signing up to Google Adwords and following the on screen instructions. This scam works by charging a monthly fee per keyword (usually obscure low quality keywords) and then running PPC ads for those keywords. Some dentists who do not know the difference between Google organic results and ads fall for this fraud.

We know the Google Algorithm

While an understanding of Google’s algorithm is necessary for any SEO consultant, nobody knows the Google Algorithm. It is Google’s business secret and one they will protect from the public at all costs. However, through years of experience and testing one can determine some important factors that affect a website’s ranking in a positive/negative manner. This is what SEO education is entails so while this claim is not entirely a scam it is highly misleading.

Now that you know how to avoid SEO scams, how about talking to a legitimate dental SEO company?

How to Create a Great Slogan for Your Dental Practice

December 17, 2015 by admin Leave a Comment

With a plethora of dentists competing for a patients attention through various forms of dental marketing (TV, radio, websites, social media, magazines, coupons, workplace referrals and more), you must up your game to become successful. Most patients think that all dentists are the same since only a few dental practices are able to establish their brand and make themselves stand out. Having a catchy, memorable slogan will help your dental office distinguish itself from others to dominate your local market. But how do you create a great tagline? This is exactly what we attempt to answer in this post.

Keep it Short

Keep your dental office slogan under 10 words. Anything too long will make it impossible to use anywhere with your logo. While you must keep your tagline short, you must also ensure that it is complete and anyone reading it should be able to tell that you provide dentistry service without any additional information.

Brand Consistency is Key

If you have a paediatric dentistry then your slogan must be related to kids and speak to their parents. If you want to attract high end clients, then your tagline should speak to the wealthy. The point being that brand consistency should be maintained when creating a slogan to attract the right patients. For example, Invisalign’s tagline positions it as a transparent alternative to metallic braces.

Focus on Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

At the end of the day, a tag-line is simply another opportunity to tell people what makes your dental practice different from the rest. For example, Crossoak Family Dentistry uses the slogan “We cater to cowards” with a big chicken on its website. Try to incorporate your primary unique selling point in your slogan.

Get Input from Patients

Short-list 5-6 slogan ideas and create a poll on your Facebook page to see what your fans think. Ask for some suggestions from your patients and announce a prize for the one who comes up with the best tag-line for your dental office. You could also personally approach a few loyal patients for their suggestions. Those are some ways to get feedback and advice from the target audience itself i.e. dental patients.

Say It Out Loud

Once you have a few ideas, say them out loud to hear how they sound. Try putting emphasis on different words and inserting punctuation to see how it changes the sound and meaning of your slogan.

Before finalizing a tagline, you will need to see if another business is already using it. If you’re in the U.S., you can run a trademark check through the USPTO. If you’re located in another country, check for availability with your government.

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.

13 Discount Offer Ideas to Promote Your Dental Office

December 3, 2015 by admin 1 Comment

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.

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.

11 Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Dental Office Name

December 1, 2015 by admin Leave a Comment

One of the first challenges any dentist faces when starting their own private dental practice is finding a suitable name. While using your surname to brand your dental office may be a good idea for some, most dentists would be better off choosing a unique name for their dental office. In this post we go over some important points you should consider when choosing a name for your dental practice.

Is it too long?

The first thing you need to be wary of is the length of your dental office name. Ideally you should keep the name up to 3 words long and anything above 5 words is far too long. In case you have to use 5 or more words, then you can develop an acronym for your practice name and use that as your logo mark. Think KFC for Kentucky Fried Chicken and IBM for International Business Machines.

Is it meaningful?

Another important aspect of a good dental office name is that it must immediately convey what you offer i.e. dentistry services. Avoid using ambiguous words that may be used to refer to something else or whose meaning is not immediately apparent. Your practice name must also distinguish your dental office from other dental related businesses like dental insurance companies and dental labs.

What does it look like?

Write the name down on a piece of paper in lower case and upper case and see if it looks okay and reads well. Show it to a few others as well and make sure you are not setting yourself up for an embarrassment like these guys.

Is it easy to spell?

Another point to consider is the spelling of your office name. When you are on the phone and tell a patient or anyone your office name, they should be able to write it down without much trouble. Stick to commonly used words and avoid fancy words unless you want to spell your practice name out to everyone for the next 10 years.

What does it sound like?

In addition an easy spelling your practice name should also be easy to pronounce. Ask a few people with different accents to ready your practice name aloud. Carefully listen to how the name sounds. Can you make out each word? How fast can people say it? Are there too many syllables?

Does it reflect your positioning?

Another important consideration when naming your dental practice is your positioning in the market. Are you alone or a group of associates? Are you a cosmetic, orthodontic, periodontics, pediatric specialist or a general dental office? Are you affordable of expensive? Your name should be able to convey exactly where you stand.

Is a tagline needed?

If you can’t find a name to fully convey your positioning then try using a tagline. The tagline will support your office name with more information to distinguish your dental practice from the rest. Ideally, however taglines should be avoided because they have become redundant over the years.

Can the City or Location Name be Added?

Since most dentists will only be operating a single city, it makes sense to add the city/town/metro name. This will provide your office a local feel which is important to many patients who wish to support local businesses over national franchises. It will also benefit you with SEO.

Is it unique and memorable?

Another important aspect of a good dental office name is its uniqueness. You want your dental practice name to be different from everyone else in the city so people do not confuse your office with another dentistry. It should also be something memorable to develop better brand recall. This will help you get a better advertising performance.

Is the name still available?

Off course the last step before finalizing an office name is to check it is available. As soon as you have a short list of names, you must check which ones are available for registration with your state and federal authorities.

Is the .com domain name available?

Now that you have finalized a name, you should confirm that it’s domain name is available and register the .com immediately. Do not register any office name where at least the .com domain name not available.

If you have answered all the above questions, then congratulate yourself because you have landed a great name for your dental office. If your shortlisted names are already taken or you are having trouble coming up with dental practice name ideas try our dental office name generator tool.

Dental Practice Marketing: DIY vs Professional Help

November 28, 2015 by admin Leave a Comment

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.

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.