When someone moves to a new town, how does he or she go about locating a good dentist? Those who have friends or family members in town may ask for recommendations, but more often than not, the answer lies with Google. Search engine queries are the foremost way in which consumers seek information about local products, brands, and services—and that includes dental services.
This has big implications for your dental practice. If you want to stand out from the competition, you’ve got to have a positive presence on the Web. You’ve got to position your practice so that it can be easily found by potential patients—and to do that, you’ve got to master the basics of a good dental marketing plan.
We won’t try to get into every minute detail of dental advertising or dental SEO marketing today, but we will try to provide the big picture: The main factors you should consider when thinking about dental marketing, and why you should ultimately ally with a dental marketing company, such as Digital Advertiser.
Paid Marketing
When it comes to dentist marketing, we believe there are three main categories to consider; a good marketing plan will integrate all three of them. The first of these categories is paid marketing—basically, using some of your ad budget to pay for sponsored positions on search engines as well as social media pages.
Paid marketing involves doing keyword research, then bidding on in-demand search terms to ensure that your paid ad spots come up in searches by local consumers. Some examples of paid marketing tools to consider include:
Pay per click, or PPC ads (specifically, Google AdWords)
Facebook ads
In some instances, paid ads on Bing, Yahoo, or even LinkedIn
Organic Marketing
Spending money on paid ad placement does not diminish the importance of organic marketing—that is, reaching consumers by providing them with solid online content that answers their questions and conveys real value.
There are two main benefits of organic marketing. The first is that it establishes your dental practice as credible and trustworthy. The second is that it helps you increase your standing in search engine algorithms.
Organic marketing takes many forms; a few to consider include:
Content marketing
SEO
Local SEO, in particular
Landing Page Optimization
A final consideration: As potential patients see your paid ads and your search engine listings, you’ll want to make sure they click through to pages that are designed to reel them in—to encourage them to pick up the phone and call you for an appointment right then and there. These pages, highly targeted toward getting consumers to take a certain action, are called landing pages, and landing page optimization is a key concern in dental practice marketing.
Dental Marketing Must Be Comprehensive
Ultimately, though, your dental marketing should unite all of these different strands into a seamless, focused, and integrative approach. That’s what Digital Advertiser excels at. We’re highly experienced in delivering comprehensive marketing solutions to dental practices—so if you’re scouting around for dental marketing companies, be sure to give us a call and learn what we can do for you.