Should You Market Your Dental Practice Online?
When you are a dentist you get to change people’s lives by changing their smiles! It is such a rewarding career; however, it can also be one of the most difficult to master when not done properly. Fortunately, you have already done the hard part and you are helping people every single day you work!
Even though you are great at what you have been trained to do, there might still be one pain point that eats at you every single day: online dental marketing! Your dental office is a place of medical care, you have that part checked, but it is also a business.
Since your dental school might not have covered how to properly market you own practice online you may feel like a fish out of water trying to run the business side of the practice.
When you first think of marketing your business you may be thinking to put an ad in the local paper, film a short TV advertisement or even do a short radio ad. However, when using these traditional marketing methods, prepare to spend tens of thousands of dollars to get the word out about your dental practice.
This is because when you are running these ads there is no “target audience” and people who may not even be interested at all may be seeing your ad.
On the other hand, if you’re targeting the same number of people but through online marketing methods, the cost would be significantly lower.
To be specific, Pay Per Click (PPC) ads are one of the most effective methods for generating high-quality patient leads through your doors.
PPC ads will put your dental practice in front of potential patients when those individuals search for dentists and dental services in your targeted area. This allows you to define a targeted radius as well as lower your overall advertising costs.
Digital campaigns are more targeted and cost-effective.
In theory, all types of marketing imagine that they are targeting a specific audience, but digital dental marketing offers tools and methods that would help fine-tune your campaign even more.
For example, instead of paying more for traditional marketing to reach everyone within the state or even county, your dental marketing solutions can focus on those who live within a ten-mile radius of your practice. That not only will save you a lot of money, but it will also generate more high-quality patients.
Tracking Results are Much Easier
When running digital marketing ads for your dental practice everything can be monitored with just a click of a button, provided that you have the appropriate tools. Whether you want to know the number of people visiting your website or how they got there in the first place, the online tracking tools available to you can help you monitor and measure any of metric you want, making it easier for you to make decisions relevant to your campaign.
Best tools to Have in Your Digital Marketing Arsenal
Without these tools, dental marketing would be very difficult to fine-tune and really define a strong target audience.
Google Analytics
Google is such an underrated goldmine when it comes to data tracking. Google Analytics tells you which pages get the most visitors, which links get the most clicks, and how your visitors found your pages, among so many other things. The best part about this software is that it is free.
MailChimp
When done properly, email marking can be a very important tool in your marketing arsenal. Not only is email a great way to communicate with your patients, it also allows you to build new referrals for people who did not even know your dental practice existed. On average, there are eight million users on Mailchimp daily, making it the most popular email marketing platform, and it is a must-have when it comes to spreading the word about your dental practice. Mailchimp is very simple to use and it also includes many features that allow users to automate routine tasks, send email blasts, customize signup forms, and even publish your own newsletter for your dental practice.