When we work with online advertising strategies for a dental clinic or office, we talk about digital marketing in healthcare for dentists. Unlike traditional marketing, this type of strategy takes advantage of digital tools to ensure greater visibility for your business.
There are numerous advantages to using this form of marketing, as we will explain later. But it is important to start by stressing that there are countless possibilities for digital media. You can work with content in different formats to reach your audience, build authority and make your schedule even more crowded.
Network marketing uses a well-designed strategic plan to gain greater visibility online to achieve its main objective. It is necessary to define communication channels, investments, and the type of content produced.
Still, have questions about how to apply digital marketing to dentists? Then, keep reading to understand everything about the topic.
To read for more information visit https://www.healthcaremarketingagency.net/
Why use digital marketing for dentists?
In summary, we can say that digital marketing for dentists brings:
- More patients for the dentist;
- Greater profitability of the dental clinic;
- More visibility, both in the local and macro markets.
Consider that nowadays, everything starts with an internet search. From everyday shopping to a specialist performing a prosthesis, the patient will check online first before making almost all their decisions.
Therefore, digital presence has already become a prerequisite for success in dentistry. In addition, inbound marketing is more efficient in digital channels than traditional marketing. Through it, you can build a relationship with your contact base. Thus, we get more calls and calls based on trust.
It’s quite different from traditional marketing, where you use a message with maximized reach, like a billboard or flyers, to try to convince the audience to call.
Step by step to apply digital marketing for dentists
Digital marketing in healthcare for dentists ensures cost-effective disclosure for clinics. So how about starting to implement it? Check out a simple step-by-step guide to working with online marketing.
Select the social networks for your clinic
With so many platforms and social networks already active and many more being launched annually, it becomes difficult to decide where to work with your marketing. The tip is: to listen to your audience. For example, the dental specialist needs to be where his patients and potential patients are.
Dental clinics have chosen the most popular networks, such as Facebook and Instagram. However, Tiktok is also gaining ground, especially those catering to a younger and more connected audience.
Some experts who want to reach other professionals in the field or even companies can opt for LinkedIn. Maintaining an active and updated Google My Business is also important to ensure good positioning in local organic searches.
Choose content type in digital marketing for dentists and create a calendar
When starting their digital marketing for dentists, many make the biggest mistake is leaving the “on the day” content to choose from. But unfortunately, leaving the day’s posts for a moment of inspiration will only harm your strategy.
It is common not to have time to dedicate to content creation throughout the day. That’s when the much talked about inspiration appears. But unfortunately, it doesn’t even show up for clinic managers most days. So, in the end, the social networks created are left without posts for long periods.
The ideal is to select the types of content to be posted in the early stages of planning and create a posting calendar, anticipating the next few weeks’ posts. Some of my favorite posts for the dental field are:
- Tips;
- Tutorials;
- Curiosities about pathologies;
- Myths and truths about dental problems.
Create a community with your dental marketing
What would the profiles of clinics and dentists be without their loyal audience? Exactly why it is important to create an active community on the internet to reinforce your dental marketing. Creating or maintaining a community doesn’t mean sitting back and waiting for thousands of people to comment on your post.
Start engaging with content similar to yours. Comment on the profiles of colleagues or even patients, like publications you find in the “explore” tab of Instagram, or join Facebook groups.
Additionally, to attract additional attention to your profile, these attitudes contribute to your posts becoming more relevant to the social media algorithm.
Follow the CFO’s rules for digital marketing for dentists
The Federal Council of Dentistry imposes some restrictions on digital marketing for dentists to keep it focused on user information, not sales. However, ignoring these restrictions can lead to legal problems and even blocked accounts.
It is forbidden, for example, to use sensationalist terms in texts or speeches. So, for example, saying that your clinic is the “best in the area” would violate this rule. The same occurs with sweepstakes, which are vetoed by the body.
Dentists cannot disclose their prices or mention queries with “popular values.”
In 2019, before and after photos in the dental area were released, which are posts with great reach and engagement. For this, it is sufficient to obtain the authorization of the patient or his legal representative.
Define your audience
Each type of dental specialty serves a specific kind of public. Those who work with prostheses, for example, tend to reach a more mature audience, while general practitioners have a broader spectrum of activity.
Therefore, the next step to creating effective content for social networks and websites is to understand your audience. For example, those working in the field for some time can use their patient data to understand who wants to consume their marketing.
Then take that into account whenever you decide to create content.
Facilitate patient contact through digital marketing
Your prospective patient wants to get in touch quickly! In other words, giving only one contact option, such as the clinic’s landline, is a big mistake. Instead, always find ways to facilitate communication between businesses and followers, including a Whatsapp number.
It is worth paying special attention to Instagram direct and Facebook Messenger. Both forms of communication are quite popular in Brazil, but some companies, especially those who have just started digital, forget to see these messages.
Dedicating a little daily attention to answering them can even improve your results with digital marketing for dentists.
Create a paid digital marketing strategy for dentists
Anyone who works with digital marketing for dentists knows that as social networks gain more users and business profiles, algorithms get more sophisticated, and organic reach drops. Anyone who has had profiles for more than five years can confirm: that it’s harder to reach your audience only with posts in feed and stories.
Therefore, companies and those who work with medical office management have adopted paid strategies to reach more people. Healthcare Digital marketing for dental clinics and offices needs ads to attract new patients and maintain the relevance of your content.
Nowadays, there are several types of ads on the networks, including those to improve engagement (stimulating your current base of followers to comment and like your posts more) or bring you news likes. Experiment to find out what your accounts need most right now.
Ask your patients for referrals and online assessments.
Did you know that most of your new patients can drop out when they find out you don’t have online reviews yet? They can be found in specific parts of the Facebook and Google My Business pages and help with conversion.
These days, reviews are social proof, which shows potential new patients that the dentist is competent and trustworthy. So, start including internal campaigns with those you already serve to get them to make this type of comment on your digital channels.
After a service, for example, your attendant can send a message by Whatsapp or by email asking the person to evaluate Google. Even if not everyone responds, two or three new comments will make a difference.
Why have a website in digital marketing for dentists?
We still haven’t talked much about one of the pillars of digital marketing for dentists: the website. It is the one that contains all the information about your clinic and services, and that needs to be always updated. But unfortunately, it is also what many office managers ignore when starting their marketing.
After all, why spend money on a website when you can get started with Facebook and Instagram right away and for free?
The site allows a dental clinic to appear in the organic searches of tools such as Google. It becomes part of the results displayed for the more than 3.5 billion daily searches.
And there’s more: keeping your website up-to-date makes your business gain more trust or, as a professional, gain more authority in your area of expertise. It’s like having a clean, well-painted facade. Your patient sees it as an initial preview of the service they’ll receive once inside the office.
Additionally, the website allows you to provide information about services provided at the clinic that fits into social networks. Posts are short and short-lived by nature, and only a web page can keep the knowledge alive long enough for your customer to know that you provide that service and what it is for.
Tips for a successful website in digital marketing for dentists
Having a website is essential to succeed in digital marketing for dentists and increase your number of patients, but it needs to be done right. Check out the top strategies for this below.
Have a blog beyond social media
Why a blog? People don’t even read these days! Or at least that’s what many think, but the number of searches for health-related topics proves otherwise. Web users want to know more about taking care of themselves, and they spare no effort to do so, even following blogs.
Those who maintain a routine of postings on their blog get some advantages. The first is in constructing an image of authority in the sector, as it shows that the dental specialist is attuned to new developments and is also concerned with passing them on.
The second is the growth in the number of keywords you can use in your medical SEO services (which we’ll explain in the next topic). Again, the more issues there are on the blog, the better!
Invest in SEO optimization
SEO is a set of prerequisites that search engines evaluate web pages and determine their relevance to search results. The better the optimization, the more a page will appear at the top of searches. This is important because most clicks are in the first ten results of the first page.
To accomplish this, you must define the keywords your dental clinic should rank. Choose a mix of local words like “RJ dental office,” broader terms like “dental clinic,” and very specific phrases like “how to avoid toothache.”
Then you still need to include those words on the site pages. They need to be in the text naturally and without excessive repetition. Take the report Please take to highlight them in titles and keep the page in the best possible position. This helps a lot in the work of the blog.
Advertise all your services on the site
Even those who decide to make a leaner site, like one page, cannot save on the amount of information! Include articles about all services and describe everything as didactic as possible. Remember that your potential patient is probably a layman and knows very little about dentistry. He must be certain of his necessities. And how you can solve his problem.
The tip here is to take the opportunity also to explain the differentials of the clinic or office. Show how services and procedures are performed, what type of technology is used, and why you are the best choice.
Create a FAQ page
Patients pepper healthcare professionals with questions whenever they come to the office. But, did you know that they would like to find these answers simply and quickly on your website? So, start listing the most common questions and create a FAQ (frequently asked questions) page to make the user’s life easier. Thus, the possible patient can get his doubts cleared even before arriving at the office.
This is important in digital marketing for dentists because it increases user trust in the dental clinic. The fewer questions a person has, the greater the chances of converting them into patients.
Why does a website complement digital marketing for dentists?
Digital marketing for dentists depends on more than just well-planned social media. Even though they’re great, a lot of the traffic generates leads from the website! This web address helps marketing in dentistry bring more visibility and patients.
Patients Google everything from the clinic’s address to how dental treatments work.
Is there anything better than answering these questions while creating a deeper connection with the prospective patient? This is exactly what the website allows, especially when it receives good SEO (search engine optimization).
This optimization helps the web address appear more often in Google results. Learn more about how it works!
How websites help in marketing strategy
Google displays thousands of results for every search in a few seconds. So how can the user decide which of these sites is interesting? Thanks to the search engine’s algorithms, more than 200 characteristics of the results are organized from the most interesting to the least relevant.
That’s why being on the first page is essential. They also allow you to generate authority and add value to content marketing.
Website is the center of digital marketing for dentists
Currently, digital marketing for dentists uses websites as the center of the strategy. The reasons are quite clear: they allow you to centralize all the most relevant information about a business and still work with quality content.
In addition, the website acts as a sort of 24-hour advertisement for your business. It is always open so that potential patients can ask questions and find contacts and addresses.
Even patients who don’t use social media can find him. The more complete the site is, the better it will be for the dental clinic.
Allows you to disclose all services and procedures
We have a big problem on social media: posts appear on the profile in chronological order, and few people scroll through the feed to see the oldest ones. This means that even if you’ve already talked about a specific procedure or specialty, potential patients won’t know if they started following the profile recently.
Therefore, it is important to direct everyone interested in the clinic to the website. It allows you to detail everything there is to offer in a simple way to find and be accessible to the internet user. Of course, this depends on special care to keep all pages up to date.
A tip: keeping pages and articles for each procedure performed also contributes to SEO. This is one of the most effective ways to appear in their search results.
Facilitates referral by other patients and professionals
The business card was the standard way to get easy referrals from patients and other professionals in the past. Just leave a small amount with each one, and they could distribute it to relatives and friends. Well, the website made it all easy!
And all very cheaply! While business cards and flyers need to be reprinted now and then, the website is always there. It facilitates contact and allows the person who received the referral to explore a little more about their specialties.
Those who wish to add even more value can additionally put reviews from other patients on the home page.
How to use digital marketing for dentists on social media
Some people may be hesitant to add social media to their digital marketing strategy for dentists, especially dentistry. It might seem strange to release dental content where most people are preoccupied with showing photos and videos of their most recent travels, plates of food, or nights out with friends.
But we assure you: it is currently difficult to have complete dental marketing when ignoring these platforms. So we’ve created a practical guide for those who want to start using them and conquer their audience wherever they are.
Common mistakes in digital marketing on social networks
How about starting with some very common mistakes in profiles that are still beginning to publicize their work in your digital marketing work on social media? First, be careful with the number of posts. Many digital gurus will tell you to post as much as possible to make yourself relevant to the algorithm.
The idea is not entirely wrong. If we pay attention, renowned influencers post several times a day. But the mistake is in thinking that only volume makes a difference. The quality and type of content convince the audience to see what you post.
It is usually better to post once a day or even just a few times a week and ensure the quality of the post. The same goes for some popular Instagram tools like filters. Use, but without exaggeration, to keep the profile professional and always give an air of confidence.
How to use hashtags in digital marketing for dentists?
Some time ago, it was common to see posts with ten or more hashtags in digital marketing strategies for dentists, something that the app even took into account. However, the time has come to change this practice. Unfortunately, for the user, who sees your post, this doesn’t make much difference and even generates a negative experience, as it pollutes the limited space of the smartphone’s screen.
For the Instagram algorithm, the abuse in the number of hashtags is now becoming a red alert to decrease the account’s reach. Choose a small but relevant amount for your post and focus on them.
The ideal is to avoid anything very broad and unrelated to healthcare marketing.
Follow hashtags for good dental marketing on Instagram
Did you know that hashtags can be utilized in other ways on Instagram for dental marketing besides including them in your publications?
Start following the most relevant ones to your field, and you will receive daily content from people you don’t yet follow.
It’s important to start interacting with these posts to show the algorithm what you’d like to see more often. Keeping an account that interacts routinely with others is also a great way to get seen more often.
Remember that Instagram, Facebook, and similar platforms are called “social networks.” That is, they were developed to stimulate interaction. Therefore, the more your profile likes and comments, the greater the chances of being found by new followers.
Experiment with digital marketing ads for dentists
Even after all the strategies we mentioned above, your digital marketing for dentists still hasn’t worked, and your networks still haven’t brought in enough new patients? The secret lies in mixing a top-notch unpaid strategy with the use of ads that drive conversion.
The ads include a series of functions that we cannot add to conventional posts, such as buttons for Whatsapp; subscription to a capture list; landing page targeting. It is a way to take advantage of the public who has already engaged with your publications or may be interested in them and take them to an appointment, exam, or procedure appointment. You can also take advantage of them to accelerate the results of your organic strategy, improving the reach of your followers and encouraging interactions with your posts.
Evaluate the best times to post on social media
Check your routine for a moment: are you on social media all the time? We imagine not. Otherwise, you wouldn’t even be able to do your excellent dental work. However, your audience has a similar routine and enters social media at specific times.
After the first few months of posting, Instagram shows the best times to post. After that, they are automatically “chosen” by the platform considering the moment of greatest activity in their posts and when their followers are usually online.
Go to The “Insights” section within the app itself. In addition, find some useful audience data, including locations, age groups, and busiest times and days.
Stay tuned for the latest Instagram tools
Competition isn’t. easy for anyone, not even the world’s most popular set of mobile apps. In the last year, Instagram and Facebook have seen a slight drop in their popularity with the growth of other apps, such as Tiktok and Clubhouse. No wonder the company keeps releasing updates all the time!
And it’s these updates that give your profile the chance to grow organically beyond what you expected. Facebook and Instagram want their users to try out their new tools to get their feedback. Therefore, new stickers, settings, and posts tend to achieve greater organic reach.
In addition, your audience loves a novelty to be able to interact with you. It’s the perfect combination: it helps to please the algorithm, which starts to deliver your posts and stories to more people and, thus, please your fans.
Make publications with other brands and professionals
Collaborative posts are still a novelty that many don’t know how to explore. Is it worth posting and still disclosing someone else? If that question was on your mind until now, the answer is yes! In addition to bringing high organic reach, these posts help you reach an audience restricted to your account: your partner’s followers.
When people who follow the partner start interacting with the post, they will inevitably end up on their profile. But it is important to create very rich and valuable content to ensure that the collaboration was not in vain.
This digital marketing strategy for dentists helps both parties grow their audience, increase engagement and profile reach, and even generate sos.
Tips for having a successful website in digital marketing for dentists
Using a website in digital marketing for dentists, the chances of success grow! But it is still necessary to work with a quality web page capable of attracting and converting new patients. What does that mean? That’s exactly what you should understand below in the essential topics for a good website.
Quality content
Consumers are curious. They will surely arrive at the address full of questions and would love to have them answered through your content. You have numerous opportunities to do so, which is encouraging, including within a blog.
The better the content, the better your positioning within search engines. Creating blog posts helps generate connections with the audience! The dental office is a more reliable source of information, and the quality of the content is practically synonymous with engagement.
Also, keeping rich pages on the site increases the user’s length of time on the page. Imagine a web address that has only basic information. Just write down the phone and close the window. To read an article and understand more about procedures, the user needs to stay there for a few minutes.
Professional design and layout
Users are extremely visual and expect a beautiful and intuitive layout to navigate. Otherwise, they will leave the site quickly or take much longer to find the information they are looking for.
Design is like a storefront. Even if it does not directly influence the product sold inside it, it certainly helps leave a good impression, either positive or negative.
SEO Optimization
A digital marketing agency works with SEO through a series of website optimizations. Among them are:
- Include relevant keywords in titles and subtitles;
- Improve the readability of articles, making them more user-friendly;
- Work with better speed on the site;
- Decrease image file size;
- Include alt tags with keywords relevant to the clinic;
- Others.
As the site becomes more user-friendly, it is better positioned in search engines. The direct result is increased traffic to the address, eventually leading to more appointments for the clinic.
Why does digital marketing for dentists use WordPress sites?
SpecialIsts in digital marketing for dentists use WordPress on most websites created. The content management platform is one of the simplest to operate, even for those who do not understand programming, as it has an intuitive and visual control panel model.
In addition, the platform allows simple SEO optimizations through ready-made plugins applied by thousands of users. Anyone working in content marketing can create articles directly on the platform and take advantage of its auto-save.
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