As with many others things… it depends. It depends on the quality of your dental marketing. It depends on the strategy of your dental marketing. It depends on your target market and a multiplicity of other factors. Though we would love to claim that there is one magic marketing silver bullet that works great for everyone, this is just simply not the case usually. Speaking to suburban moms in Anchorage one way may not be the best for young professional men in LA.
So the better answer is that dental marketing CAN work. It will take a little time and a lot of understanding to craft an effective dental marketing plan for your practice. Don’t worry, it can be done. -And it can probably be done for less than you think.
The intention of this post is not to explain all the details and nuances of effective dental marketing, but let’s discuss a few high-level points here.
- You must have a strong presence on the web to drive new patient growth (outside of direct referrals). The stats are becoming more overwhelming everyday. in 2010, 82% of people searched for local businesses online. The Yellow Pages are quickly becoming obsolete. Don’t let your practice go the way of the dodo because you couldn’t pull yourself away from those tired Yellow Pages.
- Having a pretty website isn’t enough. Yes, you need a well put together website to convert those who visit your site to new patients, but you need to get them to your site to see your beautiful dental website in the first place. Invest in SEO. You will not regret it.
- Make it easy for your great patients to refer you to their friends. You have to take great care of your patients first (which you probably do). Once your patients have a great experience, they would be happy to tell their friends about you. The best form of advertising, is always word-of-mouth. Make social media part of your practice’s dental marketing strategy and enable your patients to spread the news about how much they love your practice to all their social media friends.
Summary
Dental Marketing can be effective. Just make sure you take the time and invest enough to give your dental marketing efforts the best chance for success.