Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Dental Practice

With the sheer number of dental offices in the United States, dentists compete with their colleagues for patients. As a patient, whether I’m searching for a cosmetic dentist, a pediatric dentist, or some other kind of dental specialist, the more easily found, better-reviewed dentists or practices will be included in my top list. A natural process dental patients use to find their dentist after their insurance covers the procedures is to find someone quickly and of high-quality. In this post, we will review two dental practice marketing strategies your practice can use to find new patients.

Your Website Strategy

Your website is often overlooked when it comes to the overall success of your dental practice. Many dentists think that they can have success on separate platforms without having a great website. The truth is, a website is your dental practice's digital office.

Think back to when you first opened your dental practice. Did you make an investment in the professional equipment, the interior, the waiting room, and the front desk? Yes of course! First impressions make a big difference. Stanford University conducted a study that revealed that 75% of people have judged a company’s credibility based on how their website looks. How does your dental practice's website look compared to the best dental websites in your city?

In addition to your website's aesthetics, there is major strategy involved in building a website. Your website needs to be organized and structured in a way that provides your dental practice with the most success. Here are 6 things you need on your website:

Your Services Have Their Own Page

It is crucial to create individual pages for each of your services. This is setting your medical practice up for success when it comes to Search Engine Optimization and Google Advertising. To rank for these services in Google, it is essential to have your services separated on different pages.

Your Pages Have Call to Action Buttons at the Top and Bottom

A general rule is to include a call to action, or CTA button, at the top and bottom of your pages. This is especially true on your services pages. Your goal is to get your potential client to contact you, so two CTAs are a must.

You Have Schema Markup for Your Name, Address, and Phone Number

Another general pointer is to include your office location in your footer exactly how it is listed on Google My Business. Your name, address, and phone number should be exact. Google has a free tool you can find by typing in "Google Schema Markup" in Google. Be sure to create a schema for your name, address, and phone, which you’ll add to the header or footer of your website.

You're Tracking Analytics

Tracking what your visitors do is very important so that you understand if your efforts are paying off. You can set up Google Analytics "Goals" to put on your "thank you" page after someone fills out your contact form. You can check Google Analytics to see when someone completes this, and then you’ll also be able to see where they came from (ex: Email Campaign).

Your Potential Patients Can Get in Touch With You Easily

A great website provides ways a potential client can reach you easily. You should think about things like a business phone number, contact forms, and even a live chat service.

Your Website Copy is Thorough and Original

The words written on your website need to be original. Google will not rank your site higher if you copied or took words from another website. Also, to show Google that your content is in-depth, you should write at least 500-1000 words on each page about the main topic of the page.

Now that we've covered what needs to be on your website, let's discuss what needs to be included in a SEO strategy:

SEO Strategy (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO is a misunderstood term nowadays. Many marketers throw it around and don't actually create a SEO strategy. In simple terms It means the process of optimizing your website so that it appears in search engines. Let's briefly go over a few to-dos:

There are two main areas to be concerned with in regards to SEO: Search results and map results.

Google Search Results

Google search is the area that you can rank for both locally and non-locally. These are the results typically below map results. To rank for Google Search, it is crucial to have your website structured as we mentioned above.

It is also important to find the key terms that your patients are searching for. If you’re a dentist in Mimami, you’re going to want to try to rank for "dentist + Miami" and other variations of that. Once you find the keywords your patients are searching for each of your services, be sure to include those keywords naturally in the words and titles on the page. Don’t focus 2 pages on the same keyword. For example, don’t write a page about "Miami Dentist" and another page about "Dentist in Miami". This is overkill and Google may penalize you.

Google Map Results

Google Maps is another very important area your medical practice needs to rank on. Similar to Google search, your customers will be finding your competitors listed with star rankings and reviews. It is crucial that you work on getting 5-star reviews, and a lot of them to show that you’re the best choice.

To rank highly on Google Maps, be sure to use schema markup on your website as we discussed earlier. Also, build-out citations. Citations are listings of your business across the web. Yelp is an example of a citation. Be sure to use the EXACT name, phone, and address across all of these sites. If you move your practice, you’ll need to correct all of the websites with your old address and phone.

Finding Your Patients

Finding patients to grow your dental practice is critical to the success of your practice. While SEO takes a lot of time and effort, it is considered a top marketing strategy by many marketing professionals and is an effective way to bring in new patients long-term.

Anthony Bart is the President and Founder of BartX Digital, TherapistX, and TherapyByPro, a mental health professionals directory.