Let’s say a patient walks in with a taco in his hand. He asks you to take a bite because it ‘literally is the best taco in town.’ You accept the offer and he wasn’t lying, it is super amazing. A week goes by and you still can’t stop thinking about that taco. You start a little hunt about the ‘best taco in my area’ online. In the course of the next half an hour, you learn a little bit about the history of tacos, their construction and reviews of the best places in your area.
You like one specific place; everyone everywhere on the internet seems to be talking about it. They have a kitchen tour video on their website and photos of fresh produce they purchase daily on their Instagram page and you are sold! You decide to treat your entire staff to tacos! You may not have purchased the same tacos as the ones you tried a week ago, but you definitely end up buying the ones with the best digital marketing strategy in your area.
Build Your Tacos Online
Alright that was a long story about tacos, but I hope I made my point. In order to be visible to your prospective patients and let them know that you have something amazing to sell, you need to be available and happening online. Wondering what happening means? It means the same as that kitchen tour, those reviews and the picture of fresh produce for that taco guy.
Just having contact information on a website or some online directory will not make the cut. Digital marketing is as complex as it is simple. You have to continuously revamp your strategies and learn as you go. A marketing strategy that worked for one type of business or even for a dental practice in another part of the country might not be successful in yours. It is best not to DIY your digital marketing practices, at least not in their entirety, because it is an ever evolving platform and requires deep research and consumer behaviour analysis to make it work. So that little post about dental hygiene every fifteen days will not get patients walking in any time soon.
Do a Persona Analysis
Before we even get into how to make digital marketing effective, you need to know who you are actually targeting. You may become the highest ranking site on Google, but if that does not attract the right patients, then what good is that site anyway? Before you can get people through the doors, you need to know who you would like walking in. It is about taking charge and redirecting your business to where you want it to go.
Who is your perfect patient? Say there were a thousand people seeking dental care and you could pick any one of them. Who would it be? What would he do? What would he look like? How would he speak? This persona analysis helps you, and your digital marketing agency, to create targeted content and marketing strategies directed towards those prospective patients.
Get a User-Friendly Website with Stellar Features
Your website is your head office. This is where you want all your traffic to eventually come to. You need an amazing website that not only looks great, but offers the information your prospective patients are seeking. There is no point of having a website that does not turn up on Google search, but even when it does, it does not turn your inquiries into conversions. So the idea is to keep your website updated, user-friendly and targeted. Say someone is looking for teeth polishing services, no reason to direct them to your blog or the amazing history of the building you practice in, rather direct them to a landing page that talks about teeth polishing services and why they need to select you for them.
Also make the call to action clearly visible. Let them know where you want them to go from there rather than making them guess. Say you have a first time discount, don’t just advertise it on your home page, make it pop-up when the visitor comes to the landing page, so that the discount can help them make a decision.
Also, speak to your digital marketer about having an online booking system. Let’s go back to that taco example. Wouldn’t you rather just click a few more times and get the taco delivered rather than reach for your phone, call up the place, explain your order and your address while your dental assistant eagerly listens in to check how many tacos you’re actually ordering? Online booking is simple and extremely effective in turning leads into conversions.
See What Works
The thing about marketing is you never know what will work, so you need to keep on experimenting and trying new things to see what you need to do more of and what you need to ditch. Simple things like where you place your call-to-action button or what time you upload a post on Instagram can make a world of difference in the outcomes. This is where Google analytics and other tracking systems like exit pops, scroll tracks and track exits come in. These simple yet valuable information about visitors’ heat maps enable you to check what your potential patients are looking at, what are they most interested in and what information or strategy generated the most conversions.
It all might sound complex in the beginning. But it is interesting and extremely valuable information about consumer behaviour that can greatly help target your marketing strategies effectively and provide better service and care to your patients.
Email Marketing
Anybody who thinks email marketing died in the last decade is clearly not doing it right. Email marketing is still very much an integral part of digital marketing, when done right of course! Email marketing enables you to directly contact your potential or even existing patient and market to them in a more one-to-one manner. But the trick is to customize those emails by first understanding the receiver and second valuing their time.
Don’t spam their inboxes and neither should you send them information that does not add value to their time. Make the emails short, targeted and infrequent- and you’d probably earn more than respect from the receiver.
Any person running a small or big business needs to invest their time and efforts in digital marketing to remain relevant and in business successfully. This is an interesting world with immense potential to take your business to the heights you want to take it to. But it all starts with awareness; because as long as you don’t know what you want, your marketer would keep guessing and he might not always be interested in guesswork or going that extra mile. So get your basics right, learn more about digital marketing and get a competent professional to help you make the most out of marketing your business online.
P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:
1. Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”
The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here
2. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too
It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here
3. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event
Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here
4. Work with me and my team privately
If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here
