How do dental clinics attract new patients?
According to the latest research, it begins with awareness. In order for a patient to know what to search for online, they need to know what options exist around them.
Once they have a sense for the dentists who are in their area, they will narrow down their search using the immediate tools they have available: online reviews, yelp ratings, and social media. By the time they pick up the phone or send an email query about appointments, they have probably already made up their mind where they want to receive care.
This means that clinics need to be proactive about reaching patients where they are — online — if they want to influence a potential patient’s healthcare decisions.
In order to do this effectively, dental clinics need to have a clear plan for how they are going to cut through the digital noise to connect with people who can benefit from their services.
The Challenge of Digital Marketing
In order to understand the unique challenges of digital marketing, clinics need to understand the difference between marketing and advertisement. Advertising is a component of marketing, and in order for an ad campaign to work, it needs to be supported by a range of other marketing tools that can help make the case for your services.
For example, you may build an excellent ad campaign designed to drive more traffic to your website, but if your website is poorly designed, or if you lack the software to analyse web traffic, it is unlikely that your ad campaign will translate into more concrete queries.
Increasingly, digital marketing requires the use of sophisticated tools that can help you understand how patients are interacting with your brand online, and interpret the visitor behaviour in ways that can help you turn queries into regular patients.
Because most dentists are not experts in digital marketing, creating an effective web strategy usually means bringing in outside help.
How Dental Marketing Services Ccan Help
Fortunately, there are plenty of options designed specifically to help clinics come up with a dental practice marketing plan that can increase traffic and drive real-world results.
While the services offered by dental marketing experts may vary depending on which company you hire, most packages will provide you with a full audit of your current website and a number of suggestions regarding how you can employ more effective dental office marketing strategies.
Some companies will even take care of your dental marketing plan for you, giving your clinic an edge over the competition and freeing your own staff up to focus on providing high quality of care for patients (you can stop by Patientnews.com to learn more).
Whether or not you decide to hire experts to help you improve your online rankings and marketing, making sure that your web presence is appealing and easy for potential patients to navigate and interact with is essential.
According to one recent report, 84% of patients said they trust online reviews as much as they trust advice from their friends. Rising to the challenge of the digital marketplace is no longer optional if you want your clinic to survive, but if you take hold of the powerful tools that are available, you can turn your web presence into a patient-attracting machine.
