By Janis Peiser
The best practices to market your dental practice online are the ones that make it easy for patients to find your business and interact with you. They don’t just want to know your location, but also what services you provide, your prices and the satisfaction level of you patients. For all those reasons, the items listed below are important elements of successfully marketing your dental practice online.
Make a Website That’s Easy to Use
In today’s fast paced world where everyone is on the go, your website has to be easy to access from more than just a desktop or laptop computer. It has to work well with mobile devices, too. Make sure your site has a responsive design and is mobile friendly. It would be a shame if potential patients cannot find you online or give up because your site is unmanageable from a mobile device.
Make sure that your website has information about who you are, where you are, what you do, and when you’re open. A “Contact Us” tab is important for people who want to ask a question or schedule an appointment. However, a click-to-call button and an instant message option is even better, especially for those in need of immediate services. Don’t forget to include buttons for your social media accounts so people can connect with you on a more casual basis.
Create a blog to go with your website. This is where you can post articles, encourage people to visit the site, interact with patients and address trends in the field of dentistry. You should also have accounts on Yelp and other review sites where patients can read recommendations and testimonials. Don’t forget to include those reviews on your own site as well, in not only written form but in video, too.
Direct Local Traffic
As a dentist marketing your practice, your main goal is to get more patients. One way to achieve this is by reaching as many local people as possible through your website. That means you need to incorporate local SEO (search engine optimization) on your pages, as well as in your blog. You can use the words “dental” and “dentist” all you like, but so is every other dental practice in town. In order to maximize your visibility, you should use exceptional keywords to help in your rankings and drive local traffic your way. While it is not essential, consider hiring a company to help with your SEO. It may be costly but it will pay off in the long run.
Utilize Social Media Platforms
There are a myriad of social media platforms for you to use to market your practice. Dentists tend to focus on Facebook as their go-to program. Expand your horizons. Use Twitter to post interesting tidbits about dentistry and to push out your blog. Take pictures of your office, your staff, and with permission your patients; you can post the photos to Instagram, or even create video testimonials to upload on YouTube. All of these platforms will give you greater exposure and could lead to new patients.
Connect Accounts to Your Site
Whichever platforms you use, you always want them linked back to your website. That also goes for any content, such as blogs and newsletters, you push out. In social media marketing, you ultimate goal is to get traffic to your site; the more traffic – the higher your ranking, the higher your ranking – the more visitors to your site, the more visitors to your site – the greater chance of converting visitors to patients. It is that simple.
Making an online marketing campaign work for your dental practice takes a lot of time and effort, but it’s worth it if you want to connect with today’s consumers. Phone books are a thing of the past for most customers, so if you want to be found, take the digital route. A great website, multiple social media accounts, local SEO and accounts on review sites can all come together to bring customers to you, even if they never visit your office.
Contact Goldin Peiser & Peiser for additional information on how to improve your practice.
Note: This content is accurate as of the date published above and is subject to change. Please seek professional advice before acting on any matter contained in this article.
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