Blogs

Reputation is an unavoidable aspect of a business, be it a new one or a well-established one. Maintaining a good reputation for your dental practice will go a long way in helping acquire new patients and in improving revenue. Here we will investigate how you can exponentially increase your client base, using proper reputation management.

Reputation Management can be carried out locally, i,e offline, or Online. Offline reputation management is the traditional form of improving your brand value by offering special discounts and offers to the local residents and engaging in community events.

We will be concentrating more on Online reputation management, as it is seen that most practices give the least importance to that.

Online Reputation Management refers to the creation and maintenance of an online presence or profile for your practice. It demands work and won’t yield results unless acted upon proactively. The entirety of the internet is available to broadcast and attract new clients. We will look into a few methods to make the most of the services online.

Cementing an Online Presence

It is essential that your practice has an online presence in all major social media sites like Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Having accounts on these sites will ensure maximum reach and cater to audiences that are confined to some sites.

Search Engine Optimization

Needless to say, you must have a website for your practice as a way of verification and to obtain more information. SEO is a set of techniques used to optimize your website and as a result, end up higher in search results. You could hire an SEO specialist or contact an SEO company to do it for you.

Managing Online Reviews

The best way anyone online will know about you is by reviews on review sites like Yelp and rateMDS. Ensuring that you have good reviews will encourage more patients to choose your dental practice over others. As with anything else, there may be negative reviews, but rather than trying to get those off the site, we suggest responding to them positively and taking them as constructive criticism.

Using Social Media to Understand Patient Requirements

Having a social presence is only the start. Creating and posting relevant materials online regularly facilitates more reach. The reach and acceptance of each post can be monitored using the analytics features available. Maintaining a consistent and pleasant attitude with your audience will boost your ratings.

Having an Active Blog

This may seem odd but having a regularly updated blog goes a long way in improving your presence online. Not only does it show off passion towards the field, willingness to share knowledge and it can also feature practices and services your practice offers. It also invites people to suggest and discuss between themselves the need for proper dental care.

Running Email and Social Campaigns

In order to let your current customers and viable prospects know about the various services you offer, you could use online promotional and email campaigns. All of these can contain reviews and testimonials of satisfied customers from your practice.

Local PR and Partnerships

Reaching out and having tie-ups with community clubs to provide periodic checkups for its members and their families will help spread the news of your practice and help get more clients.

Social Responsibility

Being part of charities and local causes can help your dental practice earn a good reputation and gain value among the residents of the community. It serves the purpose of reputation boosting and the act of giving back to society. Simply put, create a genuine consistent presence that upholds the morals and values of your dental practice. Be it a simple website with a blog and an interactive social media handle, or an elaborate social network with Stay tuned for more!

As the Coronavirus makes its way across the globe, many businesses and dental practices alike have cut expenses starting with the removal of marketing or are contemplating stopping their SEO campaign during COVID-19. Those who have cut marketing from their strategy are now wondering what they can do to stay top of mind for reopening and how they can fast track the generation of revenue loss during the quarantine.

We have some great news if you’re in the boat above!

Digital marketing provides an enormous opportunity for dentists to market their dental practice online to acquire more prospective patients.

The best part of digital marketing... you can control it with minimal to no costs.

Do not rely on old dental marketing methods like yellow pages, newspaper ads, radio ads, or word of mouth.

You can’t control any of those marketing methods.

Today, we will discuss the most effective digital marketing strategy that is Dental Search Engine Optimization to enhance your local presence and build your patient base. SEO is a unique strategy as it aims to increase your dental website and content rankings on Google.

Benefits of SEO (once your website is highly ranked):

• increases ROI
• increases patient acquisition
  • automated patient growth
  • creates consistent led generation
• increases practice exposure
  • creates 24/7 marketing
  • free marketing 365 days/year
• decreases marketing expenses if not removes all
• decreases patient acquisition cost

Most customers use the internet to find answers. SEO-optimized websites rank higher in organic search results. So, you need to optimize your dental website for search engine ranking. How can you control your ranking? You need to do these things for dental SEO: 

• Your website needs value-based and unique content with HD images. These images should be relevant to the visitor's need, for example, informative content, dental blog posts, landing pages with pertinent dental keywords. It is necessary to include answers to popular dental questions, infographics, and press releases to appeal to those visiting your site. Do not write all contents about yourself, concentrate more on how your services benefit your prospective patients. Also, Include an FAQ section and informative videos and testimonials.

• A dental website should not take more than three seconds to load. Also, it should be SSL secure and mobile-friendly.

• The design of your website needs to be modern, clean, and the content should be driven to encourage the visitor to engage with your practice. Successful engagements are direct calls, inquiries for information, or a scheduled appointment.

• It is also vital to get backlinks from other authoritative websites to establish your site’s authority. Join your local chamber of commerce as they usually allow a business website within their business profile page, if you’re a member of the ADA check to see if they allow members to enter their website into the profile page, make sure every one of your social media pages includes your website and do outreach to other dental websites for content creation.

• Blog about the most common questions asked at your dental practice.

• The FAQ section should be concise and direct. FAQ sections can also provide you an opportunity to rank for Google’s featured answer snippet, which appears first in search.

• Also, make sure to provide useful information on different topics such as wellness tips, information on particular dental treatments, and business updates/news.

You can also use several other methods and channels to help with SEO. Various channels allow dentists to connect with potential clients such as through social media, blog sharing sites, and even email marketing. 

I hope this article provided some practical tips for your practice’s SEO during the quarantine as SEO will help your practice be seen by everyone who uses the internet to search for a dentist.

Adam Yang, MBA, is the founder and digital marketing expert of Beyond Marketing Solutions, LLC, a digital marketing agency that specializes in teaching and helping dentists to scale back their marketing budgets while increasing their patient volume and revenue through digital avenues. With his marketing experience in corporate dentistry, private dentistry, and dental laboratories, Yang has taken his passion for both digital and dental marketing to the next level by founding the first-ever e-commerce digital marketing agency to streamline and simplify the marketing and purchasing process for dentists. For more information on this topic and additional resources, email Adam at adam@beyondmarketingsolutionsllc.com.