As 2012 draws to a close and 2013 is waiting on the wings, it’s time for dentists to evaluate their online marketing campaign and look at the trends which are projected to dominate this entire year:

Mobile Web

According to the latest statistics, around 75 percent of the entire global population now have access to smart phones and other mobile devices. It’s not just through personal computers that prospects and existing patients can access your dental website. So if making your dental site website friendly was not a priority in the past, then you should make this task first on your list for this year.

The lure of using mobile web is the fact that people can access the Internet even when they are on the go. And with such a hectic lifestyle most of us lead, the convenience of being able to schedule an appointment with your dentist while having lunch is something which most patients and prospects would really appreciate.

“Gamified” Services

The past year has seen the rise in creating game-designs to non-game applications. There is just something very engaging and fun about being able to play an application which wasn’t meant to be a game in the first place. If you’re thinking about making website visitors explore your dental site for a longer period of time, then it’s time to “gamify” the entire experience.

In-bound Marketing

If you’ve been extremely reliant on paid links in order to get traffic to your website, then it’s time for you to scratch that plan and start going for in-bound marketing. What in-bound marketing does is that it utilizes conversations, resources and all sorts of content in order to draw in prospects to your dental website without the need of paid marketing. Instead of purchasing links, it’s time for you to invest your money on great content and catchy website designs.

Local Marketing

If in the past, small business owners had to market to the entire world via traditional SEO, the entire thrust is local marketing. Local marketing involves improving your local search results with the help of Google Places, engaging with prospects and clients in a direct manner and then tracking this success. There are a number of websites which dentists as well as other small business owners can turn to in order for them to easily track the success of their local marketing campaign, including such websites as GetListed.

The recent economic downturn has massively curtailed the ability of any average, reasonable individual to spend. This decrease in the spending power of consumers has made it nearly impossible for them to purchase goods and services which are not deemed as essential.

Some of these inessential services include elective dental procedure like cosmetic dental procedures. And while the American Dental Association has stressed time and time again that patients should see their dentist once every six months for routine cleaning, the majority of individuals are still bypassing these regular visits unless something has started to really hurt or if some sort of bleeding has begun.

All of these reasons, no matter how practical and seemingly sound they may be for prospects, are hurting the dental industry as a whole. So how can dentists work around these conditions and still keep their business afloat? 

 These tricks of the trade just might work.

Discounts?

The majority of dentists go for the most obvious solution to their sluggish productivity problems – reducing rates of services in the form of discounts. But while this definitely makes sense in that people want to get services for the lowest price, marketing experts also have a couple of problems with this tactic. For one, discounts are inorganic methods of getting more consumers and the problem with these artificial solutions is that the increase in productivity stops once you pull the plug on this gimmick. And for how long can you continue to give discounts without being in the red?

Value Added Services

Another problem with discounts is that they seemingly cheapen the service which you are peddling. The reason for why cosmetic and oral surgery procedures are normally priced higher is because patients might get the impression that they are going to an unsafe and inferior procedure. In order to escape that sort of impression yet still lure patients in, dentists go for the concept of value added services. Basically, dentists charge their patients the same rate but they get to avail of another service on top of the one that they are paying for, free of charge.

Offer Financing Options

Sometimes, a patient can afford a certain procedure, but that patient just cannot pay for everything at one go. How many patients do you know have enough cash to pay for orthodontic braces right on the spot? Not a whole lot, I bet. So instead of turning away patients, try offering  financing options or offer treatments in phases to make your services more affordable to interested prospects.

If you think that the pinnacle of your online success is getting your dental website to the very top of the search engine results pages, then think again. Your entire goal of being online is so that you can get prospects online and then convert them into paying patients with the help of your dental website.

What is conversion?

The entire process of conversion begins the moment that someone visits your dental website up to a point when he or she calls your dental office, inquires about your services, schedules an appointment and finally drops in for the first meeting.

If you want to make actual money from your online marketing campaign, you need to be able to pass through that seemingly high barrier and get a visitor to come into your brick-and-mortal dental clinic as a paying patient. But how do you start converting visitors?

The window period.

If you want to convert visitors, then you have to make your move from the very moment that someone lands into your website and make sure that before they click the “home” button, you have already convinced them or at least made them interested in calling you and asking about your services. And sometimes, that entire plan is easier said than done. Here are some of the bumps that you can have along the way:

High bounce rates. When your dental website has high bounce rates, this means that visitors are leaving your website as fast as they get to it. Even though your dental website may rank higher in the search engine results pages, if it also has a high bounce rate, all of your search engine optimization efforts are in vain.

Some of the factors for why you may have high bounce rates include not having compelling enough content, having an amateurish looking website or maybe your website is just downright misleading. You need to address all these factors if you want visitors to stay long enough on your website for you to convince them on calling your office up.

If your dental website does not offer enough information about your services or the whereabouts of your clinic, then visitors may want to look for a different dental website which can deliver on those counts. At the same time, if your site looks like it was built by a third grader and not commissioned by a reputable and competent dentist, then that could be another turn off.

You’ve heard that blogging is a great way to get your marketing message across. Moreover, blogging will help your dental website shoot up in the search engine results pages. But who has the time to blog? If you’re an average dentist who has to work 8-to-5 shits all the time, then I’m sure you’re racking your brains thinking how you can squeeze in the time to write blog posts.

Most dentists who employ the “I don’t have time” argument against blogging are the ones who haven’t realized the extent that blogging can elevate their practice. Before you whine again about how you have so much to do than blog, here are some of the things that blogging can do for your business:

1. Blogs allow you to update your various social media accounts.

Whenever you update your dental blog, it’s possible for your social networking website accounts to be automatically updated as well. For instance, if you publish an advice post on your blog, then a snippet of that article could pop up on your practice’s Facebook page. At the same time, portions of the same post can also be automatically tweeted on your Twitter page alerting your subscribers that you have published new content on your dental blog.

2. Blogs drastically improve your dental website’s visibility.

The ease of which your prospects can find your dental website online is something which you have to look into in order for you to leverage the maximum power of the internet. To begin with, if your dental website is so difficult for your prospects to locate, then why even bother having a website to begin with? Google and various other search engines love blogs in that they make it easier for blogs to rank high in online searches. What you can do to funnel traffic from your blogs to your dental websites, where you can convert prospects, is by creating links to your dental site on your blog. These links will serve as online referrals to your dental website which will elevate its standing in the online searches.

3. Blogs make it easier for you to interact with prospects.

The comment box at the bottom of blog posts actually help in stirring conversation not just among your prospects but also you with them. End your blogs with a question in order to initiate responses and you can get your prospects to engage with you a nice and healthy online conversation. 

The buzz surrounding blogging has died down a bit with so many other social media platforms emerging. You have Facebook and then the microblogging website, Twitter. And then other websites such as Pinterest and Tumblr are also earning massive viewership. But while various marketing experts have harped about the benefits of using  social media as an advertising and marketing tool, only one platform could really give your business a huge lift and that would be blogs.

The SEO Aspect of Blogs

The primary reason for why blogs are immensely helpful in online marketing has to do with the fact that Google and other search engines seem to take very well to blogs. In fact, blog posts are seen as news by the search engine giant making it easier for these posts to rank in search engine results pages. If you develop a blog with wide readership and recognized online authority with the help of Google, then you can easily create links from that dental blog to your dental website. These links will serve as online referrals that can lead Google into thinking that your dental website is a good site with the help of the high quality links that it has garnered from your blog,

The Interactive Side of Blogs

Aside from the fact that you could publish lengthy content in a very convenient manner through blogs, you can actually initiate interesting conversation among your readers with the help of the comment box at the bottom of the posts. This allows you to market not just vertically by engaging with your prospects directly but also promote horizontal marketing because your prospects are free to talk with each other on your site. And especially in this digital world where referrals and reviews of services are done through websites and blogs, a satisfied patient could sing your online praises to prospects who are still deciding whether to call you for an appointment or not.

The Informative Angle of Blogs

Prospects who are searching for dental websites are more likely to contact a practice whose dental site looks “alive” and up-to-date. An easy way to give your dental website a “lived in” look is by maintaining a dental blog that’s linked to your main site. This way, your prospects can easily browse through your blog and find out that it’s still active and so is your dental website. This will save your prospects a lot of time thinking whether or not your practice still exists. 

In this economy, loyalty is something which is extremely invaluable Marketing your practice. to new prospects can cost you thousands of dollars and you’re not even very sure about the payoff with the lowered consumer spending. You may be able to gather a lot of people who are interested in your services but they may not have enough resources to schedule an appointment. In this case, all of the money which you’ve funneled into your advertising campaign will be all for naught. For this reason, it is wiser to rely on repeat patients. Here are some ways to continue to capture the hearts of your patients:

A smile brightens everything.

People keep going back to businesses which treat them nicely. Naturally, your patients will not be very forthcoming to your front office worker who always sounds cranky on the phone and seems very intimidating in person. On the other hand, if your staff is very accommodating, helpful and warm, this will do a lot in keeping your existing patients.

Goody bags for adults.

You certainly do not have to purchase a very expensive gift in order to appease your patients. A simple loot bag containing a toothbrush and dental floss will go a long way in putting a smile on your patients’ faces. It’s above and beyond the items they receive. Cliché as it may seem, it’s the thought that actually counts.

Set a friendly atmosphere for your patients when they’re in the chair.

Your patients aren’t actually feeling so comfortable when they are in the chair and they have to open their mouths while you stick sharp, metal objects in your mouth. If the thought of pain is not enough to make them feel uneasy, hygienists talking about their boss rudely behind his or her back or dentists complaining about their work load won’t make things any easier.

Be more intuitive.

In an effort to make your patients more comfortable, it helps to take note of their physical cues. When you’re doing a routine dental procedure to something more complicated like oral surgery, your patients won’t be able to signal that easily that they need to gargle or drink water. And if you aren’t attentive enough, a simple procedure could become excruciating for a patient. For this reason, it pays to be intuitive and take note of your patients’ gestures especially when they are in a compromised position to ensure your patient’s convenience.

You know that your  dental website is an excellent tool for marketing your practice. But do you know exactly how it does that? The problem with most dentists is that they join the entire dental website bandwagon solely because they know a friend who swears that having internet visibility turned his business upside down.

 Searching Locally

According to a recent study, the majority of internet users makes use of the World Wide Web in order to scour the cyberspace for businesses which are found within their community. This is a trend is very unlikely to die especially with search engine giants like Google giving a lot of incentive for local businesses to have a Google Places listing and, furthermore, making it easy for searchers to find local businesses simply by inserting a place modifier in their queries. Since you’re a local business, then you need to tap into this right away.

How to Get Connected With Prospects

There are a number of ways that you can ensure that your dental website is getting to your local prospects. Here are just a few of the ways:

1. Get a Google Places listing.

If you’ve ever made a search which included a specific name of a place, then you’re familiar with the links that show up on top of the organic search results and next to the map with corresponding flags. Those are listings for Google Places. Owing to the fact that they show up before traditional results, having a Places listing will help you land on the first page of the search engine results pages minus all that much work involved with traditional searches. In order to activate your Google Places listing though, Google may have to call your office phone but the entire process is rather straightforward.

2. Have a Facebook page for your practice,

One thing which social media websites are known for is their ability to connect users. This is exactly the reason for why old friends and long lost family members are able to connect with each other through this platform. So why not leverage the power of social media in order to promote your practice to people living within your community? Not only will it be very easy for you to find prospects and existing patients through Facebook, you can post insightful and helpful daily tips which can help filter traffic from this social networking site to your actual dental website. 

Your dental website is the face of your practice online. It’s where your patients and prospects head to when they’re ready to find out about various dental services with the future intentions of availing of them. For this reason, your dental site should be filled with content that is geared towards converting visitors into paying prospects. To do just that, here are some of the tried and tested methods of producing great content:

1. Choose your words.

While you may have learned various dental jargon in school, it’s time to reserve those highfaluting terms for when you’re publishing a research or speaking to professionals who are in the same field as you are. But if your aim is to convert visitors into paying patients, you need to engage them at their level. Use words that are easy to understand but also veer away from using slang or embarrassingly basic terms reserved for third graders.

2.  Focus on them.

One of the most common mistakes that dentists commit when trying to promote their practice online is that they overly promote that they come off as obnoxious and self-obsessed. While the entire reason for marketing is to blow your horn, you should also reserve some of the praises for your prospects. Talk about how much you care for your patients and how your patients deserve nothing but the best kind of dental care.

One neat trick that seasoned copywriters turn to all the time is to substitute “we” with “you”. For instance, instead of saying “we have the most competent dentists in town”, say instead “you deserve the best dentists in town”.

3. Streamline your content.

While there are people who visit your website with no specific agenda in mind except to look and read around, know that the most important people who do click on your website are the ones who have already made up their mind to avail of your services. Maybe they’re just looking for your contact information or more information about the treatment they wish to avail of. To make things easier for them, giving them more incentive to convert, streamline the content found on your page. This is done by conspicuously placing well-labeled links at the top of your webpage.

4.  Make your content easy to read.

Instead of presenting a ten-paragraph article with kilometric sentences on your website, opt for something more readable. Incorporate bullets and number your points. Make sure to have a subheading if you’re going to present new information. This way, your visitors can easily skim through the article and still absorb the things that you want them to know.

Aside from giving tweens the space in the vastness of the internet to rant about their latest celebrity crush, is there anything that Facebook can offer your practice? You be it does and not just to individuals with dentistry-oriented careers but virtually to every business owner in the face of the planet. But how could this blue-themed website which is mostly used by teens and young adults help your practice?

Your Prospects’ Hangout Site

As of September 2012, Facebook has reached the one billion mark with regards to subscribers and the recent study has shown that almost half of the entire country makes use of the social media website. Compare that to only 7 percent of the population which tweets. If you put two and two together, it’s easy to figure out that majority of the people you want to sell your services to happen to be Facebook users. And because it’s your job to look for them and woo them, not the other way around, then it makes perfect sense that you become a Facebook user yourself.

You’re On Facebook, What Now?

So you’ve finally gotten round to having your own business page for your practice, how can you take advantage of all the social media goodness Facebook has in store? First thing’s first; you need friends and likes. Consider having a new set of business cards printed out with your practice’s Facebook link and then handing one out to every patient; the best people to start with are your existing patients.

Make sure that you have you place your complete contact information on your Facebook page. What use is getting prospects thrilled about your services when they have no way to contact you anyway because you forgot to type in your office phone number? Also include your operating hours and a link to your dental website in case they want to know more about the products and services you offer.

Start grabbing your Facebook friends’ attention by posting your latest gimmicks and offerings on your page. If you at least have a personal Facebook account, you very well know that your friends’ latest posts are reflected on your Newsfeed. This means that if you post a new status on your business page, that this status would go out to all of your friends’ newsfeeds. If your offer is enticing enough, you should be able to earn a decent number of clicks.   

If you’re just getting started with your online dental marketing campaign then there are four things that you simply cannot forego. The things listed in this article are arranged according to their importance. While you can do all of these things in one go it’s more preferable that you gain a solid footing on the first one before making your way through the list.

1. Dental

Your dental website must be two things – first, up-to-date and second, search engine optimized. Your website content must always be fresh and updated if you want to attract website visitors and search engine spiders. Your visitors will feel very unsure of your dental website if the last post was five years ago. At the same time, constantly updating your dental website will help ensure that it is search engine optimized. SEO is integral to your dental site’s online visibility and incoming traffic will depend on how well your website does in the rankings.

2. Dental Blog

Once you have your dental website up and running, you need to get started with your blog. Blogs are a huge help to your practice’s online visibility and because blog posts are considered news by Google, it’s also easier for your blog to rank higher in search engine results pages than traditional websites. The casual nature of this social media platform also allows you to communicate with your prospects in a more relaxed manner.

3. Google Places

Some people are against traditional organic searches contending that they do not need to make their dental website rank no. 1 in searches done all over the world when the only people they need to market their services to are those living in the same state as them. That is exactly what Google Places addresses. If you have a Google Places listing, whenever someone makes a local search for dentists, your listing may easily land on the first page of the SERPs.

4. Facebook Page

This social media giant has a billion users as of October 2012 and it’s no wonder why dentists are scrambling to have a personal and business account on Facebook. If you want to have paying patients, then you need to be where all the prospects are and start converting them there. Chances are that most of your prospects, and existing patients, have their own Facebook profiles. Use your status to drain traffic from your profile to your dental website.

When dentists start comparing their practice with the most successful ones, they’ll notice one thing – good dentists know how to build lasting relationships with their patients. The truth is that patients nowadays aren’t just after the service; they’re after the entire experience in general. When patients are looking for a dentist, they do not just base their decision on which school you graduated from or how long you have been working. They take into consideration on how comfortable and welcomed they feel.

The phone call. Most of the time, your prospects will contact you through your office landline. The wise dentists know better than to underestimate the power of the phone call. Having a cold and indifferent person handle these calls is the easiest way to lose prospects to your competition. Your front office worker should have basic phone call etiquette and genuinely be helpful. By definition of helpful, it isn’t just answering your prospects’ questions but also making things easier for them from booking appointments to suggesting treatments. If your front desk worker isn’t comfortable answering calls, you can always prepare a script for them.

The website. Your dental website is another venue wherein prospects will most likely first know about your practice. But just because you have a dental site does not ensure that you will be able to convert all of your visitors into paying patients. One of the easiest ways to turn away visitors is bymaking website navigation so intricate that visitors feel like they’re in a labyrinth of some sort. If you want to configure your website so that prospects find it easy to call you up or schedule an appointment, take a good look at your navigation tabs and be very particular with the information found in each page. For instance, your Contact page should contain all your important contact information from phone numbers, mailing address, email address and operating hours.

The first visit. The first time that your patient enters your clinic is the most crucial because this experience will help them determine whether they’ll see you again or opt for another dentist. Make the new patient orientation lively and casual. You can ask your receptionist to give your new patient a short tour around the clinic to make them feel more familiar with the entire place and to ease any anxiety that they may have. And make sure to smile and listen to your new patients.

Being in the service-industry can be extremely tough. Not only do you have to adjust to clients with different preferences and different quirks, your relationship with them also becomes crucial. This is why although dentists have this entire reputation of being calm and collected professionals with their white lab gowns, the fact remains that they are always thinking about how to find new patients.

Because dentists are often overwhelmed with the need to find new patients, chances are that they no longer think about the quality of new patients they are getting. Successful dentists argue that it’s not the number of patients that really matter but the quality of patients. At the end of the day, if you’re stuck with patients who you cannot form long term professional relationships with, how can you expect them to be loyal to you?

Although the standard marketing strategies are still very much useful in finding new patients, here are a couple of tricks for finding the perfect patients:

What makes you different?


You want to attract new patients not because of your flashy ads and posters but because of the qualities that make your practice truly authentic. What sets you apart from other practices? Maybe it is the fact that booking appointments could not be any easier with the help of your new dental website which makes you an ideal match for working patients. Or do you make sure that appointments run on time? Regardless of what your practice’s core principles are, be sure to let prospects be aware of this. If you put premium on the same values, then your prospects will find some point of association with you right there and then, and building rapport with them will naturally follow.

Are you ready to impress?

Your new patients will feel a lot of things when first entering your clinic. Your job as a dentist is to ensure that they feel comfortable and appreciated. Keep in mind that when it comes to choosing service providers, you cannot be 100 percent logical and sensible with your new patients. Regardless of the fact that you might have the best equipment and the most experienced dentists, if your patients do not feel wanted inside your clinic, they will not hesitate to leave and step into another clinic which makes them feel more welcomed. Try to be more attentive to your patients and you’ll see how positively they’ll react in return.

Optimization of a dental website is definitely very influential in allowing you the chance to attract potential clients and improve your client base. For many dental service companies there is no doubt many are looking at the E-commerce platform and seeing a very huge potential in actualizing their potential through websites, however success in E-commerce is not guaranteed by virtue of a website all be it that is the foundational step towards success. Internet marketing and increasing website visibility and traffic flow are the other important undertakings for a dental website and most importantly, optimizing the website is very important.

Basic ideas in dental website optimization

Optimizing a website and particularly a dental website take the form of different approaches, the basic one of those is actually the correct use of keywords at your title page and other parts of your website. The key words are very important in search engine ranking positions and more often than not, key word research is highly recommended in web development. Aside from that there is websites SEO through article marketing, link building and other ideas such forum posting. All this facts can be easily done by marketing professionals that have developed a specific niche for dental websites.

Key words selection for dental website optimization

Key word selection for dental websites is important because dental practice from the online platforms is fairly a unique activity. Keyword selection is done through creative keyword research in most cases the keywords selected are based on the consumer preferences. The idea of coming up with key words is tied to SEO for the website and later on article marketing strategies. Increasing SERPs for your dental website entirely lies with appropriate key word selection and that means that should be a priority in developing the site.

What do you get from a well optimized dental website?

The returns from a well optimized dental websites are self evident and in fact, the main one is attracting traffic to your website. Traffic flow is foundational on developing a good online based clientele and that will definitely translate to great income. In many cases the reason why optimization is done is to actually let potential clients know that you are online and thus they can find services there. In the current world, many people would prefer flexibility and convenience in accessing services and that is what a well optimized website will add to your business.

The importance of optimizing a dental website

Optimizing a dental website is tied the long-term objective of increasing the number of clients. Optimization in fact is one of the modern marketing tools that should be part and parcel of a dental care business. The ideas involved here will help in business expansion through limited inputs.

The first thing about communication is that there must be something to communicate. This is broadly referred to as content. It is also erroneous to believe that anything can pass off as content. To make it more accurate, an adjective needs to describe the scope of this noun. And in terms of dental websites, that adjective is “appropriate. As such, appropriate content is more apt than just content. Many webmasters, use content as filler or spam. They take content from a purely self-serving perspective and seek to force feed it to the viewer. This is among the biggest mistakes a webmaster makes. There are at least three big mistakes, and they should be avoided under all circumstances.

Generic Greetings and Content

The relationship between visitor and webmaster is that a webmaster needs eyeballs that return and visitors need useable, actionable information. It's symbiotic, not parasitic. When a webmaster uses generic information that does not answer the need of the visitor but expects to gain from the visit, that is a parasitic relationship – offering nothing in return for a visit. Parasitic relationships do not last long and pretty soon, the website is left to obscurity. Give the customer all that he seeks then point him to pages elsewhere in your site that gives him more data on something he seeks. If you give him generic information, he will leave and it’s a wasted opportunity.

Being Friendly

Being thorough is an important aspect of website content. Being friendly is not. A person's visit to a website is not with the intention to make friends with the site, it is to seek answers. Being friendly, indirect and pretty much a waste of time, will serve no other purpose than to leave and never comeback. This is a mistake many people make in planning a website, they focus too much on the tone, and being friendly rather than on the content and being accurate. The website will be a lot more productive to have wall to wall facts and being straight to the point.

Incomplete Thoughts

In a dental website, it is unwise to leave the patient or reader, hanging. Do not use a title to promise the world, use the introduction to hype the content, only to carry the reader to the end of the article or post only to end it abruptly. The promise of a title and the promise of a sound introduction sets up a person to process the information that is expected. Beginning with one thought, framing it in a certain way then disappointing the reader with a totally different direction, is not acceptable. They are not visiting your site to read Mystery Theater.

These three issues must be avoided at all times, especially in professional websites. A medical website is a site where a person is not looking for a friend but for straight answers. It must answer issues the viewer seeks and it must be done in a way that inspires confidence. Never seek to shove information down someone rather seek to answer their need.

The need for website visibility by leading dental websites has been the foundation behind dental SEO services. The reality of Dental SEO  however is that that it not just any other SEO service but actually specific to the dental sector.  The reason why this point is very important is because in any case if you are looking for optimization for your dental website, there is a need to consult specific SEO experts that have great experience in working with dental establishments online.  The basic ideas needed to get best SEO strategies for dental websites are easy to follow indeed.

 Why Dental SEO is imperative for marketing success

Search engine Optimization or SEO  is the main tool that is used for internet marketing and this is one of the basic imperatives if at all marketing success in a dental establishment will be realized. The ideas involved in SEO have an added advantage in pulling potential clients to the service and the convenience created by accessing dental services online is influential towards increased revenues. Marketing online has to involve SEO given the primary role it plays in promoting the flow of traffic and improving search engine ranking positions.

Some ideas involved in Dental SEO

Dental SEO involves quite a number of approaches. The ideas however are designed to promote website visibility which will definitely be critical in attracting potential clients. The basic rationale however that is used in SEO marketing is based on keywords and tags and in most cases, SEO professionals will have  a unique way to make sure that your dental website becomes a vibrant entity of your dental care clinic.

What to consider while looking for dental SEO services

The basic consideration when looking for SEO services for dental websites is actually the marketing budget you have. The price variation in SEO service providers will definitely help you pick experts that fit to your budget. All the same, the need to get professional SEO services should drive you towards experts in the sector. The good thing is that there is an established niche of dental SEO experts who have concentrated on specific approaches that are fundamental in the dental sector. Either way, a good SEO marketing approach should be able to get you immediate results while at the same time remain affordable and inline with your dental services budget.

Impact of dental SEO on revenues for dental websites

The impact of effective SEO marketing for dental websites on the revenues is nothing short of positive. The fact remains that SEO is the best approach to attract client through increasing website visibility. Considering that the interest has millions of potential clients, the potential of website earning great revenues from increased visibility is huge and in most cases, SEO for dental websites have earned dental websistes this success.

Dental practices must realize that the best source of new business is actually their database of not just current but also past patients. Finding a new patient is not just time consuming but also extremely expensive especially since chances are that you need to lure them by offering discounts or running expensive ads. If you could get more patients to opt for treatment without you having to cold call, send out direct mail or purchase leads, wouldn’t you be extremely eager to get started with this campaign? Chances are that you most definitely would.

Simply taking the time to reach out to your past and current patients will help your practice grow immensely. Not only are you strengthening your relationship with them and paving the road to patient loyalty, but you can also increase referrals to qualified prospects and build a list of leads.

But all of this is better said than done. Chances are that you’re already complaining mentally with how keeping in touch with past patients takes too much time and costs money. But when you factor in the return on investment, then you would think otherwise. The important part of keeping in touch with previous patients is to find a way which is time efficient as well as inexpensive and still effective.

According to studies, you should keep in touch with your patients at least fourteen times for each year in order for them to continue to remember you. You can touch base either through email, phone, snail mail or in-person meeting. Snail mail may include sending a postcard, holiday and anything else in between for that matter. All of these methods are useful in communicating with your patients.

But among those methods mentioned, which one is the most effective and successful? According to studies, there is no specific method to communicate with patients. On the other hand, the most successful “method” makes use of a couple of communication formats.

It’s easy to send out 14 emails annually, or make 14 phone calls or send out 14 postcards. But a constructive campaign makes use of a combination of these formats. You can probably send out four postcards for each year and then send six emails and then throw on two snail mail letters. Cap the year off with one phone call. Make sure though that you communicate with your clients approximately once for every three weeks throughout the entire year.

Dentists take on multiple roles. They are not just the ones who are in charge of taking care of people’s teeth. They are also the ones who are in charge coming up with and running marketing campaigns. On top of that, they’re also managers, leaders and motivators. Although dentists have a number of roles to fill, they aren’t exactly experts when it comes to advertising and marketing. They can try to learn the ropes but it can be extremely difficult to compete with the experts in the field. Here are a few things which dentists should take note of.

Most of the time dentists think that effective marketing consists of ads which sing their practice’s praises and nothing more. But the startling reality of things is that patients do not care about you or your practice. On the other hand, what they do care about are their selves. The reason for why they opt for treatment and consequently seek your services is because they want to feel or look better. Either they feel a throbbing pain or are unconfident about their appearance. For this reason, you need to reconsider your marketing campaigns.

This is where branding comes in. What successful branding does is it allows people to easily recognize your practice as soon as they hear your practice’s name. But what most dentists unknowingly think is that their name is synonymous to their practice’s name. This should be the case. When the owners of Coca-Cola decided to move forward with branding their products, they didn’t use their names. Instead, they came up with a catchy brand name which they can subsequently use for their external marketing campaigns.

As far as advertising goes, dentists should always consider the people who they are promoting their services to. What do your patients expect every time they walk into your dental clinic? You need to know exactly what they want from you in order for you to serve them better. And then you can start building your campaign based on what you know your patients want to hear. For instance, you can talk about how your treatments are minimally invasive appealing to patients who you know are scared of the dentist.

In order for you to seal the deal, you need to facilitate proper interaction. Dentists often lose a considerable number of prospects because they were not converted properly during phone calls. Lastly, dentists should also work hard at motivating their patients to give referrals.

It takes three simple steps to create the most complex website any designer could contrive. Just three simple guidelines that will allow the most ambitions dental website and portal to communicate with its target audience in an effective and comprehensive way. The three steps are also designed to be contemplated and derived from the vision of the principle's mind. This step is best done by the dentist himself or the owner of the practice.

Understand the Targeted Customer
It is advisable to begin with the presumption that your prospective customer or patient is going to be someone that will be inspired by confidence and that is the issue your site design should seek to address. People judge what they see with their mind's eye and the pass judgment in mere moments based on sets of prejudice. All of us have those. There is nothing wrong with it. Once you understand those prejudices you can either task them in your favor or avoid them completely. Here is an example of a prejudice. In most parts of China, the color black is associated with mourning and death. If you are a medical practitioner in the Chinese heartland and have a black website, the chances of you procuring a customer is slim. The same principle applies around the world. In the western world, the color white gives an immediate notion of being clean. You can use that to your advantage in design.

Differentiate The Customer
If you happen to provide two very different services then it may be necessary to target two separate customer demographics. For instance, if you cater to children who frequently need braces and to seniors who frequently look for dentures then your market is significantly different. As such, while you have only one site, you need to bring each customer in through a different door – or what is called a different landing page. So amongst the wealth of information throughout your website, there will be two different pages that optimize differently for dentures and another for braces.

Test The Site With Relevant Focus Groups
The thing to remember is that the dental website you build serves only one purpose. It is the nexus between what you have to offer and what a customer is in need off. A person who negates a focus group is essentially force-feeding the information to a person he hopes will be his customer. Its the wrong way to go about it. The best way to attract ants is with honey not vinegar. When a site is tested with a focus group, the words and layouts used can be tested with how a person reacts to it. Then tweaked to have the best possible impact.

With these three guidelines, any site is possible, every circumstance surmountable and every target, reachable. The clear path between the dentist and a patient’s loyalty is to give them what they want from the very first visit to the practice's website.

Marketing is the discipline of communicating a business and its offerings to its target customers. This communication includes the facts of the product or service, how appealing its seems, how it's priced and were to find it. In dental office terms, the same parameters apply. It is necessary to communicate with the target audience exactly what is being offered. How zealous that communication is, is another matter all together, but one thing is for certain, neglect a loud and clear voice in any marketing campaign and face the consequence of being relegated to obscurity.

Dental office marketing needs to be conducted with the most professional communication. Dentists are a subset of the health care industry and as such, second rate promotions have no place in this campaign. For a person to even consider the dental service, the first impression must be that of sincerity wrapped in professionalism.

The marketing campaigns must include, additionally, print media and souvenirs to give existing patents. There must be an extensive data base of all customers where automatic email reminders are sent out to highlight check-up dates and cleaning schedules. All these efforts to bring back and existing customer are very much part of the marketing effort.

Existing Customer

An existing customer is more valuable than a new customer. This is so because, the cost to acquire that customer has already been spent and any change of heart of that customer who has already experienced the service, points to a deeper issue. Each customer, in monetary terms, is to be valued not just by the price of one visit. Each patient is the sum of all his visits over the course of one's life. That makes each customer very valuable. A rough estimate of the math that should be used in determining the value of a customer is the present value of every single visit between now and the last visit and includes the different services the person would need over that time.

New Customer

A new customer is valued in a slightly different manner. A new customer is someone who either is migrating from a competing service or from out of town. The conversion could be for various reasons and as such the focus should remain on keeping the customer. The value of a new customer is also the sum of all future visits with the exception that new customer and old customers have a deferent disengagement profile. Old customers are more likely to stay where as new customers have higher chances of leaving.

In any case, developing a dental office marketing campaign is a simple exercise is understanding its strength and weakness then deploying the right strategy to advance the strengths and bolster the weaknesses.

There exists a large array of choices dental practices may choose from when it comes to structuring the internet presence and brand message. The tools are plenty but they all fall subservient to superior plans and strategies. It is not necessary that the highest and most expensive technologies are employed, rather it is crucial that the landscape is efficiently assessed and the strategy keenly planned. The internet and its other technologies are merely tools of execution.

Websites

Websites are the basic part of the strategy. All other strategies need to be rooted in the site since it is the platform visitors will come to once they have heard the name or experienced any of the promotions that have been meted out. But it is crucial to note, that a great dental website alone will not pull traffic.

Blogs

Blogs are a personal touch to any business. It publishes musings and arguments for and against and is a very effective meter to understand the temperature of the market. It’s an opportunity to receive feedback and to provide explanations and create awareness and understanding.

Mobile Platforms

These platforms are the anchor when pursing the mobile market. Mobile computing has become a significant part of the main stream and this is beneficial to those who take advantage of this early. Think of it as the ability to call on a person to sell him your goods at any point in time without being obtrusive.

Direct Mail

Every dental marketing campaign must seriously consider including direct mailings. It is an opportunity to provide a tangible item the recent can touch and feel. It is a tried and trusted method of communication.

Emailer

In the wake of a successful email harvest campaign, a large email database, will serve to provide direct access to people who check their mails everyday and is an important part of staying in touch. It is a good way to ask people already connected to introduce another email. Emails are a good way to send out e-books about dental hygiene or invite them with a link to the website.

GPS Marketing

This targets people who are not customers. These are newbies who happen to be in the area and a message is sent to their phone. A free gift, wither a product or a service, can be given in exchange for a simple registration form where emails are harvested.

These are some of the basic tools that can be used in a multitude of combinations, priorities and variations. It is a good way to drive traffic to the website, blog and the store front.