Dental Marketing Strategies: How Will They Affect Your Practice?

Dental marketing strategies help increase new patients and bolster patient retention. These tactics focus on developing unique services and tools that set the practice apart from other local dentists. Identifying the type of new patients the practice wants to attract is an essential first step. Creating personas for these patients, such as families or young business people, helps create marketing campaigns that speak to them.

 

Increased Patient Retention

Patient retention is one of the most important aspects of dental marketing. It is significantly cheaper to market to current patients than to find new ones, and existing patients have a higher lifetime value. 

Often, the main reason why a patient leaves a dental office is that they don’t feel valued by the team. Whether it was because they were kept waiting or felt like their visit wasn’t thorough enough, there are many ways to increase customer satisfaction and reduce attrition. Some of these strategies include creating a welcoming environment, offering flexible payment options, and outsourcing dental insurance billing.

For example, if you have 2,000 active patients and want to grow your practice by 5%, you will need to gain an additional 40 patients each month (or $40K in revenue annually). Therefore, creative dental marketing ideas to attract new patients should be a priority for any practice. By improving patient retention through dental marketing strategies, you can help close that backdoor.

 

Increased Patient Referrals

One of the most important aspects of any dental marketing strategy is capturing new patients. The best way to do this is through targeted search, social media, and paid advertising. Search campaigns can reach potential patients actively searching for a dentist, and social media and Google Ads can target prospective patients by specific demographics.

Many of the best dental marketing ideas involve community outreach and local events. Sponsoring a local sporting event or giving away merchandise with the practice’s logo is an excellent way to build brand awareness and generate new patient leads. In addition, many dental practices participate in professional referral networks or online communities to attract and convert new patients.

Stellar new-patient call handling is also essential for converting prospects into scheduled appointments. Too many offices miss calls or let them go to voicemail because they assume the caller will return a message or call back later. However, a practice can dramatically improve its call conversion rates with the right partner. This will increase the number of new patients and help grow the practice’s bottom line.

 

Increased Patient Satisfaction

A dental practice’s marketing goals should reflect the patient profile and what distinguishes it from the competition. This is why it is so important to define the target market before implementing any dental marketing ideas.

Whether organic online promotion or PPC ads, targeting prospective patients based on their search intent is one of the most effective dental marketing strategies. It helps you maximize the ROI of your marketing budget. With higher patient expectations, dental practices focus more on delivering a better experience. They are leveraging learnings from the consumer sector to improve patient experiences, fueling positive online reviews and increasing patient loyalty.

 

Increased Patient Engagement

Dental marketing strategies should include a focus on new patient generation. Every practice loses 15-20% of its patients annually due to natural attrition, so generating new leads is critical for long-term success.

Using email newsletters to provide valuable content and snippets of information about dental health and your services is an effective way to reach potential new patients. The content should be informative and targeted to your primary demographic. For example, women make 90% of healthcare decisions, so an attractive and informative dental marketing newsletter that targets mothers and wives will be effective.

Stellar new-patient call handling is another essential element in a successful dental marketing strategy. Many practices miss out on new patient leads by not answering the phone or leaving a message that doesn’t encourage the patient to schedule. By working with a dental marketing partner who offers new-patient call tracking, you can ensure that your team provides a great customer experience and turns leads into appointments.

 

Increased Patient Reach

Patient satisfaction is a critical dental KPI that can’t be left to chance. Patients are becoming increasingly demanding in their expectations of what their dentist can offer them.

One way to boost patient satisfaction is to streamline appointment scheduling. Delegating some low-level tasks to assistants and hygienists frees up the dentist’s time to concentrate on value-added services that patients need.

Another dental marketing strategy that increases patient satisfaction is to make it easier for people to find your practice. This includes making sure your website is fully optimized for local search (i.e., your address, phone number, and other geo-strategic information are visible on every page) and using Google’s advertising capabilities to target prospective patients who are searching for dental services in your area (i.e., “dental implants,” or “braces near me”).

Finally, implementing social media marketing strategies that promote your positive online reputation is important. Getting good ratings on various platforms can help people feel confident that your office creates an outstanding experience for all its patients.