Developing a marketing strategy is vital for any business, especially your dental office. Without a proper marketing plan, your efforts to attract new patients are likely to be haphazard and inefficient. We’ve touched base on marketing before, but let’s take a closer look at what you need to do to create an effective marketing strategy. When creating your marketing plan, your focus should be on making sure that your products and services meet your patients’ needs and developing long-term and profitable relationships with those patients. Here is a list of 5 dental office marketing ideas you might want to consider.
One thing you can do to better market your office is to create a mailing list. By acquiring your patients’ emails, you can easily send them updates on your office, specials and important information regarding their care. A suggested topic for emails is weekly dental tips. As a practice that is establishing their role in dental sleep medicine, you might benefit by sending out weekly emails to your patients that targets the importance of getting treated for sleep apnea. Some information might include:
- What is sleep apnea?
- What are the symptoms?
- What treatment options are available?
- How can my dentist help me?
The questions and tips that you can include are limitless. Use your creativity to brainstorm important ideas that your patients should know when it comes to dental sleep medicine. Through email marketing you can further reach your patients because majority of patients check their emails multiple times a day.
Utilize Keywords
When you are writing your website content or blog posts, be sure to include keywords within your pages. However, do not overdo it with the keywords. You want to include 2-3 per page just to get your practice out there. If you overload your content with keywords, Google will pick this up and “spam.” The keywords will show up for certain items to reach interested patients.
Use Social Media
We have mentioned it before, and we will mention it again-social media is key. Use Facebook or Twitter to post fun dental sleep medicine facts to patients. When patients see these “fun facts” they will be more prone to share with their friends. You want to not only reach your patients through social media channels, but you also want to engage them. Without engagement, your patients will simply browse over the information without really paying attention. If you provide accurate and thoughtful information, they may be more inclined to share it with their friends—especially if that information reminds them of a friend or loved one.
Create Blog Posts
Another important marketing factor is creating blog posts, which he have also focused on in previous blog posts. Blog posts are an extension of your website and another way to get content that is searchable through Google. While writing your blog posts, be sure to include keywords so that your blog post comes up when a patient is looking for specific information. You can utilize your blog to share educational or office information—the choice is yours.
Send a Press Release
Lastly, try sending a press release once a month. Remember, though, that a press release should be “news worthy,” which means it needs to announce something. Whether you have won an award, are offering a new procedure or technology, or have moved locations all can be news worthy topics you can share through a press release. Send a press release to local media to notify the public about your news worthy information or utilize an online distribution database to send your information through the Internet. Either way, press releases help to generate outside links back to your website for improved search results.
Contact Dr. Mayoor Patel for more information on how you can successfully market your dental office for 2015.