Digital marketing for dentists

AThe digital age has transformed the way patients search for and choose their dentists. Today, a strong and strategic online presence is fundamental to the success of any dental practice. Digital marketing for dentists offers an arsenal of tools and strategies to reach new patients, strengthen the practice's reputation and boost business growth.

So, if you're a dentist and haven't yet taken the plunge into the world of digital marketing, get ready for a radical transformation in your practice! Forget the old yellow pages and ads in local magazines. The digital age is here to stay, and with it, powerful new tools to attract, win and retain patients.

The Digital Revolution in Dentistry

The Modern Patient is Online

The internet has revolutionized the way people search for information and services, particularly oral health care. According to research by DentaVox in 2023, 82% of patients search online before choosing a dentist. This means that if your practice is not present in the digital world, you are missing out on huge opportunities to reach potential patients every day.

Do you have doubts about the importance of Digital Marketing for Dentists?

Then, answer these questions:

• 82% of potential dental clinic patients search online for solutions to their problems (DentaVox, 2023).
  How many booked an appointment at your clinic?
• 57% of patients choose a dentist based on their online presence, including website, social media, and reviews (Software Advice, 2022).
  What have you done for your online presence lately?
• 41% of patients use Google Maps to find local dentists (Google, 2023).
  How is your position on Google Maps this year?
• 35% of patients are willing to travel further to find a dentist with good online reviews (BrightLocal, 2022).
  How is your online reputation in your area?
• 60% of patients prefer to schedule appointments online rather than calling the clinic (Solutionreach, 2023). How many online bookings did you receive last year?
• More than 80% of Portuguese with internet access are on social media (Marktest, 2023).
  How many followers has your business gained recently?

You're starting to understand the importance of Dental Digital Marketing, aren't you?

Why invest in Digital Marketing for Dentists?

Basically, because you need to increase ROI (return on investment) and consequently, increase your dental clinic's revenue! This is the main reason to invest in Digital Marketing and take big steps towards where your target audience is: the Internet.

And it's there, on the Internet, that you will capture the attention of…

• Patients who don't know which treatment is most suitable for their problem.
• Undecided patients who don't know if it's time to schedule an appointment or which dental clinic to choose.
• Patients who search on Google – from “tooth pain” to “dental implants” – because they seek clear and consistent information.
• Patients who know the solution to their problem but are looking for more specific information to move forward with scheduling an appointment: such as location, accessibility, treatment prices, etc.
• Patients looking for second opinions or patients who were not satisfied with the results of previous treatments.

With specialized digital marketing for dental practices, it will be possible to:

• Maximize Your Clinic's Visibility: Stand out in top search results on Google, social media, and other essential digital platforms for your target audience, ensuring your clinic is easily found by those in need of your services.
• Build Authority and Credibility: Share relevant content, interact with patients online, and highlight your unique features, such as cutting-edge technology, innovative treatments, and a highly skilled team, solidifying your position as a reference in your field.
• Attract New Patients: Use SEO techniques, online advertising, and content marketing to attract patients seeking dental services.
• Retain Patients: Cultivate close relationships with your patients through email marketing, social media, and other communication tools, offering pertinent content, exclusive promotions, and personalized service.
• Increase Clinic Revenue: By attracting and retaining patients, increase the number of appointments and procedures, accelerating the growth of your business.

Need help achieving your goals?
Contact Webfarus, specialists in Marketing for Dental Clinics.

Step-by-step guide to implementing key Digital Marketing strategies for Dentists

Ready to uncover the mystery behind transforming dental offices into irresistible online destinations? Just implement – separately or simultaneously – the following Dental Marketing strategies to boost your dental clinic's revenue.

1. Define the target audience

Before you start producing content for your digital channels, you must define the target audience of your dental clinic, gathering all information about your clientele: gender, age, location, profession, occupation, likes, interests, needs, fears, lifestyle, economic situation... This data is important for personalizing strategies and developing more assertive Digital Marketing actions.

Marketing for Dentists: golden tips for gathering target audience data

• Conduct surveys in the local community to understand people's needs and preferences regarding dental services.
• Search the Internet for demographic data to understand the population composition of the area, including age, gender, education, and income.
• Ask current patients for feedback about their experiences at the dental clinic.
• Interact directly with the population in your area by participating in local events, such as fairs or sports events.
• Use relevant hashtags to analyze conversations and comments on social media to understand the concerns and interests of people in your region.
• Analyze Google Analytics data regarding your website's performance to understand the origin of visitors, their time on site, and the pages they view.

Need help defining your target audience?
Contact Webfarus, specialists in Marketing for Dental Clinics.

Learn more about digital marketing strategy.

2. Define Digital Marketing goals

Next, it is important to set clear and achievable goals over a specific period, as well as the Dental Marketing strategies you will use to achieve them.

Marketing for Dentists: golden tips for setting goals

• Identify the overall goals of your business, such as increasing the number of patients, strengthening online presence, or promoting specific services.
• Understand the demographic and behavioral characteristics of the clinic's target audience to personalize Digital Marketing strategies.
• Set realistic deadlines for achieving each goal.
• Set clear and measurable goals. For example: increase website traffic by 30%, gain 5 new patients per month, or improve the conversion rate by 15%.
• Select relevant KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to monitor actions, such as the number of appointments scheduled through the website form, website conversion rates, positive reviews, etc.
• Associate each goal with one (or more than one) specific digital marketing strategy. For example: you can associate the goal of increasing the number of appointments with PPC (pay-per-click) online advertising campaigns and/or optimization with local SEO techniques.
• Determine a budget for specialized Digital Marketing to better guide your decisions and ensure effective use of resources.
• Constantly evaluate the performance of strategies against established goals, making adjustments as necessary to optimize results.

Need help defining marketing goals?
Contact Webfarus, specialists in Marketing for Dental Clinics.

Learn more about digital marketing strategy.

3. Creating a website for dentists

Meanwhile, you should create or revamp your website to present visitors with all the information about your specialties and clearly outline the benefits of your services. And only with a professional website can you achieve this!

A modern and dynamic website for dentists functions as a true sales platform capable of increasing revenue because it can stand out from the competition and appear to thousands of users searching for your service but who do not yet know your dental clinic.

Marketing for Dentists: golden tips for creating a professional website

• Dental website with its own domain, simple and direct. For example: clinicadentariadavila.pt
• Beautiful, modern, and dynamic layout that reflects the image of the dental clinic.
• Responsive design so that the site automatically adapts to mobile devices with smaller screens, such as smartphones.
• Fast loading to not lose a single patient.
• Clear and concise information: history, mission, vision, team, specialties, schedules, contacts...
• Specific and detailed information about dental services to clarify visitors' doubts.
• Positive testimonials from satisfied patients to reinforce the clinic's credibility and influence visitors' decisions.
• Authentic and high-quality images (of the office, team, facilities, and treatments) to help build trust.
• Contact form and online appointment scheduling to facilitate access.
• SEO optimization for search engines with relevant keywords.
• Clear CTAs or calls to action, such as "schedule your appointment now" or "contact us for more information," to guide visitors on the next steps.
• Integration with social media.
• Dental blog to consistently communicate with the public and simultaneously improve search engine rankings.
• Google Analytics for access monitoring.

Need to revamp your website?
Contact Webfarus, specialists in Marketing for Dental Clinics.

Learn more about what makes a good website.

4. Content Marketing for dentists

If the information you publish online about your clinic is not generating good results, it is best to invest in Content Marketing for Dentists to capture your target audience... and Google's algorithms!

Effectively, Content Marketing for Dentists is a strategy capable of generating leads, relationships, and interactions with patients and potential clients, guiding them through the sales funnel toward appointments, and then retaining them. This is possible through the consistent publication of relevant content that addresses users' "pains" with appropriate solutions, without making advertisements! In fact, you don't even need to talk directly about your dental clinic to gain visibility and new traffic to your site or blog!

Marketing for Dentists: golden tips for producing relevant content

• Create educational content about oral hygiene practices, dental problem prevention, and dental treatments to showcase your clinic's expertise.
• Explain some dental procedures in simpler and more accessible language to build trust.
• Use images and short videos to illustrate certain dental treatments.
• Share "before and after" information and photos to show real results and highlight the quality of your dental team.
• Include a FAQ section on the website to answer the most common questions from visitors.
• Inform about events and news at the clinic, such as acquiring new equipment or additional services.
• Promote special campaigns, such as free check-ups at certain times of the year.
• Respond promptly to all comments on social media to interact with users and build an online relationship.

Need help creating relevant content?
Contact Webfarus, specialists in Marketing for Dental Clinics.

Learn more about content marketing.

5. SEO for dentists

Digital Marketing for Dentists always brings along a friend, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and here's why! Even if you have excellent services provided by qualified dentists, you will not be able to increase the number of clients if you do not increase the visibility of your dental clinic. How can you achieve this? With SEO! A set of website optimization techniques that improve page rankings in search engines because they show that they have quality content and offer a good user experience.

Marketing for Dentists: golden tips for SEO optimization

• Use relevant keywords, such as "dentist in Faro," "dental clinic in Lagos," "dental implants in Almancil," "invisible braces," and other expressions that promote services and the clinic's location.
• Write persuasive and informative meta descriptions for each page. Although they do not affect ranking, they influence user clicks.
• Optimize with local SEO for searches in your region, including the city's name in the meta description, header tags, and website content.
• Create a Google My Business page to improve visibility in local searches and provide essential information to patients.
• Develop specific pages for each service (such as orthodontics, teeth whitening, implants, prosthetics...) to improve relevance in search results.
• Encourage patients to review the service because positive opinions can appear in search results and increase user trust.
• Regularly publish relevant and quality content to maintain a relationship with patients and show search engines that your site is up-to-date.
• Optimize images by reducing file size without compromising quality to ensure fast loading.
• Also optimize your dental site’s speed to provide a better user experience and ensure ranking by Google's algorithms.
• Use descriptive alt tags to help search engines understand the content of the images.
• Develop an internal link strategy to guide visitors to other pages on the site and an external link strategy to guide visitors to other reference sites.
• Ensure your dental site has a responsive design and is perfectly readable on smartphones or mobile devices with smaller screens.

Need help optimizing?
Contact Webfarus, specialists in Marketing for Dental Clinics.

Learn more about sites optimized for Google.

6. Email marketing for dentists

Outdated? Not at all! Email marketing, or sending commercial messages to your contacts, remains one of the best ways to communicate due to its low cost and high return.

By sending more personalized and familiar emails, you can capture the attention of your leads and patients and control the number of users who saw, read, and clicked on the message… and who are therefore ready to start (and then maintain) a positive relationship with your dental clinic. Furthermore, sending email marketing campaigns is an excellent strategy for Specialized Digital Marketing because it keeps your business always in the spotlight without requiring great effort: the format is flexible in terms of text and layout and also allows you to take advantage of numerous tools for automatic and highly segmented sends.

Marketing for Dentists: golden tips for email marketing

• Before sending emails, obtain explicit consent from recipients and clearly explain why you are collecting their data and how you will use it. Also, include an option for recipients to unsubscribe at any time.
• To personalize messages, divide your contact list into segments based on common characteristics, such as age, treatment history, or specific interests.
• Use the patient's name to personalize the message and create a more personal relationship.
• Write short and clear subject lines, but catchy enough to arouse curiosity and increase open rates.
• Offer relevant content to your patients.
• If feasible, offer discounts or exclusive promotions to generate interest.
• Ensure emails have a responsive design for mobile devices, as many recipients will read the message on their mobile phones.
• Include a clear and persuasive CTA (call to action), whether for recipients to schedule an appointment or read the latest article on the dental blog.
• Adopt a balanced email marketing frequency to keep your dental clinic top of mind for patients without overwhelming recipients.
• Conduct A/B tests to experiment with different elements such as subject lines, images, or CTAs—this helps identify what works best with your audience.
• Utilize automated email sending tools to save time, maintain consistency, and avoid landing in the SPAM folder.
• Monitor the performance of your Digital Marketing campaigns for Dentists by evaluating open rates, clicks, and conversions.

Need help developing campaigns?
Contact Webfarus, specialists in Marketing for Dental Clinics.

Learn more about email marketing.

7. Google Ads for dentists

If you have a budget available for advertising, do not hesitate to invest in paid ads on the Google Ads platform! Look for the best keywords, distribute them across targeted ad groups, appear at the top of search results, and achieve more immediate and significant business results. In return, you only have to pay whenever a user clicks on your ad via one of the keywords!

Google Ads - it is worth noting - generates quality conversions because it attracts the right people at the right time, which for dentists means attracting potential patients looking for dental treatment!

Marketing for Dentists: golden tips for Google Ads

• Set a daily or monthly budget to control Ads expenses.
• Choose specific keywords for your sector to reach potential customers, such as "dental implants," "teeth whitening," or "dental braces."
• Use different keyword match types to appear in different types of searches.
• Add negative keyword matches to prevent your ads from appearing in irrelevant searches.
• Include the dental clinic's location in ads to attract local patients.
• Use location extensions to display the address, a map, and the distance to the clinic when users view the ad.
• Also use call extensions that allow you to include a phone number directly in the ad so users can call the clinic immediately.
• Highlight special offers in ads, such as discounts on specific treatments or welcome packages for new patients.
• Include positive reviews and ratings in review extensions to increase potential patients' trust.
• Ensure ads direct users to relevant landing pages with clear information about the mentioned services.
• Conduct A/B testing with different ad types to identify what works best with your target audience.
• Track conversions to measure the success of your email campaigns within your range of Specialized Digital Marketing actions.

Need help creating Google Ads?
Contact Webfarus, specialists in Marketing for Dental Clinics.

Learn more about Google Ads sponsored ads.

8. Social media management for dentists

Thank you for staying with us! As we near the end of our list of Dental Marketing strategies, we must remind you that with the majority of Internet users scrolling through social media multiple times a day, regularly posting relevant content is a way to invite "friends" into the practice!

It's also an opportunity to increase popularity, encourage interactions, build relationships, and better understand your target audience. However, simply creating a profile is not enough for your clinic to be seen, shared, and remembered. To attract new patients and increase profits, it's essential to manage social media in accordance with the goals outlined in your Digital Marketing plan for Dentists.

Marketing for Dentists: golden tips for social media management

• Maintain a consistent visual identity across all social media platforms, using the logo and colors that reflect the dental clinic's brand.
• Share relevant content about oral health and dental treatments to build trust.
• Use high-quality images and videos to showcase the clinic environment, team, or procedures across different services.
• Share behind-the-scenes stories to humanize the brand.
• Showcase positive patient testimonials.
• Engage with your audience by responding promptly to questions and comments.
• Establish a consistent posting schedule to maintain a regular presence.
• If possible, organize contests and giveaways to engage the online community.
• Use paid advertising to target and promote specific services or campaigns aimed at local audiences.
• Use local hashtags when sharing content.
• Monitor each post using analytics tools.

Need help managing your accounts?
Contact Webfarus, specialists in Marketing for Dental Clinics.

Learn more about social media.

9. Results Analysis

Are you ready to learn about the last Dental Digital Marketing strategy? It's results analysis and ROI. Yes, because the work doesn't end after implementing all these actions. It's necessary to monitor results daily and even in real-time, using metrics that show the return on investment in Digital Marketing for Dentists, according to user behavior across your communication channels. This information is extremely valuable for better understanding your audience, optimizing according to their needs, and achieving even better business results!

Marketing for Dentists: golden tips for analyzing results

• Use Google Analytics, the most widely used free monitoring tool in Digital Marketing. Just install a code on your website pages and then gather user information in easy-to-interpret reports!
• Explore some key points such as most visited pages, traffic sources, bounce rates per page, conversion rates, dwell time, devices used, and keywords that brought users to the site.
• Evaluate Return on Investment (ROI) for each Dental Digital Marketing campaign or strategy.
• Compare your clinic's performance with that of local competing dental clinics to discover improvement opportunities.
• Evaluate interaction on social networks.
• Adjust Digital Marketing strategies based on the results.

Need help monitoring the results of your strategies?
Contact Webfarus, specialists in Marketing for Dental Clinics.

Learn more about results analysis.

Advanced Dental Marketing Strategies

In addition to basic digital marketing strategies such as creating a professional website, optimizing your Google Business Profile, content marketing, SEO, email marketing, and online advertising, explore these advanced tools and techniques to further boost your dental clinic's digital marketing:

• Influencer Marketing: Partner with digital influencers in the health and wellness field, such as bloggers, YouTubers, and Instagrammers, to reach a wider audience and enhance your clinic's credibility.
• Video Marketing: Invest in explanatory videos about dental procedures, patient testimonials, or oral health tips to share on your website and social media. Video is a captivating and effective content format for delivering information clearly and concisely.
• Advanced Content Marketing: Explore more elaborate content formats like webinars, ebooks, and podcasts to educate your audience and position your clinic as a leader in oral health. Providing valuable content attracts patients more interested in your services.
• Marketing Automation: Optimize your email campaigns, nurture leads, and personalize communication with patients using marketing automation tools. Send targeted and relevant messages at each stage of the patient journey, increasing conversion and retention rates.
• Remarketing: Use remarketing to reach people who have previously visited your website or interacted with your online ads. This strategy keeps your clinic top of mind for potential patients even after they leave your site.
• WhatsApp Business: Communicate quickly and efficiently with your patients using WhatsApp Business. Create broadcast lists for sending personalized messages, use the catalog feature to showcase your services, and leverage automated messages to respond to frequently asked questions.
• Online Events: Host webinars, workshops, or live streams on social media to share information about oral health, introduce new treatments, and engage with your target audience.
• Loyalty Programs: Reward your patients and encourage their return to the clinic through loyalty programs. Offer discounts, gifts, or exclusive benefits to loyal patients.
• Partnerships with Other Businesses: Promote your services and reach a broader audience through partnerships with local businesses such as gyms, schools, and health companies.

Learn more about dental marketing.

The Future of Your Dental Clinic Starts Now

Digital marketing is the key driver of success for dental clinics in the digital age. By adopting the strategies outlined in this guide, you are on the right path to attract new patients, strengthen your brand, and build a prosperous and enduring practice. Keep in mind that digital marketing is an ongoing journey that requires constant monitoring and adaptation to market changes. Invest in a comprehensive and personalized strategy to enjoy the benefits of a successful clinic.

Digital Smile, Webfarus Specialty

At Webfarus, our focus is to highlight dental clinics in the digital environment. We have a team of digital marketing experts with extensive experience in oral health, ready to develop a personalized strategy for your clinic, boost your online business, and attract more patients.

With a comprehensive range of services, including SEO to position your clinic at the top of search results, engaging content marketing to educate and connect with your patients, effective social media management to build a loyal community, targeted online advertising campaigns to impact your target audience, and personalized email marketing to nurture relationships, Webfarus provides the tools, know-how, and experience needed to strengthen your brand and increase your revenue.

Don't waste any more time transforming your practice into an online success.
Contact Webfarus so we can help you achieve your goals.