11 Dental Marketing Strategies To Implement in 2024

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Currently, there are about 185,993  dental practices in the United States alone. The number never stops climbing. 

Beyond your career skills as a dentist, you need to build your marketing stack to attract new clients, retain customers, and promote your business.

Marketing strategies in any industry are constantly evolving due to technical advancements and changes in customer behavior. So, you must also periodically refine your strategy, remove what no longer works, and optimize what’s working. 

Whether you are a startup or a mid-sized practitioner, you’ll find this blog post insightful as it covers 11 proven dental marketing strategies and a checklist to help you implement them. 

Let’s explore!

 

Dental Marketing 101

Dental marketing involves the planned efforts taken by you or your marketing team to become more visible, stand out from your competitors, and grow your happy customer base.

It encompasses all the marketing strategies employed to attract new clients, educate the public about your services, maintain existing customer relationships, and build a positive reputation within the dental community.

According to statistics:

• 75% of American adults planned  to visit a dentist in 2023
• 65% of adults had a dental visit within the past year
• The ratio of dentists to population is 6:10,000
• An average American spends $1,000 a year on dental care

These statistics show that there’s a big market for dentists. So, it makes sense to position your dental care practice to reach a wider audience through both digital and traditional marketing strategies.

Dental Marketing Checklist for Better Marketing ROI

Before we delve into the marketing strategies you can implement for a successful dental practice, there are three basic things you should consider and put in good shape to get the best result from your marketing efforts.

Put a price on your marketing budget

Not all of the marketing strategies cost the same thing. Some are much more expensive than others and require more manpower or specialized staff—meaning your running costs go up. 

For example, data from WebFX shows that businesses spend, on average, anywhere between $4000 and $7000 per month on social media management. 

This makes social media marketing a high-budget marketing strategy if your dental practice runs on a confined budget. 

In this instance, it will make better sense to use EngageBay’s free social CRM suite, manage all your social media platforms, nurture leads, manage campaigns, and increase communication touchpoints with your social audience. 

Solidify your unique selling point (USP)

There are several dental practices out there. But do they all function the same way? No, they don’t. 

For instance, you could decide to offer:

• General services like routine checkups, cavity fill-ups, or oral health hygiene.
• Specialized services like dental care for children, surgical procedures relating to the mouth, or even managing tooth diseases. 
• Cosmetic dentistry services that focus on improving the appearance of teeth through services like teeth whitening and cosmetic restorations.

Having a proper understanding of your USP helps you to position your business. It also enables your team to craft unique, clear, concise messages that resonate with your target audience, making your marketing efforts more effective.

Using the 4 Ps of marketing, here’s how to craft a unique selling proposition for your dental practice. 

• Product: The product refers to the services you offer. What sets your services apart? It could be your area of specialization, treatment approach, location, or advanced technology.
• Price: Do you want to offer premium pricing plans for high-quality dental care or flexible payment packages that make dental treatments more accessible?
• Place: This refers to your location and distribution channels. Is your practice strategically located or easily accessible? Do you offer round-the-clock or online appointment booking services to provide more convenience for your clients?
• Promotion: Increase visibility by promoting your USP through testimonials from satisfied patients or partnerships with local businesses.

Read also: Cosmetic Dentistry Marketing Strategies: 13 Reasons to Smile

Refine your dental marketing funnel 

If you put in more and more effort without a corresponding result after a while, check your marketing funnel and detect loopholes before implementing new strategies.

Refining your dental marketing funnel looks like different things in the different marketing stages. 

For example, in the awareness stage, it could mean updating your social media profiles and reviewing your website data to ensure the info provided is up-to-date and consistent with messaging from other channels. It could also mean optimizing your website interface, making it more intuitive and accessible. 

In the decision stage, it could be analyzing the conversion points in your website, like the contact forms and appointment scheduling, to ensure they encourage specific actions.  It could also mean analyzing the follow-up process like appointment confirmation and meeting reminders.

Read also: CRM in Healthcare to Enhance Patient Satisfaction

11 Effective Dental Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Practice

Now that we’ve looked at the marketing checklist, here are some dental marketing strategies to implement in 2024. 

1. Promote free consultation 

Offering free consultation may sound counterintuitive. However, free consultation in dental practice is what a free trial is for a new product in SaaS marketing. 

It provides a lower entry barrier point and is a lead-generation tool to attract new clients. Aside from the potential of attracting new clients, it’s a great way to build clinical trust and showcase your expertise. 

Additionally, a report shows that one in four Americans have untreated tooth challenges. By offering free consultation, you stand a better chance at proceeding to paid treatment plans from satisfied clients and receiving word-of-mouth marketing.  This leads to increased customer retention rates and revenue for your clinic.

So, offering complimentary consultations opens the door to potential patients who may otherwise hesitate to seek dental care.

Hampshire Dentists is an example of a dental practice offering free dental consultation. The exciting part is these consultations are done from the comfort of your home. 

This consultation addresses your concerns, discusses treatment options, and shows you patients’ testimonials to spur you to take action. 

To book a free consultation with Hampshire Dentists, you have to fill out the following fields in their web form: Name, email address, phone number, and treatment options. 

This serves as a reservoir of patient information for further marketing contact.

From Hampshire Dentists, it’s clear that getting the most out of this marketing strategy involves providing helpful and valuable service to the visiting patients and showcasing your expertise. 

Without this, you may discover that several persons keep showing up for your free consultation without proceeding to paid treatment plans.  

2. Build brand trust with customer reviews

We’d all agree that we check several review sites before making purchases. Dental patients are not different.  If at all, they are more thorough in their research before visiting a dental clinic.  

Reviews act as social proof showcasing the real experiences of patients. It helps potential patients feel confident about choosing the practice for their dental needs, knowing others have had satisfactory outcomes.

Beyond brand trust, positive reviews increase visibility and improve online presence. For example, a quick Google search on the best dental clinic in California resulted in this.

From the highlighted part in the image above, these clinics were more visible for the search keywords due to the client’s reviews. 

To drive this strategy, you must request feedback and make it easy for them to leave their reviews by including direct links to review platforms.

Also, use multiple review platforms like Google My Business or Yelp to diversify your reviews and increase visibility across platforms. All you have to do is get listed on the review center and go through the verification process to begin.

Read also: 13 Hospital Advertisement Ideas to Elevate Your Marketing

3. Win through strategic collaborations and partnerships

As a dental health practitioner, it makes sense to collaborate with dental health product manufacturers or other stakeholders in the dental industry. These collaborations are mutually beneficial for your dental clinic and the partnering brands.

 For example, you can create joint exclusive offers where patients who receive treatment at your clinic could get discounts on dental health products from partnering dental companies. You could also invest in a joint advertisement, where your clinic and the partnering dental company promote each other’s offerings. 

Beyond partnering with health dental brands, you could also partner with influencers. Hardly anyone loves a visit to the dentist because it is often associated with pain. By partnering with influencers, you increase the audience appeal of visiting a clinic and humanize your brand.

A poll carried out by Influencer Marketing Hub revealed that 83% of respondents planned to have a budget dedicated to influencer marketing, with 23% intending to spend over 40% of their marketing campaigns on influencers. 

Some influencers may require payments instead of a free service to promote your dental clinic within their audience through educational content, vlogs, or sponsored posts. Conversely, you could offer some complimentary services in exchange for reviews or social media mentions. 

In this example above, Dr Kevin Sands partners with top influencers like the Kardashians, Drake, and many more to promote his dental practice on Instagram.

4. Attract the ‘locals’ through traditional marketing 

Despite the digital marketing frenzy, traditional marketing is a proven way to establish trust in your local community. While digital marketing provides a more cost-effective solution to get to a wider audience, traditional marketing methods may come at a higher cost but have a more localized impact. 

Additionally, a HubSpot report shows that over 57% of participants disliked ads that played before a video, and 43% didn’t even watch them. While over 50% half of consumers often watch traditional television advertisements and read print advertisements, according to MarketingSherpa.

That’s not all report from Ebiquity suggests that traditional media channels, particularly TV, radio, and print, outperform digital channels in reach, attention, and engagement relative to cost. These and more are why you should consider implementing traditional marketing in your dental clinic marketing strategy.

Here are a few ways to implement traditional marketing into your dental health practice: 

• Place flyers and brochures in strategic places like shopping malls or popular family spots.
• Reach nearby residents through print advertisements like Newspapers, magazines, or community newsletters. 
• Place billboards strategically in high-traffic areas with your dental clinic information to increase visibility.
• Introduce referral programs and encourage word-of-mouth testimonials.
• Invest in TV commercials or local radio stations.

Combining traditional marketing strategies with digital efforts allows you to connect with a more diverse audience and establish a strong presence within your local community.

Read also: Jaw-dropping Dental Marketing Ideas

5. Boost retention rates through loyalty programs 

Everyone loves to be a part of a community, especially when it offers some sort of advantage. Loyalty programs can be likened to a community where existing patients get discounts, exclusive offers, and benefits like priority scheduling, fostering a sense of loyalty and appreciation.  

Over 8-in-10 people say belonging to a loyalty program influences their decision to become repeat customers. Additionally, 84% of consumers admit to sticking to brands that offer loyalty programs. 

Through loyalty programs, you can solidify customer relationships and encourage repeat visits to your dental clinic. 

Another marketing strategy to incorporate into your dental clinic that works like a loyalty program is referral marketing. According to a report, 90% of people trust referrals from friends and family over any other form of marketing, and 92% trust word-of-mouth advertising more than online video ads 36%. 

Together, these strategies create a win-win scenario—enticing new clients while nurturing long-term relationships with existing ones, fortifying your clinic’s patient base, and improving customer retention rates.

6. Boost marketing efficiency with automation software

Marketing automation revolutionizes attracting, engaging with, and retaining customers over time. With automation software, you streamline and automate various marketing tasks. 

By implementing marketing automation, you clear up space to focus on patient care and build stronger relationships with individual patients. 

This is very important for customer retention. With marketing automation software, you can do the following efficiently.

Lead generation and nurturing

Marketing automation software like EngageBay provides leads generation and nurturing tools like web forms, landing page builders, and live chat for your dental clinic. Its email marketing and CRM software help you segment the leads and automate drip campaigns based on their actions, giving you a complete marketing experience.

Streamlining email marketing campaigns

With marketing automation software, you streamline and segment your patient lists based on demographics, appointment history, or treatment history. Segmentation in email marketing aims to shoot your shot at a particular audience with the desired result in view. 

Social media management

It takes work to maintain an active and engaging presence on social media. However, automation tools make it easier for you, as a dental practitioner, to schedule posts, respond to comments or messages, and monitor social media activity effectively. 

With marketing software, you can create and manage your social campaigns, interact with your audience, and track engagement metrics from a single dashboard. 

Data analysis and reporting

When it comes to marketing, data is king. With collected data, you get insight into your marketing efforts and see what works and what needs to be tweaked. You also get insight into your best-performing and least-performing marketing channels. This enables you to allocate your resources to channels with higher ROI.

Read also: CRM In Healthcare To Enhance Patient Satisfaction

7. Modernize your dental website

In today’s era, where digital presence affects customer decisions, a modern website serves as a show-glass for your services. 84% of consumers believe a business’s website is more credible than its social media page.

The interface of your website should be friendly, giving off a positive first impression. According to statistics, 75% of people base their first impression of a business on its website. So, have your patients in mind while designing your website. 

Here are things that a modern dental website should have:

• An engaging homepage that perfectly showcases your brand, services, and expertise.
• Testimonials from the previous client that serve as social proof
• Clear and concise call-to-action
• Patient-centric information and dental SEO content
• Web forms or appointment scheduling tools
• Responsive web design for user-friendly viewing on all devices
• Social media page integration 

Over 93% of website traffic is through Google. So, you need to optimize your website for search engines using keywords strategically.

Here’s an excellent example of what your website should look like from Dentistry on King. They include a clear CTA button that says “Request Appointment.” Additionally, they include reasons you should choose them for your dental care, their list of services, and contact information. 

If you scroll down the page, you’ll find customer reviews, a frequently asked question section, service hours, and a Google map address so patients can easily locate it. 

You can check this blog post for other dental website design ideas.

8. Increase your web traffic through dental SEO

It is one thing to have a modern dental website with a user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate. It is another to optimize it to rank higher organically on search engines.  

Employing dental SEO helps you to be found online by patients who are actively searching for dentists within their locality. Optimization of your website for search engines also helps with lead generation as your optimization strategy draws new clients to you.

To get the most out of your dental SEO strategy, here are some tips to help

1. Ensure your website has a simplified page structure that makes it more user-friendly.
2. Find keywords dental patients use to search for dental practices in your area. You can also explore Google’s “People also ask” option and tools like Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner, and SEMrush.
3. Learn to maximize Google PageSpeed Insights to analyze your website performance and fix any issue that could slow it down.
4. Regularly generate fresh and unique content, such as infographics, blog posts, and case studies. This will help keep your patients engaged and consequently help you to rank higher in search results.
5. Monitor your progress with Google Analytics. This will help you track key metrics like conversion rate, website traffic, and click-through rate and improve your strategy where necessary.

Read also: Rejuvenate Your Spa Marketing With These 15 Proven Strategies

9. Get listed on Google My Business

Google My Business is a free tool from Google. It enables business owners to manage their online presence. Getting your dental practices listed on Google’s local listing is crucial because it increases your visibility. 

How?

Businesses that have signed up with Google My Business are the ones you’d usually see first in a Google search result, local search, or Google Maps. This makes reaching potential clients easier because the GMB listing will show your contact information, time of operation, customer reviews, and location.

For example, I quickly did a Google search for dental practices near Birmingham, England, and got this result:

Google prioritizes local searches, and in the case of dental practices where proximity is a significant factor, ensure all essential information about your practice is captured. 

A well-optimized profile on Google My Business will allow you to appear as one of the top practitioners on the search result page. 

Getting listed on Google My Business pairs well with local SEO best practices. It’s a combination attack. A digital marketing service for dentists should try to rank for local SEO as a primary goal. No one from another state or country will be looking for a local dentist.

Marketing is all about finding local people who are looking for a dentist near them or in a specific place. SEO is how you digitally get a business in front of the right people at the right time.

As a marketing strategy, Google My Business also helps you with analytics. You can analyze the data from the tool to get information on how users find their listing, what customers do after viewing it, and the location they are searching.

10. Leverage video marketing

Videos are an intriguing way to convey information, showcase expertise, and create a positive impression in your viewer’s mind. 

According to Social Sheperd, online videos have an audience reach of 92% worldwide, and 96% of people turn to videos to gain information about your services. 

Use video marketing to introduce new patients to your practice, showcase your work, provide educational and dental tips, patient testimonials or review videos, and dental office tours.

Read also: Dental Ads That’ll Make You Laugh 😂

11. Optimize your social media space

Social media is indispensable for any business looking to reach more people. 82% of people search social media before making a purchase. By building a strong social media presence, you stand a higher chance of being found by potential patients. 

Here are some tips to help you optimize your social media space.

Rebrand your profile

It is easier to get found on social media when your page is optimized with your bio, including your clinic name, a description of what you do, contact information, and a website link.

Post quality content

After attracting leads from multiple sources, you must nurture them with quality content. That way, you remain on their radar whenever they decide to visit a dentist. 

Your content can come in the form of photos, reels, or videos. You could also try out a combination of all. 

Quality content with educating, enlightening, and real information equals high-level reach and a large audience, which you need. Manchester Dental Practice is one of the dental practices out there getting it right in the aspect of uploading content. Your content should answer frequently asked and personal questions that your patients could have about your dental services. 

Be active

This is where many brands need to correct things, including those offering medical or dental services and products. Being inactive can stop you from achieving your goals of building a large target audience. 

Your audience needs an active page to get what they want regarding questions and responses readily. 

You want to be something other than that page that will answer a comment days or weeks after it has been dropped. This will make your audience worn out. To help you stay active in your media spaces, you can create a content calendar that you must follow.

Hashtags

The use of hashtags is a game-changer. It might be what needs to be added to your content marketing game, making reaching your target audience goals impossible.

Hashtags help you streamline your posts for your target audience. It achieves this by pushing your posts to those searching for those hashtags or tagged words. 

Hashtags like #teethwhitening, #dentist, #dentistinOklahoma, and #toothpaste can streamline your content down to a particular service, location, or clinic, in this case, your clinic.

Read also: Glamorous Marketing Strategies For Cosmetics Companies

Wrapping Up

Like any other business, you increase your chances of attracting, nurturing, and retaining clients by increasing communication touchpoints with your audience. 

The dental marketing strategies highlighted in this blog post cover digital and traditional marketing practices to increase communication touchpoints, attract new clients, and retain existing ones. 

Irrespective of your marketing budget, there is a marketing strategy for you, from getting listed on Google My Business to optimizing your website content and social media bio and promoting free consultations. Doing these can significantly increase your dental visibility and attract new leads.

Suppose you want to focus on improving customer retention rates rather than generating leads. In that case, you can focus on dental marketing strategies that improve marketing efficiency and customer relationships, like using marketing automation software or implementing customer loyalty or referral programs.  

EngageBay is an all-in-one marketing automation, CRM, and email marketing software that helps you attract, nurture, and retain patients for your dental clinic. Additionally, you can streamline your marketing efforts on a single platform and reduce marketing costs by up to 82% when you sign up for EngageBay.