Winning New Patients With Dynamic Marketing For Dental Clinics

How do you win new patients?

That's the question that dental clinics ask themselves all the time. It's a question we've wrestled with over the years and we're happy to report that we have figured out quite a few successful methods. These are methods that we have tested and proved in market. Our experience is real and we would be happy to sit down with you and your clinic to review your current marketing plan.

We have worked with Dental Image Therapy Centres for several years helping their two Winnipeg dental clinics reach new audiences, increase traffic to their website and win new patients.

Their objectives were to create a stronger brand, positive community and public relations, and to gain more patients for both locations.

Our tactics continue to deliver dozens of new patients to the clinics every month.Some phone, some come via referral and some come in via social media or their website.

Here are few of the things we have learned work and work well.

Social Media

People spend up to four hours a day on their mobile devices today, according to Inc.That's a shocking number, but it's real. Much of that time is spent on an endless scroll of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms.

And if we set our phones down, notifications quickly buzz us back into that endless scroll.

We may not like that people are spending that much time with their noses in their phones, but as marketers we need to recognize that the phenomenon is real.

We work with our clients to build strong social media presences. We help them tell stories about their clinics - the services they offer, the people they employ, the patients they serve. Our goals are to build your community of followers. This helps us extend your organic (ie. not paid) reach. Friendly reminders from your dentist can prompt your patients to book an appointment. They can also prompt people to make referrals more easily because your clinic is that much easier to find.

If you're on Facebook and you see a friend asking for advice on finding a new dentist, it's an easy operation to link directly to your clinic's Facebook page in the comments.

Paid Social

Of course, the organic reach of what you post on social media is going to be limited. You can boost your organic reach and engagement by posting videos instead of just text and photos, but even that only do so much.

That's because Facebook, Instagram and Twitter earn money by selling ads. Advertising on social media is fairly easy. A good place to start is just by boosting one of your posts. You can also create custom ad campaigns using text, photos and videos. Just as with organic content, videos tend to perform better in paid applications too.

The best thing about advertising on social media is the amazing ability you get to target people. You can serve your ads only to people within a few kilometres of your clinic, for example. And you can target by gender, age and interest. If you want to advertise in another language to promote the fact that one of your dentists speaks Punjabi, Tagalog or Mandarin, that's easy to do too.

We like to build layered campaigns over time. Some promotions are designed to win new followers, others are simply to promote your brand. We like to run regular reminders that our dental clinic clients are accepting new patients, and it's good to remind people of your core services, your hours and your location too.

Often, the content that we run on social is designed to drive people to a website where we make it as easy as possible to book an appointment.

Website

Your website is the hub of your marketing communications strategy. It's the most important element and the one you should spend the most time and effort on.

One of the single most important elements for dental clinics is to offer patients simple and seamless ways to book an appointment. Don't assume that everyone is comfortable picking up the phone. Best practice is to offer people multiple channels to book an appointment: phone, email, chat. Give your prospective patients those options and you'll have more actual patients.

Your website should be an accurate reflection of your brand. At a glance, it should communicate clearly what people should know about you. That means you should invest in good graphic design that can deliver those visual cues about who you are - friendly, approachable, experienced, for example.

If you'd like to read more about how we approach dental marketing strategies, please click here.

We're happy to offer free, no obligation consultations. We guarantee that you'll come out of it with something of value - maybe some tips, maybe some actionable data on how to improve your digital ads. Treat it as a test drive of your new agency. Find out if you like our approach. We'll be happy to share detailed cost estimates too if you're interested in hearing more.

Reach out and contact us today to find out how you can win more new patients.