Marketing your dental practice can be a challenge, but with the right strategies, you can attract new patients and keep your current ones coming back. From social media to email marketing, there are many ways to get your practice seen by the right people. In this article, we’ll explore some fresh ideas for dentist marketing that can help you stay consistent and persistent in your efforts.
An Introduction to social media marketing for Dentists
Traditionally, marketing for dental practices has relied on word of mouth or location-based advertising to attract new patients. However, times are changing, and the way people are searching for their dental practice of choice with more people turning to online sources for recommendations, to fully understand the offering and get to know their potential new dentists.
Social media is an effective way of showcasing a dental practice and helping to move away from the fear of the dentist to give people more confidence in the services that are on offer and ultimately gain trust. Social media is a way of convincing patients that they need a dentist, not just for when emergencies occur, but for general maintenance too.
It’s true, everyone needs a dentist, but successful marketing can build trust and confidence in a brand by showing potential customers why they should choose you!
Benefits of social media for Dentists
Social media can be targeted and interactive, meaning that it can be more effective than print adverts. Social media can also be measurable, and you can track engagements and use it to follow up on leads, make connections and gain new clients.
Because of this, social media can help to establish better relationships by showcasing your expertise and service offering using articles, posting videos, and sharing case studies and testimonials.
Digital marketing for Dentists
What are the best social media platforms for Dentists?
There are many social media platforms available to use and each has their own benefits. In our opinion there are some platforms that are best for building a client base and following, these are Facebook and Instagram. There are many more available, but these are the two we would recommend beginning your journey into social media marketing.
Top Tip! Don’t think you need to start by using all of them. Start off with one or two, get comfortable with using those and then you can introduce others.
Facebook for Dentists
This is probably the platform that most people are aware of and probably use as individual accounts. Facebook is great for targeting particular groups of people and locations and it is a real all-rounder as far as social media platforms go.
Some of the content that can be created on Facebook includes sharing photos, either through single photos, or multiple photos, with or without commentary. Creating posts that link to blogs or articles that are housed on the website of your practice. Facebook is also a great place to provide updates and news about what is going on in your practice, enabling your clients to engage with your content in real-time. You can share details of the team so your clients and followers can get to know them, you can ask and answer questions as well as run promotions.
By creating a company page on Facebook, all your content will be housed in one place and easily searchable. It also allows you to update the page with your company information such as opening times, contact details and website address.
Stuck for ideas? Try our 30 FREE Social Media Ideas, we’ll drop them straight into your inbox.
Instagram for Dentists
Instagram is all about visuals, images, and short videos including reels. You can use content and hashtags, but everything on Instagram starts with an image/video. If you need some Reels inspiration take a look at our blog.
Sharing photos of your team, your reception and treatment rooms is perfect for Instagram, you can even share photos of your customers after a successful treatment – with their permission of course! Using hashtags and short content to sit alongside your photos can also drive engagement with your followers.
Instagram is the perfect platform to promote events or competitions, you can also re-post images that have been posted by your followers where they have tagged you. Getting followers to use your handle on their posts is also an effective way of growing your reach and gaining new followers.
Dentist marketing ideas
Getting started can sometimes be the hardest part, thinking about what to post at the beginning of your social journey can sometimes seem daunting. It’s also important to make sure your content hits the mark and is useful, interesting, and engaging. To help with this, we have some ideas about the kind of social content that you can start to post on your platforms.
Introduction to the dental practice, this could be a video with a voiceover, or a selection of images with supporting content. This is a great way of introducing the practice to your followers and can also be re-purposed as your following grows.
Introduction videos or images to the team. This can be done over the course of weeks or months, helping your followers to get to know the people who will be greeting them when they arrive at the dental practice.
Practical tips to patients, such as post reminding them to schedule their appointments for regular check-ups, or how often they need to change their toothbrush.
Drive engagement and promote sharing by asking patients to create testimonials, either as a video or in writing. Ask them to post on their own social media accounts and make sure they tag you!
Top 5 tips to get you started on social media for your dental practice
Have a social media strategy
This is key when you set out on your social media journey. Having a strategy sets out clearly what you want to achieve and how you are going to achieve it. Supporting this strategy should be a content calendar. With a content calendar you can set out and agree what you are going to post and when. We recommend you plan your social posts at least 1 month in advance.
Use your employees to help share and generate new followers
Most, if not all your employees will have their own social media accounts, so why not use them to help spread the word and grow your following. Your employees will have followers in the communities you are targeting, so it’s the perfect audience. If they’re comfortable doing so get them to share the posts you make and most importantly, make sure they tag you!
Regularly share interesting content
A social media account needs to be active to make it work for you – regular posts can help to drive followers and helps to get your content to show in searches. Make sure you are posting on a regular basis to keep the channels fresh of content to keep your followers engaged.
Engage with your followers
One of the key ways in which social media can work for you is engagement. Engagement can help you to connect with your existing patients and potential new ones, so make sure you monitor your social posts and reply when people comment or share and make sure you reply to all direct messages. This will show you are engaged with your client base. Promote comments from your client base too by asking questions to promote and start a conversation.
Track and measure your activity
This is super important. You want to make sure that social is working for you, so keep track of how successful your posts are. This is also a great way of working out what kinds of posts get the best traction so you know what people like to see and can replicate these types of posts in the future.
Working with Piece of Cake Marketing
Are you looking to enhance your marketing and social media presence? We’ve got you covered. Drop us an email at hello@pieceofcakemarketing.co.uk and let’s discuss how we can help you in taking your dental practice to new heights.
Whether you need guidance on developing a comprehensive marketing strategy or require hands-on support with social media management, we can help. We understand the unique challenges and opportunities that dentists face when it comes to marketing and we’ll tailor our approach to meet your specific needs.
Don’t miss out on the chance to attract more patients, build a strong online reputation and grow your dental practice.
