Summary
What is a dental marketing funnel?
Build awareness on search and social
Increase visibility with an optimised online presence
Showcase your services with social media marketing
Support consideration with content and in-person connections.
Create engaging and education content
Encourage in-person interaction
Retain and reward existing customers
The world of dentistry is a competitive one, and if you’re looking to attract new patients or foster loyalty with existing ones, the strategy you employ will dictate just how big those pearly white smiles are.
Your demographic is accessible across a range of online and offline platforms, so marrying up the marketing messaging is essential to growing your practice where the competition is rife, and USPs are tight.
In this guide, we explore full-funnel marketing strategies for dental practices that aim to drive appointment booking, highlighting the best channels to use to target patients searching for dental services, encourage them to book their first appointment as well as how to retain and reward existing patients.
What is a dental marketing funnel?
The dental marketing funnel is the journey that a potential patient takes from first hearing about your dental practice to booking their first appointment.
- Awareness. Top of Funnel (ToFu) marketing is all about building awareness of your business with new audiences.
- Consideration. Middle of Funnel (MoFu) marketing is when customers are in the consideration phase. They’ll have heard your brand name or logo, and now they are weighing up your practice alongside others, figuring out who is the best fit for them before making a decision
- Conversion. Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) marketing helps customers to commit and book their first appointment, converting them from interested to invested.
This process can happen over several weeks or months and there are many factors that go into a patient making their decision when choosing their practice. That’s why it’s important for your business to be present at every stage of the funnel, providing the key information to help convert casual researchers into loyal patients.
Build awareness on search and social
In order to grow awareness of your dental practice, focus on increasing your visibility where potential patients are looking.
Increase visibility with an optimised online presence
With 77% of people using Google to look for local business information, investing in optimising your online presence can really help your business be visible to potential patients in your target area.
Local SEO
While it’s important that your website features relevant keywords to appeal to broader traffic, focusing on using targeted location based keywords can mean you capture searches with a higher intent.
Using terms like ‘dentists in [your city]’ across your key landing pages can mean your business will rank higher in SERPs (search engine results pages) for people searching specifically for businesses near them.
Google My Business
Ensure to optimise your Google Business Profile profile to include the key details that can help customers may need, such as contact details like phone number and email address, up-to-date opening hours and a summary of services.
This will help patients to clearly see if your practice meets their needs, and provide the contact details for when they need them.
Showcase your services with social media marketing
Another way to grow your online presence is by using social media strategically to attract new customers. If you provide specialist services that others in the area don’t, this is a great place to showcase this, with product demonstrations or before and after examples.
Choose the channels that your potential patients are on, rather than trying to be everywhere. This will allow you to make quality content that is optimised for the specific platform, rather than sharing the same content on all platforms that might not be in the correct format or specifications.
Sharing regular, relevant content on social media can help potential patients discover you and learn more about the services you provide.
Support consideration with content and in-person connections.
To support middle of funnel potential patients in their consideration journey, it’s important to provide as much information that can help you stand out as the best dental practice for them, using educational content and experiential marketing opportunities.
Create engaging and educational content
Ensuring that your website has educational, engaging content such as blogs, case studies and guides will help potential customers who are in the consideration phase to gather more information to support their decision making.
Content marketing can be a great way to position your practitioners as experts in the field, helping to build your brand reputation and authority in the industry.
From dental hygiene tips and tricks to well-researched white papers, sharing a range of educational and engaging content can help middle of funnel prospective patients be certain that you’re the practice for them.
Encourage in-person interaction
In a digital-first landscape, creating opportunities for in-person interactions is increasingly important. Experiential marketing is a great way to help build relationships and meet potential patients.
One way to do this is to host an ‘open house’ event, inviting potential patients in the local area into your practice. This will allow them to familiarise themselves with the environment, meet the practitioners and provide an opportunity to ask any questions and build rapport.
You could also offer free consultation appointments to provide an opportunity to meet practitioners and experience your excellent customer service before committing to treatments.
For some people, dentistry can be daunting, and many feel nervous in clinical or medical settings. By welcoming them into your practice, you can help alleviate some of these anxieties and reassure them that you are both professional and friendly.
Retain and reward existing customers
Once you have gained a new patient, it’s important to nurture them to encourage repeat custom and promote retention.
Referral programmes and reviews to encourage trust
Never underestimate the value of word-of-mouth recommendations when it comes to finding new patients. In focusing on providing excellent customer service, you can organically grow a loyal patient base who are likely to refer you to their friends or family.
You can enhance and encourage this by creating a referral programme that rewards your loyal patients. Rewards can be small, like a free consultation for the person they introduce and a discount on their next visit for the referee.,
Similarly, rewards can also be given in exchange for reviewing your business on Google or other review platforms. Not only can this help enhance your Google Business Profile, it also increases trust when top of funnel customers discover you.
Email marketing
Using email marketing to communicate with existing customers should go beyond automated reminders when their next appointment is due. To really nurture your patients, you can use email marketing to keep in regular contact with them, so you remain front of mind.
Email marketing can be used to inform patients if you introduce a new service or product, share team updates or important industry news. It’s a great way to maintain regular communication with your clients and forms a vital part of your customer relationship management (CRM).
Final thoughts
When it comes to marketing your dental business with growth in mind, it’s important to focus your attention on both attracting new patients and promoting loyalty with existing ones.
From building brand awareness with local SEO and social media, to supporting consideration with content and rewarding organic growth through referrals from existing patients, taking a full-funnel approach to marketing your practice can help you reduce patient loss.
Need support with your marketing strategy?
We are experts in transforming digital experiences for dental practices. Get in touch to see how our solutions can help you drive more appointments.
