1. The marketing plan
As with traditional marketing, online marketing requires a plan on which to base all your strategies. However, it is time to leave behind some notions of the traditional marketing plan and prepare a marketing plan adapted to the current situation in the healthcare sector.
The marketing plan.
You can take ideas from your previous marketing plan, such as the definition and differentiation of your clinic dental, and your buyer personas or profiles of potential customers. After the study and analysis that you carry out, it is vital to check whether your clinic is prepared to meet the new needs of your customers, as well as to determine a new objective in the digital field.
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1.1 SWOT analysis
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First of all, it is necessary to carry out a market study and a study of your competition. More and more dental clinics are using the internet to sell their services, so it is essential to study how they behave on the web.
How do they build their websites, what is the process they go through to convert website visits into patients, what campaigns do your competitors’ clinics run online? Next, it is time to perform a new SWOT analysis, which rethinks the weaknesses, threats, strengths and opportunities of your clinic in the leap to digital marketing.
This analysis is essential to discover what opportunities your business can take advantage of, and will test your clinic’s presentation to your audience to see whether or not it remains viable.
1.2 Objectives
The next step is to set new objectives. This new challenge must seek the obtaining real results in your online marketing strategy, which are achievable for your business and your current resources. These objectives can be to reach a certain conversion rate of visitors to your website, to close more appointment requests, to expand the geographical area of your clinic…
These objectives can be to reach a certain conversion rate of visitors to your website, to close more appointment requests, to expand the geographical area of your clinic…
There are many challenges to meet, but it is not necessary to achieve them all at once. The most important thing is to initially choose a achievable challenge at the current moment of your clinic, and with the growth of your business you will be able to prepare yourself for new challenges.
Once you have studied the market and defined your new goals, you need to define how you will achieve your new goals. What differentiates you from other clinics in your area? Will you be able to take advantage of opportunities? Can you offer them to your clients through the internet?
What will you be able to offer to your clients through the internet?
2. What online marketing investment should look like
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Perhaps your main concern right now is the investment you need to make to start your online strategy. How much investment is necessary for a strategy that generates business? Are you going to get better results if you invest more money than your competitors?
It’s true that you need to invest more money than your competitors?
The truth is that, nowadays, the most recommended marketing strategy for dental clinics is not exactly to invest as much as possible in marketing actions. Rather, it is to study in depth what actions should be taken to achieve the objectives of the clinic, as well as to understand what actions to take to reach your audience and start building a relationship with users.
2.1 New consumer attitudes
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You have your potential customer profiles (buyer personas) designed, but are they tailored with information about their attitude as an internet user? Indeed, if you want to reach your potential customer through the internet, your marketing actions must be adjusted to the internet behaviour of the customers.
Your marketing actions must be adjusted to the internet behaviour of the customers.
The search for trustworthy professionals.
The search for trusted professionals.
Consumers are no longer so concerned about the financial aspect when researching oral health treatments. Nowadays, users opt for dental clinics that provide useful, quality information, written by trusted dentists.
The Dental Clinic Search.
The search for answers to doubts or concerns.
The search for answers to doubts or concerns.
Users, in the first place, require information referents in the dental health sector that educate them for a better care of their wellbeing. They typically seek information about the problem they are experiencing, and reflect their symptoms through the searches they perform (‘why do my teeth move’, ‘why do I feel pain in my gums’).
They are also looking for information about the problem they are experiencing, and reflect their symptoms through the searches they perform (‘why do my teeth move’, ‘why do I feel pain in my gums’).
So, users expect to get answers to these questions already on the first page of Google results. Therefore, they will consider as information referrers those websites (among those results) that provide them with useful answers. This is why it is vital to provide useful content to consumers right from the start, even before they know they need a particular treatment.
When to introduce your dental practice to users.
When to introduce your dental practice to users.
Once they have enriched their knowledge by having their questions answered, users will then choose to search for a clinic that suits their needs. In a marketing strategy for dental clinics, the aim is not to attract the consumer to the clinic, but to focus actions to educate the consumer
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This way, users will begin to have confidence in your website, so it is then time to present the unique values of your clinic, so that the bond between your clinic and the user begins to generate.
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Online reputation.
Consumers want to believe that the information you give them about your service is real. For this reason they resort to comparing your message with the opinions of patients who have visited your dental clinic. This is why nowadays online reputation is key for the generation of online business, because it is part of the decision process of potential clients.
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3. Online marketing strategies for dentistry
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The online world may seem complex at first glance, but you don’t need to rush through every possible avenue of online communication. The key to online marketing today is to launch your marketing strategies to the places where your customers interact.
Internet
The Internet allows you to reach out to your customers in the places where they interact with you.
Internet allows you to develop a marketing for dental clinics effective and profitable, studying well how to develop your actions and taking advantage of your resources correctly. Thus, there are some fundamental marketing strategies for dentistry to generate online business.
3.1 Website
Whether you already have an existing website or plan to create a new one, you can imagine that your dental practice website must also adapt to the new interests and needs of your customers. What good is a website that fails to attract users and convert them into customers?
What good is a website that fails to attract users and convert them into customers?
In many cases clinics have a website, but it barely manages to transform online visits into clients, and some don’t even generate any leads. Should you get rid of your website? On the contrary: this is the time to take it, to work on getting the right direction and turn it into a new customer generator.
What elements need to be in place for your website to become a new customer generator.
What elements need to be present on your dental clinic’s website?
What elements need to be present on your dental clinic’s website?
- Audiovisual content that allows the user to learn more about your clinic and your team, through the visualisation of photos and videos.
- Provide information about the treatments that you offer in your clinic, but that is properly organised.
- Pages aimed at resolving the frequent questions of your potential clients.
- Pages aimed at resolving the frequent questions of your potential clients.
- Facilitate the option of requesting an appointment online, both through a ‘request appointment’ page and through forms strategically placed throughout the website.
- Please make it easy to request an appointment online, both through a ‘request appointment’ page and through forms strategically placed throughout the website.
- Provide as much contact information as possible so that users not only reach you through the online appointment request (they can call you on the phone or visit the clinic in person to make an appointment).
3.2 SEO positioning
We don’t need to talk about the famous SEO, but we must mention how important it is for your clinic’s website. Having a correct SEO strategy, that is, based on your objectives and the interests of your clients, is what will bring users to your website when they search on the internet.
All of your content and content is based on your objectives and the interests of your clients, which will bring users to your website when they search on the internet.
Your content is based on your objectives and the interests of your clients.
All your content and, therefore, the keywords that you use to position yourself in Google, must be based on the source of answers that your target audience is looking for. In this way, users can arrive at your website confident that you are a source of information that will help them solve their problems.
3.3 Conversion pathways
It is recommended to study the attitudes of your buyer personas in each of the channels in which your dental clinic is present, in order to prepare the appropriate dental clinic marketing techniques to guide them in their purchasing process.
To achieve this, you need to plan conversion paths that guide users to get to the end point of requesting an appointment or paying for your services, and make sure your website is prepared for users to follow those paths easily.
These conversion paths need to include at least the following factors: calls to action or CTAs (call-to-action), landing pages, and forms for conversion.
3.4 Blog
The content of your website does not need to be constantly renewed, so there has to be another way to generate content on a regular basis to attract more traffic to your website. You can opt for the creation of a blog.
It is true that, until a few years ago, the blog had a corporate focus: it was a platform for sharing the news of the clinic. However, if today it is vital to focus attention on the user, it is recommended to reduce this type of publications to give more room for user content.
Just like on your website, it is vital that the content of a blog is aimed at the interests and needs of your customers. It is necessary, therefore, to make a content planning based on the objectives you want to achieve, from the frequency of publication to the topics to be published.
On the other hand, you can at times use articles to attract interest in your clinic: through useful information for users. One way of doing this is through the publication of clinical cases, through the publication of dentists’ reports of your clinic, etc.
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3.5 Social networks
Social networks have often been presented as channels for obtaining business opportunities. While this may not be true, they are channels for caretaking care of the relationship between the clinic and your followers.
Social media is a great way to provide a better relationship between the clinic and your followers.
Instead of planning articles focused on the commercial aspect, it is recommended to create publications focused on follower loyalty. In this way, you can maintain the interest of your new clients after they have visited your dental clinic. And if they require another dental treatment, instead of looking for a new company, they may think of your clinic again and repeat your service.
Images: The IET | COMSEVENTHFLT | Benjamin Dada | Germanna CC
