While there is no doubt that you serve a vital purpose in the community, attracting new patients is not always the easiest thing to accomplish. Your goal is to provide prospective patients with ways to find out about you, what you have to offer, and why your practice is the right choice for them. Try these four marketing approaches and it won’t be long until there are enough appointments to keep you and your staff busy.
Launch a Direct Mail Campaign
While there were predictions that electronic communications would kill traditional mail campaigns, that has not proven to be the case. Some consumers are more likely to pause long enough to read the back of a postcard than reading an unsolicited email. Work with a printer to come up with a catchy image and slogan for the front of the postcard and include a compelling message on the back. People will remember you and at least some will be motivated to call and schedule a first appointment.
Flyers Work Too
You can also arrange to hand out flyers to advertise your practice. As with the postcard, make the piece something that catches the eye and provides enough information to motivate people to call. The flyers can be distributed at local community events, parking lots, and a number of other venues. Before distributing the flyers in any area, make sure you obtain permission to do so.
Establish a User-Friendly Website
While offline marketing should always be part of the strategy, don’t neglect the creation of an online presence. Forget the site in a box approach and talk with a web designer and a builder about creating the perfect site. The pages should be clean, load easily, and provide visuals and content that cause people to stop long enough to understand what you can do for them. They should also display properly on everything from a smartphone screen to a desktop computer.
You will also want help from a professional who understands search engine optimization. An expert in SEO will help you identify key phrases, create tags, and spotlight services that are most likely to earn favorable attention from the more popular search engines. For example, the expert may recommend spotlighting the fact that you have an arrangement with SimplePay.com to offer patient financing for dental procedures. Choosing the right keywords will ensure your pages rank higher in search engine results. This is important since many people look only at the first one or two pages of those results.
Remember that having a blog associated with your website is a smart move. That gives you the chance to discuss all sorts of things related to dental care and direct readers to a page where they can schedule an appointment online or request more information.
Put Social Networking to Good Use
Social networking is free and has the ability to help you reach a number of potential patients. Start by creating a Facebook business page and populate it with images, memes, and information about what your practice offers. Remember that you can link to blog posts as a way of increasing traffic and general interest. You can also link back to a contact page on your website and increase the odds of getting a call or email inquiry.
Along with Facebook, consider setting up a Twitter account. While there are a lot of people who use both social media sites, some spend more time on one or the other. You can easily use the same information, images, and memes on each site and boost your online visibility. Remember to talk with your SEO expert about how to use hash tags effectively on Facebook and Twitter. The right approach will increase your visibility and get the name of your practice in front of more people.
There are lots of people who need a dentist but need a little nudge to make that call. Market your dental finance practice effectively and give them that nudge. Once you have the resources in place, it’s just a matter of keeping them updated and making sure you are prepared to welcome everyone who seeks out your services.
