by AdminPosted on Posted in Website

What to expect for 2023 and 2024

Here at Dental Media one of our core activities is the creation of high-quality websites for dentists, something we’ve been doing since the late 1990s and now with over 2000 sites built during that time. We’ve seen web technology change dramatically, from the earliest “static html” websites, through the advent of mobile-optimised design, to the latest content management systems and CRM integrations.

One of the key features of modern dental website design is that it takes time to do well – typically 3 or 4 weeks per website. This excludes complementary activities such as writing content, SEO work etc. So it’s quite a substantial, time-intensive task.

So what does a dental website cost in 2023/2024?

If you’ve searched around for website pricing recently, you’ll have seen a huge disparity in the pricing, from a few hundred pounds for a DIY system, to £10k+ at the other end of the spectrum. Both of those extremes are “no go” territory in our opinion – at the cheap end, you get something that will look very amateurish and not represent your business professionally, whilst at the other end, you’re paying way over-the-top for zero advantage.

Realistically, you should expect to pay in the region of £4 – 6k for a high-quality dentist’s website with sufficient scope to provide a solid foundation in Google and represent your practice, team and treatments professionally. If you consider that such a website takes 3 to 4 weeks of dedicated work to complete, then those figures should not really come as a surprise – it covers the developer’s business costs and allows for a reasonable profit, or at least it should.

Another important comparison is with websites for non-dental businesses and how much they cost. Typically you will see prices for general business websites also in the £4 – 6k range – so not at the extreme top end prices you will see advertised by some dental design companies. This begs the question, why should dentists expect to pay more than any other business for their website? Unfortunately this is another example of the “dental tax” where suppliers exploit dentists where they can get away with it.

What features should I expect in a £4 – £6k website?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Website

When your design agency promises you a high quality website, will you really get one?

Virtually all dental web design companies will offer you a high quality website these days, but will you really get one at the end of the process? In today’s blog we take a look at what ‘quality’ actually means when it comes to website design for dentists and what you need to understand before you sign off on a new site development contract.

When it comes to website quality, we can break it down into 3 key areas – aesthetics, content and technical competence. All of those areas need to be addressed and done well before you can consider that a website is of high quality and capable of doing what you need i.e. bringing new patients to your dental practice.

Let’s take a look at each element in turn.

Aesthetics

Lots of design agencies can build pretty websites these days but unfortunately website success doesn’t stop there. Indeed it’s perhaps the main area where dentists fall down when choosing a design agency – they just decide on aesthetics alone without looking at the other key factors which decide how well a website will perform.

Of course an aesthetically pleasing website is very important as first impressions definitely count on the web as well as in real life. So you do need to make sure that your website looks at least as good as your best local competitor and if possible, better. Remember that folk are often quite fickle and they will see your website as a reflection of your own skills and services. Leaving a website to become old and stale certainly won’t help you, so be sure your site is aesthetically pleasing from launch and then kept fresh going forwards.

Dentistry is very competitive and this extends to website design for dentists too. In the last few years, design aesthetics have really moved on so you will need to keep on top of this if you want to keep up with your local competitors. Try to work with a proactive design agency and make regular reviews of your website and the websites of your main local competitors.

Regular updating to build in new features and fresh content will certainly pay off, however it’s also essential not to go over the top. All too often these days we see websites where every ‘bell and whistle’ has been added leading to a website which is confusing and ends up looking like a bazaar – please don’t be tempted to do that!

Content

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

Don’t forget these key maintenance tasks….

Whilst most clients here at Dental Media simply leave our team to look after all of their web assets e.g. their website, content management system, blog and domain name etc, some elect to do it themselves.

This is fine of course, but looking after those elements does require a good level of diligence to avoid unexpected problems. Unfortunately we’ve seen too many examples where a panicked client has called us to advise that their website has gone off-line, subsequently for us to find that they’ve forgotten to renew their domain name or hosting. Whilst this is usually retrievable, there are risks involved, for example an expired domain name left too long can be lost or a website off-line for too long, de-indexed by Google.

With this in mind, what are the key things you need to be looking out for if you do prefer to manage your own web assets and what needs to be done to avoid any problems?

Your dental practice domain name

Your domain name is extremely important as this is effectively the address for your identity on the web. Usually a domain name is registered for one or two years, although it is possible to register for longer than this. As long as the domain is registered to you or your business, then you can use it as the address for your website, blog and emails.

Domains can also be set to “auto renew” and this is the default setting we use for client’s domain names. However, we do request that they notify us if the domain is no longer needed and periodically we have to hop into our domain management portal to update the settings for one of more of the hundreds of domains we look after on behalf of dentists.

If you opt to look after your domain name yourself, you will need to manage the regular renewals to ensure you don’t lose the domain. You will also need to allow us access to the admin panel so we can look after any DNS changes (for routing your website traffic and email etc) on your behalf. Please don’t lose any of your details as problems logging in can result.

Your website, content management system and back-ups

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Invisalign

Using Google Ads for orthodontics promotion – things to consider before you begin

As a supplier of ads services for dentists across the UK, we are often contacted to discuss the viability of using ads for promoting high-value treatments such as orthodontics and implants. The viability question is quite tricky and there is no simple answer; for example in areas where there is a lower level of competition, Google Ads can be very useful indeed and the payback quite excellent.  However, in areas where competition is much higher then it gets a whole lot trickier.

To illustrate my point, let’s take a look at an example of Google Ads for Invisalign in London and what you should expect if you wish to start advertising there.

Monthly budget

To begin I have to stress that you can’t launch a dental ad campaign and have it professionally managed for £500 per month, particularly so in an area with high competition. Click budget alone, per treatment type, would typically be well north of £1000 per month, often two or three times this level. Then add around £500 for a typical management fee and you can see that a substantial budget is required.

Click costs

Typical “top of results” click costs for high-value treatments such as Invisalign in London will range from a few pounds to £10 or more depending on various factors. Well-established accounts with good ad rank and quality scores, will have lower overall click costs; whereas accounts which are less well-established will need to bid more for those high ad placements.

Therein lies a bit of a conundrum for when you start advertising, as it isn’t a level playing field. You may need to bid high to establish yourself and to progressively build better ad ranking and quality scores. Where you are competing against mature accounts with big budgets, this can be difficult to achieve.

Competition from the “big players”

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by AdminPosted on Posted in social

Turn ‘cold’ Invisalign leads into meaningful treatment consultations

It’s very difficult to escape the huge range of ads dentists are using on social media to advertise Invisalign at the moment. Wherever you look, whether it’s on Facebook, Instagram and even more recently, TikTok, there will likely be Invisalign ads in your feed at some point.

This is because social media ads are a proven way to get your treatment offer in front of tens of thousands of people very quickly and then with some focused effort on following-up the leads which result, book some very meaningful consultations and treatments.

However, whilst this sounds easy to achieve, far too many dentists are failing at the point where the enquiries need to be converted from relatively ‘cold’ leads into lucrative new treatments.

So what’s going wrong and why do more fail with social ads than actually succeed?

In this blog we’ll review the types of leads you’ll receive from social media compared to other sources, discuss conversion rates and importantly, what you and your team need to do to make sure your lead follow-up process is effective as possible.

Why are social ad leads the most difficult to convert?

This is perhaps the most important thing to understand before embarking on a dental social ads campaign. These types of ads are presented to people who are essentially engaged in a social activity; communicating with friends or family, posting photographs etc. Those folk are not really searching for products or services as they would be with intent on Google for example, so the resulting enquiries are generally quite a lot more speculative. However, that doesn’t mean that they are pointless; on the contrary, there will be some real “golden nuggets” in there which are well-worth following up. Please see my earlier blog comparing dental social ads to Google Ads for more information.

Why do some dentists fail with the lead conversion process?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in social

What to expect from enquiries generated from social ads vs Google Ads

In an ideal world, all leads and enquiries into dental practices would lead to treatment with minimal input needed from the practice team. However, this isn’t going to happen unfortunately, irrespective of how much we’d like it to. Particularly when you’re advertising for new patients using ads on Facebook and Instagram, you have to expect that quite a number of the leads will be at best speculative and even some of them completely irrelevant.

But why is this, what should you actually expect and how do you minimise the number of folk enquiring who actually have very little intention of proceeding?

Let’s start by taking a look at the types of enquiries you typically receive from different advertising platforms and why they generally vary in quality. This will help the decision making process when deciding where to place your advertising spend.

Google Ads

People searching on Google are usually there with pre-formed intent i.e. they are specifically looking for a product or service. For dentistry, this could be someone searching for teeth-straightening or even more specifically, for a brand of orthodontic appliance such as Invisalign. Of course the same goes for lots of other dental treatments too.

Carefully crafted dental ads and ad campaigns on Google will successfully target those people searching for treatments and hopefully they’ll click through to your landing page to make an enquiry.

So Google ads are very useful for targeting people searching for people who have pre-formed intent and seeking out specific services. But that’s not the whole story as we’ll see shortly.

Facebook and Instagram Ads

These types of ads are quite significantly different – for example they use a combination of text, images and even video to convey the message required. So from a visual perspective they are far more appealing than typical Google Ads.

However, you also need to understand that people using social media platforms are not usually there searching for products and services; they’re there passing the time of day or updating family and friends about their latest ventures. So in many cases, they are not in “buying” mode.

Consequently when an ad is placed in someone’s social feed, it won’t typically be seen by someone who has a pre-formed buying intent at that particular time.

 A few words about ad targeting

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Website

Is the inflated cost some agencies charge for a dentist’s website justified?

There is a well-known saying in the business of dentistry related to inflated prices – affectionately known as the “dental tax”. This is reasonably self-explanatory but if you haven’t come across it before, it refers to suppliers hiking prices to dentists simply because they’ve historically got away with it.

Well, all dentists are rich right? Absolutely not of course and these days the industry is more polarised than ever. Whilst there are clearly lots of established dentists doing very well, there are lots of new entrants at the other end of the scale who are struggling with large loans and trying to build their practices from scratch.

Notwithstanding market forces, is it fair then for dentists to expect to pay higher prices for services when compared to non-dental businesses? I’m pretty sure that the answer to that is “no”.

In today’s blog we’ll take a look at the “dental tax” issue in the field of website design and how several companies are charging way over the odds for the types of websites they’re producing – and why some dentists are still falling for it.

What is the typical price for small business website?

Small non-dental businesses are typically paying £3-5k + vat for their websites. This would be for a website using the industry standard WordPress system and built to a high-standard.

For a comparable dental website, several companies are charging double this and some even more. So what’s the justification, if indeed there is one? Let’s debunk some of the reasons given.

‘Dental website are built to “special” standards’

Whilst there are standards which a dentist’s website must comply with, these are not onerous and easy enough to achieve. Simply referencing the guidance documents from the GDC is going to cover most of what you need. A few agencies with a dental bias have tried to use these requirements to convince dentists that special skills are required, but this is not really the case as you’ll see if you do your homework.

Whilst it’s useful to know your agency has experience with such standards, it certainly doesn’t justify some of the fees currently being touted.

‘Websites for dentists need to look better’

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Instagram

Is Instagram worth your time?

One of the popular questions we are asked by potential new dental clients is “can you make us big on Instagram?” – in short our answer is ‘no’. In today’s blog I’ll take the opportunity to explain why we can’t do that for you and why, probably, you won’t be able to do it yourself either.

So why that “negativity” – surely Instagram is where it’s at and offers a huge potential for dentists seeking new patients? That’s true but the missing link is how much effort does it take to gain the traction you need on Instagram before you start seeing the rewards? Unfortunately the answer is a huge amount of effort and way beyond the team at a typical dental practice.

This may contradict some of those glossy books you may have seen about dentists making it big on Instagram, but whilst it is possible, those examples are very few and far between. They are the exceptions and not the norm unfortunately.

What do you need to do to make a big impact on Instagram?

Before we explain further, it is very important to remember that the majority of the content you publish on Instagram isn’t going to be seen by anybody, very much like Facebook. Even where you’ve managed to get a decent number of followers, in itself a huge task, relatively few of these people will actually see your content. This is because the ‘organic reach’ of your content is deliberately curtailed by the platform to encourage you to buy ads instead.

Whilst this curtailment of reach is currently worse on Facebook, it’s going the same way on Instagram too – perhaps unsurprisingly so as Facebook and Instagram are both part of the Meta organisation. Why would they make it easy for you to promote a dental business on their networks when they can make money from you via advertising instead?

Why can’t agencies do all the work for you?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

Which techniques to use and the results and timescales you should expect

Whether you already run an established dental practice or you’re in the process of setting up a new squat, the topic of digital dental marketing/advertising will almost certainly have gained your attention at some point.

For some, the huge potential of the web for attracting new patients will be second nature and something they are well versed in; whereas for others, it may be an area they know they need to explore in more detail but haven’t ventured there yet. Whichever it is though, it’s undeniable that digital marketing/advertising done well, can be a game-changer for the fortunes of a dental practice and the dentist owner.

Perhaps one of the main questions our team is asked when we are discussing with new clients is “what marketing initiative do I need?” closely followed by “when should I start them?” Then of course, “what should I expect from my investment?”

In today’s blog we’ll take a closer look at those questions and provide some insights to help you get moving with your own marketing campaigns and initiatives.

We’ll also discuss how the type of initiative and to some degree the timing, will depend on the status of the practice at a particular point in time.

Search Engine Optimisation – SEO

I’ve been actively involved with SEO for the best part of 20 years so forgive me if I push it to the top of the list when it comes to promoting a dental practice. The simple fact is that holding prominent ranking positions in Google is still the most effective and sustainable way for bringing new patient enquiries from the web, lots of them.

Whilst you can be quite successful with paid adverts of various types, and more of that later, if you rank well in Google with a high-quality website, then lots of new enquiries will follow. Those enquires won’t stop dead if you suddenly switch the funding off as they would with paid ads, albeit you will still need to invest in the services of an accomplished SEO team to ensure those hard won positions are maintained in the long term.

My guidance is that a dentist should always prioritise Google ranking as soon as possible on the basis that gaining good search results takes time; it certainly isn’t a fast process. So this is a mid to long term initiative but one you need to get cracking with quickly. Unfortunately very few website do well in Google without SEO these days and those that do tend to be in areas with very low levels of competition.

So what are the potential penalties for not investing in SEO?

I think this is quite easily demonstrated by noting that over 70% of all organic traffic from Google for a particular search term goes via the top three results – so getting your web pages there is essential if you are to exploit the huge opportunity Google offers.

The large majority of the rest of the traffic goes via the remaining results on page 1 and very little at all via page 2 results. So unless your web pages feature in the top half of page one, and preferably in the top 3 positions for your main searches, then you’re really missing out. Even if you have a great website, it isn’t going to work well for you unless you have good search positions as well.

How long does SEO take?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

Which of these fads did you invest in but perhaps now regret?

The world of marketing for dentists is quite progressive, with more and more companies entering the space over the last five years or so. As new companies come along, the pressure to introduce “shiny new features” to promote websites and marketing initiatives increases. Consequently we’re seen lots of new gizmos and initiatives appear, not all of them good!

This competition is healthy and helps to drive everyone forwards, however not all of the “must haves” sold to dentists over the years, have proven to be all that was made out when they were originally introduced. Let’s take a look then, at some of those items which once were all the rage but now have been shown to add limited or no value.

Dental apps

The dental app came to the fore six or seven years ago and to the uninitiated, seemed like a good idea. What better than having your dentist’s app on your ‘phone for making an appointment or to seek guidance – or at least that’s what was suggested. As such, many dentists bought into the idea of their own app and spent lots of cash having them developed. Unfortunately, what actually transpired is that very few people actually downloaded those apps, let alone used them.

For those of us “in the know” the idea of a dental app was never really sustainable simply because the idea that people would want a dental app on their ‘phone was somewhat wide of the mark. This became even more tenuous with the advent of mobile optimised, high-performing websites which could be accessed with just a couple of clicks.

As you’ll have guessed, no-one really develops or tries to sell dental apps these days.

Website treatment animations

Do you remember when these were popular? Lots of lurid treatment animations showing how your dentist goes about their work. Not only did they generally not look very nice, they also slowed down your website if you weren’t very careful about how you used them. We actually received feedback from three or four dentists who’d surveyed their patients to check the popularity of the animations on their websites – all of them said that they were hardly used and at best were a distraction.

Over the last few years dentists have realised that those expensive animation packages aren’t really adding much value and have dispensed with them – you hardly see them at all on modern websites now.

Single page websites

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