Web marketing experience and results

by AdminPosted on August 28, 2014 Posted in Advice

Making a difference for UK dental practices.

The following testimonial from one of our clients, Hoburne Dental, spurred me to summarise how Dental Media help hundreds of UK dentists with their dental marketing; raising their profile in the local community and securing a regular stream of new patient enquiries from the internet.

“I cannot begin to tell you how much deciding to choose Dental Media has improved our business visibility. 33% of our 43 new private patients so far this month have quoted our website as the main reason to come here”

So just behind word-of-mouth, the website was way ahead of any other referral mechanism for this practice – a very pleasing result. The practice transferred to us from another well known dental marketing company after the client reported poor results and unsustainable monthly fees.

So what makes Dental Media different?

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Dental Marketing – How The Practice Team Can Help

by AdminPosted on August 22, 2014 Posted in Advice

Are the days of fully outsourced marketing over?

I would love to say that we, as dental marketers, could handle 100% of your practice marketing requirements in full and leave you, as dentists, to get on with your clinical role. However if I did, I’d be doing you a disservice.

Like all businesses, dentists need to understand which elements of marketing can be outsourced but also which elements need overview and input from within the practice team.

In this blog we will explore the relationship between the practice and 3rd party marketing companies in more detail. But first, a little bit of history….

How it used to be done

Before dentistry became increasingly competitive, even just 4 or 5 years back, a decent website with a good search engine position was really all you needed. This, coupled with some decent practice signage and a reasonable reputation for service, would stand you in good stead. Dental marketing companies could build you a decent site, throw a few hundred cheap back-links at it and off you went. However, these days, things are somewhat different and a more sophisticated approach is needed.

So what changed?

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Website Security – Why https Now Helps Your Google Rank Too

by AdminPosted on August 18, 2014 Posted in Advice

Benefits from publishing your dental website with full encryption

Before we explore why publishing your practice website with full encryption can offer some great advantages, here’s a quick recap on what it actually means.

To use a familiar example, when you visit the site of your on-line bank and log into your account, the website address will be prefixed with https rather than the regular http and a small padlock symbol will appear adjacent to it.

This is telling you that anything that you enter on your screen will be encrypted before transmission to the web server and only decrypted on receipt. This means that anyone who is looking to intercept any data on route will be foiled. The levels of encryption vary but even at the most basic level, it is virtually impossible to decrypt data which is transferred in this way.

In the dental context, there are circumstances where data needs to be encrypted too. For example, where sensitive patient information is sent via a referral contact form, then the GDC guidelines advise that this should be encrypted. The information can then be retrieved into the safe keeping of the practice network using another encrypted connection.

Latest news from Google regarding encrypted websites

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Dental websites and standards compliance

by AdminPosted on August 12, 2014 Posted in Advice

Is it straightforward to make a practice website standards compliant?

The answer to this question is “yes” – as long as you know what you are doing.

Whilst some marketing companies would have you think that compliance is a complex issue and try to differentiate their services on the back of it, the honest answer is that it’s quite straightforward to achieve and should be built into all new websites as standard.

Of course, you also need to check if your existing website is compliant and, where necessary, add the required features to bring it up to standard. Again, this is not too difficult to achieve.

Which standards are relevant?

The main standards to consider when preparing your new dental website are those of the GDC and the ICO; however it is also worth understanding certain disability discrimination and advertising standards laws and how these could also affect you.

GDC standards

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The planning process for new dental websites – the design questionnaire

by AdminPosted on August 6, 2014 Posted in Advice

Working with you to design your new practice website

One of the main reasons why dentists choose to work with Dental Media is our reputation for providing truly bespoke services and not requiring clients to fit into pre-configured website design packages. Each project we undertake is based on a detailed review process which we carry out in conjunction with the practice team.

This allows us to understand not simply the basics of the services offered, e.g. which treatments, but also the ethos of the practice, it’s key differentiators and selling points and also the preferred target market.

So whether the first objective is to get a foot-hold on the web and your budget is small, or if you want a 60 page website with full content management, you can be assured that we will work closely with you to deliver the best possible outcome. Our smaller projects are subject to the same rigorous design standards as larger ones with bigger budgets. We know that small websites will likely expand as the practice itself develops; consequently we don’t lumber any clients with low-spec, feature-limited sites that fail to create the right impression.

Putting it simply, all of our new websites for dentists, small or large are fully featured and look great too. The price difference comes with the scope of the site, for example how many pages you need and if you need a content management system.

Understanding your needs

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