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Apps for marketing a dental practice – a good investment?

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Is a customised app for dentists a good idea?

In recent weeks we’ve been approached a couple of times to give advice about apps for dentists – not the type which provide clinical advice and technical references but for marketing purposes.

I thought it worthwhile to summarise our recommendations and thoughts on where your own dedicated app should sit in your list of dental marketing priorities.

But first, for those who are unfamiliar, it may be useful to define what an app actually is.

What is an app?

Apps are actually small piece of software typically designed to run on a particular platform e.g. a mobile ‘phone and with a specific function or set of functions beyond the running of the platform itself. There are thousands of different apps, with functions that range from bringing you the weather to helping with your accounting. Apps are usually “platform specific” so for example designed to run on an IPhone or an Android device. Some apps are cross-platform compliant but very few of them work as well as an app that is designed for the specific (native) device. As we will see later, this is one of the major weaknesses of apps.

Apps are normally downloaded to a user’s device for example from the Apple “app store” or from the Google Marketplace “play” equivalent. However, there are many sources of apps available.

Apps for marketing

As you might imagine, there a lots of apps designed for marketing purposes – in the dental world this includes apps that allow you to submit a picture of your smile for a smilemakeover consultation, through to apps designed to help you book on-line appointments.

There is obviously some interesting potential here but where should such apps sit in your list of dental marketing priorities?
Let’s take a quick look at some pros and cons before summarising:

Pros

  • a good opportunity to differentiate – the vast majority of practices don’t have bespoke apps
  • potential to improve your patient’s experience by making things easier for them e.g. on-line booking, appointment reminders, an “aligner timer” etc.
  • the opportunity to demonstrate that you are in tune with the latest technology
  • facilitate “push” marketing – certain apps allows you to broadcast marketing messages to your users.

Cons

  • development cost – significantly more than a mobile site or updating your main website
  • generally not platform agnostic – this can mean you end up developing twice or three times to ensure that your app is suitable for a wide range of users on different devices.
  • updates are frequent (cost x several platforms).
  • do patients really want their dentist’s app on their ‘phone? Possibly but I suggest this is only where it makes a real difference for them e.g. saving time by integrating with an on-line booking system or for receiving recall updates. But is this actually any better than the simple systems which they are already used to e.g. the humble text message? A survey we conducted for one of clients suggested that patients were at best indifferent.

Summary

A bespoke dental app for your practice has some interesting potential and should not be discounted. However, there are a number of other proven resources which come ahead of investment in an app. We recommend making sure that the primary marketing tools, your main website, optimised mobile presence, social media, email marketing and blog are all in place and working effectively first. If they are and where budget allows, then it’s time to investigate your own app.

If you’d like to discuss dental apps or any other aspect of dental marketing, please call our team on 01332 672548 and we’ll be pleased to provide no-obligation advice.