manage your campaigns<\/a> and very likely your SEO too \u2013 DIY is a risky thing in the sophisticated world of ad management these days.<\/p>\nSo unless your budget is pushing up towards \u00a31k\/month (lower competition area) and well over \u00a31k\/month (higher competition area) then to be honest you shouldn\u2019t expect much. There are some exceptions to this and a diligent marketing company will complete a full and transparent analysis to let you know where you stand before you start.<\/p>\n
How capable\/willing is your local team with regard to assisting?<\/strong> \u2013 Marketing can be split into two main categories \u2013 \u201cdone for you\u201d and \u201cdone by you\u201d, however there is some overlap. It is completely wrong to think that everything can be outsourced (although lots of dentists still think that) and as we\u2019ve discussed elsewhere in this blog, your team will need to play a significant role. For example, securing reviews is very much in the hands of the local team, as is the management of day-to-day social media activity if you want to do it properly. If you don\u2019t want to get involved like that then you should expect your overall efforts to be compromised, and quite significantly too.<\/p>\nGoogle and Facebook (Meta)<\/strong> \u2013 you might wonder why I\u2019ve included these guys in the factors which can affect your marketing performance, but they can and do, often very significantly. For example, Facebook regularly changes the ways it validates how ads can be used on their platform meaning that what worked previously doesn\u2019t work now. Similarly Google periodically makes huge changes to the way they rank websites and you can go from being top of page one to half way down or worse, in the space of a few hours. Those types of changes can have big effects in a short space of time.<\/p>\nDigital dental practice promotion \u2013 different strategies, different timescales<\/h3>\n
There are four main strategies to consider which are web based. Of course you will also need to concentrate on the usual techniques to promote \u201cword-of-mouth\u201d recommendations via your team and existing patients \u2013 these off-line techniques are not discussed here but are equally important.<\/p>\n
Paid ads<\/strong> \u2013 this technique can be used to gain traction in the short term and it\u2019s possible to publish ads on Facebook and Google very quickly, typically within a day. However that doesn\u2019t guarantee instant success, particularly given the increased competition we mentioned earlier. The quality of your ads and how popular they prove to be will also play a big part, so it\u2019s not simply a case of \u201cpublish and forget\u201d \u2013 you will need skilled intervention to gain initial momentum and then maintain your campaigns to keep them fresh and delivering.<\/p>\nOrganic social media<\/strong> \u2013 this is more of a mid to long term strategy and takes time to build up. Again it\u2019s not simply a case of publishing a few posts and expecting them to generate traction; you have to be consistent and seek the usual likes, shares and comments to make sure your messages get seen. This is not something to outsource \u2013 the dental teams that makes organic social work are the ones that manage it themselves, not the ones who outsource to third-party companies who spin the same generic content to lots of different accounts.<\/p>\nEmail marketing<\/strong> \u2013 this is another medium to long term strategy but one you need to start working on immediately. Building a solid email list whereby you can send out periodic updates is a proven way to maintain contact with existing patients and to keep your business \u201ctop of mind\u201d when they are making decisions about more complex, expensive treatments. Start your email list quickly and then grow and nurture it.<\/p>\nSearch engine optimisation (SEO)<\/strong> \u2013 this is a \u201cmust\u201d if you are to make the most of your website and when you consider that new patient acquisition via websites is second only to word-of-mouth, it makes absolute sense. It goes without saying that you also need a high-quality website but if it languishes on page two of Google, then it\u2019s nearly pointless. Ideally your website need to be in the top three positions on page one and with a prominent presence in the \u201clocal pack\u201d (maps) results too.<\/p>\nSo how long does it take to gain useful Google rankings? Again this depends, not just on the initial quality of your website but also on the strength of the local competition. Whilst you can gain prominence within a couple of months, in areas of higher competition it can take considerably longer. Typically we aim to get a website onto page one within the first three months and then move it higher progressively, into the upper half of the page within 6 \u2013 9 months and then on from there into the top three positions. Ultimately the goal is position one but this can take over a year to achieve and even longer where competition is significant \u2013 remember that your competitors will almost certainly be using SEO too. SEO is mid to long term strategy and a very important one, so please don\u2019t neglect it.<\/p>\n
Summary<\/h3>\n
There are various digital strategies which can be used for gaining and then maintaining dental patients on the web. All will be impacted by the external factors noted above and you need to consider and understand them before you start. Underestimate any of those and you can end up disappointed.<\/p>\n
Each of the techniques has different uses, objectives and timescales to return. Whilst they can be deployed selectively, it also important to add that successful practices tend to use all of them to create holistic programmes covering all of the main digital channels.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019d like to get started for your own practice or perhaps need a review of what you already have in place, please contact the team at Dental Media on 01332 672548<\/strong>. We\u2019ll provide you with a transparent assessment, realistic estimate of costs and a proposal to take you forwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Short, mid and long term strategies for new patient acquisition One of the key questions dentists ask when considering dental marketing initiatives is, unsurprisingly, \u201cwhen should I expect a return?\u201d Whilst there is no definite answer to this, simply because …<\/p>\n
When should you expect dental marketing to deliver results?<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11407,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-techniques"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11900"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11902,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11900\/revisions\/11902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}