{"id":456,"date":"2012-04-18T10:18:12","date_gmt":"2012-04-18T10:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/?p=456"},"modified":"2012-04-18T10:34:39","modified_gmt":"2012-04-18T10:34:39","slug":"high-performance-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/dental-website-design\/high-performance-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"Dental Marketing Tool Kit &#8211; The Essentials"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Part 1 &#8211; The Dental Website<\/h2>\n<p>Welcome to part 1 in my series covering the essential components of the modern dental marketing tool-kit. Here we will look at the hub for all of the dental marketing activity, the <strong>dental website<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/u2zUO1AxHZE?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>Key features:<\/h2>\n<h3>Visually appealing with clear text and navigation<\/h3>\n<p><a title=\"Dental websites for high performance marketing\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/dental-websites.html\">Dental websites<\/a> should not just look great but also be skillfully structured to guide your visitors through to the contact form or to encourage them to pick up the phone. This is known as &#8220;conversion&#8221; and its <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">the<\/span> primary function of the website. Text should be clear and concise and the navigation intuitive and logical.<\/p>\n<h3>Consistent branding<\/h3>\n<p>Your branding should be carried through the website consistently &#8211; this includes your logo, colour scheme and strap line. Keep this consistent with your off-line branding so that your <a title=\"Signs for dental practices\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/dental-signs.html\">dental practice signage<\/a>, literature and web properties all convey the same message.<\/p>\n<h3>Compelling calls-to-actions (CTA)<\/h3>\n<p>Our user experience testing (UX), shows us that website visitors scan web pages very quickly and are easily distracted unless something interesting catches their eye. Typically this reaction happens in just a few seconds so you don&#8217;t have much time to make that all-important impression. Carefully placed calls-to-action or &#8220;hot buttons&#8221; advertising special offers, links to your contact details, USPs etc are all critical to assist the conversion process.<\/p>\n<h3>Clear topic modelling<\/h3>\n<p>Your dental website should be structured with clear topic modelling. This means that information should be structured logically so its clear for visitors <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">and<\/span> for Google. For example, key treatments should have a dedicated page so that humans and search engines know exactly what its about. Google is easily confused if all your treatments are crammed into a single page and won&#8217;t rank it preferentially. This &#8220;granularity&#8221; of information is very important even within treatment categories &#8211; for example, if you want to write about &#8216;all on 4 implants&#8217;, try to give it a separate page and don&#8217;t be tempted to cram it in there with your other implant text. Your designer and <a title=\"Dental SEO for dentist websites\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/dentist-search-engine-optimisation.html\">dental SEO<\/a> guy should discuss these issues with you when the site is being planned.<\/p>\n<h3>Good quality images<\/h3>\n<p>Go on, I&#8217;ll say it, &#8216;a picture paints a thousand words&#8217;. This is very true and it&#8217;s particularly important to ensure that you dental website makes the right impression. We encourage our clients to compile a library of &#8216;before and after&#8217; patient images that can be added to the website to showcase their work. A &#8216;pro&#8217; photo shoot covering the practice, team and patients is more cost-effective than you might think and the images can be used for the web and print.<\/p>\n<h3>Clear contact details<\/h3>\n<p>Your contact details should be prominent so that users don&#8217;t need to go looking for them. We recommend the use of &#8216;mini&#8217; contact forms on key treatment pages to encourage potential clients to get in touch. A Google map, linked to your Places account and embedded in the website is also important. Telephone numbers should be &#8220;click-to-call&#8221; compatible for ease of use on mobile devices.<\/p>\n<h3>Dental video<\/h3>\n<p>Perhaps the most important tool for converting visitors to enquiries is video &#8211; both to provide an overview of the practice and team and for those critical patient testimonials. More about this in a later blog.<\/p>\n<h3>Treatment animations<\/h3>\n<p>Dental treatment animations are informative and help to make a web page &#8216;sticky&#8217; i.e. grabbing the visitors attention. They are also good to help educate you patients about a wide range of treatment options. So treatment animations are great for new site visitors and a time saving reference point for your existing patients.<\/p>\n<h3>The e-newsletter sign-up form<\/h3>\n<p>Gaining new clients is important but holding on to existing clients is even more important. Many dentists fail to stay in touch with their client base other than sending out a 6 monthly check-up reminder. Modern e-newsletter tools are extremely convenient and should be used for regular communication with patients &#8211; news, offers etc. New sign-ups to your marketing list are easily captured via a simple form on your website.<\/p>\n<h3>Blogging<\/h3>\n<p>The blog is my personal favourite marketing tool. Google loves new content and broadly speaking, websites with bigger foot-prints and regularly updated content fare much better in Google. Oh, and patients like to see your news too! A customised blog integrated into your website and regularly updated is another key marketing tool. More about this in a later blog.<\/p>\n<h3>Social Media<\/h3>\n<p>This is a substantial topic and worthy of its own blog in the coming weeks where I&#8217;ll cover the &#8216;pros and cons&#8217; and &#8216;hows and how nots&#8217;. Suffice to say at this point that anyone who is serious about their online marketing will be looking to integrate their website and blog with the main social media channels.<\/p>\n<h3>Regulatory compliance<\/h3>\n<p>Your dental website must be compliant with all relevant regulatory bodies including the GDC, CQC and ICO. Your designer should be fully conversant with all of these requirements and DDA accessibility laws.<\/p>\n<h3>Google prominence<\/h3>\n<p>This is essential! 60% of all traffic to websites is commanded by the top three positions in Google. Suffice to say at this point that the site must be optimised for Google prominence and then promoted to achieve a great ranking position. I will cover this is in greater detail soon.<\/p>\n<h3>Measuring the return on investment &#8211; Google Analytics<\/h3>\n<p>All dental websites should be integrated with Google Analytics from launch day. This simple, free tool will tell you all you need to know about your website visit statistics and how the site is performing overall.<\/p>\n<h3>Content management (CMS)<\/h3>\n<p>You may wish to consider a CMS to make your own updates to the website or optionally use your marketing partner to look after that for you. You should seek guidance on the cost\/benefit provided by a CMS &#8211; it may be more cost-effective to go with this type of system if you think you will need lots of site updates. Alternatively, &#8216;pay-as-you-go&#8217; support from your marketing partner may prove more cost effective.<\/p>\n<h3>The &#8216;techie&#8217; bit &#8211; your website coding and hosting<\/h3>\n<p>A Ferrari with a Mini engine is not much use at all! Similarly, a nice looking website that is built on poor quality coding (the bit that makes it all work) will not perform well. So make sure your designer uses best practice coding techniques (check W3C compliance) to ensure that your website is future proof, works well in all browsers, loads quickly and performs well for Google ranking. Also check to make sure that your website hosting is &#8216;business class&#8217;, fast, secure and regularly backed-up. Don&#8217;t be tempted to skimp on cheap hosting deals.<\/p>\n<h2>Summary<\/h2>\n<p>The list above captures the key elements you need to consider when embarking on your dental marketing campaign and the development of your dental website. In the coming weeks I&#8217;ll be looking more closely at some of those elements including the dental blog, social media, search engine optimisation (SEO) and dental video marketing that complement the website hub and help drive more business to your practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Part 1 &#8211; The Dental Website Welcome to part 1 in my series covering the essential components of the modern dental marketing tool-kit. Here we will look at the hub for all of the dental marketing activity, the dental website:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dental-website-design"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456","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=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":495,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions\/495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}