Did you know that the dental market in the United States may see a growth of up to $15 billion by the year 2027?
There will never be a shortage of dental patients. People want to make sure that their teeth are healthy and straight, so dentists can rest assured that their services will be in high demand. However, that doesn’t mean you won’t need a strong plan for your dentist marketing.
Dentists still rely on dental ads to get new patients. Investing time and money in a dental marketing strategy is no longer optional in this day and age. And with marketing as a whole changing drastically, you need to stay on top of the latest developments.
Keep reading as we discuss some of the most recent trends in dental marketing.
Dentist Marketing Is Centralizing Itself into Larger DSOs
DSOs, or dental support organizations, are starting to become the new norm for dentistry. For decades, dentistry was focused on practices owned by a single dentist serving a local area. As the dentist population ages, this culture of mom-and-pop clinics may be on the way out the door.
Instead, DSOs are buying up practices across the country. Dentistry is becoming a lot like chain restaurants, where a single DSO may serve an entire city or state.
As such, these large, overarching organizations must unify their dental marketing strategy under a single umbrella. Namely, they need websites that can scale with their brand. In many cases, these websites feel disjointed and fragmented.
Perhaps the best solution is to have a centralized website that serves every practice in the region. Like a standard tenant’s login portal, patients can simply log in and schedule appointments and do their billing.
Content That Caters More Closely to Patient Concerns
Times are getting tough, and things are getting more expensive. Dentistry has always been something of a luxury, and that does not look to be changing anytime soon. As such, people are going to visit their local practice far less often.
To generate more visits and more interest, dentists should focus on producing useful content for their patients. This could be anything from answering common questions to addressing specific situations.
Think of this like an FAQ section, but in the form of articles and videos. Becoming a repository of useful knowledge will make you the ideal choice when a patient does go in for a procedure. Having generic, boring, low-quality articles is no longer a viable strategy.
Branching out to orthodontic consulting services and other related medical services will make you stand out from the competition
The User’s Website Experience Is Still As Important As Ever
Like many hospitals, clinics, and other medical services, dentist websites tend to be lackluster. They seem to come from an era already gone, with dated graphics. They are often unintuitive and slow.
Having a low-quality website doesn’t just harm your SEO. It harms the patient experience across the board.
People want more options than just paying at the counter or over the phone. They want to be able to manage their billing online and schedule all their appointments there as well. Having this service available 24/7 relieves the burden on your front desk staff as well.
Unique websites that have a coherent design philosophy will prosper. The rest, on the other hand, will likely fail as the drive to DSOs increases.
Market Yourself As Forward Thinking and Technologically Advanced
Perhaps the biggest reason people hate dentists so much is because of all the discomfort. Many of the methods dentists use have been in practice for decades and decades. For good reason, nobody likes to bite down on an x-ray reflector that cuts into their gums and hold still for the x-ray.
New technologies such as intraoral scanners make the process more comfortable and easy to do. Best of all, these technologies are not going to break your budget.
This could be a huge pull for new customers. If you can make a person’s dental experience less painful, then you are already better than the majority of the competition. After all, the companies that are most successful are often those that stand out the most.
Companies Continue to Sink or Swim Depending on Their Social Media Presence
Things have not changed much since social media became the norm over a decade ago. With every passing year, more and more people get their information from social media. It only makes sense that they will begin to expect their doctors and dentists to have a presence there.
Being present and active on social media will make you appear modern and up-to-date with the times. It gives you a chance to interact organically with the community. It makes it a lot easier to communicate offers and sales.
It also allows you to get a better reading of what people are thinking. If there is discontent with your services, you will find it on social media. And if you aren’t there to moderate, then the trolls and malcontents will take over any discussion about you.
It’s well worth the effort and the time to hire a social media manager. They can be your arm in the digital world, to make sure that you are staying up-to-date with the times.
Find More Dentist Marketing Tips
Dentist marketing is tough as we see a push towards DSOs and marketing that prioritizes the digital. The days are over when a dentist simply ran their office in their local community. Having a modern marketing campaign will be the deciding factor between dentistry that fail and those that succeed.
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