Successful dental marketing depends in large part on your responsiveness. The expertise you’ve earned and apply to your patient’s oral health gives you an amount of leverage.
But how good is that expertise if you aren’t sharing it?
Current and potential new patients connect with you most often online or through referrals. Your website platform places your dental authority front and center. A quick, authentic, and satisfying response improves your patients relationships.
Those who search for you are doing so because they’re experiencing pain, seek knowledge about their health, or want a related solution. Your responsiveness is vital.
1. Use email to stay top-of-mind
It’s easy to abuse email. This happens when you misunderstand the value of permission.
Email marketing (that works) is permission-based. An opt-in to your list comes with trust.
A patient’s trust gives you opportunity to respond. But not in a spammy, salesy, or annoying way.
Rather, make sure your email content is appropriate to their trust in you:
- Connect and inform with “story.” Begin each email with a brief relevant story, a trending news item, or a quote or anecdote that informs your reader.
- Be conversational. Write the email as if you’re speaking to ONE person. And lose the formality – who talks face to face like that?
- Inform more than you sell. Salesly cliches and overt promotions will most often go unread or end up in the “junk folder.” Promote but do so without hype or dominating your messages with the latest “deal-of-the-week.”
- Focus on your subject line. Your email delivery, open rate, and readability depends on it! Infuse each subject line with a “gotta-read-this” benefit.
2. Strengthen patient connections through social media
Connecting is the core of social media. It’s really about engagement because that implies an active, ongoing relationship.
- Give the impression that your social media followers are part of your “tribe” or “squad.” This happens through consistent, responsive interaction that feels “human.”
- Link and share content that’s relevant to your expertise, enriches your patient’s lives, answers common questions, and solves real-world problems.
- Keep a balance between content and culture. By “culture,” I’m referring to your practice’s daily environment, office shenanigans, or other peek-behind-the-curtain stories of interest. Also, don’t overdo the “Like-our-page” promotions. That can come across as manipulative if used too frequently.
- Take privacy seriously. Like email, social media exposure should be permission based. As in, no patient photos unless you’ve obtained a written okay (e.g. HIPAA).
- Review and respond routinely and regularly to all comments. Thank them when they’re posibive, and be gracious when they aren’t. Respond to any negativity with a “how-can-I-make-this-right” attitude.
Dental marketing success is about paying attention. It starts with your patient and how you position yourself to respond in a timely and effective way.
Also, check out our dental patient financing solutions.
