With so many dental marketing strategies out there, it’s easy to choose the wrong one to help grow your practice. Below, we’ve listed 8 dental marketing strategies that will do more harm than good.
Staying with the same strategy forever
Employing a modern marketing strategy is crucial when trying to grow your patient base and stand out from other practices.
With such fierce competition, making sure your online presence stays up-to-date with the latest trends, best practices, and strategies will help ensure you aren’t left in the dust.
Stuffing keywords into your content
Back when people first started using search engines, it was easy to manipulate where your website showed up in a search by just adding a bunch of keywords onto a single page. This resulted in bad user experience and came across poorly once a potential patient was on a page.
Fortunately, Google figured out marketers were abusing the system and that patients did not respond to dentists who practiced keyword stuffing. The practice now results in Google penalizing your site and demoting it in rankings or even removing it altogether!
Badgering your patients
There is nothing wrong with using patient data for marketing communications. Sending automated emails, monthly newsletters, home mailers, or text messages can all be useful tools — so long as you do 3 things:
1. Have your patient’s explicit permission to contact them
2. Be respectful with your communications — both the content and the frequency
3. Use proper security and best practices to mitigate HIPAA violation risk
Not following these 3 tenets is considered spam marketing and will do more harm than good in your relationship with your patients.
Not saying goodbye to an outdated website
An outdated and poorly designed website is nearly as bad as having no website at all. Some common problems we see with old websites include…
• Slower site loading speed, which hurts Google rankings
• Difficulty navigating on a mobile device
• Duplicate content (more on this later)
• A design that inadequately reflects your brand’s values
All of these can result in a lack of trust from potential patients and fewer new patient appointments.
Not working on your online reputation
Negative reviews can have an irreparably negative impact on your practice’s online reputation and ability to attract new patients.
Since most patients will only see the most recent reviews, managing your online reputation needs constant attention.
Make sure to...
• Monitor and maintain your presence on all online review sites
• Respond to reviews about your practice
• Keep tabs on the general patient sentiment toward your practice
Using duplicate content
If the content on your website is nearly identical to another site’s, your google search rankings will suffer. Many agencies reuse content on multiple sites, doing a serious disservice to the practices they work with.
This duplicate content not only hurts your website’s performance, but creates a boring and generic user experience. Your website needs original writing to be successful.
Not tracking results
Collecting and analyzing the results of your dental marketing strategy is crucial and will help you understand what’s working and worth your time.
There’s no point in doing any marketing if you don’t track the results and adjust based on what’s successful and unsuccessful.
Going about it alone
The world of marketing is constantly changing — getting it right and staying ahead of the competition requires constant attention and someone who understands and can implement the latest proven methods.
The person or agency managing your marketing needs to….
• Create and implement an effective strategy designed to meet your goals
• Track results and make changes as necessary
• Understand how to effectively represent your brand, voice, and personality
Don’t leave this to overworked front office staff or others at your practice without the necessary expertise.
We believe the best way to get results and truly grow your practice is by hiring an online marketing agency. This allows you to stay on top of what you’re great at — creating an unbelievable patient experience.
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