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In today’s overcrowded and competitive market, you need more than satisfied patients and their pearly whites to attract new patients. Providing great services won’t necessarily result in people lining up in front of your practice.
Coupling your expert services with strategic dental content marketing is, however, an excellent way to set up your practice for success. To get you off to a good start, we consulted our content marketing experts to help us provide the insights you need.
Table of Contents
What Is Dental Content Marketing?
Content marketing for dentists involves the marketing strategy of creating and publishing relevant, high-quality, and informative content online to promote your business. The content should be of value for the reader, so that when they find your website organically, they will trust your practice enough to schedule an appointment.
Dental content marketing can also help you target industry-relevant keywords to rank higher in the search results, boosting your online visibility.
Content Marketing for Dentists: Popular Content Forms
Experts agree that effective dental content marketing can be achieved through a variety of approaches and forms of content. Below are some of the most popular options you can leverage for your practice.
Blogs
Blogging involves regularly publishing new content (mostly articles) on your site to attract new business. Around 56% of marketers state that blogs are effective for generating traffic and an additional 10% highlight that blogging has the biggest return on investment in content marketing.
To land on your website or blog, patients must find it. This is where the importance of blogging comes into play. With the help of strategic keyword research and article optimization, high-quality content can also improve search engine rankings, playing a vital part in your SEO strategy.
Email Marketing
Email marketing allows you to utilize patient emails productively, which won’t only let you run promotions, but also build a stronger relationship with your customers. You can use this approach to create awareness for new services, products, or even discounts.
It’s a less direct marketing strategy that engages your audience and allows for more precise personalization by using the patient’s first name, segmenting your list into different audiences, and targeting them with the content that’s most relevant to them.
You can easily create an email marketing strategy with the help of automation services and templates, which will speed the process up greatly. In the dental sector, emails can be a great way to promote upsells for your patients and send out appointment reminders.
According to Clinton Jiggetts, Founder of Best Fit Digital, simple email subscriptions work very well for measuring return on investment, especially, if dentists have limited technical know-how. It’s not an intrusive way to analyze your performance, while often, subscription tools come with free widgets you can add to your site.
Video Content
Video content is among the best ways to boost visibility quickly. Data suggests that online video has a 92% audience reach across the globe, making it a highly effective content form. There are several possible video options for the dental sector, including:
- Behind-the-scenes footage: Show how a typical day flows in your office, creating a sense of familiarity and building more trust with patients.
- Educational videos: Nearly 36% of adults in the US alone fear the dentist and almost 3% of people in all industrialized countries have dentophobia. Dental procedures may look frightening, so explanatory and educational videos can help patients better understand their purpose and the importance of good dental hygiene. Such videos can build trust with your audience while also establishing you as an expert in the dental field.
- Promotional videos: You can also showcase any products you are offering and highlight the array of services you provide.
- Introductory videos: You can use video content to introduce yourself and your team. Just like the behind-the-scenes videos, this can help establish a more personal bond between your practice, medical team, and patients.
- Dental trends: Leverage video to introduce new trends, react to industry news, latest scientific findings, and other activities that occur in your area of expertise.
- Patient testimonials: A great way to earn social proof, patient testimonials help potential patients get a closer glimpse at your treatments from a customer’s perspective.
Infographics
Your marketing strategy can also highly benefit from infographics. They’re eye-catching and help convey complex information quickly.
You can use infographics to display dental processes, statistics, and other relevant complex information while engaging your audience. Rather than using dull text, infographics represent a colorful alternative that’s easy to digest.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Having a list of these questions can also help you with your SEO efforts and provide instant answers to your visitors.
For instance, users might want to know how dental checkups work, or how your practice handles consultations. The information can be shown in a structured and organized FAQ section on your website.
You can add FAQs to the bottom of blog articles, turn them into social reels or carousels, or place them on dedicated site pages.
As Tony Paris, Founder at AppWT, says, using different types of content won’t only improve variety, but will also help you better determine the formats your audiences engage with the most. “Varying different formats and analyzing engagement helps determine the best content for the audience and platform.”
Benefits of Content Marketing for Dentists
In addition to improving your SEO, dental content marketing can bring your practice and online presence several other benefits. Below is a more expansive list of the advantages of regular content distribution.
- Building credibility and trust
- Education
- Better online visibility
- Patient loyalty
- Cost-effective marketing
- Enhanced patient experiences
Building Credibility and Trust
With educational videos and other informative materials, you can establish yourself as an expert within your industry. Patient testimonials also help build credibility. Positive feedback and real-life stories can show that people are satisfied with your expertise.
Content marketing enables you to address common worries and concerns too. People can feel uneasy when it comes to dental problems and treatments, and having a reliable digital source of comfort can go a long way in fostering trust between your practice and patients.
Education
As discussed above, education is a powerful tool to establish yourself as a leading industry figure in your area. In addition to the valuable information you provide to patients and site visitors, you can also showcase your knowledge, reassure viewers about patient safety and top-notch care, and generally, help them better understand the need for regular dental checkups.
Better Online Visibility
Dental content marketing is an essential pillar of dental SEO. Keyword-optimized, accurate, and high-quality content can help improve your rankings. With the right approach, you can greatly improve local visibility, and gain the upper hand with your direct competitors in the race for patients in your area.
Patient Loyalty
With the help of personalized communication, you can improve your relationship with patients. Blog posts, social posts, and other forms of content can also enable effective practice branding, showcasing the values and mission of your establishment and dental team.
Interactive content like live streaming, quizzes, surveys, and Q&A sessions can also help you create more meaningful relationships and can offer you more insight into your followers’ and existing customers' dental habits.
Cost-Effective Marketing
SEO and content marketing are both less expensive than traditional paid advertising. While online paid ads will generate website traffic and boost conversions instantly, content marketing and optimization can build momentum and a stronger presence which will generate more traffic and leads as time goes by with less effort.
Enhanced Patient Experiences
FAQs, interactive content, educational videos, engaging reels, pre-appointment information, and follow-up content can all help familiarize patients with your services and team. A sense of familiarity can help first-timers have a more convenient initial appointment with you, while targeted follow-up emails can include care tips, treatment-related information, or upcoming visit reminders.
Dental Content Marketing Best Practices
Below are a few useful tips that can help you get the most out of your content marketing efforts.
- Include strong call-to-actions
- Define and understand your audience
- Write high-quality content
- Avoid jargon
- Leverage your social strategy
Include Strong Call-to-Actions
CTAs or call-to-actions are essential in driving conversions in content marketing. Having strong CTAs in your content can help entice your visitors to take action and may eliminate the problem of decision fatigue.
For instance, you can put clear CTAs in your headers, inviting visitors to call or schedule an appointment. Header CTAs are always visible and can be invaluable for swift conversions once a site visitor makes up their mind. Your content, such as social posts or blog articles, should also include CTAs, based on the goals you want to achieve. You can encourage blog readers to browse your articles or invite your social followers to reach out to you for service or promotion details.
Ensure that all your content pages have at least one simple CTA, especially if you want to attract more patients.
Define and Understand Your Audience
When creating content, it’s important to clearly identify your target audience. Ask your team about the questions your followers, patients, and subscribers ask. This can help you choose more relevant topics and create a tone that’s informative and reassuring at the same time.
Making an effort to understand your audience better is essential. Jiggetts says that sometimes, a simple Google search is enough to get started.
“Leverage information on Google. Find related searches to topics that cover your practice and build blogs and on-site content around that information. Google is already telling you what the likely patients are searching.”
Write High-Quality Content
Articles, infographics, educational pieces, and videos all need to adhere to the highest standards of healthcare content marketing. Ensure that you provide accurate, reliable, and relevant information. Also, aim to discuss every topic in detail. To enhance your SEO efforts and help your readers learn more about dental health in a simpler and more digestible way, consider using the content pillar method.
Gabriel Bertolo, Founder of Radiant Elephant, tells us that detailed and high-quality blog articles provide the best engagement in the dental marketing world.
“I have found that blog articles and infographics have performed the best for the dental niche. Articles discussing the different treatments and "10 best..." type of articles really help the overall rankings and bring in new leads. Infographics are super useful for getting great links from relevant websites.”
Repurposing old content to generate new leads and to cover more ground with your content marketing efforts is an excellent idea too. For instance, if you have leftover printed brochures and leaflets, you may use their digitized versions to enhance your social media campaigns.
Lastly, you can also use your data to publish original research and ultimately boost your authority.
Avoid Jargon
Relevant and high-quality content can be useless if your audience can’t understand what you’re saying. Using overly technical language can lead to confusion, a decrease in trust, less time spent on your website, and a drop in conversions.
When creating content, opt for simple language and take your time to explain complicated terms, abbreviations, procedures, and everything else that may lead to confusion. Patients rarely use jargon while searching Google, so highly technical pieces of content may fail to perform well from an SEO standpoint.
Leverage Your Social Strategy
Marketing experts know that effective content marketing isn’t only about your website, email campaigns, and SEO efforts. Good content is also the building block of any sound social strategy.
Facebook, X, Instagram, and other social platforms can help you share your blog posts and videos and can help you with other content-producing efforts, such as streaming. Furthermore, social media can help you strengthen your online presence, not just with content, but with community management too.
Social media gives you more space to engage with your audience in a truly wholesome way. A strong social presence can further increase trust, especially if you encourage people to share their experiences with you on social platforms. You may also leverage user-generated content, which is a splendid way to showcase your expertise, build trust, and humanize your practice with real-life success stories and experiences.
Dental Content Marketing Takeaways
Content is king in the digital realm, and this ultimately holds to the dental sector too. Quality content can help you engage patients, nurture better patient relationships, make your services and products more accessible, and bring dental procedures closer to people who may fear regular dental checkups.
Strong content marketing can help you boost your visibility online and establish your practice as the go-to dental office in your local area.
Dental Content Marketing FAQs
Is SEO necessary for content marketing?
SEO without content marketing is less efficient and vice versa. While you can perform content marketing without SEO, you will be missing out on precious ranking opportunities, keywords, topics, and user trends that will help you make your content more relevant aside from boosting your online visibility.
Should you invest in email marketing?
Yes. Email marketing typically offers great ROI, and in most cases, is one of the most cost-effective ways to build better relationships with patients, while keeping your practice in their minds.
Where should you encourage your patients to leave reviews?
Patients can leave a review on all directories where your practice is listed. Yelp, Google My Business, and Facebook are only a few options. You can also set up a dedicated testimonials page on your site. Just ensure that the reviews are authentic.
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