Confused with online advertising

[daniel]

Hello,
I'm a young dentist based in Minnesota. I'm trying to grow my practice online, but am overwhelmed with all the marketing options. Some marketing agents have talked to me about:
* SEO
* Google adwords - search, mobile, display network?
* Facebook
* Various YP paid indexes
* I thought about starting a blog but I'm not great in writing stuff

I have a budget that I can use to advertise in one of these channels (maybe two), but not enough to try them all... How do I know where to start?
Some of my dentist friends said they don't believe in online advertising. Do dentists advertise online at all? From your experience, which channel is most effective?

Thanks,
Daniel

 

[Jenn1fer]

Hello,
I'm a young dentist based in Minnesota. I'm trying to grow my practice online, but am overwhelmed with all the marketing options. Some marketing agents have talked to me about:
* SEO
* Google adwords - search, mobile, display network?
* Facebook
* Various YP paid indexes
* I thought about starting a blog but I'm not great in writing stuff

I have a budget that I can use to advertise in one of these channels (maybe two), but not enough to try them all... How do I know where to start?
Some of my dentist friends said they don't believe in online advertising. Do dentists advertise online at all? From your experience, which channel is most effective?

Thanks,
Daniel

Yes. Dentists do advertise online. A lot of advertising you do online, you can do for free and / or low cost.

You will need a website that looks professional that describes your practice, services offered, staff, and yourself to send people to. A website is a valuable sales tool to attract new clients. A lot of people will visit your website to check you out, get a "feel" for if you would be a good fit for them or not before ever calling the office. It is worth putting a little money into having a professional website made if you currently do not have a website.

SEO
There are things you can do on your website, (on site SEO), and things that you can do off your website that will help your site appear in a decent spot in search results. On site SEO includes things like keywords or phrases used in your textcopy, high quality content, internal links,... Off site SEO includes things like links on other peoples sites, Twitter posts and mentions, press releases, article submissions, paid advertising,... A lot of which you can do yourself, have a staff member do, or hire someone. Be careful when hiring a SEO person or business because there are a lot of snake oil salesmen in the SEO world.

Google AdWords
Trial and error. You can set a budget as to the max you want to spend. There is a lot of information from Google and misc places that can help you choose what is right for you.

Facebook
Facebook is a way to get noticed and potential new patients. Create a Facebook page for the office and use it to network with other dentists, assistants and hygienists, and patients. You can also buy Facebook ads that are GEO targeted. You set a budget and have to pay each time someone clicks on your ad. There's a lot of information on the Facebook help pages and there are ways to also use Facebook for free exposure.

YP - Yellow Pages online or Yahoo Places?

Blog
You can have a blog for your business that updates patients on what is going on in the dental practice as well as provide practical information and tips. How to get your child to brush and floss their teeth? Is whitening your teeth right for you? How to properly care for partials and dentures? Which over-the-counter whitening products are okay to use? Talk about any specials or discounts you might offer. The ins and out of dental insurance. Talk about any new procedures or products you use and why. You can have guest bloggers who write dental articles for your blog. You can pay to have dental articles written or purchase articles from an article source. You can also use the blog to help boost your website ranking as part of your overall SEO strategy.

It's not like you only have to choose one or two online marketing options to invest your money in. Some things you can do yourself or spend a small amount of money on. You can go the route of hiring a marketing specialist, just do your homework before hiring one because some people and/or businesses will promise a whole lot or they realise this isn't your strong point and will use it to their advantage.

Just remember that advertising online is not just about placing a link or making a website go live on the web and you are going to be flooded with new patients by the end of the week.



DentalHealthBlog.com
An educational blog about all things dentistry related, written in an easy to understand way.

 

[Douglas]

Networking with your online community

You also need to think about contacting your local online community for referrals and links. This will help you to increase your online profile.

This is not a case of just posting links on forums, rather it is building up a reputation where people want to link to your valid content.

Forums and message boards however are a good place to start. If you become a trusted member in answering questions you can often leave your website link in your signature.

There are also companies that will perform this service for you and call it 'link building'. Be warned though, some of them employ underhanded tactics to gain links.

Kind regards,

Care Dental

 

[Rodrick Etienne]

Hello Daniel,

First off, I applaud you for starting your own dental practice, because we all know that starting and running a business can be tough work, otherwise everyone would do it.

Congrats on that!

I understand that the world of marketing can be very overwhelming with all the new marketing strategies, new platforms, software, services and the list goes on...

One person says this is the way to go and the other totally contradicts it.

Trust me, I understand where you're coming from.

Here's the good news...

I'm not confused and I know what works when it comes to bringing in more patients into your practice...

Not to sound cocky or anything.

Trust me, it's taken me a great deal of effort in time, money (lots of it), and effort to weed out all the Internet Marketing hype.

I've written several no-fluff, no-hype articles that addresses your question on my blogs and other website properties, but I'll elaborate a little on what's working right here in this post as I don't want to write a book (LOL).

Marketing Strategy #1: Reputation Marketing

With the recent Trends that have been taking place during the last 12 plus months where SEO, Social Media, and Reputation have now been combined, you definitely must put your efforts here.

If you go to your Google+ Page, you'll notice that It includes Reviews, Reputation Monitoring (must be logged in), and the ability to interact with your patients (that's the Social Media element).

The SEO element comes into play because it's also your local Google Map listing that appears (if properly optimized) when a potential patient searches for dental services in your city or town.

Google has now put Reviews above every other marketing element.

If you have bad reviews your potential patients will see them and you'll lose thousands of dollars because of them...

A potential patient that sees negative reviews posted about your practice on your Google+ Page will most likely call your competitor whom have good reviews.

No Reviews can be just as bad, because with no reviews a potential patient doesn't have anything to base their decision on.

Once you have several 5-star reviews, you must market those all over the Internet for your potential patients to see them, which of course will motivate them to call you because they'll see you as the market leader.

Marketing Strategy #2: Google Plus (a.k.a Google Maps Listing)

You must make sure you claim your Google Plus page because it's the single best Patient Generator that you can have Online and the best part is that Google provides it for FREE.

It's already Mobile-Friendly.

Google has made your Google Plus page soo important, that it shows up above the organic Search Engine listings...

The only listings that appear about the Google+ Pages are listings that appear in the Top Local Business Directories such as Yelp, Kuduz, and so on.

The dentist Google Plus pages that appear on page one for the best keywords (i.e. cosmetic dentists) will get all the potential patients calling them.

Here's the thing, there's only 7 spots that Google will show on the first page (A through G), and if you're not there, you're missing out on all that Internet Traffic.

While I can get into several other Marketing Strategies that work, just know those two are the absolute most important.

With that said...

Reputation Marketing has to be the first element that you work on, because what good will it do you to Rank your Website/Blog and even your Google Plus page if you have either Negative or No Reviews?

I don't want to spam this forum because I'm truly here to help dentists that have marketing related questions, but if you want to know more about Reputation Marketing and Google Plus, just visit my site at http://www.strategictwistmarketing.com

 

[danielhermann]

Hey Daniel it is true that Dentist do advertise their work nowadays a lot, but advertising i think you first need to establish yourself as a good nearby dentist, who is smart in handling any issues occurring due to bad oral health. Once the pillars of foundation are made, then you can easily think of taking another plunge in advertising yourself via social media.

 

[MarkSummers]

Hello Daniel.. I do agree to most of the suggestions written on this thread. Sometime when we do have too many options we find it more difficult to choose. Better yet establish your business first and a little bit of online work can help. Some can even be done on your own if you have the time for it.