Updated on 03/28/2023
Everyone needs regular dental services, meaning there are thousands of people in your area looking for their go-to dental provider. Whether you are a small practice or a full-service dental office, you want to make sure people know about you. Digital marketing for dentists is the perfect strategy to start bringing more customers through the door and increasing your overall revenue.
Not sure where to start with your digital marketing strategy? You’re in luck, because we’re here to provide you with the ultimate guide to digital marketing for dentists.
How Does Digital Marketing for Dentists Work?
Digital marketing is the process of utilizing various online channels to market products and services to a desired target audience. This includes implementing various innovative initiatives to make sure your business is being seen by your potential patients.
You will know a digital marketing campaign is being executed successfully when you start seeing increased leads, website traffic, and overall sales. Some of the tactics used in a digital marketing strategy include:
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Social media marketing
• Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
• Website design
3 Tips for Getting Started on Your Dental Digital Marketing Strategy
We know that the initial process of implementing a digital marketing strategy can be a bit daunting. That’s why, as the experts in the industry, we are here to provide you with some starter tips to make the process as simple as possible.
Keep in mind there are many strategies that can be implemented right off the bat, but here are three of our top places to start:
1. Identify your target audience
One of the most important aspects of a successful digital marketing campaign is nailing down the correct target audience. When it comes to dental offices, you are going to want to focus on a local audience in order to get more people into the door. You’ll likely be looking at a key 5-10-mile radius for every location you have, which can be harnessed through ongoing SEO and PPC campaigns.
2. Update website content
Conduct an analysis of the overall look, content, and usability of your website. That way, when potential patients find your site, they will be able to find the information they need, navigate the site easily, and be able to contact you for more information.
Some things to look out for include:
• Calls to action on every product or service page
• Writing unique copy/removing duplicate copy from site pages
• Adding descriptive metadata to each page
• Implement internal links to relevant pages throughout the site
3. Ask customers for reviews
Customer reviews play a huge role in the overall success of a local digital marketing campaign, especially when it comes to ranking in the vital Google Local Pack. Not only do reviews assist in your rankings on search engines, but they provide additional credibility for your dental office. Asking for reviews should be an automated process within your practice. Trust us, it will help!
Additional Tips for Improving Your Dental Office Digital Marketing
Through years of extensive research and experience, we’ve accrued a lot of worthwhile tactics and tips for businesses. Here are a few methods we found that can help improve efforts in marketing for dentists:
- Claim and optimize your Google Business Profiles for your office locations
- Create relevant and representative content for your website that can help your customers find information they need easily
- Utilize Google Analytics on your site to track improvements and the best performing pages
- Target your Google Ads and Facebook Ads campaigns to the most appropriate audience using location and age filters
- Use social media to visually represent community participation in your area
Ensure your site is secure with an SSL certificate - Add forms and calls to action to all of your top service pages
- Create profiles on relevant service sites such as BBB, Yelp, local chamber of commerce pages, and more
- Use your existing customer base to send out important emails, encourage testimonials and reviews, and more
Local Marketing for Dentists: What You Need to Know
To expand on what we went over earlier on the page, dental practices by nature are local, meaning that if your office is located in Chicago, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to try and get customers from Indianapolis. That means your marketing should take on a more local approach, which includes various tactics different from regular, nationally-based strategies.
That being said, to help you get the results you desire, your business requires a customized local digital marketing approach that includes methods such as:
- Creating and optimizing unique landing pages on your site that target your desired region
- Running paid ads through various platforms just in the areas you want for the services you wish to promote
- Using social media and other platforms to connect with other local businesses to build relationships and obtain backlinks
- Utilizing Google Maps to help your listing gain rank by eliminating competition who are breaking guidelines
- And many more!
Get More Patients to Your Dental Practice Through Digital Marketing
From teeth cleaning to root canals, dentists perform many operations in offices big and small. Everybody needs these services, but they have so many options, so what will work to get the attention that your office needs to be successful and grow?
Sixth City Marketing is your best bet for the dental digital marketing you need to acquire more patients. Digital marketing for dental practices through SEO, PPC, website design, and more helps promote your business and services while driving new clients to your site.
With our expertise, we can guide you through the steps you need to take for success, one click at a time.
“The team at Sixth City is second to none!! Starting with the owner John and all his teammates I’ve worked with I have nothing but glowing things to say! I felt that they cared about MY business growth as their #1 priority even if it wasn’t always best for their bottom line. They are passionate about and great at what they do. If you’re looking for a team to help with your business, don’t look any further. This is the team that will feel like an extension of your own business!” – Dr. Paul Mikhli, Beachwood Dental
Customized Digital Marketing for All Dental Services
Your dental practice is unique, so it needs marketing services that aren’t cookie-cutter. From the culture of your workspace to the special services you provide, we can focus our skills to highlight key aspects, whether it’s teeth whitening, orthodontics, dental implants, or anything else.
Following our extensive research on target audiences, we can produce content that’s tailored to your business and the customers you’re trying to reach. This content will be used to make sure you’re getting authentic, qualified leads with genuine requests for services.
5 Digital Marketing Services You Didn’t Know You Needed for Your Dental Practice
The core of our agency is built on providing top-notch marketing approaches to help produce more leads for your business, or, in this case, to help grow your patient portfolio. Here are the six tactics we know can bring your dental office success:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – As mentioned above in our main service offerings, SEO is a vital strategy that can help get your dental office noticed online. From optimization of your content to building backlinks to increasing site usability and more, the tactics we implement through SEO can have long-lasting effects.
- Pay Per Click (PPC) – Our in-house pay-per-click advertising specialists work to gain exposure for your practice through targeted ads tailored to your audience. With expertise in Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, and more, our staff is able to focus on topics necessary for your business’s specialties and priorities.
- Website Design and Development – Is your website not delivering the leads you need? We can help. Our team can custom design the perfect website for your business in WordPress, Shopify, Drupal, or any content creation platform of your choosing. In this process, we use proven marketing strategies to ensure qualified leads and maximum web interaction per visit.
- Social Media – From Facebook to Twitter to Instagram to LinkedIn and more, our team can write, edit, and post updates for your desired social media outlets. Aiming for a strong online presence, our team strives to represent your dental practice’s personality and story as customers experience it in person.
- Email Marketing – With this tactic, we can let your current customer base know about any specials you have going on, dates you will be closed, special hours, and more. We can also use it to nurture potential clients into becoming patients. There are endless possibilities!
How We Show Results
- Leads acquired (direct, organic, paid, or referral)
- Gain in traffic to your website and traffic sources
- Positive changes in keyword positioning
- Impact of link building and/or social media outreach
Up-to-Date Reports
As a part of your team, we provide key metrics of success, reporting monthly results in ways that you can quickly and simply understand.
At the beginning of each month, we will send you a short monthly report providing a summary of the work we have conducted for the month, how traffic has contrasted from the previous month on your website, the extent of outreach on social media, and any PPC performance updates and recommendations.
And after time has passed in your campaign, due to unique technology we can apply to your website, we are able to send you a breakdown of where all your leads came from (SEO, PPC, direct, referral, etc.), which can help you cross-analyze which leads turned into customers, giving you ROI data to see our campaign’s success.
Placing a large emphasis on measurement, we ensure that the marketing methods we use online are efficient, productive, and result-producing.
What Is SEO for Dental Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing for dental practices has become more important over the years due to the rise in internet usage, and SEO can deliver great results by reaching your core audience. SEO is the process of optimizing your website and overall online presence through various tactics to enhance how you appear on search results.
The higher your website is ranked, the more opportunities you have to reach a larger audience. Our team has worked with varied dental offices around the country to help increase leads and ensure our SEO tactics are being executed properly.
Some SEO tactics we regularly employ include:
- Keyword Research – Keyword research is the process of analyzing popular words or phrases people enter into search engines that are most relevant to your business. This helps optimize the content your target market is interested in reading about and helps give a better understanding of the language your prospects follow.
- Link Building – Link building involves including links to one’s site externally and internally. External links come from other websites, while internal links are those linking to relevant pages on your own site. By including different links throughout your content, you and your business will appear more credible, and it can help improve your site’s performance ranking.
- Content Writing – Content writing is an important SEO tactic, as it helps share the most relevant content to attract customers to your site. Examples of the content writing types we provide include blog posts, product pages, category pages, service pages, and more. By updating your site’s content, search engines are able to better rank your performance from the content you provide.
“Sixth City has been incredible to work with. They quickly and articulately communicate what they’re doing and why, they respond to emails promptly, and have consistently shown solid, measurable ROIs. I would highly recommend them to anyone seeking digital marketing or SEO based services!” – Seth McDaniels, SERVPRO
Our Experience Doing Marketing for Dental Offices
Over the years, we have gained experience in working with a wide variety of businesses, including those in the dental field, making us one of the best choices for your dental practice’s marketing needs.
Our work with various dental services has provided a strong backbone in understanding the dental world, and our work with numerous healthcare companies and medical schools has given us valuable insights as well.
What Makes Sixth City Different
At Sixth City, our team of digital marketing experts work with groups of diverse clients to reach their goals. We want to help make your decision easier when choosing dental digital marketing services, which is why our team is so dedicated to client success.
Some things marketing agencies tend to leave out is how SEO is a long-term strategy. Reaching your goals through SEO is more of a marathon than a sprint, but once results show, they will last for years. Get to know Sixth City more by reading some of the ways we are different from other agencies that offer marketing for dentists:
- Our team works to create a 100% unique marketing campaign geared toward what you are trying to achieve.
- Digital marketing is always changing, and our experts stay on top of major industry updates to ensure your marketing doesn’t skip a beat.
- Our team has 25+ years of collective experience, meaning you are getting the help of real marketing experts who have worked with a wide range of business types.
- Our internal company culture is important, and we thrive off being a close-knit team that works close together to produce the best quality content for your business.
- We can help you no matter where you are located, with offices in Columbus, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Chicago and Houston.
- We collaborate with you and your company to discuss strategies in order to meet your desired goals as a business.
The Types of Businesses We Serve
Since our business opened in 2010, we have worked with a variety of clients over the years in diverse industries. This has allowed our team of digital marketing experts to expand our knowledge on different tools to help companies grow. We’re able to work with each industry to help them reach prospective customers and to improve their overall online presence. We have worked with businesses in the following fields:
- Senior living facilities
- Manufacturing
- Retail
- Healthcare
- Food/beverage
- Housing
- Entertainment
- Funeral homes
- Commercial cleaners
- Construction
- Home services (roofers, plumbers, contractors, HVAC, electricians, etc.)
- Finance
- Landscaping
- IT/Technology
- Fitness centers
- New home builders
- Many others
Dentistry Digital Marketing FAQs
Researching for a reputable digital marketing firm to potentially partner with can be stressful, and we understand that you likely aren’t familiar with every aspect of our services. To help, here are some answers to commonly asked questions we receive.
Why should I invest in digital marketing?
In the current business world, having a good presence on the internet is more important than ever. And according to LSA Insights, more than 71% of people conduct online searches before scheduling appointments at dental offices.
Can you write content for my site?
With numerous experienced writers on staff, we can craft new content for your site and enhance the current pages you have to improve impressions and traffic. In addition, we frequently write relevant blog posts around your services, the benefits of certain dental practices, updates on local participation in events, and more.
Do I need good online reviews for marketing to work?
We have found that the more positive reviews you have, the better. They not only can show visitors you are a reliable dental practice with happy customers, but they also show search engines that your business has a high authority, which can lead to you getting higher rankings in search engine result pages (SERPs).
What is the difference between SEO and PPC?
While SEO and PPC are both aspects of digital marketing, and have a lot in common in terms of their purpose, their main difference comes out of execution. Pay-per-click marketing is enacted through specific platforms and requires you to pay for every click your ad gets. With SEO, meanwhile, you do not pay any additional fees for the traffic and leads you acquire from those tactics.
How will I know my ads will reach potential customers?
One of the best parts about pay-per-click is that is it highly customizable, especially when it comes to targeting. From where someone lives to their income and more, you can get very specific. Not to mention, you can set everything up to only pay for ads for certain terms to ensure maximum results. And our writers can ensure ad and landing page content will draw in users to convert.
Want to Know More About How Digital Marketing for Dentists Works?
We want to help your dental practice to rank higher locally, and even nationally. Be sure to reach out to us with any questions and inquiries. We look forward to working with you!