The days of personal referrals landing you clients for dental implants are over. If you want to grow your business, you need more than referrals to bring in customers; you also need a strong marketing plan.
A marketing agency might be what you need soon, but there are some steps you can take before you seek the help of a professional.
Your Dental Implant Website Should be User-Friendly
It’s 2021; odds are you have a website for your business, but is it ready to handle 21st-century customers. Having a landing page isn’t all you need. Your website needs to be easy to access, and it needs to be searchable. We’ll get to searchable in a minute, but let’s start with easy to access.
KISS
There are a couple of things that your customers want. First, your website must be easy to read and easy to navigate. In an instance like this, stick to the KISS rule, Keep It Simple Stupid.
Don’t be too wordy. Keep your sentences short and sweet; keep your text easy to read.
Don’t use too many images. Images take time to load. If you want images, make sure they’re a reasonable size. The last thing you want is for someone to leave your website because it’s not loading fast enough.
Mobile-Friendly
After you follow the KISS rule, make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. Just like you want your website to load quickly on a desktop, you also want it to load quickly on a mobile device.
More than that, you want it to look good on a mobile device. Test it out on a few different devices, such as a cell phone and a tablet. Make sure the images look good. You want to see all of the text when you load your webpage on a mobile device. Words should not be cut off by the edge of the screen or covered by images.
This is a professional website. You want it to look professional no matter what someone uses to access it.
Start a Dental Implants Blog
It seems so 2000, but a blog is something that will benefit your website in the long run.
Show Off Your Dental Implants Knowledge
For one thing, a blog is a way for you to show off your knowledge. It’s the best way to let people know that you understand your industry inside and out. It also shows you’re keeping up with the latest and greatest trends.
A blog is a way to flaunt your knowledge without bragging about it.
When you show off your knowledge of dental implants, people are more likely to trust you with their cosmetic dentistry.
Local Specific
A blog also lets you prove that you understand your market. You’re not competing with the periodontist 1,000 miles away in Nashville, Tennessee. You’re competing with the oral surgeon that just opened up shop down the road.
Show your potential clients that you know the area, and you know them. Show off your local knowledge. Let your customers know you’re one of them.
Searchable Keywords for Dental Implants
Perhaps the most important thing about a blog is that it allows you to add those searchable keywords that make you rank higher in a search engine search.
Google, for example, uses a complex algorithm to determine what search suggestions it offers to its users. The company prides itself on providing the best answers to search inquiries. It focuses a lot on keywords.
The trouble is, Google is more intelligent than the average spammer. You can’t just load a page with a bunch of keywords and be done with it. Instead, the keywords need to be worked in naturally. A blog is the best way to do that.
Now you can work keywords like overdentures, mini dental implants, and bone grafting into topics naturally.
Create a Social Media Business Page
Think about the concept of six degrees of separation. The idea is you know someone who knows someone who knows someone.
A social media business page does something similar. Invite your current clients to like the page. Maybe they share the page with their friends. Perhaps one or two of those friends share it with their friends.
By creating a social media business page, you’re expanding your reach.
If you’re looking for something to post on that social media page? How about your latest blog post?
Designate Someone to Deal with Internet Reviews
The other benefit of a social media business page is that you’re inviting happy clients to review your business. Internet reviews help convince people who don’t know you. If their friend thinks you’re worth five stars, they are more likely to turn to you with their business.
Monitor all of your internet reviews and designate someone to keep an eye on them. This person will be responsible for monitoring review sites like Google, Facebook, and Yelp and responding quickly.
They should respond to good and bad reviews alike. Replying to a good review helps form a bond with the customer. They took the time to give you a good review. You need to take the time to let them know that they were heard and appreciated.
While good reviews are helpful, bad reviews and how you handle them are a true testament to the strength of your business. You cannot afford to ignore or respond incorrectly to a bad review online.
If you need tips on dealing with a bad review, look at this previous post, How to Deal with a Bad Review.
Make sure the person you designate to respond to reviews is responsible, compassionate, and uses sound judgment.
Create a Mailing List
No matter what kind of business you run, your clients are your best advocates. These are the people that have experienced your work first hand, and they’re happy with it.
Reach out to your clients and invite them to join your mailing list. Use the email list to share information and build yourself up as an expert. Once you’re an expert in your clients’ eyes, they are more likely to recommend you to their friends and family.
For tips on starting your email list, check out our previous post, Build Your Email List (The EASY Way). If you already have an email list and want to improve it, check out this previous post, Tips to Boost Your Email Marketing.
More Advanced Tactics
Once you have the basics down, you can start to work on other aspects of digital marketing. These include video explainers and targeted marketing on Facebook and Google.
If you’re simply at a loss, Intentionally Inspirational is here to help. To learn more about how we foster dental implant leads, check this out.
Remember, your competitor down the road isn’t getting more clients because he’s better at his job than you. He’s getting more clients because he’s better at marketing than you.
Written by Erika Towne