Top 5 Dental Marketing Mistakes

While marketing is crucial for dental practices to promote their services and attract new patients, local dentist offices often make 5 classic mistakes when it comes to online marketing. 
 
Yodle.com, an online advertiser for local dental practices, offers up these common pitfalls – and solutions – for dentists looking to promote their practices online.  Please feel free to republish with credit to Yodle.com.
 
Mistake #5: Building your own website.
Enticing a website visitor to call your business is quite literally a science – something easily done incorrectly. Here are a few common website design pitfalls to avoid:
 
• Not making it clear what you want the visitor to do (i.e., make an appointment)
 
• Not using web-friendly copy – too much, brochure style
 
• Not satisfying various types of visitors (age, need, etc.)
 
• Not optimizing your website based on customer feedback, new services and usage data
 
SOLUTION
Help is available in the way of online marketing service providers that can ensure you’re guiding as many people as possible toward calling or emailing you for an appointment.   Resist the urge to hire your teenage nephew to do the site – leave this one to professionals.
 
Mistake #4: Creating a site no one visits.
When publishing a website, a common misconception is that people will just show up. Unless you take action to drive traffic, though, the only person visiting your site will be you.
 
SOLUTION
Today, over 82% of people use search engines to find local services, like a dental professional. Search engines are the only form of advertising where a potential patient tells you exactly what they want – giving you the opportunity to fulfill their need immediately.
 
Luckily, experts in the field of online marketing have begun offering unique services to local practices like yours. This takes the burden off of your shoulders and provides you with access to a virtually limitless source of potential patients.
 
Mistake #3: Not knowing if your marketing is really working. Your local marketing efforts – Yellow Page ads, fliers, etc. - can easily be wasted when you don’t know the number of leads and patients your advertising is generating. Often, traditional media channels like print, television and radio are far more difficult to monitor and usually not as cost effective as their online counterparts.
 
SOLUTION
The best way to avoid failure is to make sure that you have a system in place to track the source of all website traffic, calls and emails, and answer questions like:
 
• Should I continue spending money on this marketing activity?
 
• Will it scale? If a marketing activity worked well on a small level, will it be even more successful if I spend more money on it?
 
• Was it profitable? After accounting for fixed costs plus the price of advertising, did the amount of additional revenue earned add to my bottom line?
 
Again, beyond its effectiveness at driving qualified traffic to your business, the great thing about online marketing is that everything is measurable.
 
Mistake #2: Using directory and referral services.
When using a directory or referral service to market your practice, you will be paying the directory for the privilege of being listed alongside all of your competitors.
 
Instead, promote your practice’s website directly on major search engines such as Yahoo, Google, etc. This is the best way to turn visits to your website into calls and patients.
 
Mistake #1: Not turning calls into appointments effectively.
Pick up the phone when it rings!  Only 36% of small businesses regularly answer the phone, and missing a call is a sure-fire way to drive your potential patients to keep researching and find your competitors instead.
 
SOLUTION
To manage all your incoming inquiries to ensure you are making the most out of your marketing efforts, invest in a system that can be your single source for superior appointment-booking effectiveness.
 
Visit Yodle.com for more information.