The 6 big digital marketing problems for dental practices and how to fix them.

Suppose you are a small or medium size business owner. In that case, you might think big companies are not affected by the same problems you might experience. They do – only on a much larger scale. Established dental practices, start-ups, and even multi-million dollar businesses face the same digital marketing challenges.

You will have more insight at the end of this two-part newsletter on why these problems occur and discover what you can do to overcome them. So let’s get started.

1. Developing Brand Recognition For Dental Practices.
I place this problem at the number one spot. Why? Because the majority of dentists have difficulties getting the attention of new patients.

Dentists are getting bombarded by “digital gurus,” all forecasting “the next best thing in marketing,” everyone says something different. As a result, it becomes impossible to know what you should spend your time and money on.

How can you connect and find new patients who could be interested in becoming your patients if they have no idea who you are? And you have no idea who they are and where they are. You must create a customer/buyers persona & develop unique website content.

Customers/Buyers Personas.
Now, with the help of the “Customer/Buyers Personas,” you know exactly who your ideal customer is; you can now write content that directly speaks to your target audience.

Unique Website Content.
Most dental websites talk about how excellent the dentists are. They showcase the achievements of the dentist(s) and how technically advanced the practice is. Most dental websites do not speak to or engage with the most important people. – their potential new patients. The website should be all about the patients and much less about the dentist or dentists. Have you ever visited a dental website and felt they spoke directly to you? That’s what I am talking about!

Build a Great Brand Awareness Strategy.
Once you have your buyer’s persona and messaging in place, don’t spend a single dollar without a strategy that works. There are many ways how you can find your potential customers. Still, without a plan to make them aware of your dental practice (and get them to engage with you), you will not have much success!

2. How do You Get Leads?
That leads us to problem number two. If you want to have patients, you need to get leads. But how do you get them? You could pay for ad traffic, but if you don’t have an offer of genuine interest to patients once they get to your website, it won’t do you much good. You are wasting your money and get little if any return. You need to target the right audience. Even if you create a compelling offer, it won’t mean a thing if you don’t have the right customer coming to your website.

You must have the right offer for the right audience and at the right time. You can only do it if you know whom you serve. If you think, “I serve everyone,”.. please, stop right now. If you try to suit everyone, you end up serving no one. Remember that customer/buyer persona I talked about earlier? If you spend time creating your buyer’s persona, you will know exactly who your audience is.

As soon as you know whom you serve, you have a clearer idea of what to offer them and how to speak to them about their problems. (Don’t talk about yourself or your practice) A good idea is always to offer a free download with tips on dental hygiene; then, the chances are that you are very close to getting a lead! And it is a neat way to get their emails. You can now send reminders that you are here to provide them with high-quality dental services.

But it does not end there. You now need to take that lead on a journey. It starts with persuading potential patients to enter their email on your website and building enough trust that they want to become patients. You need to construct a digital environment that constantly taps into the buying and decision-making cycle of potential patients. Unless you find the patients at the beginning of their “buying” and “selection” process and convince them to become your patients, you will never make real progress with your marketing.

“Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it.” – William Durant, co-founder, General Motors