Dental Marketing Blog
Free dental marketing tips and strategies for dentists from internet dental marketing experts. Feel free to participate. All dental marketing related questions and comments are encouraged.
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Cosmetic Dentistry Marketing In A Tough Economy
November 22, 2008 by Erik Cunningham
Of all general and specialty dental practices, cosmetic dentists may be the hardest hit by downturns in the economy.
Many treatments and procedures offered by cosmetic dentists are elective and are not covered by insurance. And because these treatments don’t address issues involving pain or potentially worsening conditions, they’re tougher to sell to prospective patients who are tightening their financial belts.
But don’t let these things scare you. Although difficult, marketing your cosmetic dentistry practice in a tough economy is essential to the continuing success of your business. In order to succeed, you need to understand and adapt to changes in your market.
Tough economic conditions reduce the demand for many of the elective dental treatments and procedures that cosmetic dentists offer. Lower demand means greater competition. And greater competition requires greater effort and creativity to win out over competitors when marketing your cosmetic dental practice to your community.
Increase Your Efforts
Increasing your marketing efforts doesn’t necessarily mean increasing your budget. The type of effort that pays off in a slow economy is mental effort. Here are a few ideas for adapting your marketing strategy in a shrinking marketplace.
You may be able to save money and attract more dental patients to your practice by increasing the efficiency of your existing dental marketing campaign. One strategy for accomplishing this is to narrow the scope of your direct mail marketing or local advertising campaign to include only geographic areas with the highest income level households.
Another idea is to take advantage of the extra time you may have in your day to work on long term marketing strategies like researching dental website design companies, blogging, adding your dental practice to free online dental directories or participating in online dental discussion groups and message boards to promote your practice.
Don’t forget to take advantage of your existing assets. If your office traffic is slow, ask your receptionist to start calling past cosmetic dental patients to offer follow-up treatments or additional procedures at discounted rates.
Increase Your Creativity
When financial times are tough, marketing messages that speak to the hearts and minds of consumers can change drastically. It’s time to put on your thinking cap and come up with new promotions and ad ideas that appeal to a market of prospective patients with shallower pockets.
If you have the option of offering financing for your cosmetic dental procedures, now is the time to let potential dental patients know. If you offer treatments that are covered by insurance, make them more prominent in your advertising efforts for the next few months.
Cosmetic dentistry marketing in a tough economy is difficult, but far from impossible. If you put forth the effort to adapt to the changing marketplace you can make your cosmetic dentistry practice succeed where others fail.
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Comments (6) — Campaign Management — Tags: cosmetic dentist advertising, cosmetic dentistry marketing, dental practice marketing ideas
Pediatric Dental Marketing and Advertising Ideas
November 12, 2008 by Erik Cunningham
When brainstorming ideas for new ways to market your pediatric dental practice, start by thinking about where parents and children in your community congregate.
Places that immediately come to mind are daycare facilities, schools, youth sporting events and community centers.
Market Through Local Schools
We’ve already covered Dental Practice Marketing Through Local Schools in a previous post. Career and health day presentations are both outstanding ways to reach local school children and send information about your pediatric dentistry practice home to their moms and dads. The PTA can also be a good resource for marketing to local parents.
Advertise In Community Newsletters
Beyond local schools, locations like YMCAs, daycare and community centers often circulate some form of mailer or newsletter to keep parents informed about upcoming events and activities for kids. What better place to advertise than in a publication mailed directly to the home of local families with young children?
Sponsor a Local Youth Sports Team
Another great pediatric dental marketing and advertising idea is to sponsor a local youth sports team. You’ll immediately receive the trust, attention and gratitude of the team’s parents. And if the name of your dental practice is on the team’s uniforms or on a banner at their games, bored parents in the bleachers are bound to notice!
As you can see, local community organizations, facilities and events offer great opportunities for advertising and marketing your pediatric dental practice. If you’ve experienced success with other pediatric dental marketing ideas, please comment and share them with the rest of the class.
Comments (0) — Community Marketing — Tags: dental practice marketing ideas, pediatric dental marketing, pediatric dentist advertising
The Truth About Online Dental Directories
November 5, 2008 by Erik Cunningham
Submitting your dental practice to online dental directories can be a great way to market your website to search engines and promote your business to prospective dental patients or other dentists. The truth however, is that not every dentist directory is created equal.
There are 3 main types of online dental directories you’ll run into on the web. The first, and most common, is a reciprocal link directory.
Reciprocal Link Directories
Reciprocal link directories offer to list your dental practice on their site if you add a link on your dental website pointing back to their dentist directory. This arrangement is fine if the link you’re getting is of equal value to the link you’re giving. Unfortunately, that’s seldom the case.
Many dental directories hide or block your link from search engines using javascript or “nofollow” attributes in their code. This practice negates the search engine marketing credit your website receives for link popularity.
But take courage. If the reciprocal link directory you submitted your dental practice to is popular among web users, your efforts are not entirely wasted. Your link or listing can still generate phone leads for your practice or click-through traffic for your website from potential patients using the dental directory to find a dentist in their area.
Paid Directories
The second type of online dental directory you’ll find is a paid directory.
Paid online dental directories charge a small one-time fee for reviewing your submission for content and relevancy. When properly executed, this human review process can lead to higher quality content and greater search engine marketing value.
Like reciprocal link directories however, hidden or blocked content can negate the search engine marketing value of your listing. For this reason and for financial security purposes, we recommend that you search Google for the name of the paid dentist directory you’re considering to see what others are saying about it before you give them your credit card information.
Free Dental Directories
The third and final type of online dental directory you’ll encounter is the free dental directory.
This is truly the holy grail of dental directories. Dentist directories like this may request, but don’t require, reciprocal links and cost you nothing but your time. The best free dental directories also offer search engine marketing value by making links to your dental website visible to search engines.
How can you find such a directory? We just happen to have one right here :). Submit your dental practice to our dentist directory today. There’s no charge, and we don’t hide your link from search engines.
Comments (0) — Online Marketing — Tags: add url, dental directory, dental practice marketing, dentist directory, online dental marketing, submit site
