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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Dental Marketing Push or Pull?
February 27, 2009 by Erik Cunningham
In our last post, Dental Marketing Strategies, Back to Basics, we discussed the two basic types of dental marketing, “push” and “pull” and posed the question, “Which type of dental marketing strategy is right for your practice?”.
The answer to that question depends on the type of dentistry you practice and the current state of your local economy.
General Dentists
If you’re a general dentist, you can benefit from both push and pull marketing strategies because your services include preventative, elective and compulsory dental treatments. Push marketing techniques like direct mail marketing are great for promoting preventative and elective dental treatments like regular checkups and teeth cleanings.
Pull strategies like dental website marketing, search engine marketing and yellow pages advertising are good for promoting compulsory dental procedures like filling cavities because they help to ensure that your patients can find your practice easily when they’re looking for your services.
Dental Specialists
Push marketing strategies aren’t nearly as effective for dental specialists as they are for general dentists because the majority of treatments and procedures offered by dental specialists are compulsory and not elective. Patients aren’t likely to respond to a postcard in their mailbox that reads, “We had a great time with your last root canal. How about we do another just for fun?”
As a dental specialist, you should focus most, if not all, of your dental marketing budget on pull marketing strategies. Advertising your practice in online dental directories and in print and internet yellow pages directories will make your contact information readily available to patients seeking emergency dental health services and general dentists looking for candidates for patient referrals.
Economic Conditions
In addition to the type of dentistry you practice, the current state of your local economy should also affect your dental marketing decisions.
When times are tough, many patients in your community may decide to put off elective treatments like cleanings, checkups and cosmetic procedures until their finances improve. As a result, push marketing strategies in a rough economy are likely to fall upon deaf ears.
The best thing to do during tough economic times is to focus your dental marketing budget on pull strategies. That way you’ll attract patients actively looking for your services and not waste money targeting people who can’t afford it.
In Summary
- General dentists can benefit from both push and pull marketing strategies in a good economy
- Dental specialists should focus their budget on pull marketing strategies
- All dentists should utilize pull marketing strategies in a bad economy
Next week’s question: “Why didn’t you read the summary first?”.
Comments (0) — Marketing Strategies — Tags: dental marketing campaign, dental marketing strategies, dental practice marketing
Dental Marketing Strategies, Back to Basics
February 17, 2009 by Erik Cunningham
There are two basic types of dental marketing strategies you can employ to promote your local dental practice - “push” and “pull”. And while the most effective dental marketing campaigns often include a combination of the two, factors like the current state of your local economy and the type of dental treatments and procedures your practice offers should dictate how much of your marketing budget you devote to each one.
Push Dental Marketing
The term “push marketing” is used to describe dental marketing strategies that deliver unsolicited information about your dental practice to prospective or existing dental patients in your community. The most common types of push marketing in dentistry include direct mail, TV, newspaper and radio advertising and internet banner advertising.
In the past, some dentists have misinterpreted the strategy of push marketing in dentistry as “pushy”. These dentists haven’t considered however that push marketing performs a valuable service to both you and your patients by reminding them to schedule regular dental checkups and cleanings for improved long term oral health. Push marketing also brings information about your practice right to your patients’ doorsteps which saves them time and effort if a visit to the dentist is already on their to-do list.
Pull Dental Marketing
“Pull marketing” refers to dentist marketing techniques that make your dental practice information readily available to prospective dental patients actively looking for your services. Common pull marketing strategies for promoting dental practices include print and internet yellow pages advertising, website marketing, search engine marketing, pay-per-click advertising and dental directory advertising.
Pull marketing gives your dental practice an edge over your competitors and helps both you and your dental patients by simplifying the question, answer and appointment scheduling processes.
Some dentist marketing strategies qualify as both push and pull marketing. Word of mouth and dental office signage are good examples.
If a patient sees your dentistry office sign on their way home from work and it reminds them to schedule an appointment with you, then your sign serves as a push marketing strategy. If a dental patient has a toothache and decides to drive around the neighborhood looking for dentist and sees your office, then your sign serves as a pull strategy.
So which type of dental marketing strategy is right for your practice? Find your answer in next week’s blog post, Dental Marketing Push or Pull?.
Comments (1) — Marketing Strategies — Tags: dental marketing ideas, dental marketing strategies, dental office marketing, dental practice marketing
Free Dental Website Marketing Ideas
January 26, 2009 by Erik Cunningham
When you’re coming up with ideas for new and free ways to market your dental website, the first thing you should consider is building links.
But not just any links. The links you’re looking for are links that will lead prospective local dental patients directly to your website and ultimately, to your dental office door. These links come from high traffic sites like internet yellow pages and local search directories, and from highly relevant sites like local business directories, dentist directories and colleagues’ dental websites.
But how do you acquire these links?
Ask Your Dental Colleagues
If you’re an endodontist, periodontist, prosthetic dentist or other dental specialist, ask the general dentist who refers patients to your practice to link to your dental website from a prominent page on their site. They’re sending dental patients to you anyway. Why not speed up the process?
General dentists can do the same. Ask the dental specialists you trust and refer patients to, to link to your website from theirs.
Register Your Website With Local Business Directories
Local business directories, like Google Maps and Yahoo! Local, and online yellow pages sites, like Superpages.com and YELLOWPAGES.COM, will publish your local dental practice information and dental website URL for free.
Submit Your URL To Dental Directories
Online dental directories and other popular web directories will also link to your dental website for free. These sites include, Dentist Marketer’s very own dental directory, Dentistry Office’s dentist directory, and the Open Directory Project’s web directory.
Contact Your Membership Associations
National and state dental associations, the Better Business Bureau and your local Chamber of Commerce may also offer free links to your dental website. If you’re already a member, contact these organizations and make sure they have your dental website URL on record.
As you can see, there are a lot of free dental website marketing opportunities available to help you promote your dental practice online. Spending a couple hours each month building links to your dental website can go a long way towards attracting new visitors to your website and new dental patients to your practice.
Comments (0) — Dental Website Marketing — Tags: dental marketing online, dental marketing strategies, endodontist marketing, free dental marketing, periodontist marketing, prosthetic dentist marketing
Measuring The Success Of Your Dental Marketing Campaign
December 3, 2008 by Erik Cunningham
You don’t have to be a statistician or a marketing guru to identify the basic strengths and weaknesses of your existing dental marketing campaign.
All it takes to measure the success of your marketing efforts is a little effort, some basic record keeping and a bit of simple math.
Ask Your Patients
The easiest way to track the effectiveness of your marketing efforts is simply to ask your dental patients how they found your practice. The best time to do this is during their initial visit or phone call, when it’s fresh in their minds.
If a patient finds your phone number on the internet, odds are that they still have the web page open on their computer and can give you the name of the website where they found your listing. If they saw an advertisement for your dental practice in the yellow pages phone book, ask them which yellow pages they used.
Offer Coupons
Coupons are also a great way to track the success of your dental marketing campaign. If you’re marketing your dental practice through direct mail, make sure you include a coupon on your postcard.
A coupon for a free checkup or teeth cleaning will encourage new dental patients to hang on to your postcard and give you an easy way to track the number of responses your direct mail campaign generates.
Monitor Your Web Traffic
If you market your practice through your own dental website, make sure you have traffic monitoring software installed. Web traffic reporting software like Google Analytics can tell you where new patients visiting your website are coming from and let you know how many leads your site generates through email contact forms.
Your dental website may also generate phone leads. As I mentioned before, your receptionist can track these referrals by asking patients where they found you during their initial phone consultation.
Check Your Figures
Record the source of your new patient referrals in a spreadsheet or in a notebook. After collecting data for a few months, divide the total number of new dental patients you received from each marketing strategy by the amount you spent. Compare the cost per patient totals and see which strategies in your dental marketing campaign were the most cost effective.
Once you have your comparison figures, see if you can adjust your budget to increase the efficiency of your dental marketing campaign and maximize your return on investment.
Comments (0) — Campaign Management — Tags: dental marketing campaign, dental marketing strategies
