When you hear the term ‘dental content marketing,’ I bet that blogs, social media, and websites pop straight to mind. Well, you’re not wrong. But really, content marketing is about telling a story, your story. One that is interesting to read and, along the way, makes potential patients grow to trust you and your practice.
That’s all well and good, but what exactly is it?
Quite simply, dental content marketing is an online tactic that’s focused primarily on providing valuable and engaging content in order to attract and retain your target audience. All while positioning you as the ‘go to‘ dentist in your area. Pretty good stuff, right?
In this way, your goal should be to deliver really useful and relevant content to your potential patients to help solve their dental problems.
It should actually be viewed as a long-standing SEO strategy too. Nowadays, it’s not a case of just creating a great-looking website and leaving that to work its magic. Online marketing is constantly developing and changing, and so you should be too.
Now the real question is, why should you bother with dental content marketing? Well, in short, there are 3 main reasons:
- It increases your sales
- It’s cost-effective
- It creates customer loyalty
What’s great about content marketing is that it’s not only good for you and your bottom line, but it’s also valuable to your patients. Now that’s a win-win in my book.
So now I’ve twisted your arm, I bet you’ll want to know how you can use dental content marketing to grow your practice. Well, let’s jump straight in and find out.
- Hire a great content-writing team
First things first. To get what you want from dental content marketing, you’ll need to realise you can’t do it alone. Think about it…. you need your content to be perfect. It needs to have eye-catching images, have no errors, be informative but interesting to read, unique and original.
Above all, it absolutely must be consistent week after week. Being realistic, you’ve got enough on your plate, so why not leave the writing to the writers?
- Hit your target audience
The next factor to consider, probably the most important, is who you want your impressive content to reach.
Think about who it is you want to target. What’s their age bracket, do they have young families, or are they mostly older people? What’s their level of education and income? You get the idea.
Developing a demographic profile of your ideal audience will help you to choose your specific target effectively.
- Content ideas
So now you’ve figured out who, where, what, when, and why, it’s time to think about the content you want to put out.
Whether you hire a writer or marketing company, you’ll still need to be in control of what you want your patients to read online.
Consider how you want to portray yourself and your practice and write content based on that.
Hint – Try not to get too tangled up on points 2 & 3. Instead, view your first few weeks as an experiment. You’ll soon discover what content works best, and then you can take it from there.
- Blogging
This is arguably the most popular form of content marketing. Why? The truth is that businesses that blog are reported to gain 67% more leads than those that don’t.
So if that’s the case, what makes a really great dental blog?
Start by answering the most commonly asked questions from your patients. If you find you’re regularly advising on the best toothpaste and brushing techniques for children or repeatedly asked if tooth whitening is dangerous, then it’s a hot topic.
Write at least 500 informative but engaging words on the subject, but throw in a few longer-form blogs of over 1000 words where you can get more into the nitty-gritty of a subject. Do this right, and you can pretty much guarantee your viewers will lap it up.
Alongside words, blogs are the ideal place to include visual content as well.
Why?
Simply because people love graphic content. A few well-chosen, high-quality images or infographics with interesting facts are bound to catch patients’ interest. It also makes them much more likely to share your great content with others on their chosen social media platform.
- FAQ’s
It’s true that people love fast facts, particularly when it comes to treatments they’re interested in. This being the case, your patients will happily welcome an FAQ page that covers the main points about dental procedures that you have to offer.
But wait, there’s more….an FAQ page can, in fact, lend itself to further future content.
What do I mean?
Well, on an FAQ page, you provide a quick general answer, right? So it’s a clever idea then to have an internal link to further blog posts that cover each individual question in much more detail. So if they’re interested, they can read more…
By doing this, not only do you hold them on your website, but you establish your expertise and gain their trust as a reputable source. Now that’s dental content marketing at its best!
- Newsletters
A newsletter can be used in a similar way to social media posts.
How about this…
Use it to not only give your top ten tips on oral hygiene care but to run competitions. In order for your patients to win, they have to ‘like’ your Facebook business page and enter the contest there, where the winner and prize will be revealed. So while you’re handing out a great newsletter packed full of useful information, you’re also building up your social media following.
Here’s a great article on how this is done in more detail.
Moreover, use your practice newsletters as a way to describe the latest cutting-edge dental procedures you’re now offering or the newest technology you’ve invested in. Be sure to include links to relevant content on your website! This keeps your patients constantly connected to your practice, and when they or their friends need to find a dentist, guess who they’re going to call?
- Treatment guides
Believe it or not, downloadable dental treatment guides are a powerful marketing tool. A good guide should be written in a patient-friendly manner that’s easy to read, and of course, it needs to contain everything someone wants to know about that specific treatment.
What’s more, guides are a great reason for getting people to sign up for your practice. In other words, use it as a trade-off for their email details.
But that’s not all…. if you put in regular calls to action linking to your website throughout the guide, chances are they’re more likely to contact you to take it to the next step.
So there you have it. If you’re interested in getting more patients into your chair by marketing your dental practice online, then let’s face it, you can’t escape dental content marketing.
The Dental Writers team are highly experienced in putting together well-written and engaging content that helps you stand out above the rest when it comes to online content. To find out how we can help, call us today on +34 605 45 73 42.
