There’s no getting away from the fact that having the right type of dental content on your website or blog can make a huge difference to your business. However, it’s no good trying to sell the sizzle if potential patients don’t trust the quality of your steak. In other words, if you really want your dental business to grow, trust isn’t just everything, it’s one heck of a lot more than that!
Remember that horrific scene from the 1976 film ‘The Marathon Man’ when Nazi dentist Laurence Olivier sadistically tortures a young Dustin Hoffman with a dentist’s drill?
Clearly, that film didn’t do too much to promote positive public relations between dentist and patient; and of course, I’m not for one minute suggesting that patients actually perceive dentists to be like that. However, did you know that one in four people suffer from some form of dental anxiety, and roughly two-thirds of UK people who visit the dentist (that’s 29,5 million patients by the way) feel a degree of trepidation before they walk through your door? With this in mind, building trust with potential patients is absolutely crucial if you want to grow your practice.
So how do you get people to trust you before they’ve even walked through your door or have met you?
The answer – It starts with your dental content – in particular, your website.
The great thing about your website is that it’s the shop window for your business and just like any bricks and mortar business, whether it’s John Lewis, Harrods, or Fortnum and Mason, it presents the opportunity to create an immediate and positive first impression.
However, at the same time, it also presents an opportunity to get it horribly wrong. For example, content that’s all about you, or is badly written and contains grammatical errors, or simply doesn’t give the person enough knowledge to make a judgement either way, isn’t going to bode well.
In short, you need to make sure the dental content on your website makes an immediate connection.
So how do you do this?
Here are some dental content hints and tips:
- Firstly try placing yourself in the shoes of a potential patient and ask yourself”What is it they really need to know? What information can I give them right now, right here, that might help them to make a booking or walk through the door?”
- How about creating a page for first-time patients detailing what they can expect when they enter your practice for the first time?
- Alternatively what about an introductory welcome video direct from you? Or how about a video giving them an interactive guided tour of the premises? (NB: I know that this isn’t specifically written content, but it is closely related and it works; so it’s definitely worth a mention).
- What about a first-time, patient-friendly guide that they can download for free directly from your homepage offering them a wealth of information on what they can expect when they come to your clinic? Or how about a guide that answers many of the frequently asked questions that will help to ease their concerns?
So how do you know which questions they need answers to?
Simple – Think about the questions that other first-time patients have asked you in the past. I’ll guarantee that they’re the same questions that tend to crop up time and time again.
- Finally, keep your dental website content both easy to read and patient-friendly. Don’t get bogged down with technical jargon. keep it informative (remember it’s all about the patient) but above all, make it light, bright, and easy on the eye.
As you can imagine, building trust takes a lot of time and effort but with a little ‘outside of the box’ thinking, you’ll find that potential patients will not only trust the quality of your steak, but they’ll probably come back for seconds too!
At Dental Writers we write great dental content for dentists. It’s as simple as that! If you’d like to improve the written content on your dental website or would welcome any suggestions as to how you could add existing content to garner more patients, then we’d love to hear from you. Contact us on +34 605 45 73 42 or email me at [email protected].
