If you’re under the impression that dental content marketing isn’t something you particularly need to worry about when trying to build your dental business in 2016, you might want to think again.
According to Google, Bing, and indeed any other search engine you’d care to name, content remains king. However, it’s not just any old content. Instead, we’re talking about relevant, meaningful, insightful content that people love to devour.
In fact, search engines love it so much that they’re willing to place great emphasis on those people, or businesses that provide it.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at this.
In the not-too-distant past, if you entered the phrase ‘Make money online‘ into Google you would have been bombarded with a ton of garbage that would either, not really tell you anything, bankrupt you very quickly, or land you in prison. Not great right?
Now in 2016, if you type that exact same phrase into Google, the first organic search result that comes up is one from Lifehack. However, if you take a look, it isn’t about the latest get-rich-quick schemes, nor is it by some so-called guru asking you to pay a gazillion dollars, pounds, euros, or yen in order to buy their latest product. Instead, it’s a hugely insightful and meaningful piece, offering real-life suggestions to those actually looking to make legitimate money online. All of this without making you feel like you’ve sold your soul to the devil.
If you take into consideration that the phrase ‘make money online‘ is probably the most competitive keyword on the internet, then it just goes to show the emphasis that search engines place on adding real value.
By the way, I have no affiliation whatsoever with Lifehack. Instead, it’s just a great example of what I’m talking about.
Now I know what you’re thinking! “That’s great Dale and thanks for pointing that out, but what has this got to do with me? After all, I’m a dentist.”
True you are, but aside from doing a great job of fixing teeth, you’re also in the trust business. So the question is “How can you get potential patients to trust you before they even enter your clinic?” The answer…. by giving them valuable, and useful information through dental content marketing.
The good news is that this can be done in many ways, some more successfully than others. However, in order to keep it so that this post doesn’t read like War and Peace, I’m going to make it (relatively) short and sweet.
With this in mind, here are 3 examples of how you can use great content and indeed, dental content marketing to add value, build trust, get new patients through your doors, and build your business. So here goes…
Get Blogging!
If you did no other form of dental content marketing (or indeed any other form of marketing for that matter) you really need to be blogging and here’s why!
The bottom line is that search engines hate static websites. Okay so the word ‘hate‘ may be a little strong, but let’s put it this way… static websites are dead in the water as far as the search engines are concerned.
Because of this, there’s a strong chance that a dental website that hasn’t been updated for some time, or worse still… has never been updated, can just as easily be buried way down on page 137 of the search engines. That’s not a good place to be, especially when more and more people are searching online for dentists in your specific area.
The problem is that it can be hard to consistently and regularly add new content to your dental website. The good news is that adding a blog page to your website, it gives you a platform to do exactly this.
However, most importantly, a blog is your chance to consistently impart those pearls of wisdom and knowledge that your potential patients are looking for. Do this and give the person what they want, and you’ll not only build trust but provided that it’s optimised for the relevant keywords that you want to rank for, you’ll start to see your dental website climb the rankings.
The reason for this is that each new blog post acts like another mini web page attached to your site, so if you can base your posts around relevant key phrases, then you have a multitude of chances to get your website noticed.
Compile A Free Giveaway/Guide
It might seem counter-productive to invest a lot of time and energy in writing an insightful guide, to then place it on your website to give it away. However, believe me, dental content marketing of this kind is a powerful thing and here’s why…
Let’s imagine for a minute that you’ve swapped hats. You’re no longer a busy and well-respected dentist. Instead, you’re a long-term denture wearer who’s pretty hacked off with their false teeth and all the problems they can bring. You keep reading about how dental implants are the perfect answer to missing teeth replacement, so now you’re looking to find out more about them before making a final dental decision that could change your life.
After spending countless hours of trawling through the World Wide Web trying to find the answers to your many questions, you just happen to stumble across a site (namely yours). Here you see a handy guide entitled ‘Everything you need to know about dental implants but were afraid to ask’. Not only are you going to be impressed, but you’re likely to be impressed for several reasons:
Firstly, the dentist in question has just saved you time. The time you don’t now need to spend trawling through endless web pages to find the individual snippets of information that you need to help you in your quest. Why? – Because all the information you need is right here, packaged up in one handy guide.
Secondly, it hasn’t cost you anything. That’s right, all that information the dentist has provided is totally free of charge.
So putting your dentist’s hat back on, why would you do this? After all, it’s a serious investment in your already precious time.
Because by providing something of real value to that particular person, your reputation as a trusting dentist has just risen through the roof. This is before the soon-to-be patient has even set foot inside your clinic.
But not only this, unlike blogging which needs to be done consistently and continually, you only ever need to write a comprehensive guide once. It can then sit happily on your site forever and a day, where it can be downloaded over and over again. Now that’s effective dental content marketing right there!
Become An Agony Aunt
Who’d have thought that dental content marketing would involve becoming an agony aunt? Well, not in the way that Marjorie Proops, Claire Raynor and the USA’s Dear Abby were known anyway. However, people will often seek help in online forums or communities if they have a particular dental problem, question, or concern they need answering. So as a dentist, you’re more than qualified to help them. You might even want to be the resident clinician on any number of dental forums where you can
- Build up trust and rapport with any number of potential patients
- Spread the word about your services and your clinic and
- Get your name out there.
All of this is for doing something that you’d probably do in your day job anyway. What’s more, every time you make a comment or help someone, it creates a link directly back to your site.
So there you have it – 3 powerful dental content marketing strategies that you can (read, should) try in 2016. Remember add value and you’ll build trust. Build trust and new patients will follow. Simple!
If you’d like to implement one or more of these strategies but just don’t have the time, then that’s okay. Instead, give the team at Dental Writers a call. With thousands of dental blogs, procedural pages, and home/about us pages written for a wide variety of dental clinics, we know how to write great dental content with your potential patients in mind. To find out more check out our website at www.dentalwriters.com or alternatively give me a call on +34 605 45 73 42 to discuss how we can help you.
