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7 Tips in Choosing the Right Dental Marketing Agency

7 Tips in Choosing the Right Dental Marketing Agency

If you want to get more new high-quality patients per month plus maximize the potential of your existing patient’s list, no doubt your dental practice will be needing to step up your dental marketing game.

Before diving deep into the tips in choosing the right dental marketing agency for your dental practice, let’s understand the need of dental marketing in the first place.

In every business, marketing and sales are the breathing engine towards consistent client acquisition. Successful dental marketing for dentists will be possible as long as you practice effective marketing strategies that boost your positioning to your potential patients, increase your conversion, retention rate and identify how much it costs to acquire a qualified paying lead.

Dental marketing helps you to :

  • Drive more qualified leads and existing patients to keep on booking an online appointment.
  • Establish an online reputation to your practice and trust to your patients. 
  •  Customize your message for a specific target audience 
  • Measure visible results as well as the speed of campaign execution
  • Save more money while making sure that each strategy has guaranteed ROI.   

Today, your patients are online and to generate new patient appointments your dental market strategies should also be focusing on where your target clients are available.  

Lastly, if you want to boost your ROI from 200-250%, getting a dental marketing professional and their team is worth a try.  

What Is a Dental Marketing Agency?

You may ask, what do dental marketing companies do? Why getting the right dental marketing agency can help you turn your practice around, and the qualities of reputable ones to look for.

Trust me, you don’t want to get involved with a dental marketing agency that is learning digital marketing and use your practice as a test subject. So to give you the basic understanding on what a dental marketing agency is, we’re here to help.

A Dental marketing agency consists of a team of digital marketers with combined years of experience in creating marketing strategies, analyzing and redesigning effective marketing plans that guarantee optimal results of booking patients within your desired budget. 

Usually a dental marketing agency will provide these deliverables:

  • Marketing Evaluation and Consultation  
  • Brand or Rebranding Strategy 
  • Online Reputation Management 
  • Trends and Technology Forecasting 
  • Web Design and Development 
  • Website Traffic Acquisition through SEO 
  • Create high quality, brand building and optimize online content 
  • Manage User’s Experience via site mobile responsiveness 
  • Social Media Management and Marketing (PPC- pay-per-click advertising)
  • Data analysis, monitoring and reporting 
  • Operational consultation and training 

What Are the Tips for Choosing the Right Agency for My Practice?

Now you have a clear understanding of the importance of dental marketing, the meaning of dental marketing agency and the services they provide, we will now cover the tips in choosing the right agency for your dental practice.   

Choose An Agency That Specialize in Dentistry

When you have a toothache, You wouldn’t get an ophthalmologist to take care of your teeth, right? A professional who specifically has experience in dental care is more qualified to do it. 

The same goes for choosing a dental marketing agency.

Digital marketing has different branches. Assigning your campaign to the right expert will increase the chance of a successful campaign. 

The world of dentistry has a different audience, message, and verbiage. You need to make sure that you will hire an agency that knows also the dental market. 

Moreover, they should also know how people can find your practice, your website performance, the keywords that your website should be used to optimize your content online, pay per click for advertisement, and lastly, converting new leads into paying patients. 

Knowing the answers to these questions can help you understand your marketing needs and getting the right dental marketing agency that can confidently answer those questions with available data and tools on hand, all while hiring a team of specialists, not generalists.

Double Check their Experience, Credentials, and Credibility

Make sure that they have the proven years of dental marketing experience. Remember that dental marketing is a niche industry. The demand for marketing strategies will be different for food marketing and hiring an agent who has specific experience in this field is important.

A legit dental marketing agency specializing in dentistry understands the pain points of your market, can forecast trends and has the experience to propose how to scale your business. 

Ask for their testimonials, and if they can provide the case study for their past projects with their clients. A case study can be composed of a brand kit, a 3-month marketing campaign or a 6 month worth of content strategy. You can also see if they have achieved the goal and numbers from their client campaigns with similar budgets. A credible dental marketing agency can confidently connect you with some of its past clients for cross-reference.

Lastly, If you are not sure if you are looking at the right numbers, you can also check their reviews from 3rd party review services such as Google Reviews or Facebook Reviews. 

Though you cannot expect a 5-star review all the time, checking how they respond also shows how they treat their clients. A legit review will be very detail-oriented including the names of the people that they have worked with. 

Look for A Sense of Integrity

Competency and credibility is just a piece of the puzzle. Professionalism should also be taken into account when choosing a dental marketing agency. 

Test their commitment to timelines and deadlines and make sure they will always do what they say. Ask questions like “How long does it take to design and develop my website from scratch?” 

Depending on the number of clients your agency is handling right now, and how fast you can provide the website assets on time, it might take weeks or a few months. They should also be honest about the project timelines and turnover dates. 

Lastly, do they ask for a referral from your network within a 5 km distance from your clinic? If they do, do they layout any type of confidentiality contract to address any biases? 

As an agency, they might be handling other competitors to run their operations just like any other business, however, it wouldn’t hurt to consider the parameters and their work ethics to make sure they can bring the utmost integrity of their services to you and others. 

Check if they are One-Stop-Agency

Investing in a group of marketing professionals that have different specialties is working smarter than relying on one person to do all the dental marketing.

At the same, there are tons of dental marketing companies who claim to be experts from pay-per-click, web building and design, SEO, graphic designers, Social Media Management, or account management for your clinic. 

Remember that digital marketing has different branches. Assigning someone per their specialty by the agency is smarter because each key member is focusing on one sector complementing their strengths and expertise.

Check whether or not they have in-house experts or they outsource. If they are outsourcing work, ask them the reasons, and how they make sure that the quality is the same as what they uphold for their digital campaigns.

While outsourcing minimal or administrative tasks is fine, if the agency claims that they are the leading agency for SEO, it will be good news if they have an in-house 24/7 staff who is assigned for this department, not just an outsource. Most importantly, the owner should also have first hand experience regarding SEO; otherwise most of the time it might be a fortune cookie sweet talk to just strike a deal with you.

You can also try asking to meet each member who is responsible for each marketing project before signing anything. Ask to meet who is responsible for the web development, the social media manager, or the digital marketing leader in the agency. 

Check if they Show ROI Transparency

Since we talked about the case studies, let’s dive deep into the bottom line; your return on investment.

Many dental marketing companies can offer different marketing services, but you need to find a dental marketing agency that is transparent with the ROI (return of investment). 

Honesty is a highly respected value in every business. This is why you need to consider asking for the estimated cost of the investment plus how much is the potential cost per client acquisition and take notes. If the deadline occurs and if they don’t get the results, ask for the contingency plan. 

Ask if they have the real-time analytics and tools to schedule campaigns, and analyze results.

If so, can they be flexible enough to adjust the proposed marketing campaigns per report to improve your ROI, and if they can report an analysis about your patient’s purchasing behaviour and explain why there are more or few booked appointments this month.

Again, great things take time and usually on every marketing effort, so keep in mind that it takes 6 months to see the results of both the conversions and return of investment. 

However, a great dental marketing agency can pinpoint specific names from the booked appointment list derived from their actual marketing campaign. Now that’s a guaranteed ROI. 

Are they communicating genuinely?

Some of you might have hired an agency already. If so, how often do they report to you? 

Do they attend meetings on time? Do they coordinate with you promptly if there are any project delays or technical issues? Do they have a project manager who always checks your clinic’s concerns? Or do they ghost you for days when you try to ask for project updates? 

Their coordination also mirrors their work ethic. 

A reputable agency can explain and report the data to you in an easy-to-understand layout to match the level of your language in a way that you will still understand even if it’s technical. 

To check for their communication skills, start by checking their website.

Can you understand who they are and what they offer? When you book a discovery call with them, do they listen and ask more about your problems, your long-term goals, rather than talking and concluding what their solutions are? Do they offer training for your team aside from their online marketing services?  

A great dental marketing agency knows that there’s no one size fits all type of marketing for all clinics so they tend to listen more to their clients to assess the problem rather than showing off how much they know.  

Is there any Pricing and Packaging flexibility?

When you’re scouting for an agency to partner with, ask for a starter kit to begin with, and compare them to their “premium package”. Ask for the features added and what makes it different or better from the previous ones. You can also ask if it is on retainer, and what is the inclusive package for it. Be as honest as possible with your budget limits.

A reputable dental marketing agency will understand your clinics’ needs and adjust their packages that can show you bigger results within your budget. If they offer a basic package and give you a “surprise” fee for upgrades, this could mean 2 things: One, they really don’t know how to assess what works for your short and long term goal, and second, they showcase vague offers and budget for each service, so you would not see the whole picture of what needs to be done for your marketing and bill you with the additional charges. 

This is the last thing you want to get involved with, So trust your gut feeling and better run when the price and packaging are not clear or suddenly change.

Final Thoughts:

We have covered the importance of dental marketing to your practice and the actual meaning and benefits of a digital marketing agency. We also covered the tips in choosing the right dental marketing agency before you sign any contract. It all comes down to their credibility, experience, integrity, transparency, communication skills, and their prices and packaging are clear and flexible according to your needs. 

Though you can follow these tips when choosing an agency, It wouldn’t hurt to ask for a free consultation call with a reputable dental marketing agency to put you on the right track towards your dental practice marketing journey.

Dental Marketing Ideas

The 5 Painless Reason Why You Need Digital Marketing For Your Dental Practice

If you are a dentist but have never applied any digital marketing strategy for your dental practice because you never heard what digital marketing is all about or it is scary or too risky for you to try, then let this blog give you a sense of clarity. 

Now, we both know that for the longest time, dental practitioners like you have relied on reputation and referrals to build and increase your customers. Brand loyalty as well as the consistently high quality of dental services have also played a part in retaining your existing patients and capitalized the word of mouth marketing and referral system to have a sustainable and thriving dental practice. 

Though traditional advertising such as radio ads and adding your dental clinic on yellow pages have done the trick, the fact still remains that just like some of your patients’ teeth, these strategies will eventually decay over time.

Don’t get me wrong, the dental industry is an evergreen practice. In fact, by the time you are reading this, the dental industry is estimated to be worth $37 billion (2021).

However, if you want to stay on top of the game and to make your dental practice more profitable, it’s essential to have a digital marketing plan for your dental practice. 

In 2021, it is more likely that your target patients are on digital media. Whether you are looking for high-quality patients, chances are they are all online and they are consuming some type of online platform (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok)  for their work or personal life.  

Google processes more than 3.5 billion searches per day and at least 85 percent of consumers use the Internet to find local businesses. The rise of online product or service reviews has been the basis for your customers’ purchasing decisions as 72% of patients look for reviews when searching for a dentist.

Dental marketing isn’t just about reaching a larger audience — it’s also effectively delivering the right message for your target customers. Dental marketing can help dentists to strengthen ties with existing patients and also bring in new patients. You might have many goals concerning where you want to be and how much you should have earned in the next five years as a leading dental care provider. 

Now, You might feel overwhelmed with all the platforms available on the market but the key in marketing for dentists is to understand where and how to connect with your potential leads can strategically target and filter high-quality clients in order to attract, retain and market to your patients are some of the advantages in learning the basics and benefits of digital marketing. 

Let’s look at some of the benefits of digital marketing for dentists and learn more about why it’s necessary for the continued success of your dental practice. 

Benefits of Digital Marketing For Your Dental Practice

Boost Online Visibility and Brand Recognition

Generally speaking, your potential patients are more likely to look for dental services from a practice they’ve heard of before. In just one click, patients can research all the dental clinics they can visit. Raving online reviews are also their basis of whether or not they will set an appointment with your dental office or your competitors nearby. 

Depending on your brand identity, you can create relevant, and insightful content for your potential clients to be informed and entertained about your dental services so that increases your chance of being remembered beyond your dental clinic name. 

Digital marketing plays a big role in establishing your digital presence and making sure to execute marketing strategies that are in line with your brand message, value, and your services. 

SEO and its Role

When you have established an online presence, your efforts will be useless when the website is not on the first page of search results. SEO is done to make your website to be on the first page of search results. 

For some, you might feel that it’s a bit overwhelming to understand what SEO is about, but having a dental marketing agency will help your dental practice to get as much online visibility through Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Remember, In order to rank higher than your competitors in search engines, it all begins by optimizing your website page, doing keyword research to target terms being used to search by your potential clients, and lastly your backlink profile. 

There are tons of dental marketing agencies out there, however getting the right dental marketing agency should have experience in building links from high authority websites that are within the dental market category. 

Accessibility To Leads

Digital marketing allows your patients to connect with you on search engines, social media, email, and your dental practice websites. Being both visible and accessible to your potential customers using their mobile is also a game-changer. 

A whopping 77 percent of American adults own a smartphone and are likely to use it to check the news, use social networking apps to connect (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), and buy products online.  Digital marketing can help you to strategically access them via social media marketing campaigns, SMS marketing, and email marketing. 

Balancing between creatively marketing your dental practice with the given data, you are opening the doors of instant brand recognition, connection, and loyalty. 

At this point, your dental marketing should be mainly digital (online) otherwise you’re wasting a lot of potential to thrive in this digital age and improve your digital marketing practices for your dental clinic even during a pandemic 

Generate High-quality leads

If you try to resonate with everybody, you will not resonate with anybody. 

You may have all the digital marketing in place, but the end goal of all dental marketing services is to target potential clients and to filter qualified leads and convert them into paying clients.  

Qualifying high profile clients and converting them to paying one is possible as long as you can analyze your target audience’s online behavior; such as their fear and pleasures towards the dental practice subject, you will be able to create marketing content that resonates with your target patients’ needs. 

There are tons of dental clinics out there. Getting the riches from your niche is all about successfully creating a digital marketing campaign targeting a potential, current or former patient with the perfect message, at the perfect time and over the ideal channel. 

Nurture interested or existing leads

Aside from targeting fresh leads to your business, digital marketing can help you convert interested or existing patients into paying ones. 

You never know if there are people within your area who are thinking about getting their teeth straightened but haven’t searched for the right dental clinics for them.

Returning to our hypothetical radio advertisement above, there’s another audience segment that we haven’t discussed: people who are interested in receiving dental services but haven’t started looking for dentists yet or some patients already searched a dental clinic nearby online but haven’t decided if they will book the appointment yet

This is why your website and its content should be compelling enough to remove the fear and uncertainties of your leads. The successful sales process is about converting the feeling from uncertainty to an act of certainty.  

Speaking of certainty, there are dental marketing companies that can promise you “conversions” or “site visits” but the question is, what are the possibilities of guaranteeing that these are not just wasted marketing efforts that don’t guarantee a call from your clinic to book an appointment with you?  

Working with a dental marketing agency that not only can boost traffic to your site for new or existing leads but also to specifically pinpoint the actual name of the patients booked from the marketing campaign is worth considering when picking the right dental marketing agency for you. 

Flexible Content Per Target Audience

Radio advertising can also be helpful in spreading awareness especially if your product or service is widely and generally used by the market. From detergent or food products, generally, people will be attracted to this type of campaign as these are essentials. 

However, if you apply traditional advertising to your dental practice you might have vague results. The listeners will receive the same message even though each audience has different levels of buying state; thus might not be relevant.  

When you use digital marketing for your as part of your dental marketing strategy, you will be able to craft your ideal avatar; their age, income level, lifestyle, and purchasing decision and adjust your digital marketing content or campaign to establish rapport and trust in this type of audience.  

Remember that your content relevance is equivalent to your response rate and the bottom line sales. 

Measurable Digital Marketing Success

Again, traditional advertising can run via newspaper, posters, billboards, or radio ads. 

As fancy as it may sound to be announced on air or be seen on a billboard by passengers, there is no sufficient data available that can prove its effectiveness and if the conversions are coming from the ads as most consumers today are already online.

 That’s why digital marketing has proven its efficiency because you are now able to see the tangible analytics to which traditional advertising lacks. 

You can now see the website statistics and check the number of site visits, clicks per page or the device used when they check your site.

From your social media campaigns, you will be able to see how much does it cost to curate paying leads or your cost per click and if it is even worth the money or marketing efforts.

From this data, You and your dental marketing agency can gauge how you can strategically craft your website and content, your social media postings, and even your weekly newsletter. 

Hiring the right dental marketing company that can be flexible to find tactics that work and are transparent to adjust your budget to another marketing campaign and create content that converts the most paying leads is very vital towards any digital marketing success.

Affordability

Knowing about the perks and benefits of digital marketing is great but at the end of the day what’s the catch? Every great proposition comes with a price.

You might be thinking, this sounds awesome! But how much does it cost? Will it create a hole in my pocket? The answer is absolutely not.

For example, if you run a traditional marketing campaign for your dental clinic’s grand opening; you will have to consider the cost to hire a graphic designer, printing, permit payment, as well as the manpower to post all the posters. On the other hand, social media marketing requires less overhead, making it more cost-effective.

It is better to invest in dental marketing services with visible and measurable results rather than spinning your last coin for an expensive traditional radio ad that is targeting the mass market that doesn’t guarantee that there will be a return on investment.

The great thing about investing in digital marketing is that every marketing strategy is specific and measurable. From targeting specific lead categories to actually seeing the numbers of how many people actually visited the site or click through the ads. 

From there, you can launch specific campaigns and run a paid test online campaign ads to see which one works well and to stop the ones that cost more leads per click, and increase the budget for the ones that will work well.

Ready to Get Started?

Digital marketing is by far the most effective way to promote your dental practice right now. 

Adjusting to the new ways on how dental marketing can be done nowadays can be challenging just like other industries are still trying to adapt.

But the faster you adapt and upgrade your dental marketing strategies, the faster your dental practice will thrive from your competition.     

Remember when you are choosing the right dental marketing agency for you, one should not only build a site, create a social media campaign for your dental practice, but also actually convert traffic to actual sales. 

Moreover, would it be nice to actually know the names of the booked patients all coming from the marketing efforts of the digital marketing agency that you hired?  

This is why Rise DDS is the leading and only dental marketing services provider in the U.S. that shows you actual visible results by patients’ names from our marketing efforts.   

Let us help you decide which marketing strategy suits your dental practice today. 

Book a 30-minute discovery call consultation here.