If you own a dental practice, it is time to begin planning an efficient marketing strategy. If you have never created one before, it can seem intimidating. But typically, it simply requires valuable time to be spent assessing the data that you own, your goals as a dental surgery and the resources that you have available.
That is not to say you can manage this by yourself. You should identify a dental marketing team to help you with this process. Even if you currently have a marketing strategy.
So, here are some key things to consider when building your marketing strategy.
What are your marketing goals?
First, you need to think about the ultimate goal. Perhaps you want to bring more patients into your surgery? Or maybe you want to build brand awareness? Whatever the goal is, you need to keep it at the forefront of your mind when creating the plan. Perhaps you want to drive referrals or grow the existing patient base?
Or, perhaps you are looking to expand on your current practice? Maybe your surgery is undergoing a makeover and you are now able to offer cosmetic dental care where you were not able to before. This is also something that would need to be discussed with your marketing team when coming up with the overall plan. As this will play a large part in the strategy and in the patients that you will want to attract to your surgery.
Identify your patients
Next, you need to consider who your patients are. Explore the demographics, such as their age, the percentage of males to females, their average income and where in the local community they are based. It’s worth noting that in almost all marketing strategies, you will be aiming these services at women. As they are the primary purchasers of services.
Identify your surgery’s strengths
Next, look at your own surgery. What is it that you can offer to your patients that another surgery cannot? This will be what you want to promote. If you are a cosmetic dentist, you want your potential patients to know that you can offer veneers or dental implants. Or perhaps you are a family-based dental team, who specialises in helping nervous patients manage their anxieties? Either way, this will need to be discussed when building your marketing strategy.
Assess your marketing budget
Of course, you also need to think about the marketing strategy budget. What resources are needed to implement this? And can you and your team play a part in it? Do you want to use SEO to attract more patients? Or would you prefer targeted ads? These will all impact the money spent on your surgery’s marketing.
Contact a marketing team
Last but not least, you need to contact a marketing team who specialises in helping dental surgeries reach the goals that you want. They will be able to implement the SEO strategy, oversee the makeover of your website, and also build up a blog which can help attract more people to it. They will also be able to target their approach to what you need. And it will usually be an ongoing process.
