Marketing Strategies That Make Dental Practices Thrive

Time and time again, social media and email marketing have proven to be effective ways of bringing in new dental patients and staying connected with your existing patient base. In this video interview, Tim Sawyer, president of Crystal Clear Digital Marketing, discusses strategies for email and social media that produce results. The key, he explains, is targeting your message on both platforms to the precise audience you’re trying to attract.

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

“What are some of the effective ways to use social media and email marketing to grow a dental practice? First of all, any practice that ignores that as an effective marketing medium is making a big mistake, and there’s a lot of data to support that. I think it’s irrefutable that the modern medical consumer is on social media, whether they’re 12 or 75, and probably all of them have two, three or four accounts.

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The key to effectiveness, whether it be email or social media marketing, is to understand who it is that you’re marketing to, because not all patients are the same. You’ve got some attributes that need to be taken into account. Age. You’ve to go take into account what type of treatments and procedures have you performed for this person. And you need to know what treatments and procedures you offer that are complimentary to that. Then through education and awareness, you want to use (email and social media marketing) on two fronts.

One: to attract a higher quantity and quality of patient to the practice. That’s on the find side. Then, on the keep side, you want to use it as a medium to introduce new treatments and procedures, increase connectivity with patients, and also as a referral mechanism.

I would add, one important piece to that, in addition to social media and email marketing, is the importance of making sure you integrate reviews into that strategy. There are two things that influence the modern medical consumer in dentistry. If it’s cosmetic dentistry, certainly before-and-after galleries. But sadly, in many cases, above and beyond the resume or CV of the practitioner, it’s going to be reviews. My wife is 46 years old. She’s not going to buy anything — go to a restaurant, nothing – without going and looking at reviews. Incorporate reviews and before-and-after galleries into a consistent strategy for email marketing and remember that not all patients are the same, and that they’re not all going to respond to the same message.

The last point that I would make for people to really consider, there seems to be this desire in utilizing email marketing to put either multiple offerings or concepts in a single email. The more concepts or promotions that you introduce in a single email, the less effective and the more watered down that message becomes. Think about the singular concept. If you’re going to send if a marketing message to someone — whether it be text, email or even via social media – make sure that you limit what it is you’re trying to say. Be concise. And again, it’s always consistency and frequency.”

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