You own a private dental practice. You’ve been successful but you want to build your business and attract more clients. And you want to do it on a small budget. That’s ok. There are lots of cost-effective ways you can distinguish your practice from your competitors.
Patient Reviews and Testimonials
Your current patients are your best face forward to attracting new patients. Use a service like Yelp or Google and ask your patients to leave reviews. These “experience-based reviews” are very meaningful and authentic to other potential customers.
The process has to be fast and simple. If not, the patient won’t want to spend the time to leave a review. Many businesses offer small prizes for leaving a review, and send gentle text reminders after dental visits. It’s best to use one review service, but if you do use several, like Facebook, Google and Yelp, you might organize all the reviews on a single page on your website.
Patient testimonials are another great way to market yourself. If you’ve had a great patient who recently had a great experience, ask them for a testimonial and give them a small prize for providing it to you. A Starbucks card or dinner card for a small amount can go a long way in saying “thank you”.
Facebook Marketing
Facebook marketing is not just having a Facebook page for your dental practice. You can purchase Facebook ads, which are relatively inexpensive. Ads start at $5 and you can increase the range of ads as you go along. Facebook uses geotargeting so your ads can be targeted to people within a short distance of your practice.
Your Facebook page is important as well. You can use Facebook’s data tracker called Insights that will let you as the business page moderator see how users are reacting to content that you post. It’s a great way to see whether you’re appealing to your followers and potential patients.
Today’s patients are looking for authentic experiences. They want to see photos of your dental staff, and hear about your dental practice philosophy. They’ll want to know about techniques and to determine your expertise.
Accurate Map Listings
New clients have to find your practice, and online map directories and listings are an often overlooked but effective way to put you on the map—literally. Services like Angie’s List and Yelp can really help and you must have an accurate Google Maps location because that information will connect to the Google search engine.
