Dentists work to improve oral health and boost patients’ confidence in their smiles. It’s a job that many practitioners are deeply passionate about.
While patient interaction is key, running a dental practice also requires handling non-clinical responsibilities. Whether you’re in private practice or corporate-owned, comprehensive dental marketing strategies are essential to driving business growth.
Here, we’ll break out our top strategies into critical categories and share dental marketing tips for each.
Contents
- Local dental marketing strategies
- General dental marketing tips
- Dental marketing strategies for patient lead generation
- Our final dazzling dental marketing tips
Local dental marketing strategies
A dentist’s business is local by nature. While telehealth may allow you to take some virtual visits, your patients will always need to be there in person for cleanings, fillings, and other work.
Local marketing strategies are particularly effective for dental practices. By getting your name out to people in your area, you connect with a relevant audience. These local dental marketing tactics can help people nearby discover your practice.
1. Optimize for local SEO
National or franchise businesses may undertake a general SEO strategy, finding ways to rank highly across search results in all geographies.
If your business serves a specific market, local SEO is the way to go. Local SEO seeks to optimize your website to stand out in relevant, local searches. It includes some general SEO moves, like ensuring your site loads quickly and has good internal links.
Next, it employs tactics that aim to engage with your local audience. For example, ensuring your address and the areas you serve are called out in your on-page content and meta descriptions.
By signaling to search engines you serve a specific, local audience, you increase the chances that your business will appear in local searches (like when someone in the neighboring town searches for “dentist near me”).
2. Clean up your local listings
Your local marketing strategy extends beyond your website. Local listings are another popular way for prospects to find dentists in their area.
To ensure people who are searching for nearby dentists connect with your business, establish a presence across popular local listings sites. This will include general local listings platforms—like Google Business Profile and Yelp—plus industry-specific directories, like ZocDoc and Healthgrades.
Visit each site to claim your profile. Then, update it with the correct contact information, hours, location, and insurance details. If the site allows it, solicit reviews from current patients to help you stand out. Just remember HIPAA rules—don’t mention any specifics about a patient’s history or personal information in your replies.
✅ Are your dental practice’s local listings in need of a health check? Find out with our free Listings Grader!
3. Try Local Services Ads
Google built its Local Services Ads (LSA) product for businesses that serve a specific geography, including healthcare practices.
Local Services Ads appear right at the top of “near me” search results. When your practice appears in LSAs, you’re more prominently featured than anyone ranking in organic results.
Unlike with other search ads, which are typically pay-per-click, you only pay for LSAs when someone contacts your practice through the ad. Even if your LSAs cost more to run, you’re typically connecting with a more serious prospect.
4. Gather reviews
Another key element of your broader local dental marketing strategies should be to gather reviews. Dentists can encourage patients to leave reviews, per the American Dental Association (though different local listing sites have rules about asking customers to post, so check each before proceeding).
Consider sending patients a text or email after their visit, suggesting they leave a rating on your platform of choice. Then, take the time to respond to each review—it builds trust with the reviewer and anyone else who happens to read your note.
Just remember: HIPAA rules still apply! Be careful not to reveal any personal information about patients in your responses—even if they’ve said something specific about their medical history, you should not address it directly in your response.
5. Run print ads
If you’re looking to reach a local audience, running print ads in local publications is a low-tech way to target them.
While most digital marketing platforms rely on user data to understand the demographics of each person on the site, a local paper will inherently hit a relevant audience.
The people who read local papers are not only your neighbors—they’re also interested and engaged in their hometown. Running print ads in local publications helps you to connect with these individuals.
6. Send direct mailers
Another analog local marketing tactic is direct mail. While it’s easy for consumers to mute television ads or scroll past digital ones, direct mail still stands out. 90% of businesses say incorporating direct mail into their campaigns has positively affected performance.
Dental practices can send direct mailers to non-patients in their geography, introducing their practice and providing an introductory offer for their first visit. Plus, sending appointment reminder postcards remains a tried-and-true tactic to ensure existing patients return.
General dental marketing tips
While local marketing tactics are especially relevant for dentists, there are plenty of broader marketing tricks to try, too. Whether that’s creating content on YouTube or setting up a TikTok account for your practice, these general dental marketing tips can help increase your reach.
7. Establish a social media presence
60% of Americans say they hate how their smile looks in photos. By establishing a social media presence for your practice, you can show off how your work produces the dazzling smiles of one’s dreams.
There are few things more powerful than a before-and-after series, showing how you took a smile from dull to gleaming. Remember to abide by HIPAA rules and never share patient photos without explicit permission.
Social media can also help you win over prospective patients who may be hesitant. Around 36% of people in the US fear the dentist. Social media is the place to show off your team’s empathy, kindness, and gentle touch.
8. Advertise on social
While organic social media is a great free marketing tactic, putting some advertising spend behind what you do there can help you increase brand awareness more quickly.
Social media advertising provides dental practices with several options. You may boost an organic post you’ve already created, expanding its reach beyond your current followers. You may also run separate social media ads, which allow you to set different goals for each campaign.
Social ads can have objectives like increasing your reach, driving website traffic, or boosting conversions. Plus, you can try out different formats. Static images, carousel posts, and video ads are all options.
9. Get on YouTube
Speaking of video, establishing a presence for your dental practice on YouTube is another way to connect with potential patients.
Create a YouTube channel where you and your team can share informational content. Whether that’s tips for maintaining a beautiful smile between professional cleanings or a behind-the-scenes look at what an onlay procedure involves, this content can educate your audience and assuage dental fears.
YouTube advertising is another tactic to try. Like other social platforms, YouTube allows you to define your target audience. Just like Instagram and TikTok, a video of a stunning smile will catch a viewer’s attention.
10. Include testimonials on your site
Besides building up your reviews on local listing sites, consider incorporating testimonials onto your website. Giving prospective patients an opportunity to hear from current ones can build trust.
You may approach specific clients to ask for a testimonial directly, or you can rely on an app that embeds reviews from local listings on your website.
As always, remember to keep HIPAA in mind. Ask explicit permission to share a client’s feedback or photos on your website.
Dental marketing strategies for patient lead generation
Once you’ve undertaken a mix of local and general dental marketing strategies to build awareness, it’s time to hone in on lead generation.
A lead is someone who’s expressed interest in your business but hasn’t yet become a patient. Fortunately, several digital marketing tactics make it easier for prospects to become leads and convert those leads to patients.
💡 Find more ideas to get leads (and turn them into repeat patients) with our free, definitive guide to lead generation complete with 25 ideas, tips, and examples!
11. Make your site lead gen-friendly
The ultimate goal of any practice’s marketing efforts is to book new appointments. Incorporating certain tactics into your website can reduce the friction visitors might experience in getting on your calendar.
Consider adding a chat function or embedding a booking app so that people can make an appointment directly through your website. These always-on tools can help you increase bookings after hours or with the busy or phone-averse.
For those leads who aren’t quite ready to commit to an appointment yet, incorporate lead capture forms into your site.
A lead capture form invites prospects to provide their contact information. From there, you can reach out directly to discuss setting up an appointment. Or, if they don’t need immediate help, add them to your CRM so you can circle back later.
12. Run a custom promotion
Sometimes the best way to convert prospects into patient leads is to run a customized promotion, like a sweepstakes or giveaway.
This dental marketing strategy serves up an enticing offer to prospective patients. Hopefully, it’s so good it gets them to share their contact information or book an appointment.
How you structure the promotion is up to you. You may offer a discount on a special service, like teeth whitening, or you may raffle off a fancy at-home water flosser. The goal is to collect contact information for as many prospects as possible.
If they book immediately, that’s great! And if they don’t, you now have permission to stay in touch and continue to market your business until they’re ready to schedule a visit.
13. Build up your email list
This dental marketing tip fits right in with the custom promotion idea, though there are plenty of other ways to build up your email list, too!
Email marketing remains a tactic with a strong ROI. However, US law states that businesses can only email people who’ve expressly agreed to be contacted. That’s why building out a list of people who have opted in to receive mail is vital.
Give prospects ample opportunities to join your list. Create a monthly dental health newsletter, then include a sign-up form on your website. Run a contest or promotion that collects email addresses. Create a downloadable guide to better oral health, and offer it as gated content—free in exchange for one’s email.
14. Respond to incoming patient leads quickly
When you’re running a service-based business, connecting with leads promptly is of the essence.
A prospective patient who’s searching for a dentist is likely calling around to several practices, and whichever responds fastest just may win them.
An AI-powered dashboard can help you text leads back immediately. Plus, a smart tool can assess each incoming request. What is the person asking about, and how urgent is their ask?
By sorting incoming messages, you can get to those hot leads that need immediate attention—say, a prospective patient calling in with a broken tooth—while creating a pathway to follow up with less critical queries, like the existing patient calling to book their six-month checkup.
Dazzling dental marketing tips to help your practice grow
Whether you’re looking to create a boost in new patients or increase retention of your existing ones, these dental marketing strategies are here for you.
Finding the right ones for your practice begins with some self-assessment. What are your biggest goals for the coming months and years? And which marketing tactics are best suited to achieve them?
From there, you can build a results-driven marketing program by focusing on overarching strategy first, then tactics. For more help bringing your dental practice’s marketing to life, see how our solutions are tailored to the dental industry to help you make the most of your campaigns.
