RMDC SPEAKER
Lean-in to Marketing By Minal Sampat, RDH, BA
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ou may be an amazing clinical dentist but if you aren’t marketing your skills and practice properly, potential patients won’t know. As a healthcare professional, marketing may not be what excites you but it’s essential to your practice success. Plus, once you learn how to do it well and see the results, you may find it more exciting than you first thought. Here are some commonly asked questions on incorporating a successful marketing strategy into your practice.
There are so many ways to market a dental practice but going from ideas to execution can be a common hurdle. How can practices overcome this? It’s true; many dentists have great marketing ideas they can’t seem to put into action. Between running the practice and treating patients, these ideas often fall between the cracks. The best way to get the ball rolling is to make it one person’s job to execute the marketing. If it’s everyone’s job, then no one really does it. Once practices designate a marketing manager, they start seeing results. That’s because it becomes someone’s responsibility to make it happen.
Social media platforms are fun but require consistent posting. How can practices keep creating content long-term? Consistent posting is important, but you don’t want to burn yourself out. To prevent that, choose just one platform and create a posting strategy for it. If you’re experienced on two social platforms, then you can stretch to two, but no more than that at first.
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Four posts a week is a great goal. Once that’s a habit, you can build from there either by posting more often or cross-posting to another social media platform. As you get better at gathering content, you can then focus on leveraging each platform individually to get maximum reach.
"It’s true; many dentists have great marketing ideas they can’t seem to put into action. Between running the practice and treating patients, these ideas often fall between the cracks."
You don’t always have to hire a new team member to accomplish this. Train someone in your practice or give them a couple of hours a week to train themselves. As their knowledge and project load grow, you can expand their hours and give them more resources.
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We know that photos and videos emphasizing your practice’s culture get the best engagement. The best strategy is to keep it simple by sharing something about your day at the office. Take a photo of your morning huddle one day, and the staff pizza party another. Honor birthdays or highlight team members for being great. If you see 25 patients a week, challenge yourself to get photos of four patients who consent to being featured online. Share before and after treatment cases.
Four posts a week, got it. What type of content should practices focus on putting out? Today, 80% of content consumed online is video. These are mostly short-form videos; think TikTok or Instagram Reels.
Pay attention to this trend. Figure out how to include it not just in your social media but also your emails, text message marketing and website. Forbes published a finding that 88% of people would rather spend time on a website with a video than one without, and 64% of customers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video. Another fun fact is that Reels were just added to the Facebook platform and LinkedIn has mentioned many times that they are also adding video options to their platform. Video is hot right now; lean into it.
Okay, we’ve got consistent posting and videos down, but we’re not seeing a lot of likes and comments. What can practices do to increase social media engagement? On Instagram right now, Reels are the best way to organically reach audiences and boost engagement. You can record quick videos where you compile clips and effects to catch and keep your audience’s attention.
