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101 Ways a Dentist Can Grow Their Practice Posted by Tyson Downs on 9/24/14 5:30 AM
Check out some of the more creative ways a dentist can market his practice. As a dentist, you probably haven’t devoted much time to educating yourself about the ins and outs of managing your online presence. Don’t feel bad – you’re not the only professional to find yourself in this pickle. Between handling patients, managing staff, making sure you are staying following all new regulations, etc. you no doubt have your hands full. You can’t get around the fact that you need an online presence to compete in this day and age. But with a real-world business to manage, you simply might not have much time to spend on moving into the online and mobile arenas. Luckily, there are hundreds of ways to expand your reach. And since increasing your online presence is an essential part of expanding your business in the real world, here are some pointers to help you get the ball rolling. You can check out this infographic or read the below blog post.
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1. Optimize Your Website Your dental website is the hub of your online operation and it often provides the first impressions to new and potential patients.
Therefore, you'll want to focus on stellar dental website design as a foundation for all of your online efforts. You should: 2. Use HTML and CSS (and validate) 3. Use robots.txt to make sure the pages you want get 'read' by the search engines or not read. 4. Perform SEO 5. Optimize for mobile 6. Geotarget 7. Link out as appropriate 8. Focus on tags and titles 9. Add a sitemap 10. Choose a web host wisely 11. Prominently display buttons (RSS, social media, etc.) All of these strategies should help to make it easier for visitors to find, browse, and share your content, and for web crawlers to find and index your site.
12. Use SEO Dental SEO is a must if you want to increase your online presence and show higher in the search results. There's multiple methods of SEO, both On Page, and Off Page. Be sure to follow some best practices. The number of people who search for your office specifically is bound to be rather small. But you can use search engine optimization to raise your page rank, reach out to those seeking dental services in your area, and of course, increase your online presence.
13. On-site blog You’ll find that SEO for dentists is made much easier through the inclusion of an on-site blog. And there are several things you can do to ensure that your blog increases your online presence. 14. Post engaging, informative, and entertaining content 15. Post timely content 16. Post regularly 17. Use trending keywords 18. Tag and title appropriately 19. Optimize 20. Add links 21. Create sharable content (infographics, videos, etc.)
22. Add social media buttons for likes and sharing 23. Add an RSS feed 24. Promote membership 25. Allow reader comments 26. Reply to reader comments 27. Ask for reader suggestions 28. Post product/service tutorials 29. Host giveaways
30. Post employee columns to interest a variety of readers The ways in which blogs can promote dental websites and increase online presence are many and varied, so you cannot afford to go without one.
31. Use Your Social Media Profiles It’s not enough to create a proliferation of social media profiles – you also need to support them if you want to gain the benefits they offer in terms of increasing your online presence. You should use your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, and other accounts in the following ways: 32. Link to your dentist website 33. Post links to blog articles 34. Send notifications 35. Introduce new products and services 36. Advertise discounts and deals 37. Host contests and giveaways 38. Encourage sharing 39. Communicate with followers 40. Form relationships 41. Provide Value! Social media offers nearly unlimited opportunities for outreach, including the chance to funnel traffic to your website, interact with followers on a personal level, and get introduced to the family and friends of your followers from a trusted source.
42. Directories Don’t neglect this simple (and often free) opportunity to increase your inbound links and reach consumers seeking your services. Directories you'll want to participate in can be found here.
43. Affiliated blogs Guest posting is a great way to increase inbound links and participate in the larger blogging community associated with your industry. As a bonus, getting in good with other bloggers could lead to increased opportunities for partnerships, cross-promotion, link sharing, and of course, reaching a broader audience. Here's a post I made at Dentistry IQ, and another I made at Dental Town.
44. Forums Participating in industry & geographically related forums can help you to become known and recognized amongst colleagues and prospective patients. You can do this by: 45. Asking questions 46. Offering advice 47. Discussing new technologies 48. Networking 49. Cross-promoting 50. Become a known authority 51. Forming partnerships 52. Negotiating for reviews and other promotions 53. Social bookmarking sites Submitting content to Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Stumbleupon, and other social bookmarking sites can help you to increase outreach and traffic in a major way, make your content is eye-catching, share-worthy, timely, and trending.
54. Promotions The main reason websites for dentists exist is to ensure that those using the internet to search for services (i.e. just about everyone these days) are able to find yours. You can create a buzz around your business and have engaging, interesting reasons for people to visit your website by creating online promotions, such as: 55. Discounts and deals 56. Contests and giveaways 57. Newsletters 58. Email offers 59. Podcasts 60. Google+ hangouts 61. Growth Hacking Strategies 62. Joint marketing/cross-promotion
63. Support charitable organizations These ideas will not only delight current patients connected to you online, but they’ll also help to catch the attention of prospective clientele.
64. Advertising If you want to expand your online presence, eventually you’ll have to engage in online marketing for dentists. Here are a few options that have not yet been discussed: 65. Ad sharing 66. Do an EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail) 67. Press releases 68. Viral videos You can also engage in real-world marketing and advertising that promotes your online platforms, including: 69. Adding your URL to ads 70. Using QR codes 71. Geocaching, flash mobs, or other hosted gatherings that rely on social media 72. Public outreach (participation in charitable events, street fairs, or community events like First Fridays, First Night, and so on) 73. Live demos So long as you remember to include online information like your URL and social media contacts via your signage, flyers, and so on, your real-world advertising efforts can definitely increase your online presence. 74. Follower submissions Whether you encourage commentary or you allow followers to submit blog posts, just for example, getting your online audience involved in the creative process can lead to increased sharing opportunities.
75. Analytics Dentist websites, blogs, social media accounts, and other online platforms are only useful insomuch as you take the time to track and analyze the results of your efforts. Analytics tools can provide you with information pertaining to: 76. Traffic patterns and trends 77. Click-thru rate analysis 78. Conversions Rate Optimization 79. Most (and least) popular keywords 80. Number of pages viewed 81. Most (and least) viewed pages
82. Time spent on site/pages 83. Search terms used to find you 84. Traffic sources 85. Referring websites 86. Sharing resources 87. Funnels 88. Browser and OS data 89. Devices used for viewing Without analytics, you may never know which of your efforts are hitting or missing. Paying attention to the back end is crucial if you want to save time and money, hone your efforts, and effectively and efficiently increase your online presence.
90. PPC 91. Retargeting 92. Facebook Ads Facebook ads can be a great way you can target your ideal audience. You can zoom into and narrow down on the exact audience you want to reach.
93. In Person Networking 94. Chamber of Commerce 95. MeetUp Events 96. BNI 97. Start your own after hours meet up 98. Hold a tour of your office to the community when it is new 99. Hold regular tours for pre school or elementary school students 100. Offer regular lectures on oral health at your library 101. Hand out business cards
There's obviously a lot more ways you can build your practice, but just take 2 of these and utilize them every week. Next week take two more, by the end of the year you'll be done with the list, and no doubt will have expanded your reach, and your patients more than you have now. What are you doing to increase your presence and grow your practice?