5 Free Ways to Grow a Dental Practice

Do You Want More Patients Through the Door?

Follow these steps to make that happen! 

Whether it’s growing your practice even further, gaining the clientele back or getting new patients in – the aims may be different but the rules are still the same. 

The pandemic has impacted all our businesses in one way or another. This is not the time to admit defeat. We as dental practice owners need to rethink and revamp our strategies to get more patients through the door. Remember, they are all out there and the need for oral care is now more important than ever, it’s just a matter of promoting your business in the right way to get the patients through your door.

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Here are 5 FREE ways to grow a dental practice. 

1. Set up and improve your social media channels

Before your reputation around town or patient feedback gives your practice some clout, the biggest and most important aspect of your dental practice is your social media channels. Especially with most people staying at home with a lot of time on their hands browsing and scrolling, your social media channels need to speak for your business as a brand.

Most people look at a business’s social media account before making the decision to book an appointment. This doesn’t just mean simply updating your business’s Facebook status once a week. It is important to make yourself known on at least more than one social media platform.

Let’s be frank, a dentist’s Instagram page will not be as popular as an influencer, but continuously putting out good content such as educational facts, get to know the staff posts etc will help you gain a following. Making a first impression on your social media channel is integral to gaining more patients.

Actions: Improve your social media channel homepages right now. Make sure your about section is detailed and engaging, get your best behind the scenes videos and team pictures on there, make your contact details visible and give them options!

Click here to learn more about using social media in your dental practice.

2. Email your patient/client list

This is a great way to reach people. Going to the dentist if you are in pain or even for a regular routine check up is usually last on everyone’s list, especially now. Oral health seems to be less of a priority, many are unaware dental practices are even open.

Sending an email or two to remind people about getting their check ups or even updating patients about clinical events, opening times or any regular updates will help ease patients’ mind and their fear of coming to the dentist.

It all ties together, updating social media posts, emails, maybe even a newsletter once a month or two. It helps patients get to know you more than just a dentist they have to see once a year.

Emails work! It has proven to be a great way to reach people. Setting up a newsletter including incentives, offers or discounts can also prove to be very beneficial to getting more patients through the door, old and new- No one likes to miss a good offer! 

Action: Create a quick and easy form on your website’s homepage for patients and visitors to easily sign up for offers or newsletters by leaving their name and email address – that’s all you need to ask for. Now start contacting them! Give them updates, send them discounts, let them know about your new services.

Click here to read more about marketing a dental practice.

3. Optimise for SEO

Optimising your SEO does not have to be a huge ordeal. You can begin with downloading SEO plugins like Rank Math or Yoast for free. Both tools are very simple to use and will help you easily and effectively improve your websites SEO.

Remember, SEO begins with content that is well written. Keywords are also key! Placing them strategically around your content will help you a lot more than trying to add the keyword in every sentence.

For more help and advice on the best ways  to market your practice check out our Guide to Marketing a Dental Practice.

Action: Download Rank Math or Yoast and start following the programme’s instructions on each page. Improve the wording and use of keywords, make sure you have subtitles (H2,3,4 tags) with those keywords, improve your meta descriptions, use internal and external URL links, use images and videos on your pages.

Click here to read more about SEO for dentists here.

4. Optimise for speed

Speed is one of those things that is often overlooked, however this step is extremely crucial. The speed of your website is a huge ranking factor as it is a sign of quality user experience. A site with fast speed will result in better user experience whilst a slower website will result in a poor user experience. Faster sites create happy users and happy users are more likely to visit your site again. Google is getting really big on speed, so this will become more and more important in the future!

Action: Use a free online tool to check the speed of your website. Use lower resolution, size or quality images to make your most important pages faster, download a programme like Lazy Loader to improve speed.

Click here to read more about creating a website for a dental practice.

5. Create content

Creating consistent and high quality content is an invaluable way to promote your brand and engage with your consumers. Quality content helps attract that right audience to your website and your business. Whether the content is written or content of a different media, starting to write content or making videos for social media is completely free and a great way to broaden the exposure your business gets.

Remember!

Writing about relevant content is an incredibly useful tool to organically increase traffic to your website and your services. 

When most people hear ‘content writing’, they think simply writing articles. However, content writing is not just for blog posts. In fact, content writing is important for all different types of content formats, including scripts, web page copy, Youtube video description, social media posts, email newsletters and keynote speakers amongst many others. Simply put, writing is the ultimate foundation for pretty much any type of content that you publish. 

Action: Start blogging right now. Create top 10 lists for your patients, give them your top tips for dental care, write articles about their different options for treatments like Invisalign vs traditional braces. Create videos of your team and your practice. Share this all on social media and your website – advertise yourself! The more active you are on your website with high-quality blogs, articles and videos, the better Google will rank you.

Click here to find out more about creating content for dentists.