You don’t need us to tell you that rules have changed. Most probably, you see often how the evolution of dental marketing has brought new challenges to your studio.

Patients don’t engage with the old commercial messages any more. As customers, they have different expectations now regarding communication with brands, your studio included. If you want to grow your business, you need to align your marketing efforts with the trends in the industry.

1. Get to Know Better Your Audience

Every marketing strategy starts with identifying the right audience for your messages. You need to build one or more buyer personas — semi-fictional representations of your ideal patients.

Who are they?

What do they expect from a dental services provider?

How can you help them improve their health?

What are the main barriers that stay between you and your audience?

These questions can help you to identify patterns and give you a clear image of the people that you’re trying to hook with your marketing campaigns. HubSpot provides a free tool to help you to make buyer personas for an effective marketing strategy.

If you already have created a profile of your ideal patient, all you have to do is update it to stay in line with what people want from you in 2019. As we said, people change their habits. They’ll be more likely to choose you as their health care provider if you keep up with their needs.

2. Open Conversations with Your Prospects.

Conversations with your patients should be the engine of your marketing strategy in 2019. Interactive communication between you and your patients has become a crucial element of any effective dental marketing strategy.

People don’t want to be marketed any more, so you need to start giving them more than plain commercial messages to win their trust. Every communication that happens between your brand and an existing or future patient should add value.

With the rise of the internet, we got free and quick access to information. People want to make educated decisions, especially when their health is at stake. Give them accurate answers to their questions and solutions to their problems, and they’ll love you for that!

Update your website or start a blog where you publish information about procedures and materials, and where you give people advice on how to protect their oral health. Use social media to share content that can help people, rather than to promote special offers (they’re important for your marketing, too, but you can’t build an entire business on them!).

3. Use Facebook Messenger and Chatbots to Grow Your Audience

Chatbots have been around for several years now. Also, their popularity has been growing, as more than half of customers prefer businesses that use chat apps to communicate with their audience.

One of the easiest ways to implement this strategy into your current dental marketing strategy is through Facebook Messenger. This way, you’re available for your patients outside the working hours.

Let’s say a patient wants to make an appointment at midnight. You can be there for him through a chatbot. The app can provide information, answer simple questions, and interact with your patient at any time. You give an immediate response and come back with a call the following morning to set the appointment for your patient.

People prefer chat apps for initial contact, as they get quick answers with minimum effort. They don’t have to wait in line to chat over the phone with an operator just to get information about your working hours and type of interventions they can get in your studio. They get what they want on Messenger, and you provide excellent customer support with minimum costs.

4. Enhance Your Social Media Presence with Video Content

77 percent of consumers admit that watching videos has influenced their buying decisions. Through video content, you can capture and retain the attention of potential patients that visit your website or connect with you through social media.

Integrating video in dental marketing can be a challenge, but it’s not something that can’t be done. You can use videos to explain the new technologies in the industry or to show new procedures. When you take the time to help people understand what’s going to happen to them on your chair, you’re more likely to become their top choice in case of a dental emergency.

You can use animation and simulations, for example, to illustrate technical concepts and make your content easy to understand by patients with no medical knowledge.

5. Use Direct Mail to Enter Your Prospects’ Homes

In 2019, offline marketing will continue to have a significant role in reaching a broad audience. And, as long as you invest your resources in the right offline marketing channels, you have good chances to see an excellent return in your efforts.

Directmail can help you build awareness, drive traffic to your website, improve conversions, and eventually boost revenues. By putting your messages in your public’s mailboxes, you get to enter their homes. Your postcard will stay on the kitchen counter or hung up on the fridge door, ready to provide details about your studio at the right moment.

To make the most out of direct mail, you need to bring the old postcards in the 21st century — an innovative design, unusual shapes, or a QR code that guides the public to your website, for example.

Final Thoughts on the Future of Dental Marketing

By keeping up with these trends, you show your potential patients that you’re interested in building a solid relationship with every one of them. Better yet, you get to promote your practice online and offline through high-quality content that educates and adds value to your public.

Above all, you need to integrate these actions in a cohesive strategy, based on your business goals and resources. This way, you can scale your marketing efforts as you grow your studio and track progress.

Are you ready to start building your patient attraction strategy? Why not give Printcall a try? See how easy it is to get new leads and connect with your patients with minimal effort.