This is an important question for dentists: What is great dental marketing in 2023?
Dentistry took its place as one of the fastest-growing sectors of the healthcare industry in 2022, for both short-and long-term reasons. The short-term reason was that, with Covid-19 in the rearview mirror, dentistry welcomed a flood of new patients as the backlog of routine dental visits and procedures continued to be re-absorbed into the stream.
Long-term growth is due to the growing market for cosmetic dentistry as well as the dental needs of a swelling senior population who, in most cases, have plenty of money to spend on themselves and their healthcare. In fact, the US dental market, which was valued at $15B in 2020 is expected to double during the current decade, hitting $30B by 2027.
So in an age of growth, how are dentists reaching these customers? We’ll look at some of the new marketing methods today, but in future posts we want to examine what kind of message is going out to all these prospective patients.
In short, what does great dental marketing look like as we begin the year 2023?
To begin, the methods of dental marketing are very different from what they were even just a short 10-15 years ago. Back then, a basic website and an occasional mailer to both existing clients and new arrivals in the community would suffice.
No more. The surge of social media participation in tandem with soaring smartphone sales have driven all marketing in a mobile, social direction, and dentistry is no exception. Patients now expect to interact with their dentists on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even the most recent arrival, Tiktok.
Dental Marketing Focus Areas for 2023
All of this has had immense ramifications for dental marketing. Here are 4 key areas to look at as we begin the new year.
- Overall website user experience
- Robust mobile website performance
- Fresh SEO-friendly content on website
- Helpful, regular social media content
These 4 areas should be the primary focuses of your dental marketing efforts. We’ll look at each of these in turn and the ways that they can be maximized.
Dental marketing in 2023 still requires close attention to your website. Your website is still where your dental implant patients will be directed from all your dental marketing campaigns. Most websites typically have a shelf life of only a few years and one of the first things that begins to suffer is the user experience or UX as it is known.
Keep your website updated regularly with the latest upgrades to offer your patients the best experience possible and to maximize conversions. Genuinely interesting content overall, as well as quality video content in particular can also help to engage users. Optimizing your website is an easy, but often overlooked, way to begin and maintain a relationship of goodwill with both your current dental customers and prospective patients.
You also need to maintain a strong focus on the mobile performance of your website since over 70% of today’s web traffic is coming from mobile phones. Although the same content is shared on both desktop and mobile, the experience does differ substantially between devices. Use Google Analytics to see if there are gaps between your mobile and desktop traffic conversions and deal aggressively with any issues you discover there.
Content is, of course, king and has, in fact, been reigning for some time. Google has become smarter than ever at knowing what searchers are aiming for and it prioritizes truly helpful content. SEO and all that it involves -keywords, alt tags, backlinks, etc. – are still important, but serving your customers well-written content has never been more important to your dental marketing. Optimizing for voice search is also important. In this sense, Google is your best ally in creating goodwill in your community. If your content meets the need over and above your competitors, you will gain the top spot!
If content is king, we all know that content shared on social media channels is probably king of kings in terms of what your customers most regularly engage with. Keeping your social media content fresh and truly helpful to your patients is supremely important as you promote your practice in 2023.
If you are needing help with your social media marketing, reach out to Client Connection Group, your social media marketing experts, today. We have a wealth of experience running dental marketing campaigns for our client dentists from coast to coast, and we would be happy to explore the possibilities with YOU and your practice!
Make your dental marketing the best that it can be in 2023!