Healthcare Marketing Blogs – MediVerticals
How to Increase Patient Volume in a Dental Office?
With the competition in the healthcare industry, especially dentistry, increasing at a fast rate, you might be wondering how to increase patient volume in your dental office. The answer lies in effective healthcare marketing, which can work wonders for healthcare centers if executed correctly. Hence, all a dental clinic needs to increase patient traffic is the right dental marketing strategy, either digital or conventional. It’s essential for dental clinics to be aware of healthcare marketing trends and develop an effective and well-rounded healthcare marketing plan.
Recent reports show that more than 60% of the patients use internet to access or find a trusted and reliable dental care provider. This means that a big chunk of your target audience can be found online, making it more crucial to leverage digital marketing strategies. With patients becoming more tech-savvy, your dental marketing ideas must adapt to digital channels to enhance visibility and efficiency.
MediVerticals is a trusted dental marketing agency that combines multiple ways of marketing to bring you exceptional results. This guide will explore the best ways of how to increase patient volume in a dental office. Read on.
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How to Get More Dental Patients?
Increasing the flow of new dental patients is a challenging task. In order to get more patients to your clinic, it is necessary that you implement a balanced mix of various healthcare marketing strategies that aim to attract, engage, and retain patients. By combining traditional and digital marketing approaches, you can create a seamless and engaging patient journey, helping you attract more patients.
In order to get more dental patients you need to be aware of how much a clinic should spend on marketing and various healthcare marketing examples.
20 Ways to Get More Dental Patients
To answer the most asked question in the dental industry, “how to increase patient volume in dental offices?”, we have penned down 20 best ways, inclusive of various dental marketing ideas, to help you get new dental patients and scale your medical practice successfully.
Develop and Optimize Your Website
You need make a strong first impression that compels a patient to take an action. And hence one of the finest ways to do this is to have a professional website for your clinic, designed and developed by healthcare marketing experts who understand the current patient market. Your website is a significant touchpoint and it should be engaging, interactive and easy to use for all users. It should have compelling CTAs throughout its length to convert visitors into new patients.
A highly responsive website with a user-friendly interface will automatically direct patients through an attractive and smooth journey, compelling them to take an action. Thereby enhancing user experience and increasing your flow of new dental patients. When patients are able to find the information they need at any time and on any device, it increases their satisfaction, builds trust, and ultimately acquires you another patient. You need to keep optimizing your website as well to keep its content updated and fresh and to boost its overall efficiency.
Your USP Increases Your Patient Volume
The competition in the dental industry has intensified. And if you do not make your practice stand out, then you might not get more dental patients. Hence, it is necessary to have a USP (Unique Selling Point) or highlight a dental treatment which you specialize in. This could be anything from implants to merely scaling or sedation etc. Most people already have a regular dentist they trust, so giving them a strong reason to consider your practice is the key.
In order to know how to attract new patients to your dental practice, you must develop a marketing strategy that strictly focuses on promoting your USP. When you focus on a specific treatment, you position your practice as the local expert which makes your practice stand out in a crowded market. This builds trust and attracts new dental patients.
Join and Sponsor Local Events
Most of your new dental patients are from your local community, so, actively engaging with tem presents a valuable opportunity to attract and acquire new patients. Participating in local events helps raise awareness of your practice, allowing you to introduce your services and encourage potential patients to take action.
This can be done easily in two ways. First, you can join local events and network with attendees to promote your dental services. Second, you can sponsor a local event, for example a charity event or a community organization to increase visibility. Other than this, you can also host a free dental checkup event, letting potential patients experience your care firsthand, building trust and familiarity with your practice.
Utilize Organic SEO to Attract More Dental Patients
As more and more people tend to look for dental services online, your dental marketing must leverage SEO as it is one of the most effective ways to boost online visibility of your practice and attract patient traffic. However, it does not mean to stuff up your website with keywords and lots of backlinks. You need to have a proper SEO strategy that you analyze and optimize regularly.
This is achieved by having your website optimized for local search. When the content on your website has strong volume and relevant keywords incorporated, the website ranks well on the search engines, boosting visibility, increasing traffic, and ultimately helping you acquire new dental patients.
Work on Your Reputation through Reviews
Compliments and appreciation work like wonders. When the online reputation of your dental practice is good, it automatically builds trust in new patients. Your online reputation enhances through positive reviews that satisfied patients leave on various platforms like Google, Yelp, Facebook, etc. Reviews are basically one of the top factors that patients consider while searching and choosing a dentist. So, you need to encourage your patients to leave a positive review about your dental office.
Having no or very few reviews may hinder your dental practice’s growth as it creates a gap between you and your competitors. This becomes an opportunity for your competitors to capitalize on. You can set a review strategy by asking all your satisfied and happy patients to leave a positive review, offering them an incentive once in a while. But be careful with the incentives as they can backfire pretty badly, damaging your credibility.
Utilize Directory Listings
Directories are basically a list of different services where potential patients can find detailed information about local businesses – including dental practices like yours. There are multiple directories available online that potential patients tend to use to find and book their appointments with dentists. Hence, you need to optimize your directory listings and keep them updated for the prospective patients to find you easily.
The patients looking actively dentists in an online directory are your target audience as they either may not have a dentist or may be looking to switch. To capture these high-intent patients, you need to make sure that your practice is listed and fully optimized on top online directories for healthcare like HealthGrades, Vitals etc. Consistent and updated directory listings not only improve your visibility to potential patients buts also strengthen your online presence, helping search engines rank your practice higher in local search results.
Leverage Press Releases
Another great way to attract new dental patients is to use press releases to increase your reach. Press releases can play a vital role in your dental marketing campaigns by positioning your practice in front of a wider audience. When you send a press release to your local media outlets, you are providing them with ready-to-publish content – and if your story is compelling enough, it can even make the headlines, giving you practice valuable exposure and credibility.
These press releases can be a very effective dental marketing idea for your clinic. All you need to do is take advantage of the trending topics and updates in the healthcare industry that might interest people. Give your opinion whenever there is news related to your relevant medical field. This will promote your dental clinic and increase its reach, helping you attract more dental patients. Reaching out to your local news media outlets is a great start.
Utilize Paid Marketing
Paid advertising is known for its efficiency in patient acquisition. There are multiple advertising platforms like Google ads, Facebook ads etc. that fall under PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising. PPC is a performance-driven marketing strategy that requires critical analysis of your KPIs to maximize results. This is an excellent way of targeting potential patients precisely when they are searching for dental services, ensuring your ad reach the right audience at the right time.
In PPC advertising, you pay only when someone clicks on your ad, making it a cost-effective way to drive traffic and generate leads. By optimizing your campaigns, you can increase visibility, attract high-intent patients, and grow your practice efficiently.
Initiate a Referral Program
The more the people talk about your dental services or refer any of their contacts to you, the higher the chances of turning those referrals into new patients. This is because personal recommendations carry significant weight – potential patients are more likely to trust your practice when they hear about it from someone they know and trust. Positive word-of-mouth is often the result of exceptional are and a great patient experience.
By incentivizing the referral program, you will see an increase in the number of new dental patients as more and more patients will try to avail the incentive by referring other potential patients. While it’s important to carefully manage incentives to avoid any unintended consequences, a thoughtfully executed referral program can become a reliable and consistent source of new patients.
Perform Social Media Marketing
Patients are now more tech-savvy than ever, with a strong presence on the internet, especially social media. And hence another way of knowing how to increase patient volume in your dental office is to leverage social media marketing. Potential patients look for healthcare dental care services on different social media platforms, and hence solidifying your social media presence there is very crucial for the clinic’s growth.
From Facebook, Instagram to Twitter or TikTok, every platform is worth keeping a profile. But you need to analyze where exactly your target market lies so you can focus more on that specific platform and strategize accordingly. Social media marketing will boost your online visibility, increase awareness, and ultimately bring in patient traffic.
Patient Special Offer for First Timers
As per research, most people do not tend to visit the dentist regularly due to high costs. Moreover, new patients are more reluctant to visit due to trust as well. So, another excellent way of knowing how to get more dental patients is to come up with special and attractive promotional offers for potential patients. These offers can include senior citizen discounts, discount bundles, free teeth whitening, etc.
The special offer could be anything but make sure that it adds value and is different from what other competitors are offering. Moreover, before deciding on the offer, it is advised to analyze the target audience for the offer. This helps you focus on the interests and preferences of that audience only for whom the offer is to go live.
Engage in Ethical Retargeting
Through the KPIs you set for measuring your SEO and paid advertising performance, you get to know about the strong leads as well. These leads are people who showed interest in your dental services but did not end up converting. Retargeting them is a wise option as they may potentially convert whenever they feel the need. You just have to stay at the top of their mind and create a sense of urgency to make them take action.
For example, a visitor on your website may sign up for your newsletter but not book an appointment, so you can retarget them in future as their browser gets a cookie from the site that follows them. Consider all the regulations before retargeting as in certain situations retargeting is not allowed in healthcare.
Offer a Dental Membership Plan
People are always interested in any sort of additional convenience they can get for rendering any service. And this can help you learn another way of how to grow your dental practice. You can come up with an exciting and a convenient membership plan for your patients that makes it easier for them to avail your dental services. A membership plan could include discounts on big surgeries or any other incentive that may retain the current patients.
If the current patients are satisfied, then through word-of-mouth, new patients will get to know about your dental clinic and prefer your services over their regular dentists. This is a great way to attract patients with limited resources or those who are not insured.
Educate and Attract Patients through Blogging
One of the most effective ways of generating leads is through blogging. As per recent studies, companies who publish blogs are able to attract around 67% more leads than those who don’t. Although it doesn’t directly generate leads because the reader could be from anywhere, it does increase your chances of getting one. This is because when you publish blogs on trending topics and educate people, then search engines recognize your authority and rank your website in the top results of the search engine. This gives a boost to your online visibility, the internal links increase website traffic and ultimately leads to conversion.
Also, when you blog you have the chance to showcase your team’s expertise through their own content. The more authentic the content is, the deeper the trust may be.
Seek Business Referral
Prioritizing collaboration in the business is how you can increase patient volume in your dental office. By collaborating with businesses related to your field you can help each other by referring the patients to each other. For example, you can partner up with an orthodontist or an oral surgeon in your locality or in another block from yours and refer each other to patients.
For this strategy to be successful, you need to have a strong relationship with other businesses. You can also partner up with businesses unrelated to your field, which will help you market a greater audience base.
Optimize Appoint Scheduling
Patients appreciate a convenient and user-friendly interface. When they are able to explore your website easily and get the information they want, they are more likely to book an appointment. Moreover, you can also optimize your appointment booking by offering online appointment scheduling directly via your website.
This will provide convenience to patients and compel them to take instant action, thereby getting more dental patients for you. Also, you can further optimize the appointment booking process by offering a 24/7 online scheduling service. This way patients will be able to book appointments on your website whenever they have time. And this will also build a stronger relation with the patients as they acknowledge the convenience.
Utilize Print Media
Printed form of marketing is a conventional marketing approach and can be very beneficial for businesses. This is another effective way to get new dental patients. Print media allows dental clinics to reach a broader target audience. And hence when awareness is increasing on such a huge scale, it will get you new dental patients in big numbers as well.
For example, you can get flyers printed for your dental clinic with a very creative design that highlights the convenience of getting dental treatment and the fulfilment of patients’ needs in a very attractive way. This will allow your dental clinic to stay on the top of the patients’ mind, compelling them to book an appointment in your clinic whenever the need arises. Also, you can give flyers to other related businesses and ask them to display these.
Offer Convenient Payment Plan
Dental clinics lose out on so many potential patients because of the patient’s concern for expensive treatment. Many patients delay their appointment booking despite any serious condition to resolve the payment concern first. By offering convenience in this aspect, you can increase your new dental patients. You can allow various payment options for patients with financial concerns and get them to book an appointment instantly.
For example, you can partner up with a third party financier who can lend patients their treatment cost and they can pay back afterwards at their convenience. Also, you can start accepting credit card payments. Another option is that you can ask patients to pay an initial deposit that would work as a registration fee, and then they can pay the rest gradually in installments.
Offer Telehealth Services
Since there have been massive outbreaks of deadly viruses, it has made people more concerned about their health and has made them reluctant to visit healthcare centers where people with airborne diseases are present. Here you have the opportunity to target these people and get more dental patients. By offering telehealth and tele-dentistry services you can achieve this, effectively.
People yearn for convenience, and when an organization provides it, they become loyal to it. This will result in a huge increase in your appointment bookings, allowing your dental clinic to serve more patients in a day. This type of service is groundbreaking today, and as it offers massive convenience to people, they may refer your clinic to their friends as well.
Expand Your Services
Finally, knowing how to increase patient volume in a dental office requires the right approach. This means that you need to do something that other clinics are either not doing or performing inadequately. Another effective way through which you can get more dental patients is by expanding your dental services and offering more innovative solutions to patients’ needs effectively.
For example, there are many services that are related to dentistry like cosmetic services that are not widely available. So you can start offering these in your dental clinic to expand your target audience. This strategy helps you get new patients in two ways. First, by offering another service you will get new patients. Second, by offering a service other than dental care, there are higher chances that cosmetic patients may book an appointment for dental care or vice versa.
Struggling to Get More Dental Patients? Let’s Build Your Practice Together!
Implementing these effective dental marketing strategies is how you can increase patient volume in a dental office. These strategies will help your practice grow, attract more patients, and build strong relationships within the community. Whether it’s through website design, digital advertising, or traditional marketing activities, the right strategies will help you enhance your dental practice’s reputation and visibility. For comprehensive and expert guidance, MediVerticals is the trusted dental marketing agency that helps dental care providers succeed in today’s competitive market.
