Social media marketing for dentists is such a valuable and useful strategy for attracting new patients, interacting with current patients, and building your reputation in the area as a trusted dental practice.
For decades, dentists have relied almost exclusively on reputation and word-of-mouth marketing to help build their dental practice. But now and it's more likely than not that your audience is on social media. Whether you are using blogs, video marketing, paid social ads, or even podcasts, you need to learn the specifics of social media marketing for dentists.
In addition to being powerful vehicles for promoting your dental practice, social media platforms are also where your patients spend their time and share their lives. By developing a marketing plan that puts your dental practice in front of the public seeking dental services, you can successfully acquire patients.
Read on to learn why social media dentistry is essential, and how to choose the best platforms for your dental practice. You can also get dental marketing tips on how to make the most of your social media presence.
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What Is Social Media Marketing for Dentists?
Social media marketing for dentists is a method of promoting your dental practice online using social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others. It involves creating profiles on social media sites, posting on social media, running social media ads, engaging with users, and other techniques. It's a great way to increase brand awareness, build relationships with patients and reach potential new patients.
Why Social Media Is Important for Dentists?
Dentists are in a slightly different position than many other industries. Clothing stores, software companies, restaurants, and other industries have to convince people that what they are selling is worth their money, even if it is something they don't need. Dentists, on the other hand, don't need to convince people that they need to have their teeth and gums checked. Everybody understands that they need to go to the dentist.
The challenges most dentists face are simply getting people to remember to make an appointment and helping them overcome the fear and anxiety associated with dental visits.
Ultimately, it's about building trust and gaining the patient's confidence.
A social media marketing strategy is the perfect way to build relationships with your audience. For a dentist, this means convincing patients that you can provide a pain-free experience.
Utilize social media sites to help patients feel more comfortable before they even visit your dental practice. Showcase your authority, results, and dental industry experience by letting clients know they are in good hands. Remove the stigma of visiting the dentist with fun and light-hearted social content. By giving your dental practice an interesting personality, you make people look forward to seeing you. Again, it's all about trust.
Remember, you're not just selling toothpaste and root canals, you're selling comfort, good health, confidence, and most importantly, a good experience. Social media dental gives you the platform you need to communicate with your patients. Remind them that you care about people, not just teeth.
Social media marketing for dentists is one of the most effective and least expensive ways to attract potential patients to a dental practice. While your dental office may only be visible to the local community, social media platforms allow you to reach a wider audience, clearly display your dental services, and showcase your skills as a dental professional, giving your visitors a compelling reason to visit your practice.
Today, when 8 out of 10 patients use search engines to find healthcare information online, why not be the one to provide it? By slipping into their social media feed, you can educate your audience about their oral health while promoting your practice and offering a solution to their dental problem.
8 Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Dentists
Unlike your profession, for which you have received formal training, social media marketing for dentists is a skill that is learned as you go along and has become an integral part of running your business. Let's take a look at how your dental practice can benefit.
Patient acquisition
Before committing, 43% of patients now visit healthcare sites on social media. You may receive a large portion of your patient bookings from your social media pages, which are another way to spread the word about your dental practice.
Cost-effectiveness
Traditional forms of marketing such as TV, newspaper, and radio ads can eat up your entire marketing budget, whereas content on social media is free and stays on your profile forever.
Brand visibility and reach
Since your audience spends more time on digital devices than any other form of media, that's where you have the best chance of getting their attention. Unlike print ads that are printed and distributed in certain areas, you can reach a much wider audience using social media sites.
Awareness
Overall, you are not limited by as many rules, length and formatting restrictions, or scripts to advertise your dental practice on social media when compared to traditional media channels. You can talk about your dental services, create educational content, or share success stories to inform your audience why they should choose your practice over your competitors.
Engagement
Once your patients have left your dental office, they need to be reminded of your exemplary care to keep them coming back to you. By connecting them to social media, you can drive engagement and recall through your content.
Virtual Presentations
Your dental social media platform acts as an online brochure of your services that your audience can browse at any time, without having to interact with your staff, giving them the opportunity to decide for themselves.
Longer shelf life
Content consumption on social media is driven by your audience. They can take their time watching, listening, or reading your content multiple times, even saving it for later, unlike viewers who are governed by scheduled programs.
More impressions
Your dental social media sites are another way to build your online presence that will result in higher search engine rankings. Interaction with your social media platforms in turn builds the authority of your dental website.
Social Media for Dentists: Choosing the Best Platforms
Today more than any time, "Likes", "Favorites" and "Shares" are essential to any marketing campaign. Not only can you get leads through social media, but Google and other search engines take into account the size and engagement of your business's social media platform. All things being equal, a dentist who is active on social media will rank higher in search results than a dentist who does not engage on social media.
Some of the most widely used social media applications include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Each of these platforms has a distinct tone, allowing you to reach a large and diverse audience if you cover all your bases.
Everybody is familiar with Facebook, and almost everybody has an account. Facebook is a useful tool for people trying to stay connected, but it's also a valuable tool for your dental practice for advertising purposes.
You can easily create a business Facebook page that you can use to advertise coupons, sales, product and service promotions, as well as events for product launches or large company parties. In addition, you can build customer loyalty by sharing images and other engaging content that people like or share from their own Facebook profiles. This way, your existing patients can advertise for you, bringing you both revenue and attention in an indirect way that is more compelling to potential patients than advertising directly from you.
Twitter is different from Facebook in that users generally do not develop very personal accounts; Twitter is more focused on sharing information. Users share "tweets" of up to 280 characters (previously 140) that can take the form of opinions, updates, hyperlinks, responses to other users, etc. Dentists can generally make the most of Twitter by sharing photos of new products or services, linking to coupons or promotional codes, or informing their followers about practice events and promotions.
Twitter is a useful platform because it's designed for extremely frequent updates, which means you can run large advertising and marketing campaigns without being obnoxious - a continually updated Twitter feed is something people want to see, so tweet as much as you want!
Twitter is an excellent way to spread information quickly. Although the number of characters you can tweet is limited to 280, you can craft a tweet and include a short link that will drive traffic to your dental website - the more impressions the better.
Instagram is unique in the sense that users share snapshots rather than text. Sharing photos may not seem to have any commercial value at first glance, but images of products or services can be an extremely effective way to get patients to visit your dental office for a checkup or other dental needs.
Visual information attracts a different market segment than purely text-based ads, so many dentists have begun to make heavy use of Instagram to attract this different sector. Millennials, in particular, are active on Instagram - according to Statista.
Leveraging this increasingly popular social media site is a surefire way to get more exposure, which means more business. You can also include a link in your bio, which can be a link to your company's website homepage, or to a promotional landing page for the special offer you are currently offering. Dentists often share an image showing a product or service, and then indicate in the photo caption that the item can be purchased through the "link in bio."
Like Instagram, Pinterest is also great for both sharing product photos and linking those photos to your dental website. While Instagram displays photos in a feed type of format, Pinterest displays posts in a gallery format.
Pinterest can be a perfect place to showcase your dental services.
You can also post articles and links in Pinterest's gallery format for your dental practice. You can share tips and live links to helpful information on your website, such as blog posts.
We haven't seen many dentists using Pinterest to attract new patients, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. That said, we think it's best to focus on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram before Pinterest.
But test it out to see if it works for you! We think you should test all options when it comes to marketing.
LinkedIn allows you, as a dentist, to expand your contact base, gain new clients, and build your expertise, brand loyalty, and credibility. For example, you can publish articles or start discussions with other experts in your field.
LinkedIn offers another way to start a dialogue and build your reputation as a subject matter expert (SME). LinkedIn recently began allowing users to blog on their sites. This is a form of SEO for dentists or any other profession where your reputation is paramount. LinkedIn is also important for branding, marketing, and even hiring.
YouTube
YouTube is more than simply a social media platform. It is also the second most popular search engine in the world, behind Google! Being owned by Google means that creating and sharing video content on YouTube has significant SEO benefits.
Video marketing drives more engagement than almost any other format, making YouTube videos an important investment for any dental practice. It also offers a better return on investment than other types of content marketing in most cases.
By setting up a YouTube channel for your dental practice you can make and share videos with your audience. Don't forget that you can get more views by sharing your videos on other social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
TikTok
TikTok is the newest social media channel and it's no exaggeration to say it's taking the world by storm. The platform has nearly 700,000 daily active users and continues to grow every day. TikTokers share short videos that frequently go viral.
In terms of dental marketing, TikTok offers dentists the opportunity to meet young audiences where they are. It's important to make TikTok videos light and informative if you want to engage with users about your dental practice.
Note that while all of these networks are free to use, you can also pay to advertise on them, which will increase the visibility of your posts. Paid advertising on social media may not be cost-effective year-round, but you may want to consider a short-term promotional campaign on Instagram, Facebook, etc. to announce a location opening, limited-time sale, or other promotion.
Social Media for Dentist: Best Practices
Once you've decided where to campaign, it's time to finalize your social media strategy. We say it again, but the key to a truly amazing marketing campaign will always be understanding your audience.
Start by thinking about your USP (unique selling point), what you can offer your customers and what types of customers you want to attract. Creating user personas will help you determine not only where you should launch your social media campaign, but also what type of content you should share.
Once you know your audience, don't forget these final social media marketing tips to increase awareness and solidify your campaign:
1. Make the most of employee advocacy
Since social media marketing is about building close relationships with your patients, it makes sense to leverage the impact of the people they interact with the most - your staff. Your team members live in the same communities as your potential patients, they love your practice and know how to reach your followers.
Using employee advocacy tools like Bambu allows your employees to create and publish content on their own social channels. This allows you to reach a wider audience and give your dental practice that human touch your patients are looking for.
2. Be personal, not clinical
Remember, your goal is to convince customers that you are providing a professional and comfortable experience. With that in mind, try not to be too clinical in your messages. A great way to add a personal touch to your campaigns is to show spectacular before and after photos that highlight your patients' stories. Don't forget to keep HIPAA guidelines in mind. Ideally, your patient will share photos for you and you'll just retweet or repost them.
Likewise, a joke or weird meme can help show your clients that you're more than just a tooth-cleaning robot.
3. Share engaging and useful content
When people come to the dentist, they are looking for everything they need to have a beautiful smile. That means they want products and services to help them with their oral hygiene, but they also want to learn what they can do to keep disease away and protect their teeth. When you post on social media, show your authority by providing valuable dental hygiene tips.
If people find your posts helpful, they'll be more likely to share them with their friends and family. The end result is increased engagement for your dental practice.
An important statistic to know is that 47% of people say they share content because they think it's informative and helpful to others. Content also gives you the opportunity to show your authority in the dental industry.
4. Engage with your audience
Again, one of the most important things to remember about social media is that it's about connecting with your audience. You don't just want to post information for your potential patients, you want to elicit a response by creating content that encourages people to click, comment, or share.
A great way to encourage engagement with your audience is to ask them a question. People love the opportunity to give their opinions on important topics. Ask questions that relate to your patients' oral health habits and encourage them to get involved with a compelling call to action.
5. Make the most of live video
One of the most interesting trends on social media right now is live video. This is one of the best methods to engage your audience and expand your credibility as a dentist. Video features like Instagram Stories and Facebook Live allow you to go beyond standard dentist ads and have real conversations with your audience.
6. Generate reviews and referrals
Online reviews are another marketing tool that can be very effective for dentists. Approximately 90% of consumers are encouraged to purchase products or services just by reading online reviews. The more testimonials you get from satisfied patients, the more confident new prospects will be with their decision to choose your dental practice.
If you're having trouble generating reviews, you can always improve your chances of getting a testimonial by hosting office visits and offering discounts on dental hygiene products or other items to people who give reviews.
Using Social Media Marketing for Dentists
Like any marketing plan, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to succeed in the world of social media as a dentist. However, if you recognize the importance of building a relationship with your audience through social media sites, you can begin to create a more credible, trustworthy, and appealing brand for today's patients.
Prove to your audience that they can trust you, and you'll have an army of happy patients who are no longer afraid to go to the dentist.
FAQs About Social Media for Dentists
What social media do dentists use?
Dentists should focus on using Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok as social media marketing platforms, as these tools have the highest potential for social media engagement for dentists.
Do dentists need social media?
Social media marketing is an effective way to attract the eyes - and teeth - of potential patients. The initial question many dentists ask is, "Does a dental practice really need social media? " The answer is always "yes," and it requires daily commitment.
