With a rise in traditional dentists who dabble in cosmetic dentistry and various direct-to-consumer products, cosmetic dentists have a lot of competition.
That’s why it’s essential for cosmetic dental practices to deploy effective marketing campaigns that highlight their unique selling points and make them stand out from the crowd.
If you’re looking for the most effective marketing strategies to boost your practice’s ROI, read on for a complete guide!
Who is the target audience for Cosmetic Dentistry?
For any business, fully understanding your target audience is essential before executing any marketing efforts. By understanding who your primary clientele is and what they desire, you can personalize your promotions towards them and increase customer conversions.
Every cosmetic dentistry practice is different and can appeal to different groups, but here are a few of the most common audience categories:
- Young professionals: This group is often concerned about their appearance and wishes to leave a good first impression as they make a name for themselves.
- Females between the ages of 30 and 55: At this age, they are often reaching career and life milestones and are looking to reward themselves with some needed self-care.
- Middle to upper-income adults: No one likes getting old, and cosmetic dental services can help this group maintain a youthful appearance and self-confidence.
- Seniors: Older individuals looking to rejuvenate their smiles with tooth repairs or replacements.
- Professionals in the public eye: Influencers, actors, models, and public speakers seek out cosmetic dentistry to meet the aesthetic demands of their careers.
Once you understand which group or groups your dental practice appeals to the most, you can center your branded material around them and how your practice can uniquely address their pain points.
How To Market Your Cosmetic Dentistry Practice
There are a variety of marketing mediums, both digital and non-digital, available to cosmetic dental marketers. To reach the most consumers, it’s often best to utilize an omnichannel or multichannel marketing approach that can hit prospective clients at a high frequency.
So, let’s take a look at some of the best channels.
Optimize Your Website
In our increasingly digital landscape, having a visually appealing and engaging website for your practice is essential to winning over consumers.
One of the best ways to do this is to showcase your practice’s success stories on a portion of your landing page. Some success story formats include before-and-after photos, testimonials, and detailed descriptions of the services you offer.
On average, people spend approximately four hours a day on their smartphones. Like any good marketer, your objective is to meet consumers where they are and communicate through a medium they are accustomed to. So, your website should be user-friendly to both desktop and mobile device users.
Another important factor for driving organic traffic to your online presence is search engine optimization (SEO). By optimizing your website, you increase the likelihood that it will rank higher in search engine listings when consumers seek cosmetic dental services.
To do this, you’ll need to conduct keyword research on common phrases that your target audience is most likely to type in when searching for cosmetic dentistry services. These keywords and phrases could include things like “smile makeover”, “teeth whitening” or “cosmetic dental procedures”.
Once you have this list of keywords and phrases, the next step is to tactically place them throughout your site’s titles, meta descriptions, and content.
Use Paid Advertisement
While website touchups can be a great benefit to your practice, a successful marketing campaign can’t avoid investing in some form of digital or non-digital advertising channels.
Online Ads
We briefly discussed how search engine optimization can boost your online presence, but it can be difficult to perform sufficiently to rank highly in search listings. Fortunately, there is a paid workaround. Google pay-per-click ads can place your cosmetic dentistry brand in the top three search listings for keywords and phrases of your choosing.
As the name would suggest, you only need to pay for Google ads when a user clicks through the sponsored link to your site. However, bidding for highly sought-after keywords can reach up to $80 per click.
Another viable online marketing channel to utilize is social media advertising, such as Facebook ads. Social media platforms are constantly collecting user data on key factors like age, location, interests, and search history. As a result, these platforms allow marketers to precisely target key demographics, such as those who’ve recently searched for cosmetic dental procedures.
It’s not surprising that so many marketing agencies utilize social media paid ads considering that the average person spends 2.5 hours a day on these platforms that provide precise consumer targeting.
Physical Ads
When businesses are looking to invest in physical out-of-home advertising mediums, most think of highway billboards, street furniture, and transit displays. While these channels can increase brand awareness among the general public, they are ineffective at audience targeting and tracking engagements.
If you want a physical advertising medium that solves these issues, look no further than wellness boards. These wellness boards offer shoppers sanitizing wipes from below a prominently featured advertisement and can be installed at retail storefronts and pharmacy wait areas.
This physical medium drives impressive levels of engagement by encouraging consumers to stop for a moment, take a wipe, and view the sponsored brand. Terraboost is a leader in this marketing channel, and independent studies have shown that 80% of shoppers engage with their sanitizing kiosks and that 50% would take a coupon or brochure to learn more about the sponsored brand.
Terraboost’s wellness boards also solve the problems associated with audience targeting and impression tracking that are commonly associated with physical displays. Their sanitizing kiosks can come equipped with geofencing and retargeting capabilities, which are digital tools that track the anonymized mobile data of nearby consumers. In doing so, it allows marketers to accurately view impression numbers and even send online advertisements to shoppers’ mobile devices.
Email Marketing
It is extremely difficult to drive patient acquisition by using cold leads and email marketing. However, email marketing can be extremely effective in patient retention as it provides an additional touchpoint to keep in contact with your client base.
Effective email marketers first segment their existing clients based on factors like appointment history, age, and dental conditions.
With a segmented client list, you can send each group personalized emails that they are most likely to engage with. For example, you can send thank you emails to recent appointments, aftercare information, birthday greetings, check-up reminders, or relatable newsletters.
Utilize Local SEO
A stunning 86% of consumers use Google Maps when looking for local products and services, making it an essential digital tool for any business to utilize– including cosmetic dentists.
To optimize your business on Google Maps, the first step is to set up a Google My Business account and claim your listing. Google favors businesses with up-to-date profiles, so make sure that you include all relevant company information such as your business number, address, and operating hours.
Search engine optimization is also a factor in Google Maps, so be sure to include keywords like “best teeth whitening in [city]” and “affordable veneers near me” throughout your online content for the best results. But one of the most important criteria that Google uses to determine rankings is the number of 4- and 5-star reviews your business has received online. Obviously, you can drive good reviews through your excellent service, but it is quicker to actively solicit your client base for reviews.
Content Marketing
Content marketing can greatly increase your brand’s online visibility in a few ways.
For one, high-quality, informational material is more likely to be shared among interested online users and will drive organic traffic to your brand. Secondly, search engines favor businesses they perceive to have Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T). By publishing educational blogs and articles, and using SEO throughout the content, it can greatly improve your standing in the search listings.
Here are some of the best content marketing mediums to utilize:
- Blog posts and articles: Your educational blogs and articles can cover different cosmetic dentistry procedures and the latest industry innovations. Titles and topics could include things like “The Science Behind Dental Implants” or “Teeth Whitening: What Really Works”.
- Social media content: Simply operating an active social media account is a great way to drive patient retention and get new consumers to engage with your brand. Consider mixing posts of behind-the-scenes looks at your practice with informational content to put a friendly face on your practice.
- Video content: Video content on platforms like YouTube has shown to be massively successful for medical practices that demonstrate procedures or provide virtual tours of their practices. Many people are interested in seeing what goes into dental procedures before they commit to one.
Encourage Patient Feedback
Acquiring patient feedback and displaying it to prospective patients is one of the most effective ways to inspire trust in consumers.
Beyond posting positive reviews on your website, consider posting video testimonials on your various social media accounts. People are most inspired by people they relate to, so try to create a portfolio of testimonials composed of patients of different backgrounds that have received different procedures.
Patient Loyalty and Retention
With all the digital and non-digital advertising mediums available to marketers, many mistakenly overlook the strength of word-of-mouth marketing!
Loyalty programs are a proven way to drive patient retention by rewarding repeat visits. However, you can include a word-of-mouth marketing element to these programs by rewarding referrals as well. What’s great about referral programs is the new patients they bring in are more likely to place long-term trust in your practice since it was referred to them by a friend or family member.
Incentives for your referral program can be as simple as discounts on future services and gift card giveaways.
Some other ideas for driving patient loyalty and retention can include offering financing options or telehealth consultations and follow-ups.
Executing a successful cosmetic dentistry marketing campaign can be difficult, but it doesn’t have to be. We at Terraboost have worked with countless healthcare brands and can provide you with key industry insights as well as a free personalized quote.
Our 120,000+ wellness boards are located at the storefronts of supermarkets like Giant, Harris Teeter, and Stop & Shop as well as the wait areas of pharmacies like CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid.
If you’re looking to place your brand on a network that delivers up to 8.8 billion monthly engagements, get in touch with us today!
