Tips to Prepare Your Dental Practice for a Social Media Advertising Campaign

Offline marketing approaches such as TV, radio, print advertisements, and word of mouth can no longer attract many clients to seek your dental services. 

With the current technological advancements in the social media sector, people are increasingly shifting to online options. Therefore, it’s best to adopt this change and adjust your marketing approaches to remain competitive in today’s industry.

Here are a few tips for getting your dental business ready for a social media ad campaign.

1. Have a Two-way Discussion with Your Audience

Rather than advertising and sharing just promotional content, try first to capture your followers’ attention, engage them, and show that you care about them. Next, listen to their views actively and participate in online discussions to gain a deeper understanding of your audience.

Focus on:

• What are their dental concerns?
• What interests and motivates them?
• What to do to help them with their issues?

One of the most effective marketing for dentist practices is identifying your audience’s issues and figuring out how each of them wants to be helped. 

This approach will help you post content that solves your audience’s problems, giving them the reason to stay and participate in your social media channel. Moreover, a two-way discussion approach can play a significant role in building and strengthening long-term relationships.

2. Be Consistent

Managing accounts on all social media platforms can be overwhelming and time-consuming. Instead, try focusing on one to two social platforms. This will help you maintain consistency and be more productive to your social media followers. You can ask your current patients what apps they use to get an idea of the type of content your demographic enjoys.

You can also utilize scheduling software to assist you in managing and monitoring your social media handles. Tools like Hootsuite and Buffer allow you to automate posting, track, respond to user comments, and gauge engagement levels.

3. Upload Engaging Content

Adopt the concept: 80% of your content should be informative and exciting, whereas 20% should sell your services (dental services). You can also share dental humor or oral health guidelines to get your audience’s attention. Be sure to share success stories by posting before-and-after photos of your patients.

4. Go Viral with Videos

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are helping videos go viral in a short while. You can create valuable and entertaining videos that last no more than 90 seconds, as netizens love short videos.

Here are a few ideas you can use in making your short videos:

• Celebrate the birthdays of your patients
• Post patient reviews
• Broadcast live at local events or dentistry seminars
• Hold live question-and-answer sessions
• Come up with contests for your audience and announce winners in a live session.
• Take a 360-degree video tour of your workplace and share

5. Make Use of Media Location Features

Check-ins and location tracking are remarkable marketing features that may help you tell the world about your services. This is especially applicable if you have a physical address.

This is how you can best utilize these tools:

• Request that your patients check in on their social platforms like Facebook when they visit for your services. The action will appear on their timelines, allowing you to reach out to their social media friends and get new patients. Furthermore, you may receive an extra review because whenever one checks in to your address, Facebook encourages that individual to leave a review.
  
• For Instagram, you can request your patients to tag your Instagram account or put a location sticker on their Stories. This can get people who follow them on Instagram to tap on their stories and learn about your services.

6. Develop and Nature Brand Advocates

Your satisfied patients, staff members, and partners can do more for your business than most of these paid ad alternatives. Take the time to discuss your services to increase your online visibility and testimonials.

• Involve your team in your media promotions campaigns and motivate them to spread the content by letting them use social media at work.
• Request reputable organizations around you to let you tag their social pages in your posts.
• Take control of your online reputation by directing your front desk staff to urge satisfied customers to submit feedback on your social pages as they depart.
• Respond to all feedback, and try to convert haters into supporters. It’s not enough to merely apologize. Inform dissatisfied patients that you’ll resolve their concerns promptly or refund their money.
• Host patient appreciation events or recognize your patient of the year or month to demonstrate your appreciation. Create Facebook events or share photographs from the events to promote these activities on social media.

Bottom Line

Social media marketing can be intimidating for most people. However, once you figure out what works best, you’ll be able to cultivate loyal online followers and attract more patients. We hope these tips will get you on the right foot.

Author: Sophia Jennifer