A professional website and quality content are essential to gaining new patients at your medical or dental practice. The following are some of the techniques that increase new patients to your medical or dental practice.
Search engine optimisation
Search engine optimization is also known as SEO, and it is used to increase your rankings on major search engines. It is important to focus on white hat SEO techniques, such as finding relevant keywords, creating quality content and ensuring proper link placement. You should always stay away from black hat SEO techniques, which include keyword stuffing, hidden links, spam and low quality content. The white hat techniques increase your rankings and bring in more traffic, but the black hat techniques cause your website to be penalized by Google.
Local search marketing
Local search marketing is an important part of search engine optimization, and this is especially true for the medical, dental, food, hospitality and retail industries. It is no secret that a huge portion of your patients are going to be local residents. Your patients are going to use local keywords to find a medical or dental keyword in their area.
One example is a patient who is searching for a dental office in their city of Baltimore. The keywords “dental office” and “Baltimore” are going to be a part of their search query. This is why it is important to place yourself on the local search map using Google, Yahoo and Bing. You want to make sure your customers can find your office when searching for a medical or dental practice.
Search engine marketing
You can also gain website traffic by purchasing advertisements on major search engines. The techniques of SEM include paid search ads, pay-per-click and cost-per-click. You can also look into pay-per-call for mobile users and cost-per-thousand impressions. You do have to spend money when getting involved with search engine marketing, but this technique is a great way to increase your rankings on search engines.
Social media marketing
People from all over the world use social media to share their photos, videos, music and latest creations. You can use social media to share your website or blog with possible patients in your area. Using social media to drive traffic to your website is called social media marketing.
You can gain attention on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media websites. The key is to create posts that are relevant to your niche with a link that is related to your post. It is also important to respond to those with questions, comments and concerns.
The way you conduct yourself on social media can make or break your reputation in the medical or dental industry. Create a LinkedIn profile to network with other members of your industry, and use YouTube to share short commercials and videos of your business.
If you find so many marketing channels overwhelming, you can always outsource some of them to dental marketing companies such as Solution21 and get some professional help.
Mobile marketing techniques
There are many people who use their smartphones and tablets to browse the internet. Mobile devices allow them to check their email, social media and favorite websites when they are on the go. You can use mobile marketing to reach your patients from any location.
Your patients may not visit your website on their phone or tablet if it does not load properly. The key is to create a website that loads properly on any mobile device. You may even decide to offer an application that can be downloaded to their device, which may include a patient portal, contact form and links to important blog posts.
Mobile advertising plays a big role in increasing patients to your medical or dental practice. You can start with basic Google ads designed for mobile devices. The ads usually feature an extra add-on extension for your visitors. Mobile image ads are another choice for mobile marketing, and the image-based ads are designed to load on mobile devices.
You should also consider using in-game mobile marketing, which is a technique that results in your ads appearing within mobile games. The ad usually appears as a banner or image on the screen or video between levels. The ads can be set to only appear to users who are close to your practice with location-based marketing.
You should also use mobile marketing to check your notifications and track your progress when on the go. It allows you to get back to your patients and people within your network quickly.
There are many techniques that drive traffic to your website, blog or app. It is important to learn those techniques so you can increase patients to your medical or dental practice.
