5 Dental Marketing Tips That Make You Stand Out From Your Competition
Aug 23, 2019
Aug 23, 2019
10 min read
10 min read
With approximately 7 per cent of daily Google queries being health-related, it's easy to understand why using the internet to promote your dental practice is a must for lead generation and brand-building. With so many marketing avenues to choose from, there are a few tried and tested strategies you should focus on to grow your business? Let's look at five pro marketing tips that will help your dental practice stand out from your competition.
1. Content Marketing
Your target audience is searching for solutions to their dental issues online. The best way to find them is to position yourself as an authority and offer them the answers that they seek. Gone are the days, when setting up a website with a few pages describing in detail about your business and products and services you offer served the whole purpose. In the present time, you need to provide the targeted audience with informative content that is search engine optimized. Such materials are picked up by the search crawlers and are displayed in front of the user's when they search for solutions about their dental health matters.
Effective content marketing involves creating content targeting at your local audience. Your aim should be to appear at the top of the search engine results when people within your radius run queries for dental services. A professional dental marketing company can help you set updated website design with plenty of quality content that showcases your competence while providing helpful information. An extension of your content marketing can include monthly or weekly educational newsletters, which you can send via an e-mail to your clientele.
2. Encourage Reviews and Testimonials
One of the things people look for when searching for a dentist or other healthcare professional is for positive reviews and testimonials. Patients look for a dentist who has positive reviews because it reinforces in their minds that they are making the right choice especially when it comes to their dental health.
Think about having to search for a healthcare professional for yourself or a loved one. You would want to find a doctor with an endless list of positive reviews and testimonials from their patients. Therefore, encourage your patients to post positive reviews and testimonials on places like Google. This, in turn, ensures that others will receive positive reinforcement and choose your dental practice for their needs.
3. Use Social Media to its Greatest Potential
Social media is an ideal tool for building a community online. A loyal community is a testament to your competence as a dental professional and will transmit your message from user to user rapidly and positively. To effectively use social media, you need to select the best networks to create accounts. The social networks you choose to target will depend on what kinds of interaction and content best conveys your message.
For instance, if you plan on using a lot of visual content, Instagram and Pinterest are the most effective social media platforms. Using Facebook and Twitter can encourage direct contact and conversations. Additionally, a YouTube channel can serve as an ideal medium for providing helpful content and patient testimonials.
Once you've finalized the social networks and created your presence, it is vital to keep track of the conversations as well as monitor the engagement and analyze the other data. Choosing an agency that specializes in dental marketing services can save you the hassle of having to go through the learning curve. Monitoring your social media presence is a very involved process that requires a suite of special tools. However, an expert in the field of brand-building can help you save time while boosting your clientele.
4. Run Targeted Online Advertising
Spending money on online ads can be an immediate source of new leads if done correctly. A successful Google Ads or Facebook Ads campaign that targets your local audience can give you an increase in appointments that you can count on like clockwork. A digital marketing company specializing in dental marketing can help set up your ad campaigns. They will also keep track of the performance of the campaigns t help you know which strategies are beneficial and which are not.
By continually optimizing your ads, you reach a point where you're able to determine the approximate number of leads, and you will be able to generate based on the investment made. It also helps you know the cost per conversion and based on the same, and you shall be able to scale your ad spending. For instance, if you've determined that you need to spend X amount of dollars to get ten leads, then the following month, you can try spending 2X to see if you get 20. Finding a correlation between the money you spend on ads and the return you get is a vital element for your online advertising.
5. Track Everything
The more you track your results, the more effective your campaigns will be together with high returns on investment of every dollar. But tracking isn't limited to advertising. You have to keep your eyes and ears wide open to the new trends in the social media sphere. This will help you manage your brand presence accordingly and will also keep you accustomed to PR disasters before it is too late.
Talk to your digital marketing services consultant about social media monitoring based on the needs and requirements of your dental practice brand. They will also help you know which tools will help you productively perform the necessary tracking.
Bonus Tip 1: Personalize Your Communication
Research shows that 90 per cent of consumers prefers personalization, and a staggering 80 per cent are more likely to hire the services of a company that provides a personalized experience. Are you looking for ways to implement personalization in your practice that helps establish a good relationship with patients and the community as a whole?
For a dental practice, personalization for patients may mean sending an email once every few months that contains information about their specific dental needs. Setting up such an e-mail list isn't as complicated as it sounds. There are automated email services called autoresponders that allow you to build segmented email lists and keep track of your communication with your patients.
Another easy way to personalize your clients' experience is to create a few separate groups on social media platforms. These different groups catering to various dental issues, help you address the concerns raised by the patients.
If you want to take an even greater step towards personalization, you can use direct mail to send out printed communication to your patients. Studies have shown that the tactile nature of printed media created a greater connection with a brand than digital communication. Since all of the competitors are opting for digital media and advertising - a personalized e-mail helps build a stronger bond with the clientele together with boosting brand loyalty.
Bonus Tip 2: Hire a Dental Marketing Services Professional
Running a dental practice takes up enough of your time. If you have to deal with all the tasks single-handedly - ranging from managing the daily operations to attending the patients to promoting your brand online as well over the social media platforms - its time to think of something sensible that is worth the investment made.
Hire a digital marketing firm that comprises of a robust team of experienced professionals who can help you with dental marketing. Based on your individual goals, they can implement innovative and practical ideas in your marketing strategy. They will make sure that you are not wasting time and money on promotional efforts that are not driving you towards your goal.
From Content Marketing to SMO to Paid Marketing, SaffronEdge provides a full suite of affordable digital marketing services that drive engagement, advocacy and conversions. Trust us in growing your business digitally. For further enquiries, feel free to reach out.
Google Revamps Search Quality Raters Guidelines Yet Again
Before we get into discussing the changes in Google’s QGR, let us understand briefly what it is all about. As we know, Google’s search algorithm is updated numerous times during the year. Suffice to say that updating the entire search algorithm for the biggest search engine in the world is no easy task. This is why Google employs dedicated teams of search quality testers, who follow a predefined search guidelines to test each web page and rates them accordingly. This pattern of quality ratings is then translated into Google’s search algorithm which enables Google to perform automated tests and rate each page that we can see in Google’s search index. The first glimpse of significant updates to these guidelines came about back in May 2019. With the recent push on EAT & Page Quality gaining more and more importance for Google, these updates laid special emphasis on how each content and advertisement media is presented on a website. For instance, the pop-ups, information and page relevancy to where the ad is shown, user readability or navigation hindrance due to information obstruction (ad size exceeding specific sizes, incomplete or misleading information, etc). This leads to a very important question for a lot of marketers and webmasters alike. How Does This Affect My Website? Unlike core search algorithm updates like Panda or Penguin which had direct impact on search rankings for website, Search Quality Raters Guideline is more of an instruction manual from Google for websites and Quality Testers alike, to see how Google wants to rate the quality of a website or page. So, this update may not have a direct impact to your overall search positions. However, it still should be treated as a strong checklist to make sure your site content adheres to it to get a strong preference from Google. If Google rates your site content high, then that quality parameter would go a long way in boosting your site’s visibility on the SERP. To summarize, you can say that quality guidelines doesn’t impact the ranking signals but rather helps in predicting algorithm trends. This makes these updates a lot more important as it can help you identify the change in trends for any core algorithm updates that have or will be taking place in the near future. This is because the algorithm changes affecting ranking signals or site evaluation for search engine positions, would be governed by these QRGs. What Changed in QRG The major chunk of changes this time round has been centered around YMYL, EAT and Main Content (on the website) and it is quite significant for all marketers and seo professionals. These changes are bound to keep SEO experts and online marketers on the edge as they can use these updated guidelines to predict the next set of changes that could be coming in the Google’s core algorithm. Let’s take a closer look at the changes and updates in the recent Quality Rater’s Guidelines. Your Money Your Life (YMYL) The first set of changes can be noticed in section 2.3 of the QRG under YMYL section. With special focus on the News and Government topics available online. The news topic section now gets its own section as against earlier when it was clubbed under Public/Official Information Pages. With this latest update it becomes clear that Google wants to emphasize information available on news sites and evaluate it more consistently based on the merit of the content and information sources. “Civics, Government & Laws” were also categorized under their own category further reflecting Google’s intention on evaluating these sub-sections separately than just as another news and information content. Some of the other significant categorizations in the YMYL sections are: Shopping and Finance to get separate categories Medical Information section has been renamed to Health & Safety Groups of People has been added as a new section ‘Main Content’ Evaluation Content quality guidelines across the world have a subjective nature to it when being evaluated by human beings. But for a machine or program to set the benchmarks, a specific set of guidelines needed to be administered. This time round, the QRG has been updated with new paragraphs about evaluating and rating content across various industries. News For any news based sites, Google has indicated that it will be looking at the source, relevancy and bibliography of citations that can verify the authenticity of a particular news article. Creative Content Focusing on content like videos, photographs, vlogs, infographics, etc. Google would ascertain the quality of the content, uniqueness and skillset of the content creator/publisher posting these content. Google algorithm is programmed to evaluate visual content quite capably. Research Content Setting examples of scientific research papers & a simple stamp collection article in terms of given weightage of evaluation, Google has signaled it would rate these types of content on the basis of consensus and expertise to validate the claims and information being presented in the article. Adding to this Google would also set different evaluating parameters for each of the content depending on nature, purpose and importance. Linguistic Change in “Hate Pages” Some of the changes in language of their evaluation checklist for websites/pages that promote hatred or violence. Citizenship, Socio-economic, political beliefs, victims of atrocities were removed from their evaluation parameters. Gender was renamed to Gender or Gender Identity Ethnicity was changed to Ethnic Origin Reputation Checks for YMYL Content Creators Let’s take an example of ecommerce sites to best explain this point. Based on the updates on QGR, Google is suggesting that it would evaluate the authenticity of the site based on user reviews of people who have made a purchase on the site. This small instance would apply according to each service or product based business or informational website available online. However the degree and nature of authenticity would vary depending on the details that are on offer and value proposition of each site. Reviews, Testimonials and trustable citation sources will become strong parameters that validates the quality of a site which should be a food for thought for all content creators across all domains and industries operating online. Journalist Quality Parameter Expands Uptil the last guidelines, Pulitzer prize was the predominant benchmark based on which any journalistic piece was measured on the basis of credible citations or accreditations to Pulitzer prize winning authors or publishings. This has now been revamped with significant change to the language of the guidelines now suggest “...Newspaper (with an associated website) has won journalistic awards. . . . “ where as previously it didn’t feature extension of the newspaper in terms of its association with one or other award winning site. Source Outcome While it is still early to comment on these changes as they don’t reflect directly on your websites performance as of yet, but we are sure to see some incoming changes and patterns of shift in terms of the overall content and trust evaluation of each website and thereby its’ positioning by Google. Popular influencer Glenn Gabe has taken to twitter to highlight some of the more indepth changes and sections and shared his opinion with his followers that has been sparking constructive debates. Source With these latest updates, Google has cleared the shroud of ambiguity on content quality evaluation and reinstated that it is going to give importance to YMYL and EAT parameters for evaluating the quality and trust of the website which consequently could have a long term impact on your site’s visibility on SERP. If you’re concerned or even worried about what these updates could mean for your business, you can schedule a free consultation call with our SEO experts today. ...
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Marketing Lessons From The Most Epic Social Media Brand Wins
Social media is fascinating, and arguably the most creative aspect of contemporary digital marketing practices. The incredible growth in digital media consumption over the last two years through Facebook, Twitter, and more recently Instagram and Vine, has transformed the way social media channels were looked upon. We have come too far ahead from the time when getting social meant responding to customer queries, running brand awareness campaigns or sharing tidbits of information about a certain product. Through this article we will cover some of the most innovative ways in which well-known brands used social media in their customer acquisition and promotional campaigns, and see why social listening is important. Viral Marketing & Dove Dove is considered a master campaigner and their brand strategists are somewhat purest of examples of sentiment marketing. Last year carrying forward the legacy of their 2004 “Real Beauty” global campaign, Dove rolled out its revolutionary “Real Beauty Sketches” campaign that stamped their authority on being the most innovative social media loving brand. Dove’s “Real Beauty Sketches” campaign had a video which involved a professional sketch artist listening to women and drawing their pictures as per the description of themselves. That was one part of a story, and in the next the same artist draws portrait of the same person but this time the description was provided by a stranger. The comparison between the two pictures showed that most women don’t always consider them beautiful or are aware of their true beauty. The impact was outstanding among viewers, since Dove was able to convey a simple but important message in a way that was instantly relatable by everybody. That YouTube video managed to secure over 114 million views (YouTube and other sources) within months of its release. NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon in what could easily be the most epic “Punk’d” style prank ever, disguised himself and took an unsuspecting car salesman on the wildest test ride of his life. Gordon’s Pepsi prank was labelled fake by Jalopnik auto journalist Travis Okulski, and this led the prankster duo to bring in another equally crazy and berserk sequel. Gordon put on a disguise of a taxi driver and took in Okulski as his passenger in the rear side. Now Okulski, who’s supposed to be taken to a race track to test drive a new car, has no idea that Gordon is on the driver seat. In what follows an anxious conversation between the two where Gordon tells Okulski he was a convicted felon and that police were chasing him. Okulski having no idea what or how to respond is shocked with the proceedings, and Gordon busy while evading cops does little help to calm nerves of his scared passenger. Eventually after taking Okulski on a nightmarish taxi ride full of drifts, spins and mad turns, Gordon manages to evade cops and enter a Pepsi themed safe house where Okulski realizes he was punk’d! Pepsi received critical acclaim and the campaign bestowed a legendary status on Jeff Gordon. Moral of the story - Mad and crazy things hook you more, and there is no harm in going a little wild sometimes. Jimmy Choo, the favorite haute couture footwear brand of women across the globe, took social media campaigns and cross-domain collaboration between big brands to the next level. Jimmy Choo and Foursquare, social media check-in network, designed and organized a unique marketing initiative in which people took part in a talent hunt across central London. The treasure hunt participants were lured with special Jimmy Choo trainers that were to be awarded to the winners. The most incredible thing about this campaign was that the “treasure”, or the Jimmy Choo trainers were checking-in their locations on the Foursquare app, and participants were to find them based on where they were located around central London. Lesson to be learned from the Jimmy Choo-Foursquare joint marketing campaign is that when you incorporate play in the lives of busy people. A fresh change is better than a day’s off. Netflix & Captain Mike Let’s cut it, the Netflix example isn’t about a social media campaign nor does it talk about the outstanding glory of Captain Mike. It is an example of how something as simple as a Star Trek reference can have such a massive influence on customer relations and crowd engagement. The story goes something like this: Mike, a Netflix customer service rep, starts a funny conversation with a Netflix user.Netflix user participates in the exchange, complementing Captain Mike’s style. A healthy Start Trek like space mission banter continues, and the exchange goes viral on Reddit. Fellow redditors start talking about Netflix in more positive context than ever before. Netflix takes notice and commends Captain Mike on Twitter. This humorous exchange between Cpt. Mike and Netflix user is one example of the greatest and healthiest exchange of words between a user and a customer service rep. Moral of the story is: Intent is better than Content. If the intent and attitude about your work is right, then it doesn’t matter if you avoid the regular rudimentary protocol. Conversations matter, and in social media marketing, they matter the most. Crowd engagement, brand promotions or simply responding to customer issues, if your marketing strategy is able to make the time spent by your audience worthy; then a much greater objective is achieved than that campaign itself. I hope Dove, Netflix, Jimmy Choo-Foursquare and Jeff Gordon’s Pepsi prank help my readers with much better and clearer understanding of how to put social media to a good use for their marketing campaigns. Investing in paid promotions and social media listening is nothing but worthless, if you aren't aligning your central campaign idea conflicts with areas that your target audience finds interesting or worth engaging. ...
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What is Content Automation? Must-read Automated Content Guide in 2024
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is very evident, particularly in content creation. Digital marketers and content creators leverage AI as a beneficial resource to enhance their work processes and find fresh concepts. Businesses increasingly recognize AI as a budget-friendly method for creating diverse content tailored to various marketing platforms. More than 75% of marketers now use AI tools, and about 19% of businesses use AI to create content. To stay ahead in the competitive market, considering the adoption of AI in content strategies is becoming essential. This guide will take you through the essential automated content tools of 2024, explain why content automation is crucial, and how it can revolutionize your marketing efforts. What is Content Automation, and why is it important? Automated content refers to the use of software and digital tools to automate various aspects of content creation, distribution, and management. This automation can include anything from finding keywords to sharing content on multiple platforms. The primary purpose of content automation is to save time, minimize the amount of work, and deliver a coherent and engaging content plan. Automation in content marketing allows teams to focus more on high-level strategic tasks that directly impact their business’s growth and success. It minimizes human error, enhances personalization, and provides valuable data insights that inform decision-making. Automated content marketing is not about replacing human creativity but complementing it by handling repetitive tasks and scaling operations with fewer resources. By automating routine processes through marketing automation services, marketers can focus more on crafting compelling narratives and building meaningful connections with their audience. This shift in focus improves content quality and drives engagement, leading to increased conversions. 7 Steps for Making Content Automation Easier Content automation can be integrated into nearly every phase of the content marketing process, from ideation to analysis. Here’s how you can automate seven key areas: 1. Keyword Research Keyword research is fundamental to any content strategy. Instead of manually sifting through search data, automation tools can thoroughly analyze relevant keywords in just a few clicks. These tools gather insights on search volume, keyword difficulty, and user intent, helping you identify the most valuable terms to target. For example, if you're promoting a new product like a durable dog bone, an automated keyword tool can quickly show which search terms will attract interested buyers and provide additional keyword variations to consider. 2. Idea Generation & Topic Clustering Once you have a list of keywords, the next step is to generate content ideas and group them into clusters. Automation tools can analyze existing content trends and suggest topics likely to resonate with your audience. These tools can also create topic clusters around a central theme, enhancing your authority on the subject and improving SEO performance. Automating this process saves time and ensures your content strategy is comprehensive and coherent. 3. Content Creation Crafting engaging and informative content of high caliber can be time-consuming. However, automation tools can assist in the writing process by generating drafts based on given prompts or by optimizing existing content for SEO. While these tools are imperfect, they can provide a strong foundation that marketers can build upon. For example, a content automation tool might generate a draft article based on your chosen keywords and outline, which you can refine to better match your brand’s voice and style. 4. Editing and Proofreading Automated editing tools have become increasingly sophisticated, offering more than basic grammar checks. They can analyze text for readability, tone, and SEO optimization, suggesting improvements to make your content more engaging and effective. Using tools like Grammarly or Hemingway, you can streamline the editing process, ensuring your content is polished and error-free before publication. 5. Content Optimization Once your content is created and edited, it must be optimized to achieve its intended goals. Content optimization tools analyze your text against the top-performing content in search engines, providing recommendations for improvements. These might include keyword adjustments, meta descriptions, internal linking, etc. Automation helps you quickly identify gaps and enhance your content’s SEO and user engagement. 6. Content Distribution Distributing content across multiple platforms can be a logistical nightmare, especially when you must post at optimal times to reach your audience manually. Automation tools can handle this by scheduling posts for you, recommending the best times to publish based on audience behavior, and adjusting the content format to suit different platforms. For example, when engagement is likely highest, a social media management tool can automatically publish a blog post to your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter accounts. 7. Content Analytics The last step involves analyzing performance to understand what works and doesn’t. Automated content analytics tools provide insights into how your content performs across metrics such as traffic, engagement, and conversion rates. They can track keyword rankings, measure social media engagement, and identify content that needs updating. This makes it easier for marketers to make decisions and implement changes to improve their content marketing strategy to achieve better results. Impact of Automated Content Creation on Content Quality AI-trained marketing automation specialists are key to leveraging automated content creation to enhance quality and drive engagement. Consistency: Automated content creation, facilitated by a marketing automation specialist, ensures a consistent tone, style, and messaging across various pieces of content, promoting a coherent brand voice in areas such as content marketing automation. Efficiency: With the expertise of a marketing automation specialist, automating content creation processes saves time and resources, allowing for a higher volume of content to be produced faster without sacrificing quality. This is beneficial for lead nurturing marketing automation efforts. Personalization: Utilizing algorithms, data-driven insights, and automated content creation under the guidance of a marketing automation specialist can tailor messages to specific audience segments for more personalized and relevant content, benefiting lead nurturing marketing automation strategies. Error Reduction: Implementing content marketing automation reduces the likelihood of human errors, such as typos and inconsistencies, in content creation tasks, thus improving accuracy and overall content quality in the lead nurturing marketing automation initiatives. With the right expertise and tools, content marketing automation and lead nurturing marketing automation can significantly improve content quality and audience engagement. Want to reduce your CAC to half? Book a strategy call Top 7 Content Automation Tools for Your Business With a solid understanding of the importance and implementation of content automation, let's explore some of the top tools that can improve your content marketing in 2024. Here are various tools and software for automated content creation, such as AI-powered writing assistants, content generators, and natural language processing platforms. 1. SEMrush SEMrush is a powerful tool for comprehensive content marketing automation. It offers keyword research, topic generation, SEO optimization, and analytics features. For example, the Keyword Magic Tool enables you to identify the right keywords to focus on depending on the search volume, keyword competition, and user intent. The SEO Writing Assistant checks your content for SEO and readability, ensuring your articles are optimized to rank high on search engines. 2. Grammarly Grammarly is one of the best tools that any content marketer should use. In addition to grammatical and spelling mistakes, Grammarly has other features that analyze the tone, clarity, interest, and presentation. It gives you instant feedback on how to write better and makes your articles more professional and less challenging to read. 3. Hemingway Editor The Hemingway Editor is another fantastic tool for enhancing content readability. It identifies complex sentences, passive voice, and other shared writing issues that could detract from the readability of your content. The tool ensures that your writing is concise and accessible, crucial for maintaining reader engagement. 4. ContentShake AI ContentShake AI is a newer entrant that specializes in automated content generation. It can create entire articles based on your keywords and brief, saving you time on drafting and research. While the generated content may require some editing for personalization and accuracy, it provides a strong starting point for busy marketers looking to scale their content production. 5. SocialBee SocialBee is a powerful tool for content distribution that automates posting across multiple social media channels. It offers advanced scheduling features, including the ability to recycle evergreen content, and provides analytics to track performance and engagement. Thus, SocialBee can ensure consistent content distribution without manual intervention. 6. Google Analytics & Search Console Integration Combining Google Analytics with Search Console provides a powerful duo for content analytics. This integration allows marketers to track organic traffic, measure engagement, and monitor content performance in search results. The insights provided by these tools assist you in improving your content strategy and adjusting the subsequent publications for higher effectiveness. 7. ActiveCampaign ActiveCampaign is an all-in-one email marketing tool that supports content distribution through automated email campaigns. It enables you to send emails at a specified time, target specific users, and even monitor the effectiveness of the campaigns. This allows you to deliver your content to the target audience at the right time and thus improve engagement and conversion. Conclusion The right marketing automation strategy will help you create the right content. Content automation makes creating, optimizing, and distributing content much easier and quicker. Automated content creation and marketing allow businesses to scale their efforts, reach broader audiences, and achieve better results with less effort. Implementing the right tools in your content marketing strategy can help streamline processes, create better content, and increase engagement. At Saffron Edge, we specialize in helping businesses seamlessly integrate AI with marketing automation to optimize their marketing efforts and drive growth. Contact us today and discover how we can help you quickly achieve your revenue goals. ...
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