Essential Elements Of A Dental Marketing Plan
Apr 16, 2018
10 min read
Getting the word out about your dental practice is now easier and cheaper than ever… thanks to the internet!
For dental practices of today, spending a considerable amount of money on marketing no longer means spending half of their budget on TV adverts and praying they’d bring in more patients. It’s more about making your every buck count utilizing the power of the internet...
We have already covered the active role your dental website plays in the grand-scheme of things when it comes to marketing your dental practice online. It’s basically the start and end point of all your marketing efforts. So, it’s vital to have a good looking website that can convince users that you’re really serious about your practice.
Before we begin with discussing the vital elements of a dental marketing plan, let’s first look at some basic objectives that your marketing efforts must absolutely fulfill -
- Attract: Grabbing the attention of a potential patient is paramount when it comes to making your marketing efforts a success.
- Capture: Setting up a mechanism to collect information from users. Taking feedback, offering newsletter subscriptions, e-books & other resourceful information is a nice way to do it.
- Convert: By this point, your potential patients are ready to convert to a customer.
- Retain: According to a study, existing customers bring in 67% more business than new customers. While acquiring new patients is kind of the reason you are marketing your practice online in the first place, you must never lose sight of your old patients.
With the objectives of a marketing plan set, you need to choose the mediums you will target to get the best out of your marketing efforts. And the mediums or elements or areas of executing a dental marketing plan I am going to tell you are not, in any way, specific to dental practices but are widely used all over the globe for other niche industries as well. Here we go -
Content Marketing
Pushing relevant, quality content to your patients (or potential patients) that helps them in solving real-world problems related to your industry should always be at the heart of all your varied marketing efforts, doesn’t matter the platform or medium.
That’s the true essence of content marketing right there and not the self-promotional stuff from brands you see online.
Starting a new blog is the right way and often times the first step to kickstart your content marketing journey.
Say, for a dental blog, the topics you can capitalize upon could be about ways to maintain the right dental health, the latest treatments in town and other informational but relevant topics.
If done right, a well maintained blog can generate a steady flow of traffic coming to your website from scratch and keep the momentum going for long. But don’t think your content marketing efforts are confined to just marketing your own blog, even the content on your web pages can serve you well if marketed in the right place and at the right time. And it doesn’t matter if you’re posting a on Social Media, if you’re playing with content, it’s already a part of your content marketing efforts.
Search Engine Optimization
I am pretty sure you must have used Google or some other search engine at some point to make your life easier.
Infact, I don’t blame you, there are 32.8 million searches made on Google everyday and they are all made by people looking for some answers.
Suppose, even if a small fraction of them are using Search Engine Optimization for best dental practices around them, you could be drowning in some serious traffic right now but in order for that to happen, you need to rank on Google.
Making yourself visible on Google is no walk in the park. You’ll have to base all your website and blog content (see, I told you it’s all about content) around keywords and that takes a lot of time and research.
If you are looking to give keyword research a go, our keyword research guide can give you a headstart.
Yes, it’s a pain... but if done right, Google can drive massive traffic to your keyword optimized website.
Social Media Marketing
Can you name a place where all your potential dental patients hang out?
It’s Social Media (or Facebook to be more precise).
In recent years, the entire Social Media space has evolved as a marketing arsenal of its own.
You can expand your outreach endeavours on Social Media and build a loyal following with the help of engaging and visual posts, provide exceptional & quick customer support, have a look at important marketing analytics and what not, all through a single platform... which I think is amazing!
And it can turn out to be amazing for your brand exposure as well. You can choose to spend money on marketing on these platforms or stay organic, it’s completely on you.
Yes, paying for marketing on Social Media has its own advantages but staying organic usually reaps enough exposure to get the ball rolling, after it, it’s up to you how creative (but relevant) you can get with your posts to make your fans stay.
Patient Support
Remember the part about retaining patients? Patient Support is all about that and more.
You absolutely need to have a relationship manager for your dental practice who will be the sole point of contact for all your patients.Being present on all the various platforms (including your website) comes with responsibilities.By marking your presence and actively marketing on all your preferred platforms, you give your users a way to contact you as well. And Social Media has emerged as a preferred way for users to submit some feedback (good and bad) or get support. But they can give you a call as well or submit a query on your website or send you an email, so you need to be present for them when they need you wherever they are or you’ll lose them if their queries go unheard or unreplied.
Most practitioners don’t pay much heed to this part of their marketing plan and loose patients through the back door. But sometimes, a good support system or a complete lack of it can make all the difference in the level of success of your marketing plan.
Modern day marketing is not about doing one thing, you’ll have to do a lot of things and do them all simultaneously and in sync to keep the ball rolling.
Only optimizing your website for SEO won’t work well unless you have keyword wrapped content on your website. Having Social Media profiles for your dental practice is great, but if you don’t have a website to channel them further through the sales funnel, you won’t see much conversions. Just adding content on your website won’t help you gain exposure if it fails to create value….
It’s all interconnected and you will have to optimize your practice for each of them to see the best results.
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Enhance Product Discovery: Best Navigation Tips to Improve UX
What makes navigation an important factor? Have you ever felt that you wanted to reach a particular page on a website but could not or said you got lost? This is where navigation comes in and helps you easily navigate through the numerous pages of the website. Implementing optimal E-commerce Navigation UX helps users easily navigate the website's various pages. Businesses can improve their overall UX by incorporating simple pathways, smoothly designed menus, and a user-friendly interface. Most of all, a well-structured navigation system easily guides a potential customer through the ocean of products, fostering a positive user experience and increased engagement and purchases. According to research, only 30% of the users rely on search input, while 70% prefer navigating directly. This blog will discuss the importance of navigation and the rules for designing an effective navigation. What is Ecommerce Navigation Design? Ecommerce navigation UX design focuses on creating, analyzing, and implementing effective ways for users to navigate online shopping platforms. This specialized area of navigation design is integral to the success of ecommerce websites, as it directly impacts how users interact with and explore the vast options of products and services. The primary goal of e-commerce navigation is to provide a smooth and positive journey for users from the moment they enter the site to the completion of a purchase. This involves the strategic use of UI patterns, including links, labels, and other elements, specifically tailored to enhance the ecommerce user experience. The advantages of an e-commerce navigation UX design are: Enhanced User Understanding: It helps users quickly understand the structure of the ecommerce platform, making navigation and product discovery easy. Increased User Confidence: A user-friendly navigation offers credibility and authority, which makes users confident about the product, encouraging them to browse and make purchases easily. Credibility: The navigation design contributes significantly to the credibility of an ecommerce platform. The design patterns for navigation UX are diverse and dynamic for e-commerce. Different businesses need different navigation patterns; there is no such thing as one solution that fits all. Each chosen design pattern must be carefully evaluated and tested to ensure it aligns with the ecommerce platform's specific requirements and the target audience's preferences. Adopting a user-centered design perspective is essential. Understanding online shoppers' distinct preferences and behaviors allows for creating navigation that optimizes the ecommerce platform and resonates with the users, ultimately contributing to a positive and rewarding online shopping experience. The Importance of Navigation Design More than 5.5 million apps are on platforms like Apple and Android collectively. Now, think of these maps as the navigation design of each app, determining how easy or frustrating it is for any user to find what they are looking for. Every product needs a smooth path, whether it's buttons, menus, or dropdowns, for a user to achieve their goals. If this path is confusing or poorly designed, that person might leave and abandon the app. That is why navigation design is crucial it works like a friendly guide, helping them explore and enjoy what an app offers. In 2001, tech expert Alan Cooper highlighted, "A good design should be crystal clear. Users shouldn't waste time figuring out where things are hidden.” Here’s why navigation design matters: Reflects Your Brand: A well-designed navigation system makes a positive impression, shaping how users see the app. Communicates User Location: Navigation acts as a GPS, which helps you know where you are in the app. It's like a friendly guide saying, "You are here," making your experience smoother. Provides Access to Information: Navigation is the key to finding your need. A smart navigation system ensures you can easily access the information or features you are searching for. Good navigation design is not just about buttons and menus; it is about making the user's journey through an app enjoyable and hassle-free. What are the rules for Designing Great Navigation? Prioritize Consistency Inconsistencies in navigation can arise when content does not align with the predefined sections of a website, leading to its separate listing. Alternatively, there are situations where users require quick access to elements residing deep within the website, prompting site owners to add quick links in the navigation. However, some alternative approaches aim to sidestep the practice of making irregular additions to the navigation.1. Subpages and Landing Pages Achieving consistency needs transparent decision-making. All navigation elements should display subpage links or none of them. Displaying subpages for specific sections may mislead users, creating the impression that sections without visible subpages lack them. If subpages are not featured in primary navigation, employing consistent secondary navigation across all sections is crucial. For example, When a visitor hovers over any section in the menu on the Nashville Zoo website, the corresponding subpages for that section become visible. Similarly, all primary navigation items should consistently link to landing pages or serve as section headers for secondary navigation links. Inconsistencies such as only some items being linked can create confusion among users. Additionally, when a primary navigation item is a link, clearly indicating the related action through verbiage or visual design is essential. This ensures users understand how to navigate to the desired content. Let’s look at an example: In the Fairfax County Public Schools menu, users can reach the Careers landing page by either clicking on the text "Careers" or clicking on the arrow to explore the subpages. 2. Call-outs and Feature Blocks Call-outs or feature blocks on the homepage or section landing page may be best for content requiring easier access. These visually appealing elements capture user attention without disrupting the overall site navigation. 3. Breadcrumbs Breadcrumbs act as effective navigation aids for users arriving from external sources. Ensuring accuracy in breadcrumbs is critical for effective user orientation. While smaller websites with two levels may not necessitate breadcrumbs, consistency is key when implementing them. By adhering to these principles, websites can establish a cohesive and user-friendly navigation experience, allowing users to explore content with clarity and effortlessly. Design Clear Interactions User confusion often arises when visitors struggle to identify interactive elements or anticipate specific actions. To overcome this challenge, it is imperative to design functional and crystal-clear interactions meticulously. Clarity through Visual Changes Visual changes convey the nature of interactions on a website. An example is the smooth transition from an expand icon to a collapse icon, signaling a change and providing users with a straightforward guide on how to undo the modification. The absence of such visual updates may result in users overlooking these crucial changes. Use of Labels with Icons While icons can effectively replace text links, introducing a label significantly reduces ambiguity. For instance, rather than relying on the widely debated hamburger icon, adding a clear "Menu" label alongside it improves user understanding. This practice proves valuable for other commonly used icons, such as "Contact" or "Login." Designing Interactive Icons The differentiation between icons serving as links and those employed for informational or categorical purposes is critical to user understanding. A strategic approach involves assigning the link color specified in the style guide exclusively to icons designed for interaction. Decorative icons adopt a distinct non-link color to maintain clarity. A study by NNG underscores the impact of varied visual indicators. Users show a 37% increase in speed when locating items within a web page list where color and icon variations complement the text. By implementing these principles, websites can serve user-friendly experiences, ensuring visitors confidently navigate and engage with the intended interactions. Avoid Deep Navigation To create a perfect design, aligning the information architecture (IA) and website hierarchy with this goal is crucial. When constructing a sitemap, aim for a "flat navigation" model, enabling users to reach the deepest pages within one or two clicks. While flat navigation is an ideal solution, it is a misconception to believe that limited short-term memory necessitates short menus. The Nielsen Norman Group advocates for menus that allow users to "rely on recognition rather than recall." Thus, menus should be short enough for easy scanning yet long enough to maintain clarity. Limiting the Number of Levels The site hierarchy defines the number of navigation levels. One or two clicks should quickly lead users to their desired destination with minimal confusion. As the Nielsen Norman Group noted, deeper hierarchies can disorient visitors. Most websites maintain three or four levels of hierarchy, balancing accessibility and avoiding overly broad navigation. To determine the right number of levels, separate the current hierarchy into different groups and assess whether these groups can be brought next to a higher-level grouping. This may involve: Updating section labels Creating new sections Adjusting how sections relate to each other Consolidation or removal of content needs to be considered as well. Current trends for truly flat navigation lean towards full-page designs where all pages reside on one level. Unique Visual Design for Each Level Navigation should enable quick scanning, distinguishing the primary, secondary, and tertiary links. Consistent visual design elements such as font styles, sizes, weights, and colors should differentiate between navigation levels. If secondary navigation is present, it should clearly distinguish between parent/child and sibling links while aligning cohesively with the primary navigation. Use Location Indicators Similar to breadcrumbs, location indicators within the navigation assist users in orienting themselves within site, especially when navigating deeper levels. Clear visual cues signify the section a user explores, enhancing overall navigation understanding. Design for Responsive Compatibility A good navigation system should be user-friendly on all devices that includes your computer, phone, or tablet. Create a navigation that looks and functions the same way on different devices, or consider having two similar navigations so users don't get confused when switching between their computer and mobile. No More Hovering on Mobile When you hover over a menu on your computer, it shows more options. But this doesn't work the same on phones. If you have something you can click on your computer by hovering, find a way to make it easy for mobile users, too. Have a text link that takes you to one place and a little button you can tap to see more options. Design for Each Device Designing the navigation differently for computers and mobiles is better. Each device is different, and designing for its unique features and screen sizes makes the experience smoother for users. It is like having a separate design for each device to ensure everything fits and feels right. Conclusion Designing navigation is a basic step to foster user engagement and convert users into buyers. Navigation emerged as a key factor shaping user perceptions, reflecting brand identity, and ensuring users quickly access the information or features they seek. As users increasingly rely on navigation rather than search inputs, businesses benefit from investing in optimal navigation design. If you are struggling to create an ideal e-commerce navigation UX or unsure where to initiate this crucial process, Saffron Edge is your trusted partner. Our expertise lies in optimizing websites, explicitly focusing on enhancing the user experience for online shoppers. Let us guide you in creating an e-commerce navigation design that not only meets but exceeds your objectives, driving engagement and conversions effectively. ...
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Email Marketing Hacks That Will Help You Dominate Your Customers Inbox
Email marketing can be an efficient and orthodox form of marketing campaign. This form, coupled with strategic planning can prove to be fruitful for marketing managers who seeks to boast around that ‘Best employee of the year’ badge. Like a coin, email marketing is too bilateral in nature. Either it can help achieve great marketing goals set by marketing chiefs or it could disappoint your boss a tidbit. So, marketing directors may often ask this question: what could be some great email marketing strategies to ensure that could help build a larger customer base? We call these methods are termed ‘hacks’ as they can greatly aid in email campaigning and provided they are intelligently used could take the Email marketing game to the next level. Creating a consistent Brand Identity It is quite unlikely that one can demarcate email marketing strategy from any strategy regarding branding, messaging and other forms of content. Hence, it is evident that this entails building an image of a business which includes style, tone of communication, the logo and overall look (especially if you are a registered business/company) which should be in line with the composition of emails. For instance, if the logo of an elite class stylist salon is embedded in the middle of its newsletter and articles, your email marketing director should incorporate this little detail so that customers know what to expect. This would enable customers to perceive the business as consistent. Secondly, it is more than obvious that any business eventually thrives because of its products. If the product is mediocre and lacks real quality, no customer would only just subscribe to the email service just for the heck of it. This means after a certain period of time either those subscribed will keep receiving the emails or they will unsubscribe eventually seeing that they receive no incentive (such as a mere free goodie) for reading the emails. Yep, it is a cruel world. Collect addresses anywhere and everywhere The first step to having a large base of customers is to have a large accumulation of addresses to which you can direct the emails towards. If a business is doing things right it should already have an email subscription sign-up form embedded in their website. This could involve an interesting tagline which would encourage customers to pay heed to the subscription pop-up box and sign up. Also, we know that the emergence of social media has marked the beginning of a great aeon of technology. Social sites such as Facebook and Twitter help take businesses to a whole new level in terms of marketing. MailChimp, Sign up Anywhere, Onspotsocial are amongst the many hundreds of websites which lets us embed free email collection forms in the form of apps on Facebook. With a majority of individuals having a social networking account such as Facebook and Twitter, emails are collected with ease. Talk to the right audience It would be a grave misconception of a business thinking that hitting the send button to thousands of subscribers is a good idea. Yes, to gain someone’s attention is difficult. More than that it is not free at all, it is earned over time. Second comes trust. Suppose you have to bake brownies for a friend. What is one ingredient you would put which binds the flour and cocoa/ chocolate? Eggs. Here, the word RELEVANCE is equal to THIS one vital ingredient. Relevance binds together the vital elements of trust and attention which every marketing manager would crave for. Every relevant email and one consecutively followed will grasp the customer’s attention. However, irrelevant email spamming provides no coherent reasoning why any customer should bear with a business sending them irrelevant emails. Customers see it as spamming. Attention can be gained over time and so can trust, but if trust is based on a shaky foundation the attention becomes scarce too. Trust is fragile.Hence, directing relevant emails to the right audience could help secure their trust and attention. A helpful strategy of ‘Email forking’ automatically categorizes subscribers to new email lists which are more specific to their interests for instance if someone clicks on ‘Belts’, emails specific to that category will be re-targeted. Offer loyalty with incentives Always give a reason for customers to take that step of subscribing to emails. Let’s be realistic. Incentives such as free printable discount coupons are a great incentive for customers. Freebies such as free E-books which offer product samples in the form of free brochures are always an instant hit. Send a Few impactful emails “Half a loaf is better than no bread”. This expression proves true in the field of email marketing also. In order to do this, we must grasp a few ideas which could enable this: Proof-reading, building customer’s curiosity and sending other people’s content. The importance of proof-reading is two-fold and cannot be stressed enough. Often a times the proof-reading stage is neglected which could lead to a vital difference between an increase in sales and readers un-subscribing en masse. Curiosity is the key to actively engage customers with the reading. This can overhaul the email marketing campaign for the better. One astute way coming from a brilliant Email marketing person would be to compose emails which ask a lot of questions. A compelling question can give astounding results. Sending someone else’s content may show that you genuinely care about your customer’s interests. This could not only enable you to provide great quality content (eg; from popular blogs, tumblr etc) but also would save time. Even Marketing Department Directors seldom have spare time to write great content also which the customers enjoy reading. Introduce yourself with a catchy subject line Subject lines could be short but must be irresistible. “Hey” has been proved to be an excellent subject line. The Obama Campaign raised a massive $690 million online so obviously, it did wonders afterall. Brevity can be quite impactful and piquing the reader’s curiosity is of immense importance through a attention-grabbing subject line because this is what hooks the reader into reading rest of the email. Brainstorm viral ideas This idea could be a vital factor in arousing the reader’s interest. Naturally when an individual enjoys reading some content it has a fair chance of going viral. Jonah Berger, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School confirms through his research that useful content that evoke high arousal emotions (anger, pain, fear loss, laughter, sadness etc) gets shared the most). Ideas are twice as likely to get shared if they arouse human emotions as compared to content write-ups that don’t. Personalize, personalize, personalize! Sending an email from a real person offers the opportunity for readers to reply to emails. When they receive an email from Dan Joe, Head of your company, they will definitely see it as a great user experience and will be impressed. A business should employ a few persons who can draft emails in a human-like tone and could also proof-read thereafter. Personalizing emails could greatly boost up customer interaction. According to Hubspot, companies between 1 to 10 employees overall contribute to open click rates of around 35% while companies employing 26 to almost 200 earn a slightly lower rate of 32%. Using the first name when addressing emails is indeed the first small step to personalizing emails from a batch company. Also, using your personal name or company name as the ‘From’ address. It is evident that incorporating these Email Marketing Hacks can contribute to a boost in email click rates. These hacks, if implemented properly with due diligence can help achieve a positive visible change in the overall sales of a company. There are many other ‘hacks’ which businesses can incorporate in order to achieve their desired objectives. ...
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10 Best SEO Tools Every Webmaster Should Know!
Every webmaster wants to get on the top of Google, but actually getting there is no walk in the park. You'll have to take care of each and every aspect of SEO to crack it - backlinks, meta descriptions, content quality, keywords and 200+ other factors that Google looks for on a webpage to rank it on SERPs. And taking care of optimizing all your webpages for all these factors can get a bit difficult for webmasters. Luckily, there are tools out there that can help you supercharge all your SEO efforts in a breeze. We actively use the helpful SEO tools we are about to tell you to provide unmatched SEO services to all our clients and drive massive search engine visibility and eventually, traffic to them. So, here we go - 1. Screaming Frog We are hardcore fans of Screaming Frog and have been using this tool since we started offering search engine optimization services in 2009. This tool scans your website like search engines scan the web and will tell you everything wrong about your website that is not chiming well with Google. It checks your website for a lot of things including meta descriptions, meta tags, duplicate content, broken redirects, robots.txt and a lot of other technical things. So, If you are looking to conduct a full SEO audit for a website, Screaming Frog is your go-to tool. 2. Yoast SEO If your website runs on wordpress, you must be aware of this killer SEO tool, if not, you should install it as soon as possible! Yoast SEO comes as a plugin extension for wordpress websites and is an all-round SEO tool that helps webmasters with optimizing their meta titles & descriptions, keywords, urls, XML sitemaps, duplicacy of content, redirections and content readability amongst other things. It's free but if you need some extra functionality, there's a pro (paid) version available as well that you can opt for more SEO benefits. 3. Bright Local Bright Local is just like screaming frog but this tool allows you to monitor and update your local citations across the web as well. Great tool to stay on top of Local SEO. 4. W3C Validator When it comes to SEO, the way your website is written can sometimes make all the difference. Properly validating your website code for SEO using a tool like W3C Validator can bring to light some problems with your website code that you didn't even know existed in the first place. You'll need to sit with your developer on this one. If you don't have one, use our help. 5. Barracuda Panguin If you think your website is hit with a Google penalty, Panguin will help you make sure that your website is indeed hit with a google penalty (Penguin, Panda and the likes) or not and help you get to the bottom of it. 6. GT Metrix The time your website takes to load is vital in determining it's search engine ranking. GT Metrix is a tool that will pin-point everything wrong on your website that is hampering its performance and will provide quick solutions to fix the issues as soon as possible. 7. SEMrush No other tool will help you better with keyword research than SEMrush. Other than that, this tool will also help you monitor and analyze your website traffic, targeted keywords, backlink profile, website content and also gives you a sneak peek of your competitors' backlink profile and the keywords they are targeting. Moreover, you can also conduct a sitewide audit with their new free SEO site audit tool. 8. Citation Labs' Broken Link Builder Working on securing broken links from the web is a great way to strengthen your own backlink profile but can be a bit extensive as finding and securing broken links all over the web is no easy task. Citation Labs' Broken Link Builder simplifies this manual and cumbersome process as it shows you every broken link there is on the web for a specific keyword. At Saffron Edge we use the same techniques to find out and create links for all the broken links for our clients. 9. Ninja Outreach Ninja Outreach makes reaching out to influencers a piece of cake. It is a tool that connects influencers with bloggers for easy collaborations. You can easily search for influencers in your industry and have a look at their platform specific following at a glance with the help of this powerful tool. Also, the tool provides ready-made messaging templates to reach out to influencers in a jiffy. 10. Google Mobile Friendly Test After Google rolled out the mobile-first indexing algorithm, getting a mobile website for your desktop website, if you didn't have one already, became a priority. After the update, mobile friendliness became a detrimental factor in assigning search engine rankings to websites. To help webmasters, Google created their own tool to make sure that webmasters complied to all the mobile website best practices there are and provided a seamless user experience to their mobile users. The tool weeds out and highlights every problem there is with your website that is hurting it's mobile accessibility. Are these tools the only ones out there? No way, there are literally thousands of tools out there that can help you with the above mentioned aspects of SEO. By actively making use of these tools you will be able to keep track of everything SEO related happening with your website and will help you stay on top of everything and gain better search engine rankings over-time. ...
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Attract more patients with customized strategies for your dental clinic’s online presence.
Talk to Experts