Let's talk dental marketing.

Actually, let's not!

That word “marketing” often has negative connotations.

• Trying to get someone to buy something they don't want
• Annoying people with multiple adverts
• Spammy e-mails
• and from the point of view of the patient, trying to be sold treatments just to make you more money! (Yes, that's what lots of people think)

This old school way of marketing is what is known as a push strategy. You have your marketing message and the treatments/products you wish to ‘sell’ (I hate that word in health care), you then push that message out to the maximum number of people in the hope that someone, somewhere sees your message, identifies with it and buys whatever it is you are selling.

It's a strategy often used in transactional marketing, we simply want someone to engage in a single transaction, part with their money, take the goods, go away and not come back again… Is that something you really want to do in a dental practice?

Let's flip this completely on its head. Let's look at this from the point of view of relationship marketing. [1]

Relationship marketing often uses a pull strategy instead of the classic push strategy.

A pull strategy involves allowing prospects (new patients) to pull the relevant information towards them at a time that is right for them. It's about handing over control, they control what they see, when they see it and what happens next [2]

Rather than try to force our message on these people, we simply generate a range of content which answers various dental problems, we put that content in various places on the Internet (think your website, e-mail marketing, social media, YouTube) marketing is then simply driving people towards this relevant content which helps them solve a dental problem.

Here's the thing…

Stop thinking about treatments, services and products.

Start thinking about the problems that those treatments solve.

• I want to replace missing teeth.
• I want to have straighter teeth.
• I want to overcome my dental anxiety.
• I want to look and feel good whilst being able to eat more efficiently.

These are the concerns that patients have, NEVER has a patient woke up one morning and decided out of the blue that they want to have dental implants, what they will do, is wake up one morning and think that they wish to solve their problem of missing teeth, they then go on a search to find out the best way to do this… This search (hopefully for you) ends with them deciding to have dental implants in your practice.

And by the way, by the time you get to the end of this series of blog posts you will see how this search absolutely can end up with them coming to see you in your practice.

If we begin focusing on solving patients’ problems (pull strategy) rather than trying to sell treatments (push strategy) we turn marketing into a relationship building mechanism whereby we genuinely help people with their dental health, and isn't that what dentistry is all about?

In the next blog post I'm going to go through some definitive techniques that you can use in order to implement your new relationship building marketing strategy. I will show you how you can attract new patients in an ethical, friendly, kind and gentle way which builds trust [3] and reduces risk.

Something which pushing your messages on people absolutely does not do!

Until next time…

[1] Gummeson E. (2002), Total Relationship Marketing, (2^nd edition), Oxford, Butterworth Heinemann
[2] Urban, G L. (2005), Customer Advocacy: a New Area Marketing?, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing May 2005
[3] Bibb, S. and Kourdi, J. (2004) Trust Matters, Hampshire UK, Palgrave Macmillian.

Hello all,

Today (17th May 2017) we will be delivering our 10,000th daily email digest to our GDPUK members. Something we are extremely proud of.

• Our first daily digest was sent out in 2008 when we built the first GDPUK website (pictured above).
• Barring one or two hiccups alomng the way.... We have sent out 3 daily digest emails a day since.
• The emails contain the latest news from the site, plus the top forum posts of the day. This keeps our members engaged with the site and more importantly, what is happening within UK Dentistry.
• The digest contains advertising banners from our partners, so thanks to all our loyal clients and friends over the last ten years who have made it possible to reach this milestone.
• In that time we have had 54 different people post over 1000 times on the forum pages. All that posting helped to create the unique content of the digests. So thanks to the 54 people and the thousands of other posters who have contributed to the site.
• Thanks also, to over 10,000 members of the dental profession who have signed up to the site since 2008.
• The GDPUK forum continues to thrive on a daily basis. The forum has had over 22,000 threads created and nearly 256,000 replies to those threads. That is 11.5 replies to every thread created. A lot of knowledge and content contained in our forum pages :)
• You have to be a member to view our forum and daily digests. Register for free here.

Thanks again for supporting and reading GDPUK.

Have you ever heard of AuctionWeb, BackRub or Blue Ribbon Sports? These are all fledgling start-ups that, at some point, rebranded so that today you know them as multinational giants eBay, Google and Nike respectively! It may sound extreme, but renaming your business can breathe new life into it.

Defining your brand is a critical first step in any marketing plan and it takes time and thought. Once you’ve done it, you might like to think that you’ll never have to repeat the exercise, but nothing lasts forever. There comes a time in every business’s life when the branding gets stale or outdated. Change might also be desirable due to a change in ownership or focus.

Several high-profile brands have gone through identity adjustments over the years. A less drastic solution than renaming is to merely modify your business name to freshen it up. A recent example is the Huffington Post that, following the departure of its founder, chose to rebrand as the snappier ‘Huffpost’. In other cases, the business name is fine as it is and all that’s needed is a new or reworked logo, as we’ve seen over the years from the likes of Apple and Coca Cola.

As with all change, there is risk, but also the potential for great rewards. The risk is that you’ll alienate some of your loyal client base. In dental practice this would likely mean your older patients who might be more averse to change. The rewards, however, can be plentiful, especially if you’re looking to attract new patients. The decision, therefore, has to take into account what your prime demographic is, based on your location and services, and what kind of change will either reel them in or send them packing.

In short, when you start to feel like your practice image could use a refresh, it’s time to take stock of where you are as a company, how you are seen in the community and where you want to go. The exercise is an excellent opportunity to check the pulse of your practice and make the changes necessary to give it a jumpstart. The first step is to engage a specialist marketing agency to help guide you through the process. If you choose the right one, they’ll give you an honest assessment of what you should keep, and what you should let go of, and then help you do just that.

Milkshake Dental Marketing is a leading provider of specialist dental marketing in the UK, so give us a call on 01844 292086, visit our website or connect with us on social media (@MilkshakeDental).

The marketing options available to the dental practice vary widely, with differing target audiences, messaging opportunities and costs. Private practices in particular strive to attract new patients and maintain the existing patient-base to ensure a high chair occupancy, which will help the business to thrive. Importantly, a practice wishes to minimise the limited resource that they have on marketing activities in order to maximise investment in materials and equipment and improve the clinical care that they provide to patients. Careful consideration must be given to the allocation of budget, meaning that innovative marketing solutions need to be created.

The digital age has delivered a new, more cost-effective marketing channel to the general dental practice, but it can be resource draining in other ways. Search engine optimisation (SEO), social media platform updates and advertisements on complimentary web sites have their obvious benefits, but to truly optimize the practice’s presence takes commitment. Websites and social media platforms need to be updated frequently to improve SEO and so sporadic participation will not help achieve the end goal. To put the dedication that is required in perspective, most mid-sized to larger businesses have one employee dedicated solely to the digital role.

Other popular and more traditional marketing strategies include direct mail (both paper and electronic) and print advertising. The majority of practices would not have the tools, skill or time to create these activities in-house and so would need to seek external help. A professional and thorough service would be provided, but with a fee attached and also time commitment for a briefing, alterations and sign off on the final collateral. Also, the amount spent on the activity can sometimes outweigh the results, meaning it can be a costly exercise for a smaller dental practice to pursue.

A Complimentary Innovative Solution

Principals and practice managers responsible for the marketing functions need to find innovative, economical and time-friendly solutions that are less of a drain on resources whilst still being reliable and robust. Becoming a Munroe Sutton dental practice provides a solution. With over 30 years experience of designing, organising and managing affordable dental plans, Munroe Sutton works with some of the largest and most influential companies such as CIGNA and Allianz. Listed as a preferred supplier, Munroe Sutton provides unique dental plans that save customers money. The thousands of members that seek financial savings on dental treatment are directed to Munroe Sutton’s network of high quality dental practices, offering your business free promotion to encourage new patients. What’s more, to become listed on the Munroe Sutton network costs the practice absolutely nothing. 

Rather than spending considerable time, effort and expense on trying to attract new patients, Munroe Sutton does the hard work for you and will direct patients straight to your door.

For more information please call 0808 234 3558 or visit www.munroesutton.co.uk

One of my early posts to my digital dentistry blog was entitled “4 A * Reasons Email Marketing is still Alive!” and I looked at the reasons behind why email marketing was still so important.

Nearly 2 years later, this is still seems to be the case. One could argue it is more important than ever. In the recent eConsultancy Census, it was found that revenue from email marketing increased proportionately by 28% in 2014, and was ranked as the number 1 channel in terms of return on investment, with 68% of companies rating the channel as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’.

Email has become part of mobile marketing, it is estimated that mobile can account for up to 70% of all email opens. The banner ads or message on these emails still need to be clear and well positioned, although it’s not just the creative that is important, the sales funnel must also be fully mobile-optimised, with every page working so that they are mobile optimised and keep your customer engaged. A well designed landing page is still always an important part of the process.

We forget that with emails you are often reaching an audience that already knows you, if you have them on your list, they want to hear from you. Email requires a deeper level of engagement and trust. That is the reasons our daily digest emails remain popular. Our members are expecting them.

Therefore advertising on the GDPUK daily digest emails (sent 3 times a day) remains incredibly popular because so many people receive these daily emails to their inboxes and thousands of eyes look at the animated banners on the emails. We use these daily digest emails ourselves as an accidental marketing tool. What started as a way of communicating the latest posts on the forum to our members, has instead become a way for our members to be constantly engaged with the site and what is happening within UK dentistry. We know that not every member reads every thread or email but there is always a subject that appeals to a number of our members and that keeps our site busy and the banners receiving impressions. This means email remains incredibly important for GDPUK plus of course every big business that is online and looking for customers.

So two years after I wrote the blog piece linked above, email marketing remains an important tool for businesses of all sizes and needs to be treated as an integral part of your marketing plans, whether you are looking to reach dentists or members of the public for your practice.

We are all looking to generate leads and gain new customers, is email marketing still something you use to reach these goals or do you find other methods more effective? We look forward to hearing your thoughts, on what works for your business and what doesn’t.

Hope you enjoyed this follow up blog. Thanks!

At 7connections, we create collateral and systems to ensure you clear your dental marketing hurdles and win the race.

The bespoke services we offer to enhance your marketing activities and maximise your return on marketing on investment include:

• Artisan Lifecycle Marketing – an innovative, automated email marketing solution that combines exceptional software from InfusionSoft with the expertise of 7connections. Focusing on the seven key phases of lifecycle marketing, the comprehensive package could help you increase new business enquiry conversation rates from an average of 18% to 80%!

• MagicBox™ – delivers a box of pre-designed and branded marketing tools to your practice door including posters, referral cards, TV loops, social media banners and patient smile evaluations. These physical and digital solutions will help drive sales, boost referrals and increase revenue with minimal cost and hassle for you, and the 12-month planner and tracker will ensure you head in the right direction.

• Ultimate Marketing Academy – a one-year programme involving quarterly meetings and 24/7 access to the 7connections library of knowledge. You’ll receive a personalised dental marketing strategy, alongside all the skills and support you need to implement it successfully – there’s also a 100% money-back guarantee if you are not satisfied with the results!*

For more information about 7connections please call 01647 478145,

email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or

visit www.7connections.com

* The 100% money-back guarantee is available if you implement the knowledge and ideas that you gain and your are not satisfied with the results at the end of the Academic year.

Your Landing Page

Neil Sanderson

Most people think of a website as an entity in its self, this is not the case. A website is a series of pages of which you need to think about landing pages.

What is a landing page? Well the description is in the name really, it’s where people land when they first come to your website.

Most people think that the place people should first see when they arrive at your site is the home page, this again is not the case, ideally you need people to land on the correct landing page, let me explain.

I’m sure that all of you have at one time or another gone to Amazon. Can you ever think of a time when you arrived on a home page which had menu options across the top for you to find what you are looking for?

No of course you haven’t. You always land on the page that you wanted. For instance if you are looking for a camera. I typed in the search “Canon EOS 70D” and below is the search I got.

Camer search screen

All the search items are about the EOS 70D which is what you would expect, some are reviews and technical pages others are sales pages, but effectively all of them are about this particular camera.

So whenI click on the search item which takes me to the “landing page”. It comes as no surprise that the page I land on is about the Canon EOS 70D.

Because Amazon is so good at this you are presented with everything you need to purchase this camera, there are reviews, things that people also bought when they buy this camera etc. In fact just about everything you need to make a purchase, this is a typical Amazon landing page and they are very good at it.

Amazon Canon landing page

So what has this got to do with your website and the landing page that your prospective patients land on?

Well it’s about this, we have all been tought by the likes of Amazon that we want to land on exactly the page we are interested in. We don’t want to land on the “home” landing page, we know what we want and we want it right now.

People are not prepared to come to a “home” landing page and navigate around the website until they find the item they are looking for, this is why you have to promote your landing pages all the time, so that your visitors get exactly what they are looking for immediately.

If someone is looking for teeth whitening, most dental websites are set up so they will come to the “Home” landing page, they will then click on the treatment tab, then they will find the whiting link and click on that, do you see the issue?

If you want people to visit your teeth whitening page you need to start optimising this page so that Google can pick it up and display it, this needs to become your whitening landing page.

The same goes for all your other treatment, such as facial aesthetics, implants, straightening etc. etc.

Writing a blog is a great help but having the right key words on the page is also crucial, along with the correct meta description. Get ahead of your competition and ensure that your treatment pages are optimised to be your landing pages.

However you can bypass all this an just use Google Adwords, which will always send people to exactly the page you require, this is one of the huge benefits of Adwords.

If you would like more information on your website, call me on 01767 626  398 or email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit our Facebook page.

www.dentalmarketingexpert.co.uk

In this weeks "digital dentistry" blog, we would like to look at comments we regularly encounter about gdpuk.com. We have provided answers to those statements in the blog below, that we believe will bust the myths about our site and change your perception of gdpuk.com.

"The same people use the forum"

We agree that a number of people post regularly (true of any successful community) but in 2013 we had 958 different contributors to our forum discussions and in 2014 we expect to have over 1000 different contributors from all over UK Dentistry. We believe that such a huge amount of expertise, information and opinion is unbelievable! This varied interaction makes the forum vibrant, controversial and inspirational, everything you want in a successful community.

"The forum contains arguments and negativity."

Yes the forum does contain arguments and disagreements but a bit of controversy keeps the community moving forward and our members logging onto the site! Overall, our threads receive positive feedback, encouragement or helpful information. The site is professional (helped by members using real names) so information can be shared plus opinion or outrage can be discussed in a secure environment (CQC, GDC etc).  This helps to create a credible, thriving and growing community. The majority of our users find the site an incredible and positive medium.

"Dentists don’t go online."

We heard this comment recently at a dental exhibition from someone who shall remain anonymous. They believed that dentists prefer to read trade magazines and books and don’t use the internet. Dentists are no different to the rest of the UK population and use the internet to book holidays, buy clothes and interact on social media. GDPUK is a major part of thousands of dentist’s daily lives; we have thousands reading the daily digest email or forum on a daily basis. We believe dentists are using online dental websites on an increasing basis, especially because they can use social media to interact with each other on a regular basis. Using dental sites means that friendships can be formed with colleagues across the country.

"Banners on the site aren’t noticed"

We have just under 8000 members, a number we are extremely proud of.  Our members are constantly logging in and out of the site all day long, often between patients or during lunch breaks. This means our banners often receive tens of thousands of impressions on a daily basis. At the start of December 2014, we started running a campaign for a company that helps practices with their CQC visits. As part of their advertising campaign they are running a survey on gdpuk. Link here. In the first 8 days , the survey has received 65 completed responses, which we believe is a fantastic response. The company have used a simple campaign of email and forum banners, which have received 126 clicks and just fewer than 54,000 impressions in 8 days. We believe that this is an amazing example of banners being noticed and with the right message, action being taken by our readers.

Thanks for reading. We hope you enjoyed this short blog. We hope you can look at GDPUK.com as a positive influence in UK Dentistry. If you would like further information on how to work with the site, please get in touch. 

Your Dental Website, What’s Important?

The answer to this question “Dental Website, What’s Important?” is incredibly simple really and it’s this: (1) You need to attract as much traffic to your site as possible (2) You need to convert as much of that traffic as possible.

Most businesses view their website as something that they have to tick the box and can say, yes we now have a website. The fact that the only people who know it exists is themselves, friends and family never seems to come into the equation.

Having a dental website built can cost many thousands of pounds and take up a great deal of your time and effort, only for it to lurk in the shadows never being seen by anyone. It’s a little like setting up a new dental practice in the middle of a field and wondering why nobody is coming!

The best and most reliable way to drive traffic to your website is to use Google Adwords. This will take you to the top of page one of Google in most instances or at worst you’ll be over on the right hand side of the first page see below.

When someone looks for your site on a mobile device this is even more important as normally you’ll only ever see the websites that are using Google Adwords advertising or pay per click (PPC).

Google normally allocates the top three slots for paid advertising which means that if you don’t advertise your website with them the best you can ever hope for is position number four and to get to this position you have to be very, very, very good at optimising your dental website.

So let’s assume you’ve decided to pay Google an amount each day to display your dental website and people are landing on the particular page you want them to land on. You now have to convert them from browsers to buyers.

Take a look at the two websites below:

I’m sure you’ll think that the page on the right is much prettier than my page and you’d probably be right, but my page will outrank the other page in Google rankings and also out convert the one on the right by a factor of 1000% here’s why.

On the left of my page is a video which automatically starts running when someone lands on the page, this immediately gets and keeps their attention. On the page on the right is a nice photograph.

On the right hand side of my page is a picture of my book, and a line saying click here to download my book or have one sent in the post for free. However to actually get the book you have to give me your email address and name and this is key.

If you are selling anything that is of a higher value such as an implant on your dental website, invariably people will not just pick up the phone and book an appointment now, simply because whenever we buy things of a higher value we want more information and this is where the email comes into play.

When someone gives you their email address it is placed in what we call an auto responder, this does exactly what the name implies, it automatically responds. So you can have a series of emails spaced out over the next three or four months that will automatically be sent to your subscriber.

This means that when they do eventually decide to have that implant or have their teeth straightened or have a smile makeover, invariably they will choose you because you have been sending them information for that last three months.

That’s how we convert browsers into paying patients on your dental website.

If you would like to know more about our website service, with video and auto responders built in, call me on 01767 626 398 or email me a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit the website www.dentalmarketingexpert.co.uk

Blogging For Your Practice

Neil Sanderson

Blogging is now essential if you want to have a successful Social Media presence and at the same time get your dental practice website up the Google natural rankings, so first things first, what is a blog?

Well you are reading one now, this is my blog and I write one every week, for two reasons, the first is to communicate with my clients and potential clients, the second reason is that blogging is one of the best ways to keep your website on the first page of Google.

A blog is simply an article written by you, usually on your website, but you can have a separate blog area too if you don’t have this as part of your site. I would recommend to anyone that if you are thinking of building a new dental practice website or changing your existing one you must have the ability to write a blog.

I recently asked for a quote on behalf of one of my clients to have upgrade his website which currently doesn’t have the ability to start blogging. Both he and I were staggered when I was quoted £950.00 + VAT.

All websites should have a blog built into them, if you build a website in one of the two major “content management systems” e.g. WordPress or Joomla, this will be provided for you automatically. Don’t buy a website without either (a) a content management system or (b) a blog section. Incidentally all the websites we build have both as standard see my siteDental Website Design and Build.

So why is blogging so important? Let’s look at Social Media first. The two main Social Media sites you should have your practice on are of course Facebook and Twitter. Neither are really geared up for having lots of content in a single post, in fact Twitter limits you to 140 characters in total.

So if you are going to engage with your patients you have to link to something else, this is where blogging really comes into its own and this is how you do it. First you write your blog (remember a blog can be any size you want) on whatever special offer you are running or something interesting about the practice. You then create a post on either Facebook or Twitter and put a link back to your blog.

This does several things, firstly it takes the person who is reading your post back to your website which is ideally where you want them. Hopefully they will take advantage of your offer or maybe have a look around your website, either way this is what you want to achieve.

Secondly Google loves this type of traffic, so the more traffic you have coming to your site from Facebook and Twitter the higher Google will rank your site. This is the modern equivalent of “link building” but one that Google approves of and rewards you for doing it.

Blogging has another great positive effect on your website ranking. Google is encouraging everyone to update and create new content for your website. A blog is the single best and easiest way to do this. If you start to blog ideally once per week or once a month even once a quarter, your website rankings will improve.

So remember, if you are ordering a new website, insist it has the ability to blog (all ours do). Insist it has a content management system (all ours do). Start blogging and see your website rise up the rankings and your Social Media engagement soar.

If you don’t have time to blog yourself, we can do it for you, simply call me on 01767 626 398 or email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit the website www.dentalmarketingexpert.co.uk

What is the best marketing plan for your practice?

Neil Sanderson

I’m often asked what is the best marketing I can buy or do. Let’s face it there are now dozens of ways to market you and your practice.

Not very long ago you really only had two choices 1. You could place an advert in the Yellow Pages or 2. You could send out a mail shot. Those of you who were a bit more ambitious might try telesales too.

Today you have literally dozens of ways to market your practice, but which is the best marketing?

But out of all these different types of marketing e.g. Direct Mail, Social Media, Posters, Leaflets, Text Messaging, Email what really is the best marketing?

So if you said to me I can only do one form of marketing which would you choose, the answer would be Google Adwords (or pay per click). This is without doubt the most cost effective and best marketing for  you and your practice.

Why do I say this. Because unlike Search Engine Optimisation which may or may not get your website to the top of Google rankings. Google Adwords can pretty much guarantee this.

What makes this even more the best marketing, it that Google will only show your ads when someone searches for it. So just think of it this way. If you could place an advert in a local newspaper and only pay when someone looked at your advert and took action would you buy that ad, you bet your life you would.

Google Adwords does exactly this, they only show your advert when someone searches for whatever it is you are advertising e.g. implants or teeth whitening etc. But you don’t pay anything to Google until someone actually clicks on your advert and goes through to your website.

It is the ultimate form of “best marketing” and Google gives you hundreds of tools to test and hone your marketing. They are the only advertising provider that encourages you to get better at your advertising, and rewards you with cheaper ads and better rankings.

Quite literally the better you become at pay per click, the less you can spend and the more your ad will be shown. That’s why we spend so much of our time at Dental Marketing Expert, making sure that we are the ultimate experts in Google Adwords pay per click.

On average all our clients are normally in position 1 or 2 on the search and the amount we are paying Google for the ads is a fraction of what people who don’t know what they are doing are paying.

If you don’t understand how wot work Google Adwords, you can spend an awful lot of money for very little reward. In fact Google’s default settings are generally design to get you to pay them as much as possible. This is why they are now the second biggest company by value in the world.

I have spent the last two years honing my skills the best marketing (Google Adwords) and as a result I would say that I probably know more about this form of marketing than anyone in the dental profession.

I have personally spent thousands of pounds with Google, but last year I grew my business by 100% and this year we are aiming for 400% growth, using this best marketing technique.

So if you want to make a massive difference to your dental practice’s fortunes and start to benefit from the best marketing on the planet, call me on 01767 626 398 or email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit my website www.dentalmarketingexpert.co.uk

The Social Media Phenomenon

A

Around two years ago I wrote my first book called How Your Practice Can Survive The Recession, there is a section in it about Social Media, which I was somewhat dismissive of.

I have recently updated the book for several reasons but one of the most important reasons was that Social Media has now moved firmly into the mainstream of business and because of this, all dental practices need to take it very seriously.

My business now receives around 15% of all the enquiries I receive from either Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin, this is a massive change from just twelve months ago. Thats quite staggering, a year ago I could count the number of leads from Social Media on one hand, all that has now changed

It is also a fact that 50% of the U.K population spends at least one hour per day on Facebook. This creates a huge opportunity for your business, both advertising and posting in in general.

I regularly speak with my clients about the opportunities of Social Media and whether or not they should be active in this area, the answer is always a resounding yes.

However there is a problem, in order to have a healthy Social Media presence means you have to be active pretty much every day, its no point trying to get people to “Like” your page if you never put anything on it, and the majority of practices don’t, for one simple reason they simply don’t have the time.

So whilst Facebook, Twitter, Google Circles and LinkedIn may be free to use, they take up a great deal of time and that is the one thing that the majority of dental practices simply don’t have.

So you could give the task to one of your employees, but are you sure that (a) they will post items that are suitable and (b) will they have the time to post on Facebook and Twitter too as well as doing all the other tasks they have to achieve.

So you have a dilemma, you know that you should be regularly communicating with your patients and potential patients via social media, but neither you or your staff have the time to do it!

That’s where my company can help. Until recently I simply told my clients that they should be posting regularly on social media, but didn’t have a solution to the problem of creating the time to do so.

I can now offer a service to any dental practice, or indeed any company involved in the dental profession, whereby we will post on social media sites at least two times per day, Monday to Friday, to find out more about this unique service, go to my website http://www.dentalmarketingexpert.co.uk/social-media-dentists/ and you will be able to watch a video where we tell you exactly what we can offer you in this area.

I don’t know of any other organisation that offers this social media service, I suspect we may well be a trail blazer in this area.

So don’t waste any more time visit http://www.dentalmarketingexpert.co.uk/social-media-dentists/

Best Regards

Neil

If you would like us to increase your patient numbers, revenues and profits call me on 01767 626 398 or email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Multimedia You Need To Cover Every  Channel

You only have to think back five or six years ago and marketing your dental practice was pretty straight forward, basically you could put an advert in Yellow Pages and one in the local newspaper and you’d pretty much done it. Today is very different, multimedia is the norm.

Wouldn’t it be easy if all your patients and prospective patients were the same, you could then market to them using one platform or media and everything would be taken care of. For instance you might only have to advertise on Facebook, or Google, the truth is that everyone is different and that’s why you have to cover all the bases, with multimedia.

There is an amazing statistic that 50% of the population spends at least an hour on Facebook every day. But that also highlights another statistic and that is 50% of the population don’t spend an hour or any time whatsoever on Facebook. So if you only use Facebook as your marketing platform, you’ll miss half of your audience.

The same can pretty much be said about any media you choose to look at, for instance did you know that 12 million people buy a newspaper in the UK every day? And when you ad the free newspapers that figure grows to around 15 million, quite a sizeable market.

In 2012 21 million people took action as a result of receiving direct mail. nine out of ten people who receive direct mail open it, which compares to around twenty percent who open email. Without doubt whilst direct mail is relatively expensive in comparison with online, it is one of the the most effective way to grow your patient base, do you see where I’m going with this multimedia thing.

I am asked all the time by my clients “can’t we just email them”? Well yes you could, but ask yourself this question, “how many emails to you receive every day?” If you’re like me probably between 50 and 150. Then let me ask the same question about direct mail, “how many envelopes drop through your door every day?” I suspect the answer is probably less than five and certainly less than ten, quite often it might only be one or two packages each day!

The same can be said for text messaging, how many of you use text messages to market your products and services? I suspect very few, but think again, how many text messages to you receive each day? Just about everyone looks at a text when you receive one, for the simple reason that most text messages come from friends and family and you probably only receive one per day (maybe two).

So just have a think about the multimedia that you can now market your practice with, they include:

• Social Media (Twitter, Facebook Google Circles etc.,
• Your Website,
• Your Google Places Page,
• Text Messaging
• Direct Mail
• Leaflet Delivery
• Video (You Tube)
• Google Advertising
• Facebook Advertising
• Local press advertising
• Local radio

To name but a few and the only way you can ensure that you reach as many of your potential patients is to have a presence in all these platforms, some may will perform better than others, but it is essential that you address all these areas. So when I say Multimedia is a must for your practice I hope you understand what I really mean.

Because marketing is now more and more complex, you almost certainly need help and that’s where Dental Marketing Expert can help you. Call me on 01767 626 398 or email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit the website

www.dentalmarketingexpert.co.uk

Blogging Is Essential To Promote Your Dental Practice or Business

For those of you who are not quite sure what a blog is, you are reading one right now and blogging is becoming more and more an essential part of any dental practice’smarketing strategy.

Why I can hear you all saying? Well hopefully you recently read my series of articles on search engine optimisation which over the three articles outlined what you need to be doing to raise your website’s ranking on Google. One of the things I mentioned was that you need to add new original content to your website, and the best way to do that is blogging.

Blogging is effectively you writing anything you like on any subject really. Because it is your ideas and your thoughts, you can write on any subject and be an forthright is you wish. Ideally you need to make it interesting to your public. So for instance if you are a dentist the subjects you might want to cover would be around oral hygiene etc.

Having said all that don’t make your blogs too serious or technical as you’ll just lose your audience, they have to understand what it is you are trying to convey to them, equally don’t use jargon, or scientific dental terms.

Blogging is one of the best ways to increase the rankings in the natural Google search. As I mentioned in my earlier articles, Google wants to present websites to their audience that are fresh and have new original content on them. Blogging is the most natural place to put this new original content. It will quite literally do wonders for your rankings, quite often my blogs out rank my overall website.

Blogging also has the effect of ranking you for many subjects too so for instance you might want to highlight that you offer implants in your practice, well the best way to do this is to write articles on the subject, use slightly different headlines and titles for the blog and you can start to rank for implants as well as general dentistry etc.

Blogging should also be part of your social media strategy. Every time you write your blog you should be promoting this with both Facebook and Twitter, not to mention Google Circles, this again helps immensely with your Google rankings.

Being seen to be an expert in your specialist field is essential if you are to sell at premium prices. For instance if you are regularly blogging on a  particular subject and your patients and potential patients read them, it is highly likely that when they actually want to use this service that they will turn to you rather than your competitors and they will pay a higher fee because of this too.

We call this in the industry “being the trusted expert”. The down side of this is that you have to give lots of information freely and regularly, which of course takes time and effort. But you’ll see that in the long run you will gain from it immensely, the other way to achieve this of course is to have someone else write them for you and this is one the services I offer my clients.

If you want to increase your revenues and profits, increase the number of new patients and encourage existing patients to spend more with you, call me on 01767 626 398, email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit my website

www.dentalmarketingexpert.co.uk

As I have mentioned in my previous digital dentistry blogs, online marketing is a growing industry, with companies investing in a number of different digital formats: Search, Video, Rich Media, Social Media, Mobile and Display. One of the areas that digital marketers still spend their advertising budget in is Email Marketing. Email Marketing sounds like it is old fashioned but if done correctly it is still well and truly alive!

Email marketing is directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using email. Email marketing in dentistry terms is used in a number of ways. Companies will email current or previous customers to encourage brand loyalty and hopefully win or repeat business. Companies will also send emails in the hope of acquiring new customers. The third way is companies will add advertisements to email messages sent by other companies to their customers. Recent research has suggested that conservative estimates of US companies alone spent US $1.51 billion on email marketing in 2011 and will grow to $2.468 billion by 2016. Amazingly still a growing market.

We now need to look at how email marketing can be used in terms of the dental profession whether you have a new product that you would like dentists to look at, or you would like to attract more patients to your practice. Below are 4 A* reasons (in celebration of exam results) we can still use email marketing to benefit your business and hopefully it will give you some inspiration to revisit your email marketing campaign!

1.    Addiction

After I hit the snooze button for the third time at about 7:30am, I reach for my phone half awake and peruse my emails. We all love to check our emails and unlike other mediums, virtually everyone uses email. Many of us will check email first thing and see what emails we could have been sent in the 7 and a half hours since we last checked! Recent studies have suggested that reading emails consumes 28% of the average workers week and we each send or receive over 112 emails a day! Those stats suggest we keep a close eye on our email inbox. We all have accounts on social media and many of us also check them with regularity but one thing we all have in common is that we all check the email inbox constantly. This means that if you are looking to promote a new product or service, you need to be in your customers email inbox. Email should therefore not be ignored.  

2.    Automated

Auto-responders can easily be set up, which allows you to write and schedule a series of emails that will be sent at regular intervals to any potential customers. They immediately provide information to your prospective customers and then will follow up over a set period. This means that over an example 6 month period you have sent a number of emails and engaged with your customers. Mail Chimp and other email marketing companies offer an auto responder service, which is easy to setup and simple to put in practice. Patients could be sent regular special offers for example over a set period.

3.    Accountability and Value

An exact return on investment (ROI) can be tracked because you will know how many people have received the email, how many people have opened and what the click rate to your message is. This gives you wonderful accountability and value for money. You will also get results instantly. For example with GDPUK when companies advertise in our daily emails or on the website we provide full stats for our customers once a week and even more if they request it. This means that the customer can see what kind of return they are receiving from their digital campaign, with the opportunity to change the banner or message as the campaign progresses.

4.    Aggressive

After we build up a decent list of contacts, prospects and customers, sometimes we can then be cautious with the list. In my previous employment we very rarely sent out email campaigns because we were afraid of appearing too spammy or aggressive but I believe that was a mistake. Please don’t take this advice and send out hundreds of emails a month but if you have something to say or announce, make sure your email list knows about it. (your competitors will be doing the same) There is nothing wrong with sharing information and showing you are doing a good job or can offer excellent value, you want to stay in front of your customer’s eyes as well as plant your brand in the customers mind! Email marketing needs to be constant, well thought out and engaging.

So how can we use email marketing in dentistry?

At GDPUK we keep our members engaged on the site by sending daily digest emails, 3 times a day. This sounds like a lot but these emails all contain different content and contain the latest dental news and the most recent forum posts of the day. This gives our members a chance to check their email inboxes and then click on subjects that interest them. The emails are certainly popular because in an average month they get opened and read 130,000 times. These emails also contain banner ads, which often get excellent click through rates for our customers because our members want to read the emails and the advertisers are reaching a target audience of engaged dentists.

In a dental practice you could send special offers to your patients or an interesting newsletter every few weeks. It means you are proactively communicating with your existing and potential patients instead of hoping they will call or walk in. This will hopefully increase business and develop further patient loyalty. If you send a good offer for “teeth whitening” for example, you could also invite your patients to forward the email offer to their friends or colleagues who might have interest in the offer. So once organised, a few minutes of work every couple of weeks will hopefully fill an empty one or two appointment spaces in the practice!