Key Strategies Implemented By Orthodontic Marketing Companies in USA

Orthodontist marketing companies use many techniques and best practices to help dental and orthodontic practices. These companies provide an immense value to your practice

Not all doctors that work in the area of oral health are the same. Some dentists provide general dental services, while others offer more specialized services and treatments. As such, marketing for any dentist needs to be effective, so the public finds the right provider for their needs. An orthodontist is one type of dentist that specializes in dental devices, such as retainers, braces, and bands. They also help those who want to change the position of the teeth in their mouth. An orthodontist can also help with various dental abnormalities such as jaw misalignment, crowded teeth, teeth that are too far apart, crooked teeth, overbites, and underbites.  

An orthodontist’s overall goal is to improve the bite of a patient by ensuring the teeth are straight, evenly spaced, and line up with their opposing teeth. A healthy bite allows someone to speak properly as well as eat and chew. Many children and teenagers see an orthodontist to correct teeth problems in their youth, but even adults may need their services. With orthodontists having stiff competition and a public that may not be well-versed in what they can and can not do, a dental medical marketing plan is needed. Otherwise, an orthodontist will have trouble growing and expanding their business to be successful. Below are five things that work when it comes to marketing an orthodontist practice.

How does content marketing help an orthodontist get more patients into their practice? 

When someone is looking for the services provided by an orthodontist, they will often begin their search by using a search engine. A search engine will provide the most relevant results to the person to pick from. The overall goal of a search engine is to present a list of choices for the searcher and have them make their pick and not return to search results. With that in mind, the organic ranking on a search engine is not set in stone and is constantly changing based on other websites and their updates. Search engines send web crawlers to read websites to understand better the context and how relevant and authoritative they are to specific keywords.  

Content marketing helps search engines figure this out by ensuring content is unique, relevant, and authoritative to topics. This is accomplished by adding, refining, and updating the content on an orthodontist’s website. Search engines like to see a website that is up to date. An orthodontist who updated their site three weeks ago will look much more important and relevant to a search engine compared to a site that was updated three years ago. The best way to appear up to date to a search engine is to update a website constantly. Instead of making updates once a year, a site should be gradually and continually updated throughout the year. First, a massive update may appear as a completely new website to search engines, hurting overall organic results. Second, after an enormous update, that update gets older and older, becoming less relevant to a search engine over time.

Another thing a search engine likes to see is the amount of time a user spends on a website. The longer someone spends on a website, the more relevant and authoritative it appears to a search engine. An excellent way to extend a user’s time on a website is to have more content on there for them to read. A website that has 100 words talking about a service provided by an orthodontist will have visitors spend less time on it than a competitor whose service page has 900 words. Also, from a search engine perspective, the more words on a website page, the more important it will look. However, an orthodontist should be mindful not to make content on a page too long. If a potential patient pulls up a page and sees a short novella, they will likely abandon the page quickly. This will drive down the time spent on-page metrics and could hurt organic rankings. For service pages, try to keep content around 750 to 1,000 words. Currently, that is a digestible amount of content that most potential patients are willing to read.

How does search engine optimization help an orthodontist acquire new patients in their practice?  

Working hand in hand with content marketing, another way to improve the organic rankings is to apply SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies to it. SEO helps a search engine present the site to users looking for services provided by an orthodontist. Most potential patients are not going to search the exact medical terms for their symptoms or treatments. Instead, they are going to use other keywords in their online searches. These keywords need to be in the content of an orthodontist’s website. For example, if someone is looking for more information about braces, braces and other keywords associated with this dental equipment need to be spread throughout the website. If a critical keyword is not in the content, a website will not appear in search results. With that said, a practice should not stuff as many keywords into content as possible. Known as “keyword stuffing,” search engine algorithms frown on this, and it may lead to organic penalties. 

When selecting target keywords for an orthodontist’s practice, it is best to choose short-tail and long-tail keywords. Covering broad subjects and numbering three words or less, short-tail keywords tend to get more web traffic, are more competitive, and have a lower conversion rate. On the other side, long-tail keywords focus on more narrow and unique subjects. Four words or more, these keywords are not as competitive, have lower web traffic, and convert at higher rates. Long-tail keywords also play a more prominent role in voice search from smart speakers and personal digital assistants. When people use voice search, they tend to ask questions that are four words or more. If a website can match these questions word for word on their site and provide the relevant and authoritative answer, they stand a great chance to be the number one choice on search engines and voice search.

How can referral marketing help an orthodontist get more patients to their practice? 

As mentioned before, there are many different professionals in the world of dental health. However, not everyone in a target audience may realize that and may assume dentists can do everything a patient needs for their oral health. In other situations, a long-time patient to a general dentistry practice may need more specialized treatment or service that their current dentist does not provide. In both cases, a referral needs to be made to an orthodontist is possible. 

A patient is sent to another dental practice on the recommendation from another dentist is considered to be a referral. For an orthodontist, this is a valuable source of new patients and revenue to their practice. Creating and maintain a referral network is not easy to do. It requires a lot of face-to-face interactions, networking, providing information, and nurturing to ensure the connection remains strong. Ideally, an orthodontist wants to be the number 1 choice for anyone in their referral network. They need to show other doctors they offer high-quality services and make it as easy as possible to send patients over.  This will go a long way to convince them to send patients to a practice

When a referral patient comes to an orthodontist’s office, they need to be treated with extra care to ensure a good experience with their visit. A negative experience can be very damaging to a referral network. First, if a patient is very unhappy with their visit, they are unlikely to return or recommend the orthodontist to their friends and family. Worse, a negative experience could sour the relationship between the orthodontist and their referral doctor. The doctor sending a patient to an orthodontist’s office is putting their reputation on the line a well. A lousy visit puts strain on their doctor-patient relationship, and they will be hesitant to send further patients to a practice if the patients are not treated well. An orthodontist could suddenly see their stream of new patients dry up after a couple of negative visits.  

Another way to strengthen a referral relationship between a doctor and an orthodontist is to make it easy to transfer medical records between the two practices. One of the most significant complaints patients have when visiting another doctor is jumping through all of the hoops again when they are first seen. If some of their paperwork and medical history could already be sent over and loaded into a patient management system, it would save everyone time. Preferably, this means a digital copy of medical records should be sent over a secure connection between practices. This is much faster than making copies and either mailing them or hand-delivering them to a practice for staff to then copy into their systems. It also cuts down on mistakes from the staff who mistype something into the files or misreads someone’s handwriting. Ideally, any medical file should be submitted through a digital portal on a website and sent to a HIPPA secure server.  

How can social media ads and posting on social media help an orthodontist get more patients to their practice?  

Advertising on Social Media can be a powerful and cost-effective way to reach a target audience. All major social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) have powerful advertising platforms that business owners can access. These advertising platforms allow orthodontists to then target audiences on a social media channel with a degree of refinement not available in search engine ads. While both allow someone to advertise by area or zip code, social media channels often let someone target by gender, age, and interest. While the target audience will be smaller than that of a search engine audience, the additional targeting parameters will help an orthodontist get a target audience that is very receptive to their advertising campaign.

Unlike Google AdWords, there are different goals that social media campaigns can pursue. More often than not, it will send visitors to a website to make an appointment or learn more about treatment or service. However, social media campaigns allow an orthodontist to promote an event, increase brand awareness by promoting a post, or have potential patients call a practice directly. Calls to action like “Learn More,” “Call Now,” “Book Now,” and others can be used to help potential patients take their next step in their oral health choice journey.  

When not advertising on social media channels, orthodontists should post regularly. They do not need to post every hour, on the hour, but at least one post a day should be roughly the goal of the practice. Once a post is made, it is pushed down by newer posts made by other people or businesses throughout the day. Posting once or twice a day gives the practice a chance to get their post front of current followers and potentially other followers more often. Some social media channels, like Facebook, make it harder for businesses to get the reach they want with their posts. Orthodontists should avoid only posting about their practice to promote their services or specials they are running. When people are always “sold to” online by a business, they tend to ignore the posts or, worse, unfollow the brand altogether. Instead, posts should have a healthy mix of promotion, local news, health news, and health tips for people to consume and share. Often, the best-performing posts are videos and pictures of the facility and staff. Followers and staff often share these authentic posts and get a pretty good reach across social media channels. A practice should be mindful not to include any patients’ faces without their explicit written permission to do so.  

How can direct mail marketing help an orthodontist market the practice?  

Unlike other traditional or offline marketing methods, direct mail marketing has a compelling feature that others do not: The ability to target households. Instead of broadcasting an advertisement over radio or TV, a practice can determine who receives marketing material. This allows them to send direct mail marketing to specific neighborhoods and communities. The United States Postal Service has several tools available to help businesses and practices target particular areas. Discounted postage may also be available depending on the volume of things being mailed out and how organized they are for the postal service.

When mailing out marketing materials to households, they need to stand out in the mailbox. While mail volume has dropped by 50% over the past decade, mail still needs to stick out among the other bills and adverts mailed every day. A practice should experiment with colors (that remain on-brand for the business), size, and even the texture of the paper. Ideally, whatever is mailed should be placed on a fridge or corkboard to advertise to the household every day. Anything mailed to a house should have the name of the practice, hours of operation, address, website URL, phone numbers, and a call to action.  

The experts at PatientGain.com can help an orthodontist practice with their marketing to help increase their patient count and grow a business. Our experienced team will show what we have done for other practices, and how our marketing campaigns can work for you. Call today, and let us start working together!