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Orthodontist Marketing & Advertising $799 to $1299/mon

Orthodontist Marketing & Advertising $799 to $1299/mon

How can a website optimized for engagement and mobile help an orthodontist increase their patient count?  How can search engine optimization and content marketing help orthodontists acquire more patients?

To the majority of the public, dental care involves a dentist. Beyond that concept, there is not much knowledge about the different types of professionals in this field of medicine. As such, effective marketing and advertising are needed. An orthodontist works in oral healthcare, but many people may assume they are just another regular dentist. However, while all orthodontists are dentists, not all dentists are orthodontists. Marketing and educating a target audience about this difference will help an orthodontist grow their business.  

Orthodontists are specialists. Orthodontists are specialists who focus on bite and alignment of teeth. According to American Association of Orthodontists, Orthodontists have 3,700 hours of orthodontic training. So as we market you, our focus is to differentiate you from a general dentist.

How are dentists and orthodontists similar?

Both medical professionals work to help improve the oral health of their patients. They are both doctors that work with teeth and gums. Both doctors also generally work out of a dental office where they will see patients.  

How are dentists and orthodontists different?

To become an orthodontist, a doctor requires additional training and education in this dental specialty, much like when a doctor wants to become a specialized heart physician. Unlike a dentist, an orthodontist can help patients align their teeth, fit them for braces, and improve their bite. A regular dentist will refer a patient to an orthodontist when they have these sorts of needs or issues.  

When a patient needs oral hygiene services and regular check-ups, they will go to a dentist who will provide the following services:  

  • Root canals
  • Teeth whitening
  • Tooth decay
  • Filling cavities
  • Gum disease
  • Crowns
  • Bridges
  • Veneers

However, if a patient has teeth alignment issues, they will visit an orthodontist. They help with things like:  

  • Misaligned teeth
  • Underbite
  • Crowded teeth
  • Overbite
  • Temporomandibular disorders (TMD)
  • Jaw issues

How can a website optimized for engagement and mobile help an orthodontist increase their patient count?  

The website of an orthodontist will be the single most crucial marketing tool they have available to them. All patients, both current and new, will visit their website as part of their patient journey. A poor functioning website will make it challenging to acquire new patients to maintain the current count or grow a business. A website needs to be optimized for engagement and mobile devices to make it competitive in an area. Some ways to accomplish this are using medical engagement chatbots, call to actions, and creating a mobile-friendly website. Learn more about how PatientGain’s Intelli*ChatBot can automate your practice and help you acquire more patients.

How can a Medical Engagement Chat Bot help an orthodontist’s website?

One of the most effective ways to promote engagement on an orthodontist’s website is to deploy a medical engagement chatbot. Chatbots, already in regular use in the retail industry, will engage with website visitors and mimic human conversation. Chatbots, however, do not possess artificial intelligence and are not thinking machines that can create their unique answers to questions asked to them. Chatbots can only provide answers to the questions programmed into them. Ideally, a chatbot should intercept some patients who need additional help to find information or accomplish simple tasks before calling or messaging an orthodontist’s office. This will save time for staff working at the front desk to help other patients with more complex issues.

To populate the possible questions and answers for a chatbot, it is best to consult with the front desk staff at the office. Since they have the most everyday interaction with patients and potential patients, they will know the most common things patients ask or need. Using this as a guide, it should be easy to build a repository of questions and tasks a chatbot can assist with. The best part about chatbots is that they never take a day off, are available 24 hours a day, and can be updated as needed with new questions or tasks. 

What are “Call To Actions,” and how can they be used on a website?

Also known as a CTA, a website with an engaging call to action can help website visitors take the next step to making an appointment at an orthodontist. Generally, a call to action is a brief message to tell a visitor what their next step is in their journey. These CTA’s are often placed in buttons for visitors to press or click to move on to their next step. Some common calls to action include:

  • Learn More
  • Make An Appointment
  • Call Now
  • Other Services
  • Contact Us

CTA’s are an excellent way to measure conversion rates on a website. If clicks can be tracked, it can be a good metric to determine if a page on the site effectively drives visitors to the clinic for services. Many medical marketing plans for orthodontists will use CTA’s as measuring benchmarks to gauge if a campaign is a success.  Learn more about how PatientGain’s website design and conversion strategies help you acquire more patients.

How can search engine optimization and content marketing help orthodontists acquire more patients?

When someone in the community searches for oral health care, they generally start with a search engine query. While search engines will return thousands of pages of results, practically no one will go past the first page. For an orthodontist to be successful, they need to get on the first page of organic results and ideally be in the top three results. The most effective way to accomplish that goal is to use search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing tactics.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of refining content to help search engines present a site as a relevant result in queries. This process involves inserting keywords into content that match potential patients’ keywords when searching for an orthodontist. Typically, these words should be spread and not used too much, or search engines will penalize a site in search results. An orthodontist should use two types of keywords on their site: Short-tail keywords and long-tail keywords. Short-tail keywords are three words or less, cover broad topics, get a lot of traffic, have low conversations, and are competitive. Long-tail keywords are not as competitive, get lower traffic, and have higher conversions because they cover specific topics. Using both types of keywords should give a website the best chance of being found by the target audience it needs. Also, long-tail keywords are becoming more important as voice search becomes more widely used. When using voice search on smart speakers or personal digital assistants, people tend to ask longer questions of four words or more.

Content marketing is another excellent way to improve the organic ranking of a website. Search engines love to see sites that are kept up to date, informative, unique, and engaging. Content marketing strategies achieve this by ensuring a website is constantly adding, updating, or refining the content on its site. Content marketing is a gradual and continual process. Updating content all at once can make a search engine think it is looking at a completely different website, causing fluctuations in organic rankings. Gradual updates throughout the year show a search engine that the site is constantly kept up to date, and therefore will be much more appealing to their users. Content should be reviewed at least once a year to ensure it is still relevant, needs improvement, require additional clarification, or needs just some grammar fixes, so it flows better. If an orthodontist’s website is already well written and nothing needs to be fixed, consider adding a monthly blog to a site. It will provide unique, authoritative, and valuable content that search engines will eat up. If it is well written and gets enough views, it may even begin to get some organic ranking on its own, further promoting an orthodontist’s website.  

Overall, both SEO and Content Marketing work side by side to help improve the long-term organic rankings of a website. Results from either marketing technique should not be expected overnight. It generally takes at least six months for these tactics to show tangible effects on a site’s organic rankings.   Learn more about how PatientGain’s SEO strategies help you acquire more patients.

Why should an orthodontist’s website be optimized for mobile, and what actions will help?  

Growing every year, most website traffic a website receives, regardless of industry, will be from mobile devices. More people are using cell phones, tablets, and other mobile devices to research things online, find healthcare solutions, and explore a doctor’s websites. If an orthodontist’s website is not optimized for mobile, it will significantly hurt conversations and impact mobile rankings in search engines. Maintaining mobile optimization is also something that requires regular maintenance.  

First, a responsive website is needed. This kind of website will rearrange itself to maintain full function on mobile devices as it would on a desktop screen. These websites can automatically detect the size of the screen it is being viewed on and change the site to fit it. However, this means looking to see where text, pictures, and other aspects of the website are placed. It may take some moving around of elements to make sure it works and flow properly.  

Next, a website needs to load quickly on a mobile device. If it takes more than a few seconds for a site to load and be used, website visitors will return to the search results and explore another option. This will hurt overall search rankings as it will show a search engine that the site they visited may not have been a relevant result causing the user to return to the search results. A site should constantly be monitored for its load speed. Pictures, videos, and other coding issues can often slow down a website. Also, a website speed issue that is fixed one month does not mean the same problem or a different problem will appear the following month. Monitoring is key!

How do traditional marketing and advertising methods like direct mail marketing and creating brochures help grow an orthodontist’s business?

While digital marketing will use most of the marketing budget for an orthodontist’s business, traditional marketing can still be quite effective. Many dentists find that direct mail marketing and designing effective and engaging brochures can be a very valuable use of marketing money. Many traditional marketing campaigns often have a digital element, like sending people to the website for more information or to make an appointment. Learn more about how PatientGain’s digital marketing strategies help you acquire more patients.

How can direct mail marketing be effective in promoting the services at an orthodontist? 

Not everyone needing oral health care will need the services of an orthodontist. However, using direct mail marketing is a great way to promote brand awareness in a community. Unlike other traditional marketing methods, direct mail marketing does allow a business to target its campaign. An orthodontist can decide what houses receive its marketing mail. Depending on the volume of mail sent out by the practice, there could be discounts available from the United States Post Office. The post office can also provide businesses some tools to better organize and plan their mailings.  

For direct mail marketing to succeed, it needs to stand out from the other mail a household receives. While mail volume is down compared to the past, a practice should experiment with different shapes, paper, and colors that work for the brand. Anything to stick out among the other bills and junk mail will help ensure that the mailer ends up on the fridge and not in the trash. Anything mailed to a household should have:

  • Name of the practice
  • High-quality picture or graphic
  • The address of the practice
  • Phone number
  • Site URL
  • Call to action

How do brochures help promote an orthodontist’s practice?  

While it may seem little old-fashioned, high-quality brochures still play an essential role in marketing. In the waiting room of every practice, there should be a stand full of informational brochures that patients can take and read at home or while they wait. Brochures for services should be included in the discharge papers of any patient after they have received their treatments. Also, brochures can even serve as a thing that can be easily mailed to home as part of a direct mail marketing campaign.

For a brochure to be effective, it needs to be informative, helpful, engaging, and have a call to action. Do not make the mistake of copy and pasting website content into a brochure. While it can serve as a guide, it should be rewritten and formatted for the space provided. Generally, there will be more content on a website page than available space in a brochure. Additionally, brochures will always send people to a website for more information and to make an appointment. A cut and paste will create a message much less effective. As with direct mail marketing, be sure to include a phone number, address, URL, and a call to action.  

The experts at PatientGain.com are ready to help an orthodontist with marketing and advertising to help them meet their goals and grow. Call our team today, and let us show you what we have done for others across the country.  

Orthodontist Marketing & Advertising
Orthodontist Marketing & Advertising