8 Patient Acquisition Strategies for Dentists

8 in 10 Canadians have a dentist and 64% of American adults between the ages of 18 and 64 have at least one dental visit in a year. These statistics show that patients need dentists. That said, several dentists are vying for the attention of these patients. The dental industry is saturated with dental practices and it is increasingly becoming difficult for dentists to stand out. This is why dentists and dental practices need effective patient acquisition strategies. 

In this article, we will discuss 8 patient acquisition strategies that can help you and dental practice stand out and attract more patients. In an era driven by digital engagement and rapidly changing consumer behaviours, these strategies will position your practice to succeed now and in the future. 

8 Dental Patient Acquisition Strategies 

1. Optimize Your Landing Pages
2. Gather Online Reviews
3. Share Video Content
4. Add Live Chat To Your Dental Website
5. Run a Dental Referral Program
6. Optimize your dental website for local and mobile searches
7. Run Paid Advertisement Campaigns
8. Have an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

1. Optimize Your Landing Pages

Landing pages are pages on your dental website that are designed to capture leads. In theory, any page that visitors land on when they click your dental practice’s Google listings, paid ads or a Call to Action link in your email newsletter is a landing page. These pages are created to reel in your website visitors by giving them information that captures their attention and encourages them to patronize your dental practice. 

As a practice, your landing pages should cater to your prospective patients and their interest in specific dental healthcare services. Using SEO tactics, these pages should rank high on Google’s search engine result pages (SERPs) so that your prospective patients can find them at the top of SERPs. 

If you want to capture more leads, you optimize your landing pages for local and mobile search. Speak to your website developer about optimizing your landing pages or contact Connect the Doc and work with a dedicated website manager who will ensure your landing pages are effective at capturing and converting patient leads. 

2. Gather Online Reviews

When deciding on their choice of a dentist, patients read reviews on Google My Business profiles, social media and industry-specific review boards like HealthGrades and RateMD. These reviews help patients learn more about your expertise and the quality of your dental healthcare services. Patients pay attention to the nature, velocity and quality of your dental practice’s reviews. This means that the more recent and positive online reviews you have, the better your chances of attracting new patients. 

Reviews are equally important to your dental practice’s success. As a dentist running a dental practice, you need to have a strategy in place for gathering reviews and sharing them on review websites that your prospective patients read. Connect the Doc’s intelligent review tool can help you automatically gather and publicize your patients’ reviews. This helps to get more eyes on your dental website and generate more leads for your practice. 

3. Share Video Content

A recent Cisco Annual Internet Reports suggest that by 2022, video content will account for 82% of all web traffic. Additionally, Google reports that 1 in 2 consumers decide to pay for a product or service after watching an online video about the product or service.  The fact is the modern patient consumes more video content daily than at any time before. As such, the modern dentist has to produce and share video content to stay engaged with their patients. 

With a reported 80% lead conversion rate, videos have a high ROI and allow you to promote your dental healthcare service in a compact format. A 2-minute video about your practice displayed on your dental website’s homepage can go a long way to convincing website visitors to become patients. Also, you can use videos to showcase your expertise and offer more value to your patients by sharing dental healthcare resources and tips. As prospective patients learn from you, they become more confident in your abilities and may be motivated to schedule an appointment with you. 

4. Add Live Chat To Your Dental Website

Live Chat makes it easy for patients to connect with you and learn more about your dental practice as soon as they visit your dental website. One of the most effective ways of communicating with patients is by meeting them on a channel they prefer. In today’s world, digital communications are the norm and according to a recent survey by SuperOffice, Live Chat outranks emails and social media as the communication channel of choice for consumers. In contrast, only 9% of businesses currently use Live Chat. This means that there is a great opportunity for you to distinguish your dental practice, connect with more prospective patients and generate more leads using Live Chat. 

Powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, Connect the Doc’s Live Chat software—Walter—is designed to help you stay connected 24/7 with your prospective patients. This smart tool responds to your patients’ queries, gathers information about your patients to help you learn more about them, allows you to jump into conversations whenever you’re available and transfers conversation from website to text messages so the patients can continue to engage with your practice on the go. Walter makes your dental website much better at turning visitors to leads and leads to active patients. 

5. Run a Dental Referral Program

9 out of 10 patients trust the recommendations of their family or friends more than advertisements. This proves that word-of-mouth marketing is still an effective and essential marketing strategy. However, this strategy has evolved to include dental referral programs that incentivize current patients to recommend your dental practice to prospective patients in their social circles. Much like loyalty programs, referral programs encourage your patients to become your brand ambassadors. 

Referral programs present an opportunity for dentists to significantly increase their patient acquisition rate. By leveraging your current patients’ confidence in your dental healthcare service, you can generate more leads with a limited amount of effort. Connect the Doc’s referral software makes the process even more effortless for you by automating the process of asking current patients to make referrals and tracking and rewarding their referrals. With our referral software, you can automatically spread the word about your dental practice and convert more referrals. 

6. Optimize Your Dental Website For Local And Mobile Searches

Your dental website is the first point of contact between your practice and your prospective patients. In addition to having engaging and interactive content on your website, you need to maximize your website’s visibility on the internet so more prospective patients can find it. To improve your website visibility, you must optimize it for Google’s search engine. When Google’s search engine algorithm crawls your dental website’s content, it assesses the quality, usability and value of your content and uses the information gathered to determine the position of your website on its listings. The higher your website ranks on Google’s SERPs, the easier it is for your prospective patients to find you. 

The majority of search queries on Google are location-specific and from users of mobile devices. This prompted Google to update its algorithm to favour local and mobile searches. To give your dental website the best chance of ranking high on Google’s SERPs, it must be optimized for local and mobile searches. These search engine optimization (SEO) practices will help you attract and acquire more patients through your website. 

7. Run Paid Advertisement Campaigns 

Paid advertisements (ads)—such as PPC, PPI or display ads—help drive traffic to the landing pages on your website. With paid ads, you can increase your lead generation and conversion rates. To run a successful paid ads campaign, you will need a specialist who can create, optimize and monitor your campaigns. 

Connect the Doc’s team of ads specialists can maximize your ROI by running targeted paid ads that reach your prospective patients when they are searching for dental practices like yours. You will be assigned a dedicated account manager who will share monthly reports on the progress of your paid ads campaign and inform you about the marketing practices that are yielding the best results. With paid ads, you have an opportunity to reach your prospective patients at the right place at the right time. 

8. Have an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

If you want to increase your patient acquisition rate, your dental practice must be visible to patients. To boost the chances of your prospective patients coming in contact with your practice’s brand elements and marketing collaterals, you must be invested in multiple—but connected—dental marketing tactics and channels. An omni-channel marketing strategy spreads your marketing efforts across different channels, such as Google’s SERPs, online review boards, paid ads, your website, Live Chat, Emails etc, in a way that reaches more prospective patients. More importantly, these different channels align to build your prospective patients’ confidence in your expertise as they come across your marketing messages and collaterals.

Connect the Doc’s marketing experts help dentists to successfully implement omni-channel marketing strategies that increase their dental patient acquisition rates. With an array of intelligent dental marketing software, Connect the Doc can position your dental practice to leverage key patient acquisition strategies and increase your dental practice’s productivity and revenue. Contact us today to start implementing the strategies that attract modern patients.