Marketing Your Practice During COVID-19

Here at Smile & Grow, our dental marketing agency has been supporting practice owners navigate through this tricky period in a variety of ways. Developing a communication strategy is one of the key initiatives our team has implemented for practice owners to ensure they can focus on their internal business and managing day to day activities with emergencies whilst sharing the new dentistry experience patients need to be aware of.

Consistently monitoring the situation and updates through the AHPRA website is a crucial step practice owners need to take at this delicate time, to stay up to date we encourage you to setup google alerts so when a new article or content piece is created you will automatically get notified via email.

You can setup google alerts by following the below steps:

  1. Click here to go submit your google alerts
  2. Type in alerts you would like to receive, for example – “ahpra update” “ahpra covid 19” “dentist guidelines” “dentist + your location”
  3. Click on “show options” and modify these filters as you see fit so you get the communication you would like
  4. Done – you will now begin receive regular updates automatically.

Smile & Grow has been diligently planning to equip practice owners with a robust strategy helping them better navigate through this time to give your practice a boost when you reopen your doors.

Create A Smile Gallery

BEFORE AND AFTER IMAGES

Intent: Before and after photos validate the treatment and provide the tangible benefits people often need to see to believe. Give your audience confidence and motivate them to book in their next cosmetic dental treatment.

We often use before and after photos when targeting high valued services like cosmetic dentistry. Take this opportunistic time to collate before and after images you have access to and create a smile gallery on your website – you can then link these photos to your social media platforms and use them in sales funnels which will get these images in front of your target audience.

You most likely have a range of images to reference in your practice management software that needs you to sift through to export for using. Let’s get those images out in the world.

Your To-Do List: Access your before and after photos and prepare the files to be sent to your marketing agency or get them ready for you to upload.

  1. Name the before and after photos making it clear which are related
  2. Title the before photo with the problem
  3. Title the after photo with the solution
  4. Create a small blurb outlining the treatment and process taken to get the desired outcome
  5. Patients need to approve the use of before and afters so ensure that you gain approval.

DENTAL PRACTICE PHOTOS

Intent: Photos of your dental practice gives your patients an insight into who you are and what the practice looks like which both go a long way to converting a a click to a new patient. Practice photos help patients connect with your business without visiting you, these type of images should also be used in your social media strategies, your local seo strategy with your google my business profile.

Your To-Do List: Planning time to take photos of your practice has probably been something you’ve thought about and put on the back burner, until now. It’s the perfect opportunity to take photos of each room, front-office and street frontage that you have making it easier for patients to know exactly what the entrance looks like.

We encourage practice owners to take photos of technology you have invested in, this enhances your credibility and provides potential  patients with a level of confidence in your ability to deliver quality dentistry.

  1. Name the before and after photos making it clear which are related
  2. Title the before photo with the problem
  3. Title the after photo with the solution
  4. Create a small blurb outlining the treatment and process taken to get the desired outcome
  5. Patients need to approve the use of before and afters so ensure that you gain approval.

Pro Tip: Make sure you use a good camera that allows you to get the highest resolution images, you can then send those separately and they can be optimised to suit your website, social media posts or GMB.

Patients have built an immediate connection with the team for their visit at Simply Dental Chatswood with these photos

COMMUNICATION STRATEGY

COVID-19 MESSAGE ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND YOUR WEBSITE

Intent: You need to invest time into documenting the changes you have undertaken and share these with your patients, this will help them understand what to expect if and when they need you and how your business is responding to the pandemic.

Here you will find attached material we have on Coronavirus to help reassure your patients.

We have created a communication strategy using Simply Dental Chatswood described below but you may decide to modify it to suit your patients.

  1. We have created a banner on the website and a separate page describing all the preventative measures this dental practice is taking to keep the community, patients and staff safe at all times. Please see an example here – https://simplydentalchatswood.com.au/announcement-covid19/
  2. A social media post has also been published with the announcement directing people to this page
  3. Utilise email marketing to engage your full patient list conveying a similar message to step 1.

Your To-Do List: Start by curating the changes your practice has made, this might be highlighting the certain emergency treatments you offer and the additional precautions staff are making in terms of sanitising.

  1. Create the document with the date at the top, as the situation evolves you will need to update accordingly.
  2. Once you have created this document, you will need to create a new page on your website and copy and paste this into a new webpage.
  3. If you are familiar with how to create a new page, great. If you need a website developer to create this then send them your request so they can update
  4. You will need to download a plugin to add the banner, we recommend simple banner
  5. Add your text and link in the simple banner and submit
  6. Your website will not have a banner message at the top with the page to click on

SOCIAL MEDIA CALENDAR OF EVENTS

If your fortunate enough to have some spare time outside of homeschooling throughout this situation, creating a social media strategy will be a great way to keep your audience engaged and allow you to invest time planning for when you reopen your doors.

Social Media success revolves around engagement, not just likes from your relatives, when you’re creating valuable, educational content people will engage with your brand and begin to follow you with anticipation for your next post. Videos and instagram stories often make the most engaging type of posts so you can use some of the below ideas.

Pro Tip: Create your social media calendar in advance, by doing this is eliminates the need for you to consistently invest time thinking about the different topics, captions and collecting the images. You can use scheduling tool to release your posts on a consistent frequency or use a social media marketing agency like Smile & Grow to curate the content, captions, collate images, publish and respond to comments.

  1. Post a photo of a a staff member who is committed to your practice and patients – Check out this example here with Hills Dental Design patient who has visited your practice lately – here is an example on
  2. Create some video footage with your patients and share on instagram and facebook, click here and check out this video from Hills Dental Design
  3. Keep your audience up to date with what’s happening in your practice, Parkdale Family Dental have done this with a recent renovations update.
  4. Create a content and keep you audience engaged, see how Simply Dental Chatswood has gained exposure and increased it’s followers by 73%
  5. Celebrate milestones and events, Kooringal Dental achieved this with a recent post for Dentist Day
 

Genuine posts involving your practice yield the best engagement, avoid stock images where you can and get the team involved.

BLOG POSTS

Intent: Creating a blog if you haven’t already got one is crucial, and much like the social media calendar now is the time to seize the moment and create some topics, identify a posting frequency and then share these articles so they can gain traffic to your website. These articles help gain visibility in Google and support your google rankings growing so the more unique content you publish, the stronger your rankings will grow.

Your To-Do List: Do some keyword research to help you understand the search volumes around particular keywords, you can also use your own anecdotal experience with patients and look to create content that helps solve problems, address concerns or even share hints and tips on brushing techniques.

  1. Keywords research, you can ask your marketing agency to help provide topics or use a tool like SEMRush
  2. Create 20 content topics that you will write about, these topics can relate to treatments you would like to do more of. For example, creating a series of blog content around dental implants is going to help inform a qualified audience who is searching for information about dental implants, you can then dive deeper into this and create an article around costs, procedure, before and afters and more.
  3. Dental Tips – these blogs are great and very shareable on social media – you can share how much sugar is in certain products, educating your audience and improving their oral hygiene.
  4. Maximise your time off and build citation links to build your website authority – you will find this dentist directory to be helpful and list out dental practices around Australia

Maximum SEO Value From Your Blog:

  • Blog content requires a structure to ensure google can read the flow and recognise the keywords. You should be creating content with between 500-750 words of content. The content should also have supporting images to help break up the content.
  • Use headings with a keyword focus for different sections of your blog. By creating a heading structure, you are guiding the reader through the content and making it easy to digest. Additionally Google is looking for headings and well written blog content with headings and a keyword focus will yield stronger results than an ordinary blog post.

Reopening The Doors

Despite the future being a little uncertain at the present moment, we do know that you will be reopening at some stage. When that time comes we need to plan accordingly and ensure your patients are aware that you will be open to increase your book and avoid having a dentist on with only a couple of patients a day.

Many practice owners made a brief video explaining the practice closure and much like that message you should be planning a reopening video, inspiring patients to be excited about getting back to normality and getting their fresh, bright smile back.

You can implement a communication strategy which will raise awareness around your reopening and give people an insight into any modified operating hours, additional changes that may have been made and encouraging them to make a booking to fill those days up with patients.

Your To-Do List:

  1. Create a message about reopening and have this created into a banner message for your website
  2. Modify the hours of operation in your website
  3. Have your marketing agency update social platforms outlining the grand reopening
  4. Consider a special offer to encourage people to make an appointment

Smile & Grow Are Here For You

Smile & Grow is an exclusive marketing agency that understands the challenges you are facing and are here for you. Whilst there are issues we are all facing, there are also opportunities for those wanting to capitalise on inactive markets.

Your dental practice deserves the best strategy and needs to communicate clearly to your community, we’re here for you.

Disclaimer: The content provided on this website is intended for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice tailored to your specific needs and circumstances. Any reliance you place on the information provided in these blogs is, therefore, strictly at your own risk. We shall not be held responsible for any loss or damage resulting from the use of the information provided on this website.

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