The biggest challenge that dental practices face is attracting new patients — this is particularly true when first starting out. Much like any business, increasing your customer base will be crucial for growth and increasing brand reputation, so how can you go about doing this? There are a few effective strategies to try which centre around improving the reputation of your dental practice. This is vital in an industry where people want a dentist that they can trust and rely on because dental health is so important. Here are a few effective strategies to try. Combining a few of these could have a huge impact on the success of your dental practice.
Add Customer Reviews
People will always seek out customer reviews as this is how to gauge what the experience will be like. Also, it serves as a form of social proof. This means that you need to be asking every single patient for feedback and using positive reviews in highly visible spaces, such as on social media and on the company website.
Start Referral Programs
Similarly, word-of-mouth marketing is essential for growth and acquiring new patients in this industry. Hopefully, you will benefit from word-of-mouth marketing simply by the excellent service that you provide, but you can also encourage word-of-mouth marketing through the use of referral programs which incentivise your existing customers to recommend your practice to their network.
Show Expertise on Social Media
Social media is a platform which allows you to show why people should choose your practice over the competition. In addition to using customer reviews (as above), you could also show your expertise by creating original content. This could include posts such as:
- Dental health tips
- Videos on brushing technique
- Interviews with your dentists
- Dental health news
Improve Service
Of course, one of the best ways to improve your reputation and attract more customers is simply to provide a better service to your patients. This might include investing in higher quality equipment from the top UK dental suppliers. In addition to improving service, this could also help make your dentists’ work much easier, so it is certainly worth considering.
Digital Marketing
You can use digital marketing to increase your visibility online, which should increase your customer base while also improving brand reputation. People turn to the Internet when they are looking for a new dentist so it is important to make sure that you are highly visible online which can only be achieved with digital marketing — use an experienced agency for the best results.
Get Involved With the Community
Digital marketing is important but you also need to remember that it is the local community that you will be targeting. Getting involved with the community can help to raise awareness about your dental practice while also showing that you care. A few ideas include:
- Sponsoring a community organisation
- Attending local events
- Hosting your own events
- Getting involved with schools
Try a few of these strategies and it should help you to attract a lot more customers to your dental practice and take the business to the next level.