3 Marketing Mistakes to Avoid for Dental Practices

BR Dentistry Road sign Wylie Texas

Dental practices have a good number of clients that come in as referrals from current patients. Children of patients often become lifelong patients themselves, for example, which can help alleviate the need to generate a large number of leads from marketing. However, that doesn’t mean a dental practice doesn’t need to do any marketing. That is far from the truth.

Unfortunately, because established practices don’t always need to rely on marketing to continually bring in new patients, they often make mistakes with their advertising. Here are three common marketing mistakes dental practices make that you should try to avoid.

 

Failing to Understand Your Audience

Some dental practices make the mistake of assuming that everyone is their audience, but this isn’t always the case. There are several factors that determine who your audience is. The first is what you focus on. Is it general dentistry, or is it orthodontics or pediatric dentistry? What does your neighborhood demographic look like? If you have mostly low-income families living in the area, you’re going to need to approach things different than you would if you were located in a very affluent neighborhood.

To avoid making this mistake, do some market research before planning out your campaign. Learn who you’ll likely be serving and look at what services you want to highlight. Maybe you have a large number of adults coming in regularly, but your pediatric specialists don’t have much to do. In such a situation, you may want to market more to parents to bring in more young patients.

 

Skipping Online Marketing

Online marketing is a vital component to any advertising campaign these days, regardless of what industry you’re in. People are now much more likely to search for a dentist online than they are in the phone book, so you need to have at least some online presence. Ideally, this means a website, some social media profiles, and claimed listings on Google, Yelp, and other credible websites.

It doesn’t mean you have to have a huge website, but you need to have information available on your services, your staff, and other factors that will help a potential patient choose you.

Likewise, you don’t have to use every single social media site out there, but you should use several of the most popular ones. What’s important is that it’s easy for someone to find you by doing a basic search, which means you’ll need to make use of SEO, especially local SEO.

 

Going All-In on Online Marketing

That said, another common mistake many businesses in almost all industries have made is going all-digital with their marketing. Traditional marketing tools such as signs, billboards, flyers, mailers, vehicle wraps, and other ways of advertising can still be very effective.

Your potential patients are all going to be locals who live near your practice. This means using a car wrap or a billboard will get your name in front of the right people.

Don’t discard a marketing tool just because it seems low-tech or has been used for decades. Sometimes, these older marketing tools get the job done just as well or even better than online marketing.

 

Need some help with your signage or vehicle wraps? SignSmiths of Texas is here for you. Contact us today to discuss your advertising needs.

 

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