1: The Basics of Dentistry Marketing
Why Digital Marketing is Crucial to Run a Successful Dentistry Practice in 2024
Solving the ‘empty chair’ problem
Few dentists boast a full schedule at all times. This creates the “empty chair” problem, where your practice operates for several hours each week when there are no paying patients – but you still need to pay your staff, your rent, and many more fixed costs.
Unfortunately, no practice is immune to this challenge. The average dental practice loses 17% of their patient base each year from people moving, changing insurance, etc. Your patient base needs to be constantly added to just to sustain the levels it’s at today.
Patient referrals are an integral part of organically sustaining your patient base, but they don’t create consistent patient flow. Spending marketing dollars is critical to creating a more reliable stream of new patients, to ensure you never have an empty chair again.
Winning market share and staying relevant
Competition for patients is rising quickly in the US. A recent study suggests that the ratio of dentists to the general US population will grow in the coming fifteen years, leading to a surplus of practitioners. Meaning that competition for patients is only going to increase with time! This will be exacerbated by what some economists call “winner takes all” markets. For most of modern history, people chose their dental practice based purely on proximity. But with the rise of the internet, patients are now equipped to research and compare the reputation and service offerings of multiple practices.
In fact, 43.3% of US citizens choose the dentist with the best online reviews - making it by far the most common method of choosing a practice - while 18.4% choose the practice with the best search rankings.
Furthermore, as DSOs expand, they have dedicated marketing teams who are actively trying to target the same groups of patients as you.
As a result, practices that are highly active and visible across digital platforms win a disproportionate volume of patients - and earn a dominant market share. Building a positive digital presence is therefore essential to win business - and can help you attract patients who historically would never have known about your practice. But how can dentists balance time spent building that presence against time spent treating patients?
Changing customer expectations: convenience and transparency
The internet has empowered consumers to learn more about companies they deal with. Dentists therefore need to undertake a similar mindset shift, providing clear information – and making it easy to access. This also puts a premium on fast communication: one study finds that customers expect to hear back from a practice within 5 minutes of contacting them.
Easy-to-use systems like Opencare make it easier for dentists to quickly respond to patients using email, text, or a phone call. Having a strong digital presence also empowers patients to find valuable information without phoning your practice, as they can simply visit your Opencare Profile or website. This creates a smoother experience - and therefore keeps patients happy.
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The Key Forms of Dental Marketing
There are numerous ways for dental practices to market themselves. Historically, this has fallen into three basic categories:
Traditional advertising and direct marketing
From featuring their practice on posters to offer leaflets, dentists have often relied on patients to “discover” their practice for themselves. This is a relatively straightforward method, but it relies heavily on proximity. The only patients likely to visit your practice because they saw a sign in your window live close by - limiting the reach of this approach. And patients are increasingly less trusting of these forms of media because they feel “old fashioned”.
Word of Mouth
Dentists often grow their practice through a combination of community outreach and “word of mouth”. They may become a well-known presence in their area, and multiple generations of the same family visit the same practice. This is a foundational component of building a durable and loyal patient base.
However, there is an inherent limit to this method. Word of mouth is an unreliable and unpredictable channel, and it takes years to develop. It is also inherently limited in reach. Dentists must supplement this channel with digital market to stay relevant and competitive.
Practice website + SEO
Ten years ago, most dentists saw a website as a “nice to have.” Today, a website is table stakes. Many prospective patients simply will not trust a practice that does not have a website, and you will be “invisible” to any patient that uses the internet to find a new dentist.
A high-quality website showcases your services and makes it easy for a prospective patient to learn about your practice. This should feature key contact information, insurance coverage, a breakdown of your services and costs, and offer the ability for a patient to book their appointment directly through the website.
One crucial factor here is visibility: a good dentistry website should not only function well and be easy to use – it also needs to be easy to find. That is where search engine optimization comes in. This is a complex practice of developing content for your website and improving various technical factors so that the website ranks high on popular search engines like Google.
Search engine optimization can be time intensive, requiring technical and writing skills to be successful. This leads many dentists to turn to marketing companies to generate traffic, but there is no guarantee that traffic will translate into an increase in patients.
Social media
A recent study found that 41% of patients had used their dentist’s social media to find information. However, over 30% of dentistry practices still do not have any social media presence - and those that do vary widely in the amount they use their account. Having an inactive social media account can actually be harmful: if people find you were active but have not posted in several months, they may question whether you are still in business.
This presents a big opportunity for most dental practices to connect with patients and reach prospective new patients. By posting patient success stories and providing useful information, your dental practices can grow its following and increase their digital visibility. So that when a person is looking for a new dentist, your practice is top of mind.
Google Ads
Given the number of dental patients who use search engines to find a practice, Google Ads has become a central digital marketing tool for dentists. By bidding on relevant keywords, businesses can buy advertising space on the result page – and only pay for ads which people actually click on. (This is known as “Pay Per Click” advertising.)
Because this sounds relatively straightforward, many dental practices manage their own Google Ads. But this generally leads to poor outcomes: you end up spending a significant amount of money on clicks that don’t turn into paying patients, and without expertise and experience, it’s easy to end up wasting a lot of time and resources without measurable gains to your bottom line.
Third-party patient acquisition
While most of the marketing methods we’ve discussed are undertaken by your dental practice, there are also “outsourced” methods which involve paying a third-party to market your practice for you.
The first of these is known as lead gen marketing. This is a model where your practice pays a third-party marketing platform or agency for each lead it generates. The third-party undertakes a range of marketing activities - most of which are described above - and generates leads for your practice.
This can be a highly efficient way of building your patient base. But there is a drawback: with the standard lead gen marketing model, your practice pays for each lead - regardless of whether the patient actually books an appointment or shows up. As a result, you will frequently find yourself paying a third-party for generating…an empty chair.
In recent years, alternative model called patient acquisition marketing has emerged. It works similarly to lead gen marketing, except you only pay the third-party when a patient actually shows up and is successfully treated. This model, pioneered by Opencare, provides a more reliable - and therefore ultimately cost-effective - solution to your marketing problems.
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Three Forms of Marketing Partnership
Most dentists are not effective marketers. They don’t have the time or the expertise. But the shift to a digital-first approach puts this fact into sharp relief. As marketing gets more sophisticated, utilizing numerous platforms and large volumes of data, dentists are unlikely to succeed if they try to manage it all themselves. Fortunately, there are multiple ways to get support.
These come in three basic categories:
1. Marketing consultants
A marketing consultant will assess your existing marketing and tell you how to improve it. These insights can be very valuable, especially for dental practices that are unsure how to adapt to digital – which is why this method is popular. But there is a clear downside which many dentists overlook: who exactly is going to implement those insights?
While sophisticated marketing strategy is essential in today’s competitive marketplace, it is worth nothing if it remains a series of slides. Consultants are likely to paint a beautiful picture of what could be achieved with their plan. And they are free to do that – because they are not the ones responsible for making it a reality.
Consultants are great advisors, but you are still on the hook to manage the day-to-day.
2. Marketing agencies
There is a huge industry of firms that can help dental practices with their marketing, both strategy and implementation. They bring with them teams of experts in various areas of marketing, including Paid Digital Marketing and SEO, and are often able to execute complex strategies at scale. But the problem with most agencies is not what they do – it's how they are rewarded for it.
Marketing agencies have different business models, but they are typically incentivised to focus on factors like brand building or traffic generation – neither of which have a direct connection to your bottom line. As a result, you often end up with quality campaigns but relatively low ROI.
Agencies take a huge load off your plate. But they often don’t deliver results that correspond to the astounding price they charge.
3. Patient acquisition companies
Patient acquisition companies, like Opencare, tie their business model exclusively to the number of paying patients they generate. This means they only get paid when you get paid, making for a much more direct ROI calculation – and a more aligned incentive structure.
These companies take the risk out of getting patients in the door, both by producing a consistent stream of patients and using a business model that is tied to performance.
All three of these partnerships can produce great results for dental practices and can be combined in an additive way. But most dentists will benefit most from working backwards through the list. Start with patient acquisition – especially if you are unsure how to navigate the digital marketing ecosystem – to focus on generating paying patients. Experiment with marketing agencies or consultants later if you feel they are necessary to help your brand grow.
