13 Creative Dental Marketing Ideas for 2023

Dental Marketing Ideas for 2023

New year, new patients. In this guide, we share 13 dental marketing ideas that are bound to make an impact on your business in 2023. The truth is, you’re not the only dentist in your area who is eager to bring all the patients to the office. Therefore, dental patients need to be able to find you when they have toothaches and smile insecurities. They have to see the value in choosing you over all of the other dentists within a 5-mile radius.

Standing out from your competitors takes creative marketing. Below, we’re laying bare some of our most time-honored dental marketing ideas (while keeping the current pandemic situation in mind) from our playbook that brings results.

Content Marketing Strategies 

1. Film patient testimonial videos.

Dental patient testimonial videos sell by telling a story. They give potential patients assurance that people trust you as their dentist. Above all, testimonials boost your credibility by having your patients, rather than you, brag about your cleanliness, friendly demeanor, and pristine dental work. People are influenced by other people. In other words, testimonial videos are an example of word-of-mouth marketing.

Unless you’re social media savvy, filming a patient testimonial might seem daunting at first. You want to make sure that you’re using a high-quality camera (but not necessarily a DSLR), a good microphone, and a tripod to stabilize the camera. A phone such as the iPhone 13 Pro makes a nice camera option. Next, have your patient share their transformation. Perhaps you whitened their smile. Or they have perfectly straight teeth now. Maybe their chronic tooth pain has stopped. Emphasize the results they’ve had from your dental prowess. Get our guide to filming a patient testimonial video here. 

2. Start a dental blog.

We write a lot about content marketing because it’s so powerful. One type of content marketing is blogging. Blogging can increase your dental practice’s visibility in search results. By giving people a reason to regularly check your website, you can boost traffic to your dental website, increasing your chance of generating new leads. To write a dental blog post, choose your dental topics and keywords. Optimize your blog post for readability. Offer valuable information and answer key questions, using your patients’ language rather than using your dental school jargon. We walk you through writing your first blog post here.   

Social Media Marketing Strategies

3. Create a YouTube channel.

Video is king. Around 100 million people watch YouTube TV on their TV screens each month in the U.S. In fact, video became even more relevant for businesses during the pandemic. According to Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing Survey, 91% of marketers feel the pandemic has made video more important for brands. What kind of dental marketing videos should you make? Videos that are inspirational, informative, and entertaining perform the best.

There are endless video ideas you can use. An easy one to film is a “talking head” style Q&A video answering commonly asked questions about dentists and oral health. Use sites like Answer the Public and Quora to learn what people are googling about dental hygiene and visiting the dentist. According to the former, the questions people are searching include: “Will dentists judge me?”, “Can dentists prescribe antibiotics?” and “How do dentists remove teeth?”

Once you film your videos, you will want a free and convenient place to publish them online to reach new patients. That’s where having a Youtube channel for your practice comes into play. From there, you can embed your YouTube videos on your website. We share more video ideas and how to set up your Youtube channel here.

4. Offer a discount for holidays, seasons, or create contests.

If you’ve ever purchased something on Black Friday solely because it was on sale, then you understand the psychology behind this one. Discounts encourage people to spend money even when they aren’t planning to. Decide on a special dental service discount you can offer around a holiday on a service such as tooth cleanings or a checkup.

Another way to get people excited about your dental services are with social media contests. Post dental contests on social media as a way to grow your platforms and get new people to interact with your pages. Maybe challenge current patients to share their new smiles on Instagram with a branded hashtag and to tag other friends in your post. The prize can be dentist-related or something such as a gift card, a gift basket, or perhaps an item from a local business you’d like to support. 

Brand Marketing Strategies 

5. Take new brand photography.

Brand photography personalizes your dental practice. Brand photographs of your dental practice not only establish your credibility, but they also help patients identify your dental practice by demonstrating your personality. Have a professional photographer take well-lit, natural photos of you and your team in your dental office. Stock photos, although useful for dental blog posts, can look tacky if they’re all over your website. They do little to make your practice stand out.

Professional branding photos can be used on your website and across social media. Take individual headshots of you and your team, as well as team photos. You’ll also want to showcase a few photographs of your office’s exterior and interior. You can also shoot behind-the-scenes photos performing a tooth cleaning or chatting with a patient (be sure to use a model release form), to humanize your work even more to potential patients.

6. Know your Unique Selling Proposition (USP).

It’s not enough to have a degree from a top 50 dental school. Patients need to know your unique selling proposition. Put another way, how are you different from other dentists? What’s your secret sauce? It might take some time to figure out what you do or offer that might be niche, but we’re here to help. This list of questions will help you to figure out your dental practice’s unique value in no time.  

Local Marketing

7. Make Branded T-Shirts.

This tip is most effective for orthodontists, however, dentists of any specialty can use it. Don’t walk, but run to your local print t-shirt printing company. Get your dental logo printed on some shirts and hand them out to your school-aged patients. When they go to school, other teachers, parents, and students will become familiar with your dental practice. After all, that’s the goal: make your brand memorable and identifiable to people who are most likely to need your services. 

8. Volunteer with your team in your community.

One way to show your local community that you are a valuable and supportive member is to volunteer. Volunteering with a youth organization, nonprofit, or school fundraising event can also boost your reputation by revealing your values. For the past six years, Pain-Free Dental Marketing has proudly supported Operation Christmas Child by packing and sending shoeboxes filled with gifts to kids around the world. What causes do you support? Pick something you genuinely care about and give your time and money to it. Post about your involvement on your dental practice’s social media and share it in email newsletters. 

9. Update (or create) your Google My Business listing.

It goes without saying but, your online reputation matters. A Google My Business profile lets people find your practice online. Potential patients Google your practice before they even think about visiting or booking an appointment with you. If nothing comes up when people search for you, you’re going to have a difficult time reaching new patients. Your Google My Business listing shares your dental practice’s name, address, hours, and contact information. It helps people in your local community to find you.

To claim your Google My Business listing, log in to Google Business with the email associated with your dental practice. Type in your office name. If it does not come up click the “Add your business to Google.” Fill in the remainder of the form. We share how to optimize your Google My Business profile and what to do if someone else has claimed your business in this blog article. 

Essential Digital Marketing Strategies

10. Optimize your homepage. 

First impressions are lasting impressions. So let’s start with the beginning: your dental website’s homepage. The homepage needs to be fast, sleek, and up to date. We recommend keeping the page simple rather than overwhelming it with lots of text, graphics, and imagery. Accordingly, break up the information into bite-size chunks. It does not need to tell the entire story of your practice. Provide introductory information and links. There are other things you can do to improve your dental website that you should keep in mind. 

11. Create an email newsletter. 

Email marketing helps you to stay connected with your patients with emails such as company news updates, blog post announcements, discounts, and reminder messages. It’s cheap and fairly easy to get started. You can’t email your entire patient database from Gmail or the Apple Mail app. Instead, use email marketing software such as Mailchimp or Drip. These services let you create, send and manage newsletters to people subscribed to your newsletter. 

Other Creative Dental Marketing Ideas 

12. Respond to all of your online reviews (even negative ones).

People are talking about you. Online reviews for dentists appear on many websites. These include Google My Business, Yelp, Zocdoc, and 1-800-Dentist. According to a 2019 survey, 74.6% of respondents had researched doctors, dentists, or medical care online. With this in mind, reviews play a huge role in how people choose dentists. The more reviews you have, the better to build your practice’s social proof. Of course, you want all of these reviews to be positive. But sometimes that’s not always the case.

When your practice receives negative feedback, respond. Instead of reacting emotionally, acknowledge the patient’s concerns and apologize for the issue. Explain the problem or misunderstanding. We go into more detail here but the key is to be kind and professional. Bad reviews don’t have to be a bloodstain on your scrubs. When you address a patient’s negative feedback, the rate of patient satisfaction increases by 99%.

13. Run paid ads on Facebook or Google.

Are there any newbies out there? New dentists who have just set up their dental office and want to get the word out fast, listen up because this one is a biggie. Run a paid strategy for your dental SEO. Even though you do want to get to a point where you can use organic reach to drive up your SEO, paid ads work. Investing in a paid strategy can bring you results faster. When you create a Google ad, the Google Search network shows your ads to potential patients who are searching for keywords. Google Display Network shows your ad to users on other websites such as Facebook that aren’t necessarily related to dentistry. Ultimately, both options can get your practice on potential patients’ radars. 

Execute Your Dental Marketing Ideas Strategically with Pain-Free Dental Marketing

To conclude, we did our part and spilled a few of our dental marketing secrets, now it’s up to you to implement them and gain more business. If your hands are tied up with dental drills and probes as it is, leave the creative dental marketing ideas and strategizing to our team. Contact us directly for a 2023 marketing strategy tailored specifically to your practice’s needs.