It's imperative for the future growth of any dental practice to successfully incorporate the Internet into his or her dental marketing efforts. It's highly recommended that dentists make internet marketing their number one focus when planning their dental marketing and advertising strategies.
There have been numerous case studies conducted over the past few years by prominent research companies like the Kelsey Group, comScore Networks, and Nielsen/NetRatings to determine the viability of the Internet for brick and mortar businesses. These studies have concluded that of all the people who search the Internet for information, 85% of them will also search for local service providers, including dentists, on a regular basis. And, of those people who do local searches, 61% of them end up making some form of purchase or inquiry to a locally searched business.
With all these local searches being performed daily, the Internet offers the practitioner with an opportunity to gain more exposure for his or her business quickly, with a lot less advertising expense than traditional forms of advertising avenues, and by being able to target his or her services to prospects who are seeking dental services right now.
So, how can a dental practitioner take advantage of the tremendous potential the Internet has to offer their business. In my next posts I'll provide some beginner dental marketing tips for the "Internet marketing newbie", as well as some more advanced tips for those who may already have a presence on the Internet.
Firstly, it's essential to have
Secondly, the practitioner's website needs to have a "call to action" on it's home page. A call to action is anything that gets the website visitor to immediately take action by emailing, calling, or visiting the practitioner's office. The best way to get a web visitor to take action is by offering them something special, unique, or free, just for visiting the website, and by offering it for a very limited time.
Thirdly, and probably the most important tip for increasing business via the Internet, is by optimizing the practitioner's website so that it is found easily in the search engines, and more specifically, in Google. Unfortunately, this is not an easy task to accomplish. One cannot just throw up a website and expect it to be found on the first page of Google, Yahoo, or Bing whenever someone searches for "dentists" in "their city". A Search Engine Optimization(SEO) service needs to be applied by the website owner, webmaster, or an SEO service provider in order for the website to be found by the search engines.
An SEO service will optimize the dental practitioner's website so that the search engines can easily find the website among the billions of websites floating around in cyberspace. And, a properly optimized website will tell the search engines how to properly index the website and rank it as the most relevant website when people search for a dentist in the dental practitioner's town.
The dentist who has built an SEO friendly website will have a much higher search engine listing and rank, and receive many more client leads than competing dentists who do not have SEO friendly websites.
Considering how few practitioners actual use internet dental marketing strategies properly, any practitioner who follows the above steps will have a huge advantage over their competitors.
Eric Snyder is a Search Engine Optimization(SEO) specialist, Internet Marketing Specialist, and an Internet dental marketing consultant.
More information on his services can be found at Your DentalMarketingSolution.com
