You can’t rule out traditional marketing methods in favor of online marketing, as traditional methods still work. This is the mistake made by many. To succeed in marketing, you have to do both with the same energy. However, online marketing has a larger platform and some easy ways to utilize it.

In this article, you’ll learn how to market an orthodontic practice by using several methods and platforms, a few of which will be traditional. Keep up with the TV and billboard ads; they are still valid to date.

14 Effective Ways To Market Your Practice

1. Networking and Referrals

One of the best ways to get a good client flow into your orthodontist clinic is through referrals. There are a couple of ways to get referrals. One is through your previous patients who’ll speak greatly about your work. Another is through colleagues who have developed a lot of respect for you as a person and a professional. Offering rewards for referrals is a great way to gain referrals, for example:

Attending events is an easy way of meeting people. Networking at events is quite easy, and throwing in your business card is expected while you mingle. Find out what events are upcoming and get your name on the guest list. Please make a point of attending events that cover your line of work and attend other events because it’s not only medical practitioners who need orthodontist services.

As you network, try to form relationships with guests. Do more listening than talking; people love a good listener. However, when you get a chance to talk about yourself, discuss things you can help them with.

Finally, let your fellow orthodontists know you. Don’t rule out general dentists, as they will refer patients your way. Know and make friends with as many as you can so that they can always refer patients to your practice. One referral always leads to many more.

2. Join Forums

Forums are the biggest and easiest way to get traffic and create a platform for your practice. Everyone on the internet wants to learn something and also share their views and opinions. That’s what forums are for.

Some good platforms to consider are Quora and Reddit. With millions of users each day, you won’t miss a good audience to capture.

You can join groups and subreddits that discuss orthodontist or general dental matters and share your knowledge with them. You can also start your own group and do the same. Aside from these platforms, you can join Facebook groups or start one.

Your orthodontist Facebook page should also consist of educational information.

3. Collect Testimonials

While many orthodontists may not find this useful, it is one of today’s most powerful marketing tools. Every service researcher goes for the reviews and testimonials to help them decide whether or not you’re worth their trust.

You can collect testimonials from patients after they recover and are happy with the outcome.

Ask a patient to email or text their review. Make sure to get their consent so that you can share their name and testimonial with the public.

You can also ask the patient to record a video and talk about her experience and the results. Take before and after pictures of their dental situation. This acts as good evidence of your expertise.

Reviews and testimonials should be posted everywhere, from your website to your social media pages. Have them on your clinic brochures as well. Here is an example of testimonials on a website:

There are several online platforms where patients can also certify your great work. Some include Yelp and Google My Business. Another excellent tactic is to ask your patients to post a review on their social platforms, then tag you and your practice. They can also post on your platform with their accounts.

This method is much better because prospects believe that they are real people’s experiences and are not fake claims.

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4. Create Offers and Discounts

Everybody loves an offer. Considering that medical specialists’ fees are quite high, a good offer or discount will attract many.

The point of offers is not to make losses. Of course, there will be limits and terms to your offer. The point is to have more people enjoy your services to testify to it and refer people to you. If a patient is impressed, there’s also a high chance that they will be a regular.

However, be strategic with your offers, don’t just give discounts every day of the year; no one will take you seriously. Pick occasions when offers are justified. Such occasions include holidays or even when you celebrate your clinic’s anniversary. For example:

Some good offers include a discount or giveaway on referrals. This means that every time someone refers to a patient to your clinic, they get rewarded. You can also give a discount on every third visit of a patient. This keeps them coming back for your services.

5. Nurture Your Professional Relationships

One orthodontic advertising tactic is not just to network and form business relationships but also to maintain them. One tactic is to reach out during the holidays. Pack up some holiday gifts and wrap them in a basket. You can include a holiday card in the basket with personalized items such as, a wine glass that’s branded with your clinic’s name or a comfy blanket. To close the deal, drop in your brochure and a business card.

This reminds your colleagues that you appreciate their referrals while indirectly marketing your orthodontic practice.

In case your peers host events or even private functions and invite you, always make a point of attending. But, don’t leave your business cards behind. Not every gathering is a marketing opportunity.

Another tactic would be sharing your online platform with your fellow peers. If your contact who owns an IT firm is launching a project, be the first to show support by posting on your social media pages. Don’t do this with your corporate platforms, only your personal ones.

If you do this, they’ll do the same for you when you launch a project or campaign.

6. Do Some Charity Work (Sponsor Events)

Nothing markets your work like sponsoring an event. Your community wants to know that you care about their well-being. Find out what charity events are around the corner and get your brand name on that flier by sponsoring part of the event. Do some research about an event so that you ensure it’s good for the community. If an event is associated with anything negative, then sponsoring it will tarnish your brand really fast.

You can also start your own charity event where you bring people together, come with your colleagues and help diagnose any dental issues the members could be having. If you can do this for free or at a very small fee that anyone can afford, then you’ll be helping your community and building your brand altogether.

Let people know you as humble and kind enough to help whether or not you make money from it. One thing people love more than a skilled specialist is a friendly one that they can trust.

7. Invest in Advertising

Start by thinking of advertising as an investment for your practice. Orthodontic advertising can be done in several ways:

• Radio and TV advertising
• Billboard advertising
• Print advertising such as in newspapers
• Social media promotions
• Pay-per-click advertising

Every social media platform has a promotion feature where you can pay to have a specific post or your business page advertised. In essence, paying for advertisements puts your brand in front of new eyes that can be converted to paying clients.

Additionally, advertisements keep reminding those who already know your name that you’re still in business. People get tired of seeing the usual service advertisements. To gain traction, you can create a social campaign or give discounts and offers that will attract many people.

Google offers advertisement opportunities to brands where you pay-per-click (PPC). With the use of cookies, your site visitors will be targeted everywhere they surf after leaving your website. This keeps your brand in their thoughts. PPC is quite affordable, and you only pay when a prospect clicks on your advertisement. The image below shows an example of a few PPC advertisements:

(Image Credit: SEO Quincy MA)

8. Have a Good Website

While this seems like an obvious point, a carelessly done website can easily break your marketing efforts. If you think about it, every marketing lead ends up on your website to source further information.

Start with a good web design. Let every page on your site have a similar theme. Each page should be well designed and organized. A good design attracts the eye and makes prospects to enjoy browsing your pages. An organized website also portrays an organized orthodontist practice.

A good website should have:

• A clear navigation bar and links to different pages.
• Call to action buttons on every page.
• Different pages for different types of information; home, about, contacts, etc.
• Well-written web copies that sell your services.
• Different contact options such as email address, live chat, contact form, and telephone details.
• Social media icons accessible on all pages.
• A landing page.
• A blog page.

9. Start a Blog

As mentioned, a blog page is a must-have. This is the page where you write fun, yet informative, content on dental health which will identify you as an expert in your field. The essence of corporate blogging is to improve search engine optimization. SEO entails ranking high on popular search engines like Google.

With over 25% of researchers clicking the top website results on Google, ranking becomes a vital orthodontist marketing tool.

To rank on Google, you’ll need to:

• Use relevant keywords in your blog posts
• Write informative content that people are interested in reading
• Write at least one post each week to keep your website growing
• Link your pieces to internal posts to keep readers on your page
• Include external links to authoritative websites

Content marketing is one of the easiest ways to showcase your expertise to your prospective patients and their families; indirectly convincing them that you’re the right orthodontist for them.

FACT: 86% of companies produce blog content compared to other formats. The majority of companies (67%) use organic traffic to measure their content success.(Hubspot)

10. Local SEO

As you can see, SEO is a good orthodontist marketing tactic. But what takes it a step further is local SEO. Local SEO entails attracting people who live in your region. To be specific, the region where your orthodontic practice is.

If your practice is in Fresno, then you may want to target Fresno residents before anyone else. The trick is to mention your location in all written materials online that are associated with your practice.

For example, every blog post should have Fresno (i.e., whichever location you’re in) mentioned in the headline, subheadings, introduction or conclusion. Mention it frequently, and don’t forget to say California once in a while.

Why local SEO? Well, Google realized that many people searching for services will always mention their location in the search box. “Reputable orthodontist in Omaha.” This means that the researcher is in the area and is ready to seek these services. When you optimize local SEO you an be part of the local searches map, for instance:

Therefore, you have a better chance of ranking for these searches than when you generally say ‘Reputable orthodontist.’ Being general means, you’re competing for the first spot with orthodontists from the whole country, or even the whole world, which is quite unrealistic.

11. Practice Social Media Marketing

There’s almost a new social media platform out every week that one can’t have an excuse for not using it to market their practice. However, trying to make the most out of all available platforms will waste time and effort. Pick 2 to 4 social media platforms and use them to create your brand profiles.

When it comes to online marketing for orthodontists, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and probably LinkedIn will work quite well. While Instagram has good coverage, it’s more of a visual platform where only videos and graphics are popularly used.

However, you can go for Instagram and join the meme club. Find ways to create funny memes that are dental-related occasionally. You can also use Instagram to post video guidelines on dental care using the IGTV or reel features.

Social media helps you drag traffic from these platforms to your website. Every time you publish a blog post or a video on YouTube, post snippets about them on social media and give links to your website. The social icons on your web pages help readers share your content across platforms, which will also bring you more traction.

12. Social Media Challenges and Campaigns

For the sake of entertainment, which is what every internet user seeks today, conduct some fun campaigns or challenges on social media. No one said that online marketing for orthodontists has to be all formal and boring. Get creative. Come up with a good social media challenge where you ask people to do an activity and post on their social media. After which, they’ll have to tag you and your brand’s username. Here is an example of a social media challenge:

To make it a trend, create a hashtag for the challenge so that everyone can gossip about it online. You can also run awareness campaigns and have a hashtag for them. The point is to become engaging. The more people discuss your social media activity, the more they learn about you and your practice. On the upside, make sure all the serious and fun activities have teachings.

We hope that you found this article useful.

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13. Consider Video Marketing

When marketing your orthodontic practice, using videos will be one of your best content pieces. Start by launching a YouTube channel. YouTube has over 2 billion visitors each month. This is a good audience to chase. Considering that it’s easier to watch a video than read a lengthy article, your prospects will appreciate the effort.

You can create videos of various content. One can be advertising your services, and another can be a guide on dental hygiene. There’s no limit to how many videos you can produce. Just try and have a couple that you can advertise.

You can also create a short video for some of your blog posts and share it on social media.

FACT: 99% of people who use video for marketing say they’ll continue using video in 2021. 88% of video marketers reported that video gives them a positive ROI. (Hubspot)

14. Email Marketing

Create an email list for your current and prospective clients. An email list can be created using email marketing platforms like MailChimp and Constant Contact. To collect prospects’ email addresses, have a pop up on your website where you request email subscription from all your website visitors.

You can either directly tell site visitors to subscribe for new posts, or you can entice them with some good content and offers. One way would be to offer them a free eBook download after submitting their name and email.

Once you collect their email addresses, they occasionally send you service offers and blog post snippets to their inbox. But, don’t overdo it, because it then becomes spamming their inboxes. Once a week, or even once every two weeks, is enough.

Email marketing is one of the best marketing for orthodontists because you have personal access to your site visitors. You can take the chance to conduct surveys and learn what your prospects want. Occasionally, run a Q&A session and have them ask you about pressing issues. This lets them know that you care and are not just filling their inboxes with your advertisements.

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