New year, new trends, same core principles. The only constant in digital marketing is that the rules are always changing – but with trust-building as your guiding light, you’ll navigate the orthodontic marketing world in the new year without a hitch. Here are our predictions for how you can most effectively boost your orthodontic marketing in 2024 to increase your practice’s exposure and set yourself up for success.
Post Educational Content
…and resist the urge to sell to your audience overtly.
It used to be much easier for brands to get away with direct, to-the-point marketing that sold the product and didn’t do much else. The cold, hard truth, however, is that today’s society can see right through the sales tactics of the old, and they’re far more interested in the genuine personal connection resembling an old friend or trusted expert. In other words, they don’t want an angle, and most modern users actively avoid content when they can tell it is trying to sell them something.
In reality, the best products and services sell themselves, and they usually do so by the genuine virtue of being the most useful, helpful, or effective tool for their market – and the same goes for brands on a larger scale.
The best way for you to tap into this trend in 2024 is to share content that helps your followers – and this is where you come in. Because you’re already an expert in your field, you have the edge to present your honest opinions, ideas, and advice to your audience to establish yourself as a leader in your field. Once your followers come to trust your consistency and expertise, they’re more likely to remember you when they need to use your services.
So rather than letting your audience know you offer clear aligners, for example, post a video explaining why you prefer clear aligners over another orthodontic treatment. Then, with this fresh perspective in your orthodontic marketing toolkit, you can watch your audience – and your patient list – grow.
Pay Attention to SEO
…including on social media.
As a digital marketing agency, we’ve seen our fair share of SEO trends and tricks. However, one of the most surprising and important developments over the last few years is that social media is becoming a search engine of its own. It’s more and more common for users to turn to platforms like Instagram or YouTube to ask the same questions they might ask Google, seeking a more personalized response from creators they know and trust.
This means that optimizing your social media captions and hashtags like you would for Google is more important than ever if you want to be seen by new audiences and increase your exposure. Fortunately, our team can help you handle this complex part of your orthodontic marketing strategy.
Take Advantage of User-Generated Content
…and not just on social media.
When most people hear user-generated content or “UGC,” they usually think of influencers. And while this is probably the most common form of UGC, hiring an influencer isn’t always the best use of your orthodontic marketing budget. The marketing needs of an orthodontist don’t require an individual repping your brand – you can do this effectively on your own. You don’t have to generate a need for orthodontic treatment either – the need already exists.
What you do need to do is create the drive for patients to visit your practice instead of your competitors, and this is where your existing user-generated content comes into play. By mining reviews from your Google My Business account or pulling positive comments from your social media page and adding them to your website, you can highlight your best features in their words, making your voice more effective and helping potential new patients trust you that much more.
Finding further outlets for non-influencer user-generated content takes creativity, but they’re out there – and we recommend using them to your advantage.
Use Google & Meta Ads
…we’re not saying print ads don’t still work, but…
Creating an advertising budget is essential for your practice, even if allocating the funds can be complicated. But what we can tell you is this: if you’re not dedicating a portion of your orthodontic marketing budget to Meta and Google ads in 2024, you could fall behind.
Although print ads used to be a major medium in the marketing world, they’ve largely been replaced by their digital counterparts: Google and Meta ads. These ads are seen by well over half of all online users, and because they are targeted, you can direct them to users who are most likely to follow through with your services once they’ve seen them – plus, they make it easier for individuals to follow-through immediately when they’re most likely to act.
After all, you can’t click to call on a magazine ad, and you can’t visit a website by looking at a billboard – but you can access all the information you need in two clicks with digital ads, which puts your prospective patients that much closer to doing business with you.
Maintain Consistent Branding
…because it’s all about building trust (are you noticing a theme here?)
Your brand identity is a reflection of your practice’s overall personality. This personification of your team, from your logo to your tone of voice, is what helps your followers or potential patients connect with you – and that connection means everything for your business.
In order for them to feel the trust that comes from this connection, however, you need to maintain your practice’s established branding – font, color scheme, tone, everything – across your online channels to make their every interaction feel personal, as though users are talking with a whole brand in one person. Once you’ve established your brand, you’ll become more approachable to your users and adaptable to the changing climate of personalized advertising.
Relate to Your Audience
…and don’t shy away from interacting with them in multiple ways.
Now that you’ve established your brand and feel comfortable taking on its persona, you’ll need to engage with your audience to make them feel included in your online community. So start responding to their comments on Instagram, send emails that speak directly to each patient, put your face on camera – every time you provide a personalized experience and relate to your audience in an authentic way, you’re paving the way for a better relationship with those who trust you and the future success of your practice.
Trust Neon Canvas to Make Your 2024 A Success
While the current trends can help us predict that these steps will improve your orthodontic marketing strategy in the new year, trends are constantly changing – not to mention that implementing them can take an entire team of professionals! But with Neon Canvas’s on-demand creative request process, SEO experts, website design team, and more, we’ll help you stay relevant in 2024 without having to learn the best practices that we already know are most successful.
Call our team today to learn more about how we can boost your orthodontic marketing efforts!