As an orthodontic professional, straightening teeth is your main concern – but it’s not your only concern. Running a successful practice requires more than just brackets and wires; it requires the ability to book consultations and turn leads into starts. Your online presence is the key to creating successful conversions in the digital age, and building an online presence means devoting time and energy to digital orthodontic marketing techniques. How can digital marketing create new leads for your orthodontic practice? Keep reading to find out.
Here’s Why Digital Marketing Works
Compared to traditional marketing strategies, digital marketing is more measurable, more engaging, and more audience-specific.
Although many orthodontic practices dedicate some portion of their budgets to traditional marketing techniques like magazine ads or printed media, most are allocating more and more to digital marketing techniques like social media ads and website content. There are several reasons for this shift.
It’s Easier to Measure
One reason is that digital marketing techniques are more easily measured than traditional techniques. These performance-based statistics allow orthodontic and dental practices to assess where their money effectively generates leads and where it does not.
Here’s an example: billboards may increase brand awareness, but the ROI can be difficult to track because there’s no reliable way to measure the number of leads it generates. Facebook ads, on the other hand, are directly linked to tracking tools that provide more information about their effectiveness, making it easier for practices to adjust their marketing efforts accordingly, minimize their risk, and experience more returns on their investments.
It’s More Engaging
As more and more of your prospects’ daily lives are spent online, there is more opportunity to capture their attention through digital marketing techniques. In fact, a study conducted by ClickZ reports that most people spend an average of six and a half hours online per day. With so much online real estate to be explored, more tools are at your disposal, including a wide range of online ads, social media marketing, and content curation. As your patients like and share your content, more prospects see your brand, providing more effective avenues for building your brand presence and turning leads into starts.
Ability to Target Specific Audiences
Because of the high level of hands-on direction you can apply to your digital marketing techniques, online content makes it much easier to target your intended audience than traditional marketing does. In tandem with SEO optimization, tailored content that speaks to moms of teens looking to get their children the orthodontic treatment they need allows your brand and message to appear wherever those moms are looking – leading them to click
Here’s why it works: although a billboard might capture the attention of someone driving down the highway, it can only ever occupy that one physical space – and there’s no way to know that your target audience is viewing your billboard. A social media graphic, however, can appear across social media platforms and be boosted to specific Internet users, essentially bringing the billboard to their phone screen exactly when they need to see it.
Here’s How We Make It Happen
By building credibility and brand awareness and using search engine optimization to drive users to your site, digital marketing generates new leads quickly and effectively.
Content Builds Brand Credibility
Churning out consistent, quality content is one of the best ways to improve your conversion rates. Whether you’re producing social media posts, informative web pages, or blog articles, your users will see this content as a marker of your expertise in the field of orthodontics.
- Social media posts help your brand stay relevant, letting your audience know you’re constantly assessing their needs and those of the current market.
- Web pages provide reliable, easy-to-navigate information that they can use to make decisions about their treatment.
- Blog posts expertly answer questions that your audience is asking, making them view your brand as a trustworthy source.
However, quality content trumps quantity in most cases, especially when it comes to building credibility in the eyes of your audience. Be sure to keep this in mind when curating your own online presence.
Digital Ads Create Brand Awareness
Quality content doesn’t just exist for establishing your brand as an orthodontic expert – it can also function to capture your audience’s attention by broadcasting the perks of working with your practice. Targeted ads on Google, Facebook, or Instagram can put your services front and center for prospective patients, and running promotions or deals as digital ads take this a step further.
SEO Drives Leads to Your Site
One of the most important aspects of digital marketing is making sure your content appears at the top of the search results for any Google query related to your practice. If your website appears first, you’re more likely to get prospective patients on your site, and once they’re there, they’re more likely to book a consultation with you.
An Integrative Approach Works Best
Digital marketing is not a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing, and it requires the use of all these tools at once to provide the best results for your orthodontic practice. While having expert content is great, it’s only effective when combined with SEO best practices to drive this content to the top of the search results. Similarly, digital ads might target your audience to a T, but they’re not as effective if the website they lead users to doesn’t appear credible. Integrating each of these methods at once, among others, is the best way to boost your online presence and generate leads.
Light Up Your Brand with Neon Canvas
At Neon Canvas, we have a unique understanding of what it takes to make it within the orthodontic world of digital marketing. Not only are we social media, SEO, and content pros, but we also work with orthodontic practices every single day to make their smile goals come true. If you want to generate more leads for your practice, you’ve come to the right place. Contact our team in Memphis today!