In the same way that digital marketing should form an essential part of a modern-day business’s approach to promoting its products and services, so too should a dental practitioner include dental SEO in their marketing drive. Marketing and digital marketing, in particular, offers a myriad of highly sought after benefits for a dental practitioner that cannot be found with more traditional forms of advertising. For example, consider for a moment the extensive reach of a dental website that remains accessible to the healthcare consumer for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Digital marketing can arguably be considered a tireless workhorse in the advertising domain that works in favour of the dental practitioner who has paid attention to an optimised, high value and high performing dental website.
While there is no denying the attractive rewards of digital marketing campaigns for healthcare practitioners, in Australia, there are legal compliance guidelines put in place by The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) to abide by. These guidelines are not intended to place restrictions on healthcare practitioners, but rather, to protect them as well as the healthcare consumer. Misinformation can lead to harming the healthcare consumer which, in many instances leads to notifications lodged against the practitioner in question. In its topical recent annual report, the Australian Dental Board acknowledges that as many as 784 notifications were lodged with the regulatory agency, Ahpra.
How to use digital marketing to drive healthcare marketing
The digital world is accessible to anyone anywhere in the world with a digital-enabled device (laptop, smartphone or tablet) which means digital marketing has an amazing reach. This then leads to an important question – how can dental practitioners reach the local consumer? Because dental practitioners all over the world can compete for the attentions of the healthcare consumer looking for dental care, local SEO for dentists is a marketing technique reserved for local searches of dental treatments and services.
Digital marketing tools such as websites and social media platforms will need to be optimised with targeted keywords used by the healthcare consumer to search for the services they are interested in.
In addition to this, a business website must incorporate a dynamic design that is: engaging, relevant, high-value content and has fast load times. Equally important is for the website to represent well the dental practice that promotes the engagement of the visitor so that they do not feel the need to leave the site in favour of another.
- This means the website needs to:
- Answer all the visitor’s questions.
- Be easily navigated.
- Provide full and easily contactable details.
- Showcase the profile and personality of the practice (with the use of photographs and corporate videos).
Dental practitioners may have concerns about investing in digital marketing and whether it is worth engaging the services of a medical marketing service provider offering local SEO for dentists. It should be noted that digital marketing efforts can be measured thanks to specific data and metrics that point to what is working and what is not. A dedicated service provider like Dental Focus Marketing is experienced in interpreting data and implementing best practice techniques to attain the best possible results.
