Identity Dental Marketing

As a dentist, you are always looking for ways to grow your practice and bring in new patients. However, marketing has become a complicated landscape to navigate, and there are many mistakes that dentists make that can be detrimental to their business. Here are five of the most common, deadly marketing mistakes to avoid.

1. Not Analyzing Your Competitors: Before you can even begin to develop a successful marketing strategy for your practice, you need to analyze the competition. How much marketing are they doing? What type of digital footprint do they have? Are there any gaps in their offerings that you can capitalize on? Understanding your competitors’ marketing efforts is essential to developing a strategy that will help you stand out and bring in new patients.
2. Asking the Wrong Questions: When it comes to marketing, it’s important to ask the right questions. Asking “What does it cost?” is not the best question to ask. Instead, ask, “What does it take to attract 20 more new patients a month?” You also need to ask questions about website ownership, plug-ins, and proprietary software. It’s essential to know exactly what you are getting and how it will help you reach your goals.
3. Signing Long-Term Contracts: Many marketing companies try to lock you into long-term contracts. This is a mistake, as you can’t be sure you will get the results you need. It is best to put pressure on the marketing company to cancel contracts and only commit if you are confident they will deliver results.
4. Overcomplicating Marketing Proposals: Many marketing companies try to make their proposals look as impressive as possible. However, they should be clearly laid out, with a high level of detail about the type of work being done and the expected results you can achieve. Don’t be fooled by companies that try to make you think you need everything they are offering. Make sure your marketing plan is tailored to meet your goals.
5. Not Knowing What to Expect: Different marketing methods can achieve different results. For example, Google Ads are great for lead generation, while an educational video can help build your brand. Make sure you understand what each marketing method can do for your practice, and don’t be afraid to ask questions.

Overall, marketing is a complex landscape that requires a customized approach for each practice. Before you commit to any marketing strategy, make sure you understand the competition, ask the right questions, and know what to expect from each marketing method. At Identity Dental Marketing, our team can create a custom plan designed to fit your individual needs and deliver the desired outcomes. Contact us today to schedule a complimentary marketing strategy session. https://identitydental.com/Grace/

Please visit The Dental Marketing Academy for more information and helpful topics on how to successfully market your dental practice. The Dental Marketing Academy

Identity Dental Marketing is an industry leader when it comes to marketing for new dental practices. As a result of their broad marketing expertise, they can help denovos with many aspects of marketing. This includes business names, logos, overall branding, website design, SEO, Google Adwords optimization, print design, event marketing, social media marketing, and more. With proven methods, Identity is known by dental practice owners as the most effective and ethical dental-specific agency.

“We love branding AND strategy—so dentists don’t have to choose between impressive aesthetics and effectiveness,” says Grace Rizza, owner and CEO of Identity Dental Marketing. “We were a start-up ourselves. We seem to be one of the only companies that sets real expectations based on the area, niche, and circumstances of each client.”

“We have more new patients than ever. Since working with you all, I am not losing sleep anymore. I’m very happy with the results.” Neighborhood Dental’s Dr. Jordan Johnson stated.

“I met with several companies, and Grace was honest, down-to-earth, and willing to work within my budget. This superb company delivers what they promise. My practice would not be where it is today without them,” shares Dr. Collin Kwasnik.

“Grace and her team helped me build my brand and website, and our continued marketing campaigns have been very successful. I am thankful for their dedicated work.” mentioned Dr. Mohammed Mahdi of Blooming Braces.

“I am grateful to Grace and her all-star team,” shares Dr. Jeffrey Greenburg in a provided testimonial. “Since starting my practice, they have helped with branding, website development, maintenance, SEO, social media ads, and most of all, my sanity! Starting up isn’t easy, but they had my back from the beginning.”

Establishing a trustworthy brand for your dental practice startup is the single most significant step you can take to ensure long-term success. Better branding leads to better marketing results, which in turn leads to more patients and ultimately more revenue for your business. In order to help dental startups grow their practices and maintain them in the most efficient manner possible, Identity Dental Marketing will provide you with a roadmap, support, and other necessary materials. They will work with you to develop a custom dental marketing plan for your startup which includes business names, custom website design, SEO, logo design, and more that is tailored to meet your individual needs.

Schedule a complimentary marketing planning session today to learn how they can help. identitydental.com/grace

Identity Dental Marketing is proud to announce the addition of David Coyne to our team. With over nine years of experience in digital marketing, David has managed millions of dollars in ad spend and has a proven track record of success.

David is a strong creative writer with a deep understanding of brand positioning and effective marketing strategy. He excels at using technology to implement and execute campaigns on multiple platforms, using a blend of automation and customization to build the most effective funnels for our dental clients.

At Identity Dental Marketing, we are committed to providing the best possible service to our clients and are always looking for top talent to help us achieve our goals. We are confident that David will be a valuable addition to our team and will help us continue to provide exceptional results for our clients.

We are excited to welcome David to the Identity Dental Marketing team and look forward to working with him to achieve even greater success in the future.

As a dental practice, it’s essential to have a strong online presence to attract new patients and retain existing ones. However, managing multiple online accounts and keeping track of leads can be time-consuming and overwhelming. That’s where Identity Dental Marketing’s lead nurturing service comes in.

Our lead nurturing service streamlines the process of managing online leads by providing a one-stop platform for tracking and responding to potential patients. With our service, you no longer have to log in to multiple accounts to see who’s interested in your practice. Instead, all of your leads will be automatically collected and organized in one place, making it easy to see who needs a response and when.

Not only does our lead nurturing service save you time, it also increases conversions by ensuring that no potential patient falls through the cracks. By providing timely and personalized responses to every lead, you can build trust and establish a connection with potential patients, making them more likely to schedule an appointment with your practice.

In addition to streamlining lead management and increasing conversions, our lead nurturing service also allows for better communication with existing patients. With our platform, you can easily send appointment reminders, follow-up messages, and other important information to keep your patients informed and engaged. This not only improves patient satisfaction, but it also helps to reduce no-shows and missed appointments.

Overall, Identity Dental Marketing‘s lead nurturing service offers a convenient and effective solution for managing online leads and improving patient communication. By streamlining the lead management process and providing personalized communication, our service can help your dental practice grow and thrive.

Many desperate salespeople like to offer “free” audits to their prospective clients. It’s a way for them to establish themselves as an authority without having to look at the actual rankings and performance of a campaign. 

Why is this “free” audit problematic? 

1. Its motive is to create fear/doubt in your current strategy so that they can sell you. 

2. They often point out “strategies” that are not accurate

3. They often speak over your head, again… to sound smart and sell you things. 

Why is this audit useless? 

If you are ranking in the top 3 for your main search terms, most marketing companies want to work with you. They’ll want to take our stellar foundation and attempt to maintain the rankings we’ve helped you to establish. They also target our clients, knowing we’re one of the only marketing agencies without 12-month, auto-renewing contracts. 

What are some of the false/inaccurate claims they may make: 

1. They may claim the site structure is not to their liking. 

This one is interesting. If the site is ranking, then Google must have no issues with its structure. Also, a non-developer would have a very hard time confirming or denying this statement. It’s also extremely subjective. We have a tried and true method for website development for SEO. If they’ve said this to you, feel free to send us their report, and we can show you why any “red” scores on their “audit” are necessary for functionality and/or rankings. 

2. They may claim content is “stolen”

We are very smart about how we conduct business. We have leveraged over a hundred pages of content (that we have written and have rights to leverage to give you an advantage on Google. Remember, rankings are the proof of our strategies’ effectiveness, not sales audits. 

Some of these lovely salespeople like to use words like “plagiarized” or “bootlegged”. We could honestly sue them for this deceitful representation of our work, but we’re too busy helping our clients beat out their clients on Google with real strategy (on-site and off-site SEO). 

3. They may audit backlink quantity

SEO can always be stronger, which is why you invest monthly. The longer you invest, the stronger the rankings. Not all backlinks show up on reports. 

The real way to gauge if your SEO is “working” 

1. Watch the progress of website stats. Set up a meeting with your internet marketing strategist on our team to review your dashboard to evaluate traffic and other stats that show progress. 

2. Do a Google Search. Are you moving up? If yes, the SEO is working. 

3. How are your new patient numbers? Are they increasing from patients who found you on Google? 

4. It usually takes about 6 months to see a significant change in rankings and new patient numbers, but we love to see progress sooner. 

How do we come up with an SEO strategy? 

We have ongoing strategies as well as a variety of strategies that are systematically executed. We’re also constantly discovering and adding new strategies on a regular basis. 

Is there anything we can do to boost rankings faster? 

Yes, you can increase your number of Google reviews and consider sponsoring a widely distributed press release ($500) to accelerate results and show positive news about your business to your community. 

If you’re considering purchasing a custom press release, it’s a great idea for many situations, and it can be very beneficial to any business owner. 
 
It is most commonly used in the following situations: 

• Introducing a new service, technology, or expanding services to a new demographic.
• For the purpose of improving Google rankings and expanding keyword reach.
• The introduction of a new doctor, hygienist, associate, or partner.
• Building a positive online reputation, especially when people search for you on Google or other search engines.
• Promoting an event or special offer.

What to expect:

As soon as you have approved your proposal and authorized payment, the Identity Dental team will send you a questionnaire to understand the purpose of your press release. We will present you with a press release for your approval or revision once we have received your submission. The press release will be distributed as soon as you provide your approval. The article will be published live on at least 30 platforms, creating a powerful push of backlinks and a presence in Google’s news section. 
 
Press release marketing is the biggest missed opportunity in dental marketing as a whole. Reputation building and brand recognition are excellent benefits of this strategy. Most major influencers and business owners leverage public relations techniques such as press release distribution.
 
To maintain a constant flow of positive news about your practice, we strongly recommend using a monthly press release strategy. Additionally, you may purchase them as needed for the purpose of making announcements.

Direct mail is helpful when announcing a new business or new service offerings. It tends to “work” to generate about 3 new patients per 5,000 pieces until it tapers off and stops working after about 5-6 mailers.

Direct mail works best when paired with aggressive offers. This is because the potential patient isn’t actively seeking your service offerings when they encounter your message. This is the opposite with a method such as Google ads, which will allow you to show value at the exact moment when a patient is searching for a dentist or dental specialist like you.

What direct mail lacks in its ability to target the right people at the right time (affordably), it can make up in brand recognition. If you’re going into a direct mail campaign with the hopes that you’ll get the most bang for your marketing buck, you’ll likely be disappointed in it, even with the strongest message and the most appropriate targeting. Most of our clients agree that the predictable and longstanding ROI from digital marketing is more powerful than direct mail, however some still choose to run this type of campaign to enhance brand recognition and to have a diversified marketing approach – both of which have an intangible value.

When it comes time to print your marketing, you can mention us to postcard mania for special pricing or work with a local printer who is EDDM certified. Every Door Direct Mail by the United States Postal Service will get you the best value and allow you to blanket your community with your message.

If you’re wanting to run a highly targeted direct mail campaign (i.e. only show my message to families with children under 10 years of age), you’re going to spend more on the list and printing than you would to “hit” the whole community through EDDM. Financially, extremely targeted lists don’t make sense because the cost to attain and leverage them is higher than the cost to bulk print and hit all homes.

Why are my ads not working?

Like ALL marketing methods, paid digital advertising takes time to work.

Usually in the third month, the campaign has matured past its learning phase and will begin to produce the expected results.

As time goes on, personalized tweaks will be implemented to the campaign allowing our team to best utilize your marketing ad spend.

Remember in medium level competition markets, it costs about $200 to bring in a new patient without a low cost/ cheap offer. A budget of $1000 for a general new patient after 3 months may bring in 5 new patients per month, and that’s with competence in conversion with the front office team members.

These are only estimates. In higher competition areas or for higher competition keywords (cosmetics/implants/Invisalign), these expectations don’t apply.

Verbal skills are imperative for converting a lead to a long lasting, loyal patient. Conversion for patients who came in from ads are a little more challenging than those who came in referred by their mom, sister or colleague. We recommend always having someone listen to and give feedback on calls. Let us know if you’d like support with this. We can refer a trusted colleague.

If you’re in month 1 or 2, it’s too soon to be critiquing the ads. If your budget is below $1000/month or you expect more than 5 new patients from a $1000 budget, you may not have fair expectations for how this marketing works.

Ads are too expensive for me, what else can I do?

SEO is the most cost effective marketing solution in most towns, costing under $1,000 / month in most cases and once in top 3 for main search terms, bringing in 10+ new patients. It does take at least 6 months and a competitive number of reviews.