Identity Dental Marketing

Google Ads has come a long way from its beginnings as AdWords in 2000. While it still functions as a way for businesses to bid for advertising in the Google search space, it has far more nuances, refinements, and robust features. As a more complex tool, it is important for you to leverage everything Google has to offer. 

Today, if you are operating a simple pay-per-click campaign or trying to wing it, you are probably losing a significant amount of money. Here are tips on how to set up a Google Ads campaign that will optimize results.

Set a Realistic Goal

How many patients do you need to grow, and what is the average cost to acquire a new patient? You must factor in the level of competition in your market to create an estimate. We can assist you with setting realistic expectations after factoring in your ad focus, offer (if applicable), ad spend, and competition.  

Optimize Your Keyword Strategy

You must know the specific search terms your audience is looking for and ascertain the demand for those terms. If you haven’t set specific search terms and utilized exact match phrases, you may be mismanaging your ad spend. 

Utilize Negative Keywords 

Negative search terms prevent Google from wasting ad spend with automatic settings, which include showing your ad for all “dental” related searches. Without setting specific keywords to avoid, Google can zip through your budget, while showing your ads to people seeking “free” or “cheap” care.  

“These little extra steps are the difference between a new patient acquisition cost of $150 and one that costs $300,” says Grace Rizza, founder and CEO of Identity Dental Marketing. 

Leverage Retargeting (also known as “Remarketing”) and Display Ads

By leveraging remarketing, you’ll benefit from additional exposure to relevant traffic. After a patient visits your site, they’ll see subtle, beautiful graphic ads showcasing your business on future online activity. Reaching them this way is highly cost effective, immediately builds brand recognition, and allows prospective patients to continually learn about you and your selling points. This feature can complement a PPC strategy and allow more bang for your buck on Google. 

Hire Identity Dental Marketing 

Many dentists and business owners will undertake a do-it-yourself Google Ads campaign to avoid paying a professional. Almost always, however, management fees are dwarfed by lost revenue from targeting mistakes. 

As a reputable dental marketing agency serving the dental profession since 2009, the Digital Marketing team at Identity Dental Marketing has a great deal of experience optimizing Google ad campaigns. We keep current on all Google certifications and tools, and have consistently proven results shown both in Google Analytic reports and actual new patient reports.  

Let us help you target the right audience, use effective keyword strategy, and optimize your digital marketing budget. 

Identity Dental Marketing offers transparency in ad spend, and often requires no long-term commitment. Register for your Complimentary Marketing Planning Session with Grace today. 

You may have a great team, top-notch technology and a good name in the community you serve, but if you are not consistent in your business practices and in your leadership style, you are missing out on a key piece of dental practice success. Consistency is such a big component that your practice can’t be truly successful without it.

What does consistency in leadership look like? Ask yourself these questions:

• Does your team know when you are available, and what your schedule looks like?
• Do they know when to ask questions and when to wait?
• Do they know how to find resources that will enable them to succeed in their role?

If you’ve answered yes to all these questions, you are on the right track. However, there is more to consistency in leadership than protocol. If you want to strengthen your team from the top down, you need to keep the best version of yourself front and center as much as possible.

We all have bad days; we’re human! Leaders, however, must learn to compartmentalize and put their best foot forward.

The ‘game face” is typically easy to pull off with patients, but what about staff?

“Do they know which version of you they are going to walk into on a Monday morning? Do they deal with your mood swings and your stress and your overwhelm?” asks Grace Rizza, CEO and founder of Identity Dental Marketing. “Keep in mind that whatever energy you bring to your team is going to be absorbed and amplified, and that energy is going to be shared with your patients.”

Another consistent quality you want to share with patients relates to marketing. You want to put out a steady stream of community-minded and educational messages, so you become a trusted source of oral health information. One proven way to achieve this is by putting out short, weekly educational videos on social media or on YouTube via your website.

One way to torpedo efforts at achieving consistency is to start one marketing program and abandon it in favor of another before you know whether it’s really working. Some approaches take time to see results; others require some expertise that you may not have, or a multipronged approach that you do not have the time to implement. After all, patients should be your focus.

If you want strategies to implement top-down consistency, hone your marketing skills, and increase momentum with your team and practice growth, reach out to Identity Dental Marketing. Email Grace Rizza directly at grace@identitydental.com.

Having a strong website is essential to a thriving and growing practice. It helps patients find you through search easily and it clearly conveys what your practice is about. If you were to quiz yourself on your website’s effectiveness, how would you do?

1. Is your website modern? Have you updated it in any way within the last two years? Does it look and feel up to date with an on-trend design and fresh-looking layout? If yes, give yourself two points.
2. Is your website branded? Does your site match your brand recognition? Examine the colors and the font you use and see if they match your signage, brochures, and other elements. If they are inconsistent, it gives off a sense of cognitive dissonance among people trying to find a new dentist. If yes, give yourself two points.
3. Are you using real photography and videography? People want to see you, your staff, and your office. An exterior shot will help them to find you. Real patients, well-photographed, along with testimonials, go a long way toward engendering trust. If yes, give yourself two points.
4. Is your website responsive? Your patients and prospects need to be able to see your website and navigate it easily from any type of screen: mobile phone to desktop. This is what is meant by a responsive website. If yes, give yourself two points.
5. Do you love your website? “Is it something you are proud to share? Is it something if you were a new patient seeking a dentist that it would make an amazing first impression?” asks CEO Grace Rizza. If yes, give yourself two points.
6. Are your selling points obvious? Does your website properly telegraph your key differentiators? In other words, does it convey what is special about you and your team? Does it show or tell about the technology you use? Does your About Us show your credentials? If yes, give yourself two points.
7. Does your website rank well on Google? This is the most important website factor. If no one can find it by searching online, why have a website at all? When people search for “dentist near me” or “Dentist in (Your Town),” you should come up in the top three Google Map positions for at least one of your top keywords. Bonus if you have a lot of 5-star reviews. Give yourself 4 points if you’re satisfied with your search engine ranking.

No matter what your score, it’s time to take a critical look at your website and decide whether it can withstand competition. If you would like to upgrade your website in any area mentioned above, Identity Dental Marketing can help. It offers a multipronged solution to a great website. Schedule a consultation with Grace Rizza today. Get started by emailing grace@identitydental.com and get the website that proudly reflects who you are and what you do.

What You Need to Know About Branding

Many people talk about branding – What’s your brand? Does this partnership align with my brand? Is it time for a rebrand?– but what does that mean? Grace Rizza, founder and CEO of Identity Dental Marketing, is an expert on branding for dental practices and shares these tips with the Dental Peeps Network:

A brand is simply a visual identity that resonates with the intended audience. Creating one involves telegraphing what your practice is about to attract your ideal patients and set the right tone. “Think about your intended reputation,” Grace advises. “Whenever we’re building a brand, we’re actually building how people perceive you, and we want to identify this in a way that’s true to who you are.”

How do you go about creating a new brand for your dental office? When is it time to reevaluate the one you have now? First, determine whether your current brand or the brand you are envisioning rings true. Do the elements such as graphics, font, and tagline fit with what you’re about? 

Grace gives the fictional example of a mature dental practice whose tagline is “Convenient, compassionate care.” That was accurate when the practice was founded, but times have changed: Cutbacks have forced this practice to scale back personnel. It no longer has weekend appointments. It no longer accepts insurance. The phone is not answered after regular business hours. In this case, rebranding around the office’s current strengths would be wise to meet patient expectations.

Creating a brand involves far more than searching for clipart of a smiling tooth! Grace notes that there is a psychology to choosing a name, font, colors, and symbols. First, you need to understand your intended audience and know how to attract them visually. 

Primary colors and whimsical lettering may work well for a pediatric dentist, but not for a practitioner whose bread and butter is restorative work on seniors. It’s an obvious example, of course, but should get you thinking about what you want your brand to be.

Grace and her team at Identity Dental Marketing take the guesswork out of branding. They offer deep expertise in helping dental practices create unique, powerful, and effective identities. 

Want Grace to answer a question about dental marketing? Email her at grace@identitydental.com.

Research shows 94% of patients evaluate providers using online reviews, and 72% use it to find a new provider. Even if most of your reviews are positive, just a few negative comments can sow seeds of doubt among prospective patients, and, let’s face it, they personally sting. How you deal with bad reviews on reputation and social media can impact your business as much as the reviews themselves.

Is the Bad Review Real?

The first type of poor review can be totally illegitimate. How do you recognize it? There is usually outsized anger in its tone; it may be nonsensical or feature personal attacks; it aims to hurt instead of offering anything constructive. In working with many dental clients over the years, I have learned this type of bad review may not even come from an actual patient. It may be a disgruntled ex-employee behind the keyboard, a competitor, or a former patient who is dealing with underlying issues.

What should you do? First, don’t let it ruin your day, as hard as that may be. Evaluate where it came from. Decide whether you can contest the review and have it removed from the site. That, of course, will depend on the site; some are more difficult than others. If the review contains hate speech or is blatantly false, it may be worth contacting the site.

Should You Respond to Illegitimate Reviews?

That depends on your tolerance for confrontation and what is said. There is nothing wrong with trying to correct a false statement – of course you sanitize your equipment! – but drawing a sword against irrational comments and ad hominem attacks is probably futile and may further encourage the reviewer.  

When Good Patients Leave Bad Reviews

What if an actual patient puts a legitimate complaint on blast? A real patient may be shy about telling you something in person but finds courage behind the keyboard. Acknowledge the complaint and decide whether it has merit. If you know who the reviewer is, don’t be afraid to reach out to them. Inquire with genuine concern, promise to address the issue (and follow through), and then politely request that they remove the review or amend it with a follow-up. You would be surprised how many reviewers will comply; often, they just want to be heard.  

Remember You Are Not Alone

You can be the kindest provider in the world with the most helpful and accommodating staff and hundreds of loyal patients – and still get a few bad reviews. It seems unfair but it happens to just about everyone at some point. If you are the target, take a few deep breaths and remember this is a moment in time. If you are the office manager, just be there and provide support for the provider.

Solicit Positive Reviews

Make sure the good outweighs the bad. Get into the habit of asking satisfied patients to provide reviews and be proactive in gathering them yourself. Solicit kudos via text, social media, or postcards. With written permission, post short reviews with photos or create video testimonials during follow-up appointments. These are enormously powerful reputation management tools that will overwhelm and “push down” negative reviews you can’t remove. Give your satisfied patients a list of review sites on which to share their positive experiences. Above all, lean back on your good reputation and ramp up a program that keeps positive patient experiences in the spotlight.

If you want expert advice on nurturing a positive, meaningful online presence? Get in touch for tips on comprehensive dental marketing that works.