Lead Generation for Dentists: 8 Effective Strategies That Work

In dental practice, a lead is someone looking for a new dentist. And the process of lead generation for dentists is quite similar to lead generation for other service-providing companies and agencies.

Lead generation in online marketing always requires that we capture potential lead information such as name and email to start with.

And depending on the sales team’s requirements, it might be required that more comprehensive information are collected such as phone number, contact address, age, medical history, e.t.c.

The lead generation process actually works when dental companies offer something of value which is referred to as lead magnet – because they attract visitors, in exchange for information.

This could be a comprehensive e-book on dental hygiene or free dental treatment in return for information. Afterward, the list of warm leads is then sent to a sales representative or the clinic’s sales team to contact and close the sales and make them into paying patients.

Why Lead Generation Works

Today we live in a world where people research their options online before they decide to buy or patronize a business. Everyone in the world today has an abundance of options and flexibility online. We are all trying our best to make well-informed and logical purchases.

The generation of leads is the second stage in the overall approach to marketing. After succeeding in attracting visitors to our website, we begin the lead generation process to acquire leads. We then prepare them and move these leads to salespeople who close the sales.

8 Strategies to Performing Lead Generation For Dental Businesses

For a Dentist to make sales and be successful, he requires steady patronage, and in order to bring in new patients, he needs a strong and effective online strategy that can attract dental leads steadily.

Online strategies that actually work include:

1. Content marketing

Content marketing is one of the most effective ways of bringing in qualified traffic to your website as a dentist. It involves regularly posting and publishing pages with useful information regarding dental health on the website.

As a dentist, you should make it a point of duty to regularly post contents that educate people about dental health, and also answer questions about dental issues from your site visitors.

It would make more sense to also set up a blog to regularly publish tips and educative topics in form of articles, infographics, or even videos on how to maintain dental hygiene.

Make your posts very interactive by giving the audience permission to post comments on each and every post you publish. Also, make sure that you follow up with explanatory responses to their comments or questions.

By doing this, you are showcasing your level of professional competence to the audience. And this will also build their trust and confidence in you. They will also like to patronize you and also invite friends and family to your clinic.

2. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Most people that want dental services usually begin by going online and using search engines like Google to find addresses of dentists near them. These people are your potential targets and you have to reach out to them. And your goal is to make sure your business shows up in the results for searches.

Search Engine Optimization is the best way to achieve this goal. For a dentist, Search engine optimization involves researching words and phrases that your potential patients use whenever they are searching for dental services

After researching these keywords and phrases, you should use them in your content. This helps search engines understand your site content and better display your pages in results for relevant searches. It also helps you appear in top rank on Google and other search engines.

SEO also involves building links from other reputable sites, most especially the ones related to your dental activities. This shows your site’s credibility to search engines as a reliable source of information.

Your main goal is to rank highest and the more online authority your site gains, the higher your chances of ranking for searches that are related to your industry.

3. Social media

Many successful dental clinics and professionals today have honed into the idea of using social media to reach out to their audience and even get quality leads.

Lead generation for dentists will require social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as good sources of attracting dental leads.

You can advertise your business and services on social media, as well as by posting the most genuine and helpful content to your profile.

Even better, you can ask users questions, respond to questions from followers, and even resolve issues that anyone had when using your practice.

4. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

In order to turn your website visitors into patients, you need to put in the effort to convert them into leads.

The best way to achieve this as a part of your dental lead generation strategy is by using contact forms and email newsletters sign-ups to ask for their email addresses. 

Afterward, you can proceed to use conversion rate optimization, to improve your site and get as many conversions as you possibly can.

Conversion Rate Optimization involves testing multiple versions of different elements on your website. These elements can include Like buttons, calls to action, and forms just to determine which of them is the most effective in converting your visitors.

After you have found out which one is the best, you can then implement that best version and move on to testing another element, and keep doing the process till you get the optimum result you so desire.

5. Email marketing

Assuming you have successfully collected your visitors’ email addresses by using contact forms and email newsletters sign-ups, you can then proceed to use email marketing to nurture your new leads until they are ready for conversion.

This requires that you send an email newsletter to them on a regular basis

To do this effectively, you need to include information about new services or equipment you have recently added to your practice.

Also include dental care tips that your patients may find useful in the emails you send out to them.

This strategy allows you to reach your leads directly with useful and interesting information. And, when it is time for their next dentist appointment, you will be the dentist they call.

6. Use FB Ads

Another way to reach out to the audience and connect with people who might be interested in your dental services is by using Facebook Ads.

Here are steps to take to implement a successful Dental Fb campaign.

Step 1: Use happy customer photos

Make sure your Ads showcase your customer’s teeth in a smiling picture after a teeth whitening procedure. This picture of a satisfied patient smiling and showing how white and bright they look after the teeth treatment will earn your brand a lot of positive attraction.

Step 2: Attractive Ad copy

Make your Fb Advertisement very attractive. Enrich it with elements of irresistible offers and Call To Action. Also, consider your target audience, make it properly designed to suit their desires, and offer perfect solutions to their pain points.

Another thing you want to do in your Fb Ad presentation is to make your offer seem scarce, for instance, you could say “Only 30 bookings ” or that it is “a limited offer.”

Step 3: Strategics Ad targeting

Be objective and choose your Ad campaign wisely. Decide who your target audience hare and design your Ad in such a way that it is focused specifically on them.

For instance, if your target audience is people who will buy your product, then the wise strategy is to focus on conversion. And let it be targeted at people who are in close proximity to your dental clinic, whom you know will not have much barriers or trouble paying your clinic a visit.

Also, make sure you put people in the right age group into consideration. And place your ad properly, make it conspicuous and bold so as to attract prospects.

The payoff after investing in Ad campaigns is that since you provide outstanding service, once these customers walk into your clinic you are going to have them for life.

They will certainly keep coming back and might even bring in friends and family for any dental procedure they will ever need.

The bottom line is, you will end up making a lot more than you had earlier spent on acquiring these customers.

7. Lead management

You should not end your dental lead generation strategy with contact form submissions or email sign-ups. You need a system for organizing and responding to leads as you begin to attract them.

The best way to accomplish this task is with lead management software. LeadFuze has the necessary tools that will not only help you generate leads but will also help you manage them effectively

With the LeadFuze lead management tool, you can easily keep track of each of your dental leads. You can access their name, email address, and phone number so that you can respond to their questions with helpful answers and set up an appointment with them.

Take time to observe how each of your leads found your practice. Check whether it is through a search engine, pay-per-click campaigns, social media ad, or any other marketing channel you must have set up and use for your dental lead generation strategy.

Then, use this information to understand what channel your best leads are coming from and improve your strategy as you move forward.

8. Social Media Contests

lead generation for dental business can also include the use of social media to host contests.

You may periodically host a contest that offers a free giveaway of a gift card, an electric toothbrush, or a free dental procedure.

And in exchange for this contest, users may have to share your page or follow your page. They may be required to post a before and after photo following dental procedures like dental implants, braces, and any other procedure

Types of Social Media Contests

The social media contests types include:

Photo contest. You can participate in this contest by entering a photo that conforms with the contest theme and be qualified to win.

Sweepstakes contest. This type requires that you enter by submitting your email and in the process winners will be chosen at random.

Video contest. To participate in this contest you will be required to submit a video in the theme of the contest and be qualified to win.

Vote contest. This contest is done by submitting a photo or video and the crowd will have to vote for a winner.

Caption contest. Caption contest is a creative type in which you will be required to enter a creative caption for a photo, then a winner with the best caption will be chosen.

Hashtag contest. You enter by submitting a photo or video using a specific hashtag.

The purpose of each type of social media contest is to create interaction between you and your followers. In which participants have to perform a small task – submit their information, and enter the contest to win a prize.

Social media contest also helps you get a lot of user-generated content. These are the photos, videos, and creative media that you receive through the participant’s entries.

You can then proceed to transform these media files into content and share them across your social media channels. This is ultimately a win-win situation in which you get user-generated content as well as valuable leads and they win an awesome prize in return.

The Contest Prizes

Your choice of prize for your social media Contest must be related to your business. By choosing something closely related to your industry ensures everyone who enters the contest is interested in what your business offers.

As a dentist, the best choice of the prize would be either a Sonicare toothbrush or credit for teeth whitening. With these prizes, you will be assured that those who enter the contest have at least some interest in dental care and would be more likely to become a paying customer eventually.

This strategy gets you more targeted leads and will ultimately help you make more sales.

How To Promote Your Contest

After you have decided your contest type and chosen your prize package and all is set, its time to promote your contest

There are basically two types of contest promotions to choose from. They are:

Paid Promotions: Paid promotion is done using online tools like online advertising Facebook ads or Google AdWords to drive traffic to your website. The beauty of this process is that you will be actually driving traffic to the contest page using online ads.

Another advantage of paid advertising is that it allows you to quickly and easily establish a connection with your target audience also to drive in immediate traffic.

Since Ad networks like Google and Facebook get millions of users daily they are the perfect sources for capturing audiences that are ready to be converted.

A business that has been online for quite a long time and has built up a healthy number of followers online has several options for organically (free) promoting their contest.

Organic methods(free) of contest promotion simply leverages your existing network such that your contest page receives traffic naturally.

Free Or Organic Methods Of Contest Promotion As a Dentist:

• Email. This method involves promoting your contest through email by sending out the contest details via email to the participants or prospects. When the emails have been sent, you then use subsequent emails to keep them updated on the contest status and timeline. It is very important to include social sharing buttons and calls-to-action for entry in the emails.
• Social media. Social media contest promotion involves publishing a post on your social media channel to let followers know the contest is running. This also works best when you include a call-to-action like “enter before Thursday!”. The call-to-action helps you to propagate the contest.
• Partnering. When you partner with related businesses you increase your promotional power. Your business partner can contribute a quota of the prize to be won while you both promote the contest to your networks. In the end, the leads are shared enjoying both a higher number of leads and a wider range of participants.

Contest Follow-up

This is actually the last stage in the online contest process, and it requires that follow-up with the participants who have entered your contest.

At the end of the contest, you need to send an email to the winners of the contest. You will also have to email everyone to notify them that the contest has finished and a winner has been chosen.

You should thank them for their participation and tell them to be on the lookout for the next contest. You can also attach a consolation prize, discount, or a free consultation in the email.

Remember that your main goal here is to commence the relationship-building process with your new patient ( leads), you must keep your brand on their radar until they are ready to buy.

Send helpful articles on tips, and other dental health information to them regularly to keep the conversation going with the intent of pushing for sale when the time is right.

Don’t deviate from your original goal of getting potential patients (leads) through this steady communication. Just make sure to keep enticing them with free stuff periodically, so as to make sure they are glued permanently to your marketing channels.

More importantly, offering free stuff and free consultations periodically is a great way you will offer value at a low-cost at the same time bring in more traffic.

Conclusion

Our comprehensive list of lead generation strategy is exactly what your dental practice needs to flourish.

For any dental practice to grow it needs a reliable strategy for attracting new patients. In addition to the above list of strategies, referrals can also be of tremendous help.

They will serve as a means for you to reach people who might not have access to your online marketing channels

When you invest in dental lead generation for your dental business, you automatically place yourself in a perfect position to earn quality leads, paying customers, and grow your business rapidly and steadily.