You have your hands full, running a dental practice. Scheduling patients, managing employees, and providing excellent service. So, where does marketing fit in? How can you most efficiently leverage the digital landscape to engage potential patients and grow your business?

Content is King

Not long ago, sales were driven by quick-talking salesmen pushing products, services, and “the value you cannot live without.” Today, customers demand (and deserve) more. People need transparency and time to arrive at their own decision. The goal of content marketing is to engage, educate, and inspire. If you can supply a steady stream of reliable and engaging content, you can cast the widest possible net at relatively low cost.

Writing is storytelling and every single brand has a story to tell. Content marketing not only lends a personal touch to your marketing efforts but invites readers to take part in an ongoing dialogue. The goal is to become part of their life, not just a pestering advertisement.Effective content will build trust with the reader, laying the foundations for the very thing all sales have ever been built on: relationships.

Below are the top 5 ways content marketing can help your dental practice thrive:

Blogging

For you to show up on Google’s radar, you need to have content for the search engine to crawl and index. The more indexing your content achieves, the more the internet will recognize your site as a credible resource that benefits more people. Websites that utilize blogging see a 97% increase in indexed links.

Depending on the size of your practice, you will want to shoot for at least one post a day. You want your blog to be informative and comprehensive, yet crafted in a bite-sized, easy to understand format for your readers. Keep these things in mind when starting your blog:

• Use visual tools like videos and creative headers to help your blog stand out from the rest
• Give your blog longevity by promoting it over social media
• Optimize your blog with targeted keywords to drive traffic to your site

Make You Content Pop

While maintaining your blog as a core content marketing engine, don’t be afraid to diversify. Most people are visual learners or at the very least more likely to pay attention to images.

Utilize videos on your social media channels introducing you and your team.

Create visually dynamic infographics to make otherwise dull information fun and digestible.

Use step by step tutorials and your YouTube channel to help direct more eyes your way.

Now your readers know not to expect the same old blog every week, but something fresh and stimulating.

Engage with Social Media

While it is true dentistry may rely less on social media than other industries, there is still value to be gained here. Put active work into building your social following. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Today’s audience expects instant gratification, and this is one way to give it to them.

Focus on answering common patient questions, provide them with useful tips on dental care, or show off something fun going on at your office. It doesn’t have to always be work related. The goal here is to provide content that is actually useful or entertaining, not just another annoying page to badger customers with offers and ads. Nurture your social media like a living thing. If you don’t feed quality into it, you won’t get quality out of it.

Newsletters

Newsletters are a great way to inform your client-base about the industry. These can be tailored to be more intimate than a traditional social media post and even include things like contests to encourage page or email subscriptions. Use your newsletters to both guide patients to your website through linking and keep them up to date about the latest news in dental technology.

FAQs

When it comes to quick-hitting, useful information, an FAQ’s page is the way to go. In any medical field and especially in dentistry, patients are understandably nervous. They want to know what to expect. Don’t hesitate to look to competitors to see what they are and are not sharing with their patients. Find gaps that you can take advantage of and leverage your FAQ page to provide comforting and succinct answers. You can also use your FAQ page to link back to helpful blogs.

Content marketing is about engagement. At a relatively low cost, using content to build a meaningful relationship with your patients is one of the best ways to increase traffic to your business. You just have to put in the time. By utilizing the above content strategies, you are boosting your chances of standing out in the field. But don’t get overwhelmed. Digital content is a perfect way to let your personality as a practice shine.At the end of the day, think of content marketing as just another tool in your arsenal to bring out a smile.