Content Marketing Hacks for Dentists

Right now, as you’re reading this, hundreds of other dental practices are fighting for the attention of the same target audience you want.

In a highly competitive industry where people are constantly bombarded with advertising and marketing from multiple dental practices, how do you set yourself apart from your competitors and attract more patients?

The answer lies in truly understanding what makes your target patients tick and using it to create highly targeted content!

But before we discuss this in detail, let’s quickly tackle what content marketing is.  

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a long-term strategy that focuses on attracting and building a strong relationship with your target audience by providing them content that piques their interest, answers their questions, and addresses their needs.

Content can be anything from educational articles to blogs, to ebooks, to videos, to how-to guides, and more.  

Why is Content  Marketing Important?

Aside from establishing trust, building relationships, and cultivating customer loyalty, content marketing is vital because it influences your company’s bottom line big time.  

According to the Content Marketing Institute, those who use content marketing have conversion rates that are six times higher compared to those who don’t.  

So, if you want to have the means to buy the latest equipment, open new branches, hire more employees, and grow your dental practice into a legacy, you need to start publishing great content today!

What Are the Top Four Content Marketing Hacks to Help Your Dental Practice Stand Out This 2021?

Identify the Right Patients for Your Practice

If you want your practice to stand out, you need to identify who it is that you want to appeal to.  

Casting your nets wide and trying to cater to everyone will only make your content less effective and less compelling in driving potential patients to your practice.  

So, how do you define your target patients?

• Assess your current customer base and find out what they have in common and the reasons why they chose your practice. Chances are, other people like them could also be interested in what you have to offer.  

• Look at your competition’s customer base and try to avoid going for the same market. Find a niche that your competitors are overlooking.  

• Analyze your offerings and list down their benefits. Once you’ve made a list, determine who is most likely interested in those benefits.

• Go back to your unique value proposition and identify who is most likely in need of what you’re good at.  

• Determine specific demographics you want to target to further define the niche you want to serve.  

• Examine the psychographics of your target patients to identify what kind of marketing channel they’re mostly on, what features of your dental practice they’re drawn to the most, how and when will they likely use your services, and how your practice fits into their lifestyle.

• Weigh your decision to check if you’re going for the right niche for your practice. The questions you should ask yourself should include:

• Can they afford your service?
• Are there enough people in your chosen niche?
• Will your target audience see the need for your services?
• Are they easily accessible?

• Do you know what makes them tick?

Once you know who your ideal patients are, it’ll be easier to come up with highly targeted and compelling content that will drive them to make an appointment, visit your practice, or explore your website.

Create Content That Matches User Intent

The people who visit your website, search for the services you offer, and engage with your content are at different stages of the customer journey.  

However, there’s no way of finding out which stage they’re at, and modern consumers no longer travel the customer journey in a straight line.

So, instead of creating content that aims to meet your target patients at each stage of the customer journey, your mission is to create content that matches their search intent and inspires them to take the next step.  

What is user intent?

User intent or search intent reveals what a user is looking for during a search query.

To create user intent optimized content, be sure to follow these steps:

• Understand your target patients’ goals at each stage so you can create content that corresponds to their questions and satisfies their objectives as they move closer towards the end of the marketing funnel.

For example, if a potential patient is looking for information about early tooth loss, you can create blog posts with tips on how to prevent this or common cases of early tooth loss in kids.  

You can also create a full-on video tutorial on how to clean a toddler’s teeth properly to answer their questions, pique their interest, address their concerns, and satisfy their informational intent.

• Map out all potential customer touchpoints and make sure to tailor your content for each channel to drive maximum engagement.  

• Identify your target patient’s pain points in every intent and aim to address this in your content.

For example, a potential patient is suffering from low self-esteem because of his chipped teeth. So, you want to create content that aims to address his self-esteem issues by presenting him with different treatment options that can bring back the confidence in his smile.  

• Use long-tail keywords to boost your searchability and visibility.  

• Use compelling calls to action at the end of your content to encourage potential patients to take the next step and push them further down the marketing funnel.

Satisfying the needs of your target patients is the way to build trust, meet their expectations, and set your practice apart from others.  

Use Content Automation to Your Advantage

Content automation doesn’t mean that robots will be the ones writing articles for your dental practice.

Content automation aims to automate the manual processes in content marketing to help you become more efficient and make your content more effective.

Here’s how you can use automation in content marketing:

• Identify what topics your target patients are the most responsive to.
• Proofread your content to get rid of any grammatical errors.
• Track behavioral patterns regarding content consumption so you can better improve your article, videos, images, ebooks, newsletters, and more.

• Keep your content updated to keep your audience engaged.
• Make real-time SEO recommendations to boost your content’s visibility.

And, here’s how your dental practice can benefit from content automation:

• Save time by eliminating repetitive tasks in content marketing like editing, publishing, and many more.
• Save money by eliminating the need to hire more employees to perform manual content marketing tasks.

• Boost productivity by allowing your content team to focus on creating dynamic content. This allows them to publish more high-quality content for your website and across all touchpoints.
• Improve workflow by streamlining processes and identifying barriers in your content production pipeline.
• Nurture leads and convert them into patients by allowing you to set follow-ups and automatically send email reminders you can use to push them down the funnel.

It’s one thing to satisfy the needs of your target patients by providing user intent optimized content, but being able to produce this type of content consistently and serve it to your target audience at the right time is a whole new level of providing value to your patients.  

Explore the “Stories” Feature

The “Stories” feature in social media is so in demand right now. It’s currently the most engaging type of content aside from TikTok videos.  

People love them and can spend hours clicking through stories, engaging with questions, answering surveys, and consuming content in general!

So, you want to take advantage of this feature to engage potential patients on social media and make your dental practice stand out.  

But how?

Here are some tips on how you can use stories to help your dental practice stand out:

• Share behind-the-scenes clips or pictures to humanize your practice and make you more relatable to your target patient.
• Curate branded stories to make your audience more familiar with your brand and your practice.
• Use stories to survey your audience without making them feel like they’re answering a survey. This is a great way to encourage them to engage and answer, so you can learn more about them, what they like, what kind of content they want to see more from you, how you can improve your services, and gather information.  
• Keep your practice on top of their minds by constantly posting content in your stories.

• Allow your employees to take over so people get a different POV and a glimpse of what your dental practice is like. It’s an opportunity to resonate with your target patients and build your brand image.
• Generate more sales or appointments by using ephemeral content in your stories.

Conclusion

If you want to create great content that will help your business stand out this 2021, make sure to build your strategy around your audience.  

We believe that success lies in knowing what makes your target patients tick and giving them exactly what they want through great content.  

Do you know what your target patients want?

At Digital Resource, we can help you develop a content marketing strategy that will not only set your practice apart, but also help you achieve business goals! Contact us today to know how we’ve helped other dentists grow their practice.  

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