To bring new patients to your dental practice, you’ll need a well-designed digital marketing strategy. Today’s patients are using the internet to find their dental care providers, so you’ll need to use a marketing funnel to turn web searches into booked appointments. Sales funnels are the fastest way to improve dental office marketing. In this article, we’ll take a look at why dental marketing funnels are important and how to build one that generates real results.
A dental marketing funnel is the process your customers go through from the time they initially find out about your dental business to the time that they make a purchase. The steps in a marketing funnel can look slightly different for every business. However, all marketing funnels go through the same general process.
The first step in the marketing funnel is when the potential customer becomes aware of your practice, whether that’s through a Google search, social media post, word-of-mouth, or something else. From there, the next step is interest - the potential customer realizes that your practice could provide the dental care they need.
The customer needs to research your practice to determine if your dental services are the right fit. Material within your dental marketing funnel should give them the information they need to make this decision.
For example, the prospect might click on a PPC ad or social media post, which takes them to a landing page on your website. This landing page would provide information about your products or services. This web page will address if you meet their dental needs or not.
The final step in the marketing funnel is taking a desired action. For dental practices, this is usually making an appointment, but it could also be buying a product or signing up for a newsletter. This is the final stage of the funnel is where all your marketing efforts pay off!
Today’s customers are bombarded with digital content, which can feel very overwhelming. Using a sales funnel for dentists helps you target the right patients for your practice, which increases the chances of leads turning into paying customers. You can customize your funnel to focus specifically on patients in your geographic market. You can also target specific demographics - for example, if you’re a pediatric dentist, you might want to specifically focus on marketing to new moms and families.
Your marketing funnel also gives you more control over the way your customers experience and interact with your brand. As potential patients move through the funnel, they’ll learn about your practice, giving you time to make a sale.
When building your dental marketing funnel, you’ll first need to understand how patients find your practice. For most patients, the first step is realizing that they have a dental problem. They might be struggling with an acute problem, like a cavity or bleeding gums, or they might just be overdue for a cleaning. Many patients will also search for a dentist when they move to a new city or state.
Once the patient identifies that they have a problem, they will typically conduct some online research, and they may also ask friends and family for advice. Then, they’ll start searching for a dentist or dental services through their preferred channels, whether that’s a search engine, business directory, social media, or something else. Finally, they’ll decide which dentist is best for their needs and will seek out treatment.
Google says a consumer will have between 20 and 500 searches online before committing to a service or product. Teethtalk ads can run your dental sales funnel on autopilot for dental practice. Watch how teethtalk ads can generate more ideal patients for your practice here.
Building a successful marketing funnel is a multi-step process. You’ll want to find ways to widen the top of your dental funnel to bring in more quality leads, while simultaneously refining the middle and bottom of your funnel to increase your chances of acquiring a dental patient. Quality of lead generation is important too. Would you rather have 100 hygiene patients or 100 implant patients? With teethtalk ads, you can target the type of dental patients you want to attract to your practice.
Here are the three key steps to take when building your marketing funnel.
The first step is to capture the attention of your patients and make sure that you are on their radar. When building out the top of your funnel, you’ll want to focus on consumers that are most likely to become patients, rather than appealing to everyone. This means you’ll want to focus on a specific geographic market. Depending on your specialty, you may also want to appeal to certain age groups or socioeconomic groups as well.
There are many different approaches you can take at the top of a conversion funnel, both online and offline. One of the most effective digital marketing strategies is pay-per-click ad campaigns across a variety of platforms, such as Google, Facebook, or YouTube. These ads work well because they target specific keywords. This means that your ads are only shown to people who have already searched for related terms. PPC ads are also very cost effective, because you’ll only pay when visitors actually engage with your ad.
Another popular online strategy for top-of-the-funnel leads is influencer marketing. You can do this by offering local influencers free or discounted treatments in exchange for posting about their experience. Many consumers seek out recommendations from their favorite influencers, so this is an effective way to drive traffic to your site.
In addition to digital strategies, there are also many offline strategies to use at the top of the funnel, such as billboards, TV ads, and radio ads. Another helpful in-person marketing strategy is to attend or sponsor local events where prospects can talk to your dental team in person.
After learning about your business, the next step many visitors will take is to do research. You’ll need to use your funnel to provide information about your business and direct these leads to your website.
One of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website is to improve your search engine optimization (SEO). Since dental SEO tactics can be very complex, consider working with a professional SEO agency to help you find the right keywords, develop a backlinking strategy, and more.
Content marketing is another excellent way to pull leads to your site while also providing educational content about dental issues. Examples of dental marketing include blog posts, YouTube videos, and social media posts. When selecting a social media network to use, consider what networks your audience uses most, whether that’s Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or something else.
Paid marketing campaigns work well to keep on top of potential customers during the sales process. Advertinsg before and after success stories are powerful in the middle of the funnel!
The final step in the marketing funnel is to guide your prospects to make an appointment. While you can’t force anyone to make a purchase, there are things you can do to increase the chances of a conversion.
Building optimized landing pages into your website is a simple but effective way to do this. When someone clicks on one of your advertisements or social media posts, that link should funnel them to a landing page where they can easily make an appointment or learn more about your practice. Email marketing is very powerful at the lower end of the sales funnel too.
Another strategy is to use retargeting ads for patients that have already visited your site. Google Ads, Facebook ads, and many other ad platforms make it easy to retarget patients who have already interacted with your practice online in some way. Retargeting ads promoting phone calls or a free consultation work great to increase conversion rates!
Finally, encourage previous patients to leave an online review when they have a good experience. Many people rely heavily on reviews when choosing a new service provider, so this can have a serious impact on your conversion rates.
Dentist sales funnel can be extremely powerful if you build them out correctly. A sales funnel is only one aspect of attracting more patients. You are most likely a dentist if your reading this and not a seasoned marker. Teethtalk ads is a done-for-you dental sales funnel right out of the box. You sign up and start getting phone calls and online bookings from the type of dental patient you want.
Book a demo today to start attracting the types of patients you want.
If you don’t already have a digital marketing funnel in place, now’s the time to build one. Refining your dental funnel with digital ads, high-quality content, and amazing landing pages to turn your leads into loyal patients.
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Zach Westerhoff is a dental marketing expert. Join Zach and over 5,000 dentists to learn how to scale your dental business like a tech startup. Zach managed digital marketing teams & campaigns for large SaaS companies and retail giants. As co-founder of teethtalk ads, his goal is to help dentists advertise their practice to patients looking for treatment.
Built for every dental team no matter the size, teethtalk ads boosts local visibility while driving procedure-ready patients.
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