Social media marketing for dental practices shouldn’t be structured, impersonal or clinical. In 2021, social media marketing needs to be authentic, relatable, honest, and friendly – enabling you to build relationships with a digital-savvy audience, who are switched on to ‘salesy’ or false advertising claims and are seeking value and connection.
Here’s how you can overhaul your orthodontist’s social media marketing strategy to build a community and a loyal customer base around your clinic, convert leads, and increase sales.
Social media marketing strategies for dentists
- Targeted social advertising
Advertising online to social media users who aren’t typically interested in what you have to offer is a waste of your budget, creativity, and time.
A paid social media advertising campaign is usually a lot more effective in driving leads and awareness for your business than organic social media marketing because you’re paying for a) an expanded online reach and b) an expanded online reach that targets your ideal and potential customers. Defining, finding, and targeting your target audience on social media will yield you much greater results than running a social media campaign with no targeting will.
Consider the target audience of your dental clinic. You can implement the following targeting when running an orthodontal targeted advertising campaign:
- Demographic targeting – you could target online users who are of a typical age to undertake a specific dental treatment (such as a generational group) target online users by income (if you’re running a discounted deal, or the service you’re advertising has a higher price point), specific location (you could target specific postcodes of local areas you want to infiltrate), relationship status (target brides to be ahead of their weddings – there will be many photographs taken that they’re going to want pearly white teeth for!).
- Behavioural targeting – online social platforms such as Facebook allow businesses such as dental practices to target online users based on their actual digital behaviours – such as purchasing habits, online browsing history, and online activity. This means that orthodontists can implement social targeting to reach social media users who have been engaging with dental adverts, products, accounts, and services online. Talk about striking while the iron is hot!
- Target using custom audiences – target your social ads to users who have previously engaged with content on your accounts and website yet haven’t become a conversion.
- Target using lookalike audiences – serve your social media adverts across Facebook and Instagram to users whose interests are like those of your existing online followers and customers.
- Targeting users based on interests and hobbies – reach online users whose interests align with your vertical and services. Dental clinics offering cosmetic services such as teeth whitening could therefore target users interested in cosmetic treatments and beauty.
Social media targeting minimises wastage of impressions, clicks and budget, maximises the potential of your advertising campaign, and delivers much more leads than a non-targeted, organic social media advertising campaign, – and there are so many more benefits of online targeting for businesses here.
2. Retargeting
Running a social media retargeting campaign will bring potential leads who did not become a conversion (e.g., a phone call, an online consultation or appointment booking) back to your website or social media page. It basically is a digital marketing strategy employed to seal the deal.
Your adverts will be served to the social media users who interacted with your paid advertising campaign yet didn’t click on your call-to-action.
Retargeting offers additional consumer touchpoints – and the more touchpoints you have with an online consumer, the quicker/likelier they are to become a paying, converted customer.
Furthermore, it keeps your business at the forefront of consumer minds, builds brand awareness and recognisability, and ensures you’re not forgotten in the never-ending abyss of a social media feed.
3. A lead ads social advertising campaign
Bring interested potential clients closer to becoming conversions by developing a Facebook and Instagram lead ads campaign. This is an advertising campaign that employs your chosen audience targeting and presents them with a form when the call-to-action button is clicked.
You can tailor your form to uncover information about each individual lead – aside from contact details to nurture your leads, the beauty of this advertising product is that you can personalise your form to generate responses to questions that will help you bring your prospects further down the conversion funnel, such as “which dental service interests you the most?”
4. Conversion tracking
There is little point in online marketing if you aren’t tracking where your conversions are coming from. It’s vital to know which advertisements, landing pages, social profiles, and content your conversions have been driven by – so you can make more of what works and determine where to invest your marketing budget.
Because the evidence of a dental service or products success is based on visual, aesthetic results, content that demonstrates this and shows your business in its best light with credible success stories is going to pull in more awareness, leads and conversions. User-generated content and client success stories are both an amazing way of building trust with potential customers and you can incorporate both into your social media marketing strategy for your dental practice.
6. Social proof
Social proof is built through user-generated content and strong reviews, so encourage, share and repurpose both whenever possible across your chosen social media channels.
7. Use the right social media channels for orthodontists
Utilise the right social media networks for your business and use the channels your target audience are actively using. This means that you don’t need to be on every social media channel available to you, and it also means that you’ll need to adjust your organic content and messaging across each channel. Avoid posting the exact same content across your social media profiles – repurpose it all, keeping the audience using each social media channel in mind.
For example, what appeals to a younger TikTok audience, is not going to entertain an older, more informed audience on Facebook. Find out more about choosing the right social media channels for your business.
8. Build connection through storytelling
Tell the stories of your clients to demonstrate your appreciation for your customers, foster a customer-centric, people-focused approach, and generate relatability between your business, your current client base, your social media audiences, and potential customers.
Humans by nature buy into stories, and stories are much more memorable than facts. As a dentist, you should be using social media to explain to potential leads how your dental services and products improve and benefit people and their lives. Selling on social requires you to tell your audience about the benefits and value a product or service adds, not its features. This is not an eBay listing – it’s human-to-human marketing!
9. Social media content for dentists
Valuable content on social media for dentists will generate a larger following, expanded reach, and eventually more customers. Gone are the days of clean, pristine social media feeds and clinical stock imagery. Social media audiences want to see real stories, real people, and real content that adds value to them. Have a purpose behind everything you post and add value to your online audiences through dental how-to’s, dental tips, customer stories, product information and benefits, a day in the life videos, Q&As, and collaborations.
Browse the types of social media advertising campaigns curated at LOCALiQ.
