How Much Should a Dentist Spend on Content Creation?

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A small dental practice in San Diego is understandably focused on the nuts and bolts of their day-to-day business. Scheduling patients, sticking to the appointment times, staffing each shift, and handling the billing: these time-consuming tasks have to take center stage over content creation. However, content creation can be an important part of how a dental practice retains and attracts new clients, and you can halt your business growth if you’re not thinking ahead. We’ll examine how much time and money you should spend on it.

How Much Money Should You Spend?

The general rule is that you should be spending up to 10% of your annual gross revenue on your marketing. So if you’re spending $2,000 on general marketing per month, you may devote $400 of that to content creation. This can mean anything from posting pictures on social media to sending out emails to your patients or responding to review site complaints. It’s important to keep up both your digital and physical business presence if only to cement your name and reputation to the community.

How Much Time Should You Spend?

This is a much trickier question because most San Diego dental practices don’t have the need for a full-time content creator and even if they did, they probably don’t have the budget for it. Dental practice owners can certainly allocate different content creation tasks to staff members, whether that’s a dental tech who loves social media or an office manager who needs to promote the latest technology the office has just invested in, but if the staff is busy caring for other patients, it’s easy to see how content creation would be the first dropped ball.

Marketing for Dental Practices in San Diego, CA

If you’re looking for marketing professionals for dental practices in San Diego, CA, Digital Healthcare Professionals has the skills and the services to help you get where you need to be. Content creation is a long-term strategy to improve your business, one that relies on constant updates so your business doesn’t get left behind. It’s a proven way to keep people aware of your brand, specialties, and expertise. If you’re ready to take action on your content, contact us today.

4 Ways to Make Your Optometry Website Stand Apart from Competitors

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Your optometry practice’s website is an important part of your marketing strategy, but is it working to draw in patients? If it’s not, you could miss out on an important opportunity to bring in new people to your practice. It helps to work with an optometry marketing professional. It’s also helpful to follow the tips below.

1. Make your website interactive.

Interactive features on your website can be very convenient for patients, which can help win over clients interested in engaging with your office. There are many things you can do to make your website interactive. Some suggestions:

  • Create forms that your patients can fill out to request an appointment.
  • Set up a chat feature that will turn on after hours, so patients can reach your business even when no one is able to answer the phone.
  • Add a call feature that makes it easy for patients to call your office with the touch of a button.

2. Provide eye care and eye health tips.

Offer patients eye care tips that they can read on your office’s blog. This can help your patients find answers to their questions and also help them learn new ways to take care of their eyes. Update your blog regularly to show patients your website is being maintained.

Going for long stretches of time between blog posts can make it look like your website is not being maintained, and that can sometimes give patients the impression that your office has closed.

3. Use infographics and illustrations when appropriate.

Illustrations and infographics can be useful for providing patients with eye care information. These images can also make your website more interesting, which can keep people looking at your website for longer.

4. Incorporate photos of your glasses and eye care products.

Show patients what kind of eyewear they can access when they come to your optometry practice. Post pictures of the eyeglasses in your showroom.

Your optometry marketing professional can help you create a customizable optometry website that can stand out from the other optometry offices in your community. At Digital Healthcare Professionals, we’re happy to help you create a website that you love. Call today to get started.

3 Email Tactics to Encourage Customers to Schedule Their Annual Eye Exam

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An annual eye exam can be easy for customers to put off, especially when the pandemic knocked a lot of people off their regular routines. If you’re looking for ways to bring your clients back to the office, we’ll look at how email can help convince them to make an appointment.

1. Segment Your Audience

You’re likely already segmenting your audience to some extent (e.g., by location, etc.). However, consider how getting into the finer details can make a difference in the response rate of your email campaigns. For instance, if your adult clients have children who are also patients, consider an email campaign that encourages everyone to stop by for a visit. If your optometry marketing in San Diego, CA is specific to the individual, it’s likely to net you better returns.

2. Target Client’s Health

You don’t need to explain how important a person’s vision is, but you may need to talk about the most common threats to people’s eyesight. This is where you can combine segmenting with your email content. For instance, while cataracts may occur to people at any age, they’re unlikely to be a common problem for people in their 20s. In this case, an email to young students and professionals might focus more on what a computer or mobile phone screen does to the eyes over time. As you move forward into the upper age groups, you can talk more about the threat of glaucoma or macular degeneration. This is less to invoke fear and more to get people to think about prevention.

3. Find a Digital Marketing Professional

If you’re having a tough time keeping up with your email campaigns, it might be time to get some help. The right healthcare marketer in San Diego, CA can have a market effect not only on your revenue but also on the relationships that you have with your patients. The expert staff at Digital Healthcare Professionals can help you standardize your email schedule, so your clients can count on regular communication. They can also help you send messages that are likely to resonate with the reader. If you’re looking for better content, contact us today to learn more about our services.

Beyond the Chair – Building a Brand for Your Dental Practice

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If you are looking for marketing ideas for dental offices, you have come to the right place. The competitive landscape of dental care means you must distinguish your dental practice from others. And building a strong brand is the key to doing just that.

Beyond the Chair – Building a Brand for Your Dental Practice

Building a brand for your dental practice means you need something that will create a lasting impression. And it’s not just about teeth, it’s about the entire dental experience and the values that best represent your practice.

Here are some ideas to help you build a dental brand that resonates beyond the dental chair.

1. Define Your Identity

You can start by defining what sets your dental practice apart. What is your mission, what are your values, and the aspects that make you, your team, and your services unique? Are you a family-friendly practice? Do you use advanced technology? Are you a specialist in cosmetic dentistry? Build on the things that make your practice unique.

2. Develop a Consistent Visual Identity

Create a cohesive visual identity that reflects your practice’s personality. This includes a memorable logo, a consistent color palette, and a distinctive style that carries through your website, marketing materials, and even the interior design of your office. Consistency reinforces brand recognition and trust.

3. Tell Your Story

Share your journey and the stories of your team. Personal narratives create an emotional connection with your patients. And this is what helps foster trust and loyalty. Highlighting your commitment to patient care and community involvement can make your brand relatable and trustworthy as well.

4. Embrace Patient-Centered Communication

Craft your communication strategies with patients in mind. Use language that is easy to understand and resonates with your target audience. Establish a strong online presence through social media and a user-friendly website to engage with your patients beyond the clinical setting.

5. Educational Content

Position your practice as a source of valuable information by creating educational content. Blog posts, videos, infographics, and other popular types of content that address common dental concerns. Any type of content that promotes oral health helps contribute to your brand recognition and authority while keeping your audience engaged.

Are You Looking for a Reputable Digital Marketing Agency?

If you need assistance in crafting a compelling visual identity, developing engaging content, or navigating the ever-changing world of digital marketing, our team is here to help. Please Contact Digital Healthcare Professionals today for a custom quote.

Should You Open a Second Optometry Office?

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Opening a new optometry office in San Diego, CA, may be a lot of extra work, but it’s also the opportunity to stretch your skills and grow your staff. Whether your business is steady enough to warrant a new location or you’re growing so fast that you need more support to take care of your patients, we’ll look at what you need to consider before you’re ready.

Location, Location, Location

The question of location can be trickier than it first appears, especially if you’re bursting at the seams right now. If you open too close to where you are now, you can end up drawing business away from your original practice after seeing an initial uptick with both locations. If you open too far away, your primary demographic may find the second location too inconvenient to get to.

One of the best things to do is examine where your patients are now and which patients you’re liable to miss, thanks to where you are in town. San Diego is a patchwork of neighborhoods, and competition can be fierce, so it’s important to consider everything from patient loyalty to traffic patterns.

Challenges Ahead

You already have some idea of how zoning laws, employee hiring, rental agreements, and city planners can get in the way of opening an optometry office. The problem is that your experience can vary widely depending on where you open. If you were met with nothing but clear skies the first time around, it’s important not to make assumptions the second time around.

Digital Presence in San Diego

Your digital presence will have a lot to do with how your patients respond to the opening of a new location. You don’t just want to generate excitement by posting a few photos of the grand opening on your Facebook. If you want to really get the word out and maintain the reputation of both practices, you can find a digital marketing team in San Diego that specializes in the optometry industry.

At Digital Healthcare Professionals, we can help you nail down the strategies that will improve your reach. We’re here to help you achieve the revenue you’re looking for from both practices. (Maybe even a third when the time is right!)

LinkedIn for Dentists: How to Post for Fellow Professionals

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There are a variety of ways for dentists to reach out to current and prospective customers. The objective is to figure out how to best talk to people based on the platform — whether it’s print marketing or social media. The problem is that too many companies use the same strategy, forgetting that not only are the audiences different but the priorities are changing too. We’ll look at how to utilize LinkedIn so you can tailor your approach before creating content.

Play to Your Strengths

When you consider the content to post for professionals, consider what you can offer to them. It’s likely that if people are looking on LinkedIn for information about dental services, it will be based on the insurance plan they have. If your office is excellent at determining the benefits of different plans, don’t be afraid to boast about it. Social media marketing for dentists in San Diego, CA works best when you give your business a unique voice.

Talk about how your prices are lower than your competitors as a way to appeal to professionals who are looking to save money. Offer to take a look at their plans and explain how they relate to your services. Remind them that their dental plans can cover certain procedures as a way of driving in new business.

If you’ve noticed that you’re losing market share to a specific competing business, think about the unique selling points that will distinguish yourself from your competitors. Whether it’s the ease of filing a claim or more modern equipment, LinkedIn users are more likely to be looking for practical advantages as opposed to fun facts or photos that might be better suited to Facebook or Twitter.

Dental Marketing in San Diego

Dental marketing in San Diego, CA doesn’t have to be complicated, but it will take some time to put together. If you don’t have the bandwidth to go through strategies for your office on every social media platform, the staff at Digital Healthcare Professionals can help you keep it all straight. A professional browsing at work and a parent browsing on Instagram will have very different needs, so it helps to keep that in mind before you choose a content strategy and schedule.

What’s a Reasonable ROI for Your Marketing Dollars?

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Marketing is such a broad term that it’s easy to get confused by what exactly it is. From there, the assumptions only get more tangled. If you’re investing in marketing as a dentist in San Diego, CA, just how much should you be making? We’ll look at why there isn’t always a straightforward answer, and what you can do to help manage your expectations (and your budget).

The Standard Rule: 5 to 1

The most oft-quoted advice is to make around $5 for every $1 of marketing you spend. (If you’re making $10 for every $1, this is considered exceptional). Anything below $2 to $1 is likely losing you money. The standard might sound great for anyone trying to convince themselves what the cost vs. reward is of their spending, but it doesn’t tell the full story.

The Trick of Measuring Your ROI

If you’re thinking about dental marketing ROI in San Diego, CA, you first and foremost need to remember that marketing and sales are technically two different departments. They may be closely linked, but marketing is more about getting the word out there and cementing your brand. It’s not the same thing as crafting a sales pitch.

Because marketing is more about a broad strategy than it is about conversion rates (even if conversion is the ultimate goal), it may be more difficult to track your ROI. You can certainly ask people how they heard about you, but their answer may not always directly connect to your marketing. For instance, a client may tell you that they heard about you through a friend. What they left out is that the friend heard about you thanks to your Facebook contest campaign.

Dental Marketing in San Diego

When you’re working with the right marketer in San Diego, they can tell you more about how your dental practice is likely to perform in certain territories. They can tell you more about the expectations of various audiences, so you can speak to them on their level — whether that’s in an email or on a web page. At Digital Healthcare Professionals, we tackle a wide variety of services that can help you gain a prospective customer’s trust, so you can grow your client base.

Narrowing Down Your Needs: Marketing Goals in Optometry

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Despite all of the advice out there about marketing, it’s still common to come across businesses that have a hard time defining what they’re looking for. Part of this phenomenon stems from confusion about what your ROI should be from each marketing campaign (because ROI is often far less straightforward than it seems). The other part is often a failure to think through each key metric. If you’re interested in better marketing in San Diego, CA, we’ll give some tips for optometrists who are serious about hitting their marketing goals.

1. Consider All of Your Options

Optometrists have a very special skill set. When it comes to marketing, there needs to be plenty of consideration paid to how your talents can match the needs of different populations. For instance, if you want to make 10% more revenue this year, you have to define where that money is coming from:

  • Upgrades: Are you hoping to sell new services to your existing clientele?
  • New patients: Do you want to make more appointments with new patients?
  • Engagements: Can you make money by giving speeches?
  • Research: Would new research generate better partnerships or sponsorships?
  • Consulting: Can you use your talents to do part-time consulting for major organizations?

All of these are new initiatives, but the marketing goals of each one will vary considerably from one option to the next.

2. Consider Your Parameters

Parameters in marketing can frustrate even the best marketers, largely because they are subjective to each business. Let’s say that you run an SMS campaign for your patients where you send reminder texts before their appointments. This campaign results in higher customer satisfaction but seemingly no new referrals. If you declare this campaign a waste of time and money because there was no direct correlation to a boost in income, you can easily miss out on how the extra consideration for your patients resulted in better retention, easier upsells, and (eventually) new referrals.

3. Find the Right Partner

Optometry marketing in San Diego, CA demands time and energy that most offices simply don’t have to spare. If you’re looking for professionals who can dive straight into a project, determine what you need, and then get to work, contact Digital Healthcare Professionals for your best chance of success.

3 Types of Posts to Share on Your Optometry Practice’s Social Media Pages

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Most professionals recognize social media as the superior marketing tool for just about any business, including healthcare. While social media profiles are easy enough to set up for your optometry practice, the true challenge comes in creating regular content that will drive customer engagement. Many practices take the approach of creating sheerly advertorial posts, which can lead to being unfollowed and losing engagement potential. The most effective social media marketing strategy involves a healthy mix of content for your profiles and pages.

Informational Posts

Informational posts are just as they sound: they offer some level of information. The topics of these posts can vary, but some good examples include:

  • Information about your practice, such as services offered or how to schedule an appointment
  • Information about specific treatments available, such as LASIK or glaucoma management
  • Information about relative eye health issues, such as eye disease statistics and resources

Community Engagement Posts

Community engagement posts are strictly built to provoke a reaction from your target customer. These posts often pose a question, have share-worthy information, or even request a comment. For example, a post may:

  • Offer a brief overview of symptoms of rare eye conditions
  • Ask patients what triggers their eye condition symptoms
  • Provide the potential for something in return, such as a free t-shirt for sharing

These posts are more likely to provoke a response from your followers, which means they can help you gain a lot of traction when it comes to followers.

Advertising Posts

Advertising posts on social media do have their place, even though every post should not be an advertisement. And, the way you propose an ad on social media can make a difference in its efficacy. For example, you could advertise that you are offering savings on prescription eyeglasses for a limited time or even share positive reviews you’ve recently received from happy patients.

Need Help with Your Social Media Marketing Plan?

A well-built social media strategy is defined by good content. If you struggle to keep your pages and profiles updated as an optometry practice, getting help from digital marketing professionals can be what garners you more digital attention and in-office visits. Reach out to us at Digital Healthcare Professionals for more information.

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https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-health-care/

Social Media Image by pixabay

Is Your Modern Dental Website Missing These Important Features?

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When a potential patient pays a visit to your dental practice’s website, they will be there for different reasons. One, they will be looking for more information about your practice. Two, they will be visiting because an outbound link led them to your site. In either case, most modern-day internet users will be looking for specific links on your site.

Social Media Links

Social media has grown to be the go-to way for prospective customers to get to know a business they are considering visiting, including healthcare professionals. Many site visitors will look for social media links on your website specifically for that reason. Therefore, these quick links should be in a visible spot across your website pages.

Social Media Image by pixabay

Online Appointment Booking

Offering the ability to book an appointment online is a modern-day convenience for any dental patient. This can save them from placing a phone call when text and email communication may actually be the preference among some groups. Additionally, online appointment booking can reduce in-office call volume substantially, which helps your staff better manage patients in the waiting room or who may be calling for more pressing reasons.

Patient Forms Link

New patients like to be prepared for their visit before their first appointment. Plus, if you require forms from longstanding patients for other reasons beyond new patient history forms, you can simply direct customers to your website to input their information. Therefore, incorporating a forms link on your website is a feature that most patients will appreciate, and one that can simplify processes in the office.

Reviews from Other Patients

Reviews from other patients can be one of the most profound ways to garner positive traffic to your dental practice. Most modern patients will actively seek online reviews of a dental practice before they make an appointment. Making good reviews available on your website makes it simple for visitors to see what patients are saying.

Need Help with Your Dental Practice’s Website?

When built appropriately, your dental practice’s website can be a functional hub for information, attract visitors, and even simplify some of your everyday operations. If you suspect your dental practice website needs work, reach out to us at Digital Healthcare Professionals to schedule an appointment.