What Is UGC for Dentists?

User-generated content (UGC) has become a major term in marketing. As influencer content becomes less impactful and branded content gets pushed to the bottom of the page, people rely more and more on regular consumers to relay their honest experiences about a business. If you’re asking how a dentist practice could utilize UGC, we’ll look at what you should know.

What Is UGC?

UGC refers to content that actual users make, typically to post on their social media platforms in San Diego, CA. The UGC you’re likely most familiar with for dentists is your reviews. From Yelp to Google, real customers talk about everything from your prices to your admin staff to your bedside manner.

How Can You Harness UGC?

The best way to harness UGC is to ensure that everyone has a good experience when they’re your client. If there’s an issue, you should act quick to fix it. Even if the customer isn’t happy, you can publicly post about the steps you took to correct the situation. This will mean plenty to prospective and current customers alike.

Can You Solicit UGC?

Yes! This is the best part. You can ask your customers to leave you a Yelp review or hashtag your practice. The catch is that you can’t ask the customer to make positive UGC about your practice, meaning they can post negative content or even lie about your business.

You can also consider an outreach campaign where you ask local influencers with relatively small follower counts to visit your practice for a small discount or a box of goodies (e.g., toothpaste, whitening strips, etc.). For example, if you’re a family practice, you might ask a hip mom to create a quick social media post about how their child was treated during their appointments.

How to Get Better UGC in San Diego, CA

If you run a dental practice in San Diego, CA, Digital Healthcare Professionals can help you find marketing tactics that are as cost-effective as they are practical. We’re here to help you fill in the blanks so you can build your customer base, attract new audience demographics, and maintain your reputation in a competitive city.

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3 Super Effective Ways to Market Your Optometry Practice

You have your optometry practice up and running. Now what? Marketing! That’s what. It’s not a “you build it, and they will come” proposition. In most cases, they won’t because there’s too much competition out there for that. So what can you do to get patients into your seats?

3 Super Effective Ways to Market Your Optometry Practice

You probably have some sort of marketing plan in place. But you can’t stop there. Marketing is an ongoing process. Here are some unique ideas to add to your current marketing campaigns.

1. Video

Video marketing is phenomenal. It can be used in so many ways.

  • Educational Videos

These can be used to educate your current patients. They can also be used to build your brand and brand authority by putting out videos educating the public. These branded videos then link back to your practice. And this is how they help you gain new patients.

  • Google Business Profile, Website, and Blog

Videos can also be used on your Google Business Profile, website, and blog. Talk about repurposing!

  • YouTube and Social Media Pages

You can start a YouTube Channel and share your videos there, as well as all your other social media pages. Again, repurposing!

The possibilities are pretty much endless.

Your video topics could include “what is” topics of interest, anything vision-related, trending topics, new optometry tools and techniques, etc.

2. Pay-Per-Click PPC

OK, so Google, Facebook, and other PPC ads aren’t all that unique marketing ideas. But they are oh-so effective. And they provide you with quick, immediate results. So make sure you are using this option. And if you don’t have the time or don’t know how it’s worth the money to pay a professional to do it for you.

3. Forum Participation

This is something most people don’t do. However, participating in forums is a great way to build trust, and that will help you gain new patients. It will also help you build your practice’s reputation and authority in the industry.

This is how it works. You can find forums like Reddit and any other forum that your patients and potential patients frequent. You join the group and answer questions, offer advice, and make recommendations based on the topic, mentioning that you are an optometrist.

Some forums will allow you to link back to your website, and some won’t. But people will appreciate you helping them. So, even if they don’t allow linking, people will still ask to contact you directly because you have shown that you are knowledgeable. And because you helped them, they trust you. Then you can give them your details and take it from there.

What’s Next?

Don’t let a good marketing opportunity go to waste. If you don’t have time or would like a professional to do it for you, please Contact Digital Healthcare Professionals today.

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When Is It Time to Mix Up Your Social Media Strategy?

For dentists in San Diego, social media may seem like little more than a necessary evil. You might have a basic business page listing your basic services, hours, and addresses, which can help people clarify where you are and what you do. However, social media can also be a great way to not only help you land more clients but also help you retain those you have now. We’ll look at when it’s time to switch things up and why it matters.

You’re Seeing More Competition

San Diego is a big city, so you likely already know what it means to compete in your neighborhood. However, if you’re losing more clients to another practice or you’re just seeing more dentists set up in your area, it may be time to rethink your approach to social media. If you focus on the quality of your posts, you’re more likely to pop up in search engines. You can build up a larger following if you focus on recurring themes, such as helpful advice for oral health or family-friendly photos.

You Want a Different Clientele

As neighborhoods change, so too will client demands. Large families will have very different priorities than elderly people. Young professionals may care far more about what insurance you take than about the latest technology you just purchased. No matter what clientele you’re going after, they’ll likely peruse your social media pages to get a sense of what they’re signing up for. Whether they want to be assured that you’re as gentle as you are competent or they’re more interested in your pediatric specialties, gearing your content toward your desired demographic can go a long way.

Social Media Marketing for Dentists in San Diego

At Digital Healthcare Professionals, our goal is to help dentists and their staff find the best marketing strategies. Moreover, we don’t allow our clients to get stuck in a rut as the world changes around them. If you’re looking for social media marketers in San Diego who cater to small practices, contact us to learn how we take the burden off you so you can focus on revenue.

Covering Services: Service Elements to Include on Your Optometry Website

In today’s digital age, your optometry website is the cornerstone of your online presence and a vital pathway for connecting with patients. Therefore, incorporating certain details about your practice’s services into your website design and content is essential to effectively communicating your value proposition and attracting and engaging prospective patients.

Vision Correction Solutions

By providing comprehensive information about vision correction options such as glasses, contact lenses, and refractive surgery, you can educate patients about their treatment choices and encourage them to schedule appointments for personalized consultations. Additionally, showcasing your practice’s commitment to providing cutting-edge optical solutions with the best reputation for quality reinforces your credibility and trustworthiness among potential patients.

Specialized Eye Care Services

By highlighting specialized services, you can attract patients seeking specific treatments or conditions, establish your practice as a trusted industry authority, and differentiate yourself from competitors. Many prospective patients will land on an optometry website when looking for information about specific services or conditions. Therefore, these service discussions on your website can place you in a position to give advice and lead patients to your practice.

Examples of specialized eye care services to include on your website may include:

  • Pediatric eye care
  • Low vision rehabilitation
  • Vision therapy
  • Orthokeratology (Ortho-K)
  • Dry eye treatment
  • Specialty contact lens fittings
  • Diabetic eye care
  • Glaucoma management
  • Macular degeneration evaluation and treatment

Technology and Equipment

Highlighting the technology and equipment used in your optometry practice showcases your commitment to providing advanced and high-quality care to patients. By featuring state-of-the-art equipment and cutting-edge technology on your website, you instill confidence in prospective patients and demonstrate your practice’s ability to deliver accurate diagnoses, effective treatments, and exceptional outcomes. This emphasis on technology also positions your practice as innovative and forward-thinking, which may set you apart from competitors.

Looking for Help with Your Custom Optometry Website?

As potential patients increasingly turn to the internet to research healthcare providers and services, your optometry website becomes the primary platform for showcasing your practice and the services you offer. If you are having difficulties with integrating all the right elements, Digital Healthcare Professionals can help. Reach out for a custom quote to get started.

3 Ways to Build Dental Practice Engagement with Social Media

In the modern era of technology, building engagement comes down to being approachable and connected to the patients you serve online. Social media can be an exceptional tool for this purpose, but how do you build dental practice engagement with a basic social media profile? Check out a few ideas to keep both patients and prospects connected and interacting with your brand as a dental practice through social posts.

Highlight Your Dental Practice Team

Familiar faces mean a great deal when you are in a new place or even in an uncomfortable situation that provokes anxiety. Therefore, introducing your staff members on social media can be a meaningful way to build familiarity between your practice and prospective or current patients.

To give faces to your brand, highlight certain staff members on your social media pages, and be sure to share their pictures. If you want to take things a bit further, consider posting fun videos featuring the employees or doing brief Q&A sessions that can be shared with your audience.

Show Off Your Dentistry Skills

What sets your practice apart from all other dentists in the area? Do you provide specialized services or have access to technology not available at all practices? Make sure these selling points and skill sets are spotlighted on your social media pages. A few examples of ways to portray your dentistry skills include:

  • Offering before and after photos of patients willing to share their results
  • Providing information about how a new technology makes treatment better for patients
  • Explaining how your primary treatment providers gained the specific skill sets they have

Make Your Dental Brand Approachable

To make your dental practice more approachable on social media, focus on creating engaging and informative content that resonates with your audience. Share helpful dental tips, behind-the-scenes glimpses of your practice, and patient testimonials to humanize your brand. Respond promptly to messages and comments, and encourage interaction through polls and contests. By showcasing your expertise while fostering a friendly and welcoming online community, you can establish trust and build lasting relationships with current and prospective patients.

Struggling with Social Media? Trust Digital Marketers with Experience

If you need help with your digital marketing plans, bring in a team of experts to guide you. Contact Digital Healthcare Professionals to discuss your needs and receive a custom quote.

4 Essential Pages on Your Dental Practice Website  

As you contemplate your dental practice marketing needs, your website is one of the most important areas to focus on. Creating a professional-looking, up-to-date, and user-friendly website is essential to making a great first impression for prospective clients. The structure of your website should include easy navigation and pages that will meet all of your site visitors’ immediate needs. Remember that they’ll be looking for either information or dental services, so you must provide both needs. Here are the four essential pages on your dental practice website.

1. Home Page

The very first impression that your site visitors get is through your home page. Every website needs a home page, which is where visitors first land when trying to learn more about you. The home page should do several things:

  • provide navigation links to other pages
  • tell what kind of business you are
  • offer a visually appealing experience

2. About Us Page

The About Us page works to build trust and connection. This is where you get to show off your expertise without coming off as being boastful since your prospective clients want to know all about your education, background, area of expertise, and even a little bit about your personal life, such as your hobbies or pastimes.

3. Services Page

The services page is where you get to summarize all the various dental services you provide. This page can link out to detailed service pages, where you go into depth about what a particular service entails. This is a page where you can showcase your expertise and highlight where you differ from your competition. For instance, if you offer high-tech dental X-rays that are more comfortable for the patient or if you offer extras like Botox or treatment for sleep apnea, this is a good place to discuss that.

4. Contact Us Page

Ideally, you’ll offer your site visitors multiple ways to contact you. The contact page should include detailed instructions on how to book an appointment. Maybe you’d like clients to be able to book online, or you might like to provide a phone number for people to call and book over the phone.

No matter where you are in the U.S., you can rely on Digital Healthcare Professionals to provide your dental practice marketing needs. Contact us to get started today!

Storytelling and Optometry: How to Narrate Your Brand

Storytelling has been a huge part of advertising since its inception. Companies are known to embellish how they came to invent their products or offer their services, creating a mystique around the brand to keep customers intrigued. The best stories invite people into the narrative, giving them a chance to take part in the journey and creating a loyal customer base for the organization. We’ll look at how an optometry office can harness these basic principles to create more dimension for the brand.

Optometrists and Storytelling

An optometrist deals with practical problems every day. They verify prescriptions, test for hereditary diseases, and diagnose vision disorders. What can get lost during all the problem-solving are the stories behind the people. If you’re looking for stronger marketing at your optometry practice in San Diego, you need to consider how these stories can be a hook for your customers and potential customers.

Start with What You Know

At Digital Healthcare Professionals, our marketing professionals in San Diego, CA, recommend starting with the basics. For instance, maybe you have a devoted receptionist who is as friendly as she is efficient. You can feature her story either on the website, in an email, or via social media. Talking about how they came to work at the practice and what they love most about the job can inspire people to make an appointment with you. Or you could feature a weekly patient success story that highlights what your practice does best. For instance, you can use an appointment with a nervous child to show just how well the office can handle patients of all ages. Or you can talk about how you caught a patient’s condition in the earliest stage.

Marketing for Optometrists in San Diego, CA

Storytelling isn’t just for luxury or trendy brands, even if these brands usually have the most money to spend on advertising. If you’re looking for a storytelling strategy that fits into the larger ethos of your organization, contact Digital Healthcare Professionals to learn more about how to integrate your tales into your current marketing strategy. We can help you streamline your messaging to customers so you’re able to break through the noise and distractions.

How Much Should a Dentist Spend on Content Creation?

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.

8 Reasons Why You Need Regular Blog Posts

If you have an optometrist’s office, it’s more essential than ever that you make regular blog posts. Blog posts offer much more than you might think on the surface. The more frequently you post, the more positive results you can expect. Here are eight reasons why your optometrist office needs regular blog posts from your digital marketing agency.

1. Foster Community Engagement

Regular blog posts invite interaction from your audience, sparking discussions that enhance community engagement. These interactions often translate into a loyal customer base, essential for the growth and sustainability of your brand.

2. Boost SEO Ranking

Search engines value fresh content. Consistently updating your blog with high-quality posts increases the likelihood of your website ranking higher in search engine results. This improves visibility, leading to more organic traffic and potential customers.

3. Establish Authority

Regularly sharing your knowledge and expertise in the field of optometry through blog posts helps to establish your office as an authority to be trusted. This credibility typically influences customer decisions, strengthening your company’s reputation.

4. Increase Website Traffic

Every new blog post is an opportunity for someone to find your website. By using strategic keywords and offering valuable information, you attract more visitors to your site, enhancing your online presence.

5. Promote Your Services

Blog posts can subtly promote your optometry services. By providing useful information related to what you offer, you can guide your audience toward making a purchase without having it come across like a direct sales pitch.

6. Connect with Customers

Regular blog posts allow you to connect with your customers on a personal level. By sharing stories, ideas, and experiences, you can foster a sense of community, cultivating stronger customer relationships.

7. Stay Relevant

The fast-paced digital world demands that businesses like yours stay on top of trends. Regular blogging enables you to share timely and relevant content, keeping your optometry service in the forefront of customers’ minds.

8. Encourage Sharing

When you create compelling content, readers are likely to share it on their social media platforms, amplifying your reach and potentially attracting new customers.

Regular blog posts are proven to be an effective strategy to boost your optometry office’s profile, increase the number of customers and position you as an authority in the optometric field. To learn more or for blog post services that will get your optometry office noticed, contact us today.

 

3 Things Optometrists Should Know About Social Media Reviews

Busy optometrists in San Diego, CA, may have any number of things on their to-do list, and this is especially true for offices with just a few members of the staff. So it’s understandable if social media reviews slip your mind, or even if you had never really considered them in the first place. However, before you dismiss the comments from people, we’ll look at why it pays to pay attention.

1. Social Media Reviews Matter

No matter what your customers are saying about you, other people will find them. From Yelp to Facebook, people are going to use these reviews to decide whether to make an appointment. (Even if optometrists aren’t taking in new patients, they still need to be concerned with keeping the patients they have.) The best part is that positive reviews on social media can also be used to help boost the credibility of other assets, such as your website or print materials.

2. A Little Can Go a Long Way

Your patients aren’t necessarily expecting perfection from an optometrist. No matter how professional or experienced a doctor is, they and their staff are still liable to make mistakes. The problem isn’t necessarily making mistakes, it’s failing to react to them appropriately. Negative reviews can have a major impact on your profit margins.

If the staff is constantly assuming there’s nothing they can do, they can start thinking that even a genuine apology will do little to change the situation. This is a mistake. Even if the angry patient doesn’t respond to the gestures, you can honestly tell the story on social media. This way, other patients can see that you’re making an effort.

3. You Can Find Marketing Experts for Optometrists in San Diego

If you don’t have time to make appointments, let alone answer social media reviews, you should know that there are marketing services for optometrists in San Diego, CA. At Digital Healthcare Professionals, our staff specializes in helping optometrists connect with their patients online so they have a better chance of improving their revenue in the office. If you’re interested in having an expert monitor your social media presence, including harnessing the power of positive reviews, contact us today for more information.