Anyone toying with the idea of setting up their own practice is usually faced with many questions and problems. Should you take over an existing practice or plan and implement a new practice from scratch? How do you get the right employees or excellent financing? Especially when starting a new practice, the topic of patient acquisition is essential in order to win exactly the right patients for your own practice right from the start, which you also want to have.
Around 7 out of 10 searches for a dentist now start online on Google. If you want to build up your patient base with your own desired patients, you should definitely integrate Google into the practice marketing mix. If you fully exploit the possibilities that Google provides us with, then it is possible to win targeted patients for the desired treatment focuses and to increase the fee revenue in the long term.
Why do patients use search engines like Google?
Dental treatments involve a strong information asymmetry for the majority of patients. As a layperson, you are completely at the mercy of the practitioner and have to trust their experience and honesty. Accordingly, it can be observed that the patient’s need for information also increases with increasing complexity and cost intensity of the treatment.
This means that patients are increasingly turning to Dr. Consult Google to find out about the dental problems and solutions on the one hand and to find the perfect dentist on the other. The comprehensive online research process consequently opens up the opportunity for dentists to generate important initial points of contact with potential patients very early on and to be perceived as a trustworthy contact person when they appear on Google.
Use Google correctly as an advertiser: Pay to Play
In the past, it was enough to have a good and optimized website to achieve a good positioning in the organic (free) Google search and thereby direct potential patients to your own practice website. Since Google cannot generate any income with the organic (free) search results, it can be observed that Google is playing out paid advertising more and more. This means that you have to scroll through the first 4-5 (paid) search results in a Google search, for example, before you get to the organic (free) search results.
The same applies to other offers from Google, such as YouTube, where you first have to watch advertising videos before you can access the free content. Google therefore limits the free range on its own channels in order to sell the paid range. For dentists, this implies that Google’s paid advertising offers should be used to get the most out of their own practice marketing.
3 tips for the practice marketing of practice founders
Collect positive Google reviews quickly
Online reviews are now fundamentally important, as patients now trust reputable online reviews more than personal recommendations. The more positive reviews you have on Google, the more likely potential patients are to choose your practice. In addition, good Google ratings have a positive effect on the local Google ranking on Google Maps, making you more visible here. With helpful tools like practice review it is possible as a practice founder to quickly collect many good Google ratings. In addition, such a tool helps to catch bad reviews in order to avoid expensive deletion.
Do a social media campaign
With a two-month paid campaign on social media, you can quickly and easily let people in your area know that you have opened a new practice and are open to new patients. Thanks to the possibilities of specifically controlling the advertising campaigns on social media such as Facebook and Instagram, you minimize possible wastage and use your start-up budget for marketing very efficiently.
Use the full power of Google
With so-called Google Performance Max campaigns, you have the opportunity to quickly and efficiently win new patients for your practice. In addition to the ads in the Google search, the channels YouTube or Google Display can be used, for example, so that you not only reach patients who are actively searching on Google, but also patients who generally fall into your target group or, for example, according to your keywords have searched and then are on YouTube or other websites. With a perfectly set-up Google Performance Max campaign, you build up a very effective and efficient channel for acquiring new patients right from the start, with which you can optimally design your practice marketing.
Win the right patients right from the start with specialized experts
So that you back the right horse when setting up a practice and save yourself expensive tuition, you should have the practice marketing set up by experts. Growth partner for dental practices such as rankingdocs work with you to build effective and efficient practice marketing from the ground up, which will offer you a full practice with the desired patients in the long term.