Unique businesses face unique marketing challenges. 

Empower’s experience helping small businesses grow with impactful, tailored digital marketing solutions tells us this is certainly true for a great many dental practitioners who struggle to distinguish themselves online in a crowded market. 

With so many dentists' offices vying for attention on Google and beyond, it can be challenging to attract new patients. 

I’d like to explore the specific challenges faced by dental practices and offer solutions to help you define your brand and stand out from the competition. 

Being Different Means Being Yourself

The dental industry is incredibly competitive, and many practices struggle to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Every ad for dentists has a picture of someone smiling. That’s nice, but it’s not nearly enough to say, “This is who we are.”

One solution to this challenge is to identify what makes your practice unique and highlight it in your marketing efforts. 

For example, if your practice specializes in a particular type of dentistry or has a unique approach to patient care, make sure to emphasize these aspects of your practice in your marketing messaging.

First Impressions: More Than a Great Smile

Your website is often the first impression that potential patients will have of your practice. It's essential to ensure that your website is well-designed, user-friendly, and provides all the information that patients need. 

Keeping a great website up to date is an extremely common issue for smaller medical practitioners, dentists among them. 

Empower is a simpler, more dedicated solutions provider than your local “IT freelancer.” We’ll  help you manage your website and ensure that it is always up to date with the latest information about your practice.

SEO: Give Your Google Visibility Some Real Teeth

Search engine optimization (SEO) is critical to improving your online visibility and attracting new patients to your practice. 

However, SEO can be complex and challenging to implement effectively. Empower specializes in SEO for dentists' offices and dental practitioners. We can help you optimize your website and content for search engines with the right keywords and other techniques to ensure that you rank higher in search results.

Managing Your Online Reputation: Building Trust with Patients

Online reviews play a critical role in a practice's success. 

Think about it: how many people love going to the dentist? But if clients love their dentist, if not the time they spend having a procedure, that word of mouth (pun absolutely intended) goes a long way. 

Recommending a dentist is about trust. No one is going to tell a friend, family member or stranger to go see a bad dentist. Positive reviews can help attract new patients, while negative reviews can damage your reputation and deter potential patients. 

To build a positive online reputation, it's essential to actively solicit patient feedback and respond to both positive and negative reviews in a professional and timely manner. 

By monitoring your online reputation and taking steps to address any negative feedback, Empower can help you build trust with potential patients and establish your practice as reputable and reliable. And to improve matters, great online reviews can lead to better search engine rankings. 

Empower: A Clean, Fresh Start 

By focusing on branding, investing in a great website, using SEO effectively, and building an online reputation, Empower can help a dental practice build its foundation for strong, ongoing, regularly managed marketing success that attracts new patients, helps retain existing ones, and positions your practice as trusted, credible provider. 

And we’ll make you smile while we do it! 

Come back soon for a second installment, where we’ll take a closer look at what SEO practices work best for dental practices and how social media advertising can reach a target audience effectively.