A dental team found a previously undiscovered symptom that could help detect asymptomatic COVID-19 virus cases: oral lesions. Dentists at The Baltimore Center of Advanced Dentistry in Lutherville noted gum bleeding and multiple oral lesions in the mouths of two teen patients who normally display “exquisite oral hygiene.” Concerned by this development, they called in Dr. Gary Bauman, who requested permission to perform polymerase chain reaction (PCR) COVID-19 tests.

Both patients, and several family members, tested positive for COVID-19, but displayed no other symptoms. “The lesions were the only sign of COVID-19,” Bauman said. Samples from the lesions were then sent to the lab, which confirmed that they weren’t caused by herpes or other known viruses. This may be the first case of diagnosing an asymptomatic case of COVID-19 from lesions in the mouth, and Dr. Bauman has submitted their findings for further study.

Dr. Bauman wants dentists everywhere to be aware of these potential symptoms. “We have asymptomatic cases out there,” Bauman added. “I don’t want dentists to let their guards down. Some people are getting vaccinated, but those aren’t the ones we need to worry about. The ones who don’t know they have it or aren’t telling you, those are the ones we should be looking for to prevent the spread.”

If you notice lesions in the mouths of otherwise healthy patients, it may be a sign of an asymptomatic carrier. Keeping a record of a similar finding could help further research and understand asymptomatic spread.

ProSites is proud of all the work dentists have done and are doing to prevent community spread. We are particularly proud of our customer, Dr. Bauman, for this ground-breaking discovery!

To learn more, visit: https://www.drbicuspid.com/index.aspx?sec=ser&sub=def&pag=dis&ItemID=327921 

Finding ways to delight your patients is essential for the modern dental practice, as it allows you to fill your appointment book, increase referrals, and build a stellar reputation in your community. Though excellent customer service is still the first step, technology gives you the opportunity to go above and beyond for your patients. Here are ways to increase patient satisfaction using the latest dental office technology.  

Provide Online Appointment Booking 

One of the biggest benefits you can provide for your patients is the ability to book appointments right from your website. In today’s climate, online appointment booking helps patients stay current on their dental work. Patients will appreciate the ability to see your schedule and book right from their phones, tablets, or computers. Your staff will also appreciate the break from making appointment reminder calls, allowing them to spend more time running your office.  

Offer Appointment Reminders by Text 

Your patients will have different preferences about how to receive appointment reminders, but the vast majority prefer the simplicity and convenience of a text message. According to a recent Hanover Research Study, over 80% of dental patients prefer to receive their upcoming appointment reminders via text message. Text messages also have an average response time of 90 seconds, so you’ll save time for your staff while still confirming each upcoming appointment. Offering appointment reminders by text both increases patient satisfaction and streamlines how your office is run.  

Stay in Communication Between Appointments 

In addition to delivering excellent customer service during each appointment, you can increase patient satisfaction by staying in contact between their visits. Creating helpful and informational Facebook Posts keeps you top-of-mind with your patients and increases referrals. In addition, you can send out holiday greetings to show your patients that you care. Both Facebook posts and holiday messaging can be included in your PracticeMojo plan, so be sure to take advantage of these essential features! 

Simplify Dental Care for Families 

Families are an essential part of running your practice, and busy parents are extra appreciative of the latest dental technology. With PracticeMojo, you can send the entire family reminders in the same text, making it simple for parents to confirm appointments for all their children in one go. With Online Billing through ProSites, parents can also pay for their entire family’s services online, and they can use your Online Forms to quickly confirm changes for individual family members without having to re-enter all their information. Parents are more likely to recommend your services when you simplify their busy schedules, so offer these dental technologies to increase referrals!  

While you should still provide excellent customer service, patient satisfaction also relies on their experiences before and after each appointment. Providing appointment reminders, consistent communication, and features like online appointment booking helps to remind patients why they come back to your dental practice and encourages them to recommend you to their friends and family.  

As you expand your client list, it’s essential to streamline your patient communications to save your staff time while increasing patient satisfaction. PracticeMojo, a ProSites brand, automates your patient communication to reduce no-shows and help you spend more time focusing on what matters most: your patients.

Save Your Staff Time with Automated Appointment Reminders

As your practice grows its patient roster, it’s essential to automate your appointment reminders without sacrificing quality or customization. PracticeMojo provides customizable, automated campaigns that you can tailor to your practice’s unique needs. From upcoming appointment reminders to recall campaigns, holiday messaging to benefits reminders, PracticeMojo provides ready-to-launch campaigns…and allows you to make any adjustments you need!

Customization is extremely important on the patient’s side as well, because all of your patients have different preferences. PracticeMojo gives you the flexibility utilize a mix of text messages, phone calls, voicemails, emails, and even postcards depending on what each patient prefers.

Limit Contact Between Patients and Staff with Online Forms

COVID-19 has made it more important than ever to limit touchpoints between patients and staff, so use technology to limit the time spent in your waiting room. Having patients complete their onboarding forms online prevents passing paper between multiple people, limiting contact during this complicated time. PracticeMojo provides you with a HIPAA-compliant portal with customizable online health forms that patients can complete on their mobile phone, tablets, or computers. These forms can be accessed directly from your practice’s website and include your branding and logo to create a seamless experience.

Support Your Social Media Presence with Facebook Pro

For most busy practices, it can be difficult to find the time to run your practice’s Facebook page. PracticeMojo provides you with two post ideas every week so your staff can easily copy and paste onto your page. These topical posts are designed to engage your followers and encourage new appointments, and they include quick tips, how-to’s, and relevant dental care updates. While your staff may not have time to write bi-weekly posts, copying and pasting PracticeMojo’s content will help your Facebook page stay active with minimal effort.

Get Support from Marketing Experts

Since ProSites and PracticeMojo have been supporting dental practices for decades, we understand that your business is unique and deserves personalized support. That’s why our PracticeMojo Managed Plan includes two free marketing consultations with our experts. We’ll help you explore what’s working well, recommendations for improvement, additional marketing channels that your practice can utilize, and the latest marketing trends!

Customized Campaigns

Though your PracticeMojo dashboard already features predesigned marketing campaigns including benefit reminders, recall programs, holiday greetings, and more, your practice probably has additional ideas for campaigns you’d like to run throughout the year. That’s why the Managed Plan includes six additional custom campaigns! Just tell our team what ideas you have, and we’ll write the copy, create images, and plan out the timing and channels, all according to your practice’s unique needs!

Maximize Your Online Presence

First impressions used to take place when a patient drove past your office or looked you up in the phone book, but now almost all of them take place online. In the modern world, building a stellar online reputation is essential to attracting new patients and giving them the confidence to book that first appointment.

Our Dental Reviews Pro feature gives you control over your online reviews, allowing you to highlight glowing reviews from your patients. It also automatically encourages patients to leave reviews for your practice, and you can specifically choose which review websites you want to focus on, whether it’s Yelp, Google My Business or Angie’s List.

Conclusion

As you grow your practice, technology can help you streamline patient communications from start to finish. From the moment patients read your first online review to the minute their appointment begins, PracticeMojo can help you automate every touchpoint with your patients. To learn more about how our comprehensive Managed Plan can support your practice, reach out to us today!

If you’re looking to expand your practice, take the time to explore all your different marketing options. Services like SEO and social media provide slow but steady growth, whereas pay-per-click advertising can aggressively grow your patient base, but with an increased cost. This breakdown helps you review your dental office marketing options and make an informed decision! 

The Benefits of Dental Office Marketing 

When your practice is just starting out, it can be tempting to just let new patients find you organically. But steadily growing your patient base is essential for the ongoing health of your practice, especially as patients may move away, change insurance providers, or leave your practice for other reasons. Having a strategic and consistent plan for your dental office marketing keeps your practice busy, increases revenue, and helps expand the impact you can have in your community. So whether you just founded your practice, or have been in business for years, marketing is worth the investment! 

Use Patient Reviews to Build Your Reputation 

When you look for a new service, where do you start? Like everyone else, you probably look at review websites like Yelp, Google My Business, and Angie’s List to make sure you’re hiring the right provider. To maximize the impact of your reviews, ask your patients to leave positive reviews on these sites. If you work with ProSites, we help you send automated review requests after annual appointments, but you can also do this manually by writing your own emails. 

When choosing which review websites to focus your efforts on, we recommend evaluating your competition. If they have the most reviews on Yelp, send your patients there to submit reviews for your practice. Once you have a comfortable amount of reviews on the first site, you can direct patients to another platform. By switching between all three reviews platforms, potential patients can read about your great customer service wherever they look! 

Master Your Social Media Pages 

Social media is an essential tool for attracting leads and engaging with your current patients. Facebook allows you to continually interact with your community, share dental care tips, and build your brand awareness. To maximize the impact of your dental office marketing, you should launch a few posts every week. Rather than writing your posts one at a time, compose one month’s worth of posts and have your office staff copy and paste the content onto your Facebook page on scheduled days. If your staff is too busy, you can also hire a service like ProSites to create content from scratch and post it for your team. 

Use Search Engine Optimization to Gain Local Traffic 

You’ve likely heard the term “Search Engine Optimization,” and its abbreviation “SEO,” as it’s an essential part of your dental office marketing. Since patients won’t drive too far to visit their dentist, local SEO should be your central focus to find patients near you. For each service you offer, like family dentistry, teeth cleaning, root canals, you’ll want to create custom content that is focused around your location. This will help potential patients find you when they search for the services they need most! 

It takes time and dedication to create an ongoing SEO strategy, especially since Google constantly re-evaluates pages and prioritizes different factors. Since dental offices are busy supporting patients, SEO may be the best option to outsource. Dental office marketing services like ProSites will create pages that focus on the best keywords for your practice and include all the technical minutia that will help you to rank. 

Conclusion 

While dental office marketing requires a lot of time and effort, it helps bring in a steady stream of new patients that will boost your practice’s revenue. If you decide to focus on your patients and outsource your help to a team of marketing experts, reach out to ProSites for a consultation! We have a team of experts that can help you develop a strategy and execute a tailored marketing plan! 

A comprehensive dental marketing strategy can help you quickly fill your appointment book, so it’s important to sit down and evaluate your different options. By making sure you have a strong foundation in place, testing new ideas, and delighting your existing patients, you can put marketing to work for your practice!

Build Out Your Practice’s Website

When it comes to attracting new patients, the only thing that’s more important than your physical dental office is your online presence. While patients might drive by your location and decide to book an appointment, having a well-developed website expands your opportunities and allows you to reach patients all around your city.

In the modern age, just having a website isn’t enough. It has to present a professional image and provide a user-friendly interface so potential patients will feel confident in your services. Take the time to build a website that is mobile-responsive, modern, and contains helpful information for patients and prospects alike.

Since your website acts as the centerpiece of your dental marketing strategy, this is the one thing you may want to leave to the experts. ProSites can design your website, provide excellent dental care content, and drive users to convert using our 20 years of dental marketing experience!

Encourage Reviews

The second step of your dental marketing strategy is to provide what’s called “social proof.” When patients are looking for a new dentist, they’ll research local practices on sites like Google My Business, Yelp, and Angie’s List. Take a look at what review services your competition is using, and then encourage your existing patients to submit reviews there after each appointment. If you use an automated communications service like ProSites’ PracticeMojo, you can automate your review emails and easily select the website you’d like to focus on. To help give a rounded view of your practice, you may want to switch reviews services every quarter. For example, you can use a link to Yelp from January-March, then switch to Google My Business from April-June, then Angie’s List from July-September, and then back to Yelp for the rest of the year.

As you gather a huge list of reviews, you’ll also want to highlight the best ones on your website! This provides social proof so new patients feel confident booking their first appointment with you.

Establish a Referral Program

Like reviews, a referral program taps into the market you’ve already developed: your devoted patients. When a friend or family member mentions their search for a new dentist, you want your patients to eagerly recommend your practice. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is to offer some sort of referral program by providing a discount, gift card, or other incentive for every new patient referred to your practice. In addition to mentioning this program to your patients, you can include it on your business cards, website, and emails to keep the program top-of-mind after every appointment!

Consider Advertising Locally

If you’re looking to aggressively grow your practice, your dental marketing strategy should include some paid advertising. For dental practices, it’s essential to perfect your targeting so you’re only reaching local audiences, as patients likely won’t drive far for care.

There are a number of avenues for paid dental advertising, but the two most popular are Facebook Advertisements and Pay-Per-Click. Both allow you to customize your messaging, audience targeting, and focus on your city. When deciding which dental marketing strategy is best for your practice, look at your budget and competition. What are your competitors doing to bring in new leads? What can your practice do better? If you’d like personalized guidance on where to start, reach out to ProSites today!

Automate Your Cosmetic Leads

Patients who need a series of treatments can quickly fill your appointment book, so cosmetic leads are an excellent demographic to target in your dental marketing strategy. However, patients who need extensive cosmetic work can be understandably nervous to get started. An easy way to start the conversation with potential patients is to offer a virtual consultation right from your website. Patients will be able to select between emergency and cosmetic consultations, then submit a series of photos and comments on their problem. You’ll be able to evaluate their case, come up with a treatment plan, and respond right from your dashboard. This feature can be implemented directly on your ProSites website, and you can direct leads to your consultation page to streamline conversion.

Delight Existing Patients

While bringing in new leads should be a priority, delighting your existing patients needs to remain your primary goal. It takes less effort to retain an existing patient than attract a new one, so keeping a loyal patient base is essential to the overall health of your practice. In addition to excellent customer service, high-tech features will help you remind patients why they choose you over the competition. Consider implementing online forms so patients don’t have to complete paperwork before each appointment, as well as automating your appointment reminders so patients stay organized. Overall, your goal is to simplify each step for your patients and help them prioritize their oral health!

Conclusion

The digital age provides a myriad of tools to assist with your dental marketing strategy, so take the time to evaluate what will benefit your practice the most. If you need a marketing expert to review your options—and take a look at your competition—reach out to ProSites today!

You’ll need to take time to evaluate the best strategy if you’re looking to expand your dental practice. Services like SEO and social media provide slow but steady growth, whereas pay-per-click advertising can aggressively grow your patient base, but with an increased cost. Our complete guide helps you make an informed decision on the best channels for marketing for dental offices.

Perfect Your Dental Website

Your website acts as the hub of your marketing efforts, giving you a home base that you can direct all traffic back to. It’s essential to give off a professional and modern impression, as potential patients will make a snap decision about your practice based on what they see. Here are some of the essential website design components that will help your practice convert visitors:

• Automatically resizing for different screens (including mobile phones)
• Securely encrypted (Beginning with HTTPS instead of HTTP)
• Dental care content to showcase your expertise
• Images and graphics that speak to your target market
• SEO-optimized pages for each of your services (cleanings, root canals, family dentistry, etc.)
• Forms to help new visitors book their first appointment
• Features that highlight your locations to assist with local search
• Reviews from existing clients to highlight your great customer service

Creating a beautiful, mobile-responsive website is the first step to marketing for dental offices. If you feel that your current website could use some improvements, schedule a consultation with one of ProSites’ marketing experts!

Maximize the Impact of Your Reviews

When patients are searching for a new dentist, they’ll likely start by looking at reviews. Websites like Yelp, Google My Business, and Angie’s List can help you showcase your practice and stand out from the competition. To make the most of these services, you’ll want to ask your dedicated patients to leave reviews and support your practice. ProSites helps you send automated review requests, but you can also do this manually. Since there are so many platforms to choose from, we recommend evaluating your competition. If they have more reviews on one site than the others, focus your efforts there as well. Once you have a comfortable amount of reviews on the first site, you can change the link in your emails and direct patients to another platform. By switching between all three reviews platforms, you can establish a great reputation across the web and maximize the impact of your marketing for dental offices!

Mastering Social Media

Once you’ve fully optimized your website and reviews, your next step should be to focus on social media. Platforms like Facebook make it easy to communicate with existing clients, build up your brand awareness, and even attract new patients. Fully optimize your profile by checking that your address, contact information, website, and hours are correct. We recommend checking these a few times a year to ensure nothing has changed, so potential patients always have the most up-to-date information.

You should also add a profile picture and cover photo that speak to your practice. If you don’t have professional photos, you can start with using your practice logo as the profile picture and a wide-angle view of your waiting room as the cover photo.

Once your profile is fully optimized, take time to brainstorm some content. To create sustained social media marketing for dental offices, you should post a few times a week. Rather than sitting down and coming up with one post at a time, write out a month’s worth of posts and have your office staff copy and paste the content on certain days. You can also use a service like ProSites to create content for you if your staff is too busy!

Use Search Engine Optimization to Gain Local Traffic

You’ve likely heard the term “Search Engine Optimization,” and it’s an essential part of marketing for dental offices. By tailoring your website content to the terms people search for when looking for a new dentist, you have a better chance of showing up on the first page of relevant Google searches. Since the average person will not go past the first page of Google results, having a comprehensive SEO plan is essential to finding new patients.

Since patients want to find a dentist close to home, local SEO is going to be your bread and butter. Focusing your content around terms like “dentist in [your city]” will help bring the right leads to your website. You’ll want to create separate pages for each of your services (for example, family dentistry, teeth cleaning, root canals, and more) all focused around your location. This will help potential patients find you when they search for the services they need most!

It takes sustained effort to create an effective SEO strategy, especially since Google frequently implements algorithm changes and re-prioritizes content. Since most dentists are busy focusing on running their practice, SEO may be the most important aspect of your marketing to outsource. Marketing services like ProSites will create content for you, make changes to your site to capitalize on algorithm changes, and monitor your rankings.

Utilize Pay-Per-Click Advertising

It can take time to build up both local reviews and SEO to bring ongoing traffic to your website, so consider using Pay-Per-Click Advertising to speed up your leads in the meantime. Go to Google and run a quick search for “dentist in [your city].” You may notice that the first few results are advertisements. If so, it means that your competitors are being aggressive in trying to grow their practice. On the other hand, if no ads come up, it means that you can be the first to market in your area.

Pay-Per-Click is an effective tool for marketing for dental offices, as you have complete control of your spending. You can set maximum bids for each term, as well as weekly and monthly spending limits. However, it can take a bit of testing to perfect your strategy. You’ll want to start by creating a long list of keywords you want to target, always staying focused around your city name. Since you aren’t sure what competitors are willing to bid, start with a low weekly spend targeting many different keywords. You can then monitor to see if any of the keywords have a dramatically high cost per click. If so, your competitors are bidding on that keyword as well. Once you have this data in hand, you can decide how to proceed.

If you decide to run your Pay-Per-Click campaigns yourself, check in frequently to see how things are performing. In addition to constantly testing keywords, you should also A/B test different copy and landing pages to maximize both click-through and conversion rates. If you decide to outsource all this work, ProSites can help!

Conclusion

While marketing for dental offices requires a lot of effort, it will quickly pay off as you grow your patient base. If you decide to bring in experts to support your marketing, reach out to ProSites for a consultation! Our team is entirely focused on dental marketing and will help you evaluate each channel and your competition to find patients in your area.