Dentistry advertising: how to attract customers and increase profits

Signboard

Marketing in dentistry begins with outdoor advertising.

Why is that

The exterior façade is important when it comes to finding a location. In 2-3% of cases this can lead to a new client, but more often it is for orientation. No one wants a potential client to pass by their clinic. There is a layer of people who will choose dentistry close to home. They can be hooked with a sign. Task: make it in neutral colors (black, white, pastel colors).

Red, orange, yellow, any bright color is not about medicine. Never and under no circumstances. Only hospitals and intensive care units. But it’s unlikely that anyone would want their dentistry to be associated with intensive care.

External advertising

Streamers, posters, stands - all these are types of outdoor advertising. They relate to methods of attracting customers, but are already hopelessly outdated. So much so that no one steals billboards anymore. And this suggests that, in general, they are no longer needed.

Promotion of dentistry has practically nothing to do with external advertising. The only thing you can focus on is opening lighting. Then yes, one shield, streamers, balls and standard attributes. The rest is a waste of money. This is a waste of money because the decision to treat teeth is not made spontaneously.

In the CIS there are three reasons for this:

• There is free money, and it is necessary to conduct a complete examination of everything, including teeth;
• Severe pain that can no longer be tolerated;
• Don’t waste money on relatives or children, let them have healthy teeth.

None of the three options is spontaneous. At the same time, there is a stereotype that dentistry is necessarily expensive. And it cannot be destroyed. Even if the clinic prices are lower than the city average. Therefore, external advertising cannot attract a client who will look, forget, and then go looking through his friends to find out which doctor performs fillings.

Stretch marks

Stretching is a pointer. It doesn't make sense to use it for anything else. It is necessary that clients do not get lost while going to the dentist. Therefore, it is recommended to use it at the nearest turn, with brief information about the clinic and a sign.

It doesn't attract the client. It’s strange to imagine a situation where a person has a sharp toothache on the street, and instead of going to the pharmacy, buying analgin, and then at home to see where he should go tomorrow, he breaks down the same day and goes to the nearest clinic.

Other types of outdoor advertising

The same is true with other types of outdoor advertising. There is no emphasis on it. Only pointers and attracting attention. This is for a hot audience. Advertising dental services through external attributes is a road to nowhere. You need to understand and remember this. You cannot attract someone from the street to dentistry.

Making clear aligners using 3D printers

The rapid development of 3D printing has opened up many opportunities for dentistry, one of which is the ability to affordably create clear aligners. Aligners are designed to treat malocclusion by straightening teeth with a set of individual transparent trays. They do not damage the enamel, ensure proper tooth movement and are almost invisible when worn, unlike braces. Thanks to 3D printers, it is possible to carry out either a complete aligner production process or an incomplete one using the services of 3D printing companies emerging on the market.

Internal advertising

Internal dental advertising is a little more complicated. The appearance of the room determines whether the client will be satisfied or not. But not as much as marketers will claim. First of all, the quality of services.

What to focus on:

• Hall design;
• Sterility;
• Information booklets;
• Stand.

Hall design in neutral, pastel colors. There can be no questions here. No holiday or mourning. Everything is everyday. Otherwise, the client will tense up, and this will create negative feelings. Sterility - don't forget about it. Shoe covers are the base. The top should be perfectly clean.

Booklets - they are needed for those who come with the client. So that they can read and find something for themselves. For example, teeth whitening. Or caries treatment. Filling, removal of nerves. Anything.

Stand - this is for clients and potential clients. The only thing you need to write there is pricing. They already learn about doctors on the official website and from friends. Nobody cares about diplomas. The prices are what worries me. It is necessary for a person to come and understand how much he will have to pay.

Art Bashlykov - blog author

Hello. Here I recorded a short course about how I create my projects from scratch, promote them and make money. Will you participate?

I will participate!

Promotion channels : VK Geo : Yaroslavl Budget : 4,432 rubles

The essence of the case: This was the first project in the field of dentistry. From this budget we managed to get 183 transitions to the group and 5 end clients who ordered services. Inside the case, the author tells what audiences and creatives were used.

The case turned out to be small, but you can get good ideas for promotion from it. Read more about this case at the link below. Link : https://vk.com/@daniil_target-keis-stomatolicheskaya-klinika-g-yaroslavl

Printed products

Advertising a dental clinic with an emphasis on printed materials is risky. In other niches, flyers pay off when it comes to a one-time purchase based on emotions. In this case, the amount is always limited by the spending limit: from 100 to 5,000 rubles. This is an average range of costs that cannot always be explained logically, and purchases are made on emotions. Printed products work according to different schemes. Let's discuss two common options in more detail.

Flyers

Flyers are leaflets with an advertising application. A catchy title, a minimum of questions about the price, a maximum of enticing text and design. It turns out something like a catchy banner on social networks from 10 years ago. Without vulgarity and dirt.

Advertising through flyers works according to the following scheme:

• A man walks down the street;
• Sees someone handing out leaflets;
• Receives or does not receive a leaflet;
• Looks at her;
• Throws it away or leaves it.

The last action is not important, because there is no goal for the leaflet to be preserved. It is important to convey information and show your offer. A leaflet can be effective when you need to show some kind of promotional offer or conduct PR for a limited edition product.

In that case, it might work. But in dentistry, different principles work. Even if there is now a discount for New Year, Christmas or any other holiday, people do not make decisions spontaneously. Costs in dentistry are higher than when purchased in a store. Usually 3-10 times. Therefore, the spontaneous sale option will no longer work.

Brochures business cards information sheets

Booklets, business cards and information sheets are an informational advertising format. The emphasis is not on the customer having to buy something on that day, but on telling the person something. This is a more attractive format for dentistry. It is important to talk about the doctors who work. This is the only thing that will attract customers. The reputation of a clinic can go downhill if there is no dentist there that clients go to. Not to a company, but to a person. This is the difference.

It makes sense to make business cards with information about the doctor. Information sheets showing how the price is formed. Address the main objections: cost, quality, inability to predict costs. If you act like this, advertising can work.

Promoting a dental clinic on Instagram: real cases

case No. 1 – promotion of dentistry from Barnaul

We studied different cases of dental promotion on Instagram and want to show you the one we liked the most. This is a case for promoting “Dental Center on Leningradskaya” in Barnaul from the Axioma web studio.

At the time the client contacted the account @stomatology_brn. There were only 156 subscribers, the posts were published without division into paragraphs and with a large number of hashtags. Of course, there was no decoration either.

Axioma specialists have tidied up the profile header:

Added a beautiful ribbon design:

And improved post structures:

Then goals were set. At the time the agency worked with dentistry, among them were:

• Increase the number of subscribers to 1000.
• Provide 30,000 impressions of clinic advertising per month (to increase awareness).
• Attract 250 ad clicks per month.
• Increase the volume of traffic from Instagram to the website (exact plan numbers are not announced).

The main emphasis was placed on promotion through targeted advertising. Several segments were identified among the target audience:

• Men and women from 18 to 25 years old and from 25 to 35 years old, interested in fashion news, secrets of maintaining beauty and health.
• Men and women who have recently entered search queries on the topics: dentist, dentistry, dental treatment, installation of veneers, bridges, implants and braces, enamel whitening.
• Married women or women with children for whom the health of their family is important.
• People living or working near a dentist.

We launched advertising on them in posts:

And advertising in stories:

As a result, with a budget of only 15,000 rubles, the company received 925 subscribers at a price of approximately 16 rubles per subscriber. The results are worthy.

More details about the case can be found at the link.

Other cases that may be useful to you

Here we present three more cases that we liked and may be useful to you:

Case No. 2: Madwins agency and CHARISMA clinic. Pay attention to the content plan that the agency proposed and posts with videos (!) of satisfied patients. Link to case.

Case No. 3: Clinica Marketing agency and Dr. Shipkov Dental Clinic. They relied on attracting people living within 3 km of the clinic and used the charisma of the clinic owner in advertising, that is, they promoted the business through the personal brand of the founder. Link to case.

Case No. 4: WWA agency and dental center in Kiev. Yes, the case is about promoting dentistry in Ukraine, but location has little effect on promotion technology. This case talks not so much about promoting an Instagram account, but about using Instagram as a lead generation channel. A good talk about audience settings for targeted advertising. Link to case.

Other

It is a mistake to make medical advertising based on a company and brand. People do not go to a clinic, but to a person. This is the difference between the classic approach to advertising and revolving around the employee. It is recommended to attract one or two dentists with their own client base at the start.

It doesn't matter how it's done. Offer the best conditions, freedom, percentage of transactions. You need to get them first. Then the client flow will be stable and not fluctuate depending on the load of competitors. Therefore, the first step to promoting dentistry is to attract a doctor.

A promotion strategy is built around it. It is desirable that a person is known in the city - he has his own “recognizable brand”. Then in every campaign you can focus on him and the fact that he works in dentistry.

This is more difficult, but it will allow us to work through the main objection: unknown quality. Prices will come later, but you need to worry about them when the first clients appear and they have the objection “Why is it so expensive.”

Effective advertising with a small budget

There are two effective channels for advertising dentistry on small budgets: reviews on maps and newspapers. Despite the fact that the popularity of print publications is declining, the target audience of dentists is still there.

Principles of advertising in a newspaper: catchy headline, stamped text, photograph of a doctor. No more is needed. It only hurts. Stamped text is needed for that layer of target audience that reads newspapers. They develop their own disdainful attitude towards everything that does not fit into their standards. In this case, text. The more formulaic the better, but it is important not to slide into a “young, dynamically developing clinic.”

Cards are a risky moment. 2GIS, Yandex.Maps are two platforms where you can place yourself and get clients with the queries “Dentistry in the city N”. Why risk? There are competitors who will notice this and may post some negative reviews. At first it will be difficult to fight off this, and creating your own factory of positive comments is not an option. This is a waste of the budget. Therefore, you first need to test the first option - with a newspaper. If it doesn’t work out there, or it doesn’t work out as well as we would like, then move on to another format.

Prospective indirect advertising

Indirect advertising - storytelling. The only format that lives in the CIS. Stories on social networks or in Zen.

Where to upload storytelling:

• To social network groups;
• To city channels;
• Try the newspaper.

For storytelling, you need to turn to copywriters. To those who work with selling texts. Informational posts will not work. We need an engaging story about how a representative of the target audience went to the dentist, had all his teeth fixed, and now everything is fine with him. Mention of a clinic or doctor - once. No more. Otherwise, it’s obvious advertising.

Preparing for promotion

After the goals and objectives are set, it is necessary to prepare the dental account for promotion. If you don't do this, you risk wasting money.

Competitor analysis

First, you need to evaluate how competitors promote themselves on Instagram. Since dentistry is an offline business, you need to start by assessing those clinics that are located near you and are your direct competitors for the residents of the area. Afterwards, you can generally assess how clinics are promoting in the Russian segment of Instagram without reference to geo-location.

What to evaluate when analyzing competitors:

• Account name. It can be the same as the name of the clinic:

Or maybe have a geographical name:

Using a geographic name allows a potential client to understand that they are not just advertising a dentist, but one that is located near them. This greatly increases trust and response. And if such a name is not already taken, perhaps you should take it.

• Account header. Here you need to pay attention to what services the competitor describes and how.

The more detailed the list of services is, the higher the likelihood that the client will contact you, since he will see the service he needs in the list. From the examples presented above, dentistry in Strogino has compiled a better description, since it contains a list of services, opening hours, and even the ability to make an appointment by phone or via WhatApp. Making an appointment through instant messengers significantly increases the likelihood of conversion, since many clients do not like to call.

• Eternal stories. Pay attention to how your competitors design them. What do they write? Where stories are made beautifully and clearly, where there are not enough of them, where there are too many of them. All this will give you an understanding of how best to make your stories.

In the example below there are too few stories. Moreover, they are no longer relevant, since we see last year’s price list and promotions for holidays that have long passed.

In this example, we see overkill with stories. Yes, all below are from the same account. And what comes first is not services, contacts and reviews, but examples of the work of specific doctors.

This kind of story feed can be considered optimal. Everything you need is on one screen.

• Ribbon. It is important to evaluate both the design style and which posts get the most likes and comments. Based on this data, you can create your content plan.

Visual account design

When you have analyzed your competitors and identified the advantages that your clinic could use on Instagram and the disadvantages that should be avoided, proceed to creating your account. This must be done before you start promoting.

What you need to do:

• Add an avatar. It is better to use the clinic logo to make it recognizable.
• Switch to a business account. It provides greater opportunities for customizing and promoting your Instagram.
• Fill out the description in the header. As we have already discussed above, it is better to indicate the profile and services of the clinic, as well as contacts and work schedule.
• Add communication buttons. It is ideal if the client has the opportunity to both call and write.

• Insert a link to the site with utm tags. If you have a website, then it is extremely important to include UTM tags in the link so that the analytics system correctly recognizes traffic coming from Instagram. This will also allow you to evaluate the effectiveness of promotion through this social network.
• Make eternal stories. We also already touched on them when analyzing competitors. Eternal stories should have covers designed in the same style and contain: A list of dental services.
• Customer reviews.
• Information about promotions.
• Scheme of how to get there.
• Photos and videos from the life of the clinic.

Post topics

All experts recommend writing about the following:

• Dental clinic services.
• Stock.
• Expert opinion of doctors.
• Information about doctors (so that the patient sees not a faceless clinic, but the people who work in it).
• Customer reviews (in photo and video format).
• Photos “Before” and “After”.
• Competitions (infrequent, but necessary to engage the audience).
• Entertaining posts.

At the same time, it is recommended to make no more than 20% of the total number of publications selling posts (with prices, promotions, competitions). It is also not recommended to make more than 20% of entertaining posts. This is due to the fact that Instagram for dentists is primarily a tool for increasing awareness, and not for generating sales.

It is highly advisable to coordinate texts with doctors so as not to accidentally publish something that is not true.

It is also recommended to select your own hashtags for each post, rather than using the same ones for everyone. When using the same hashtags, there is a risk of pessimization of posts, which is harmful for promotion.

In the future, after the initial filling of the account, it is better to keep the frequency of publications at the level of 1-2 posts per day and not publish them on weekends. With more frequent posting, there is a risk that users will begin to unsubscribe. Still, not everyone is ready to see a lot of photographs about doctors and dental treatment every day.

Advertising that doesn't work for dentistry

The first thing you need to do when developing an advertising campaign is to work out the target audience of the dental clinic.

It depends on the target audience:

• Campaign effectiveness;
• Customer cost;
• Probability of attraction.

What definitely won't work: A marketing model for small businesses and retail entrepreneurs. Focus on the brand, not the employee. Long, boring presentations. Flyers in the style of one-day promotions.

Texts and slogans used for advertising dentistry

The situation with texts and slogans is more complicated than with everything else. If there is no person on staff who worked in marketing, you need to forget about them. Don’t remember right away until such a person appears. The task of the slogan is to make the client have a chain of associations in his head. If done incorrectly, it will also have its own logical series, only in the spirit: “slogan” > shame > I don’t want to go there.

There is no need to engage in naming and creating slogans if you have no experience in this. It will only do harm. If you really want to, you can do something simple: The Art of Caring, one of the slogans of the clinic in Ulyanovsk and Yekaterinburg. There are creative people who can come up with something in the spirit of “Try saving money.” This is also a real slogan, the company really publishes it. This kind of presentation is embarrassing. We do not recommend doing this.

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