To attract the Millennial generation -- and their children -- into your dental practice, you need to step up your dental marketing strategy.
Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996 and now 25 to 40 years old (2021), are now beginning to experience some of the dental health issues that come from inconsistent care and irregular check-ups. And because they’ve been staying away from the dentist -- especially with Covid-19 as an excuse -- they’re available as new patients.
Attracting new patients of this certain age requires a sophisticated approach to technology and patient experience. Our dental marketing 101 guide goes over this in detail. Here are five steps to winning the hearts -- and gums -- of Millennial patients:
If you’ve not updated or added anything new to your dental website in the last five years or so, it’s time. Why? More than two in five patients (43.6 percent) use a practice website to form an opinion of a dentist or other healthcare provider, according to a survey by PatientPop, a healthcare technology provider.
In the same survey, 38 percent of respondents said a practice’s website ultimately influenced their choice of provider. Whether true or not, if your website looks unchanged and out of date, then that’s how potential patients see you -- obsolete. On the other hand, when your website looks fresh and new, your practice is seen the same way.
Updating your website means more than just a new design. Have you added a chatbot that can answer questions? Is all of your contact information easy to find? Is there an online tool for requesting or scheduling appointments? Make sure prospective patients can easily find dental practice locations with google directions.
Make sure your site contains information about new equipment or treatments and how they benefit patients. Posting regular articles, or blogs, to your site lets visitors know you’re paying attention to it, and it helps search engines find you, too.
A website redesign or update is a good time to make your search engine optimization signals -- keywords in content, page titles, meta descriptions -- are up to snuff. The PatientPop survey indicated 75 percent of people have looked online to find out about dentists and other healthcare providers.
It’s not a secret that Millennials are active social media users. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, 91 percent use YouTube, 79 percent use Facebook and 67 percent use Instagram, according to the Pew Research Center’s most recent review of social media use.
The same report said that among 30- to 49-year-olds, the older half of the Millennial demographic, 87 percent use YouTube, 79 percent use Facebook and 47 percent use Instagram.
What does “active” mean? For Facebook, it means adding posts several times a week. If your Facebook page hasn’t been updated since June 2018, well, that’s not a good look. The same applies to Instagram, which relies on interesting or fun images. To maintain an active YouTube channel, you’ll need video content posted regularly, perhaps not as often as other social media.
Of course, that’s just the information you post for free. All three provide cost-effective paid advertising platforms (because Facebook owns Instagram, you can build ads for both in the same ad platform). Frankly, if you want to be seen on any of those three platforms, free posting alone may not be enough for your organic dental marketing campaigns.
To advertise on facebook, you need to create free business accounts, which can also help you promote dental services or collect patient reviews, the next topic.
The reviews patients write about you are the digital version of word-of-mouth advertising. In the PatientPop survey, 70 percent of respondents said positive reviews are very or extremely important when they’re looking at a dentist or dental practices.
Dental patients said they looked for healthcare provider reviews on Google, WebMD, Yelp, HealthGrades, and Facebook. More than a third said they had posted reviews on those sites as well as the practice’s website.
How do you get positive reviews of your dental practice? Ask for them. You can give satisfied dental patients a card as they leave the office, send them a post-visit email, or include a review page on your website. A great marketing strategy is to ask for an online review as a way to enter into a referral program for your dental clinic.
Don’t fear negative online reviews on your business listings. Respond to them in a way that lets people know you care about their satisfaction. A good response to a negative review will most likely generate a positive impression for anyone reading it later. To keep up with reviews, pay attention to your social media and Google My Business accounts, or use one of many tools to monitor your online reputation across the web.
If your website can't capture online reviews or showcase them, it might be time to update your website. Here are 7 of the best dental website builders to transform the image of your dental practice.
Convenience is key. Anything you can do to make it easy for patients to schedule appointments, understand their treatment, and even pay their bills will make your dental practice more attractive.
In a study by Kyruus, a provider of schedule and data management systems, 58 percent of Millennials said they were willing to switch healthcare providers for the ability to make appointments online. Just 18 percent of Baby Boomers said they would be influenced by that ability. Also, 37 percent of Millennials said they would prefer online booking.
Many survey respondents reported problems making appointments even when calling a practice. Be aware of any roadblocks you may have unintentionally set for people calling to make appointments. Set up phone systems that make it easy for callers to make appointments, even without talking to a live person.
Like quantum physics, medical costs are one of the great mysteries of the universe to many healthcare consumers. And that mystery makes patients uneasy.
Millennials want to know what they’re going to have to pay for your services -- before they sit in your chair. A survey by PNC Healthcare reported that 77 percent of all patients say healthcare costs are unpredictable.
The survey also said 54 percent of Millennials have delayed or avoided treatment due to cost.
This means that your website and your dental office staff must be able to explain costs associated with treatments and how insurance may or may not affect what patients pay. It also means that as Millennials search online for a dentist, you might have to become price-sensitive.
Your website and other marketing must also establish the value of your service in terms of health, comfort, appearance, and even self-confidence.
Millennials represent a large and under-served demographic. When looking at dental practices, their reliance on online search, reviews, and ease of scheduling means that dentists who accommodate those habits will have an advantage.
You can create that advantage by updating your website for new patients, staying active on your social media channels, asking for and responding to reviews, making it super-easy to schedule appointments, and being clear about what appointments and various dental procedures will cost.
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Zach Westerhoff is a dental marketing expert. Join Zach and over 5,000 dentists to learn how to scale your dental business like a tech startup. Zach managed digital marketing teams & campaigns for large SaaS companies and retail giants. As co-founder of teethtalk ads, his goal is to help dentists advertise their practice to patients looking for treatment.
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