When you choose a dental marketing company to help your practice grow, the stakes can feel high. Ideally, this company will become your trusted and long-term partner. On the other hand, you could end up shuttling money to a third party without ever seeing results. You might also find yourself moving from one company to another, which is a huge waste of your valuable time and resources.
Most dental practices are small businesses owned by doctors who specialize in oral health, not business management. But that doesn’t mean you should meet with company reps unprepared. Here are six tips to help you find a dental marketing company that will deliver results.
Make sure their services align with your needs
Dental marketing covers a huge range of services, something few people realize when they research companies. Even if you narrow down to “dental digital marketing company,” you still need to prioritize services such as paid advertising, video production, branding, SEO, and influencer marketing.
Few businesses will be true specialists in every service you want. Most will have a primary specialty, such as dental social media marketing, and other departments that gradually expanded to complement the primary offering. Some small agencies may outsource some work or refer you to other agencies to make sure you get services that are diverse and top tier. This means your job is to enter the conversation having done your research about what kinds of digital marketing services they offer, and which ones are the most important to you.
You don’t need to know everything about every service; a good dental marketing company should be able to offer advice about what channels will provide good results for you. However, you need to know enough to be sure that their advice won’t be limited to a small scope of services. Since you’re a small business, make sure that your marketing company provides, at a minimum:
- Local SEO (search engine optimization)
- Website design and hosting
- Social media marketing
- Reviews and reputation management
- Graphic design
- Copywriting
- Media buying and ads management
Questions to ask
- Can you provide case studies for the services that are most important to me?
- What is your protocol if you can’t provide a marketing service that I want?
- Can I consult with the members of your team who provide a particular service? (i.e., can you meet with their designers, dev team, etc.?)
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Be skeptical of promises for quick fixes or instant results
When it comes to marketing, slow and steady wins the race. Sure, there are moments when your Google rankings will suddenly grow by leaps and bounds. But the viral solution rarely translates into high-quality patient conversions. Instead, you want a strategy for sustained, long-term growth.
There are unsavory marketing practices that will get you impressive numbers quickly, but they never amount to anything in the long run. For example, you can use black hat SEO to get your website ranking first on a search page for a while, but then you may get penalized by Google for those same methods.
The same shortcuts apply elsewhere: you could suddenly get 5,000 new followers on Instagram, only to realize they’re all bought and none of them will ever be patient leads. The best dental marketing SEO companies avoid black hat practices and communicate about slow, steady growth.
Questions to ask
- What measurable goals would you recommend for our practice’s marketing strategy?
- What’s a reasonable amount of time to wait to see results in-office?
- What contract model do you use—annual, quarterly, or monthly?
- What methodology do you use for each service, and what’s your marketing philosophy?
Look into the company’s history, longevity, and funding
Marketing agencies move quickly. Businesses boom, businesses bust, and even those that stick around can experience massive turnover that will affect your service. While new businesses can be small and agile, if your priority is finding a long-term partner, you want a business that has proven they’re in it for the long haul. Many flashy marketing agencies also rely on a “burn and churn” model; they care less about keeping their clients happy long-term than they do about roping in new clients with a big contract.
You can learn a lot by asking about the history of a company. Ask about the story of its founding and growth, the intentions of the founders, and what gap in the market they intended to fill. It can be useful to learn how they’ve adapted to changes in the industry and their plans for future growth. You might also want to learn about their funding model. Startups backed with venture capital money are under a lot of pressure to grow fast. That means growing pains for both you and them.
Questions to ask
- How was your company founded and funded?
- What’s the five-year vision of your steering group?
- What’s your turnover rate for clients and employees?
Find someone with experience in dental practice marketing
Yes, it matters whether your marketing specialist has worked with dental practices. Dental practices occupy a very specific niche in the business world. A marketing agency that focuses on promoting e-commerce retail companies will never understand the way that relationships drive your business, how vital local connections are, and what precautions you need to take as a health-care provider when advertising online.
For example, consider the Google algorithm update in 2018 that had an outsized impact on the SEO rankings of health-care providers. Because Google was attempting to crack down on medical misinformation, content that wasn’t attributed to authoritative medical sources was deprioritized in search engines. A dental practice marketing company is your best resource for reacting to this kind of shift in your rankings.
Most important, you need to make sure that your marketing agency can ensure that they’re compliant with HIPAA regulations in all their online communications so you’re guarded against expensive lawsuits and the loss of your patients’ trust.
Questions to ask
- What percentage of your clients are dental practices or other small health-care clinics?
- What precautions do you take to ensure that all our ads and content are compliant with HIPAA?
- What’s unique about a dental practice that will inform your marketing strategy for our business?
Look for someone with great support and communication
If you’re looking for a marketing agency that will take 100% of the marketing duties off your plate, you’ll probably be disappointed or deceived. The most effective marketing will always require some participation from your team. For example, your social media will be better with personal pictures of your team, and a third party will never be able to perform all the verification needed to set up your Google Business profile.
That’s why you need to foster a partnership mentality. You should have a designated point person on your side, and excellent support and communication provided by your dental marketing company. They should be able to provide consultation that will help you know what to do about negative reviews, how to run in-practice promotions, and how to promptly promote news items that come up.
Questions to ask
- Who will my point of contact be and how many clients do they answer to?
- How often can I expect to hear from you and what amount of consultation time can I expect so I can ask questions and discuss ideas?
- Can you clearly articulate what my responsibilities will be and what yours will be?
Research the company reputation and values
It’s always good to do business with people who share your values. Today, more than ever, businesses are articulating their goals and values to the public. Look at the company’s “About Us” section to learn more about its mission statement. But don’t stop there. See whether they’re involved in charitable initiatives that show they walk the walk. Are they sincere in emulating the goals of the dental community? Do they invest themselves in good faith efforts to make the world better? Are they well-connected with the dental community?
Do your own research. You might take a close look at their online reviews, see whether their team engages in conferences and speaking engagements in your field, or check to see what referring companies have to say about them.
Questions to ask
- Can you provide references from current and former clients?
- What are your corporate goals and what specific actions were taken this year toward those goals?
- What dental organizations, conferences, or charitable organizations do you partner with?
Remember, don’t rush it! Get quotes from several different agencies, ask for time to talk face-to-face, and do your research. Disseminate all the information you need before you sign a long-term contract. Using these tips and questions, you should find a dental marketing company that delivers results and helps your practice grow and thrive.
This article originally appeared in DE Weekend, the newsletter that will elevate your Sunday mornings with practical and innovative practice management and clinical content from experts across the field. Subscribe here.
