The biggest challenge to dental marketing strategies is sharing the same market with your competitors. Are they better than you? Of course, not! We’d like to think we’re the best in the industry, but if they are better at positioning themselves, then they might be gaining more followers and clients than you. What are your competitors doing that make them better than you?
When you’ve got a pretty strong competition in the market, you need to shadow their every move. No, don’t get too obsessed and peek into the personal lives of the dentist and use whatever you find to ruin their reputation. You can get in trouble because of that.
Everything should be done professionally, and that means following them on social media, subscribing to their email newsletters, attending their events, and checking out what special offers they have for their clients.
Check Their Websites
After everything you have done to make your website attractive, your competitors are still beating you in terms of web traffic? What are you doing wrong?
Here’s what: you may not be marketing your website remarkably. It doesn’t matter if you made the best website to rival even Amazon, Target, and Walmart. If you are not promoting your website, no one is going to find out about it.
Check your competitors’ websites. What are they doing that you aren’t doing? Maybe they have an appointment system there? That will allow clients to book a schedule instead of needing to call the clinic. If they are capitalizing on that, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t, too.
Follow Them on Social Media
Marketing a business cannot survive without social media. If you want your dental marketing strategies to work well, make the practice visible on every platform imaginable—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Instagram, Reddit, etc. These are the places that most people visit when they need to find out information about everything under the sun, including dental practices and services.
What are your competitors’ doing on social media? Are they running games and contests? Are they engaging with their followers? Do they post every single day? What do they post? If their social media profiles have a huge following, that means their strategies are working and maybe you can emulate those on your own platforms.
Set Up an Appointment
We know this might sound a little James Bond-ish, but what would it take to finally get an idea why your market is choosing your competition over you? Set up an appointment and see how the whole dental staff deal with their clients. Send someone you trust over. If you’re going to go there yourself, it would look like you’re stalking the competition.