5 Vital Dental Marketing Strategies for DSOs & Groups

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, dental practices, especially those under Dental Service Organizations (DSO) and group practices, are finding innovative ways to enhance their online presence and attract new patients.

The following five viral marketing strategies have proven to be game-changers for dental practices aiming to stand out online.

These strategies are tailored to cater to the unique needs of DSOs and group practices, enabling them to maximize their online visibility, streamline marketing tasks, and focus on strategies that provide the best ROI.

1. Optimize Your Google Maps Listing

Google Maps is by far the number one place where a patient goes to find a new dental provider and is a vital dental SEO strategy. The little red pin that shows up on the Google map is called a Google Business Profile (GBP). These profiles can be optimized to help them appear more often in the top results of the Google map.

But it’s not just about being found; it’s about being found and chosen by the type of patient that you’re looking to attract. By updating and optimizing your GBP to highlight high value services, you can attract profitable patients at a fraction of the typical marketing cost.

How to Do It: Begin by understanding that Google maps is a localized search result, which means that patients find your practice on the map based upon where they are searching from.

If a patient is standing across the street from your practice, pulls out their mobile phone and searches “best cosmetic dentist”, your practice is likely to be one of the top listings. But, what if they’re searching a mile away from your practice? It begs the question, “Where are the patients located that are finding my listing in the top search result and where are they not?”

The only way to figure this out would be to drive around town doing searches on your mobile phone and seeing how high your practice ranks. But no one is going to do that. Enter Google Heat Mapping! The image below shows how well a practice is ranking for the keyword “cosmetic dentist” round their practice. Each one of the colored dots is a search from that location. It’s as if you were standing there, pulled out your mobile phone and searched “cosmetic dentist” on Google maps.

The numbers on each one of the dots is where the practice GBP is in the search rankings. If the number shows “1” that means you’re the top listing on the map from that location.

But here’s the kicker. You don’t rank the same for all search phrases. Below is another Google heat map for the same practice but for the keyword “dental implants.”

Obviously they are being found by patients searching for cosmetic services much more than patients searching for dental implants.

Action Item: First, find out which services you’re ranking well for and which ones you’re not by running Google Heat Maps for those services. Secondly, begin optimizing your listing to rank better for the dental services that are most valuable to your practice growth and profit. There is a great article about how to do that here on Group Dentistry Now.

2. Leverage the Best Social Media Publishing Software

In the vast sea of social media publishing software, finding a tool that caters specifically to the needs of dental practices can be challenging. There are softwares like Hootsuite and Sprout Social that offer great functionalities for businesses, but they do not meet the unique requirements of dental social media marketing.

For DSOs and group practices, the goal is to manage social media in an efficient, cost-effective manner that can easily demonstrate a return on investment (ROI). This demands a tool designed with the dental industry in mind.

The Dental Publisher is the only software built specifically for dental practice social media management. This platform stands out by offering all the functionalities expected from a top-tier social media publishing tool, along with features uniquely beneficial for dental marketing:

Hierarchical Management Permissions: Allows a DSO to structure the content creation, submission, authorization, and publication processes efficiently regardless of corporate structure.
Extensive Dental Media Library: Boasts the largest collection of dental imagery, memes, graphics, and content ideas available, making it easier for marketing managers to source engaging content.
Weekly Trending Ideas: Practices receive weekly curated trending ideas, which allows them to stay hyper-relevant and boost visibility and engagement on platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels.
AI and Graphic Design Integration: Features ChatGPT (AI) integration for quick caption and content creation, and integrates with graphic design tools for custom graphics creation. This allows for the branding and design of practice photography and images in a fraction of the usual time.
Full Graphic Design Support: Offers a custom graphic design service for practices without their own graphic designer, ensuring professional, high-quality visuals are always within reach.
Social Interaction Management: Integrates with Facebook and Instagram messaging and comments, responding to every comment and direct message on behalf of the practice, ensuring no patient inquiry goes unanswered.

Why It’s a Game-Changer: The Dental Publisher streamlines the social media management process, making it more efficient and effective for dental marketing managers. It enables DSOs and group practices to enhance their social media presence, reduce time intensive tasks, engage more effectively with your audience, and achieve a better ROI from their social media efforts. In addition, it’s often less expensive than other publishing softwares.

Action Item: Experience The Dental Publisher firsthand. Your organization can navigate the complexities of social media marketing with ease, allowing you to focus on delivering exceptional dental care while growing your patient base.

3. Improve your SEO with A Technical Overhaul

Search engines like Google and Bing utilize complex algorithms to determine the ranking of websites in search results. Among the factors considered, the technical aspects of a website play a significant role. When it comes to SEO for dentists, approximately 30% of a website’s ranking is attributed to technical SEO. This underscores the necessity for DSOs and group practices to prioritize technical SEO to stand out in a highly competitive digital landscape.

The essence of technical SEO is all about making your website fast and functional. Speed is a key component here; a fast-loading site contributes significantly to a positive user experience.

Google’s aim is to facilitate an effortless search experience, where users can quickly find accurate and relevant answers to their queries. A website that loads swiftly and efficiently contributes to this goal, encouraging users to continue utilizing Google as their primary search engine. This, in turn, impacts Google’s advertising revenue, emphasizing why Google prioritizes website speed and overall user experience in its ranking algorithms.

Key Components of Technical SEO

Technical SEO encompasses various elements that go beyond the aesthetic appeal of a website, focusing instead on its functionality. Essential aspects include:

Page Speed: The loading time of your website when a user accesses it. A faster load time improves user experience and contributes positively to your site’s ranking.
Broken Links: Ensuring all links on your site are functional and lead to the intended pages.
Search Relevance: The content on your site should match the search queries you intend to rank for. For example, if you’re targeting “dental implants” as a keyword, your site should provide relevant and comprehensive information on that service.
Bounce Rate: This metric indicates whether visitors found what they were looking for on your site or left quickly (“bounced”).
Metadata: Descriptive information and tags on your website that help search engines understand the content and context of your pages.
Duplicate or Plagiarized Content: Search engines penalize sites with substantial duplicate content, as it can confuse algorithms and degrade user experience.

Action Item: Run a speed test using a free resource from Google called Google PageSpeed Insights. This test checks the loading speed of your website on both mobile and desktop devices. Aim for a score of 90% or higher to ensure your site meets Google’s speed recommendations.

Action Item: Conduct a Full Technical SEO Audit: This will identify any issues related to the technical SEO aspects mentioned above, among others.

4. Invest in Custom Copywriting

Custom copywriting cannot be overstated. It’s a cornerstone for enhancing website ranking and ensuring your online presence is both informative and engaging. Google, along with other search engines, values and prioritizes fresh, original content.

Though the task of copywriting may seem daunting or even mundane, it’s indispensable for appeasing the “Google algorithm gods.” It’s a straightforward formula: to be found online, a dental practice must engage in creating new, custom content. This requirement underscores the critical nature of copywriting in your overall dental SEO strategy.

Key Areas for Custom Copywriting on Your Website

Dental Service Pages: These should be detailed and informative. The length of a service page depends on how competitive that service is in your area but a good standard would be a minimum of 750 words. The content must be original, not copied or repurposed from other parts of your site or the internet. Utilizing tools like Grammarly’s plagiarism checker can ensure the uniqueness of your content.

Blog Posts: Like service pages, blog content needs to be custom-written, at least 750 words in length, and free from plagiarism. Blogs offer a platform to help rank for geo targeted areas as well as services. It’s a foundational dental SEO task. For those of you that need a little direction and help with copywriting, this dental SEO blogging article could be helpful.

Location Pages: Optimized for specific geographic areas rather than services, these pages help attract patients from targeted locations. An example would be creating a page specifically for an area where you’re not currently ranking well. Here is a great example of a location. This page is designed to help Sweet Smiles Family Dentistry rank better for, “dentist in Henderson NV.” And that inbound link I just gave them, is pretty great too.

Guest Blog Posting: This involves writing articles for other businesses or practices within your network and publishing them on their websites. Such posts should link back to your website, creating valuable inbound links. This strategy is particularly effective within DSOs or group practices, as dentists can write for and link to other practices within the organization, strengthening the SEO performance of the entire group.

Action Item: Consider utilizing tools like ChatGPT for drafting guest blog posts. Download this ChatpGPT prompting guide to help you write your first guest blog post.

5. Embrace AI-Powered “Chat Agents”: Elevating Beyond Traditional Chatbots

Among the most transformative applications of artificial intelligence in customer engagement are AI-powered chat agents— a significant evolution from the standard chatbots with which many are familiar.

Chat agents should not merely serve as digital assistants; they ought to be extensions of your practice’s team, embodying empathy and the capability to engage patients in a natural, informative conversation. These agents are designed to be knowledgeable, responsive, and adept at guiding potential patients towards scheduling an appointment confidently.

Regrettably, the chatbots of our prior experiences fall short of these expectations. Predominantly built on simplistic “if-this-then-that” decision trees, they resemble the frustrating phone trees that trap users in loops, unable to provide direct answers or connect them with a live representative when needed.

Consider the following scenario where a chatbot fails to provide a straightforward answer about the cost of a dental implant, instead leading the user down an irrelevant decision path.

Contrast this with an exchange involving a new, AI-powered chat agent adept at discussing dental implant costs.

The AI chat agent is far more intuitive and capable than the chatbot. AI chat agents mark a significant departure from the earlier, more rigid and less intuitive chatbot experiences.

The New Era of AI Chat Agents

A select few dental marketing companies are pioneering the integration of AI chat into dental practice websites, recognizing the substantial benefits of AI-powered chat agents:

Enhanced User Experience: AI chat agents revolutionize user engagement with their intuitive design, offering a seamless experience that surpasses traditional chatbots. They align with the high standards of care your practice offers, elevating your reputation among patients and the local community.
Customized to Your Practice: AI chat agents can be finely tuned to your practice’s unique offerings, procedures, pricing, and insurance policies. They mimic your team’s tone and communication style, providing personalized interactions that accurately represent your practice’s ethos.
24/7 Availability and Human-like Interaction: AI chat agents ensure your practice is always accessible, providing round-the-clock support and information to patients. They offer seamless, natural conversation flows that make visitors feel understood and comfortable, facilitating a connection that mirrors human interaction at any hour of the day.
Rapid Response and Sales Skills: AI chat agents are designed for the modern user, delivering responses more swiftly than human counterparts while also possessing advanced sales skills. They efficiently gather information in a natural manner, facilitating smooth exchanges that enhance the likelihood of securing new patient appointments, all with the promptness today’s patients expect.
System Integration: AI chat agents can integrate with patient management systems, streamlining administrative tasks by retrieving and verifying patient details.

Action Item: My Social Practice is excited to announce a soft launch of a fully integrated AI Chat Agent service. They are currently seeking a select group of Dental Support Organizations (DSOs) to participate in this pioneering phase. If you are interested in being at the forefront of this technological advancement, please complete the following form to be considered for the soft launch.

Conclusion

Dental service organizations and group practices aiming for supremacy online must embrace a comprehensive strategy. These pivotal steps not only enhance each of the DSO or group practice dental locations but also streamline operations and elevate the patient experience.

By implementing these strategies, DSOs and group practices can navigate the complexities of dental marketing, ensuring they remain competitive and responsive to the evolving expectations of today’s tech-savvy patients.

FAQs

What is the best dental marketing strategy for a DSO?

The best marketing strategy for a Dental Support Organization (DSO) combines targeted campaigns, AI integration, scalable and SEO-optimized websites, online booking systems, and a focus on Google maps SEO. Emphasizing personalized patient experiences and operational efficiency, this approach should also include centralized marketing efforts for brand consistency and growth scalability. Leveraging these tactics ensures DSOs meet patient needs while achieving growth and revenue goals efficiently.

How can a DSO or group practice rank higher in Google maps?

To enhance Google Maps rankings for DSOs or group practices, it’s essential to optimize Google Business Profiles by claiming and verifying each location, maintaining consistent NAP details across the web, and accurately categorizing the practice. Enhancing the profile with updated service listings, strategic service areas based on Google heat maps, and regular engaging posts can boost visibility. Additionally, linking to social media and ensuring a steady stream of positive reviews can further elevate rankings, making the practice more visible and attractive to potential patients searching for dental services online.

How can a dental practice use artificial intelligence?

AI transforms dental practices by enhancing diagnostics, streamlining treatment plans, and improving patient interaction through web chat. It also boosts online presence, generating engaging content for websites and social media. This integration of AI chat optimizes both patient care and marketing efforts, making practices more efficient and appealing.

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