Marketing Services for Your Dental Practice: AIDA Part 2

Now that you understand the AIDA marketing model, let’s use these concepts to build a strong marketing strategy for your dental practice.

Keeping the ideas of AIDA in mind, let’s remember what your marketing goals should be:

• Creating awareness for potential patients about your dental practice and the services you offer
• Piquing patient interest about how you can help them through the services you provide
• Building desire by creating value around the services you provide
• Providing multiple ways your potential patients can take action and move forward in whatever way they’re most comfortable via email, online booking or a phone call, etc.

With these goals in mind, let’s look at some of the online marketing strategies you can use to meet them.

Website Design and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

You may already have a website up and running, but did you know that it’s essential to update it frequently? Keeping your website updated helps it stay relevant and improves your ranking when potential patients search for a dentist.

If your website is outdated (older than 2016), or you don’t have a website, it is time to invest in an update or in creating one. A website is the best way to grab the attention and build awareness of your dental practice for new patients, and you can’t effectively compete in today’s highly digital market without one.

SEO goes hand-in-hand with your website. You may have a fun, engaging, and informative website (which you want), but no one is going to find it without SEO strategies in place. When you correctly optimise your website for SEO, you increase your ranking in the search engines and improve your chances of attracting new patients to your dental practice.

SEO strategies include:

• Keyword optimisation
• Content strategies and development
• On and off-page optimisation  
• Site audits

SEO needs to be ongoing to be effective, so this could be something you consider hiring an agency to help you with.  

Paid Search Advertising

Whether your new patients are in the awareness or desire phases of the AIDA funnel, you can grab their attention or even help them take action through paid search advertising, and there are options for almost any budget.

The first step in making the most out of paid search advertising is to determine your goals. For example, are you looking to reach more people and create awareness, or is there a specific service you want to promote or target, such as dental implants or Invisalign?

Once you know your goals, you can determine which type of paid search advertising is right for you.

Google Ads

Google ads focus more on particular products or services you’d like to target. You could consider this strategy for patients who are in the desire phase and looking for something specific.

With Google, you’ll bid on specific keywords for ad space, so it’s crucial to think about what your target market is searching for and what they may be typing in the search engine to find it.

Facebook Ads

Facebook ads are different from Google in that they’re more suited for building brand awareness. Facebook users aren’t necessarily shopping for anything, but they typically share ideas or interests with their friends. So this type of advertising works well if you don’t have a specific product to sell.

Facebook has a broad audience, which increases your potential of reaching people who may be looking for your services. It also provides tools so you can target your ads to more specific audiences.

Digital Content Marketing

One of the best ways to create awareness and grab the attention of potential patients is to keep your online content fresh, engaging, and relevant. This does require a bit of time and attention since you should be posting new content regularly for your community to engage with.  

The list of possibilities for digital content marketing are endless and can include but is not limited to:

• Blog posts and FAQ content
• Content for paid advertising
• Webinars or virtual events
• Informational ebooks
• Video marketing – YouTube or live videos
• Social media content
• Email marketing

You can choose one or multiple combinations of the types of content marketing that work best for you, but keep these things in mind while creating it and before posting it:

• Keep it valuable and relevant to your viewers – not too sales-focused.
• Remember that building your online community is the goal.
• Make it entertaining to grab attention and keep their interest.
• Be creative – your readers will respond more and enjoy engaging with creative content making you the one they think of when they have a dental need.

Content Marketing for Each Phase of AIDA

When planning your marketing strategies, keep the concepts of the AIDA model in mind to help guide you. Following the AIDA model can guide your readers successfully through the stages of buying. Here are some tips.

Awareness

This is the first stage where your potential patient is getting to know you, so it’s essential not to be too sales-focused with your awareness content.  

For this stage, making sure you have content on your website optimised for SEO is critical since this is how potential patients will first reach you.

Social media content is also essential in this stage because once a new person finds you, you can then direct them to content that allows them to get to know more about you and join your online community. Social media is powerful for this, and it builds a firm foundation for the following stages of interest and desire.

Interest

The next stage of AIDA focuses on building interest for your potential new patients.

You might choose marketing like videos to provide information or a newsletter to create interest. A newsletter reaches your potential patient regularly and keeps you in contact with them until they might need your services. 

But remember, they’re still getting to know you at this point, so be sure to share some more detailed and engaging information about what your dental practice is all about rather than focusing on specific services at this point.

Desire

This is the stage where your potential patient realises they need something and looks for more information about it.

For this stage, make sure that your service pages are packed full of valuable and helpful information that will help them make educated decisions about their dental health.

Blog posts can provide more specific information, and long-tailed keywords can help guide your potential readers to the blog post.

For example, your blog post might be about The Advantages of Dental Implants for Replacing Missing Teeth. You can include long-tail keywords in your post like ‘how dental implants replace missing teeth’ or ‘dental implants in Sydney for dentures.’ These keywords ensure that your readers find the information they’re looking for, and then your blog post will direct them to you for the services.

Action

The action phase happens when your potential new patient is ready to schedule with you, so you want to make it as easy as possible for them to do so.

Include calls to action (CTAs) throughout your service pages and blog posts inviting them to contact you. You might consider offering a discount or including a special offer to help nudge them towards moving forward with booking.

Then, make it easy for patients to reach you. Everyone prefers different options for scheduling, so be sure to include your phone number, email, and links to online booking tools.

Need Some Help?

Planning and implementing marketing strategies takes time. So, if you need help or have questions about it, your team at Great Dental Websites is here to help.