How To Market Your Specialty
Dental Treatments:
Dental Implants, Root Canals & More

As a dentist, it’s important to provide the best possible care to each patient, but you’re also running a business. This means you need to attract clients who can afford bigger treatment plans, as they are going to help you meet your margins. Of course, not everyone needs more extensive treatment, like dental implants and bridges, but for patients that do need more complicated dental work, how do you market those services?

There are a variety of different strategies, some focusing on current patients while others rely on finding people who haven’t come to your dental office before. Of course, high quality services are often expensive, so it’s important to be mindful of a patient’s budget and needs.

Here are a few tried and true methods you can use to market more specialized services that are more than just routine check-ups.

Focus on the Benefits for Your Patients

There are a lot of factors that the average new patient goes into before choosing a dentist, including location, quality of service, and accepted insurance plans. Build a strong relationship with your current patients, so they choose to keep coming back to you, regardless of the service they need. It can also drive referrals, as people love to share to their friends and family a good experience at the dentist.

Encourage patients to regularly come back through usual marketing channels, like sending text messages or postcards when they are due for the next appointment. Then, if the time comes they need some more extensive work, emphasize why they should go to you for that treatment. Use messaging that showcases the benefits of relying on your regular dentist, such as:

Convenience

If you’re offering more extensive services to a current patient, you can focus on the convenience it provides to go to someone they know. When patients choose to go to their regular dentist, they don’t have to worry about sending x-rays or previous treatment records to another professional. They know where your business is, they know how it works, and they don’t have to fill out additional paperwork to get the treatment they need.

Affordability

When working with regular patients, you most likely already have their insurance information on-hand. Patients should also already be aware of how your payment plans work and other resources they can use to pay for your services.

While dental services like implants and root canals are more expensive, chances are they already have compatible insurance or are part of any membership plans you may offer to patients who don’t have insurance. This makes it a much easier ask for patients who are worried about the cost.

Trust

If you regularly provide treatment to a patient who needs more extensive dental work, you should already have trust built up with that patient, so if you recommend a certain service, your patient should trust your recommendations.

As an added bonus, you’ll already have all previous records and know your patient’s concerns to provide an experience they won’t be able to get through someone new.

Cut Out the Jargon

Your patients haven’t spent decades studying and learning dental terms like you have. While you don’t have to “dumb it down,” you should consider laying out what will happen in a way that anyone can understand. This is especially true for more complex treatments like dental implants or cosmetic dentistry services.

People are often anxious about any type of dental surgery, especially if they don’t understand what’s going to happen during the whole process. Be abundantly transparent about what happens during treatment and most importantly the reasons why the service will improve your patient’s quality of life.

For example, think of the equipment you purchase to provide special services. Most people won’t understand what a CEREC® crown is. However, there are benefits to the patient by choosing a dentist that offers this type of crown.

Instead, explain to your patient that by making the crown in one day through CEREC crown technology, they can have a crown placed in only one appointment instead of two. The benefits to your patient is that it saves them both time and money, while still providing the high quality service they expect.

So, use messaging like “same-day crown” in your messaging, as people are actively looking for that, not the type of crown you provide. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t or shouldn’t say “CEREC Crown” on your website or other marketing material, but rather to make sure you have the simple language on there anyone can understand.

Keeping language simple can build the necessary trust with your practice because people will appreciate the transparency and honesty, and they may choose you over your competitor because they know what to expect from your practice.

Get Reviews From Patients Related to Your Specialty Services

According to BrightLocal, 86% of patients look at reviews when looking for a dentist. While good reviews are a viable marketing strategy for dentists in general, getting reviews related to the service you are trying to market can be especially effective.

Google now recommends certain keywords in their reviews in the “People often mention” section, so if people leave reviews related to more extensive services, potential patients can see exactly what your business has to offer.

From this example, you can see that there are quite a few people who have mentioned “corrective jaw surgery,” which is a much more extensive treatment than a simple cleaning. It shows both Google and users that your practice has experience providing that service, which can increase your rankings on Google and encourage users to contact your business for that service, not your competitors.

Take Before and After Photos of Your Work

Especially for cosmetic dentistry, you need patients to see the results of what you can do. While you should be careful of the types of pictures you use in your marketing, take pictures and videos of your most dramatic dental transformations! Don’t show something that would make people feel uncomfortable, but do emphasize the power a beautiful smile can have.

Visual proof can build a lot of trust with potential patients. Orthodontists do this often when showcasing their results for braces, and it can be extremely effective for dentures, veneers, and other cosmetic procedures, too!

You can and should showcase these transformations all across your website, social media, or any other visual medium. They can also be shown on postcards, display ads, YouTube ads, and more. People want to see real photos, not stock!

Use a Strong SEO Marketing Strategy

Content Strategy

Just like marketing any service, you should focus on marketing strategies that work. Make sure your website reflects the more complex services you offer, what patients should expect from your service, and how they can schedule an appointment. Add pages to your website dedicated to root canals, dental implants, or other specialty services so it creates an opportunity for your pages to show up on a Google search.

You can create blogs around the most common questions people have about those services to build trust. For example, some potential questions you could answer on your website include:

• What is a root canal?
• Do root canals hurt?
• How much do dental implants cost?
• How long do dental implants last?

You can talk to your team or do keyword research with a paid keyword research tool like Moz to figure out what topics you should be covering. Then, Google the term to see what type of content shows up.

You can see that certain dentists are ranking for terms like this, and if you write better than what’s covered here, you could take these valuable spots on a Google search, too. If you need some help with the research side of things we’ve already done the hard work with our dental blogs library! Get it as part of our dental packages today!

Read More: Content Marketing for Dentists: How To Build a Great Content Marketing Plan

Local SEO Strategy

Add the services you offer on your Google My Business profile and optimize the rest of your profile so your phone number, address, and business category are accurate.

You can also consider including secondary categories like “periodontist” or “endodontist” if you offer those treatments, so you can increase the chance that you may show up for those search terms.

However, do not add categories for services you don’t offer, as that can penalize your profile and ultimately hurt your rankings.

Read More: 4 Mistakes To Avoid With Your GMB Listing

PPC Strategy

Consider investing in pay-per-click ads related to services you want to show up for, such as “dental implants near me” or “root canals.” That way, you can ensure your name pops up when people are searching for these services, not just your competitors.

These types of ads are especially effective to find those who are actively searching for these types of services. Make your offer or practice look enticing to click, and it’s possible that you may be chosen over your competitors.

A good agency can help you figure out which keywords you should be targeting and adjusting your budget to achieve as low of a cost-per-lead as possible to get a better return on your investment.

Read More: Top 14 Dental Marketing Ideas To Get New Patients

Need More Assistance Marketing Your Practice?

At Oozle Media, we’ve worked with many dentists to help them attract new patients and help their patients come back with a website designed to help you rank on Google.

Plus, we’re offering new plans that allow you to either leave your marketing to us or teach your staff to create content and manage your social media to build your brand and ultimately help you get new patients on your schedule. Through our resources, you can better manage their time and paycheck.

Or, during our free analysis, we can also see where you are currently ranking on Google in your area. Make sure to ask us about this during your free consultation!