With each passing year, we bear witness to how digital marketing trends push tested and proven traditional marketing strategies further out of favor.

While it’s true that traditional means of marketing one’s dental practice still work, the bigger, better, and ultimately more cost-effective digital marketing strategies that people come up with these days have given dental professionals more reason to tread the relatively new path of digital dental marketing.

Indeed, the many digital dental marketing trends that have emerged over the last few years have helped dentists improve their online visibility, boost their brand, and get more patients coming through their practice’s doors. However, dental marketing trends come and go. What may have worked well in the last few years may no longer be as effective today or in the following year. Fresh ones also pop up periodically and turn the industry on its head.

That said, let’s look at some of the dental marketing trends you should try in 2019.

Chatbots

Chatbots—Artificial intelligence-powered computer programs that carry out online conversations—have transformed the way businesses do customer support. With advancements in artificial intelligence, it would only be a matter of time before majority of businesses integrates chatbots into their websites and social media accounts.

Dental practices can benefit significantly from chatbots, given that they’re in a customer service-oriented industry. The most obvious use of a chatbot for a dental practice, of course, would be to help patients book appointments through their websites. Chatbots are also useful for apprising patients of the latest dental technologies as well as new treatments the practice is offering.  The best part is they can do the things they’re designed to do 24/7.

More video content

If made to choose between reading a 4,000-word article and watching a three-minute video on the exact same topic, which option do you think would most people go for, without any hesitation?

Few tools are as useful for businesses in engaging audiences, building brand awareness, and fostering trust with prospective customers as video. Video content, after all, is so much easier to consume than even the best-written articles that run for a few thousand words each. The rise of live videos also contributes to the ever-growing importance of video content.

Video is predicted to account for majority of Internet traffic by 2021. Expect more dental practices to create more videos to promote their services and provide patients and prospects useful information related to dental health and hygiene.

Interactive content

Videos attract and hold the attention of people, but they aren’t nearly as engaging as interactive content.

Interactivity has been a buzzword since the beginning of the digital age, but at no time has it been more attuned to customers’ needs than today. With their need for more engaging, personalized experiences, customers are now treated to a virtually endless stream of infographics, quizzes, polls, surveys, and the like online, effectively increasing the likelihood that they’ll stay onsite for far longer than they planned.

For dental practices, creating interactive content such as quizzes about people’s eating habits that may affect their oral health or infographics that help parents deal with their kids’ fear of visiting the dentist will go a long way in keeping their attention while on your site. Be as creative as you can be with interactive content to make every visitor’s user experience engaging enough to make them spend more time checking out what your site has to offer, and eventually lead to an appointment in the future.

Original photography

There was a time when stock photography was all the rage among websites from across industries. You could hardly find a business website that doesn’t have these images of perfectly dressed and manicured people in clearly-choreographed poses splashed across its pages.

Stock photography served a purpose, but people are now more into what’s real, and stock images are the farthest thing from real. For a dental practice website, stunning photographs of its dental office and its state-of-the-art equipment will go a long way in conveying that realism. The same goes for beautiful shots of a dental practice’s staff, or of patients proudly displaying the results of their dentist’s work.

Responsive design

Mobile has long overtaken desktop, and it isn’t likely that the latter will ever recover in the immediate future.

With hordes of mobile users using their devices to search for all sorts of products and services online, it’s imperative for dental practices to have websites that display well on smartphones and tablets. The best way to achieve complete mobile-friendliness is by making their site responsive.

With a responsive web design, existing and prospective patients will find it easier to book appointments, field queries, or pay their dental bills.

Ground Marketing

Your dental practice is a local business, and it’s always great to build relationships right there within your community. When you take time out of your busy schedule and give back to your community by offering seminars or participating in an employee health fair or any similar event, you are building rapport with people.

When you’re doing all this, you are making yourself and your dental practice more visible. Whether you’re aware of it or not, you are doing ground marketing, and it’s one of the most effective ways of getting more patients and profits for your practice.

Ground marketing revolves around the idea that you’re right there talking face-to-face with people, which is an excellent way of getting them to see you as an authority figure in dentistry, which could lead to you becoming their go-to person for their oral health needs.

Ground Marketing is one of the most effective and affordable ways to bring in new patients immediately. Within this week! To learn more about Ground Marketing click here.

These are just some of the dental marketing trends that are expected to make a splash in 2019. Keep them in mind as you plan your dental marketing strategies.

Article contributed by: Andrea Ladera

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