The Branding Recipe to Stand Out in a Crowded Dental Market

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We joined Michael Arias on The Dental Marketer Podcast for his Monday Morning Marketing podcast episode.

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During this podcast we dive deep into the world of dental websites and how they can help you build a strong brand for your practice. You'll discover key strategies to set yourself apart from the competition and answer the pressing questions potential patients may have. Additionally, you'll learn why your website is your most valuable sales tool and why we say YES to listing price ranges on your site. Finally, we'll uncover the secrets to creating a low-friction experience for potential patients and how to address their pain points through your brand.

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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated)

Michael Arias  

Hey, Josh. So talk to us about websites. How can we utilize this? Or what advice suggestions or methods? Can you give us that will help actually attract new patients through our website? 

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Josh Hampson  

Yeah, definitely. So for the new dental practice, where I recommend getting started is really at the foundation, make sure that you're building a brand. So before you really think about building a website, it's important to figure out what's going to set you apart from your competition. Why should a potential patient choose to book with you over any other dental practice in your area? So really, I have a few questions that I like to answer before diving into that. 

I've already said, what sets you apart from your competition? What makes you better choice than other dental practices in your area? And then this is core. But what are your ideal customers, your ideal patients pain points, what dental services are they typically looking for? So are they looking for general family dentistry? Where they may be looking for pediatric dentistry for the little ones? Or are they looking for more cosmetic dental services? You know, then plans been years, those sorts of things. The other questions that I like to ask is, what questions do they have about the services that they're looking for? And how can you easily answer them on your website? And then, you know, this is not at all website focused, making sure that you're creating an exceptional experience for your patience is paramount. 

This starts in your marketing, and bleeds all the way through into that, then offices curious. So as we really think about diving into the website, once you've answered these core questions about your business, about your offerings, is that how you can tailor your messaging to those ideal patients, I'd like to dive into the basics. So the biggest tip that I can give anybody that's thinking about either relaunching a dental practice website, or if you're a brand new practice, starting from scratch, don't fall into the trap of thinking that your website is just so website, I really like to think about our website as your most valuable sales tool. 

And it's typically one of the first or the first touch points that you'll have with a new patient before they ever come into your studio. So with that being said, it's important to stand out. You know, I think we've all seen a lot of dental practice websites, and actually isn't that difficult to stand out in the dental stakes, when we looked at a lot of dental websites, they feel somewhat sterile. And so really offering different design aspects that make you feel more personable, that feel authentic to you authentic to your practice experience. 

And once again, going back to speaking to your ideal customer, so not just unloading about the services that you do, but really speaking to how that is going to impact your customer or your patients lives, right? 

So we all know that health starts with oral health, a lot of problems that we can experience really begin with know what's happening in our mouth. So speaking to that unique value proposition, and positioning your style, your practice, as the guy that will help your patients solve that. And then once again, going back, what sets you apart. It's all about being authentic. 

It's all about, you know, really setting yourself apart from other practices in your area, because there are tons of options. And then, on top of that, your website an integrated piece of your marketing plan. 

Like I said earlier, you know, answering questions that patients might have about a need of your services, Paramount little hack there is you can put these in an FAQ section. 

‍A lot of these questions are actually SEO keywords and search terms in and of themselves. So you know thinking about I'm based in Austin, Texas, thinking about Invisalign. “How much does Invisalign costs in Austin, Texas?” – huge search term right there? 

So answering that question on your website, having that keyword on your website is automatically going to bump you up in search rankings just by simply answering your question that your patient already has or something you know that they're going to have. 

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Michael Arias  

Nice. I do have a question about the the website when you I guess, put yourself into your brand. You don't like the about us page and things like that. Or about the practice. Do you prefer or do you think it's better to speak from like a third party or like it looks like the doctor is actually saying like, I love this community and I love or the doctor loves this community and what's better? 

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Josh Hampson  

I think it really depends on the size of your practice. So if you're solo, you're the only doctor in your practice. I think that having that type of, you know, one on one conversation with a patient is the way to go. If you've got many, many, many doctors in your practice, maybe multiple locations, I would recommend kind of saying, This is what we are about. And then you can always do like a letter from the founder or blog posts from the founder, I think is a really great option there. 

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Michael Arias  

Gotcha. Okay, cool. 

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Josh Hampson  

And then going back to really making it easy to find the answer or for your patients to find answers to their questions. And one of my favorite dental Hacks is an insurance verification form, we typically use type form, which allows you to set up essentially to consistently have a little developer a bit of conditional logic, where you can upload all of the different insurances that your practice accepts, and then anything you don't accept, and then stuff that form up. 

So you're grabbing the patient's name, their email address, and what insurance they will be potentially using your practice. And from there, you can conditionally then just like, hey, we take your insurance, let's go ahead and book your appointment. 

We don't take your insurance, but you can then direct them to maybe you have like, in studio membership option, but what you're doing there is making it easy to answer whether or not you accept their insurance, to you're also capturing that lead and able to follow up with them in the instance that you do sent their insurance, and they didn't quite make the jump to schedule that appointment, you can always follow up and convert that lead. That's kind of one of the most valuable tools that we've employed lately. 

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Michael Arias  

Gotcha. When it comes to that, like, Okay, how much is how much does Invisalign cost? Or how much are implants? Or, you know, I mean, would you prefer to have the price on the website, like, just put it out there? Or, because you know, how some people are like, Well, don't put the price out there. You know what I mean? You're gonna deter people and have them call for it, you know, I mean, and then that kind of doesn't answer the question that Google wants, right? 

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Josh Hampson  

Yeah, so I'm a big proponent of including pricing on your website, whether it's, you know, a potential website or a SAAS website, think about how many times you have been looking into the past that really any product or service and can't figure that out, you're more likely to just put it off, and not put your appointment not reach out, or anything like that, what you're really doing and including pricing is, once again, like validating that you are the right choice, or your patients. 

So if they come in, and they see that your Invisalign prices out of their price range, it's gonna save you a little bit of time as well to not have to answer those questions, those sorts of things. So it's going to limit some lift on your front office stack, but it's also going to help you attract your ideal customer, which is what it's all about, we want to make sure that we're getting the right people in the doors at the right time, and helping them with the products and services that they can, okay. 

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Michael Arias  

Okay, so have the price on website. 

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Josh Hampson  

Definitely. And the thing with that, I know, these are all variable prices. So you can always include a range. So if we're looking at an implant, we know that that can vary dramatically, depending on patient's individual, you know, their individual Chase, that sort of thing. So you can always put a range, it doesn't have to be an implant is $3,500. Implants typically start at x, and they could go up to y, depending on what your individual case looks like. Okay, awesome. Another often overlooked option for helping convert potential patients is utilizing an online booking widget or platform. 

So we know that it can be kind of a hassle to schedule it's and for women, especially maybe you haven't been to the dentist in a while. So making it as easy as booking an Airbnb or ordering DoorDash that's really going to dramatically boosts the number of patients that are in your practice. 

So if they can easily figure out if you do take their insurance, and then easily book online, you're just taking away those blockers that could keep them from booking with you so they don't have to call. Of course they could call if they want, but we all know if things are right in front of us the likelihood that we'll actually move forward with doing that thing that will actually happen. So just streamlining that making it as easy as possible for patients to figure out once again, if you take their insurance and then ultimately look paramount and getting more folks through the door, and typically, most dental practice software are going to have an embeddable widget, you can usually find it directly in your platform. 

It's just an embed code copy pasted into your website builder, and seamless. So super, super easy to implement on your website, provided that your dental practice software, how's that action review. 

And then maybe a lot of us, you know, guys or gals are going to be getting the feel this, but I'm always hesitant to sell especially a practice this just starting to go full send on SEO, search engine optimization. What's more important for a brand-new dental practice is making sure that you have the SEO fundamentals down. So making sure that you're hitting keywords, relevant keywords here in area, super, super easy to go onto a tool like SEMRush and find what those keywords are for your, your individual area, and make sure that you're including those into your site. But I think when it comes to creating tons and tons of SEO content, I generally kind of reserved that for practices that are at least like a year old. 

That takes time. It's a costly endeavor. And I think more important for a brand new practice is making sure that you're really growing your book, providing an excellent in-office experience, those sorts of things. But like I said, SEO fundamentals are super, super important. Make sure that your most site builders were do this as your you know, building your site on your own, just make sure that you've got your one search choose noted. So that these from a technical standpoint, Google will validate your website and start to raise your hand. 

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Michael Arias  

So that's nice. That's good to know about the SEO especially, I feel like a lot of the times when you're getting on the Get going like you know, it's like kind of like crickets or like a couple new patients. You're like, Oh, I'm paying SEO, you know what I mean? Like, come on, where are we first on Google or something like that? I'm gonna get impatient a little bit. 

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Josh Hampson  

Yeah, I mean, SEO takes time, it takes time, it's a good bit of work. And most importantly, once again, answering those questions that your patients have. Because at the end of the day, like, good SEO is also good user experience, right? So answering questions that folks might have, and directing them where they need to go is a foundational piece of SEO. 

Last thing that I would say is, I touched on this at the very beginning of our call, is just making sure that your website is an integrated piece of your marketing plan. So when you have a lead, come through on your website, whether it's through a contact form, that insurance verification form, make sure that you follow up with those leads, especially if they do not book with you immediately. That means they're a warm lead, they're a hot lead, and they are looking to find place to get a dental home, essentially, other piece, stay in touch with your existing patients. 

So once they come in for that first appointment, if you didn't get the opportunity to schedule them for their second follow or for their follow up visit during their appointments, make sure that we're following up three to four months after that first appointment, so that we can use that and schedule for that follow up. And last but not least streamline referrals. 

So we all know, word of mouth, this is the easiest advertising tool, right. So make sure you're streamlining referrals, there are a number of different platforms you can use to do that, that integrate directly into your website. And once again, really, really valuable and converting potential patients, especially after one of their friends, one of our colleagues has had a great experience with you. It's a shoo in. But then we've come into clinical services on eurosla units. 

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Michael Arias  

Okay, man, so put Yeah, books on referrals. But it starts with building our brand, right, building the brand and making sure all this is kind of in play. And we can dive deeper into SEO and upcoming month but at the same time making sure your websites looking good. You mentioned referrals widgets, have SEO optimization conversions, right, getting the leads in in him, man. 

That's it. It sounds like a little bit but then there's a lot of moving parts, you know what I mean? And so this is the I feel like this is where the listener right is, I guess paying for that optimization, right? Like okay, this is where we add to move, moving parts keep up to date, all these things, because there's a lot. 

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Josh Hampson  

Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's a lot of moving parts. Our dental clients-- They're experts in dentistry, right? Maybe they might not have taken your business class since general college. And so there's a lot of moving parts and can become very technical. So yeah, just make sure that you're hitting all those key points and everything will fall into place. 

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Michael Arias  

Awesome. Josh, I appreciate your time. And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find him on The Dental Marketer Society Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly? 

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Josh Hampson  

Yeah, definitely. So drop on over to our website. It's www.hmpsn.studio. So just my last name with no vowels. And then we've also got a dental blog post on our website as well, that dives into a lot more of this in detail. So check that out as well. 

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Michael Arias  

Awesome. So guys, that's going to be in the show notes below. And Josh, thank you for being with me on this Monday morning marketing episode. 

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Josh Hampson  

Thanks so much, Michael. It was a blast.