Digital Marketing

Show Notes

Linda talks about the various digital marketing channels, including social media, email marketing and video marketing.  She also talks about the importance of SEO for dental websites and explains the difference between Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. Additionally, Linda shares the importance of online reviews and how that improves overall search engine ranking for your website.

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What is Mettler Marketing?

Linda provides dental professionals actionable marketing knowledge they can use to grow their dental practice.

Linda Mettler: In it's one of the most important investments to grow your business. And if it's done correctly, it does not have to cost you and harm the light. So what SEO does is it combines content
creation, your branding and your promotion. Welcome to the matalin Marketing Podcast where we will talk about marketing strategies and tactics to grow your practice. I am your host, Lynda Mettler and
I have worked with dental practices for several years now. And I want to share my knowledge and experience with you so that you can gain valuable and actionable steps on how to grow your practice. We
will talk about the latest and greatest and marketing features some guest speakers so that you can hear firsthand what is and is not working and help you unravel the complexities of the digital
marketing world. I work really closely with my clients. So we will also delve into some other issues that affect your practice from time to time, such as staffing problems, COVID protocols and similar
issues. So today, we're going to talk about digital marketing, and how to use it to promote your dental practice. So when I ask my clients or any dentist, what is digital marketing? Most people tell
me it's Google. Well, that's right, but only partially right. So what is digital marketing? digital marketing is the ability for using online marketing tools to identify, build, and target an audience
and turn them into new patients for your practice. So digital marketing involves using many different channels to connect with current and prospective new patients. A couple of examples, search engine
optimization, email marketing, social media marketing, content, marketing, advertising, so pay per click and an online advertising, online, PR, an inbound marketing, those are all some examples of the
broader scope of digital marketing. So we'll talk about each of those in a little more detail in a minute. But first, I want to just share a few statistics with you. inbound marketing costs 62% less

per lead than traditional outbound marketing. And companies that blog get 55% more web traffic. So that's a big reason to put a blog on your website right there. 57% of businesses have acquired new
customers through just through their blogs alone. 78% of internet users conduct product and service research online. And over 200 million Americans have registered on the National Do Not Call list. So
they don't want to be marketed to through phone calls. And nearly half of all US Small businesses do not currently have a website and have website users and online users Generation X they the current
young generation, they are the largest largest users of shopping online. So let's talk a little bit about SEO search engine optimization, which I mentioned a minute ago. So what does that mean? And
simply put, SEO is the process of optimizing your website so that it gets found by all the search engines. So when somebody types in dentist near me or dentist in Scottsdale, Arizona, those search
engines go looking for for it. So optimizing your website helps you come up in those search rankings. It's one of the most important investments to grow your business. And if it's done correctly, it
does not have to cost you an arm and a leg. So what SEO does is it combines content creation, your branding and your promotion to bring qualified people to your website via the search engine. And
stats show exactly why SEO is important. In fact, Google receives over 77,000 searches per second, that's crazy. And 67% of clicks go to the first five results that are displayed in the search engine.
So when you search something, you get that first page on Google and 67% of those clicks go to those first five websites that are displayed.

About 90% of webpages that are on the internet get zero organic traffic from Google. That's really sad In my opinion, and 50% of search queries are Over four words, I don't know if that's always the
case in the dental industry because I see a high amount of searches for dentist near me or, you know, crowns in Centennial, Colorado, things like that. So that may not hold true in the dental
industry. But improving your SEO will definitely boost your search rankings, which in turn will help you reach more new patients. So to improve your SEO, you need to have really good content on your
website, you need to have a blog, you need to have all your services and everything listed on there, you need to have links to your social media, information about your insurance, your hours,
everything about your practice needs to live on your website. But additionally, you need a few more things as well. And one of the two of the two of the biggest things you need with your website is
first of all, it needs to be responsive. So that means your website needs to have the ability to show up on a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, and a mobile device. Any it needs to be able to respond when
people are searching and find your website and show up on all those different types of devices. And additionally, it needs to show up it needs to load in five seconds or less, because you will lose
people in droves if it takes any longer than that. Another very key ingredient for your website showing up keeping your search rankings high are your directory listings. So there are other search
engines besides Google, there's Bing and Yahoo, and Facebook. There's about 35 top directories. And the information that is on these directories as are called your citations. And it's really important
that that information be consistent across all of your directory listings. A really great tool to help you with this is Moe's mo zmz.com great tool to help with that. So since we're talking about

online searches, you probably know that most of them are done from a mobile device. When somebody searches and purchases a product online. This is known as mobile commerce. Nearly 95% of all people in
the US currently on a mobile phone. And most people spend about three and a half hours per day on their mobile devices.

There are about 5.1 billion unique mobile users in the world. So you definitely want to make sure that your website is responsive and can come up correctly on a mobile phone, you want to make sure
that your phone number can, people can just click to call so that when they're on their mobile phone, looking at your website, and your phone number is right there at the top, all they have to do is
tap on it so that they can call your office. Definitely very, very important. So another term that you'll hear is search engine marketing. How is that different than search engine optimization, while
search engine optimization makes sure that your website is optimized so that search engines can find it. And search engine marketing is basically how you use the other various forms of digital
marketing to help increase your search rank rankings. So let's start by taking a look at some of those other forms of digital marketing and how those can help increase your search rankings so that
people can find you. One of the most important things right now are online reviews. 81% of consumers trust the advice from friends and families. When searching for businesses. 90% of people who read
online reviews claim that positive reviews influence their buying decisions. Customer Testimonials and case studies are considered the most effective type of content marketing, nearly 70% of online
consumers look at a product or service review prior to making a purchase. So you want to make sure that your online reviews are really good and that they're there that they're showcased, you know on
the Google page, you so you want to make sure you have a tool that's really easy for your patients to use. We have a great tool that our clients use, where when a patient leaves the office, the front
office staff can just text a link directly to that person's phone. And they can just click and leave an online review before they even get to their car. Of course you want to ask them if it's okay to

do that. And it doesn't have to be that type of tool but you do need some type of tool that makes it easy for people to leave you and online. Right View, preferably a Google review, although Facebook
reviews on Facebook and social media are great as well. And speaking about social media, that is another form of digital marketing. And there is absolutely no doubt about the power of social media
today in the digital landscape. There are 1.5 billion Yes, billion social media users across the globe, and 55% of buyers do their research via social media. So it's crucial for your practice to have
a presence on social media. Even if you don't want to be on there personally, and I feel your pain with that I personal I my personal life, I don't love social media as much as I used to, because I
don't feel that it's just social, I feel that it's gotten off into other other avenues that I don't care about. However, social media is definitely big on business. And it's used as a way to for
business people to network for people to review and refer other businesses. And it's also used as a hiring tool. So a lot of social channels have a way to post jobs. So your company your practice. And
if you're looking for a hygienist or an assistant, you can do a job posting on Facebook or LinkedIn, or Twitter at you know, almost almost all of the social media networks. And a lot of employers
today are using social media to check out the candidates that they're considering. So and you're in for business as well, your competitors are all advertising on social media. So your practice, at the
very least, even if you're not advertising, you need to have a presence on social media. I see dental ads every single day on Instagram, and some of the social channels, what's important with it, not
with some of them, but what is important with social media channels, is to pick the right one for your practice. So if you're an orthodontist, you definitely want to be on tik tok and Snapchat, and

some of those

those social social media channels where younger people and their parents are on. And if you're maybe a prosthodontist, or you specialize in dental implants, then you want to be on those channels
where some of the older people are every day, such as Facebook or LinkedIn. Another really good strategy in your digital art Arsenal is email marketing, it's really impossible to ignore how effective
email marketing is these days. For every $1 spent, it averages a return of $44. It's crazy not to do email marketing, with that kind of ROI. 102 trillion emails are sent and received every year. And
here we go. Again, with the mobile device. 49% of all emails are opened on a mobile device. So if you haven't gotten that message yet, the ability for your mark your digital marketing to be seen on a
mobile device is crucial. So sending emails, the frequency of sending emails varies by industry type. I think in the dental in the medical industry, you want to send out email newsletters, about six
to nine times per year. Most of these should be newsletters that are informative that are educating your patient base, something healthcare related. Sometimes you can have some special promotions in
your emails, maybe you want to do a whitening promotion for summer or Invisalign. But others other emails might just be a real simple one page email that says Happy holidays or Happy St. Patrick's
Day. That way something cute and fun and light, you want to keep your brand your name your practice in front of your patients and potential new patients. But you don't want to inundate them with
really cheesy ads. So there is so much detail that goes into an effective email marketing campaign that we're going to devote an entire podcast just to email marketing in the future. So stay tuned for
that.

Right now, the number one form of digital marketing is video marketing. So let me share some quick statistics with you. 54% of consumers want to see more video content from a brand or a business that
they support. 85% of all internet users in the United States have watched online video content monthly on any of their in all of their devices. Internet users spend close to seven hours per week
watching online videos. And YouTube currently has over 2 billion users, which is almost 1/3 of the internet population. But most offices I talked to are extremely intimidated by video marketing. And
you really don't have to be. But I definitely understand because I don't want seeing myself on video either. But video marketing, you know, it does not have to be expensive, or super time consuming.
There are a lot of online platforms that can help you, such as places, or storyblocks that can help you create video content. And you can even create it right on your smartphone, and then push it out
to your social media channels and put it on your website. You can of course, get super fancy and create webinars and do some live streaming. But you don't have to be a video superstar to create some
really good content. And you always want that video content to live on your website, as well as create a YouTube channel. One of the most popular things in the video world right now are video blogs,
or they're called vlogs. And they're a great way to skyrocket your search results with those search engines with your website. So another really popular term right now that I'm sure you've heard is
content marketing. I hear it multiple times a day. So what does content marketing mean? Is it really any different than digital marketing? Nope, it's not. So content marketing really means educating
your potential new patients and your existing patients. So your content is information and education about dental implants, crowns, veneers, Oral Surgery, whitening, orthodontic, whatever, whatever

your services are. That's your content. And content marketing is the process of educating people about your product or your service. So for example, when you create a video on dental implants, and put
it on your social media channel and your website, that is content marketing, podcast, our content marketing, there are a lot of podcasts out there. And videos. YouTube is all about content marketing,
every YouTube video is teaching you something or telling you something or showing you something. But it's but that's what content is. It's the education and the content marketing is the process by
which you educate people on your services. So what I love most about digital marketing is the ability for integration, you can write a blog, and you can put it on your social media, you can send the
link out in an email newsletter, and you can host it on your website. The same is true of videos. And most websites include links to social media channels, and social media channels include your
website information to make the most of digital marketing, I recommend having your website as the central hub. That way patients can find all the information about your services and products. And also
see your social media, your reviews, your videos, your blogs, your email, newsletters, everything in one place. So all those different pieces of digital marketing can connect with each other and live
on your website.

And I know some some dentists ask what why is digital marketing so important? And what are the benefits? Well, there's quite a few actually, first of all, it's a lower cost. Digital Marketing is
cheaper than traditional marketing. If it's done correctly, the ROI on your digital marketing budget can be huge. A big reason for that is so many people already spend time online. And this is going
to result in higher quality leads because you're going to be where most people are spending their time. Digital Marketing has a global reach. Maybe your dental practice doesn't doesn't have a global
global practice yet. But if you do, you've got a global reach with with digital marketing. The potential exists for your content to go viral. So when you distribute your content online, it gets shared
by people. So people on social networks share people on social media, share your content, share a link to your page or your blog. And that brings more business to you at generally no added cost. The
results are measurable, you can track your digital marketing results. There are a lot of analytic tools out there these days like Google Analytics that can help you track the effectiveness of your
digital marketing campaigns. Keeping Up With The competition is an important reason to have a good digital marketing presence. It's more and more common for All customers to expect that all brands and
services will have an online presence. So having a good website is kind of like the old days of having a business card. If you don't have it, you're not relevant, and personalization might be the
biggest reason to get into the digital marketing world. Digital Marketing does really well for small businesses because you can personalize it, you can change the user's experience based on their
interests. This way, you can present them with targeted information and offers that are specific to what they are looking for. We will definitely do a much deeper dive on that topic in a future

episode. In fact, our next few episodes will definitely take a deeper dive into websites and social media. So for now, I'm losing my voice. So have a great week and I will talk to you soon.

Ed Bejarana: Are you committed to the growth of your practice Mettler marketing can help at medtner marketing. We help dental practices gain new patients increase referrals and maximize patient
retention with customized Marketing Solutions tailored to fit your needs. Visit www dot medtner marketing.com to schedule a free consultation and learn how we can help grow your practice. Thank you
for tuning in to the Mettler Marketing Podcast. Please share this episode with your friends and colleagues. If you would like to be a guest on our show, visit Mettler marketing.com and drop us a note.
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