Common Marketing & Business Pain Points for Dental Clinics

Dental marketing can be a complex game to succeed at. Regardless of where you are in the dental marketing cycle (see image above), it can be challenging to differentiate your clinic from others while establishing trust with potential new patients. A competitive landscape, especially for general dentists, necessitates a strategic and nuanced approach to create lasting success. In our experience with dental clinics, we’ve seen several key pain points arise that can be challenging, but not impossible, to navigate. Let’s dissect them. 

1. Attracting New Patients & Developing Online Visibility

While this is the primary concern for new clinics, new patient acquisition is a critical need for all dental clinics. There are only so many patients to go around, so how are you able to reach the types of people that would be interested in what you have to offer? 

1. Pain Point: Limited awareness for new clinics & competition against older clinics. When opening a brand new clinic, there are many hurdles to developing patient awareness. It takes time to build your online presence, which includes having a website, Google Business Profile, and SEO-optimized copy in place. When prospective new patients go to find you online, do you have a credible website with relevant information? How about a large enough number of reviews? These factors go into their decision whether to book with you or not. 
2. Pain Point: Branding isn’t in place, or critical pieces of it are missing. If all you’ve done is put a sign up, you’re not going to get found in the way that you need to to keep chairs filled. A fleshed-out online presence means having the pieces mentioned in point #1, but also cohesive branding across these different elements. Potential patients search across a variety of mediums and platforms, and they should get similar information and branding at each access point so they can understand whether they’re aligned with your brand and values.
3. Pain Point: Weak SEO resulting in not being found in Google searches. We’ve found that many dental websites have minimal content or content that overlooks important keywords. Not only does this impact your Google search rankings, but it also means that prospective patients might not be getting the information they need to feel confident booking with you for niche or specialized services.

2. Building a Solid Reputation & Establishing Patient Trust

Once people are aware of your clinic and your service offerings, you have to establish credibility and expertise. There are many strategies for this, although many of them take time and consistent effort.

1. Pain Point: Poorly handled reviews or not enough of them. Since most locations have many dental clinics to choose from, prospective patients often rely on reviews to determine credibility and learn about others’ experiences at your clinic. New clinics need to work hard on garnering reviews to build up this reputation, but all clinics also need to learn how to manage less positive feedback. Showing professionalism, compassion, and a willingness to rectify a negative situation can be just as impactful as a good review.
2. Pain Point: Branding isn’t in place, or critical pieces of it are missing. If all you’ve done is put a sign up, you’re not going to get found in the way that you need to to keep chairs filled. A fleshed-out online presence means having the pieces mentioned in point #1, but also cohesive branding across these different elements. Potential patients search across a variety of mediums and platforms, and they should get similar information and branding at each access point so they can understand whether they’re aligned with your brand and values.
3. Pain Point: Lacking or limited content means missing out on showing off your expertise. Minimal content on websites, or a lack of ongoing blogging, is not only a missed opportunity for using keywords but also a chance to connect with your audience. People look at blogs to get a feel for a dentist’s expertise, areas they’re excited about, or more information to see if a clinic is right for them. So, you’re not capitalizing on an opportunity to build credibility and create trust before a patient even comes into the clinic by not blogging consistently. Blogging also provides an opportunity to provide ongoing clinic updates or highlight new technology or service offerings.

Another area we see lacking information is in Google Business Profiles, and this can be seriously detrimental. Keeping up to date contact information, office hours, and filling out your profile in its entirety shows that you want to be reached by patients and that you care about their experience. Everyone hates trying to get in touch with a business that’s closed when it claims to be open; this is an easy pain point to work around with care and diligence.

1. Pain Point: No hook or new patient promotion. It’s common for clinics to run promotions with discounts or free product offerings for Invisalign or new patient appointments. This will be allowed depending on your governing body, so it’s a tool that should be used with caution, but if you’re seeing other clinics’ ads in your area, it could mean that you’re falling behind the competition. If you don’t want to run an offer, make sure that you have a differentiator that sets you apart from your competition; why should someone choose your clinic out of all of the ones available to them? Don’t be afraid to brag a little (while staying within college guidelines, of course!)
   

3. Wasting Time and Effort on Marketing Without Strategic ROI

While Google, Meta, and other marketing platforms offer helpful advice to get marketing and advertisements in place for your business, they don’t necessarily help you optimize them. If you’re inexperienced in running ads or marketing on these platforms, you might be spending money unnecessarily, or in a way that doesn’t match your goals.

1. Pain Point: Your marketing approach isn’t strategic or cohesive, leaving patients confused about the experience they’re going to get. This is especially an issue when it comes to graphic design. If your branding isn’t the same, or you’re just using whatever Canva templates are available, you’re creating a disjointed experience for potential customers, who might feel that if you’re cutting corners on graphic design, you might be cutting corners elsewhere. Dentistry is a field where people expect a certain level of professionalism, and this certainly applies to your marketing efforts, too. Every piece of content, ad, or post on social media is an opportunity to highlight your values and clarify patient experience.
2. Pain Point: Wasting money “trying” things without knowing what will work or not. It’s tempting to just throw some money at different marketing avenues and see what yields results, but without expertise or strategy, you could just be throwing your dollars out the window. For ad spend, for example, you’ll need a high enough budget for your area to be competitive, and this will vary market to market. Do you know where your target audience spends their time online and how to reach them? When deciding where to place your marketing spend, it’s worth doing the research or trusting a team with this knowledge in place to ensure you’re getting value.
3. Pain Point: You’re unable to get analytics, so you’re assuming something is or isn’t working based on gut feel. Without having data, it’s hard to tell what’s really working or not, since patients rarely share how they found out about you or why they became interested in your clinic. Investing in tools that give proper reporting and analytics will help you determine if the juice is worth the squeeze on your marketing initiatives. While your intuition might tell you what’s working or not, hard data will always reign supreme in understanding where your engagement, or lack thereof, lies.

4. Operational Hurdles

It’s been more and more common to see clinics getting bogged down in administrative tasks and staff turnover, getting too busy to spend any time on marketing. Put the right tools and training in place from the outset, and you can reduce the time needed to maintain your marketing plan.

1. Pain Point: Mismatch between marketing leads and internal operations leads to lost opportunities. What we often see is that ads or marketing funnels seem to be working from our end, but there’s a lack of responsiveness or follow-up from the front desk team, ensuring that leads are contacted quickly. It’s critical to make sure your whole team is “bought in” on marketing initiatives, understanding their role in clinic growth. Furthermore, if you don’t have a dedicated marketing staff member, it’s easy for time to pass without anyone keeping marketing content and copy fresh and up to date.
2. Pain Point: Hiring is an ongoing issue, leaving gaps in who is running your marketing. When clinics try to run their marketing in-house, it can cause some fallout if turnover is high or only one person has the knowledge needed to keep things running. Additionally, we’ve seen lots of clinics struggling to find the right team members to conduct actual appointments. We’ve helped our clients set up a hiring page on their websites to consistently receive resumes and ensure there are no gaps in their team. We also recommend creating a shared knowledge base to prevent misplaced passwords and ensure a smooth workflow.
3. Pain Point: Not knowing how much things “should” cost, so you make budgets without understanding patient value. It’s important to think of your marketing as a business driver; so, where do you want to drive business? What are your high-value service offerings, and how can you find patients that keep coming back? What is the lifetime value of a new patient to you, and how much are you prepared to spend to find them? Thinking in terms of ROI can help make high marketing budgets feel more accurate, once you know what the return value is to you.

5. High Cancellation Rates & Leaky Funnels

When you have multiple marketing campaigns in play, you need to have the time, data, and expertise to see where things are going wrong or right. High cancellation rates typically indicate that your messaging is inaccurate or that potential clients do not understand the value you offer. 

1. Pain Point: Last-minute cancellations limit appointment volume and reduce revenue. This is a critical area to diagnose where things are going wrong; are competitors offering better value or rates? Is something about your booking process confusing? Consider different ways to make your clinic more approachable, provide client support in booking, or even use online booking software to remove barriers.
2. Pain Point: Many practices lack reliable analytics, like call tracking and patient funnel visibility, to accurately diagnose loss points. If you look at your marketing funnel, there are usually many areas to problem solve: not enough leads coming in, phone call and email responsiveness from the front desk team, ads are not compelling enough, etc. Missing out on the data to really understand where things are going wrong makes it harder to make informed and smart decisions about where to put your marketing efforts.

We understand that as a dentist and business owner, you have a lot to manage. When it comes to marketing, it can be helpful to have a trusted partner with the expertise to not only understand marketing in general, but dental marketing specifically. With many roads to success—from marketing automation to ads, social media, and videography —it can be a lot to think about on your own. Reach out to us today if you want to learn more about how we can address your specific pain points, but also support your most important goals. The right marketing strategies can make your day a little easier, and your clinic a little busier, so get the right tools in place today.