The article "I Want to Do the Big Cases!" by Gary M. DeWood, DDS, an Ohio Dentist, in Dental Economics (Nov 2007) is a wonderful self-evaluation piece in which a dentist with big aspirations finds a golden nugget among life’s stony stream: "It’s not about me!" And while this is an important life lesson kin to The Golden Rule, some dentists still want the big cases…don’t you?
Let’s approach hooking the big cases from a marketing perspective. You may have the education, hands-on training, technology, and team to support full-mouth reconstructions and complete smile makeovers, but do your patients know about it? Furthermore, do you potential patients know about it? One of the best modern marketing tools for virtually any business, dentistry included, is a fantastic website. Notice that I did not say a webpage or a so-so website. I said a fantastic website.
Internet marketing is global, so your practice is a minnow in a world that’s 2/3 water. A fantastic website requires more than throwing a few before-and-after photos and a Google map onto your domain. If you want a website that will capture your target market – let’s say that market is 40-year-old professionals who prioritize health and beauty and have the money to pay for cosmetic dentistry – you need a site that:
- Appeals visually to your prospective patients
- Features information and marketing text that is written specifically for your audience
- Is easy – and fun – to navigate; is an adventure in exploring dentistry from a patient’s perspective
- Accurately represents your practice, experience, and capabilities
- MOST IMPORTANTLY…can be found
What makes a site easy to find? Well, without getting into details, it’s the optimization, or SEO, that will bring your site up on Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. Your professional website development company can optimize your site for search engines by composing your original text according to current SEO strategies, formatting it appropriately, and performing the backend work (that you’ll never see) necessary for proper optimization. Because SEO writing and submission guidelines constantly evolve, and because some "black-hat" strategies can get your site banned from the engines, you need professional support for good results. The more competition you have, the more important your SEO strategy. You can gauge your site’s SEO success with reporting features that your website development company can provide.
If you want to focus in on a niche area, like implants or veneers, TNT Dental can optimize your site, then add PowerPages on independent domains to boost your rankings for a particular area of expertise and for your geographic area.
Bottom line, if you wan to become a big fish in the enormous ocean that is the World Wide Web, you need professional help. Successful marketing for the big cases is not impossible, but you can’t do it alone. Call in the fishermen to do the hard work for you.