Marketing your dental practice using online local classifieds can be a very productive way of spending your marketing time and energy. Usually these routes are free of charge so you don’t worry about throwing more money at advertising. Typically the average Internet user who looks up classifieds is looking for some sort of discount. So it’s a perfect opportunity for you to advertise free teeth whitening, free consultations etc. Online local classifieds are and have been a great tool for local marketing for many years now. Generally speaking, dental practices have not yet adopted this concept. Which gives you, the reader of this article much advantage over your competition by doing so. Every state or area has it’s own local online classifieds website that is popular. For example, here in Utah it’s KSL.com which is the website for one of the local news stations.

It will be up to you or a professional who is helping you to find out what that website is that is currently getting all of the traffic for your area. You can contact me if you need more information regarding what that website may be in your area by leaving a comment to this article.

There is one thing you can almost guarantee with online local classifieds. Almost all of the searchers are local people! That means that they are all people within “striking” distance of your dental office. You can also see what your competition is up to. If you don’t see them advertising on the local classifieds, you know that you have tapped a resource that they have not thought of yet. Which gives you a wonderful advantage. If they are already advertising on this spot, you can see what they are up to and what offers they are offering. Remember, online classified ads are also crawled by the search engines giving you twice the opportunity for your ad to be seen.

There are some important tips that I wanted to give you concerning the writing of your dental online local classified ad. They are as follows:

• Write an eye catching title to your ad - Make sure to write a title that you feel will best attract your local customer. For example… “Free Teeth Whitening at Fairfield Family Dental”
• Include A Link To Your Practice Website - Instead of having to deliver all important information pertaining to your practice in one little ad, just link to your website (which should include all helpful information for the potential patient)
• Clearly State Your Offer - Be clear and simple in stating your offer. Whether it be free teeth whitening, free consultations or whatever. Make sure you clearly state what the offer is and that you can actually deliver it.
• Post A Testimonial - Give your potential patient the opportunity to see what others are saying about your practice and about your work. You will be surprised how effective this tactic is.
• Image of Practice Logo - Post with your ad if you can an image of your practice logo. This has a branding effect on the viewers and portrays to them your value above all other related ads.
• Phone Number & Address of Practice - this is critical to your success with your online classified ad. Make it simple and easy for people to contact you and to find your practice.

Good luck with your classified ads. If you need any further advice or help you can ask us. Patientdocs.com MedeRank services help Dentists with their online classified ads as well as with many other aspects of dental internet marketing.

Social Networking is a huge phenomenon that has taken itself widespread throughout the Internet. It seems as though almost everyone has either a Myspace or Facebook account, and uses it regularly. Specific industries are taking advantage of this concept as well. You can find industry specific social networks all over the internet. But why are we not hearing more about this in our very own Dental Industry?  We should not be left behind. Dentists need to be able to advertise themselves as well as their practice. Each dentist has marketability individually, even without a dental practice. There is no better way to market an Individual online than through social networking.

Dentists should not be left behind in this momentum that is taking place with Internet marketing. If you are a dentist, go to Facebook.com, Linkedin.com and any other social network of your choice and create an account. Upload photos, share your profile etc. Advertise yourself as  a “Doctor” and you will find your online reputation grow. Your practice website traffic will increase and thus, generating more new patients to your office. If you don’t know where to get started, leave a comment to this article with your questions and I personally will help you get started.

Recently on The Wealthy Dentist Blog, Melinda Spitek spoke about the importance of marketing for the dental practice especially during the “slow” times. She covered several good points including the “essentials of practice marketing” which were stated as following:

• Ask for a referral, in person, with every appointment
• Reward patients who refer you a new patient
• Quarterly practice communication—newsletter or letter to your patients
• Professionally created “welcome packet”
• Printed stationery and thank you cards
• Consider newspaper, magazine, radio advertising
• Direct-mail prospecting service.

This is great information provided by Melinda and I hope that all Dentist Practices understand this information. The only problem is that it fails to include one of the most vital essentials of marketing. And that’s Internet Marketing! How could she so easily forget? When we are talking about “slow times” nothing is better than a website for your practice. Especially because it’s more cost effective than print and radio ads. Melinda Spitek, don’t forget next time!

More great results coming from our Dental SEO program.  Horizon Dental of  Taylorsville, another member of the Horizon Dental group now has top rank placement on google for the term “taylorsville dentist”. See for yourself:

This is working out great for the actual practice in bringing in new patients every month. The beautiful thing about this is that it’s what we call an “Organic” listing. Unlike pay per click ads, we don’t have to pay for this listing on Google. If you are interested in our Dental SEO program click here - Dental SEO. We can help any dental practice get more patients with our Dental Search Engine Marketing approach.

I’m proud to announce that our dental search engine efforts have benefited Horizon Dental of Payson. They are currently the very top listing when you do a Google search for the most important term in their market, “Payson Dentist”. See the image below for yourself:

This has been fantastic news for Horizon Dental of Payson. It has given them a marketing advantage over their competitors that they are proud of. Now, whenever someone does a search for Payson Dentist they are naturally going to find themselves navigating to the Horizon Dental of Payson website due to it’s wonderful search engine position.

We have officially this week begun to use StumbleUpon actively in all of our dental search engine optimization efforts. This has been done in a new attempt to strengthen our already strong existing Dental SEO package that we provide to all of our dentists. For those of you who are new to StumbleUpon, it’s a social bookmarking site that allows you to rate, comment, and share websites. By hitting the “stumbleupon” button on your toolbar they give you when you sign up you are taken to random websites. You can then give those sites a thumbs up or thumbs down depending on whether or not you liked the site.

This provides a perfect opportunity for dentists to be found on the internet. That is why Patientdocs.com has decided to join forces with stumbleupon to help strengthen it’s dental search engine optimization package and help dentists drive more traffic to their dental office.  You can go to the services page on patientdocs.com to learn more about our Dental SEO plan.

I came across an interesting blog article today on lauralake.com about online marketing and dentists. She highlighted some interesting points about online marketing vs. yellow page advertisements. Her input and point of view is very interesting. Here is what she said…

“Dentist use to spend most of their marketing budget in yellow pages advertisements. A large percentage of them are now allocating a certain percentage to online advertising.

Recently I was in need of a dentist in the Overland Park area, so I began my search. Of course I used the search engines, I refuse to crack open the yellow pages. Truthfully yellow page phone books seem archaic to me. I realize that some people still use them, but I believe that percentage shrinks everyday. After all the yellow-pages are published once a year - how up to date can they be?

After a quick search I found a dentist in the area - that catered to those that have a fear of the dentist and want the “perfect smile.” While I wouldn’t say their website was the most aesthetic pleasing it was informative and gave me enough information to book my appointment.

Long story short, if you are a dentist and you are not advertising online, I wonder how many of your potential patients are going elsewhere. Perhaps it’s time to consider placing some of your budget in online advertising. Consider this over 4000 search queries are preformed for dentist every 90 days - that’s a lot of potential patients..”

The reason why this information is so valuable is because it comes from a Patient Perspective rather than someone who’s actually in the dental industry. This woman searched for a dentist in a search engine and found a dentist in her area, and actually booked an appointment with that dentist. She gave an interesting stat that 4000 search queries are done on search engines for dentists every 90 days. I wonder where she is pulling that information from? Even if it’s a close estimate, that is a lot of queries. Something that every dentist office should capitalize on.  To read more of this article and comments about the article click here.

P.J. Lloyd is the CEO of Site Revamp Corporation and writes in his blog for his company often. Site Revamp is a web design and development company that specializes in search engine optimization and internet marketing solutions. P.J. recently wrote a very interesting article titled “Yellow Pages vs. Search Engines” in their blog. The article focused on specific statistics and facts regarding Internet usage against yellow page usage. The following are some excerpts from this well written article…

“According to Jupiter Media, over 64% of people looking for information online, use search engines. If I can type what I want into a search engine and find what I need, I don’t need to go through the 100 pages of ads in the Yellow Pages. Search Engines are getting more precise down to an industry specialty and geographic focus, while also continuing to be easier to use.

I’m not sure about you, but as a business owner, the last thing I would do is give my prospects a list of my competitors. The Yellow Pages does just that. Using search engines, you can differentiate yourself from everyone else. Given that your site is optimized, when the ideal client is looking for what you do, they find you, not your competitors.

And did you know that as far back as February 2004, The Kelsey Group and Bizrate. Com found that 64% of Internet users who make purchases online prefer search engines to conventional Yellow Pages. Go figure.

he Yellow Pages Integrated Media Association commissioned a study finding that the printed Yellow Pages have seen usage decline from 2.0 average weekly lookups per person in the mid 1990s to 1.4 average weekly lookups in 2003. However, the economics of publishing printed Yellow Pages remains incredibly strong, so even with decreasing usage; the books continue to appeal to advertisers at maximized ad rates. With more research validating Search Engine Optimization and benefits, listen for the ripping of those Yellow Pages rate cards.

Bottom line: Realize that yellow page books and yellow page online directories do not differentiate you from everyone else. Make sure your site tells what you do, where you are located and invites the client to take action with your firm. Welcome to search, the killer application that is leapfrogging the current directory model. Search is the future: the question is - are you are going to be a player or a spectator? Good Selling!”

You can read more of this article by clicking here. I found his lists of statistics and information very appealing and interesting. It’s obvious that the Internet is a much more effective and cost efficient means of advertising for the Dental Industry, and for all industries for that matter.

Last post we talked about stats from Pew Internet Stats concerning email among internet users. We are planning on writing several posts regarding the stats that we have received. Like last time we reported that 71% percent of American adults claim they use the Internet. That is a “majority” of Americans.

In a study taken in February and March of this year, out of that 71% of internet users, 91% said they use a Search Engine to find information. This number shows us that along with email, search engines are critical tools for the everyday internet user. They are almost as mandatory as the Internet itself. With this being said, how does that apply to a dental practice?

Dentists need to stop focusing so much on print ads such as the yellowpages and start focusing on organic search engine optimization. The dentists who decide to do this now will get ahead of their competition and it will pay off in the long run.