Blog

You’ve long since established a website for your dental practice, and it does everything you need it to do. It introduces you to potential patients, showcases your skills and the procedures you offer, has your location and contact information, and has a blog and social media component.

You’re good to go, right?

Yes – and no.

Your site does what it needs to do, but is it producing results? Is it generating interest in your practice? Is that interest, measured by site traffic, bringing in new patients?

If the answer to either of these questions is no (or “I don’t know”), then it may be time to upgrade your site.

There are certain things that visitors expect from your website. Its appearance should be up-to-date. It should be easy to navigate. And perhaps most important, it should be mobile-friendly.

• Appearance. Your site doesn’t need to be ground-breaking or trend-setting, but it should be modern. To put it plainly, if it looks old or outdated, visitors will assume that it is. An up-to-date appearance will gain their confidence.
• Easy to navigate. Visitors should be able to see, at a glance, how they can find the information they seek. You’ve got a grace period of about five seconds. If visitors are unable to figure out where they need to go in that brief period, they’re going to lose interest and leave.
• Mobile-friendly. People visit websites using everything from desktop computers to smart phones. As we have stressed before on this blog, the trend toward mobile is growing steadily, so your dental practice site has to look good and function properly on mobile devices. (It’s a strategy called mobile first.) If you haven’t designed your site for mobile devices, put that at very the top of your to-do list.

Content

Your website may meet all the above criteria. But is its content effective? If your site isn’t generating enough interest in your practice – too few leads, in marketing terms – improving its content with rewritten copy is often enough to correct that. In particular, better calls to action can address this issue. Get visitors to ask a question or make an appointment.

Are you giving it fresh content on a regular basis? This is a must. Search engines love fresh content. Fresh content, like a regularly updated blog, attracts them. Your site will be crawled and indexed more frequently, which helps to improve your search ranking.

Search engines may love fresh content, but your website, at least ostensibly, is meant for users. And guess what? Users love new content, too. It keeps them coming back. And the more they come back, the more likely they are to convert from site visitors to new patients, and the more likely they are to recommend your site – and your practice – to friends and family.

None of this is easy, but you don’t have to figure it all out yourself. ProspectaMarketing is an Internet marketing firm that helps dental practices reach their audience. We use the tools of Internet search marketing to reach key prospects looking for what your practice has to offer. Our unique and thorough approach provides visibility, financial accountability, and ongoing refinement and improvement. You can find out more by contacting Lane Anderson toll-free at 1-877-322-4440 Ext 101, by email using the form on our Contact Us page, or online at ProspectaMarketing.com.

Google is pulling the plug on its Google+ social networking site. Citing what it called significant challenges to maintaining it, the company announced it will phase out Google+ over a ten month period, beginning immediately.

“While our engineering teams have put a lot of effort and dedication into building Google+ over the years, it has not achieved broad consumer or developer adoption, and has seen limited user interaction with apps,” Google said in an October 8th statement. “The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds.”

The phase-out is expected to be completed by August 2019.

ProspectaMarketing, a firm specializing in marketing dental practices on the Internet, has not managed Google+ pages in several years. Instead we actively manage Google My Business accounts for our clients, so that patients can more easily find their practices on the Internet. Google+ links remain on some client websites, but we are removing them.

Google’s announcement came on the heels of a reported security breach affecting up to half a million Google+ accounts. Although it just became public knowledge, Google discovered the breach early this year.

Google attributes the breach to a software glitch, and said it gave unauthorized third-party access to users’ private profile data, including names and email addresses.That unauthorized access lasted from 2015 until March 2018, when it was discovered and corrected, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal also reported that Google chose not to make the security breach public, “in part because of fears that doing so would draw regulatory scrutiny and cause reputational damage.”

Google launched Google+ in 2011 in an effort to make inroads in the expanding social networking market. “We aren’t trying to replace what’s currently available,” a company spokesman said at the time. “We just want to introduce a new way to connect online with the people that matter to you.” Though it underwent several changes, Google+ never really caught on, and is viewed by many as a major flop.

•

ProspectaMarketing helps dental practices reach their audience. We use the tools of Internet search marketing to reach key prospects looking for what your practice has to offer. Our unique and thorough approach provides visibility, financial accountability, and ongoing refinement and improvement. You can find out more by contacting Lane Anderson toll-free at 1-877-322-4440 Ext 101, by email using the form on our Contact Us page, or online at ProspectaMarketing.com.

You’ve seen them before: you’re browsing a website and a little box pops up, asking whether you’d like to chat with a representative. And just like that, you’re able to interact with a business.

Chat features are emerging as an unbeatable way for dental practices to interact, in real time, with patients and would-be patients. Live chat applications work directly on your website, so site visitors don’t have to interrupt their browsing to ask questions. They get the answers they’re looking for. quickly and efficiently.

It’s the instantaneous nature of chat that makes it so appealing. Your site visitors don’t need to take out their cell phones to call your office. They don’t need to look at an FAQ that might not answer their question. And they don’t need to fill out any forms, which usually means leaving personal details, and then wait for you to get back  to them.

Live chat on websites isn’t all that new, but its value is increasing. Research shows that having live chat on a website is important to forty-four percent of site visitors. That number is likely to grow.

Like any other customer support tool, live chat requires a human workforce. But chat operators are able to carrying on several patient interactions at once, by switching between windows on their computer screens. That means it takes fewer people to run the process, which in turn means reduced costs. To sweeten the deal even more, live chats don’t take the same investment in equipment and special toll-free numbers that telephone systems do.

But it’s the rapid response time that is live chat’s most compelling feature. People just don’t want to wait anymore. Research shows that taking even fifteen minutes to respond to an inquiry means losing a potential lead. They’ll go back to Google and click on the next search result.

Live chat enables you to engage with new patients faster and more directly, and in real time, than ever before. They’ll find out whether you provide a particular service or procedure, or the availability of appointments.

ProspectaMarketing specializes in marketing dental practices on the Internet, and can help your practice reach its audience. We use the tools of Internet search marketing to reach key prospects looking for what your practice has to offer. Our unique and thorough approach provides visibility, financial accountability, and ongoing refinement and improvement. You can find out more by contacting Lane Anderson toll-free at 1-877-322-4440 Ext 101, by email using the form on our Contact Us page, or online at ProspectaMarketing.com.

Your dental website is your most potent tool for promoting your practice: it’s where patients and would-be patients find out about you and the services you provide, and perhaps most importantly, your office hours and location.

As we have described elsewhere, video remains the most popular type of content on the Internet, and is a huge factor in local search success. It is something you should take advantage of, and by using the smartphone you probably have in your pocket right now, you can create professional-quality videos and share them on your website.

What sort of videos, you may wonder? As a trained dentist, you can start by drawing on your own expertise. Your site visitors would love to hear your thoughts on topics in dentistry, from simple subjects like checkups, to popular procedures like teeth whitening. You might create a Q&A with questions drawn from real patients, or create a video centered on your dental team.

What you don’t want to do, however, is share poorly-made video. They don’t have to be perfect, but by learning a few simple techniques, you can make quality, effective videos that work to your advantage.

Good lighting. This is essential. You don’t need to invest in expensive equipment, but try to always shoot in brightly lit areas. The resulting video will be crisp and clean.

Stay horizontal. Turn your phone sideways, in what the pros call “landscape” orientation. When you play back the video it will fill the screen, and give it a professional look.

Get close. Don’t be afraid to move close to your subject. (The subject might be you, so remind your videographer!) Image quality will be improved, focus will be better, and – again – your videos will have a quality, professional look.

Be steady. It’s hard to hold any camera steady, and smartphones are no exception. But shaky video detracts from the content, and looks amateur. Use a tripod or some other stabilizing device.

Edit. Some people are satisfied to put “raw” video clips on their sites, and there is nothing wrong with that. But you may do multiple takes, and only one will be right. Simple editing software allows you to trim out any rough edges. There are plenty of inexpensive video editing smartphone apps.

Remember, eighty-five percent of Internet users in the United States watch videos online, and it makes up one-third of all Internet activity. By incorporating simple but informative and well-made videos on your dental practice website, you boost your chances of reaching many more potential patients.

ProspectaMarketing uses the tools of Internet search marketing to reach key prospects looking for what your practice has to offer. We bring a unique and thorough approach that provides visibility, financial accountability and ongoing refinement and improvement. You can find out more by contacting Lane Anderson toll-free at 1-877-322-4440 Ext 101, by email using the form on our Contact Us page, or online at ProspectaMarketing.com.