We are proud to announce that PBHS President, Jay Levine, has been featured in the October/November issue of Doctor of Dentistry magazine. The article is one of the cover stories titled “Connect With Your Patient Base”. Here’s the full story…
In the age of high-speed Internet connections, abundant blogs and overwhelming interconnectivity, most businesses and dental practices maintain a website, which some consider the most powerful and accessible marketing tool. Where does your dental practice fall in the spectrum of website effectiveness?
From lowering patient wait time to streamlining registration operations, a website can offer as little or as much information as you desire to provide. But while a well-executed site can improve your brand and practice success, a website lacking details, current information and appropriate design has the potential to damage your practice. Utilize your options to make a lasting first impression on patients.
Site Essentials
Consider some of your favorite websites and what makes them appealing. Is it the easy-to-navigate layout, the compelling images or well-placed blurbs of information that pull you in? For dental practice websites, incorporating some basic information makes your business easy to identify and contact. These may include:
• business hours
• contact information
• direction
• location
• mission or philosophy
• profiles of dental professionals
“Two Significant aspects of building and maintaining a successful dental website are education and communication,” says Jay Levine, president of PBHS Inc., a provider of dental and dental specialty websites in Santa Rosa, CA. “Your website can position you first as the expert on a variety of dental issues and secondly as the premier practice within your community.”
Streamlined Success
Some patients may seek out a website, yet a complicated maze of click-throughs and broken links leaves them with unanswered questions. To prevent this, streamline design and employ functionalities to make workflow more simplified. Consider how many consumers use the internet for researching products, and apply those habits to how you intend patients to use your site. Within the ever-changing world of Web technology, more patient processes and pre-appointment paperwork can be filled out online – and still be compliant with HIPAA. This minimizes time spent completing paperwork prior to an appointment. Including online registration, links to web resources, patient tracking and feedback increases patient satisfaction.
Seeking Services
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a common term among website developers and marketing practices. Using SEO practices better positions your website to rank higher on search engines when potential patients enter certain words or terms, like “dental implants South Jersey,” for example, into a service such as Google or Yahoo.
“The way educational information is stated within a site directly influences the recognition of that site by most search engines,” says Levine. “Contact is king when search engines crawl your site. The goal is to promote content that is relevant to who you are and where you are – on a procedure-by-procedure basis.”
Complete Network Capabilities
As social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace increase in popularity among a wider age range, the principle of grassroots marketing in reinvented. Patients show their support of businesses through news feeds and relevant links.
“Facebook business profiles build brand awareness among existing and potential patients,” says Levine. “The creation of localized niche advertising within the Facebook network enables pin-point accuracy in targeting select markets. These ads have the unique ability to focus on audiences based on demographics such as age, gender, location, occupation, education and relationship status. Never before has it been possible to target such specific audiences on a broad platform.
Complete Package
As with all traditional marketing strategies, maintaining a similar tone and design throughout your website is essential to communicate your message to patients, whether it’s a message of secure services or topnotch care.
“The Internet is such a valuable resources for dentists and their practices,” says Levine. “A well-executed site will not only promote the practice, but it will facilitate treatment planning, help increase case acceptance, facilitate workflow and make a practice more productive.”