Opening a new dental practice can be extremely stressful, especially when it comes to getting new patients through the doors. A lot of people will visit their dental practice sporadically and not have a particular one that they stay loyal to. However, the patients who really care about the condition of their teeth are more likely to take their oral hygiene seriously by attending regular check-ups and taking advantage of other more advanced treatments that can help restore or preserve peoples’ smiles. Having a patient attraction system in place from the moment you open your practice is vital if you hope to attract a substantial amount of new patients, but there are several other things that you can do to ensure that your patients stay loyal and tell all their friends and family about you too.
What do you need to consider when attracting new patients?
When it comes to reaching potential future patients online, there is more than one thing that you need to take into consideration. It is incredibly important to showcase your abilities and achievements on your website as a practice to show new patients that you are reliable and that you have the treatments that they are searching for. However, it is also important to consider what features are likely to attract your future patients in the first place, besides your dental capabilities. In the modern day people are incredibly technical and incredibly busy, spending a lot of time on their smartphone, which is where they find out all of their information. A majority of people use mobile devices to search the internet, so having a mobile friendly website will increase your chances of keeping people on your website once they arrive, as they do not have to awkwardly pinch their screen so they can enlarge your website’s incredibly tiny text or need to slide to the left to read the rest of their sentence.
Another thing to take into consideration is your website’s loading speeds, how easy it is to get in touch with you, and most importantly you need to consider your position within Google’s results. A large portion of internet searchers do not scroll past the first few results that Google provides, and almost nobody ever looks past page one. This means that if you do not make it into the top few results, you may not see a large increase in the amount of web traffic that you are receiving.
Engage with your patients and keep them interested
Knowing what your patients want is vital. Communicating with them regularly is important too, as this makes them feel valued as your patients and kept up to date with what is going on in their dental practice. Alerting your patients of the latest treatment that is available in your practice or if you have an offer on via social media will make them more likely to take advantage of this benefit than if you are only advertising to patients who are already in your practice for an appointment. Having a social media account on different platforms will enable you to reach a wider range of people and you will also be able to keep people up to date with your professional blog.
