Archive for the ‘Dental Internet Marketing’ Category
Add Pages to Boost Rank in Surrounding Cities
February 22nd, 2012
Posted in Dental Internet Marketing, New SEO Pages, Online Marketing, SEO
A primary goal for any dental practice’s online marketing strategy is to be found easily on search engines. This involves more than initial site optimization; in order to continually increase in ranking for desired keywords, and to avoid being knocked down a few spots by competition, it is essential that Roadside implement a long-term SEO maintenance plan based on your needs and goals. Your Account Manager may recommend adding New Pages to your marketing plan; here’s an explanation of why they’re such a valuable tool.
You may be ranking well in the search engines in your own city. What about the cities and towns surrounding your dental practice? Especially if your primary city is on the small side, adding pages to go after surrounding cities can be instrumental in increasing your online presence.
Both Dr. Stephen Bjorklund of Wayzata, MN and Dr. Karla Bloomquist of Gig Harbor, WA have taken advantage of new SEO pages, to increase search engine rankings in outside cities. Think of your SEO like a spider web, with your home city in the middle. We have found that beyond the primary city and perhaps a secondary city, new pages are the best and easiest way to branch out your SEO.
Referred to as:
- New SEO Pages
- Cases by Places
- Patient Spotlight
These pages all do the same thing – feature patients who come from surrounding cities, highlighting actual dental work. For destination services such as dental implants, porcelain veneers, or full mouth rehabilitation (just to name a few!), a new page can naturally pair a dental keyword with a new target city.
How does it work? Dr. Bloomquist has several patients who have come to her from outside of Gig Harbor. Each page in her Patient Spotlight (in the Portfolio) section, includes the service performed:
- porcelain veneers
- smile design
- …etc.
The page also includes the city where the patient is from:
- Renton, WA
- Tacoma, WA
- …and so on.
It is our philosophy to add one keyword phrase (ie, Tacoma porcelain veneers) per page, while also showcasing the doctor’s exquisite dental work. These new pages can serve two roles – 1) boosting SEO traction in new cities, and 2) portraying the expertise of the doctor to potential patients.
Want to hear more? Contact your Account Manager today and ask about the three contract options available to add new pages to your site. We hope to hear from you soon!
Social Media: Why It Can’t Be Ignored
February 20th, 2012
Posted in Blogging & Social Media, Dental Internet Marketing, Online Marketing, Research and Trends
If you are a dentist or dental professional, and have not yet implemented the effective use of social media to build and fortify your practice, we at Roadside Multimedia aim to win you over! In today’s blog post, we are going to return to the basics, and explain how social media has shaped modern commerce in a way that makes your office Facebook page nearly as important as your autoclave, your highspeed handpiece, or even your personal protective equipment.
As your dental marketing experts, we at can’t emphasize enough the importance of including social media in your marketing strategy. Here’s why:
- Winning your share of internet traffic (get social to get found). Internet queries have become the preferred method of consumers looking to be matched with local business, like yours. At Roadside Multimedia, we engineer gorgeous dental websites and build solid SEO strategies designed with internet search in mind. Social Media sites are being indexed by Google and other search engines and are given increased relevance in the search rankings. As a result, being social equates to being found online!
- Social media is here to stay. A recent study by ComScore (summarized here), states that social media is now the most popular online activity in the world. Interestingly, the 15-24 age group who’ve grown up with the internet, now use social media as their preferred form of communication (more than email or mobile devices). But it’s not just young folks spending their time on social sites like Facebook. In fact, the 55+ crowd is the fastest growing social group. At Roadside Multimedia, we’re convinced that social media is here to stay, and you need to be a part of it!
- Let’s talk about patient retention. You’ll likely agree that one of the cornerstones of a successful practice involves building lasting relationships with your patients, ensuring that they’ll keep coming back through the years. Have you considered the advantages of connecting with your clientele on a personal level in between their visits? Facebook (for one example) allows you to do just that. And, with a staggering 800 million active users, who spend an average of 20 minutes per session perusing posts, you can be sure that a huge portion of your patients are avid Facebook users.
- You + social media = providing a valuable service. It’s what you chose to do for a living; keeping others healthy, easing pain, and improving lives. The preventive, restorative, and cosmetic procedures you offer do just that, but one of the most important services you dole out involves educating your clientele. Once again, social media provides a platform for you to transmit helpful knowledge to your patients and others – en masse – thus providing a service of real value.
The fact of the matter is; it’s no longer an option. In order for your small business to remain competitive, it is imperative for your practice to actively participate in the world of social media. Getting you set up to succeed is our specialty at Roadside Multimedia. But to really make those all-important personal connections (what social media is all about), thus experiencing the full measure of success that can be derived from social sites, it is important that internet users experience your voice, or the collective voice of your dental practice.
Why wait another minute? Contact your dental social media marketing experts at Roadside Multimedia to get started!
Your New Website Has Launched—Congratulations! Now what?
February 8th, 2012
Posted in Dental Internet Marketing
Recently, you signed up with Roadside to have a new, beautiful, and effective website created for your practice. After working with your project manager, your brand new website is about to launch. You’ve been waiting for this moment for weeks, maybe months. All your hard work collecting assets, scheduling photo shoots, proofing content, even giving design direction has all paid off and you now have a beautiful new website to show for it. So what’s the next step? Let your patients know!
Spreading the word that your practice has a new website has never been easier. Roadside can create an HTML email blast announcing the launch and various important features of your website!
Use the content we’ve already created, or submit your own text. Then let us brand the email with your logo, color scheme, and textures to match your new site.
We can supply you with the HTML files and you can send it to your email list for only $250.00. Or, we can do it all the designing and send the email to your patient list for $325.00!
Informing patients of a new website has several benefits:
- It will increase traffic to your website, therefore helping boost rankings
- Patients are likely to help you spread the news by telling their friends or family members
- It should increase traffic and encourage interaction on your social media accounts
- It can remind delinquent patients to schedule an appointment
- It shows patients you are on the cutting-edge of technology and customer service
- It gives patients a reference so they know where to find important forms and necessary information
Launch announcements email blasts are available to any client who has had or is going to have a new Roadside site launched. It’s never too late to give your patients good news!
Contact your Project Manager (Amanda or Amy) to get started today!
Video Marketing: Is It Really Necessary?
February 7th, 2012
Posted in Dental Internet Marketing, Dental Link Building, Dental Video Marketing, Online Marketing
Having video on your site used to be an extravagant extra that did not make it past the wish list for most companies. The cost and time involved put it out of reach for small businesses looking to stretch their marketing dollars. My, oh my, how times have changed! With advances in technology, there are many types of videos that can be made available to Roadside’s clients for a very reasonable cost and with a quick production turn-around. Additionally, videos can be featured through multiple marketing avenues, which make them more of a necessity than an extra in today’s online marketing world!
Videos benefit your marketing in several ways.
Videos allow patients to get a “preview” of you, your office, and your staff, helping them to make a decision to pick up the phone and to form a connection before they even walk in the door. A video introduction can do a lot to ease a nervous patient’s fears and help them get to know you before their visit. A video gives you a great avenue to build relationships with potential patients before you even meet them – think of it as your ability to have one-on-one consultations with patients 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!
Videos can also be used to market your practice through multiple avenues, including YouTube, Google Local, Facebook, Twitter, and many other sites that cater to videos specific to your industry. Additionally, search engines index properly optimized videos, opening yet another avenue for potential clients to discover your practice. With videos being as accessible and popular as they are today in online marketing, your business could be left behind without this valuable asset.
Video: Give your practice the gift that keeps on giving!
When you have video, and it is optimized correctly across the web, this provides many high quality links back to your website. Linking is still 42% of how search engines rank your site so this is a very important point. Since there are so many options for posting your video on professional sites, one video can provide multiple linking opportunities. Additionally, videos submitted to your profile on Google places is a huge asset and improves rankings across the board in most cases. Videos on your social sites engage your fans, increase credibility, and help them make the decision to pick up the phone and call.
A great tool to help a dental practice get started with video marketing is an Animated Media Presentation (AMP). AMPs contain photos and taglines set to music in an aesthetically pleasing way, designed to introduce prospective patients to your practice, your philosophy, or a new service. Roadside Multimedia’s AMPs are carefully crafted to stir the viewer to action, driving viewers to pick up the phone and make an appointment. AMPs can be featured on your website and also on YouTube, Facebook, and other sites, where they reach a larger audience, provide linking opportunities, and contribute greatly to your SEO rankings.
Check out some examples of Roadside Multimedia’s AMPs:
Because we believe it is vitally important that every dental practice uses video in its marketing efforts, we’re offering a special on AMPs through the month of February – this is an outstanding opportunity to start your video marketing efforts! The retail price for an AMP is $700.00, however, if you order an AMP before March 1, 2012, we’ll take $200.00 off, making this valuable tool only $500.00! This is a steal that you don’t want to miss!
Contact Roadside’s team today if you’d like more information or if you’d like to place your order. Call us at (360) 658-2626 or email us at team@roadsidemultimedia.com.
Market Your Expertise! The Dental Professional’s Guide to Q&A Websites
January 31st, 2012
Posted in Dental Internet Marketing, Dental Link Building, Online Marketing, SEO
If you are a dental professional who understands the impact that a successful internet marketing campaign can potentially have on your bottom line, no doubt you are looking for every possible avenue to enhance your exposure on the web. Well, at Roadside Multimedia, we’re here to help!
Time and again, we’ve extolled the advantages of sharing your dental expertise in blog posts and social updates, as a way to gain credibility and convert web users into new patients. Another area that you might consider, however, is the Q&A site. Websites like Yahoo! Answers, or Ask afford persons with real expertise in their field the opportunity to share that knowledge in a meaningful way, with individuals who are in need of such help! While you’re not likely to experience any tidal-wave-like influx of new patients after adding Q&A sites to your marketing strategy, doing so can nonetheless help to build your status as an authority online, possibly build a few external links, and round out an already formidable web presence.
When it comes to using Q&A sites to answer questions, among the simplest and most effective may be Yahoo! Answers. Simply create an account by registering, click through “Browse Open Questions,” then follow the links to the category that best describes your expertise (for most of our readers, this will be “Health,” then “Dental”). You may be surprised by the multitude of questions you’ll encounter! But who better to provide helpful, meaningful answers than someone with your training and experience?
Here are a few tips from your dental marketing experts at Roadside Multimedia:
- Be genuine. Answer questions in the Q&A forum exactly as you would face-to-face with a patient sitting in your own chair. Be kind and helpful, rather than serving up a canned advertisement for your practice.
- Be picky. As mentioned above, you will likely find many hundreds of questions in your field of expertise awaiting an answer. Instead of attempting to answer a great many, focus on providing very high-quality answers to just a handful. Doing so will ensure that your presence on the forum doesn’t become a nuisance.
- Be smart. Market your practice without abusing the intended purpose of the Q&A site. When the opportunity arises, you may give a frank answer to an open question, and then invite the reader to get a fuller understanding by providing a link to your blog or website. By doing this, you’ll provide the user with the opportunity to learn more about his/her question, and you’ll also boost your linking power and overall SEO.
- Be courteous. After providing an answer, sign off graciously: “Warm Regards, Dr. Smith.” Many of the questions relate to upcoming dental work, (i.e. “I have a crown appointment next week, and I’m scared. Is it gonna hurt?”), and the posters would no doubt love to hear the feedback of an actual dental professional such as yourself!
We hope this gives you a good jump-start to adding Q&A websites to your marketing strategy. If you have any questions, or for more information on how Roadside Multimedia provides expert marketing for dentists, contact us today!
New FastTrak Site Launch: issaquahmoderndentistry.com
January 27th, 2012
Posted in Conversion, Dental Internet Marketing, FastTrak Dental Websites, New Site Launch
We are very excited to announce the launch of one of our first FastTrak dental websites! Dr. Eric Jorgensen and his wife, Rose, worked enthusiastically to help us make the most beautiful site for their practice: Modern Family Dentistry of Issaquah. Dr. Jorgensen and Rose carefully selected each photo for their site to strike an emotional chord with prospective patients and to encourage them to want to learn more. They wanted their patients to relate easily with the stock images they selected and eventually, they plan to use actual patient photos throughout their site.
Dr. Jorgensen chose the FastTrak design “Traveler.” Traveler is a very beautiful template option because of the large welcome movie and the soft background textures. Another great thing about this template is the scrolling call to action bar. On every page there is a contact us button, but additionally, at the top of every page there is a bar that scrolls with you so the phone number and social media are always available to a potential patient. This makes it extremely easy for a new patient to contact their office if they want to make an appointment.
Prior to working with Roadside, they had an old site with another company, but it did not have a very strong online presence. The area they serve is highly competitive, and understanding that they needed better visibility on search engines, they came to Roadside seeking assistance. Our marketing team came up with a plan of action designed specifically for Dr. Jorgensen, strategically considering their target market and their specific needs. We are positive that our monthly work on their behalf will greatly help them attract new patients!
Introducing: FastTrak Dental Websites!
January 26th, 2012
Posted in Dental Internet Marketing, FastTrak Dental Websites
A strong online presence is vital to any business, and dental practices are no exception! While custom HTML magazine-style websites are a great option for many practices, we have seen the need to offer additional options for those who may not be in the market for a fully custom website. To meet that need, we are thrilled to introduce a new collection of HTML FastTrak dental websites! Our FastTrak websites have been uniquely designed to fit the budget and style of a wide variety of practices in the dental field, including general dentists, children’s dental offices, and specialists.
Any of Roadside’s FastTrak dental website designs can be customized using your logo, actual patient photos, and dynamic optimized content. These components fit together seamlessly to make your new dental website a marketing powerhouse! The designs have been specially created to be developed efficiently; once we have your content, a FastTrak dental website can be built and launched in a matter of days!
In creating our FastTrak designs, the team has combined our experience creating beautiful custom dental websites with our knowledge and understanding of the dental field. The results are powerful conversion and marketing tools for our clients! The goal of every FastTrak website is to convert online viewers into new patients, so strong calls to action and prominent contact information are key components in every FastTrak dental web design. Additionally, clear and easy to use navigation makes the sites extremely user-friendly. While these sites offer fewer customization options than a fully custom website, they have no limitations when it comes to online marketing. A FastTrak design can be enhanced greatly by SEO optimization, ongoing monthly maintenance, and integration with social media and blogging.
We are proud to offer eight stunning designs, each with unique features and benefits. Check out all eight designs in our FastTrak portfolio: www.roadsidemultimedia.com/fasttrak.
FastTrak websites start at $2500 and are a budget-friendly option for a wide variety of practices. To save even more, take advantage of our February special – $500 off any FastTrak website! This is a steal that you do not want to miss – hurry, offer ends February 15, 2012.
Interested in learning more? Contact us today at team@roadsidemultimedia.com!
New Roadside Site Launch: vaildentistry.com
January 24th, 2012
Posted in Dental Internet Marketing, New Site Launch, Roadside Clients, Roadside News
Upgrading Dr. Jonathan Haerter’s simple flash site to a stylish and functional HTML site was a no-brainer—Dr. Haerter’s old site just didn’t do his practice the justice it deserved! With a new logo, new office photos, and plenty of new special offers to showcase, we had a ball designing and building a new site for Vail Dentistry!
Some unique features of www.vaildentistry.com :
In order to make navigating the site easy, we anchored the main menu to the top of every page. That way, no matter how far down patients scroll, they always have the entire menu at their fingertips.
Vail Dentistry loves their patient family and therefore have several different special offers to highlight on their site. We designed an eye-catching Special Offers thumbnail right on the home page, and once clicked, a savvy “coupon” image opens with all of their special offers detailed. These can easily be changed by Dr. Haerter through our Updates process throughout the year.
Dr. Haerter and his team are very active in the Vail Valley community and love to give back. They submitted several fun newspaper clippings and photos which we were able to design a Community Involvement page around. Organizing so many items on our flash sites is difficult—now with HTML technology it’s easy!
Dr. Haerter’s old flash site was perfectly functional, just missing the pizazz and infrastructure needed to highlight the various photos, videos, galleries, and other fun items they provided us. Now their patients can easily explore the website and learn more about this multi-faceted practice!
Use Your Dental Expertise to Create Meaningful Online Content
January 10th, 2012
Posted in Blogging & Social Media, Dental Internet Marketing, Online Marketing, SEO
If you are a marketing client of Roadside Multimedia, you’ve likely heard our frequent and enthusiastic encouragement of creating fresh, engaging, interesting content for your blogs, Facebook posts, Twitter feeds, etc. We’d like to complement those of you who’ve taken the initiative to create fun blog articles and social media posts that are brilliantly showcasing the personality of your practice and building lasting relationships with your valued patients. Kudos!
In today’s blog post, we want to focus on another category of online content that you create: Information designed to educate your current and potential clients. The fact is, search engines regularly field a multitude of queries regarding dental health issues (and no doubt your patients have questions of their own as well). Who better to answer these than a qualified dental professional such as yourself?
So, are you using your greatest assets – your training, experience, and knowledge– to generate content for your blog and social media platforms? Here are some great tips for creating useful content from your experts in online marketing for dentists at Roadside Multimedia:
- Give them what they want. Naturally, patients and those in your community already see you as an authority in your field, and they have questions they want answered. These are the questions you hear in your office every day: “How can I get my teeth whiter? Do I really need a crown? How do I know if I grind my teeth? What is causing my tooth pain?” Using your blog, YouTube channel, and other social media forums to provide helpful answers is giving web users what they want! And ultimately, it makes good marketing sense too.
- Don’t be afraid to highlight the source of your expertise. As you grow in your field and continue to learn and be shaped by courses you take, newly released studies, and professional journals, why not share some of what you are learning with your readers and fans? Sharing helpful links and articles relating to dental health issues communicates to the reader that you have their best interests at heart, and only solidifies your status as an authority in your field!
- Be gentle. For the online user who has a genuine concern relating to their own dental health, or perhaps a family member’s, they could be facing real pain and even embarrassment. With this in mind, articles and posts relating to sensitive dental health issues should be handled delicately, written in a manner that shows dignity and respect to the audience.
Your position as an excellent dental healthcare provider offers you a unique opportunity to create helpful, meaningful online content. Such content can actually serve to better the lives of those who connect with you online. And when done properly, this can enhance your social media marketing and SEO in a way that improves your bottom line!
Consider tapping into our expertise as well – many of the writers and bloggers here at Roadside come from a dental background, and stay up to date on current research on what patients are searching for online. If maintaining your blog or social media on a regular basis seems like it might be too time-consuming, we have a team in place that can help you out! For more information on marketing your dental practice online, contact the team of experts at Roadside Multimedia today!
How to Respond to a Negative Review
January 5th, 2012
Posted in Dental Internet Marketing, Online Marketing, Reputation Management
Picture the scene:
Imagine you are on a beautiful tropic island, basking in the sun, listening to the waves crash, and wondering how life could get any better.
Suddenly, a dog runs up and pees on your leg. At the same moment, a bird soars over and poops on your head. How are you feeling right now?
Similarly, is this how you feel when business is running smoothly, happy guests are leaving your practice with smiles, and all of a sudden someone leaves a negative review about your practice online? You have worked hard to build a good reputation and to create a business that you are proud of, so this can be initially devastating.
Once the initial astonishment has worn off, how do you respond? Take a minute and read over these three main tips for resolving the issue…and then you can take a breath and relax again.
Acknowledge the Issue.
First, let your customers see that you are paying attention to the issue and that their concerns are important to you. Your prospective clients will be reading your reply with great interest. Write this for them. Help them see that when someone has a problem, your business will hear them. It doesn’t matter if the reviewer lied or only told half of the story – acknowledge the issue they wrote about.
Stay positive.
Reviews are invaluable feedback and it’s good to use that information to fix what’s wrong. Use these pieces of public information to build good customer relationships, improve customer service, and improve your services.
Look at it this way: negative reviews give businesses a chance to respond and show how awesome they really are. So, write about your company’s commitment to customer satisfaction. Tell your prospective clients that you have actively made changes to ensure this issue will not happen to them. There is no need to dispute the facts; apologize for the negative experience and then emphasize the incredible services that you and your team are excited to provide. Invite the reviewer and prospective customers to come in to see for themselves your commitment to a positive experience.
It’s a good idea to send a copy of your response to an outside source, ideally someone that doesn’t work at your practice. Ask them to review your response and make sure it doesn’t sound defensive or combative.
Offer to correct the issue.
Never ignore the review. Open up the opportunity to resolve the issue with your unsatisfied customer. Offer to have him or her come in and talk to you personally; tell the individual you will be happy to address his or her complaints. If the situation is resolved successfully, ask the individual to update their review.
When all is said and done:
Once you have acknowledged the complaint, invited customers to see your commitment to their satisfaction, and made any needed changes to ensure a negative review doesn’t pop up again, look at the experience as something that will make your practice better than ever before…and then take that needed vacation.
Reviews are a vital part of successful online marketing, especially in the medical and dental field. Whether searching for a dentist for a regular cleaning or researching to find a cosmetic dentist to redesign a smile, individuals are presented with a plethora of choices on the internet. If a practice has no reviews, this can raise a red flag in the eyes of a potential patient. However, if the patient finds several reviews, this increases credibility, puts the patient’s mind at ease, and increases the probability that they will pick up the phone and make an appointment.
Roadside Multimedia’s Local Services team actively provides recommendations and tips to help you get more reviews. Additionally, the team regularly monitors the major review sites for our Local clients and alerts them to negative reviews so that they can respond right away. They are also available to assist with responding as needed. If you are not currently a Local Services monthly client, call us today to learn more!
