Patient Photos Bring Value to Your Dental Marketing Website
Beautiful patient photo on foxviewdental.com
Our goal here at Roadside Multimedia is to develop and create the best and most visited websites for dentists. Our dedicated design and development team does the very best to listen to our clients’ wishes, wants and desires, so as to provide you with the exact site that you envision for your practice. In order to do so, we’d like to encourage you to do a few things to make your new website the very best it can be. One of the biggest contributions you can make toward the success of your site is to schedule a photo shoot and provide us with beautiful photography of your actual patients!
Roadside has a large supply of stock image photos; however, we encourage all of our doctors to provide us with quality actual patient photos. Ideally, we love to see both headshots and candid photos. This is a great way to make your site a complete portfolio of your work and not look like a stock website. It is also a great tool for making your site more relatable to prospective patients. It will be easier for a visitor to relate to the people on the site, as they may look more like them.
When a website uses actual patient photos, visitors can see how the doctor works, how he relates to patients and real people who come to this practice. We understand scheduling a professional photo shoot is slightly costly and time consuming, but taking the time to do this will not only add a lot of credibility to your site, but will also end up attracting more visitors because the people who you feature on there are more than likely to tell their friends and post your site on their Facebook page and other social media for their friends to see.
Actual Guest Photo on jesssantucci.com
Another thing to remember about the internet is that people want to see people that they know online. Better yet, people want to know what their peers like and think about things. If you serve a well-known, influential person in your community (i.e. the mayor, town pastor, principal, etc.) it is a good idea for you to ask them to come in to your office for a cleaning, informing them that you have hired a photographer to snap a few photos for your website. A different direction to consider is asking the patient families to come in for a photo shoot. This is a nice way to say thank you to them for being your patient as well as capitalizing on patients of all ages in a single day. They can take home some pictures to frame for their mantel and you can take the photos from the day and use them for your site, your billboards, print ads, etc.
Family photo on foxviewdental.com (they’re all patients!)
Here at Roadside Multimedia we want to provide you with the service and tools to make your business as successful as it can be. Always going above and beyond for our clients is our goal, and in return, we hope to see our clients going above and beyond to push their practices to be the best they can be! If you have any questions about dental marketing photography or if you’d like to update your existing site with new photography, give us a call at (360) 658-2626 today!
Facebook for Dental Professionals: Your Guide to Making it Work
Clients of Roadside Multimedia have heard us shout the praises of social media marketing via Facebook time and time again. Facebook is now the second most popular website in the world. You have the opportunity to get in on the action, marketing to a potentially vast audience, and save money! Perhaps you have a business page already set up, complete with eye-catching profile image, vanity URL, and even keyword-optimized text. (Many of our valued marketing clients have had these steps completed on their behalf by the social media experts at Roadside.)
But this is only just the start! Effective social media marketing for dentists via Facebook takes daily (yes, as in: every day) effort, and to really work, it takes fresh, unique content. Don’t be intimidated; we are here to help!
If you are a monthly Social Media client of Roadside Multimedia, you will be receiving a questionnaire from our Social Management team. Your answers to the questions there will allow us to personalize your posts with some of the following:
- Video testimonials from satisfied patients.
- Pictures of your office for a virtual tour.
- A video chat with the dentist, discussing pertinent dental health issues or answering frequently asked questions.
- Feature a staff member of the month.
Additionally, there are some great ways you can actively improve your Social Media right there within your practice:
- Assign a team member to check your Facebook page each working day. This can be a rotating assignment, or it can be an easy transition for the team member already responsible for checking office emails.
- Respond to all comments and posts to your page. The team member in charge can respond, or help determine which threads are more appropriate for the Doctor to comment on.
- Whenever possible, get the Doctor involved. This sends a terrific message to your fan base on Facebook, but we understand it’s not always easy between root canals, hygiene exams, continuing ed., etc. Team members can make this easier by previewing posts, and having the page up and ready to go at a time that will be convenient for the Doc.
- Consider networking with local businesses by featuring them in your Facebook posts to expand your social media exposure! (Check back here for a follow up post that will describe exactly how to do this.)
Count on Roadside Multimedia’s Social Management team for fresh ideas to keep your social media engaging and for tips to increase your fan base! Remember, the first word in social media marketing is ‘social.’ Would you socialize with someone who never showed up to engage in the conversation? Make Facebook work to market your exceptional dental practice by showing up for the conversation each day!
Effective Calls to Action Can Increase New Patients
Does your website serve its purpose of persuading web users to become patrons of your business? As a client of Roadside Multimedia, you can rest assured that from interest-piquing headlines and images to informational body text, your website has been engineered to represent your practice. If it has been several years since you last reviewed your website however, it may be time to re-evaluate whether the statements on your site that are intended to call the reader to action are as effective as they could be.
Consumer use of the internet to research, decide, and buy continues to increase. As a result, the web is saturated with calls to action like “click here” and “contact us,” which have become easy to overlook. While there certainly is an appropriate time and place for such simple calls to action, in some instances, they can be improved upon. Catchy calls that grip the reader and engage them are your coup d’état, giving you advantage in a sea of forgettable websites!
But where do you start, and how do you know if the calls to action on your site are working to their fullest? Well, first, you need to be sure of what you want web users to do. While the ultimate goal of your website and social media pages is to compel the web user to choose you as their dentist, you may also want potential patients to print and fill out intake forms, become educated on their own dental health by watching your videos, schedule a new patient exam, or more. Once you know what you want the reader to do, tell them! Your calls to action must make it clear (in a fresh, engaging way) what steps the reader needs to take next.
One surefire way to get the most out of your calls to action and increase the number of new patients from the web is to contact Roadside Multimedia and schedule a complimentary marketing review of your existing site. Get in touch with us today by clicking here!
New Roadside Site Launch: acld.com
Featured on many popular television programs and mentioned countless times in print, Dr. Brian McKay is a leader in the cosmetic dentistry world. Many other dentists look to him and admire what he’s done for the industry, especially in treatment of eating disorders. We provided Dr. McKay a sleek and organized website with a mission to educate and convert patients!
Check out some of the unique features of www.acld.com:
Dr. McKay is so well-known and respected in dentistry, we featured him as the first slide in his welcome movie, as well as lower on the home page. It’s important for patients to recognize Dr. McKay and featuring him prominently on his website helps brand the doctor himself, not just his practice.
One of Dr. McKay’s greatest assets is registered dental hygienist, Cris Duval. She’s as experienced as they come and the new site has an entire page devoted to Cris! Her interesting and easy-to-understand online consultation videos (cleverly-named Cris’ Corner) are featured on this page and really help patients understand the importance of good oral hygiene.
Implant dentistry can be overwhelming, scary, confusing, and misleading for patients who are unfamiliar with it. Dr. McKay had some wonderful patient testimonial videos created so people could hear real patients talk about the procedures. They also discuss barriers patients may find about dental implants (pain, financial worries, etc) and combat them very effectively!
Dr. McKay’s new site is like a breath of fresh air—it’s easy to navigate and quite informative without being encyclopedic. Roadside Multimedia is proud to create a website for a dentist who is so widely known and respected! Take a look at www.acld.com and let us know what you think of the new site in the comments below!
Welcome to our New Team Member, Jon Woods!
The entire team here at Roadside Multimedia would like to welcome our new integral team player, Jonathan Woods. Woods comes to Roadside with degrees in finance and marketing from Gonzaga University and post-grad an extensive history in sales and marketing. His marketing experience consisted primarily of building and maintaining the SEO & SEM campaigns for his previous positions. This experience ensures that he will have a smooth transition to his new role as a Roadside Account Manager. As an Account Manager, Woods works directly with clients to help them continuously improve their online presence through social media management, local listing placement, and other Roadside marketing services that will enhance their placement on search engines.
Woods’ friendly demeanor as well as his experience in sales has made him develop the patience to cater to what each and every client needs. Roadside is grateful to have Woods join our diverse team and we more than excited to see how well he connects with all of our valuable clients as well as all of our team members.
If you want to connect with Woods outside of work, you’d better put your hiking boots on and grab your Zags sweatshirt. He is a native Washingtonian, an avid local sports fan, and always makes sure that he takes advantage of all the natural beauty this state has to offer.
Welcome Jon by visiting our Facebook page and leaving him a message!
Fill Your Schedule With the Help of Social Media
When dental professionals and their business staff pore over the numbers, one topic that is sure to come up is that old affliction to production, down time. Whether due to broken appointments or a failure to fill open slots, down time in the schedule means empty chairs, quiet handpieces, and hygienists on payroll not scaling calculus!
No doubt you’ve got some effective methods in place to reduce the number of unappointed slots in your schedule, including an active recall system and possibly even broken appointment fees. However, this scourge is here to stay. That being said, the more down-time busting tools you have in your arsenal, the better!
At Roadside Multimedia, we’ve been touting the benefits of including social media platforms in your marketing strategy. We’ve been touting them loudly and quite often. Today we want to inform you of an unexpected advantage you garner from actively utilizing your social media pages: That is the ability to use them to fill open appointments, even on short notice!
Once you’ve established your base of patient fans and followers on Twitter and Facebook, informing them of appointment slots that have opened up on short notice is a snap. Thanks to the booming popularity of smart phones, many savvy consumers are accessing their social media accounts from a mobile device throughout the day. When high-demand appointments (like late afternoon hygiene) open up on short notice, you can inform a large portion of your patient base in one fell swoop with just a few keystrokes! We have no doubt that your patients will appreciate this service as well, and be more than ready to take advantage of it.
For example, if you have a 2:00 PM appointment that cancels that morning, write a post on your Facebook wall letting people know there is a 2:00 PM appointment open – consider also offering a discount or incentive to the first person to call to book the slot. Encourage your fan base to share the opening with the friends to reach an even larger audience. The more often you post openings, the more your fan base will start to expect to see these types of posts – which will lead to more individuals taking advantage of the convenience and booking that last-minute appointment.
Check back often for more tips on improving your dental practice or other small business with effective online dental marketing tips from Roadside Multimedia.
Link Building for Dentists: Why is it Important?
There are hundreds of different factors that affect how a web page is ranked by search engines. Of these, links are one very important factor. But what, you may ask, are links? Links are tools which allow users to navigate from one web page to another, simply by clicking on them.
We see links practically every time we surf the internet. A link can be a long, complex chain of characters, like this: http://www.roadsidemultimedia.com/internet-dental-marketing-about-us.html. Or, it can be something more simple and familiar, like this: click here. Links are important because they affect how your pages are ranked by search engines, such as Google.
Link Building for Dentists
Link Building for dentists involves actively seeking to establish links from other web pages to your web own pages. As search engines crawl the web, they analyze links to learn how pages are related to one another, as well as how important a site is. In this case, a link stands in as a vote, representing the web’s opinion of how important your web page is. The more links you have, the higher your rankings will climb. Each time someone links to your page, they are essentially casting a vote for it. The more people “vote” for your page, the more important it is to search engines. A perfectly built website with no links will not rank highly. On the other hand, a poor website with a surplus of links can still rank well. The Roadside dental marketing team gives you the best of both worlds; we design dental websites that look incredible and attract consumers, and help you get the links that set it apart from the competition.
If you’re a Roadside dental marketing client, you’ve likely heard your Account Representative talk about the importance of obtaining links. If you have any questions about how to best build links for your dental website, talk to your Account Representative – they’d be thrilled to give you fresh, practical ideas. If you’re not a Roadside dental marketing client but have questions about the topic, contact us any time for additional information!
Linking Social Media Platforms for Success
Here at Roadside Multimedia, we’ve found that social media is essential to online marketing success. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and YouTube allow a business to interact directly with customers and attract new business. They also can help you increase in search engine page rank. We’ve shared tips and tricks to effectively use these to your advantage. However, if you’re a busy professional (which we know you are), this can seem to be too time-consuming.
Without a plan, we could start to find that managing multiple social media platforms can be intimidating and somewhat exhausting. I don’t know about you, but I am constantly asking myself “what derivative of my name did I decide for my username?” and better yet, “what super-secret password did I promise myself I was not going to forget?” I know it’s not just me, it happens to all of us. How can we best simplify our efforts to achieve success without overcomplicating matters?
One solution, for example, is ping.fm – a great site that makes it ridiculously simple to combine your efforts and post to multiple social platforms all at once, saving time and maximizing your reach. With one login, one post, and one click, you will have informed all of your audiences with your new status, photo, or post on Facebook, YouTube, Google+, WordPress, and Twitter. It’s a time-saver, and even better, it’s free!
It is important to remember, however, that the key to social media marketing success is interaction – keeping it social. Once you’ve posted to these various platforms, don’t forget to continue the conversation by responding to comments and initiating conversations with others.
Have you found a way to effectively use your social media to increase business? We’d love to hear your tips – please leave us a comment below! If you have questions about managing social media efficiently and effectively, contact the marketing experts at Roadside today!
New Roadside Site Launch: smileimages.com
November 28th, 2011
Posted in Dental Internet Marketing, New Site Launch, Roadside Clients, Roadside News 
Dr. Bradley Olson has been practicing dentistry for close to 30 years and has an impressive portfolio of patient case photos to show for it! We wanted to highlight his experience and established practice in a modern but classic way and found several subtle design features to accomplish this.
Some unique features of www.smileimages.com:
In order to make contacting his Waldorf dental office as easy as possible, we’ve incorporated a Contact Us tab to Dr. Olson’s site that always stays anchored to the top of the page. This means no matter how far down on the site you scroll, the phone number, request an appointment form, and social media icons area always visible at the top of your screen. We have found that this tool increases patient conversion and makes the site more user-friendly. Try it out for yourself!
We wanted to incorporate Dr. Olson’s tagline, “Making your smile a masterpiece,” into the design of his site so we used a background that had artistic flair (watercolor) and used a picture frame in his welcome movie as well as the inner pages. We try to vary it up when it comes to how we display photos on our sites, and this gave us the perfect opportunity to show photos in a frame.
Showcasing real patients on a dental marketing website is always best! It builds credibility with patients and can give a site a real feeling of authenticity. You’ll notice we added “Actual Patient of Dr. Olson” in the welcome movie and wherever else possible.
Since Dr. Olson is very active on his blog (which the Roadside team commends him for!) we highlighted it right on the home page as a feature box under the welcome movie. This provides another call-to-action for patients to get involved and to interact with the practice more.
In addition to a traditional Smile Gallery, Dr. Olson has a Patient Case Studies section on his site. This is a great feature for patients to see before and after smile photos, a great after portrait, and a little description from the doctor of the services performed.
Dr. Olson has several really great online consultation videos (another thing we commend him for!). We needed an efficient and eye-catching way to showcase these on his site. Check out his In the Media section and notice how we also link to it from various inner pages.
Dr. Olson upgraded from one of our older-technology Flash sites to this beautiful new HTML site. The entire Roadside team loves the new site and we are excited to see how it benefits Dr. Olson’s practice! We’re confident he’ll see a boost in both new patient conversions and search engine rankings. If you have any questions about upgrading your older Flash website to an HTML site designed to effectively market your business, contact the online dental marketing experts at Roadside Multimedia today!
Get Your Patients Smiling With a Winter Whitening Special!
It’s late November already, and in case you hadn’t noticed, holiday shopping is in full swing! According to a survey by lab42, Americans plan to spend hundreds of dollars on gift-giving this year, with about a third of respondents planning to spend more than $700. Additionally, on average, Americans spent $107.50 on themselves during the 2010 holiday shopping season!
So how can dental professionals take advantage of all this holiday spending? At Roadside Multimedia, we’ve seen clients experience great success with the offer of a holiday whitening special, and we think it can work for your dental practice too. Here are some reasons why running a special on teeth whitening during the holiday season really works:
- With holiday parties, events, and travel coming up, it is likely that many of your patients already have a reason to want to brighten their smile.
- A vibrant, white smile makes a terrific gift!
- A special on teeth whitening can attract new patients.
- Teeth whitening is an accessible cosmetic procedure, but it often encourages patients to value their oral health and the appearance of their smile more than they had before. Some patients who’ve had their teeth whitened go on to pursue more extensive cosmetic dental procedures.
- A gorgeous white smile is a walking advertisement for your dental practice. Don’t you want all of your patients wearing their best smile?
Once you’ve decided that a special on teeth whitening during the holiday season is the right choice for your dental office and determined workable parameters, follow these marketing tips from Roadside Multimedia to ensure the highest level of success:
- Use your office blog, Facebook, and Twitter to announce your special offer.
- Create an attractive flyer to place prominently at your reception desk.
- Use your social media platforms to post updates and reminders for the duration of your promotion. Consider getting permission from a patient who has purchased teeth whitening to post before-and-after photos to show their results.
- If you have any whitening patients who posted a glowing review about the procedure on Google, Yelp, or another review platform, why not link to and highlight that review on your Facebook page and blog? If you don’t have any reviews specifically about this procedure, try to obtain one from a recent patient.
- For many, the holiday season is a time of charitable giving. Why not team up with a local charity by offering your special whitening price when patients bring a donation of non-perishable food items, toys, or clothing to their appointment? Be sure to promote the charity on your social media pages and post pictures of all the donations you gather.
- Consider offering a bonus or other incentive to staff members directly tied to the production from your promotion.
A winter whitening special offer is a superb way to market your practice and give your patients what they want! Check back regularly for more tips on successful internet marketing for dentists, and contact Roadside Multimedia today.
