social media

Dental Marketing: Facebook as an Effective Internet Marketing Tool

February 7, 2012 By Catherine Hughes 3 Comments

Effective dental marketing requires that dentists keep up a regular presence with dental patients in order to ensure success.

Having a dental website, blog, newsletter, Google+ page and Facebook page are all important factors in keeping your dental practice in front of your dental patients.

Some dentists are still not convinced that Facebook is an effective Internet dental marketing tool.

Last week, Facebook started the process for its highly-publicisedipated IPO. In anticipation, the online competitive intelligence service Hitwise just released their 10 Key Statistics about Facebook, comparing the Facebook audience with that of other social networks.

Here is what Hitwise found –

1. Facebook captures 1 in every 11 Internet visits in the United States.
2. 1 in every 5 page views occurs on Facebook.
3. The average visit time on Facebook is 20 minutes.
4. Facebook’s audience skews slightly more female than the online population as a whole.(Female is 57%, male is 43%).
5. The ages of Facebook visitors are indicative of the website’s strength in the marketplace, with relative parity in distribution of its visit share by age vs. the online population (Ages 18-24 is 18%, 25-34 is 23%, 34-44 is 21%, 45-54 is 19%, and 55+ is 20%).
6. Facebook wins 499,949,430 visits from the most affluent income group versus YouTube’s 223,732,591 visits and Twitter’s 15,166,795 visits.
7. Facebook became the #1 ranked website in the US on March 9, 2010.
8. “Facebook” is the most searched term in the US and Facebook-related terms account for 14% of the top search clicks.
9. Facebook users are highly loyal to the website; 96% of visitors to Facebook were returning visitors in January 2012.
10. Internationally, Facebook ranks in the top 2 websites in every market except China, where Sina Weibo, Baidu Zhidao and Renren are the dominant social networks.

Hitwise further states that “Facebook is the largest website in the US and a top performer in numerous international markets. The fan base of the site is loyal and spends a significant portion of their time online on the social network. Facebook’s influence is seen in the presidential elections, digital shopping habits and beyond.”

Last June Hitwise concluded in their Facebook Fan Acquisition and Analysis that 1 Facebook fan is equal to 20 additional visits to a business website over the course of a year. If you have 500 Facebook fans, this means an extra 10,000 visits to your dental website a year.

Hitwise wrote, “The figure of 1 fan = 20 extra visits to a website uses a unique methodology that combines Hitwise data with data from social media experts Techlightenment. We took the top 100 retailers ranked in the Hitwise Shopping and Classifieds category and bench-marked visits to those websites against the number of fans those brands had on their Facebook page. We then also looked at the propensity for people to search for those retail brands after a visit to Facebook using our Search Sequence tool.”

Here at The Wealthy Dentist we firmly believe that your dental marketing plan should include a Facebook page. With dental patients spending more time online, dentists should increasingly be looking to use Facebook as a part of their dental marketing.

Facebook fans can play a role in dental patient retention and procurement by helping to drive dental website traffic, boosting dental practice awareness, demonstrating dental treatments or acting as a customer testimonial billboard.

Dental Marketing: The Real Facts About Dentists Using Facebook Pages

December 19, 2011 By Catherine Hughes 4 Comments

With more than 500 million active users now on Facebook, The Wealthy Dentist decided to conduct a survey asking dentists if they have a Facebook page for their dental practice to support their dental marketing efforts.

Facebook is now used by 1 in every 13 people on earth and is beating Google in terms of traffic.

60% of dentist who responded to this survey have a Facebook page for their practice, while 40% do not.

Suburban dentists use Facebook pages more than urban dentists, with rural dentists not using Facebook pages at all.

Of the 60% of dentists who are using Facebook pages, the average number of “likes” for a page is 158. The highest number of page “likes” reported are 821 and the lowest is 5.

Here are some dentist comments on Facebook pages –

“Facebook provides easy interaction with patients who are active users.” (Minnesota dentist)

“We have had giveaways every other month like a gas card, free teeth whitening, and an iPad on Facebook.” (General Dentist)

“Just starting to use it. Giving away a Kindle for Christmas for one lucky new Facebook Fan.” (West Virginia dentist)

“Electronic email seems to be more effective. They don’t have to like you to get postings, even though the can unsubscribe.” (California dentist)

“I am not sure exactly what Facebook’s value in marketing does for a practice.” (California orthodontist)

“I have a Facebook page because people feel dentists should be involved in latest social media…” (Illinois dentist)

“I am not sure I want one.” (New Jersey dentist)

“Yes, I think if it’s done correctly, it will be another way to market my practice.” (California dentist)

“I haven’t seen much benefit, despite the 1-2 time a week postings.” (Nevada dentist)

“I don’t have a clue about how to set it up.” (General dentist)

“We use it for referrals, trivia, giveaways, etc.” (Utah orthodontist)

“I don’t have time to maintain it and it’s not helpful if you don’t spend some time on it.” (Texas dentist)

As a dentist, if you want to increase your dental marketing influence, a Facebook Page is an additional option; it’s not something that’s going away anytime soon, and we anticipate that it’s something that will continue to grow.

We will continue to keep you updated on how a Facebook Page can assist your dental marketing efforts.

Do you have a Facebook Page? What are your thoughts?

Filed Under: Dental Marketing, Dental Surveys Tagged With: dental marketing, dentist, dentistry, dentists, Facebook, Internet dental marketing, marketing, social media, social media for dentist

Dental Marketing: Location Seems To Be a Factor in the Use of Social Media

October 25, 2011 By Catherine Hughes 3 Comments

Dental marketing with LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and other social media engagement tools continue to expand within the general population, many dentists are utilizing social media to interact with their current patients and attract new dental patients online.

Even the ADA is supporting social media use with its presentation on social media for dentists at the American Dental Association 2011 Annual Session, held October 10 to 12.

The Wealthy Dentist conducted a survey to ask dentists how often their dental practice posted updates to social media over the past 3 months.

Here is how dentists responded -

35% Never use social media
14% Use social media less than one post per month
16% Use social media at least one post per month
35% Use social media at least one post per week

Tools used -

31% Facebook only
1% Twitter only
21% Both Facebook and Twitter
33% Did not indicate what social media tools they use
14% Facebook and *other

*Other tools used with Facebook: LinkedIn, blog, Yelp, Kudzu, YouTube, Social Raves, Mojo, Constant Contact, and Dr Oogle.

Location seems to be a factor in the use of social media by dentists -

71% Suburban dentists use some type of social media
29% Urban dentists use some type of social media
0% Rural dentists use some type of social media

What the dentist’s had to say about social media -

Positives

“Jump in now, so you aren’t left behind. It is the best way to communicate with your clientele in this day and age.” (Arizona dentist)

“We only began to notice benefits to the office once we reached a high amount of people “Liking” your Facebook page. Don’t expect this to happen overnight. Once you maintain a social media presence, it is an easy way to get your patients to notify their friends about you and post comments about your office. We have had really great comments and some of these have been entered by patients on Social Raves.com which also sends them to search engines and review sites after we get a chance to view and comment on them if we wish.” (Ohio prosthodontist)

“It’s the wave of the future and definitely here to stay!” (Illinois dentist)

Negatives

“I hate that we are now compelled to participate in this time intensive BS. I think the Internet and social media are taking the focus off of patient care and more just dental marketing, marketing…” (General dentist)

“I have ‘old dog/new trick’ issues to overcome…I’m feeling overwhelmed.” (California dentist)

“Social media hasn’t helped me.” (Illinois dentist)

“It already takes many man hours of time to maintain our digital dental office, which includes patient e-mail contacts through Demandforce. Add in referrals, office to office contacts, Guru, etc. etc., we will soon need a full time IT person to help keep it all running smoothly. What is the cost to benefit break even point of social networking a dental practice, if that can really even be determined? What are the legal pitfalls? I have watched so many people gobbled up by Facebook; patients needing to use their smart phones at every little break, to send or receive a tweet. I much prefer to have my staff focus on quality time with a patient, providing quality work, than spitting out non-personal tweets and Facebook contacts all day long.” (North Carolina dentist)

Social media as a dental marketing tool will become an increasing factor in generating new patients. Even now, only a few high level dental practice websites are integrating social media marketing, mobile web pages and Google Places into their Internet marketing mix.

Filed Under: Dental Marketing, Dental Surveys, The Wealthy Dentist Tagged With: dental marketing, dental survey, dental surveys, dentist, dentistry, dentists, Internet dental marketing, marketing, social media, social media for dentist, survey, video marketing

Dentist Online Social Media: The New Dental Marketing?

March 2, 2010 By Julie Frey 20 Comments

Dentists are embracing social media websites for business networking and internet dental marketing. Over half of dentists (57%) report using Facebook, Twitter and/or LinkedIn for professional purposes.

Facebook is the clear leader; half of dentists use it professionally, and 4 out of 5 are on Facebook for personal purposes. One in three dentists uses Twitter professionally, and one in three is on Linked In.

“I believe they will and have had a great impact on dental marketing," predicted one dentist. "It remains to be seen exactly how this will impact patients actually using these sites to select their dentists."

“Social Networking is FREE," raved a website designer. "It gives your dental websites visibility that they would not otherwise have. Most everyone under 50 use the internet for everything. Print is gone, and the internet social media is free right now, so why not take advantage of this?"

Here are some more comments from dentists:

“It seems a little non-professional, but I don't knock those who do. I'm personally annoyed with my chiropractor's posts, so skip over them. I imagine my patients would do the same.” (Texas dentist)
“Too new…not sure of impact.” (Pennsylvania orthodontist)
“I think all of these sites are a huge time killer!" (Alabama dentist)
“No online social networking personally or professionally anymore. Most of it is a waste of time. I'd rather spend the valuable time with my wife and kids.” (Ohio prosthodontist)
“I have begun to use LinkedIn for contacts across the nation for my orofacial myology business.” (Nebraska dental hygienist)