Industries

Chart The Waters

Explore insights on SEO, AI, and digital marketing strategies designed to help your business grow, stay visible, and adapt in a constantly evolving online landscape.
Get Started
Call For Consultation
Beacon_Icon_resouse

Tips to level-up your financial marketing before 2021

Picture of Sabrina Martinez

Sabrina Martinez

Leadership is important in every industry. However, given the year we’ve all just had, it’s never been more important in financial marketing. American businesses of all sizes, in all industries, have ridden a rollercoaster of government policy, shutdowns, booms, busts, and technological advances. Now that 2021 is on the horizon, it’s time to start planning.

Since we’re all friends here, we want to give you a tip: this is a huge opportunity for you. Everyone is looking for direction and guidance, and you have the expertise they need to make it through these tricky times. It’s time to step up and be the leader they need. To take a quote from William Shakespeare, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” (Does that send tingles up your spine too?)

That means it’s time to talk about thought leadership. This is a financial marketing strategy that leverages the experience of your team to build an audience and generate leads.

Have we piqued your interest? Schedule a free consultation.

Thought leadership in financial marketing

The most effective way to display thought leadership is through content marketing or publicity. The former can include virtually every type of media from blogs to videos, social media, and more. The latter can include speaking at events like conferences and webinars in order to build brand awareness. There are lots of ways you can establish your expertise:

  1. Discuss the latest industry news and offer an opinion
  2. Create a step-by-step guide to tackling a common problem
  3. Answer questions your clients frequently ask during appointments
  4. Write long-form articles that give advice using strong keywords
  5. Examine trends and predict where the industry is heading
  6. Share case studies about the way you achieve success
  7. Collaborate with colleagues and other experts

Truthfully, the sky is the limit when it comes to thought leadership in financial marketing. Since you work in finance, we know you like numbers, so pay attention to the analytics. Check in regularly with Google Analytics and Facebook Analytics to see what kinds of content are getting the greatest reaction. Which blog posts are people most likely to click? Which ones are people reading all the way to the end? What types of social media content get the best engagement? What are people talking about in the comments?

Paying attention to the data will help you refine your strategy over time, capturing as much attention as possible and presenting your brand in the best possible light.

Pay attention to financial marketing trends

What’s trending in the finance sector? How will this affect your business? Most importantly, how will this affect your customers? It’s really important to stay up-to-date with industry news, because this is great fodder to not only improve your practices, but fuel your strategy.

Financial marketing is changing rapidly, just like the industry it promotes, and there are several reasons why it’s important for you to stay ahead of the curve. The first one is so that you can provide a calm port in a storm for existing clients and give them the best possible service. The second to build trust with prospective clients to start winning them over.

Think about it. There are generally two ways people find a new financial services partner: they ask for recommendations from people they trust, and they start Googling. You’ll catch their eye with snazzy Google Ads and a sparkling SEO strategy, and then you’ll only have a couple of seconds to make an impression and win their confidence.

Here are some thought-starters. What’s your take on these topics?

  1. Artificial intelligence integration
  2. Best practice in cybersecurity
  3. Importance of data analytics
  4. The rise of Blockchain technology
  5. Re-thinking the concept of money

This isn’t a random list. It’s the result of a quick search for “finance trends,” which means they’re the kinds of topics people are talking about online. Are you taking part in the conversation? What are you going to do if a client asks for your take? The best way to be prepared is to include them, and any other trending topics, in your financial marketing strategy. That way, the next time people are searching for answers, your content will start to appear in search results lists.

Make sure your content works double-time

If you’re going to invest in thought leadership as a financial marketing strategy, you’re going to need strong content. Content requires a considerable investment of time and effort, so it makes sense to get the biggest possible return on investment. Right? If you’ve ever heard of the marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuk (we’re big fans here at the Beacon office), you’ll know he’s the king of repurposing content. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel.

Digital marketing is versatile. There are many platforms, many mediums, and many methods you can use to share your messaging with the masses online. Here are some simple and time-saving ideas you can use to maximize your impact while minimizing your effort:

  1. Share video of your speaking engagements on your website and social platforms.
  2. Combine blog posts into an eBook to boost your credibility as a thought-leader.
  3. Present blog posts as videos (or vice versa). Then share the audio as a podcast!
  4. Screenshot Tweets and share them on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
  5. Share content from colleagues and experts with a thoughtful comment.
  6. Freshen up your old content and reshare it with a modern twist.
  7. Create a quick infographic to accompany a report.

The progression is simple. Thought leadership needs content marketing. Content marketing needs a marketing strategy. A marketing strategy needs a strong brand with clear goals. This will lay the foundation you need to successfully start growing your audience online.

Secrets to financial marketing success

Before we let you go, we’re going to run you through some very practical tips to help you level-up your financial marketing strategy for the year ahead.

The most important, by far, is consistency. Thought leadership, and content marketing, are both long-term strategies. Each piece of content will build on the ones that came before it, leading to exponential growth over time. There’s nothing to be gained by publishing one or two think pieces and then simply hoping for the best. Consistency means you’ll need to budget the time to research trending topics, plan a publishing schedule, and create the content you need. You’ll also need to check-in regularly to ensure it’s hitting the mark and that you’re across any sub-topics that need further explanation.

The other thing we’d like to mention is the importance of making content marketing a two-way conversation. Don’t just shout into the void of the internet! Respond to all the comments people leave on your blogs or videos, and dedicate at least 30 minutes a day to interacting with people on social media. This doesn’t mean simply dropping a few likes here and there, but asking questions or leaving thoughtful comments to encourage people to engage in a dialogue with you.

Looking to hire a marketing partner? We can help.

What is financial marketing and why is it important?

Picture of Sabrina Martinez

Sabrina Martinez

Marketing refers to the methods you use to promote your products and services to your customers. When we talk about digital marketing, we are referring to all the different ways businesses can do this online. And when we refer to financial marketing, we’re talking about the way you specifically can grow your business. Are you ready to start scaling? Read on! In this blog post, we’re going to run you through the basics so you can reach your goals.

We’ve worked with a lot of financial services firms over the years, helping with everything from merchant services, to local banks, and even Alaska’s infamous Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) program. We’ve worked hard and generated some awesome results:

Want to see numbers like these? You know where to find us.

Step one: Define your voice

Ready for a rapid-fire round? Here we go. Who are you as a company? What do you offer your clients? What makes you different from any other bank, credit union, accountant, financial advisor or stockbroker? What are your values? Why should a client choose you?

These are all really important questions, because from a financial marketing perspective, they lay the foundations for a memorable brand that will encourage client loyalty. Financial services can be confusing for people who aren’t up to their elbows in spreadsheets every day, so you need to make sure you’re accessible and approachable to the kinds of people you want to help. Position yourself as a friend who speaks the same language.

Financial marketing tone example

Here’s an example of the kind of thing we mean. Our client, eComm, is committed to re-inventing the merchant services industry. It’s a national brand owned by an Alaskan financial services company called Cornerstone Credit Services, and it launched in 2017. Looking back, the owners say: “We were entering an industry that had a bad reputation, but we were doing it for a reason… We knew that the business community deserves better.”

This attitude defines the client’s brand voice, which sets the foundation for a financial marketing campaign. The message is simple. The tone is straight-talking. The communications are transparent. This company works with small business owners all over the United States, who don’t have time to beat around the bush, which is reflected across all of eComm’s digital assets. This is immediately clear through the use of phrases like:

  • “You probably have first-hand knowledge that the merchant services industry is wildly unethical.”
  • “Some merchant services providers don’t seem to understand the golden rule: don’t lie to people.”
  • “Our aim is to be undeniably up-front with you about everything from mark-up fees to monthly charges.”

This is strong language. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. However, the up-front style is very effective from a financial marketing point of view, because it connects with this client’s target audience. These are people who need answers now and want to work with someone they feel they can trust. The voice reveals everything you need to know straight away.

Step two: Build trust in your community

The best way to build trust in your community when it comes to financial marketing has always been, and will always be, word of mouth. People are much more likely to trust the recommendation of a friend or family member who has had a great experience than take a risk on an unknown company. The logical conclusion, of course, is that the best way to build trust is simply to give every single customer a great experience. Listen to them. Solve their problems. Save them money. Make them great coffee. Write them thank you notes.

Financial marketing example

Cornerstone Credit Services has a range of divisions, including payment solutions. The company has an outstanding reputation in Anchorage, Alaska, and it’s the go-to merchant services provider in the region. From a financial marketing perspective, this is gold, but it doesn’t mean no further efforts are required. Cornerstone has actually capitalized on this reputation across their digital assets as well – take this homepage, for example. For one thing, it recognizes the positive impact clients have on the business, and makes them feel special. For another, it encourages them to go ahead and make even more referrals in their personal circles by offering an enticing cash reward.

Ready for another set of quick questions? Here we go. What are your strengths? What are some things you’re already hitting out of the park? How can you use them as part of your financial marketing strategy to grow your business even further? This is important, because it will help you work as efficiently and effectively as possible to reach your goals.

Step three: Nail your value proposition

Once you’ve defined your brand, and you’ve built a strong reputation, you need to work on your value proposition. Catch the attention of your prospective clients and make them an offer they can’t refuse. This is the part where you’ll be encouraging people to click onto your website, guiding them down the path to purchase, and hopefully converting a sale.

Financial marketing example

A key part of this is a strong landing page. Our client, Bookkeeping Alaska, is currently in a growth phase. The owner, Tabitha, asked us to create a landing page to encourage more people to sign up to a special offer that will help them organize their accounts for just $97. She’ll help you set up QuickBooks, start reconciling your statements, start reconciling your transactions, generate system reports, and provide email and phone support along the way.

Landing pages can be really simple. In fact, there’s a recipe for success, because there are a few key touch-points every prospective client will consider in making a decision:

  1. Professionalism of your appearance (i.e. design, layout, text, etc.)
  2. An offer that is immediately very clear and easy to understand
  3. An explanation of what exactly the offer includes (i.e. a list)
  4. Some social proof or a testimonial to encourage trust
  5. An explanation of why your business is a great choice
  6. Several very clear calls to action so they can take next steps

Once you’ve addressed all those points, you’re good to go. When it comes to building effective landing pages, we recommend a tool called Leadpages, which has templates tailored to different industries and different types of offers, making them easy to create. It’s a great way to qualify leads and ensure the people who reach out are a good fit.

Why you need financial marketing services

Once a client has clicked through to your website, the only thing left to do is streamline the path to purchase so it’s easy for them go to ahead and do business with you. Make sure that the next steps are clear, with a strong call to action, and ensure your contact details are prominent so they can get in touch with any questions. It’s that simple.

Want it to be this easy in real life? Give our helpful team a call.

Trends you need to capitalize on in financial marketing

Picture of Sabrina Martinez

Sabrina Martinez

If you’re working in financial services, there’s a fair chance you’re a left-brained person. Along with your aptitude for numbers, and your talent for problem-solving, we’re guessing you also like being organized, you like planning, you like details, and you like executing a well-developed financial marketing strategy. Right?

You like researching the most effective techniques, methodically putting them into place, and watching the leads roll in. Marketing is an interesting sector in that it blends science with art. On one hand, it’s very methodical (and we always tell our clients that consistency is key). On the other, it can be incredibly creative and fun.

In this blog, we’re going to run you through three trends you need to capitalize on to ensure your financial marketing strategy is giving you maximum return on investment. We’ll tell you which bits are about process, and which are about personality, to help you grow.

Ready to get started? Schedule a free consultation.

1. Google Ads: Help clients find your financial services

The first trend you need to capitalize on when it comes to financial marketing is Google Ads. It’s no longer enough to rely on word of mouth, or start a company Facebook page, or build a website without taking further action. These are all great methods, of course, but when it comes to financial marketing, there are simply better ones you can use –like Google Ads.

There are a lot of reasons why Google Ads is amazing, but the main one is simply because it helps people find you when they’re looking for you. BAZINGA. Modern marketing doesn’t get any better than that! Google Ads allows you to target specific keywords, and zero in on your key demographic by selecting things like location, age, income level, and gender.

Let’s put it this way. It makes sense to cast a wide net in the hope of catching a nice fish… unless you have a dependable strategy that will help you catch a trophy king salmon.  You’d take the second option every time, right?

(Well, we would, but then again, our headquarters are based in Anchorage, Alaska, and many members of our team know their way around a fishing boat! Ask us for tips any time!)

The second reason Google Ads is awesome is because the client already knows they need you. They’re actively searching for you, so all you have to do is capture their interest and convince them you’re the best choice to solve their problem. (And let’s face it, people usually engage financial services firms because they have an issue they’re unable to deal with on their own.)

2. Landing pages: Tell your clients why they need you

Google Ads are like a one-two punch. Boom. The client is yours! The first part is setting up the ads; the second is making sure you’re sending clicks somewhere that will seal the deal. This is where landing pages come in. A “landing page” simply refers to the first page a client will see when they visit your website. It’s the first impression you have, so make it count!

When Google Ads first started, it was customary to direct traffic to an existing page on your website, like your home page or services page. More recently, there has been a trend towards directing people to custom sales pages. This is definitely best practice, because it will significantly increase your chances of converting a client and making a sale. So what does a great landing page look like? There are three main points we recommend:

  • A clear offer or deal to show people why they should act now.
  • A value proposition, such as a free download, so people feel like they’re getting value.
  • A number of very clear calls to action to help people know what to do next.

Landing pages don’t have to be long. A really common mistake people make is to stuff landing pages full of key words, thinking that will increase their ranking through SEO (we’re definitely guilty of this too – we’ve mastered our strategy over many years with a lot of trial and error). The trouble is that SEO isn’t really the point of a landing page.

Running Google Ads means you’re already targeting the keywords you need, and because you’re paying per click, you don’t need to worry so much about SEO. Instead, you need to kick your sales brain into gear, and think about the key information a prospective client would want and need to know because deciding to take action.

If in doubt, less is more. Make it snappy. Make it interesting. Make it helpful.

Most of all, make sure the next step is crystal clear and very inviting.

3. Personalization: Let clients know how much you care

Let’s take a moment to recap quickly. Step one was capturing people’s interest with shiny Google Ads. Step two was making them an offer they can’t refuse with a sparkling landing page. Step three is showing the client exactly how important they are to you and reassuring them they’ve made the right choice. We’re not talking champagne and corporate suites at the basketball (although hey, surely no-one would complain about that!).

Here’s a word we know you’ll love: data. Personalization starts with data collection and analysis. You’ll need to figure out exactly who your ideal client is, who is responding to your Google Ads, and who is taking action on your landing page. Are they the same types of people? If not, why not? You may find an audience persona really helpful here to help focus your efforts and ensure you’re targeting the most profitable demographics – i.e. those who are most likely to convert.

Once you know who you’re talking to, tailor your messaging accordingly. Don’t be generic. Target their specific interests. You’ve discovered this group loves football? Great. Make some football puns. Or do they all come from the same neighborhood? Great. Make some local references. Make them feel like you know them, that you understand, and that you can help.

And remember, a follow-up phone call after they take action on a landing page is always a classy touch. Nothing shows a client how important they are like you taking a few minutes out of your day to introduce yourself and thank them for their interest in working with you.

Stay on top of financial marketing trends

Modern marketing moves quickly. It’s an innovative industry, because marketers are always trying new ways to capture people’s attention and make their message heard. Staying on top of the latest trends can feel like a full-time job (and for us, it is! Seriously!).

If you’re running a financial services firm, you’ll have a lot on your plate, so it makes sense to work as efficiently and effectively as possible. You may find it valuable to bring on a marketing partner, who can stay across all the latest trends to ensure you’re capitalizing on the ones most likely to grow your business. If that’s the case, please reach out.

What are you waiting for? Let’s talk business.

HVAC marketing can boost your reputation (and your sales)

Picture of Sabrina Martinez

Sabrina Martinez

The digital revolution has done so much to democratize marketing in the last few years. Now small, local HVAC businesses can compete with bigger companies on a much more equal footing.

Here, we’ll look at three low-cost, and in some cases, free, methods to get huge reach and effective targeting as part of your HVAC marketing strategy.

Prefer to chat to a person? We get it. Give us a call.

Building sales funnels in HVAC marketing

Sales funnels are a widely used marketing technique that you can use to draw in new customers for your business. The basic premise in HVAC marketing is that you start by making people aware of your business and gradually draw them down the levels of the funnel, giving them the information they need, until they decide to become new customers. It’s called a funnel because it starts broadly – i.e. who are you? Then the information gets more specific as they go further along. What’s your full range of services? Then what’s a special offer specific to their needs? Then how do they contact you? The focus narrows until you’ve given them precisely what they need to address the issue they’re having. It’s important to keep this in mind as you design your website and build your strategy from there.

Read more: Capture more qualified leads with landing pages

Awareness is key to good HVAC marketing

Awareness is the first stage in a HVAC marketing funnel. At this point, your main concern is with getting as many people to see your content as possible. You’re trying to convert people from general consumers to prospective leads. These people will remember you next time they need HVAC services. At this stage quantity is as good as quality, you want good coverage, but you also need to make sure that when people read your content or see your ads, they aren’t put off by low quality.

A big part of HVAC marketing is education

Next, you want to be putting out content that answers people’s questions. This shows them the problems they are having, even ones they don’t know they are having, and how you can fix those problems. We like to recommend that you include helpful advice on how people to fix these problems themselves. This breeds goodwill and helps make people trust you so that they remember you as a helpful, trustworthy business next time their A/C unit or furnace needs its annual service.

Read more: Is marketing the new sales?

HVAC marketing relies on engagement

The third stage of the funnel, when it comes to a good HVAC marketing strategy, is engagement. This really requires quality production. Every time someone clicks on one of your ads, or a link in one of your blogs, they will be taken to what we call a “landing page.” It is important that this is just as high quality as the ad or the blog. The purpose of all these ads, blogs, landing pages, and so on, is to get people to reach out to them, to walk into your metaphorical showroom.

The best part of HVAC marketing is conversion

Finally, we come to the thin end of the funnel, conversion. At this point, people are actively coming to you. They know who you are, they know what services you provide, and they have a good impression of your business. Now that, you’ve got them coming to you, you need to sell to them. Let’s continue our showroom metaphor. They want to buy a product that you sell or use a service that you provide. What you have to do is prove to them that they want to buy from your business, not your competitor. At this point, you’re no longer really doing digital marketing, but rather you’ve transitioned into sales.

Ready to get started? Schedule a free consultation.

Social media is key to HVAC marketing

Social media is another incredibly powerful HVAC marketing tool that has made the job of small companies easier than ever before. Because platforms like Facebook have such huge reach, with more than 2/3 Americans using it, you can market directly to your most likely buyers. It’s an essential element of every strategy, because unlike the broad funnel of your website, waiting to catch interested customers, you can use social media more like the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner.

The advantage of social media, and advertising platforms like Google, is targeting. Social media platforms gather huge amounts of data about their users which allow them to model those people really accurately. This means that you can target ads to people and be confident that they are more likely to succeed than traditional ads. The real advantage with social media is that you can do this, while still advertising to huge numbers of people, which makes your sales funnel very effective.

Social media is useful in other respects as well. It allows you to create a community following around your brand, with real person-to-person interaction and gives your customers a direct line to your business for reviews. Some may see this as a benefit only for the customer, but your business can benefit as well, as long as this is done right. When you post content on your Facebook page, you open yourself up to the whole world, and anyone can say anything. This means that any negative reviews you receive can be responded to directly. When doing this, it’s important to do it well though! You have an opportunity to turn a negative review into a positive with a well-reasoned, polite response. We often find that these actually give a better impression of a business than great reviews alone.

Read more: Is your social media producing results?

Blogging can boost HVAC marketing efforts

We briefly mentioned blogging in our sales funnel walkthrough, and here we’ll discuss how to make sure your blogs have maximum effect. Blogging may not be an obvious HVAC marketing strategy, but it’s essentially a method to game Google’s search algorithms, known as Search Engine Optimization.

Whenever someone searches for something on Google, the search engine searches through everything on the internet to bring you the most relevant results. It works out what is relevant based on various criteria some of which we’ll list here, along with the way you can meet those criteria:

  • Relevance: Google calculates relevance based on the amount of time users spend on the search results provided for a given search term. If someone searches “HVAC near me” and they click the first result and realise it isn’t what they’re looking for, they click the back button quickly and Google interprets this as the page having low relevance. You, therefore, need to make sure that your blogs are relevant to the title and keywords you’re using.
  • Questions: You’re probably aware that Google searches are often used to answer questions. A great strategy for blog writing is to find out what questions are being asked, using services like Answer The Public, which allows you to find out what the most common questions are for certain keywords. Just type in the name of service or product you want to sell, find out what people want to know about it, and answer that question. Make sure you link to a page where people can either buy the product online or a contact form so they can get in touch.
  • Backlinks: Google uses links on webpages as a sort of review system. If someone links to your site, it means they think it is good. However, getting other websites to link to yours can be challenging, so we use the practice known as backlinking. This involves linking between pages on your own website, to accrue multiple “recommendations” of your own content.

Ready to develop your strategy? Call our friendly team.

Optimize your mental health marketing on social media

Picture of Sabrina Martinez

Sabrina Martinez

Social media is the perfect tool for mental health marketing. The wide variety of platforms means that you can target your preferred audience, use the whole range of digital media, and build brand loyalty. Even better, you can do most of this for free! In this post, we’ll explain our five top tips for making sure your social media presence is as good as it can be.

Already know what you need? Give us a call.

1. Choose your social media platform(s)

There are so many social media platforms these days that choosing which one to use for your mental health marketing strategy can seem like a daunting task. They are all different, and the demographics that use them mean the differences are important. Ultimately, the platform you choose will inform the audience you are able to reach.

For example, Facebook is still the biggest platform around, and it has loads of useful features for businesses, but its user base is getting older. If you want to target a millennial audience for your mental health practice, you might do better on Instagram. If you want to target even younger audiences, you’ll want to be looking at platforms like TikTok.  The challenge with the youngest social users is keeping up with whatever platform is fashionable right now!

The audience is not the only factor to consider, however. Different platforms also lend themselves better to certain types of content. In some cases this is obvious – for example, YouTube is for videos – but in others, it might be less clear. Instagram is for photos, right? Well, it can also be a really good platform for short video. Meanwhile, LinkedIn, with its focus on B2B, tends to be used more for text than other platforms. This is important to consider when trying to place your marketing efforts.

Read more: Telemedicine is booming in mental health

2. Mental health marketing needs consistency

This is something that sounds obvious, but which many people overlook. If you want your mental health practice to have a successful social media presence, you need content. Just creating an account won’t do anything. You need to be posting at least weekly, and we’d suggest more regularly if you can. The real advantage of digital marketing has over traditional marketing is that it’s so easy to put out large amounts of content to lots of people. Unfortunately for you, everyone else is doing this too. The more they put out, the more you have to put out in order to just be noticed. Social media may have democratized mental health marketing, but it’s also increased the work you have to do to keep up.

So, if treating social media like a billboard or newspaper won’t do, then what will? Well, as we said above, post content! Post it as often as you can, post every time you write a blog on your website, post every time you offer a new service, post every time you change something about the way you practice, post every time you attend a mental health conference, or a new study comes out that changes the way you work. You need to be putting content out there if you want this to be worthwhile.

Read more: 3 things to know about Google Ads.

3. Community building on social media

We’ve got quantity out of the way, now for the quality. What we call “community building” in mental health marketing is really just a different way of saying building brand loyalty. The great advantage of social media is that you can build brand loyalty in people who haven’t even visited your mental health practice. This means that if in the future those people do find themselves in need of mental health services, they’ll already have a preferred provider in mind, you!

There are many ways of building a community online, and each successful business has its own. Here, we’ll just give a few tips that go a long way. Obviously, the first is in what you post. Your content should be friendly, human, and show people that your team is made of real people, not just a corporate account run by some faceless person in an office block. Just as important is that way you interact with people who comment on your posts. Social media posts aren’t just “fire and forget” marketing; they’re two-way. If you reply, you can build rapport with the comments, and everyone else who stops to read.

The way you reply is possibly even more important. Having a good in-person reputation is hard when your social media is badly managed. If people are posting criticisms on your platforms, you need to be able to respond politely. It may sound obvious, but it’s not uncommon to see businesses respond to negative comments badly, and it can be more off-putting than the original comment.

Remember the golden rule of social media: everyone can read what you write!

Looking to maximize your impact? We can help.

4. Branding is key to mental health marketing

This is related to our previous section but goes a little further. Not only is it important to remain courteous, but also to keep the tone of your posts consistent with the mental health service you’re trying to sell. There is a certain tone of voice that is appropriate when posting about children’s services, but a very different tone might be needed when talking about crisis prevention services.

It all comes back to your brand. Who are you? Why are you in business? What matters to you and why? What is your purpose? Figuring this out right at the beginning means your messaging will be consistent across all of your social platforms, as well as the way you treat your patients in real life. Consistency is essential in mental health marketing because it helps people get to know you, so they know what to expect when they engage your services, and they can feel confident working with you.

Read more: What makes a good mission statement?

5. Mental health marketing needs visuals

Visual marketing has become really important in mental health marketing. This isn’t really news, because images have been used in marketing for as long as marketing has existed, but we’ve never before had the ability to include video quite so easily. Previously, you’d have to pay big bucks to produce television commercials, but now you can just pull out your phone and do a Facebook live. This is a great way to let people meet you, see your practice, and invited them to come and visit.

Video is a great way to convey information. Humans absorb and retain data best when they are able to hear and see someone telling them, so this is the best way to get your message across – second only to talking to someone face-to-face. Video is also much more friendly, and less intimidating, than a wall of text. If you’re interested, you can learn more about video marketing here.

Ready for a marketing partner? Schedule a free consultation.

Simple way to use sales funnels in dental marketing

Picture of Sabrina Martinez

Sabrina Martinez

You’ve probably seen the term “sales funnel” quite a lot as you’ve been researching digital marketing online. They can be extremely powerful when you’re trying to convert leads, but how can you apply a sales funnel to your dental marketing strategy? That’s a really good question.

Sales funnels works as you’d expect, by collecting as many people as possible at the wide end, and gradually drawing them down the levels of your funnel until they become paying patients at the bottom. The number of people at each stage will reduce as they progress through the funnel, until you only have qualified leads. The way you set up your funnel is important, so here’s a step-by-step guide.

Ready to talk sales? Ask our experts today.

Dental marketing starts with awareness

Awareness is the first stage of every digital sales funnel. This is where people become prospective patients, transitioning from never having heard of your dental practice, to becoming aware of it. This is also the stage at which the person starts to learn how you can help with problems they’re having.

The best dental marketing strategy here is to generate awareness is through content. At this stage, you want lots of people to see what you’re putting out. This maximizes the number of people in the funnel and increases the number of people making it all the way through. This is a case of quantity AND quality – obviously, the content has to be good enough that people actually read or watch it, but you need to make sure you don’t spend too much time making it, and too little working on the next piece.

So, what kind of content you be putting out to raise awareness of your dental practice?

The truth is just a 400-600 word piece about a topic people are searching can increase the chances of people finding your business. Take our client, Dr. Mandanas, whose integrative dental practice is based in Anchorage, Alaska. We write blogs for her dental practice every month and now we have our blog on the top of the Google results page for the search term “integrative dentistry.”

Dental Marketing

You can increase your chances of reaching the top-ranked spots on Google search by practicing Search Engine Optimization, which we explain in detail here. It’s a really neat way to take your dental marketing strategy to the next level. You should also note that in addition to publishing on your website, you can boost the reach of your blogs through Google Ads, Facebook ads, and social media.

Want to phone a friend? We’re here to help.

Education is the key to dental marketing

The next level of the funnel is education. This is for those people who clicked on one of your ads, navigated more of your website after reading your blog, or clicked on a link in a Facebook post. The people who click on a link on social media or an ad need to be sent to dedicated “landing pages,” which are essentially sales pages that give people all the information they need to sign on.

For example, if you’re advertising children’s braces, your ad and landing page should focus on the topic. The landing page should give some more information about the braces you offer, the problems you can fix with them, and how to get in touch with you so that they can learn more. It should be fact-based and persuasive – getting this right is essential to your dental marketing strategy.

Alternatively, if you wrote a blog post about regular cleanings and their importance in staving off periodontal disease, you could then include a link to the page of your website where people can schedule an appointment to have a check-up and cleaning.

Read more: 5 genius ideas to grow your dental practice

Dental marketing leads to engagement

The third level of the sales funnel is where prospects become leads. People in your community are aware of your dental practice, they know they services you provide, they’ve clicked through to your website, and now they need to be converted into leads. The best way to convert these people is by having them reach out to you and schedule a consultation, or to ask about your services and costs.

The question, then, is how to get these people to get in touch?

Your landing pages really need to be on point. You need to be active on social media. You need to run Google Ads for key terms people will search when they have an issue you can address. That way, you’re staying front of mind and making it as easy as possible for them to choose your practice. That way, when they’re interested enough to pick up the phone or fill out a contact form on your website, it will be an easy decision and you’ll be waiting to welcome them into your office.

Although this is a very exciting stage, we’re not done yet.

This is where you cross from dental marketing to sales. The prospective patient is now interested enough in your dental practice that they have actively got in touch with you, but if you can’t close the deal all that work will have been wasted. We call this process “conversion”, as you are converting a person from a prospective patient into an actual patient.

Need help refining your landing pages? Contact us.

Converting patients with dental marketing

Conversion may be more of an art than a science. It’s important to remember that people probably aren’t just looking at your practice. If they’re actively looking for a dentist it’s likely they’re dissatisfied with their current provider, or they have a problem. If it’s the latter case, they are likely to be looking with a sense of urgency and will be looking for a solution ASAP. Whichever of the practices they are researching is able to provide that information first is likely to convert that prospect into a patient.

According to revenue acceleration company Xant, half of prospective patients choose the company that reaches out first. Among the reasons for this are a perception that your practice is well organized, professional, eager to help, and easy to find. Those who do it well are likely to convert.

Read more: Step-by-step orthodontics marketing plan

Dental marketing needs a target

We talked at the start about the way sales funnels grab as many people as possible with a wide opening, and gradually draw people down to become patients as they pass each level of your dental marketing strategy. However, there are tools available that make this even more efficient.

The rise of targeted advertising on platforms such as Facebook, and across the entire web thanks to Google, means that you can use your funnel a bit more like the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner. By targeting your ads based on Facebook or Google’s prediction models, you can make sure that your ads are only seen by people who are likely to make their way all the way through the process. This may seem as though your numbers will be reduced, but due to the vast reach of platforms like Google and Facebook, you can still reach large numbers of people. More importantly, you’ll reach the right ones.

We hope you find this guide helpful in creating your own sales funnel. This is a great time to re-evaluate your dental marketing strategy as many people look to start returning to regular life, although now with a heightened sense of hygiene and cleanliness. Not only is this a time to welcome your regular patients back, but you can also seize the opportunity to increase your market share.

Ready to get started? Schedule a free consultation.

Top four dental marketing tips to increase market share

Picture of Sabrina Martinez

Sabrina Martinez

It’s time for people to come back to the dentist after lockdown, which means now is a great time to be marketing your dental practice. This is a great opportunity to start gaining market share, as well as welcoming back your own regular patients. If you want to make the most of this period, you’re going to need a killer marketing strategy that makes use of all the tools available to you. Keep reading for our top four dental marketing tips.

Prefer to talk it through in person? Give us a call.

1. Dental marketing starts with a website

No matter what your dental marketing plan entails, sooner or later patients will be looking at your website. A few years ago, an amateur could put together a website and it didn’t matter that much what it looked like. Nowadays, however, so many people have well-designed sites that anything less can reflect badly on your dental practice. It’s easy to see why. If you’re looking for a dentist to take care of your teeth, you want someone who gives a sense of competence and professionalism in every aspect of their business. A well-designed website, with a clear list of services and costs, is a necessity if you want potential patients to feel as though they can trust you to take care of their oral health.

Your website can also show the human side to your dental practice. Many people are wary of visiting a dentist, and humanizing the process can alleviate some of their fears. Short biographies of your staff members, lots of pictures of the practice, and testimonies from current patients are all dental marketing essentials. They can all help to make the dentist seem much less daunting.

A great website will be the anchor for your entire dental marketing strategy.  All of your social media presence, advertisements, and physical marketing will point people to your website. It should be easy for visitors to find your location, your contact details, and your services and costs. This allows them to decide that you’re the dental practice they want to visit and make the necessary appointments.

Read more: Managing online reviews in dental marketing

2. Community building in dental marketing

Social media is the next most important dental marketing tool. It has such a huge reach that not using it is a significant lost opportunity. Social media allows you to produce ads which can be targeted to specific audiences. This targeting can be incredibly specific due to the amount of data people willingly give and the inferences that these companies are able to draw from users’ activity. We’ve written before about how Facebook advertising yields results (you can read that here).

Here, we want to focus on the organic side of social media. When we talk about “organic” on social media, we’re referring to the posts you make on your own profile, rather than paid ads. These posts are visible to people who follow your page, as well people tagged in the comments. This kind of post may not have the same kind of reach as an ad, but it has a different relationship with the people who see it, because it feels more genuine – it’s a modern form of word-of-mouth advertising. It’s easy to present the culture of your dental practice, perhaps with slightly less “polished” visuals, but they let people interact with your practice on a personal level, which builds a community. Dental marketing in this way builds a form a form of brand loyalty, where patients feel that they actually know you.

We’ll develop a step-by-step guide for you. Contact us now.

3. Dental marketing with Google My Business

Google My Business is a tool that we are recommending to our clients more and more as we see really impressive results. You’ve probably come across it before. When you search for a restaurant or store, you’ll see a box on the right-hand side of your Google Search results page. It can include images, a link to the website, and interactive phone links for mobile users.

We recommend it for the same reason we recommend a professional website: it’s becoming standard, which means not having one can make your dental practice seem less reputable.  If all the big-name businesses have Google My Business then not having one makes you seem like a small, slightly unofficial business, and no-one wants to visit an unofficial dentist.

The good news is that it’s is really easy to set up. In fact, we’ve written a detailed guide on setting up your listing here – it’s as simple as finding your listing on Google and claiming it. You’ll want to do this as soon as you can, because the process is so simple that anyone can claim a listing. At this stage, there’s actually nothing that can stop someone else from claiming yours, which isn’t ideal.

Case studies: Grow your practice with these bold strategies

4. Online reviews in dental marketing

Google My Business allows us to slide neatly into our next tip, online reviews. Reviews are integrated into your listing, so anyone who searches for your dental practice can see what others think of you. This is really important. If your practice is well-rated, this will obviously inspire confidence in prospective patients. On the other hand, dentistry is a field where people are already nervous, and the perceived potential for harm is large. In practice, this means that your reviews are going to have a much more significant impact than other types of businesses, such as stores or coffee shops.

The best way to make sure you get good reviews is to give good service, but there are other tricks to maximize your score. You may have heard of a concept called “volunteer bias.” This is what happens when people are voluntarily able to review products. Those who had an average experience don’t put in the time to review, so the aggregate score represents only those who had either a bad experience or a very good experience. As a result, negative reviews can have a disproportionate effect. You can get around this by actively asking people to review your business. This is a fine line to tread, because being too pushy can lead to people be put off and giving a worse review, however, when it’s done well, it can fill in some of that space between the very good and the bad, which improves your score. It also increases the numbers of reviews, so any single bad review is much less noticeable.

Another good strategy for reducing the impact of bad reviews is to reply to them. A well-reasoned, polite response can often turn a bad review into a positive – read this post to learn more.

Worried about your reviews? We can help!

Bonus tip: Using video in dental marketing

Okay, okay, we promised four tips – but here’s one extra. We’ve been writing a lot about video lately. It’s dramatically increased in popularity with the increased performance of mobile devices, and it’s a great way to connect with customers online. For example, it’s an excellent way to cram a lot of information into a format that takes little effort to absorb, and it’s easy to maintain attention.

Not only is video great for information transfer, but it’s also really great for building rapport as it allows you to present a human face to potential patients. As we mentioned before, this is especially important for dental practices as it helps remove some of the apprehension that people may feel. It also gives you a great opportunity to let people see your practice and to talk about offers.

We hope you’ve found this list of our top tips helpful, if you’re interested in learning more about the digital marketing strategies we use, check out our other blog posts on marketing for orthodontics.

Need a marketing partner? We’d love to help.

How dental marketing has changed in 2020

Picture of Sabrina Martinez

Sabrina Martinez

The world is very different right now than it was six months ago. The events of this year have caused a lot of change in the way people live and do business. Businesses that rely on face-to-face interaction, such as dental practices, have been hit particularly hard. Even now, as the market is starting to open up again, there will be lasting changes. It makes sense, then, that your dental marketing strategy changes accordingly.

Need personalized advice? Schedule a free consultation.

Social strategy is now king in dental marketing

One of the most important lessons learned from the lockdown period is that dental practices who interact with their customers on a real, human level do best. That means social media should be at the core of your dental marketing strategy, because it allows direct contact for reviews, criticism, and complements. This lets your patients feel like they’re really talking to a person and that their comments and concerns are being heard.

Posting on social media falls into two categories: ads and organics.

Ads are exactly what you think: images or short videos that grab attention and hopefully draw people to your social profile or website. Social media advertising is incredibly powerful. Platforms such as Facebook collect lots of data about their users which allows them to build detailed profiles about those people’s personalities, likes, and dislikes. Also, you are able to target your ads, rather than just scattering them out and hoping that potential leads see them, as you might with traditional media such as newspaper or radio ads.

Because of all the data social media companies collect, you can be really specific about the people you want to target. This type of advertising is called “targeted advertising” and it is almost the sole source of revenue for Facebook, Google, and other large tech companies that offer free services.

Organic posts are posted directly to your account feed, and while there is no cost attached to these, people won’t see them unless they visit your account or follow you. The advantage of organic posting is that it has a way more personal feel. People who see these posts are more likely to feel like they are seeing something personal.

This is where our next point comes in.

Read more: Step-by-step orthodontics marketing plan

Dental marketing needs constant communication

Because so many people have been exposed to reduced, and often uncomfortably low, levels of social interaction over the last few months, it is more important than ever to show a friendly, welcoming face in your dental marketing plan. Social media provides an amazing way to do this by allowing you to communicate directly with potential new patients. However, just posting once or twice won’t be enough to maintain this image.

The more you communicate with your followers, and the friends they share your posts with, the more this impression of personability comes through. If you’re able to post daily, both existing and potential patients will feel as if they’ve got to know you. Not only does this give them cause to trust you when they are looking to return to the dentist, but also keeps you in the back of their minds, so that they think of you when they do decide it’s time for their next appointment. This is key to your dental marketing success.

Applying the methods you use for your organic posts to your ads is another great way to give the impression of interacting with a real person. When people see a clean-cut, professional ad, with all the perfect imagery and color, it may feel just a little distant and corporate. To someone who hasn’t seen their family for four months, or who hasn’t left their apartment in a week, a simple video of your staff warmly expressing how much they’re looking forward to welcoming patients back to your practice can go a long way.

Case studies: Grow your practice with a bold plan

Video is perfect for dental marketing right now

Speaking of video… video is one of the best tools in your dental marketing toolbox when it comes to making things personal. Someone who really understands the power of this strategy is Gary Vaynerchuk. He has mastered the use of his smartphone camera to give the impression that he is talking directly to the viewer, almost like a personal video call. This works especially well on social media because of how scalable it is. He can have a “1-to-1” conversation with millions of people at once. (We’ve discussed Gary and how he creates such successful content before – if you want to learn more about video production, check out this blog). This style may not suit you or your dental marketing plan, but using video of your staff, and even customers if they are happy to help, gives a sense of honesty when you make claims about how great your business is. A short text post saying that you’re offering a discount for new clients is nowhere near as impactful as a short video of a patient who had a great experience.

The sense of personal service that you can give with visual media is complemented by the brain’s ability to digest imagery better than text, and to remember it for longer. In fact, this article from 2012 found that users are more than 27 times as likely to click on a video ad than a standard banner ad! From presenting information faster than text, to allowing people to take in non-verbal communication, there’s a reason why the most popular social media platforms are those that include a large amount of video, including Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

Read more: Managing online reviews in dental marketing

Dental marketing needs reassurance first

As people start heading back to the dentist after lockdown, many may be concerned about the continuing risk of infection. Your marketing is an excellent way to reassure your existing and potential new patients that you are exercising the highest standards of safety and infection control. This is something that won’t disappear just because the lockdown ends either. It’s highly likely that the impact of this period will be felt for at least the next year and that people’s awareness of infectious disease will remain at a heightened level for a long time.

Again, video will prove an important tool in showing how seriously you’re taking the safety of your dental patients. Showing the preparations you’ve made and precautions you’ve taken, while also reassuring people that they can still expect a warm, personal service behind the mask, will make sure that people feel confident to pay you a visit.

Need some help? Ask our dental marketing experts today.

How functional medicine marketing can convert leads

Picture of Sabrina Martinez

Sabrina Martinez

Once you establish a strong functional medicine marketing funnel, you’ll start to see a steady stream of leads arriving in your inbox. It’s the first step to helping your practice grow to the next level.

Most often, people will find your practice through search and social, where you’ll have an active presence thanks to Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and an active content marketing strategy. They’ll click through to a polished landing page on your website, where you’ll educate them about what functional medicine is, and all the different ways you can help. They’ll reach out to you and either schedule a free consultation or request a free download. Just like that, you’ve got a lead.

That means you’re going to have tons of business, right?

Maybe! Abundant leads are a very exciting part of the growth process, but truthfully, it all depends on whether or not you can close them. After all, numbers are only meaningful if they follow through to a sale. You can develop the best website traffic, the highest social engagement, and the longest list of leads, but they’re not going to help you unless you can drive conversions.

So how can we close the gap and ensure functional medicine marketing leads to sales?

Prefer to chat to a real person? Schedule a free consultation.

Converting functional medicine marketing leads

One of the most important things to remember in health marketing is that your business might not be the only business that prospective patients are considering. They’re looking to solve a problem related to their health, which means they’re experiencing a certain level of discomfort, which in turn leads to a sense of urgency. They’re looking for answers, and they’re looking for them now. The first functional medicine practice to give them the information they need is likely to convert.

You can’t expect your leads to sit still, so you need to make time a priority. As internet entrepreneur Neil Patel says, “first to call is first to close.” According to Xant, a revenue acceleration company based in Utah, 50% of leads end up choosing the company that reaches out first. There are a few reasons for this: the fact that your practice comes across as being organized and professional, the perception that you have answers and are eager to help, and the fact that you make it easy.

In this respect, automation can be your friend. Once someone hits “submit” on a request for a consultation or phone call, send an automated email thanking them for their request, providing a link where they can get more information, and letting them know a realistic timeframe.

Time really is of the essence. Five minutes is better than 30 minutes, which is better than an hour, which is better than a day. The earlier your respond, the better your chance of converting a new lead you’ve received through your functional medicine marketing strategy.

Read more: Is marketing the new sales?

Try, and try again, to close functional medicine sales

The internet is theoretically endless, and every page is fighting for attention. That means there are distractions are every turn. People have short attention spans, which means they move on quickly. Chances are, they’re not sitting by the phone and waiting for your sales call.

We assume you’ve heard the famous quote: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” It’s believed to have originated in 1840, but it’s as relevant today as it was then. Don’t stop after just one or two emails or calls. Be polite, and don’t hound your prospective patients, but remember a little bit of persistence at this stage shows that you’re willing to go to the extra mile for them.

Need help refining your strategy? Schedule a free consultation.

Making sure functional medicine marketing and sales match

Digital functional medicine marketing requires a constant flow of feedback, not just from between your practice and its patients, but between your marketing and sales strategies. If something isn’t working, ask why! Are you attracting the right type of leads? Are your messages getting mixed? Do you need to bolster the educational part of your process to help people understand what you offer? Is your price point too high? Is there a weakness in the funnel, like a broken link?

Effective functional medicine marketing strategies aren’t “set and forget.” You need to check in constantly to adapt and modify things as best practices change, you should run A/B tests to see what’s going to be most effective in your area for your desired clientele, and you should think critically about how things are working and why to ensure your process is optimized.

If you can’t figure it out, go right back to basics. Who is your ideal client? What do they need? Who are your leads? Do they match your ideal client profile? If not, why did they reach out? Once you have answers to these questions, you’ll be able to ensure both your functional medicine marketing strategy and your sales process address the right pain points to convert the right leads. It’s important to be consistent across all your patient interactions so you can start building trust.

Read more: Anatomy of a high-converting landing page.

Finding your functional medicine marketing niche

Every functional medicine business has a unique value proposition. It comes with the territory: by nature, you’re an out-of-the-box thinker. That means some aspects of your business might be better suited to driving sales through a functional medicine marketing strategy than others.

For example, you might have an integrative cardiology program you can use to deliver results for people with heart problems, which allows you to focus your efforts on a really narrow niche. You might have a 12-week anxiety program, designed to help people reset their mental health through functional medicine practices, which allows you to hone in on a highly-targeted market. Perhaps you specialize in helping people with autoimmune conditions, or migraines, or obesity. Great! Use that to your advantage and make it the focus of your functional medicine marketing and sales process.

The best thing about finding a niche is that it allows you to research your competitors, find out what they’re doing, and think of ways you can do it differently or better. It reduces the competition, which means you’re likely to see a return on investment much sooner than you would otherwise.

Finding a niche is a great way to streamline your funnel, align your messaging, and fine-tune your process. Once you’ve nailed it on one aspect of your business, you can build up to your other programs and speciality areas, to ensure you’re doing it in the most effective way possible.

Read more: Why having a mission statement matters.

Helping your functional medicine practice grow

If you’re new to the world of sales funnels, you’re rebranding, or you’re serious about wanting to grow your business, you may benefit from hiring a digital marketing agency. They’ll be able to conduct research on your behalf, advise you about the best way forward, and build all the pages you’ll need to refine your funnel. They’ll also be able to provide training to ensure you’re ready to receive sales calls and you know exactly what to say to get convert new patients for your practice.

Ready to get started? Schedule a free consultation.

Step-by-step orthodontics marketing plan

Picture of Sabrina Martinez

Sabrina Martinez

So you’ve made the decision to grow as an orthodontics practice. Great! Now what?

You know that digital marketing is the first step to reaching prospective patients. Your website needs freshening up, you need to run Facebook Ads, and you need to boost your Google ranking. It can be intimidating and time consuming when you’re first starting out. How do you get all of these pieces working together to your advantage?

We’re glad you asked. After over 20 years in the marketing industry, we’ve developed the ultimate step-by-step guide to digital marketing for orthodontists that will send new patients flocking to your doors. Find out what we consider to be our “secret sauce” below.

Want to talk strategy? Schedule a free consultation.

Quick overview of orthodontics marketing

If you want to register more patients for your orthodontics practice, you have to think like your prospective patients! It is well-known in the digital marketing industry that people go through four stages as they are being convinced to buy: Attract, Engage, Convert, and Close.

We’ve added one more: Prepare. Orthodontics marketing doesn’t work unless you’re organized, with a crystal clear strategy in mind. Make sure your digital ducks are all in a row before you launch into the buying cycle, and you should see results in a matter of months!

1. Prepare your orthodontics marketing strategy

The foundation of an effective digital orthodontics marketing plan is strong branding and an optimized website. Without these elements, your strategy will struggle to get off the ground. Here is what we mean when we talk about branding and website design:

  • Branding and graphic design: Your brand, including the logo, colors, and fonts of your orthodontics practice, is one of your greatest assets. It visually communicates to prospective patients who you are and what you do. Without a strong and consistent brand, your orthodontics marketing strategy won’t be effective. Prospective patients will be confused, and less likely to remain loyal, if they see different visuals representing your practice in different places online. Make sure you have an authoritative style guide, outlining which logo, colors, and fonts you can use, to keep you on-brand throughout your digital marketing.
  • Website design and content: Your website is the first impression you give, and the primary source of the content Google will read to rank your position online. Therefore, it’s vital that your orthodontics marketing strategy includes a clean, seamlessly designed website with a good structure and keyword-optimized content. This means writing each service page focused on including a specific service-related keyword (such as “Invisalign”) so that Google knows what you’re talking about. This is called “Search Engine Optimization” or “SEO.” Clean up your website if you can and rewrite your services if you need to before you begin marketing online.

Ready to get started? Let’s talk orthodontics marketing.

2. Use orthodontics marketing to attract patients

Your orthodontics marketing strategy begins with the “Attract” phase. Here, you should identify prospective patients as people in your area who are starting to become unhappy with their appearance, people who are beginning to notice issues caused by the alignment of their teeth or jaws, or parents who are wondering if their children might need orthodontic work. As a result of this heightened awareness, many of these people are asking questions online, typing them into their browsers or asking friends over social media. All of these people in your region can be targeted and attracted to your business using the following digital marketing tools:

  • Social media marketing: You’ve probably already created a Facebook page for your business and tried to run some Facebook Ads. This is undoubtedly the place to be if you want to reach as many people as possible – in fact, Facebook has 214 million users in the United States alone. That’s almost 66% of the population! Platforms like Facebook and Instagram allow you to target these people based on location, their demographics, the groups they follow, their interests, and more, showing your advertisements in their news feeds. This is gold when it comes to your orthodontics marketing strategy. Post consistently with your target marketing in mind, answering questions they may have as they engage with you online. Always, always include a call to action in your posts and advertisements, either by linking back to your website or providing a phone number people can call to schedule an appointment.
  • Google Ads: Never underestimate the power of Google Ads. One of the first things any modern, prospective patient is going to do as they are looking for an orthodontist is research online. Did you know you can put your practice in the number one spot on the Google results page with Google Ads? They show up at the top of the page in the “ad” section whenever a prospective patient searches using the keywords you choose to target through your ad account – for example, you could target “Invisalign.” Be sure to use a catchy title and point the ad toward a relevant, keyword-optimized service page on your website for best results.
  • Blog marketing: A great way to target the *exact* questions prospective patients are searching online is to write a blog answering their question! This is an essential part of every orthodontics marketing strategy. Google Autocomplete is a great way to do this. Simply type in a word like “Invisalign,” see what pops up, and write a blog answering the question. Easy! If you blog regularly (we recommend one to two times per week if you are able), you’ll notice your web traffic increase substantially! The most important thing is to be consistent.

Looking to outsource your orthodontics marketing? Call us.

3. Orthodontics marketing that engages

Once you have attracted potential customers, your next goal should be to have them stick around. Keep your followers coming back with higher levels of content that answer more of their questions about orthodontics, establish your credibility, and begin to develop a virtual relationship. Use the following orthodontics marketing tools to engage prospective patients:

  • Video marketing: Now that your followers know that they can find quality content from you on social media, they will be on the lookout for more. Video is one of the most easily consumable forms of content and a very effective way to get your message across. Create short, 30-60 second video productions that talk about the benefits of becoming a patient at your orthodontics practice or that answer common questions to keep people engaged.
  • Social media quizzes: Social media quizzes are also becoming increasingly popular online. Create an engaging quiz such as, “What does your smile say about your personality?” Be as serious or as silly as you like – it all helps develop your brand personality. Remember that this stage of your orthodontics marketing strategy is all about engagement! Include a call to action at the end to encourage people to call or visit your website.

Need help developing your messaging? We’re the experts.

4. Convert using lead generation

After your orthodontics marketing strategy has attracted and engaged prospective patients, you can ask them for something in return. At this point, your followers are interested and will be willing to give you something, such as their email address or their availability for an appointment. Convert these people to leads by requesting their contact information using the following tools:

  • Landing pages: Landing pages are generally the pages on your website that a customer lands on after they have clicked on an advertisement or a call-to-action, however, many landing pages are built with one goal in mind: conversion. These landing pages offer something valuable in return for prospective patients’ contact information. It could be an eBook, free consultation, or whatever you choose (see below)! When creating a landing page, be sure to write a catchy headline, use relevant images, and write concise, relevant content to the topic at hand, always driving the visitor closer to the call to action of submitting their contact info.
  • eBooks: eBooks are a fun way to repurpose the blogs written in the “Attract” stage of your orthodontics marketing strategy! Compiling and indexing relevant blogs into an eBook gives you a valuable piece of content to deliver to prospective patients in exchange for their contact information. For example, after you have answered a comprehensive set of questions about braces, you can create an eBook entitled, “What You Need to Know Before You Get Braces.”
  • Other: There are many ways to capture contact information that are not limited to landing pages. For example, you should have a contact form setup on your website and strongly consider installing a chatbot if your orthodontics practice has the time to manage it. Chatbots can request that visitors enter their email address and/or phone number before they chat. You could also offer free subscription to email updates whenever you publish a new blog or a free subscription to an e-newsletter if you have time to regularly email prospective patients as well.

Struggling to convert leads? Let’s assess your strategy.

5. Final stage of your orthodontics marketing plan

The “Close” stage is the final stage where a prospective patient makes the decision to register with your orthodontics practice. Now that you’ve reached the end of your orthodontics marketing strategy, make it as easy as possible for them to give you their business using a simple sales tactic:

  • Free Consultations: Free consultations require no commitment and allow prospective patients to take a no-strings-attached peek into your practice. By making the first step, however, they are taking action that will give them a favorable predisposition to you over your competitors. Offer a free consultation form on your landing page or website to take prospective patients through the final stage of the buying cycle.

After you have completed the “Close” stage, you’ve done it! You have successfully taken a prospective orthodontics patient through the buying cycle using an effective orthodontics marketing plan. Now all that’s left is to stay consistent with all of these tools and techniques to keep them coming!

If all of these stages and tools sound too overwhelming, please know that they can easily be built up over time. That said, it is imperative that you complete them regularly and in a reasonable timeframe if you want this orthodontics marketing strategy to be effective. Please know that we have done this for many practices over the years and we would be happy to talk strategy with you.

Ready to get started? Schedule a free consultation today.

Secrets to unlocking a finance marketing brand story

Picture of Sabrina Martinez

Sabrina Martinez

What is a brand story? It’s a narrative about your business that inspires a positive emotional reaction. It’s not about showing and telling people about your brand, like traditional advertising, but combining facts with feelings as you explain how your business came to be and what drives you.

Storytelling isn’t a new concept in digital marketing. It’s easy for a tourism business to inspire people, for example, by creating a narrative around the kind of experience a visitor will have if they visit that destination or engage that service. It’s also easy to inspire people with a start-up, because usually there’s a strong values-based reason as to why the founder took action.

Brand stories for finance companies should focus consider the following elements:

  • Who are you and what do you stand for?
  • What problems do you help solve?
  • What experience do you redefine?
  • Why should people trust you?
  • Who is your community?
  • How do you do good?

Think about these questions as you read on. We’ll come back to them in a little bit.

Ready to talk to the professionals? Schedule a free consultation.

Modern marketing leans on brand stories

Historically, most businesses used a model best described as “interruptive marketing.” It’s called this because it essentially involved interrupting people to capture their attention, educate them about your services, and convince them to engage – think direct mail, cold calls, door knocking, etc.

However, the digital age turned this model on its head. As consumers became more tech-savvy, they became more educated, which meant they were in total control of the kind of information they read. Being interrupted all the time with brand messages became a nuisance, which was off-putting.

The way we market had to change at a fundamental level, which is why the industry evolved and adopted a new philosophy known as “inbound marketing.” Inbound marketing is essentially the practice of yourself easy to find, so people can access your services when they want or need them. They come to you; you don’t go to them. It’s an entirely new way of thinking.

That’s where the brand story comes in. Prospective clients will find you in many different ways. You’ll need a strong social media strategy and a strong SEO strategy to ensure you’re present in all the places they’ll be likely to look when they’re trying to find a financial services company.

Once they choose to click on one of your links, the brand story will be front and center. This means two things: acknowledging their problem, and explaining how you’ll act to solve it. Make it persuasive, because this is your chance to inspire them to take the next step.

Read more: What is StoryBrand marketing and how does it benefit my business?

Creating a brand story for your business

Let’s circle back to the questions above. The reason we ask them is so we can find out what makes your business unique. What separates you from your competition? Ultimately, this will be at the heart of all of your company messaging, because it’s the first step to explaining why someone should choose you. You need to create a brand in which your employees and clients can take pride.

It’s not necessarily about being the best (although that doesn’t hurt). It’s about the relationship you develop with your clients and the experience they have doing business with you. Your mission statement is a good place to start. What are your values? These should be reflected in your brand story, to help people understand what you’re about and see if your values align with theirs.

Once you’re clear about your guiding principles, you can develop your story.

Here’s something to think about: benefits sell; features don’t. Anyone working in the finance sector can list all of their services and launch into a length explanation of each. Does anyone want to hear that? It may sound harsh, but the answer is not really. They don’t want to wade through a bunch of technical financial information and create a spreadsheet comparing your services to that of your competitor. What they do want, however, is to find out how you’re going to help them.

Every brand story should focus on the consumer. They’re the main character. Create a story that validates their problem, shows that you understand, and lets them know you’re on their side.

You need to immediately acknowledge their problem and explain how you’re going to act on it. You need to explain the benefits of your services. Most importantly, you need them to buy into your story – they need to align to who you are, what you stand for, and what drives you.

Read more: Why is corporate branding important?

How to actually write a brand story

By now, you’ve realized that a “brand story” doesn’t mean a novel. We’re not asking you to write a book about your childhood, your formative years, your struggles, and your hopes and dreams (although if you do go ahead and write a personal memoir, we’ll definitely help market it).

Instead, think of your brand story as your 30-second elevator pitch. Say you’re riding in an elevator with a prospective client. They ask what you do. You only have a few floors to make an impression. What are the key things you’ll want them to know when the bell dings and the doors open?

HubSpot, a marketing software developer, says the key is to “tell your brand’s story, not its highlight reel.” No-one wants to listen to someone brag about their achievements for 30 seconds. However, a genuine human connection – such as a story of overcoming adversity, or solving a problem with a values-based solution – will be relatable, and memorable for all the right reasons.

If you’re not sure where to start, make it a tale of overcoming adversity. It’s a classic model of having an ideal, pursuing a goal, getting knocked down, and ultimately finding success that never fails to be persuasive. People love to root for an underdog and see them prevail.

Read more: An expert guide to content marketing

Putting brand stories to work

Once you’ve had a brainstorm, defined your answers to the questions we listed at the start of this blog post, and organized your thoughts into a few paragraphs, it’s time to put them to work.

First of all, we recommend putting a summarized version on your homepage – this only has to be one or two sentences. For people who enter your digital ecosystem through the front door, it will capture the heart of what your business is about and create a good impression immediately.

The full version of your brand story should live on the “About” section of your website. This is generally the second most-visited page on any website, because once people are on your webpage (whether they enter through the homepage or a side window, like a blog post), they’ll want to confirm that your business is legitimate. This will give them a sense of who you are and what you’re about, which will encourage them to invest the time reading the rest of your web content.

In order to maximize the impact of your brand story, we also recommend expanding on your philosophy in a blog post (or series of posts), and sharing snippets of your story on social media. This will ensure your messaging is consistent, which will help prospective clients get to know you.

There’s nothing better than having a meeting with someone who says, “Oh, you’re the company who ___.” Bazinga! That’s why stories are at the heart of modern marketing: we create a story, develop a genuine connection, inspire someone to take the next step, and generate a lead.

Ready to develop your brand story? Schedule a free consultation.

Managing online reviews in dental marketing

Picture of Sabrina Martinez

Sabrina Martinez

Going to the dentist involves a huge degree of trust. Often, your patients are nervous about visiting you, and they rely on you to correctly diagnose and treat any problems they may be having. It can also be very expensive, depending on what they need done and whether their insurance covers it. As such, it’s really important that your dental practice’s marketing strategy revolves around trust.

Successfully building trust requires a few different elements. Transparency and legitimacy are important, so it’s critical that you ensure your website is up-to-date, that you have a Google My Business profile, and an active social media presence. This lets people find you when they need you, and check you out to see what kind of practice you run and whether you’re the right fit for them.

However, the oldest and best form of marketing is word of mouth, and the best way to capitalize on this is by incorporating online reviews into your strategy. This allows people to check what others have said about your business, and get a sense of the experience they might have if they choose you. We’ll run you through the basics of Facebook and Google reviews as well as website testimonials.

Need to call the professionals? Schedule a free consultation.

Making the most of Facebook reviews

When you set up a business page on Facebook, you’ll automatically get a “Reviews” tab. This is a page where your patients can create posts, give you a rating, and decide whether to recommend you. All posts are open to the public, which means they’re really valuable for two reasons. First, they let you get a sense of what people really think about your customer service. Second, they’re really compelling for people researching new dentists online – after all, you can write whatever you like about your practice on your website, but the public is an independent judge.

Here’s an example from our client, South Anchorage Dental Center:

Dental marketing

As you can see, there is a rating out of five, and a simple button people can select to recommend the dental practice to their friends. Anyone can click through and read the comments.

The other important thing to note is the response. Dr. Broc Brimhall is one of the dentists working at this office, and he responded promptly to acknowledge the positive review, thank the patient, and explain why the experience they had reflected the practice’s mission statement. This is a great example of best practice in managing Facebook reviews. It’s not every day a patient leaves a positive review, so if they take the time to do it, let them know that you appreciate it. It’s quick and easy and will show anyone else reading the page that you’re responsive and polite.

Read more: 10 tips for optimizing your social media presence

Optimizing your Google reviews

If you haven’t already set up a Google My Business profile, do it now. It’s a free tool that creates a business listing and ensure you can easily connect with patients (and prospective patients) across Google Search and Maps. For example, if someone types “emergency dentist near me” into the search bar, having an active profile means your practice will show up at the top of the results page.

Google My Business results are displayed in a column on the right-hand side of the Google results page. They include a map, a rating out of five stars, a list of basic details (such as address, hours, and phone number), popular times, and then – you guessed it – a reviews section.

Here’s an example from our client, Mandanas Dental:

Dental marketing

People can then click through to read the full list. Just like Facebook, Google My Business providers the business owner an opportunity to reply to all comments. It’s a great way to reinforce your connection with people, increasing the chance that they’ll come back to see you again the next time they need a dentist. It’s also a great way to address concerns raised in negative reviews.

Stay tuned, because we’ll circle back to this a little later.

Read more: 10 tips to improve your website’s ranking on Google

Making website testimonials work for you

When a company displays testimonials on its website, we marketers call that “proof.” Essentially, that means proof your dental practice is as good as you say it is, validated by a third party.

There are a few different ways you can do this. For example, you can share things people have said in Facebook or Google reviews on your page, you can provide links where people can click through to read those reviews, you can ask patients to fill out a survey after their appointment, or you can reach out to long-term patients via email or text and ask them directly.

Once you have a range of testimonials, you may find it helpful to incorporate some of them onto highly-trafficked pages, such as your home page, about page, and contact page. Depending how many you have, you may even consider creating a dedicated reviews page.

Here’s an example from our client, Valley Dental:

Dental marketing

This practice has provided quality family dentistry services in Wasilla, Alaska, for many years. Dr. Robert W. Robinson III (affectionally known as Dr. Rob) took over the practice from his father in 1999. Dr Robinson Sr. started the clinic back in 1973, so it has a proud history in the area.

They’ve collected a huge number of glowing reviews over the years, so it makes sense to display them front and center on the homepage. It’s one of the first things people will see, and it immediately creates a positive first impression that invites visitors to take action and schedule an appointment. Don’t underestimate the persuasive power of these simple statements!

Read more: 5 website design trends you need to watch this year

How to handle negative reviews

Unfortunately, at some point in your career, it’s inevitable that you’ll have to deal with a negative comment. Perhaps you dropped the ball. Perhaps your patient was having a bad day. Whatever the reason, it’s important that you can deal with them promptly and professionally, because many consumers read online reviews before engaging the services of a dental clinic.

Remember what we said at the start about trust?

The good news is that negative reviews aren’t necessarily bad. For one thing, they allow you to keep your finger on the pulse of public perception so you can proactively manage your reputation. For another thing, they allow you to identify areas where you can improve your business.

They also provide a great opportunity for people to learn about your character and your values. Yes, negative reviews can sting. It’s totally normal to feel a range of different things – disappointment, frustration, anger, injustice, and more. However, other people can see when you respond quickly and calmly, and offer to make things right. It gives them confidence that, since you valued that patient’s experience, you’ll value their experience as well and do your best to look after them.

Read more: 6 must-read tips to rocking your online reviews

So there you have it: managing reviews 101. If you’d like help managing your online reviews, or some advice about how to make them work for your specific circumstances, schedule an appointment. We’d love to discuss this with you over tea, coffee, or something stronger.

Financial marketing woman

Tips to level-up your financial marketing before 2021

Read More
Financial marketing guy

What is financial marketing and why is it important?

Read More
Financial officer reviews paperwork with applicant.

Trends you need to capitalize on in financial marketing

Read More
Digital Marketing Can Grow Your Local HVAC Business

HVAC marketing can boost your reputation (and your sales)

Read More
Mental Health Marketing

Optimize your mental health marketing on social media

Read More
Dental marketing

Simple way to use sales funnels in dental marketing

Read More
dental marketing

Top four dental marketing tips to increase market share

Read More
How Dental Marketing Has Changed in 2020

How dental marketing has changed in 2020

Read More
Functional medicine marketing

How functional medicine marketing can convert leads

Read More
Orthodontics Marketing

Step-by-step orthodontics marketing plan

Read More
Finance marketing

Secrets to unlocking a finance marketing brand story

Read More
Dental Marketing

Managing online reviews in dental marketing

Read More
See More Posts