dental content marketing
Does Your Dental Marketing Copy and Content Cut Through the Noise?
I credit Brian Clark and his Copyblogger article. He prompted my thinking about an essential element of compelling copy and content including what use in your dental marketing.
Writing is hard. Reading more so.
How’s that?
You (and your readers) must identify with a compelling reason to take action. In essence, that’s scheduling, using your service, or making a purchase.
Basically it’s the primary response your dental content and dental copy intends to prompt in your reader.
Is it compelling?
What makes content creation difficult is not the writing itself. It’s the identifiable benefits that are hidden behind the features that pose the challenge.
That’s a theme I’ve covered before. There’s no shortage of feature-intensive dental content.
It’s easy to focus on the newest, greatest, latest, state-of-the-are, cutting-edge this or that. Right?
No doubt you’re proud of whatever it is that you’ve recently acquired or offer as a service. But adding an emphasis on the “thing” without compelling your audience with what the “thing” can do for them makes for a weak, lazy marketing message.
“Why didn’t I think of that…?”
Clark highlights the value of true benefits with a reference to direct response copywriter, Clayton Makepeace.
“…(He) asserts that fake benefits will kill sales copy, so you have to be on the lookout for them in your writing. He uses this headline as a an example:
Balance Blood Sugar Levels Naturally!
That sounds pretty beneficial, doesn’t it? In reality, there’s not a single real benefit in the headline.
True benefits
Makepeace advises to apply his patented ‘forehead slap’ test to see if your copy truly contains a benefit for the reader.
Here’s how Makepeace identifies the real benefit in that headline:
‘Nobody really wants to balance their blood sugar levels. But anyone in his or her right mind DOES want to avoid the misery of blindness…cold, numb, painful limbs…amputation…and premature death that go along with diabetes.’”
See the difference?
Make a connection where your reader “feels” something – the risk and effects of diabetes. This hits them where your reader (in this instance) lives.
Get “emotional” about it
Your copy shouldn’t be emotional for the sake of it. That leaves your reader numb and unable to do much about it.
Tap into emotions that compel a response.
Think what?, why?, how?
What is your product, service, etc., and what does it do? This is the feature level.
Why is this important, useful, etc., in the first place? Now you’re thinking at the edge of benefits.
Now…
How does your product or service actually connect with your patient’s/client’s desires? Here’s where you think emotionally and make it about the real benefits they’ll receive from whatever you’re promoting.
Nothing “fringe” about the benefits
Ultimately benefits are personal to everyone who interacts with your promotional copy. They make up their mind and take action simply because you ask them to but…in response to being compelled at an emotional rather than solely rational level (where a high percentage of marketing copy and content fails).
“What’s in it for me?” is the ultimate question your copy and content must answer. Get your reader, listener, viewer to ask that question and it’s only a matter of time before you can lead them to a responsive answer.
And that’s the goal for much of your marketing copy and content – ACTION!
How to Meet Your Audience Eye-to-Eye in Your Dental Marketing Content
Sometimes the strain is too much. In my case it was the strain I consistently felt in my neck.
A practical Christmas gift solved that problem. And it prompted me to think about a principle that can keep your dental content and dental marketing from being well…a pain-the-neck.
I’m at my desk for the majority of each work day. My stand-up desk, though efficient and good for my overall health, even so created ongoing tension in my neck and shoulders.
Looking down at my MacBook Pro all day left me sore at day’s end.
I browsed for a more ergonomic solution. And viola!
The Rain mStand.
This gorgeous piece of aluminum looks sweet on my desk top. More important, it provides the lift I need to bring my MacBook Pro to eye-level.
Mom hooked me up with one for Christmas. I’m stoked about it.
Everything’s at eye-level now. Neck-strain gone!
Got me to thinking about marketing-strain.
What’s that you ask?
Consider it any promotion, copy, or piece of content that fails to meet your reader, client, patient, or customer at eye-level.
Eye-to-eye or “die!”
Might seem extreme. But in a world of “hey-look-at-us-and-how-great-we-are” marketing it removes the pain.
Marketing that’s so feature heavy and bloated with industry-speak that it weighs your core message down isn’t compelling.
There’s a better way.
How to Create Dental Marketing Copy and Dental Marketing Content That Meets People at Eye-Level
1-Get personal
Your dental marketing strategy has one purpose, ultimately. It’s to consistently meet your patient/client at their personal “pain-points.”
To clarify, not all patients/clients are at a pain threshold all the time. Much of the time they’re simply looking for a solution to a problem.
This demands that you personalize your strategies.
Speak to each as an individual rather than a collective group. For example, use the word “you.”
This trains you to think in terms of a single person. You’ll naturally write, promote, market as if you’re speaking to them alone.
More important, they’ll feel it too.
2-Stop “selling”
Might seem strange to hear that said in a discussion of marketing. True, “selling” is the outcome of your dental marketing.
Though you perhaps don’t like to think of what you do as “selling” it’s the reality of marketing.
But…
It’s important to understand that the concept of “selling” is much different than the approach that feels and sounds “salesy.” Before you dismiss this point as a matter of semantics, think about it.
“People (you included) don’t like the idea of being sold.”
It’s more a matter of connecting their personal desires, emotions, problems to a solution. That connection is where the real value of “selling” takes place.
You create a “fan” over time by how you engage them with your solutions. If you sound, write, promote like a 15 second tv commercial you’ll do nothing more than numb your market.
Tap into your patient’s/client’s emotional buying motives. It’s reflected in a classic marketing formula according to Theodore “Ted” Levitt:
“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.”
And that, my friends, leads to a third and final idea…
3-Solve problems
The “drill” (according to Levitt) isn’t the ultimate, desired solution. The “hole” is!
In our feature-intensive marketing language it’s easy to forget the problem-solution-benefit equation. That is, how your services/products are described or packaged isn’t as valuable to your patient/client as the solution-benefit it provides.
Know your “audience” and you’ll speak to their pain. Listen to chair side conversations, consultant feedback, online reviews, search data, social media data and conversations, etc.
Mine conversations for problems that your unique services/products can solve. Create content that highlights how the problem/pain is solved.
Your dental marketing value will increase within your niche when you give your patients/clients consistent reason to trust your expertise.
Get eye-level. Your pain and theirs will disappear.
How to Assure that Your Dental Content is Clear and Useful
I love it when clients “get” what I’m about to share with you! It’s simple really and it can add value to your dental content – online or offline.
I recently wrote the copy for a dental client’s website. The pediatric dental content was brief and to the point – as they preferred.
They asked for a minor revision. It involved copy on a somewhat obscure dental issue. Though pleased with the copy, the client recognized that the existing content could be a bit confusing to their “audience.”
It’s vital that your content connect on a compelling AND clear level with your reader.
I made a minor adjustment to the copy. All it involved was a simple tweak in the language followed by a clarifying explanation of the issue.
I’ll share the “language” I used in a moment.
Clarity first
I’ve written about what is called the “power of one.” It’s the principle that your copy/content is more compelling and useful when it focuses on one, clear idea.
It’s common for marketing or promotional copy/content to take on too much. Words carry weight but too many ideas all at once can weigh-down and confuse your reader.
Narrow your focus to one clear, compelling, big idea. And make sure that idea is clearly communicated (what my client gets).
How to Assure that Your Dental Content is Clearly Useful
1-Know your audience
This is Communication-101. Who are you talking, writing, marketing, promoting to? Dentistry is a technical, knowledge-based industry. As a dentist, your education holds esteemed value to your patients (and it certainly should).
Your audience “pays” for your knowledge and expertise. But that knowledge-base requires a clear explanation when it’s shared with those other than industry colleagues (i.e., your patients).
- View your services through the “eyes” of your patient. Explain, promote, educate them with words they understand. This is a fundamental task of my dental content writing – clarifying and attaching benefits to what is otherwise obscure or irrelevant.
- Get to the benefit level as quickly and clearly as possible. Remember that the benefits of your services must connect with your patient’s emotions. Features, on the other hand, appeal to their logic. Use both (features and benefits) but clarify what you provide around the benefit they will receive.
2-Paint a “picture.”
It’s useful to illustrate the “idea” you’re communicating. This is what I did recently with my client.
I used a few simple words to clarify the complex issue. Instead of using albeit accurate technical language I illustrated it by saying, “Think of it this way…,” then crafted a short connection to a relatable idea.
Those simple words shifted their thinking to something they could understand. When your reader makes the “shift” they inch closer to accepting what you’re communicating.
Art takes work.
Invest time creating clear ways to communicate your services. What can you compare it to? Is there a connection to something your patient(s) know and understand?
3-Tell a story.
This is about your core message. Those who read your content aren’t looking for a screenplay but they are looking for value in what your provide.
The more you draw them into your services the better your outcomes.
- Help your patient see themselves using and benefitting from your service. It’s not about “whiter teeth” it’s really about confidence at their daughter’s wedding or feeling attractive at their upcoming high school reunion.
- List as many plot-lines as you can think of for each of your dental services. By “plot-line” I’m referring to the path you guide them on from problem to solution. What ultimately does this “problem” cause if avoided and what would it look like if they accept the “solution?”
- Mine your reviews, surveys, and patient testimonials for story themes. Patients tell you their story through their post-treatment comments. Listen chair side for clues to your patient’s story. What are they really wanting from the service you’ve treatment planned for them?
That’s story!
Simplify your copy. And remember that clarity adds value to the content you publish to promote your services.
Two Strategies That Will Keep People Reading Your Dental Content
There’s a reason this adult coloring book trend is catching on. The deeper vibe you can gain from it also applies to how you position yourself in the minds of those who consume your dental marketing content.
A friend and colleague has joined the tribe of adult coloring book publishers. Hers goes beyond the simple act of coloring the stress relieving pages.
Her “Thoughtful Colouring” approach includes the refreshing aspect of coloring designs. It adds a corresponding page with an inspirational quote and blank space to process it however you choose (while you’re coloring).
Cool! I agree.
It’s that small addition to the trend that I believe offers a principle you must consider in the content you curate and create.
You increase your authority with your patients/clients when you implant value in your content.
Words, especially the common, fluff your reader is accustomed to can become numbing and an eventual turn-off.
Your content audience has too much info-noise coming at them minute by minute. It’s your task as content creator and publisher to capture their focus.
This is the precise reason I encourage dental providers to step away from a standard, brochure-like website design. Refresh your design (and with it your authority) by adding an information platform to your site (e.g a blog/article page, a newsletter portal, etc).
Your content gains traction when you list dental implants among your services. It increases in value when that page links to an archived blog post/article that answers a common question about “dental implants.”
In fact, in today’s search rankings, you might discover that the article page ranks higher than your keyword intense services/procedures page. The reason: search engines like Google place a higher priority on your value-providing intention via a blog post than on standard webpage content.
How to Add Some “Color” to Your Dental Content Marketing Strategy
Inspire your reader
How inspiring can dental content be? Appeal to your reader’s curiosity and hunger for solutions to their dental problem and your inspiration-factor increases.
You inspire by compelling your reader through the solutions you offer.
General site content promotes your services. Consistent, fresh content inspires your reader with answers to their questions and solutions to their problems.
You become a source of inspiration to your patients/clients when they get that you’re listening to them. The best proof of listening is to mirror their “pain,” “problem,” or “concern” through relevant content.
- Listen to every patient/client conversation with content in mind.
- Ask information-gathering questions: “How can I help you with…,” “What’s your biggest fear about…,” etc.
Simple, right? Inspiration shouldn’t be complicated.
Next…
Import secondary value
Think deeper benefits related to what you provide.
You deliver a primary value as a dental professional or a dental marketing professional. Respectively, you help, heal, or you promote in a way that leads to a buying decision.
Your secondary value to your patients or clients is vital too. This happens when you move from an “I’ll-call-when-I-need-you” relationship to a “Go-to-source-of-useful-shareable-information” relationship.
Secondary value rises as you become a consistent “well” of practical (not technical) information.
- Invest the time and marketing dollars in a consistent well-spring of content. Again, focus on the needs, wants, desires, questions, and problems of your patients/clients.
- Create a front-of-mind expectation. The more consistently you appear on their “radar” via a blog post, article, newsletter, social media link, etc the more influence you’ll earn.
Influence has value. Give your patients and/or clients something to value alongside the primary services you provide.
How Influence is More Vital Than Ever to Your Dental Content Marketing Strategy
Election season. You love it or hate it.
Wherever you affectionately land there’s more to the process. The same is true for having an online presence for your dental practice or dental industry business.
I don’t blame those who are a bit disinterested or jaded about American politics. And I’m not here to “stump” one way or the other.
My better point: the right to vote (however you feel about the current stable of candidates) is a privilege of citizenship. It’s a right granted you and I as result of our country’s fight for and preservation of freedom.I
What comes with the “territory”
Rights and privileges are worth protecting. Better is their ability to be used or maximized to their fullest potential.
You don’t have to agree with everything or everyone. But you do have a cause to act.
Action is the energy of your online dental marketing efforts. Succeed or fail, “casting-your-vote” is the essence of the privilege associated with having a piece of territory on the internet.
Sure, it’s a massive space. And you’re one among the billion or so.
Daunting. Yes.
But it comes down to one thing
Value. Not everyone who owns a piece of cyberspace uses it deliver value.
You? Me? I count myself among the value-delivery crowd. And hopefully you do as well.
No, not every blog post, Tweet, newsletter, email, or shared article is a world-changer. But I do approach it feeling as though I deliver something my growing “tribe” will read and be helped by.
And frankly, for starters, that’s enough!
Whatever you do online…do this as consistently as possible.
Create, Deliver, and Share Valuable Content
Increase your influence
I have a client whose influence as a consultant is on the rise. Why?
She recognizes the value, scope, and scalability of hers and her organization’s influence. The weekly content I help her create provides value to a segment of her industry target.
Notice I said, “segment.” You won’t influence everyone.
Focus on a niche within the greater industry universe you occupy. Tap into their pain, problems, and search for relevant solutions. Write, broadcast, email, market to that…consistently!
Showing up on their consciousness “radar” on a regular basis will nestle you into their thinking when they need the help you provide.
Online search these days revolves more and more around your intent. What kind of intent?
Your intent to help. Your online presence that’s branded, so to speak, with a particular library of useful content.
Invest in your influence
Desiring to have influence and being able to consistently deliver on that desire are two different things. For example, as a copy/content writer and content strategist I’m an investment to my previously mentioned consultant client.
I collaborate and create content for her “brand.” She has invested an amount of her marketing stake in my skill to research and write content.
Many dental professionals, dentists, and dental industry business owners desire to expand their influence. And they take a step into the content marketing sea.
Then they become weary. Why?
Consistent content curation, content writing, and content publishing takes time. For most, it’s time you as a professional do not have.
Outsource content curation and creation to other skilled professionals. Locate a go-to copy/content writer, resource them financially, and set them free to consistently stoke your influence via your brand’s content.
Your name is still the one in lights. The content shines on your behalf.
It’s a better approach than a random blog post or digital article here and there. Consistency reveals that you’re dialed in, available, and in tune with your “audience.”
And the quality is also no longer an issue. Although being there with consistently, useful content holds the top spot.
Influence transcends many things. And I’d have to agree that (given the current season where I live) politics is one of them.
What Simple Intuition Can Do for Your Dental Content Marketing Strategy
He’s smarter than I give him credit for. And there’s another more valuable trait that he’s developing at a young age.
I’ll let you in on our grandson’s growing personality in a moment. On a related note, there’s a trait within his intellectual development that applies to how your create your dental content.
Our grandson is six (”and a half…” as he’s quick to remind). The time I spend with him is priceless.
Being a freelancer and solopreneur has it’s perks. Especially when I can take a day off and spend time with the “B-man” as I call him.
I had that opportunity on a recent school holiday. Following breakfast, I reflexively viewed my incoming email on my iPhone as he was playing on the floor in our family room.
That’s when he schooled me…
“I thought you were taking the day off, G-pa!?”
Busted!
He made a connection that face-in-phone means work. He’s six and already more intuitive than I realize.
Intuition
Your power of observation or your ability to use your intuition can improve your dental content creation. It’s natural to make assumptions about your target audience.
After all, you’re a dental professional. You provide a certain set of services and the assumption is that people know it.
How people access your particular brand of services is the issue. Most approach who you are and what you do with questions.
Those questions – as we’ve discussed before – are your gold mine for creating compelling, useful content to promote your services.
Assume less – Intuit more
Your patients or clients are consistently in search of solutions to their “pain” or problems. And like most, they type a word or phrase in the form of a question into their chosen online search engine.
They, like you, do this more often on-the-fly via their smartphone or tablet. Pain, a problem, an unforeseen setback invades their space and they go searching for a solution.
Content Intuition and What It Can Do for Your Dental Content Marketing that Assumptions Cannot
Intuition creates real-time opportunity
Thoughts are fluid. You are always experiencing a constant stream of them.
So are your patients and clients.
It’s essential that your intuitive content finds its way to their thought consciousness. Your success rate will increase as you appear on their conscious “radar” consistently.
Monthly content…that’s a stretch. Sure, if it’s dense as in a content rich newsletter, industry case study, or informative ebook.
Start with a bi-weekly published content. But consider the opportunity-value of appearing in their space with useful content on a weekly basis – this is optimum.
Why? Your patients/clients are busy.
And volume of content they consume for information, entertainment, support, etc is off the charts.
Be there consistently. Be there usefully.
And you’ll occupy a small space in their content stream.
Intuition compels an informed response
The information your patients or clients search for depends on their current need, mood, pain, etc. Getting a response relies on your ability to intuit their condition.
How?
Listen!
- Set up listening “stations.” Encourage your business team, consultants, assistants, hygienists to develop an open-ear approach. Train them how to pick up on the signals your patients/clients are sending. Develop ways to log/archive that data.
- Create content around the questions, pains, problems, and solutions being sought by your patients/clients.
Remember that useful information compels…and “sells.”
Intuition conforms to the solutions you provide
Other “listening stations” are your online reviews, ratings, and strategic surveys. This is useful as you use your intuition to access what’s being said on and between the lines.
- Get intentional by using surveys. Brief, targeted surveys can help you tap-into the needs, wants, and desires of your patients/clients. Avoid lengthy, complicated, or irrelevant questions. Ask what you really want to know.
- Use reviews and survey data to create a content editorial list. Craft content around answering the questions and problems with solution-oriented content.
- Provide variety. Informative content can be shared via a blog, podcast, video, short courses, webinars, etc.
Give your “audience” numerous channels to connect with you. They’ll appreciate the convenience and your intuition.
How “Irritating” is Your Dental Content? And is That a Good Thing?
Years ago, I heard author/consultant, Jim Collins (Built to Last, Good to Great), speak. During his talk he said something I will always remember.
Your dental marketing influence on new patients or new clients rises and falls. It will achieve greater consistency when you create and use content according to what I remember Collins saying.
He made this statement about the sharing of ideas and principles – “I want what I share today to be like an irritating grain of sand stuck in the folds of your brain…”
Not to say that you want to “irritate” new or potential patients/clients into action. But the principle applies.
Content irritation?
The goal of your dental marketing content isn’t to irritate in the purest sense of that word. It’s more a matter of sustained front-of-mind presence.
Your potential patients/clients seek their information differently these days. It’s short of reflexive to reach for a smart phone or tablet device and “Google” the answer to their “burning” question.
What shows up in the search queue is vital to your ongoing ability to reach and compel them. More often than not a link to an article will pop-up in their search results.
Are you there?
I’m talking “there” in the sense of having a consistent presence via content that’s useful and relevant to their search. They’re looking for you, a dentist, or you as a dental industry professional and their “pain-point” is the motivation for seeking your services.
Or your new patient is sitting in your operatory following the exam, x-ray, and teeth cleaning as result of your latest promotion. Treatment is necessary.
A treatment plan is being presented. They have a decision to make.
Are they prepped and equipped with the information to make the decision?
Information flows
Your target audience makes decisions based on the compelling quality of the information presented to them. It would make sense that the more, compelling, informative, useful, and available information…the better, right?
Content creates a river effect. It flows towards expectant and otherwise seeking-to-be-informed people, not unlike yourself.
You’re reading this blog for much the same reason. A need or desire for the information prompted you to click a link and read it.
Or it was shared with you via a respected colleague, friend, or social media connection (always appreciated, by the way).
Welcome to the new era of content community.
How to Use Consistent Content to Inform and Compel New Patients or New Clients to Take Action on Your Services
Use the echo-effect.
Become a voice that “echoes” in the consciousness of your patients/clients. This happens when you show up consistently on their “radar” via compelling content.
You have limited hours of operation, marketing dollars to invest, and time to maximize your connections. Content works for you around-the-clock, so to speak.
Create “echo-points!”
- Create and send emails to your patient/client list. Link to relevant blog posts, articles, and/or social media channels. Limit how much you email promotions compared with the amount of “content-echo” you distribute to your list. A will timed email with a link to a relevant content channel could tip a new or current patient/client to take the next step.
- Use voice-mail (if you must rely on phone contact) more strategically. Craft the message (content) you leave with unavailable patients/clients to include a call to action. Avoid saying “call us back,” etc. Give them a reason to feel they’re missing out on something if they don’t return your call.
- Make audio/visual content available for after-hours “echoes.” Use short podcasts, YouTube videos, Periscope, Instagram, GIFs, SnapChat, etc.
Construct a go-to archive of valuable information.
Your online presence (via a website) should resemble a library more than a digital brochure. Archived content (blog posts, articles, videos, podcasts, etc.) set you up as an authority.
- Catalog your posts and articles by category. This improves eye-scan impact and ease of access.
- Use your content platform as reference point for patient/client questions – “What’s your email address? I’ll forward you a link to a blog post/article/podcast that will answer your question…” This gives you an opportunity to “echo.”
Release your collective influence.
This follows the previous tip. Your content becomes a second voice of influence beyond yours and that of your team.
Again, having content to share increases your authority and influence. Plus, not all of your team members (you included) are rock-stars at closing the “deal.” (treatment plans, etc.).
And content relieves all that “salesy-speak” that’s so easy to use when trying to close treatment or a sale.
Content gives you permission to keep promoting – even when you aren’t present…or as a reference point when you are.
Front-of-mind consistency is the strength of your dental content. It’s the type of “irritation” you shouldn’t mind having.