While most of us are practicing social distancing while sheltering-in-place, people are searching the web more than ever. In fact, total internet hits have surged by between 50% and 70%, according to preliminary statistics.
Now is the time to continue marketing and communicating with your current and prospective patients. Here are 20 things you can do during COVID-19 to boost your marketing.
Website
- Add a COVID-19 page to your website if you have not already done so, and add regular updates.
- Add a teledentistry page to your website if you are providing any type of telehealth service. Telehealth services can include simple text messages and phone videos to a dedicated telehealth platform. Adding a web page to your site that describes your capabilities and the steps to contact you will help with your search engine optimization and your patient communication.
- Add a sterilization page to your website. Explain what you and your practice is doing or has been doing to adhere to state sterilization guidelines. Include a description of your sterilization lab, your operatory procedures, etc. Do you have a dedicated staff person who manages your sterilization protocol? If so, communicate this on your page.
- Read your website content and add any new or additional information to each service page.
- Update your practice bios.
Create Short FAQ Videos
- Take this time to shoot short 30-second to 1-minute videos that answer specific questions that patients may ask you or your staff regularly.
- Then, post them on your practice YouTube page and link to your website pages where applicable. For example, if you answer a question about when parents should schedule a child’s first visit, add it to the Family Dentistry/First Visit/Children’s Dentistry page.
- Use YouTube’s capability to transcribe your videos so your text scrolls across the screen as viewers watch. Scrolling text increases viewing time and makes it more engaging for your audience.
Ideas for videos include:
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- Welcome to our practice!
- Our practice philosophy is…
- Answer the top 10 questions your patients ask on a regular basis. Answer one question per video.
Blogs + Vlogs
- Now is a great time to write blogs for your website. Blogs help improve search engine optimization and highlight your expertise.
- While you are recording short FAQ videos, you also may want to consider recording “vlogs” or video blogs at the same time. Instead of writing a blog, record a video. Remember to post it on your practice YouTube page and link the vlog as a blog post on your website. Additionally, transcribe your vlog and add that content to the blog post. We are seeing significantly increased website traffic to transcribed vlog pages, so this extra step will help your SEO.
Social Media
While social media channels are “blowing up” due to more people at home with time on their hands, now is the perfect time to communicate with your current and prospective patients through your practice Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages.
- Post photos and videos from your team members at home or your skeleton crew in the office. Simple shout-outs and educational posts about COVID-19 are generating significant interaction across all social media channels.
- Boost posts about your emergency services and hours to current and prospective patients in your community to increase post reach.
- Update your banner image with a COVID-19 related message.
- Update your practice hours to reflect your COVID-19 availability.
Google My Business (GMB)
- Make sure you are regularly optimizing and updating your practice GMB.
- Add Emergency Dental Services to your practice categories.
- Post a COVID-19 update message inside your Google Posts.
- Apply these GMB recommendations to your every-day maintenance.
- Remember to email your patients about your emergency services, available hours and other COVID-19-related topics.
- Add a video to each email you send with a quick description of why patients should watch it.
Keep in mind that there are more than 20 things you can do right now to keep your COVID-19 marketing effort moving forward while everything around us stops. If you have questions about these recommendations above, don’t hesitate to contact us. We can help!