The WebFX team is made up of more than 500 subject matter experts in digital marketing, SEO, web design and web development, social media, and more. Together, they’ve helped WebFX’s clients earn more than $6 billion in revenue from the web — and that’s just in the past five years. @webfx
Get all the benefits of digital marketing for dentists, from more patients to higher retention, with proven strategies like local SEO, review management, referral marketing, website optimization, email, and more!
More patients are turning to the Internet to look for healthcare information and professionals. In fact, 75% of people search online for doctors, dentists, and other healthcare providers.
Let’s improve your dental practice’s online visibility and start filling your calendar with appointments with these digital marketing strategies:
9 key digital marketing strategies for dental clinics
Digital marketing encompasses several strategies, all of which can boost your dental practice’s online presence. In this section, we highlight the most important ones for your office, starting with quick tips you can make for maximum gains.
“The dental industry is extremely competitive, and I see [dental marketing] as a two-pronged strategy,” says Jordan D., Healthcare Internet Marketing Expert at WebFX.
“The most important thing is hitting your fundamentals, which includes location pages, geo-targeted service content, and proper structured data markup,” he explains. “The other prong is the development of trust with the users visiting the website and the search engine.”
Expert insights from
Jordan D.Healthcare Internet Marketing Expert at WebFX
“By working on our fundamentals to first establish local targeting for services and building trust through on- and off-site strategies, we can influence both potential patients and search engines.”
Make your dental practice shine like pearly white teeth online with these strategies:
1. Local SEO: Capture patients looking online for a nearby dentist
Local search result for “Orthodontist in Queens, NY”
When someone in your area searches for “dentist near me” or “dentist in [your city],” you want your practice to appear in the results and the local SEO 3-pack. That’s because improved local search visibility can potentially lead new patients to your dental office.
Local SEO is an effective strategy for dentists to show up in local searches. You can start by claiming and optimizing your Google Business Profile. Doing so can boost your local visibility in days.
The foundation of your local SEO, your Google Business Profile (GBP), appears when patients look for dental practices in your area. This free listing can influence your potential patients to contact you.
Google Business Profile of a dental practice in the SERPs
That’s why you must claim your profile and optimize it by:
Filling out important information on the page (including your practice’s name, address, phone number, website, office hours, and business category)
Uploading high-quality photos of your dental office
Audit your dental practice’s listings across major directories, including Yelp and Zocdoc, to ensure your NAP information (Name, Address, and Phone Number) is consistent across all of them.
Having consistent information across the web helps guide your patients to your correct dental office address and call you at the right phone number to book an appointment. Tools like LocalFX let you update and sync your listings across directories, so you don’t have to manually update them on each directory.
Local citations are mentions of your dental practice, address, and phone number on other websites. These citations improve your practice’s relevance and show that you’re a reputable dental practice that other businesses mention.
Publish pages about your services and address common patients’ concerns. That way, they’ll better understand your offerings and come to your office confident that they’ve come to the right place.
FAQ page from a pediatric dental practice
What types of pages are these, you ask? Here are sample pages:
Service pages: Explain what each service involves and what your patients can expect during their visit.
Dentists’ profile pages: Introduce your team with bio pages highlighting their credentials, experience, and expertise. These boost your site’s credibility on search, too!
FAQ page: Answer common questions you get from patients. Insurance claims, what they need to prepare for their appointment, emergency cases, and appointment cancellations are typical concerns.
These pages help both patients and search engines understand what you offer.
Build real-world relationships in your community by providing free services and education at local events. Your participation helps local residents become familiar with your dental practice and improves your local SEO.
These activities can earn you online mentions and links from local organizations and publications:
Providing dental screenings at local schools
Participating in community health fairs
Running oral health educational presentations at community events
These local mentions tell search engines that your dental practice is an active and trustworthy member of a community. As a result, you’re also improving your rankings in local searches.
2. Online reviews: Get more positive reviews and attract new patients
When potential patients shortlist dentists, they’re just not checking dental offices’ websites. They’re also reading reviews.
Google Maps reviews of a dental practice
Online reviews play a key role in influencing a patient’s decision to book an appointment. If you have a lot of positive reviews and a high average rating, potential patients may see your dental practice as trustworthy and credible. Meanwhile, a lack of reviews or several negative ones may drive them to another dentist
That’s why actively managing your online reputation is important to attract new patients and keep your schedule full.
Don’t wait for reviews to happen naturally. Know when to request a review, which is right after a positive experience at your dental office.
Here are ways you can get more reviews:
In-person: Train your front desk staff to mention reviews to satisfied patients by telling them you’d love to know how their experience went, and they could leave a review on Google. Provide a QR code they can scan to make it easy to leave a review.
Follow-up email: Send a personalized email after a day or two of their appointment to thank them for their visit. Include a link where they can leave a review.
The easier it is to leave a review for your practice, the more likely your patients will leave one. Here are some ideas:
Display QR codes at your front desk: When you strategically place them at your front desk or checkout counter, patients can scan them and leave a review.
Add direct links in your thank-you email: Ensure the link leads to the right page and they don’t have to navigate to another page to leave their review.
Respond to reviews to show patients you value their feedback. For positive reviews, thank your patients for their kind words — this helps build relationships.
When you receive negative reviews, don’t just delete them. Instead, address them with these steps:
Respond promptly and professionally: Use these negative reviews as opportunities to improve your service and turn unhappy patients into satisfied ones. Respond promptly and kindly to turn things around.
Acknowledge their concern: Start with empathy by apologizing for their experience. Acknowledge their pain points, and briefly address their specific issue without compromising their privacy.
Offer to discuss their concern privately: Provide an email address or phone number they can reach out to or inform them that you’ve contacted them in private (if you have already) so you can resolve their issues. This helps you take the next step of resolving their concern and shows potential patients that you take concerns seriously.
Resolve their concern: Avoid making excuses and proactively address their concerns.
Patients leave reviews on different platforms — from Google to Yelp and even social media. Stay on top of your patients’ feedback and respond appropriately.
You can use review management tools like ReviewAccelerationFX to consolidate reviews from all platforms into a single dashboard, making it easier to track, respond, and manage reviews. It can also email your patients to encourage them to leave a review and integrate reviews from various platforms to display directly on your website!
3. Pay-per-click advertising: Turn targeted ads into booked appointments
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising puts your dental practice at the top of search results instantly. If you’re a dentist in Austin, Texas, your PPC ad can appear in searches relevant to your services, immediately getting the attention of patients actively looking for practices like yours.
If you want to book more appointments quickly, you don’t have to break the bank to see results from PPC. Instead, implement PPC strategically with these best practices to get the most from your ad budget.
Sponsored ad on a local search for “pediatric dentists in Austin, Texas”
Focus your ad budget on keywords patients use when they’re ready to book an appointment.
Terms like “teeth whitening in [city]” or “emergency dentist in [neighborhood]” attract patients who are actively seeking specific dental services. These high-intent searches are more likely to turn into appointment bookings than informational search terms like “what is teeth whitening.”
Prioritize keywords related to your high-value services, which justify the cost of your ad spend. While you can advertise services like routine dental cleaning, the lower profit margin makes it harder to achieve positive ROI on paid ads for these services.
Google Ads and other ad platforms let you target ads to specific geographic areas like your city, neighborhoods, or a radius around your dental office.
Use this targeting strategically to reach only potential patients who will actually visit your dental practice. There’s no value in showing your ads to patients 50 miles away.
Your ad copy must clearly communicate your services and how patients can book an appointment. Highlight specific services, benefits, and special offers. Drive your potential patients to act with a strong call-to-action like “Book Your Appointment Today,” or “Call Now.”
Use ad extensions to provide more information without extra cost. Details like your office’s phone number, location, patient review, or link to the specific service page.
A Google search ad for the keyword “orthodontist in Dallas, TX” with an extension
The most important PPC metrics you can track are appointments booked and revenue generated.
That’s why you must set up conversion tracking to monitor phone calls, form submissions, and online appointment bookings from your ads. This lets you see exactly which keywords and ads drive patients to your practice.
Focus your initial budget on your most profitable services and highest-intent keywords. Then, monitor your ads’ performance for the first few weeks, answering these questions:
Which keywords are generating booked appointments?
Which time of the day performs best?
Which ad copy convinces most people to call or book an appointment?
Once you’ve identified what works, gradually increase your budget for your best-performing campaigns. Cut spending on keywords that don’t generate appointments. This approach maximizes your ROI from every dollar spent and eliminates waste on ads that don’t fill your schedule.
4. Content marketing: Educate patients and build trust with helpful content and videos
Content marketing for your dental practice takes time and effort, but it establishes your authority and builds trust with potential patients. By answering their questions about dental health and procedures, you show you’re knowledgeable and approachable, which are qualities that help patients choose your practice over competitors.
✅ Content and video marketing best practices for dentists
Did you know that 80% of people read five or more reviews before deeming a healthcare provider to be trustworthy? Patient testimonials are among your most powerful marketing assets.
Expert insights from
Jordan D.Healthcare Internet Marketing Expert at WebFX
“Trust signals such as testimonials, reviews on platforms such as Google Business Profile and Yelp, doctors’ details, and insurance information are crucial in helping potential patients take the next step. For the search engine, using author bios on your resource or blog content lets the search engine know this content was developed by a medical expert, which is a must in a ‘Your Money and Your Life’ (YMYL) industry.”
Display written testimonials and glowing reviews on your service pages (without compromising your patients’ privacy, of course). Video testimonials are compelling, because they feel authentic.
Aside from testimonials, provide other trust signals like any of the following:
Professional affiliations
Accepted insurance plans
Awards or community recognition
These credentials reassure prospective patients that your practice has high professional standards.
A video tour of your office helps potential patients feel at ease before their first visit. They are effective for dental practices that have invested in modern equipment, renovations, or unique amenities.
Example of a dental office tour page with an embedded video
Showcase the following to give patients a preview of their visit:
To help patients find you online and trust you, you must create useful content besides your foundational ones. Focus on topics they typically look for, such as:
Common questions they ask during appointments
What happens during particular dental procedures
How dental insurance benefits work
Dental practices typically have their hands full managing their offices and attending to their patients, so publishing regular content can be overwhelming. The key is sustainability. Choose a publishing schedule you can maintain.
Every month, produce one quality article or video that you can repurpose and share. If your practice doesn’t have the bandwidth to create content regularly, work with a dental marketing agency like WebFX.
For orthodontics, cosmetic dentistry, and dental implants, before-and-after photos and videos show that your practice delivers results. These visuals establish your credibility, and also benefit your existing patients and prospective ones.
When patients see their own successful results, they feel more confident and appreciate the documentation of their journey. Meanwhile, your potential patients may envision themselves achieving the same successful transformation.
Pro tips:
Always get your patient’s written consent before using their images or their case in marketing materials.
Use well-lit, professionally presented photos that show the transformation.
If you can, create short video case studies to show your patient’s journey from their consultation to results.
For example, if you created a blog post about “What to Expect During a Dental Cleaning Procedure,” you can create different content pieces (with less effort) and share them through different platforms. Based on this blog post, you can:
Create a video with your key points and publish it on your website
Share the link through your email newsletter with an excerpt from the blog post
Create an infographic that you can share on social media
5. Social media marketing: Engage with your patients and build community on social platforms
Social media is an avenue for your dental practice to connect with your patients and prospective ones beyond their appointments. People spend an average of 143 minutes on social media every day, scrolling, discovering healthcare providers, and engaging with businesses they trust.
Use social media strategically to build relationships with your patients, answer their questions, and keep your practice top-of-mind through these marketing channels.
A dental practice’s Instagram page
While other marketing strategies are focused on immediately booking appointments, social media marketing is an ongoing effort that aims to build long-term trust and community. When your patients regularly interact with your practice, they’re more likely to book appointments, refer their friends, and come back to your dental office for follow-up check-ups and procedures.
✅ Social media marketing best practices for dentists
Focus your efforts on social media platforms that your patients use. Facebook and Instagram work well for most dental practices because of their broad demographics and visual formats.
Pro tip: Start with one or two platforms that you can maintain regularly, instead of spreading your team too thin. You can always expand later once you’ve established a rhythm.
Maintain a regular posting schedule for your dental practice. Choose a manageable frequency — you can start with one to two posts per week.
A dental practice’s social media post featuring its team members
Keep your content interesting by mixing different content types:
Educational infographics or posts: Share dental health advice, oral hygiene tips, and answers to common questions.
Behind-the-scenes content: Share day-in-the-life photos or videos that showcase your office culture and the people behind your practice.
Patient testimonials: Glowing testimonials build trust in your practice and showcase your best work. Always ask for your patients’ permission before sharing their testimonials!
Before-and-after results: Show visual transformations of your patients (with their permission, of course) that demonstrate your expertise and help prospective patients envision their own results.
Dental practice news and updates: Announce new services, extended hours, holiday schedules, or local events you’ll participate in.
Community activities: Share photos and videos at community events you participated in or sponsored.
Timely content: Create posts related to dental awareness days or months (like World Oral Health Day), seasonal tips, or trending topics related to oral health.
To make the most of social media, don’t just use it as a broadcast channel. Instead, interact with your community by responding to comments on your posts, engaging with other local businesses, and answering messages. These interactions build relationships and rapport with your patients.
To keep this task manageable, set up a simple workflow: Designate schedules for different team members to check and respond to messages or comments. Use social media management tools that enable you to respond to messages and comments on different social platforms through a single platform to improve your team’s efficiency.
If managing ongoing engagement overwhelms your team, you can work with an agency like WebFX to maintain consistent, professional interactions with your patients.
Social media platforms offer advertising tools that can target potential patients in your area.
Unlike Google ads that capture people searching for your services, social ads are meant to introduce your practice to potential patients and help them remember you. These ads are effective for staying visible to people in your area who may need dental care soon.
6. Email marketing: Fill your schedule and strengthen patient relationships with email
Email marketing lets your dental practice directly communicate with your patients. It serves two purposes: Keep your schedule full with appointment reminders and strengthen relationships with helpful and timely content updates.
✅ Email marketing best practices for dental offices
No-shows and last-minute cancellations reduce your revenue. Automate email reminders for appointments two to three days before your patient’s schedule. That way, you’re giving them time to reschedule if they need to.
You can use tools like EmailMarketingFX to automate this process and ensure your patients receive their reminders.
Got patients who haven’t visited in six months? Send them an email to fill your appointment gaps!
These patients already trusted your dental practice, making it easier (and more cost-effective) to invite them back to your office than to acquire new patients.
Manually sorting through your patient list and emailing each one is a laborious task. The good news is that you can automate emails to remind them that they’re due for cleaning, check-ups, or follow-up procedures.
Pro tip: Personalize your email based on their last visit and procedure.
Once you’ve built your list, group your patients based on their profiles or needs so you can send personalized messages for each segment. For example, you can group families with young children together, so they’ll receive information about pediatric dental care, while patients interested in cosmetic work are grouped together so they’ll know the latest updates on your offerings related to whitening or veneers.
When you send content tailored to specific patients, they’ll receive information relevant to their dental needs and likely engage with your emails. Tools like EmailMarketingFX can automate your email campaigns and help you manage your list.
Alternatively, you can partner with a digital marketing agency like WebFX to handle your email marketing efforts.
7. Referral marketing: Grow your practice through patient referrals
Nine out of 10 people trust recommendations from their friends and family. When satisfied patients recommend your practice to their network, their referrals will likely book dental appointments, too.
That makes referral marketing a more cost-effective way to acquire new dental patients than advertising. When you run ads, you spend money to reach strangers. With referrals, you might offer small incentives or rewards, but you’re spending less while getting more booked appointments from people who trust your satisfied patients.
The simplest referral strategy is to ask your happy patients if they know anyone who needs a dentist. Train your team to recognize signs that show patients are satisfied with their experience and ask them for referrals.
Most people are willing to refer, but won’t offer unless they’ve been asked. Acknowledge and thank your patients personally when they refer a family or friend.
The simpler you make it to refer, the more referrals you’ll get. Here are some ideas:
Provide referral cards with your practice information and a special offer patients can give to friends and family.
Create an online referral form for your patients.
Send unique URLs or QR codes that your patients can share via email or social media.
8. Website optimization: Turn website visitors into booked appointments
Your website is where most of your digital marketing efforts lead, making it a crucial touchpoint to convince potential patients to book an appointment with you. Optimize your website to make it easy to find information, trust your dental practice, and book an appointment.
✅ Website optimization key actions for dental practices
Your website must work seamlessly for every visitor, regardless of device. Most patients browse on their phones, that’s why it’s important for your website to display properly on them and on any device.
You also want site visitors to easily:
Find your phone number
Click your book an appointment button even on small screens
Navigate your service pages
Find other information they need
Optimize your pages’ speed so they load quickly, because more than half of online users leave a page if they’re forced to wait longer than 3 seconds.
Every page on your site must make it easy for visitors to book an appointment. Place prominent “Book an Appointment” or “Call Now” buttons throughout your pages.
A dental website’s homepage with clear CTAs to book a consultation and give them a call
Pro tips:
Integrate online booking on your website, so patients can schedule their consultation even outside your business hours. Tools like SchedulerFX let you easily schedule appointments by setting office hours and allowing patients to select an available slot.
Make phone numbers clickable on mobile so that patients can call with one tap.
While you can use AI-powered website builders to create your website, you may need technical expertise to optimize and maintain it. You can work with a web design and development agency or a full-service one like WebFX to build or redesign your website and optimize it to convert visitors into patients.
9. Analytics and tracking: Know which marketing efforts fill your schedule
Without tracking, you’re guessing which marketing strategies are bringing in patients and which ones are wasting your budget. Having proper analytics and tracking in place lets you measure and monitor the results (such as booked appointments and revenue) each marketing effort delivers to your practice.
✅ Analytics and tracking best practices for dentists
Call tracking assigns unique phone numbers to different marketing efforts — one for your website, another for Google Ads, and another for events.
You can implement call tracking by signing up for such a service, get unique phone numbers for each marketing channel, and use them. You can receive calls as usual, but the system tracks which source the call came from.
What do your visitors do on your website? You want to find out if they are:
Filling out and submitting contact forms
Clicking on your phone numbers
Completing online booking appointment forms
You can set up conversion tracking in Google Analytics for free to see which pages, messages, campaigns, and CTAs are driving people to take the next step to book an appointment. For comprehensive tracking (from your website to phone calls), platforms like RevenueCloudFX consolidate data across your entire patient journey.
Marketing agencies like WebFX can help you implement these tracking systems and improve your ROI.
Book more appointments with dental online marketing
Your potential patients turn to the Internet when they want to find a new dentist, and digital marketing is the most effective way to ensure they find your practice. If you’re interested in creating an online marketing strategy for your dental center, WebFX can help. We have over 98,500+ hours of healthcare experience, helping dental centers acquire new patients and retain existing ones with personalized strategies.
Just like the pearly whites you work on every day for your patients, every dental practice is unique and has its distinct marketing needs. That’s why we provide each client with a custom digital marketing solution that’s crafted to fit their practice.
Craft a tailored online marketing strategy! Utilize our free Internet marketing calculator for a custom plan based on your location, reach, timeframe, and budget.
Craft a tailored online marketing strategy! Utilize our free Internet marketing calculator for a custom plan based on your location, reach, timeframe, and budget.
Our expert SEO specialists, copywriters, and digital advertisers will help you increase your website’s rankings when your target audience searches for your treatments online, so you can continuously drive traffic and revenue for your practice, hospital, or business.
We’re opening a new location
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We’re not attracting enough patients
Get a steady flow of new patients to your practice, hospital, or brand with expertly crafted strategies that provide a seamless, engaging user experience for your website visitors, encouraging them to become patients.
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Offer new treatments or services and need to get them in front of your potential client’s eyes? Our range of revenue-driving digital advertising and marketing services have you covered and reach the people who need your facility the most.
The WebFX team is made up of more than 500 subject matter experts in digital marketing, SEO, web design and web development, social media, and more. Together, they’ve helped WebFX’s clients earn more than $6 billion in revenue from the web — and that’s just in the past five years.@webfx
