What’s Trending in Dental Marketing For 2021

Marketing advances and evolves faster than many people realize. Some technologies and techniques that are common today didn’t even exist five years ago.

In order to reach the largest number of dental patients, it’s important to know about all the marketing tools at your disposal. These are some of the marketing trends that we expect to have the biggest impact on dental marketing in 2021:

Semantic Search

Search engines are now placing less emphasis on individual keywords and more emphasis on the overall meaning of a query. If you have been trying to improve your search engine ranking by creating content with targeted keywords, it will be important in 2021 to focus on long-tail keywords. Instead of packing your content with words like “Dentist” or “Dentures,” focus instead on full phrases like “Affordable braces for adults.”

Mobile Optimization

Research has shown that the majority of search queries on mobile devices have a local intent, meaning that the user is looking for something close by that they can actually visit and not simply a website. Logically, they are looking for dentist’s offices too. In 2021 it will be more important than ever to have a website that is optimized for mobile devices.

Google announced their mobile-first indexing in September 2020 which means your website must now be optimized for mobile to get a priority on your ranking for mobile searches.

27% of consumers will leave a site if it is not mobile-optimized. (ExactTarget, 2014 Mobile Behavior Report)

Social Media Equality

Traditionally, social media profiles have been treated as something lesser and secondary to a dentist’s primary website. While this is true to a certain extent, data has shown that social media pages are ranking higher in search results, and have great potential to lead to an appointment booking. One of the most important marketing trends to watch for in 2021 is how dentists begin to improve and emphasize their social media profiles.

The majority of marketers (59%) are using social media for 6 hours or more each week. (Social Media Examiner)

Quality Content Creation

Schemes designed to artificially inflate search engine rankings through paid links and keyword-heavy content have been largely shut down by Google and others. That means it is essential to produce quality content that naturally promotes sharing and distribution. This is not necessarily one of the new marketing trends, but it is something that is more important than ever in dental marketing.

Content marketing generates 3 times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing, but costs 62% less. (Demand Metric)

Citations

A citation is anytime your dental practice, address, or phone number gets mentioned on a site besides your own. The more citations you have, the more authoritative your site is considered to be and the higher you rank in search results. In 2021 it will be important for every dentist to get his or her practice listed in local directories like Google My Business and others.

Consider Google My Business Support for help with this.

44% of online shoppers begin by using a search engine. (Interconnected World: Shopping and Personal Finance, 2012)

Inbound Remains King in 2021

You might have noticed a common thread running through all these forecasts – each is designed to help you drive visitors to your web presence.

This overarching strategy is called inbound marketing and it comprises a number of techniques and strategies that help online traffic find their way to your dental practice instead of the ones you compete against.  It helps you educate your audience before they even become a patient.

By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship without talking to a human. (Gartner Research)

Learn more about what is involved and how it could work by request a free digital marketing consultation.