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39 Comments

How to grow my dental website service?

Hello IH!

I'm offering website development, branding and photography specifically for dentists. I am looking for ways / channels to reach them and offer them my services.

Do you have any ideas for reaching dentist and growing my business?

Some ideas I came up with so far:

  • At the moment I target local dentists in my city by writing them e-mails
  • Looking up, which kind of magazines they read and placing an ad there
  • Visiting them in their physical office and leaving a flyer there
  • Placing ad in some kind of website that dentists use

About my offerings:

  • 2 website packages, one cheaper and basic, the other one is more expensive but also contains more functions and photo shoting (480 USD / 900 USD).
  • branding
on June 24, 2022
  1. 5

    Hi, i've been doing small business websites for about 5 years on the side now.

    A couple things that have worked for me:

    1. Build a leads list by googling dentists and a town/area.

    2. Any dentist with no site goes on your list.

    3. Run Google speed tests on thier sites. Anything below 60 put on your list.

    4. Run SEO health checks. Anything with subpar SEO goes on the list.

    5. Avoid sites that look like they were built by an agency. They probably are under a contract they can't get out of.

    6. Prioritize any business with a site that was built on a site builder.

    7. I've never had luck with cold emails. Cold calling is king for me. You will fail at first but get comfortable on the phone. You will get better. Tell them what's wrong with their site, how you can make something better, and why that will help their business.

    8. Be consistent about calling. Make it a goal to call 5-10 businesses a day.

    9. If you don't have any clients yet, consider doing the first one for free. You really only need 1 site in your portfolio to show off.

    1. 1

      Great comment 👌🏾. Was wondering what your thoughts were about website builders vs custom code ?

      1. 1

        If we're talking local business websites, I would recommend custom code for 1 reason.

        Page speed. It factors into local SEO and is an easy win you can get over your competition. With custom code it's easy to hit 100/100 page speed scores (Use Googles speed test here https://pagespeed.web.dev/).

        Some site builders have decent scores. For instance, some Webflow templates do well but others are terrible. Depends on how they were built.

    2. 1

      Thank you so much! This is a perfect way to start out. I never did cold calling, but I will give it a shot.

  2. 3

    Is there any way you can target dentists that are opening a new office?
    I think doctors opening a new office are most likely to use your offer. Established dentists are in a lesser need.
    In Germany there is some kind of board where new dentists have to register. Maybe there is something equal in your country?

    1. 1

      Amazing idea, thank you! I will try to find it here in Hungary too. What is it called in Germany?

      1. 1

        I think it's called "Zahnärztekammer", but I am noch 100% sure how it all works. I just know that it's mandatory for a dentist to be in there and they can approve or decline your request to open a new office. In return they help you doing market analyses etc.
        I would also do SEO and content marketing targeting dentitsts that open new offices. Though this takes at least 1-2 months until it shows any results. Search engines are weird.

        1. 1

          Slightly unrelated but could you translate ‘Zahnärztekammer’ literally please? I love German words and their very literal translations.

          1. 1

            No Problem!
            I think the most correlating term in English would be "dentist's association".
            A word by word translation would be "board of dentists".
            A literal translation (grammatically incorrect) is dentistsboard. In German you can glue subjects together and create a new word. That's what "Zahnärztekammer" is.

        2. 1

          Thanks! I found one "Zahnärztekammer" here in Hungary too. I will reach out to them.

          1. 1

            Awesome! I hope they are able to help you!

  3. 2

    Here is simple lifehack that would get you returning leads foreever.
    Find a local authority and make a guest post about your target geo for exact search term people are searching for on Google.

    Here you can “ Dentist in Reading,Uk “ - This using my current location. Your definitely would be different. Optimize the content and have the writer recommend your business on the authority . I call this approach “ authority pilfering ‘ . If done well you rank the target page without lifting extra fingers. This way you getting leads and businesses for life.

    1. 1

      This is a great idea, thank you! Like a paid PR article, that is perfectly targeted.

  4. 2

    We are the founder of GMBEverywhere.com. It is a GMB SEO tool.

    A good chunk of our users are denstists, or do service for dentist. We have around 25k users. From our experience, some of the things you can try:

    • GMB (or GBP) is usually the major source of traffic. Most users look up for new dentist on Google Maps and usually go to the closest one with the best reviews.
    • You could offer a service to help with growing a reviews. In Google Reviews, it is allowed to ask for reviews, so you should definitely provide this offer. Review is the 3rd important factor for your reviews. In our customer outreach, I have heard of marketers that charge upto 80USD per review build for their clients.
    • GMB post should also be in offer. More than social media post, it is GMB post that is more attractive to dentist. This is a repeating task, so dentist would usually like to outsource this.
    • When you do the initial outreach, you can audit their GMB and give them some tips on how they can improve. If you use our tool, you can find businesses which has not yet claimed their GMB, this should be your initial target.
    • When you reach out, show them how they presently rank when compared to their competitors. You can do this with our Teleport function.

    Based on this, try creating an outreach. Our tool is free to try, infact, you can use the free version to try out all the above.

    This video gives a short description to our tool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ovHVc_MfyY

    1. 1

      Very intetersting approach, thank you! It may be a good idea to consider offering GMB services.

  5. 2

    I ran a marketing agency in the past targeting local service companies. A very effective way of reaching new clients was mailing print SEO audits. We targeted companies that were large but doing poorly in search.

    Service companies get lots of spam emails offering web design, SEO, and other services. Almost no one will mail them a professional proposal.

    1. 3

      This is an amazing idea. What an attention-getter.

    2. 2

      Amazing idea, thank you! Will try out.

      1. 1

        I see you are Hungarian! My father was Hungarian and I still have lots of family there. Are you in Budapest?

        1. 1

          Yes I am! That's super interesting! Are you visiting Budapest often?

          1. 1

            Prior to Covid we did.

            My son and I are Hungarian citizens now, so we are thinking of moving there for a couple of years.

  6. 2

    I would list them on Google Map (or any other phone list provider) and call them one by one.

  7. 1

    hey hunorkerekes ,Two quick ideas from my side:

    1. list out all the dentists and then reach out to them using emails - you can even scale it using tools like Apollo.io for emails scraping and Lemlist for mass personalisation and email sending.
    2. content marketing talking about their challenge (they need to have more patients, rights? And your website should be able to help them) using lead magnets and then approaching to them.
  8. 1

    You should definitely connect with Roberto Robles

  9. 1

    One search trick to get leads in an area can be,

    site:linkedin.com "dentist" "hungary"

  10. 1

    Search for related hashtags on Instagram and message them directly. If they’re using social media it’s most likely they’re actually interested in growing their business.

  11. 1

    Local SEO is a channel that might be something you can explore

  12. 1

    I've actually done websites for dentists!

    Believe it or not, it's pretty competitive. There are a couple legacy agencies that also focus on dentistry but tbh they're pretty old school.

    What really worked for me was:

    1. Create a template that looks super modern and clean.
    2. Make a spreadsheet of all the shitty looking dental websites in your area
    3. Download their logos and slap them on your template.
    4. Cold email them and have a link to a showcase site with their logo already at the top so they can envision that showcase site as their own.

    Generally, the biggest hurdle you'll come across is that they don't care about the outdated site. Don't dwindle on older dentists. If you can, try to find new practices opening up, they'll obviously be the easiest to convince.

    I ended up working for a dental software company after doing this a couple of times.

    Let me know if you have any Qs

    1. 1

      Great tips, thank you! Exactly what I was thinking about older dentists, I will try to reach out to new practices. I will shoot you a DM if I will need some tips in the future.

  13. 1

    Maybe Google
    10 Local SEO Strategies For Doctors And Dentists
    For an article in search engine journal
    May give you some inspiration.

    1. 1

      Great, thanks!

  14. 1

    I know more about germany than hungary but here doctors and medicine is a very hard demographic to get right. Even doctors in private pracitce don't really think much about marketing, buisness and branding. (I mean why should they in a heavy gouverment regulated sector). Many doctors I met are great physicians but terrible at buisness. So try to get the basic right and really explain them why they need you.

    1. 1

      Yes, that's what I see too. I tried to make my website as straight-forward as possible.

  15. 1

    Google Ads, email marketing, GMB are all good ideas! But since you mentioned about websites, have you tried doing SEO and content marketing already? What about social media marketing or running an FB ads?

    1. 2

      Thank you very much! I will try Google Ads and GMB.
      I am doing SEO and Content Marketing, but my website is only 2 days old. I will need some time to build in this direction.

      Is there a way in your opinion to target dentists on FB or other social media ads?

      1. 1

        Join a community, thread, and social groups. For instance, you can type "dentist near me" or "dentist in (location)." Then, click on the groups or post, and you'll definitely find something from there.