7 Dental Implant Marketing Ideas That Get Results

May 18th, 2022 by Tyson Downs Leave a Comment

*This post was originally published June 29th, 2016, and extensively updated May 18, 2022.

Dental Implant Marketing Done Right!

The introduction of dental implants marked one of the biggest advances in the history of dentistry. What may surprise you is that many of the people who could benefit from dental implants are not aware that they exist. That means there’s a huge untapped market of dental patients that you can reach if you properly manage your dental implant marketing campaign.

Just how big is the potential audience for dental implant procedures? The American College of Prosthodontists estimates that there are 120 million Americans who are missing at least one tooth and about 36 million who have no teeth. The prevalence of tooth loss increases with age, with one study finding that 12.9% of Americans over 65 and 17.8% of Americans over 75 have no functional teeth.

At Titan Web Agency, we work with dental practices to help them get more of the cases they want. One of the questions we get asked frequently is:

What are the best ways to approach dental implant marketing?

That’s an important question to ask, considering how big the dental implant market is. Even though the audience for dental implants consists mostly of older people, online marketing is still one of the best ways to reach them. The Pew Research Center estimates that 90% of adults in the United States use the internet. Many of them do research and read online reviews before choosing a dentist.

In other words, it makes sense to use online marketing to reach dental patients who might be interested in dental implant procedures.

A couple of questions that nearly all potential patients will have are:

1. How much do dental implants cost?

2. What are my options for dental implants?

3. Who is the best dentist for dental implants?

Listen to this blog post:

BONUS DOWNLOAD: 5 Ways to Market Dental Implants Like a Pro! Grab our free guide and learn exactly how to get in front of your target implant market with our free guide.

Dental Implant Marketing Ideas to Get More Dental Implant Cases

Titan Web Agency works with dentists and prosthodontists every day. While some marketing strategies are specific to marketing dental implants, the general principles of dental marketing also come into play.

Here are seven proven dental implant marketing ideas to help you attract new patients.

1. Market Dental Implants to the Right Audience

There are two key elements to identifying your target audience for dental implants. The first element applies to every type of dental marketing: narrowing your audience geographically. Unless you live in a rural area with little competition, the chances are good that your dental practice will compete with other practices in your area to attract new patients. You’ll need to be clear about which cities, towns, or neighborhoods are in your target area.

The second element relates to what we discussed above: You must understand which people are in the target market for dental implants and how to educate them about implants.

While much of your local demographic data can be collected through online research, you can also use the demographics of your current patients to determine your target audience.

Assuming that your patient records are computerized, as is the case with most dental or medical practices today, you have the capability of generating reports based on the demographics of your current patients.

You can generate reports that tell you:

The age range and mean age of your patients
The geographical range and mean distance traveled to your office
The number of years a patient has been with your practice

Using these figures, you can determine a radius around your practice to target. You can also determine the best type of marketing to reach the average age within that radius. This part of marketing can seem tedious, but creating the best dental implant marketing strategy is necessary.

The next step is putting yourself in the shoes of your target dental implant patients. We discuss that in this post: How Can You Communicate the Value You Bring to Patients?

It takes some practice to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, but once you can, you can create social media posts and blog content that will catch the attention of everyone in your target audience and resonate with them.

Using Personas for Dental Implant Marketing

You need to do a few things before creating your dental implant ad. The first thing is creating a patient persona.

A patient persona tells you exactly who your ideal patient is. The more time you invest into creating your personas, the better you’ll be at targeting the right audience.

Start by asking yourself this question:

What kind of person would want dental implants?

I can think of:

Older people who’ve lost teeth to decay or neglect
Someone who’s been in an accident and lost teeth
Adults with an underlying medical condition that has contributed to tooth loss
Athletes who’ve damaged their teeth in competition

As you can see, the examples I mentioned are four distinct groups of people. The first group is older, the second and third could include people of any age, and the fourth group is likely to be young and active. Instead of lumping them all into one, you’ll create several target personas and market to each one.

Here’s an example of a complete buyer persona:

It includes many critical demographic details like age, marital status, occupation, and location. Most importantly, you’ll want to answer two questions about your target audience:

What do they hope to achieve by getting dental implants? For example, a healthier mouth, a more attractive appearance, less difficulty chewing, or fewer questions from people asking what happened.
What’s preventing them from getting dental implants? The answer could be money, lack of insurance, stigma, or family objections.

Then, you can start creating content and advertising materials highlighting the benefits of dental implants for them and minimizing the barriers that keep them from becoming patients.

2. Use Social Media for Dental Implant Marketing

Once you’ve started targeting your audience, it’s time to determine which social media platforms to use. While much of digital marketing is trial and error, using a variety of social media platforms for your initial launch is always a good plan.

In any dental social media marketing plan, it’s always good to start with three or four of the most popular social media platforms to launch your campaign. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest are good places to start. Just make sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew. Having no social profile for your business is better than having an inactive one.

Here are some tips to optimize your social media marketing:

Automate Your Posts

It’s a good idea to use a social media management tool that allows you to schedule posts on a variety of media and offers valuable reports you can use to determine:

Which posts get the most attention
The best times to post on social media
The specific demographics of your audience

They’re also a huge time saver because you can pre-schedule your posts for the day to go out at optimum times, then just walk away. Here’s how it looks on one social media management tool, Buffer:

Speak to Your Followers

Another important thing to consider is what will be of interest to your targeted demographic. What’s going to capture their attention?

Something that would catch the attention of someone in their 20s might be of no interest to someone in their 60s. So, make sure what you share on social media speaks to your target persona.

This means that you’ll need to understand who might be in the dental implant market and then tailor your social media campaigns to appeal to those people.

Promote Your Blog Content

Drawing traffic to your website should be a top goal of your social media marketing efforts. So, promote every new blog post you write and include attractive images, relevant hashtags, and other elements that encourage clicks.

You can use social media tools (we use Hubspot) to ensure your blog posts are shared when most of your followers are online and engaging with new content. You should share your content more than once to get the most attention. You can promote the same post on Twitter 4 or 5 times (because the half-life of a Tweet is so short), and on Facebook and Instagram a couple of times, for example. For platforms that do not see as much traffic such as Pinterest, one share should be adequate.

Monitor Your Posts

You also want to be sure you’re monitoring your posts. When someone asks a question or leaves a comment, you’ll need to respond appropriately. This allows you to build an interactive relationship with your followers and let them know there is a real person behind the posts.

For businesses, including your dental office, social media has become a platform for customer service. Disgruntled patients may air their complaints there. It’s your job to respond and try to resolve the issue. Otherwise, prospective patients will see only the negative feedback and not how you handled it. You should manage complaints on social media the same way you would any negative online review.

Managing business social profiles can be difficult, but this strategy makes it a lot more effective.

Test and Adjust

Your social media automation tool provides you with tons of insights on what social posts resonate the most.

Within the first 30 days of launching your online marketing plan, you can start generating reports and use that information to create future posts based on what is popular, what time of the day your social media profiles get the most traffic, and the age group of those visiting your social media pages.

3. Implement Content Marketing in Your Dental Implant Marketing

Content marketing is undeniably effective. 60% of marketers say that content marketing helps to generate leads, and 70% say that it’s useful for educating people in their target audience. That makes it an ideal marketing strategy for dental implants.

What Kind of Dental Implant Content Should You Create?

Now, let’s review the dental marketing content types that might be most effective for attracting new dental implant patients.

Blogging

55% of marketing experts say that blogging is their top inbound marketing strategy, and blogs are the 5th most trusted source of information online. To be effective, your blog should be easily accessible from your home page.

Blogging regularly gives you the chance to develop a relationship with current and future patients and offer them valuable information about dental implant services and other dental procedures that you perform. A well-written blog also offers you the chance to create unique, search engine friendly content that you can use to direct readers to your dental practice's website.

Content Formats to Try

As I mentioned in the previous section, the content you create will depend on the interests and pain points of your target audience. For example, one reason a lot of people don’t get dental implants is that they don’t know about the option. So, a portion of your content should be educational and informative about the dental implant process.

It’s also important to remember that your blog isn’t all about blogging. Use it as a platform to promote a wide variety of content, such as:

Images
Informational Videos
Infographics
Patient Testimonials
Success Stories

Your personas can help create blog content. For example, say that one of your personas doesn’t opt for dental implants because of cost. You can create a detailed infographic of the various payment options available.

Here are a few more pointers to remember when using your blog to gain more dental implant patients:

It’s also important to remember that your blog isn’t all about blogging. Use it as a platform to promote a wide variety of content, such as:

Include a call-to-action. With any blog, you want to offer readers the opportunity to subscribe to your blog. Each time you post a new blog, they will get an email letting them know. If you use WordPress, this is easy enough to do by installing a plugin. It’s an effective way to attract old traffic back to your blog and continue nurturing potential patients. You can also repurpose your blog posts as podcasts and encourage subscriptions that way. It’s a strategy that works great on our blog.
Be consistent. Once you start a blog, it is important to keep posting consistently so readers who follow your blog will stay engaged and look forward to your next blog. Nothing looks less professional than a blog that hasn’t been updated in 6 months. If you blog consistently, subscribers are also more apt to share your blog with their friends and family, creating an even larger impact.
Put a face to a name. It’s also not a rule that all your blogs need to be about dental implants or dental procedures. You can use it to highlight your practice, introduce your staff, and feature patients in human-interest-based blogs. While most blog posts should be related to dental topics, an occasional blog about the community or an upcoming holiday can offer a boost in traffic and more opportunities to increase your subscriber base.

4. Use Paid Ads to Attract Dental Implant Patients

Our fourth recommended strategy for dental implant marketing is running a dental implant ad on Google. PPC ads are beneficial for getting your practice in front of new patients. They’re most successful when they focus on a single service or promotion.

As of 2021, businesses earned an average of $2 for every $1 they spent on Google PPC ads. Advertising dental implants can earn you a good return on your investment if you do it properly. That means:

Choosing the right keywords
Targeting the right audience
Creating a compelling ad that prospective patients will click
Creating an irresistible landing page to go with your dental implant advertising

To build a successful PPC ad for dental implants, you’ll need:

A compelling headline that will capture your audience’s attention
Your top keywords in prominent positions
A description that lets your audience know what to expect if they click your ad
An irresistible call-to-action
A relevant image

Your landing page should use the same wording as your ad: something that gives people who click that “I came to the right place” feeling. Make sure to use your top keywords and keep the focus on dental implants. Every service you offer should have a separate landing page.

Finally, make sure that your landing page has a call-to-action (for example, a link to schedule an appointment) that’s above the fold – meaning that readers don’t need to scroll to find it. You may want to include multiple calls to action. That’s a great idea if one is at the top of the page.

5. Direct Mail Dental Implant Marketing

We focus on online marketing for a reason, but that doesn’t mean offline marketing isn’t necessary or useful. In fact, I strongly recommend using direct mail marketing to let people in your target area know about the benefits of dental implants.

As of 2018, the direct mail response rate for marketing lists was 4.9%, making it more impactful than email marketing. There’s something about receiving a piece of mail that captures attention and makes it difficult to ignore what’s being offered.

Of course, you’ve got to use the correct strategy if you want to reap the rewards of direct mail dental implant marketing. Here are some pointers:

Choose your target audience carefully. You may choose to create separate mailers for each of your dental implant marketing personas. You may also decide to target a mix of new and repeat patients.
Make your mailer visually compelling. It should be clear that you’re focusing on dental implants. It’s important to choose a text that is clear and relevant images to go with your offer.
Use codes to track the performance of your direct mail campaign. It’s the best way to measure your success since you won’t have access to the usual automated reports that you can get with social media marketing.
Where it makes sense, personalize your mailings. One thing that can help you save money is to create a basic mailer that you can personalize for each marketing persona you create. The basic information about dental implants remains the same regardless of who you’re targeting.

Direct mailers can help you reach potential dental implant patients in their homes, where they’ll have time to consider your offer and make an informed decision about whether dental implants are right for them.

6. Use Before and After in Your Dental Implant Marketing

One of the biggest hurdles for dental implant providers is the lack of knowledge about dental implants among the people who could benefit from them. Sometimes, the best proof of what dental implants can do is photographic evidence.

Before and After Marketing

Image Credit: Kennewick Dental

Dentists and orthodontists have used before and after photos in their marketing for years. Tooth whitening and braces are two key examples. You can demonstrate the effectiveness of your tooth whitening service by showing a picture of a patient who had yellowing teeth before treatment and a picture of their gleaming, white smile after treatment.

The same is true of braces. It’s easy to understand what braces can do for someone with crooked teeth when you see side-by-side photos of what they looked like before and after treatment.

Many people who have missing teeth are self-conscious about their smiles. They may not fully understand what new dental implants can do for their confidence. A before-and-after ad with photos of someone with missing teeth and a complete smile thanks to dental implants can tell people in your target audience everything they need to know about how dental implants can impact their lives.

Of course, get written consent from any patient whose image you use in your dental implant marketing. If you need to grab some waivers, we've got you covered, along with many other dental templates.

7. Offer Financing Options for Dental Implant Patients

Not everybody has dental insurance and even people who do may have only limited coverage. It’s not surprising that one potential roadblock that could prevent a patient from getting a dental implant procedure is an inability to come up with the money needed to pay for implants.

For that reason, we strongly recommend presenting potential patients with financing options and advertising those options as much as possible. When patients know that they have the option to apply for a Care card or to sign up for a payment plan, they’re more likely to seek treatment options such as dental implants.

Many dental practice management software solutions include the tools you’ll need to track payment plans if you decide you want to offer them. It’s essential to have a system that allows patients to get the care they need while also protecting your financial interest.

Brainstorm and Test Dental Implant Marketing Ideas

Many online marketing companies for dentists boast that they have a magic formula to help market dental implants and direct potential patients to your practice. The truth is that much of digital marketing strategy is determined by trial and error. Conducting the proper research before implementing a marketing plan can help eliminate some of the errors, but it is typically not until a marketing campaign is launched and running for a month or more that you see what’s being shared, reposted, liked, and discussed. Here are some suggestions to help you.

Track Your Dental Implant Marketing Campaigns

Tracking the source of your new dental implant patients is as important as your dental implant marketing strategy itself. Once you have a better idea of what appeals to your target audience, you can use the data to fine-tune the areas that work.

If you sign up for Google Analytics, it will provide some details about your traffic sources: from social, search, or direct. You can also add UTM tracking to your links and get more details about where your traffic comes from.

See What Resonates with Your Target Audience

Using a social media management tool, you get solid data on what people like—and what people aren’t as interested in. Once you determine who’s interested in what you offer, it’s important to retain their interest and offer them something of value in every post.

Take Advantage of Your Data

Once you’ve implemented your social media campaign and determined what works, you can start creating posts based on questions or comments you receive. These comments and questions can also be used as blog topics. If you see a lot of questions about how long dental implants last, for instance, you can write a blog about it. You’ll be providing your readers with the information they need about dental implants.

You can gather additional information when sharing your blog posts on social media. Pay attention to what your followers say in response to your posts and reply to them. It’ll give you the chance to share your expertise and show your followers that you care about what they think.

There’s a lot more to successfully marketing dental implants than posting a few times a week on Facebook or Twitter. Doing your own research and taking advantage of the available resources can make it easier than you think to attract new dental implant patients. With a large amount of valuable information online, as well as easy-to-use social media management tools, you can market dental implants for your practice like a pro.

If you decide to use the services of a dental web marketing company, research can also help you collaborate with them to create a successful campaign. If you keep in mind that there is no magic potion that assures that your marketing plan will bring in 100 percent of your target audience, knowing your audience and what they are interested in can increase the number of leads you receive that can be converted into new patients.

Are You Ready to Get More Dental Implant Patients?

There is a large and ever-increasing market for dental implants, and you can get your share of patients with strategic marketing that’s designed to educate your target audience about the benefits of implants. The seven ideas we’ve outlined here can help you connect with patients and beat out your competitors.

Do you need help attracting more dental implant patients? Click here to work with us!

BONUS DOWNLOAD: 5 Ways to Market Dental Implants Like a Pro! Grab our free guide and learn exactly how to get in front of your target implant market with our free guide.