If you own or operate a dental clinic in a small town, you may be wondering whether you should use the same marketing strategies that offices in big metropolitan cities. The answer is that to a degree, good marketing will work anywhere, but there are some specific things to keep in mind when marketing in an area with a smaller population.
Less People – Less Clients, but also Less Competition
The main difference small towns have is that , unsurprisingly, they have much less people. This can present a challenge in that there is a smaller pool of available patients, but on the flipside, it also usually means that there is less competition in the area. Smaller towns generally do not attract the large DSOs like Aspen Dental which cause independent dental offices in smaller cities a lot of headaches as they have huge marketing budgets to outspend any small office.
Word of mouth
The ideal situation in a small town is when you become the synonym with the word “dentist” for everybody in the town. In some cases, you may not even need to invest in much marketing as you will be the default option (or sometimes the only option) for anybody in your area that needs any kind of dental treatment. That being said, it is still a good idea to implement referral marketing best practice to maximize the referral flow into your office. This includes everything from giving your patients an outstanding experience when they visit you to providing them with referral incentives such as discounts when they refer a friend or family member.
SEO – Dominating organic search
The big advantage when it comes to digital marketing for a dental practice in a small town is that they can rank organically for incredibly competitive keywords without a lot of investment. In a city like New York or Chicago, for example, you couldn’t realistically expect to rank for dentist in New York unless you were willing to wait years and spend tens of thousands. It is very possible; however, to be the top result always for Dentist in Enterprise Alabama, or other competitive terms like those.
What are some marketing strategies for a dental practice that don’t work as well in a small town?
Just as there are many strategies such as SEO that work particularly well in smaller, less competitive cities, there are also strategies that aren’t as good a bang for your buck as they are in other areas. One area, for example, is Paid Search Marketing. While we recommend our clients to always start off with Paid Search Marketing, particularly when their practice is new or has a recently established web presence, the focus for small towns should be on dominating the organic search landscape. In competitive metro areas, it is basically impossible to rank for high volume terms like “dentist near me” outside of a 2-4 mile radius around the office, whereas in small towns it is possible to show up in the top 3 results for the entire city. Due to this, investing heavily in PPC marketing can cause either underinvestment in SEO or it can cause cannibalization where patients who would’ve clicked on an organic search result anyway click on a paid search result.