Guide to Marketing for Pediatric Dentists

All pediatric practices face a unique challenge when developing their marketing plan. As a pediatric dental practice, you want to reach a younger audience base while gaining the trust of parents, who will actually be scheduling the appointments and paying the bills. Because this audience group contains two vast age sectors, your pediatric practice needs to develop specialized marketing strategies for targeting patient families as a unit.

Unfortunately, attracting and retaining patients in the current pediatric dental marketing landscape can feel impossible when focused on tending to your existing client base. When searching online for pediatric dental marketing ideas, you’ll likely find an overwhelming list of tasks, making it hard to understand what your dental practice should focus on. Below, we break down the foundations of a quality pediatric dental marketing strategy so you can begin targeting new patients, expanding local business, and achieving practice growth.

Understanding Your Audience

Before developing a dental marketing plan, you must define your target audience to create content that meets their needs. In general, you want to target parents, as prospective patients will be too young to schedule their appointments.

With that being said, the parents of your potential patients want to see that your pediatric dental office is friendly, caring, and inviting to children. Because of this, you want to gear a lot of your pediatric dentist marketing efforts toward a younger audience to show your practice’s family-oriented nature.

We recommend considering the average demographics of your pediatric dentistry practice. For example, if your current patients are around 15 years old, you may want to create more fun and catchy social media content geared toward their interests following the latest trends. On the other hand, if most of your patients are in elementary school, you will need to focus more on reaching their parents using authentic, effective marketing practices that build your facility’s trust and authenticity.

The Power of Social Proof

At the end of the day, parents care most about choosing a practice that will provide stellar pediatric dental care for their children. Your online reputation can make or break your practice’s success, as most people will consider your patient reviews before deciding whether or not to choose your business. Online reviews can impact how new patient leads see your dental office and how search engines rank your website in search results.

Collecting positive reviews and managing negative ones can take a lot of time and effort your pediatric practice may not have. We recommend the following strategies for managing your online reviews:

Directly request reviews when patients interact with your practice

You can gather reviews from more patients by offering incentives like free teeth whitening services or sending convenient appointment follow-ups with a direct link to the review form.

Promptly respond to negative reviews

Poor reviews can deter new patients. We recommend responding to patient reviews as soon as possible, asking them to take the conflict offline. You can hopefully resolve the issue, then remove the review.

Showcase positive experiences on your pediatric dental website

When someone leaves a stellar review about your dental services, you can showcase it on your website or social media pages, assuming you receive consent.

Consider an online reputation management tool for easier management

Gathering reviews takes a lot of time and effort. Numerous tools, like Weave Reviews, allow you to streamline the reputation management process so you can automatically collect more positive reviews while responding to negative ones.

Leveraging Social Media

Social media is a must-have aspect of any dental marketing effort. With social media, you can develop your brand, reach wider audiences, engage with the community, boost brand awareness, and drive your practice’s revenue. Social media channels allow you to connect with your patient base and their families, allowing you to reel in leads with fresh content displaying your practice’s knowledge, authority, and fun atmosphere.

Below, we discuss Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat content marketing ideas for pediatric dental practices.

Instagram and TikTok for Engagement

Instagram and TikTok are two leading social media platforms providing premier avenues for connecting with your audience. To successfully build a community on either platform, you must create engaging content that follows the latest trends and best practices. For example, on Instagram, most pages only post a few times per week to remain relevant, while TikTok creators typically must post multiple times per day to maintain their statuses.

We recommend the following tips for Instagram and TikTok content:

Create Instagram Stories

While you may only post on Instagram a few times a week, you can upload Stories far more frequently. Regular Stories can keep your audience more engaged.

Follow the latest TikTok video and audio trends

TikTok trends change on a dime, though you can almost always join in on them, regardless of your industry. We recommend following the hottest trending audios, video challenges, transition techniques, or other content ideas to get your practice on the For You page.

Prioritize visual storytelling

Visual storytelling can engage all audiences through your content. For example, you can show a day in the life of a pediatric dentist.

Offer how-to and DIY content

You can also create content on at-home oral healthcare tips and tricks. Videos and posts on children’s dental health will help you reach your primary audience and prove your experience and knowledge of the subject.

Keep your captions brief and catchy

Instagram and TikTok are primarily visual platforms, so your captions should be brief and goal-oriented.

Use a few relevant hashtags

Hashtags help your social media posts surface in your target audience’s feed. We recommend researching the right terms and only including a few.

Stay consistent

Social media takes time and consistency to yield results. Continue posting regularly and engaging with the community to build your following.

Snapchat’s Untapped Potential

Snapchat has over 406 million daily users. Each quarter of each year, more and more young teens flock to the platform to communicate with friends and view stories from their favorite creators. You can hop on this rising untapped potential with Snapchat advertising, allowing you to create video or image ads that appear between stories.

With Snapchat paid advertising, you can reach teens on their preferred platform, helping your brand stay relevant. Younger patients will recognize your brand and keep you in mind the next time they have a toothache.

Content Marketing: Blogging and Video

Content should be at the center of your pediatric dentistry marketing plan. Content drives search engine optimization, bringing valuable leads to your website to drive practice growth. With the right content, you can build audience trust while propelling conversions.

Below, we cover our top ideas for blog posts and video content so you can rank well while providing useful, educational information.

Starting a Pediatric Dental Blog

A pediatric dentist blog is a great way to fill your practice website with rich, informative content. If you want to succeed with your blog, you need a thorough plan. We recommend the following tips:

Create a content calendar

You must publish articles consistently, whether one blog post per week or daily. You should establish a calendar so you can stick with your publishing schedule.

Choose relevant topics that appeal to parents

You want your content to appeal to your primary audience. You could write a blog post on at-home dental care for kids, how to deal with a dental emergency, staying up to date on the best dental hygiene products, etc.

Write articles surrounding target keywords

Keyword research and implementation help your content surface for your desired audience. We recommend researching terms other pediatric dental websites use and creating content surrounding them.

Share your articles on social media

Be sure to share blogs across your digital marketing channels to reach the widest audience possible.

Use calls-to-action (CTA)

When someone finds your content, what do you want them to do? Try to think past “read more” and drive them to schedule an appointment or subscribe to a newsletter; something that provides them value while also supporting your practice.

Creating a Pediatric Dentist YouTube Channel

A YouTube channel can help you advertise dental services while producing educational and engaging videos for families. We recommend the following tips:

• Answer questions you typically receive in pediatric dentistry
• Produce consistent, high-quality content with actual staff members, not just stock footage
• Offer insights on at-home dental care, like tooth brushing
• Feature videos on your website and social channels for strong link-building and credibility

Creating a pediatric dentist YouTube channel with educational and engaging content strengthens your practice’s online presence, offering valuable insights and fostering trust with families.

Community Involvement and Charitable Efforts

There’s no reason to limit your practice to online advertising. When your practice gets involved with the community, you can boost your brand awareness and show local families how much you care about children in the area. Here are a few fun ideas for community outreach and charity events that can align with your practice’s values:

• Host a free giveaway
• Donate to a local charity or larger organization, like Give Kids a Smile or Smiles for Life.
• Sponsor a local sporting event
• Host a 5K, food drive, or other charitable event

Engaging in community involvement and charitable efforts not only enhances brand awareness for your practice but also demonstrates your genuine commitment to the well-being of local families and children.

Optimizing the Online Presence of Your Pediatric Dental Practice

Search engine optimization is the digital marketing practice of shaping your online advertising and marketing efforts to make your website appear at the top of search engine rankings for targeted phrases, such as “pediatric dentists near me.” To create a stellar user experience on your website that also ranks well in search results, you must follow all the top SEO best practices. We recommend the following tips for ranking well in search results:

• Research local keywords and include them in your content
• Use a simple navigational structure on your website
• Optimize your website for mobile and ensure that everything loads quickly
• Run your website through a site audit tool to remove any technical errors
• Create a Google Business Profile so you can appear in online searches with other local businesses
• Gather positive reviews so you can rank well in Google Maps
• Request backlinks from authoritative sources, like other pediatric dental offices in the area
• Include your contact information and practice hours in an easy-to-find spot on your website

Optimizing your pediatric dental practice’s online presence involves a strategic combination of SEO best practices, including keyword research, mobile optimization, technical audits, and authoritative backlinks, to enhance visibility and rank in search results effectively.

Innovative Pediatric Dental Marketing Tactics

So far, we’ve discussed the basic foundations of a solid marketing plan for your practice, like audience targeting, social proofs, community involvement, and search engine optimization. After nailing the basics, you can begin adopting more innovative strategies that place your practice ahead of the curve to beat the competition. The following are some of the top emerging trends and creative ideas in the industry:

Online booking for new patient acquisition

Online booking tools make appointment scheduling more convenient for new patients while freeing up your staff so existing patients can spend less time in the waiting room.

Proactive appointment reminders

Your marketing plan should cover each stage of the lead funnel, including retaining existing customers. Automated scheduling reminders can help your practice prevent no-shows while increasing appointment rates.

Online resources for patient retention

The most advanced clinics provide full digital suites that allow patients to pay bills online, access medical records, communicate with providers, and more.

Weave: Streamlining Marketing for Pediatric Dentist Practices

Pediatric dentists must stay informed about the latest marketing strategies. They must also be willing to adapt to attract and retain patients. At Weave, we provide an all-in-one solution that allows you to automate your marketing efforts by streamlining processes like review management, patient scheduling, reminders, and more.

Get a demo of Weave’s services today to see how we can enhance your marketing efforts.