Are we getting marketing wrong? In this guest blog, Content Marketer and Creative Director of Big Bee Content, Niki May Blane, explains why a bigger audience isn’t always better when it comes to digital marketing.
Marketing is a numbers game…or is it? Online, we watch the number of followers, likes, shares, comments and notes with bated breath, constantly comparing our social media profiles to others’. But what if we’re doing digital marketing wrong? Ultimately, we market our services to increase our market share of patients, but when we focus too much on the number of followers we have, or page views, we run the risk of creating content for clicks, and alienating our target market. Big numbers are good, but big numbers from the wrong people, are wasted. This blog is about attracting the right people with your marketing efforts, and it begins with understanding your audience.
Know your audience
Do you have a favourite patient? Let’s call her Margaret. I bet you’re Margaret’s favourite dentist too. And so, when she goes home to her partner, or speaks to her friends, she’ll talk about how great you are. Your current patients are your strongest advocates. You want more patients like Margaret.
Margaret has an advantage; she already knows you. Every interaction you have together strengthens her trust in you. You put her at ease, you work your magic to relieve her pain and make her smile. Ultimately you want to create a similar impression online with all the other Margarets out there. So, you need to begin by asking yourself what you know about Margaret? Think of your current favourite patients and consider the following questions:
- How old are they?
- What are their main dental goals?
- What are their concerns in the chair?
- Who do they come in with?
- What do they talk about in the waiting room?
Asking these questions helps to build an understanding of your audience and what matters to them, identifying subjects that will help you to build a rapport. Say they talk about holidays a lot, for example – write content about how to take care of your smile when on holiday. Maybe they talk about sports? Create content about the advantages of mouthguards and how to take care of them. Maybe all they talk about is their family – discuss how the mouth changes through the different stages of our life.
Creating content that supports and resonates with your target market offers the greatest opportunity for building a relevant and positive audience. When you create content that resonates with your audience, you’re not just talking to them, their connections will see it too, and you’ll soon find that your audience will grow in the right way.
So, always sense check your content by asking “Would Margaret like this?”
Choose your channels wisely
With your ideal patient in mind, it’s worth considering what channels to use to talk to them. Channels are any platforms that you use to speak to your patients, including emails, social media platforms like Facebook or TikTok, and your website.
Here are some benefits of some of these core platforms:
Best for Everyone
Website – regularly updating your website with up-to-date, useful and trustworthy advice content will demonstrate to prospective patients that you care and are knowledgeable. It will also help improve your visibility in search engines like Google.
Best for Existing Patients
Emails – regular engaging emails offering advice will keep your existing audience engaged and keep you front of mind. They can also be used as a benefit of the care that you provide, offering advice that helps to maintain their dental hygiene and health. You can create emails specifically to target different segments of your audience, so the ability to make content more relevant is greater in emails.
Best for Prospective Patients
Social media – as a whole, social media offers the best opportunity for visibility with those who wouldn’t otherwise find you. There are multiple opportunities to target your content at the right people. These include using hashtags, partnering with other relevant businesses on posts, or even enlisting the help of influencers to advertise your services. The options on social media may seem endless, but here are a few pointers to keep you focused:
- Remember you don’t have to be on all platforms, just the ones that make sense for your Margaret
- Get familiar with their paid targeting functionalities, it is usually worth spending a little to get in front of the right people
- Get to know the tricks that gain you the best visibility without paying (organic reach) because you’ll use these every day to build your audience.
Three ways we get social media wrong
- Avoidance
Lots of dentists make the mistake of avoiding social media altogether because it seems too overwhelming, they don’t think their audience exists on the platform, or they think they’re just appealing to a local audience, so why bother? Your typical patient might live within a 15-mile radius, so clearly you wouldn’t pay for a national TV advert, but social media works differently. The beauty of social media is the ability to target very specifically to interests, geography and demographics. So, creating a social media advert that is targeted to your local area may well be worthwhile. Create content that is appealing enough to your target audience, and you might even be able to push the limits of that radius to gain patients from further afield.
- Scattergun approach
Other dentists make the opposite mistake and scatter content across them all. While it does no harm to share high quality content across multiple platforms, every platform has its unique dimensions and rules and so content that works great on Facebook, might do terribly on TikTok. You need to dedicate time to do it right. So, if you’re short on resource, it will be more worthwhile to identify two or three platforms and do them really well. Think about your ideal patient, consider where they are most likely to be active on social media, and focus your efforts there.
- Inappropriate trending
Before you jump on the latest TikTok trend, remember your target audience. Is it going to make them know, like or trust you more if you latch on to this content? If the answer is no to all three, then as fun as it may be, it’s not worth your time to create. Clickbait-style content may be popular on social media, but it doesn’t necessarily build the trust that’s needed to convince prospective patients.
Remember what your content is for
It’s easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of content creation, to fret that you’ve not yet made and produced a 12-month plan for it, and to hastily pull together low-quality content. But if you feel out of control at any point, take a breath. Remember why you’re making content. It’s there to support, inform, build trust and engage your audience. If you’re able to do any one of those things with videos, articles, animations, graphics, or podcasts, then you’re doing well. Maintain focus on your Margaret, and the rewards will soon follow.
