How To Optimize Your Dental Website For Maximum Conversions

Watch the webinar replay of ‘How To Optimize Your Dental Website For Maximum Conversions‘

Welcome to our second webinar of 2022. Today we will be talking about how to optimize your dental website for maximum conversions. My name is Ian Cantle, and I’m the founder and chief strategist at Dental Marketing Heroes. We’re a dental marketing agency whose mission is to help dentists and orthodontists thrive by generating a return on investment of five times or more. So you can help more patients, so your team and your families can thrive, so you can give more back to your community and to worthwhile causes you believe in.

Today, I’ll be sharing information that, should you put it in place, can make a radical impact to your practice. So without further ado, let’s jump in. Today we’re going to be covering a lot, and here’s our roadmap.

What We’ll Cover

1. A conversion… What’s that?
2. The commonly misunderstood role of dental websites.
3. Who is your dental website really for?
4. Elements every dental website must have in order to maximize conversions.
5. A special offer!

What Is A Conversion?

To create a commonplace of understanding of what a conversion is, let’s first look at where conversions happen.

Conversions happen in your buyer’s journey. A prospective patient has many self-directed routes they can take before they decide to choose your practice. And the really important part is to present them at each of their decision points within their journey. To simplify this journey, let’s look at it as a straight line. But before we get into the actual journey, let’s talk about conversions.

Types Of Conversions

There are two types of conversions to consider. There are macro conversions, and these are the really large-scale conversions that for you, you love. They’re things like your new patient numbers and your billable services. But the second type of conversion is called micro conversions, and these happen at every single stage of your buyer’s journey. Because we’re looking at your website conversions.

In this webinar, we’ll look at the micro conversions that happen on a website that eventually lead to the macro conversions that you care so much about. For simplicity’s sake, let’s use the straight path journey so we can come to an understanding of where conversions happen via your website.

As an example, John, the little icon at the bottom of the image above, is looking for a new dentist. So he Googles ‘dentists near me’. Some ads pop up. He looks at the map listings. Organic results pop up. He visits the top websites in the organic results and even clicks on some of the ads. He visits some of their websites. He checks out their Google reviews. He visits them on Facebook and Instagram, maybe even looks at some Tik Tok videos. He returns to the website of the dentist that he likes best and he books an appointment with you. And finally, he comes in for his first appointment.

Tada, that is the micro to the macro conversion!

So on a website, we have two very strong conversions that happen. We have:

1. Phone calls to your office and,
2. Form completions when they book an appointment or complete a contact form

We’ll use this as a basis for the key conversions that you want to attract more of. Now let’s dig into why you need a conversion-maximized website. Let’s first hear what Bill Gates has to say. He says:

“If your business is not on the internet, your business will be out of business”.

And at no time has this been more true than today, and we all know it.

I’ve also learned that not every dentist or orthodontist likes to think about their competition. Some even think the competition is irrelevant, that if they just focus on their business, they’ll win. But nothing could be further from the truth today. What your competition does affects your business and what you do affects their business, because it’s not just about being on the internet, it’s about maximizing your presence and outperforming your competition. The great news is that you are in control of your destiny and you can maximize conversions and attract more great patients.

The Misunderstood Role Of Your Dental Website

Now let’s look at how the role of your website is often misunderstood in dental practices. Here’s a quote from Leland Dieno:  “Your website is the center of your digital ecosystem, like a brick and mortar location, the experience matters once a customer enters, just as much as the perception they have of you before they walk through your physical door”. That is really important for you to know that your prospect’s perception of your practice rarely starts with their first visit or even their first phone call.

No, it starts online.

Now, what is the role of your website?

First, a really important thing to remember is that your website is the only property that you own online. You don’t own your presence on Facebook or Instagram, Google My Business or Google Business Profiles, or any other social platform. And unfortunately, sometimes these profiles can be ripped away from your business because you don’t control the platform. But your website is your property that you can control.

The second role it plays is that to be effective, your website must be the hub of all your digital marketing. Both online and offline marketing efforts. Almost every effective marketing element that you invest in will somehow connect with your website. All roads lead to your website.

The third role it plays is that to be effective, your website must attract, engage and convert visitors. Otherwise, it’s just an online brochure rather than a 24/7 sales machine. Remember, your website is a vital part of your patient’s buying journey and a key retention tool for existing patients.

And lastly, it’s your 24/7 sales and customer service machine. It can help your customers and prospects book appointments, get information via a chatbot or even live chat that you can subscribe to. They can find information that they need even when your office is closed. They can find answers to their common questions, and they can even complete forms in order to get them into your funnel.

So we looked at the role of your website. Now let’s clarify who your website is for.

Who Is Your Dental Website Really For?

I have some unfortunate information to tell you. Believe it or not, it’s not about you — the dentist or the orthodontist.

It’s not about the vanity of the dentist or your team, although I do recommend you and your team have high visibility on your website because that’s who people buy from. But your website is really all about your audience, the people you want to attract and retain. And who are those people, to take it a bit further?

• Number one, your prospects, the people you’re trying to attract, the people who are searching for a great dentist or orthodontist
• Number two, it’s about the robots who help prospects find you. The robots are Google and Bing and Yahoo
• Number three, it’s about your current patients.

Those are the three most important audiences for your website. And really, they are in that order of priority. You can’t ignore any of them.

Okay, we’ve talked about what conversions are. We’ve talked about the role of your website, and we’ve talked about who your website is for. These three things are vital to maximizing conversions.

Now let’s look at the conversion elements that matter most to you. And as we jump into that, here’s a quote from Brian Eisenberg:  “Trying to increase sales simply by driving more traffic to a website with a poor customer conversion rate is like trying to keep a leaky bucket full by adding more water instead of plugging the holes”. So let’s look at how to plug those conversion holes.

Elements Every Dental Website Must Have To MAXIMIZE Conversions

1. CORE DIFFERENCE

Now, it’s vital that you present a core difference on your website. The reason for this is that one of the biggest conversion issues that we find on websites is that most dentists or orthodontists fail to create a very clear and profound core difference in the mind of their visitors. This creates a vacuum, so the visitor doesn’t really know how to compare one dentist or orthodontist to another one. And the last thing you want them to do is to compare you on price. But that is always the consumer’s default. So present a clear and concise core difference to your visitors.

2. DOES YOUR WEBSITE LOOK OLD OR NEW?

Now, this should be obvious, but does your website look old or new? Does it look like you are on the cutting edge of your field or not? There is a definite aesthetic aspect to websites, and it would be foolish to ignore that. We see all the time dental websites that were created 10-15 years ago, and they look like they were created 10-15 years ago, and they look like that to your prospects and your patients. The average website needs to be refreshed every two to three years to look up to date with other sites that people find attractive on the internet.

3. CALLS TO ACTION

You must have clear calls to action, and these should start with the ones that matter most to you — the conversions we talked about at the beginning of this webinar. You want people most of all to call you or complete a form to book an appointment. So those are your primary calls to action.

Number two, your secondary call to action should be an invitation for them to provide you with their name and email address in exchange for a lead magnet like a checklist or a guide to choosing a dentist. This will allow you to communicate with them on an ongoing basis after they download that item and you begin a relationship with them.

And number three, you also want to include always present or omnipresent key calls to action. You want your phone number and your booking appointment link to be always available and always visible at all times on your website. So usually the solution to that is a thin bar at the top that always has those calls to action available to help you track your return on investment.

It’s vital that you have tracking and reporting mechanisms for your key calls to action. This is the only way you can truly know what your ROI, your return on investment, is and improve it over time.

4. SOCIAL PROOF

You then want to share social proof on your website that you are an awesome dental or orthodontic clinic. You do this by sharing reviews from your patients. Or if you can’t do that (some states and provinces don’t allow you to) then share your overall ratings and the number of reviews you have. It’s good when we can say great things about what we do, but it is enormously powerful when coming from someone else. Studies show that reviews play a massive part in the buying decision, and it will benefit you greatly to include these social proof points on your website.

5. AUTHORITY BUILDING AND TRUST BUILDING

A great way to build trust is to show the associations, the brands, the awards, the accolades you’ve received as authority-builders on your website. It’s a very easy thing to do, but it’s often overlooked by many dental websites.

6. PAIN POINTS AND HOW YOU SOLVE THEM

All right, people are coming to you because they want a solution to something. Either they need a dentist or orthodontist or they’re dealing with a specific issue. Having content on your website that speaks to the common issues, challenges and pain points that your patients experience — and how you solve them — is a fantastic opportunity to show up for Google searches related to these topics and to help patients and prospects understand that you can help relieve their pain. And when someone is in pain, they are a motivated searcher and a motivated buyer.

7. INTRO VIDEO TO PROSPECTIVE PATIENTS

Using video to introduce your practice to prospective patients is a powerful connector. Video has been shown to break down barriers and grow trust while raising conversions. Use it well and it can be a powerful tool in your conversion arsenal. Plus, visitors want to know who the dentist is, how they appear and speak. Are they someone that they’re going to like? So video is a very powerful way to break down barriers and grow trust.

8. NAVIGATION

Studies have shown that if website navigation is cumbersome or complex or too deep, you will not keep visitors engaged. The answer is very simple, clear, concise navigation that provides multiple paths to the most useful information, the most-searched-for information, and that makes it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for. It’s a very small thing, but a very powerful thing. And also the robots, the Googles of the world like clear, multi-layered navigation so they understand the structure of your website and the products and services you provide.

9. SOCIAL LINKS & GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE CONNECTION

Having social media icons and links on your website shows that you’re community-focused, that you’re available, that you’re engaged, and that you are timely with your patients on the platforms that they spend the most time on. It also provides additional links of relevance that Google is looking for about your business. And I can’t say enough about building out your Google Business Profile. You absolutely have to do that in order to show up high on rankings, which is ultimately at the top of the funnel of your conversions.

10. YOUR SERVICES

Okay, it seems like it should be obvious that your website should provide detailed information about what you actually do — the services you provide so that visitors know you can help them in the area they’re interested in, or the solutions that they’re looking for.

What’s not obvious is that the link structure and the interlinking within your website of these services can be a powerful message to Google of what you offer. So you show up on more searches that people are doing.

11. YOUR BLOG -> FRESH CONTENT

Some business owners think that blogging is for hobbyists because that’s kind of how it started. But blogging is just a term that we use in the industry from a platform perspective for curating valuable content regularly on your website that your prospects and your clients are looking for and that helps you on Google search. As a marketing consultant, this is a key strategy for SEO to show up for the powerful long-tail keywords that have less competition associated with them, but that people are searching for. It provides fresh content that Google wants to see and it gives you shareable content for your audience.

12. SUPER FOOTER

A super footer again is helpful to your visitors but provides an even more powerful set of structural links that Google likes. Don’t overlook the power of the simple SEO powerhouse that has become a mainstay of good ranking websites.

13. YOUR FOLLOW-UP:  WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THEY CONNECT WITH YOU?

Follow-up isn’t directly related to your website, except you can’t have a website without actions on it, where somebody is connecting with you, without some sort of follow-up. When someone takes an action on your website, it is one of the times when they are most likely to take further actions.

So once they take an action, once they complete an appointment form, if they call you, anything like that, or download your lead magnet, this is the time to reach out to them with a nurture sequence, a follow-up program so that you can get them when they are most likely to react.

14. SEO:  SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

SEO is one of the biggest conversion elements on your website. Studies have shown that searchers who click on organic results are more likely to act and the only way to show up at the top of Google rankings is to optimize your website to the max. For our clients, we find that SEO return on investment is significantly higher than even paid traffic. Return on investment is usually more than three times higher and the spend is much lower.

15. GOOGLE CORE WEB VITALS

Okay, this is a pretty nerdy subject, but really important. Last year, Google announced an entirely new aspect to their algorithm called Google Core Web Vitals. And they did this because it’s all about the user experience. When they come to your website, Google wants to make sure that they’re sending the most relevant search results with the best experience to people searching because that’s how they stay as the best search engine. So the things that Google looks at are highly technical in these core web vitals, but they must be done to rank well on Google.

So we talked about a lot of elements there at a very high level. These elements can be very powerful. They can powerfully impact your conversions, but let’s simplify it.

The way to maximize your website conversions is to:

1. Understand the role of your website.
2. Know your website’s three audiences that we talked about.
3. Leverage the 15 vital website conversion elements we talked about.

I find that most practices lack the expertise to really maximize their conversions. So if you feel that way, you’re not alone. And luckily, that’s where my team and I come in. We’re here to help practices get a great return on investment from every marketing dollar spent.

We find that when we implement our comprehensive marketing engine into practices, we consistently achieve a greater than five times return on investment for you, and conversions are a key to our formula in doing that. So if you’re interested in learning more, please schedule a free marketing consultation with me.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this webinar, I wanted to provide you with a very special offer for attendees. I’m offering a free dental website review. This review will take a look at your website, how it’s performing, and what you can do to get more out of it.

If you’d like to take us up on this offer, scan the QR code or visit the web address you see here and complete the request form. I’d love to help you attract, engage and convert more visitors so that you can get more patients, so that you can grow your practice, and so that you can thrive.

And lastly, I’d like to invite you to join us for the next webinar in the series that will cover the important topic of The New 2022 SEO Formula For Dental Practices. This will be on the first Friday in March, which is March 4th at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time. If you miss it click the link anyway to watch the replay! And click here for a complete lineup of all past and future webinars in this series.

I hope to see you there. In the meantime, keep calm and market on.