And just like that, another year has passed. 2022 brought some sense of normalcy back, along with a slew of transitions and adjustments. You may not have fulfilled everything on your list of goals, but you still have time to reset and get back on track.

As a dental marketing professional, blindly sticking to the old ways can be harmful. Looking out for changes that can impact or benefit your practice is necessary. Consider the problems you encountered, how you handled them, and how you can avoid them in the future.

To help you get started on the right path, we've put together a list you might want to include in your New Year's resolution.

9 New Year’s Resolutions for Dental Marketing Professionals

1. Get to know your customers better.
2. Invest in user experience.
3. Focus on your top search queries.
4. Explore email marketing further.
5. Stay proactive.
6. Build linkable assets.
7. Tap into user-generated content.
8. Delve into video marketing.
9. Embrace social media. 

1. Know your customers better.

As a service provider, your patients are your driving force. Relationships you keep with them help steer your practice forward. 

How you’ll convert a first-time visitor to a returning patient and encourage them to stay depends on how well you understand and respond to their needs. Listen to your customers and take every opportunity to make them feel valued. 

Patient appreciation doesn’t have to be costly. But failing to recognize their problems is. No two patients are the same, even if they’re from a single household. The more you know your patients, the more you can offer better solutions for their concerns. 

Conduct surveys, collect feedback, track website and social media analytics, and pay close attention to patients during conversations. 

2. Invest in user experience.

Digital marketing trends will continue to shift, but user experience will remain crucial. You need to prioritize user needs, whether you’re marketing to fellow business owners or individual consumers. 

Pay attention to how they interact with your products and what they expect from you. User experience involves several aspects, such as load time, visual design, and ease of use. Here are tips to improve user experience on your dental website.

• Boost page speed. According to a study by Portent, a site with a 1-second load speed converts 3x higher than a site with a 5-second load speed, and 5x higher than a site with a 10-second load speed. Monitor how fast your load time is and work with your digital marketing team to boost it. 

• Optimize site navigation. Provide your users with a clear map of your website. See if your search button is easily visible. Check if your menu options include all the services you’re offering or keywords you’re hoping to rank for in search engines. Decide on the hierarchy and page depth. And review your footer if it contains your main pages. 

• Add visuals. Your website needs more than text to make it stand out. Graphics, from images to infographics, help make your content easier on the eyes. They allow for breaks between long paragraphs and help capture the reader's attention. They also help you present information in a more digestible manner.

• Go mobile. Mobile-friendly websites help you reach a wider audience. Mobile phones allow seamless sharing. Your audience can pass links to your sites to their family members or fill out new patient forms while on the go. They help you increase conversions with less work. You don’t have to have two separate websites, but yours must be responsive.

3. Focus on your top search queries. 

Don’t be afraid to let go of search queries that aren’t serving you. 

What is your most popular content? Why do you think users keep coming back to it? Take inspiration from these pages when boosting your organic search rankings. 

If your keywords haven't been generating clicks for several weeks, it's fine to move forward. As for your top queries, try to do the following as part of your New Year's resolutions:

• Optimize on-page SEO. Improve titles, tags, and content formatting.
• Review backlinks. See which sites have linked to your content and see if you can request more healthy links from website owners. 
• Do some internal linking. Connect related posts. Be your own promoter. 
• Look for topics related to your top-performing queries and expand on them. 
• Deliver your content in another form—whether an infographic or video.

4. Explore email marketing further. 

But don’t do it for the sake of including it in your digital marketing strategy. This year, think about what makes you click or junk an email. Be sure to personalize emails according to the recipient's behavior and needs. You might want to check the pages they recently visited or the services they last received. 

You don’t have to work on everything manually. That’s another trend you have to watch out for. You can automate email marketing, but make sure that your content is tailored. Include user-generated content and interactive call-to-action buttons. 

Don’t hesitate to consult with an agency if this is your first time incorporating email marketing into your strategy. According to research, email users are set to reach 3.9 billion by the end of 2023. These are figures you can’t ignore as a dental marketing professional. 

5. Stay proactive.

User experience must be optimized across devices. And you must stay agile in adapting to changes in the marketing landscape. 

Rather than responding to customer queries and handling concerns as they come up, do your research ahead of time. Collaborate with your team members to determine a contact person for every project. Or coordinate closely with your digital marketing agency so you can use the data you have to add more value to customer experiences. 

For example, create more content about frequently asked questions or your most popular services. Share information that your audience is actively seeking. Take advantage of direct communication with patients to find out which products or services are most helpful. 

By staying proactive, you also help manage after-procedural queries. And always remember, content creation isn’t only a job for your marketing team. Even practitioners, sales team, and customer service staff can contribute. 

6. Build linkable content assets.

Content will remain king. But merely populating your website with new blogs won’t do the trick. Focus on what users want to know rather than talking about random topics. 

Look into what’s working for your competitors. Which of their pages or blog entries have the most views? Which types of content are trending among your competitors? 

Here are tips to make your content assets your winning media.

• Write about the topics your clients are talking about. Listen to conversations in social media or take notes during meetings with patients. 
• Speak in a way your target audience will easily understand. Avoid jargon or big words. 
• Be sure your content is unique. Take ideas from the most popular posts and improve your own. Find the angles they missed out on. 
• Follow the format of top-ranking posts for your search queries. Include a video in your post if those on the first page all have it. 
• Format your content so it’s easy to scan. Observe white space, bullets, and numbers, and break up long paragraphs. 
• Include internal links where relevant.

7. Tap into user-generated content. 

Authenticity in the digital age is a huge concern among consumers. And it should be a big deal for marketers not only in 2023 but at all times. 

User-generated content impacts purchasing decisions. It’s hard to deny that consumers tend to lean toward word-of-mouth when taking action, even if you work hard to show transparency in your content. This is one reason influencer marketing is seeing growth. But anyone among your loyal clients can be a positive influencer. 

Encourage visitors to share their online experiences and incorporate their content into your social media posts. Build meaningful and authentic connections with your existing clients to reach potential visitors. In a way, this will also help solve your marketing team’s need for quality and engaging content at a fast pace. 

8. Delve into video marketing. 

Videos remain a powerful marketing tool. If you're already using videos to promote your dental practice, continue to do so in 2023. Apple, for one, shared that TikTok was the most downloaded app in 2021. 

Some content is better served in a video format. If your audience prefers video content, there's no reason for you not to try it. But if you're dipping your toes into it, you might as well go all the way. Don't present half-baked content. 

A great video can keep consumers glued until the end. This is a lot harder to achieve with written content, especially since the attention span of humans is only 8 seconds. 

9. Embrace social media. 

Make your presence felt on social media. It isn't enough to publish a post regularly. You must also interact with your audience. 

Social media is about building and fostering human connections. They allow you to communicate with people in real time. So your followers also expect the same from you. 

Rather than filling your page with information about your latest products and services, share content produced by your followers too. 

Take your audience behind the scenes and show them what it's like to be working with your team. Set the mood for conversations. Once in a while, host games, surveys, quizzes, or giveaways.

How’s your New Year's Resolution going as a dental marketing professional?

To sum it up, consumers still lead the way to business growth. But meeting (and even exceeding) their demands no longer has to be tedious. 

Try automation tools, but don't forget to personalize. Explore video marketing, be social on social media, and always consider what your patients think and feel. Remember, you’re connecting with actual people and not bots. 

It’s okay to seek guidance from digital marketing professionals. You never know, but outsourcing could be your most valuable step in 2023. A good foundation will help you prevent detrimental issues down the road.

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