4 dental marketing tasks dentists should delegate 

You became a dentist to help patients maintain and improve their oral health. Many dentists want to spend their workday filling cavities, whitening teeth, and treating gum disease — many also find themselves dedicating a lot of time to dental marketing.

Attracting new patients is important to a successful dental practice, and when your success hangs in the balance, it can be tempting to want to personally handle any related activities. But most dental marketing shouldn’t be completed by you — entrust tasks like building a dental website and managing advertising to other people.

Here are 4 marketing tasks you can delegate, along with suggestions for who can take them on.

Here are a few dental marketing responsibilities to assign someone else, so you can spend more time treating patients.

Roughly 99% of prospective consumers use the internet to learn about and locate local business information. Even so, only 73% of small businesses have a website, according to Zippia. If your practice is among the 27% without a website, you’re missing out on prospective patients.

Just 8% of people have not used the internet to find a local business in the past year, according to BrightLocal. The need for a dental website is clear, but even if you have the expertise, you don’t have the time to create and maintain it yourself.

Allowing an expert to handle your dental website offers the best of both worlds: a quality marketing tool with minimal effort from you.

Some 72% of American adults use social media, according to the Pew Research Center. The most popular platforms among US adults include:

Considering these numbers, it’s likely that much of your target patient base uses social media. When done properly, social media for dentists can help you attract and retain patients.

As with any social media campaign, the key to success is posting relevant, interesting content on a regular basis. It also involves engaging with other businesses, entities, healthcare professionals, and members of your community, responding promptly to any negative patient comments or feedback; and staying on top of current conversations and trends in order to participate fully.

Depending on the size of your practice and your larger marketing strategy, social media can be a full-time job. Since social media for dentists requires a significant time investment, it’s best to assign this responsibility to someone who has the bandwidth.

There are 202,536 dentists working in the field as of 2022, according to the American Dental Association. Although that’s a national statistic, that’s still an average of more than 4,050 dentists per state. Since you need to compete at the local level for a loyal patient base you need to find a way to bring them to your office. Dentist ads can help your practice stand out.

Managing an ad campaign is hard work. It involves planning and creating the campaign itself, constantly monitoring all ads to make sure they’re driving traffic, and making adjustments as needed, which can be time-consuming. Working with an expert can protect your time and ensure your ad campaign is as successful as possible.

Most consumers (87%) read reviews for local businesses, according to BrightLocal. Furthermore, 57% will only use a business with 4 or more stars.

Clearly, dental reputation management matters. Patients are checking up on you, and if they can’t find anything about your practice — or if what they find isn’t good — they’re going to book an appointment with one of your competitors instead.

You don’t have time to manually handle your dental reputation management, but you can’t afford to ignore it. Automating as much of your reputation management as possible, and delegating the rest, can free you to focus more on patients.

Here are 3 suggestions for how you can effectively delegate these marketing tasks.

Generally, an independent contractor, a dental marketing consultant works with your practice to create and execute marketing campaigns. They carefully monitor results and make any necessary adjustments to ensure your message gets in front of and resonates with the right audience.

A dental marketing consultant often specializes in one area — such as social media marketing or copywriting — so you might need to hire a few different professionals. This can be a good idea if you have an employee who can take on some marketing duties but not others.

If you’re ready to delegate all your marketing tasks, partnering with a full-service dental marketing agency can be a wise move. From building a polished website to handling all your SEO and social media, you’ll get everything you need under one roof.

Working with a dental marketing agency is an investment, but you get what you pay for. This option will allow you to enjoy professional marketing services while barely lifting a finger.

If you’d still like to handle at least some of your dental marketing efforts, medical marketing software can help you wear multiple hats. For example, platforms like Hootsuite allow you to schedule social media posts in advance, making it possible for your account to publish content while you’re with patients.

Medical marketing software can make your life easier, but it still requires some time investment. The difference is you have more control over when you choose to put in the time.

Being there for your patients is the best thing you can do for your dental practice. However, both your patients and dental marketing activities require full-time attention, so delegate the latter and focus on what you do best.