How To Leverage YouTube To Market Your Dental Practice?

What is the first thing to strike your mind when someone mentions “video”? YouTube, right? No matter how prominent social networking sites try to build a better video platform, a discussion of video is mostly concluded with YouTube mentions.

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And why it wouldn’t be? After all, YouTube is the second most visited site, globally, only second to the platform that owns it, Google.

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From its inception in 2005 to now, being a significant advertising and content marketing channel, YouTube has evolved and how! Do you know how many videos are uploaded every minute on YouTube, 400 hours of videos! And how many hours of videos are watched every day? Over 1 billion hours! These staggering stats are enough to fathom the gravity at which YouTube is being hailed as a leading video-based content creation and marketing channel. “YouTube holds a significant power on swaying the purchase decision of the consumers with 68% reporting to have used YouTube to bolster their purchase decision.” While this is an established fact that YouTube is primarily used for entertainment purposes, but regarding it as just a mode of relaxation would be a common mistake that can cost your business losing out on significant opportunities.

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With people spending more time on YouTube than on their television (which by the way is increasing every year) and actively looking for useful information every minute, YouTube holds a significant power in swaying the purchase decision of the consumers with 68% reporting to have used YouTube to bolster their decision. From being a video hosting platform to an effective marketing platform to becoming the second most viewed search engine, YouTube has now become a competent marketing tool alongside its social media contemporaries. Many businesses, be it in the healthcare or retail or any vertical whatsoever, are aggressively investing in marketing through YouTube. The health-conscious population is increasingly drawn towards YouTube for informative videos. One of the most overlooked aspects of our overall health is dental health, which is riddled with misconceptions due to a lack of accurate information. The online growth of the dentistry sector is helping patients understand it better, and the digital marketing trends help dentists be more accessible to their patients. Your dental channel can help users get answers to their dental queries such as early signs of dental trouble; recorded procedures can help them get rid of the apprehension and comprehend the importance of good dental hygiene. Your channel, on the other hand, will have an extensive reach, more patients. Furthermore, your practice will perform better on search engines. YouTube is a cost-effective yet powerful marketing tool which if done right has the ability to strengthen other marketing mechanisms such as SEO and social media. Then why hasn’t your dental practice set up a YouTube channel yet? Wondering how YouTube marketing can help bring new patients to your practice? “..marketing your dental practice on YouTube can help attract, engage and retain patients.” Of all the users actively browsing through YouTube for some relevant information or solution for their query, there would be a certain percentage looking for good dentists or dental service-related information. They want to know how a procedure works, what are the real results, what are the risks involved, and more. Just like any other industry, marketing your dental practice on YouTube can help attract, engage and retain patients. Allow me to elaborate on the benefits of incorporating YouTube in your dental marketing campaigns: “investing in YouTube marketing seems like a bankable move to grow awareness, boost your dental practice search engine ranking, and substantiate your credibility in the industry.” It is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies with the plausibility of far-reaching impact on garnering a higher volume of traffic. With half of the internet population accessing YouTube every month and viewing billions of hours of videos, imagine the amount of attention your practice will be able to capture with an effective YouTube marketing strategy?

• With Cisco predicting video to be 80% of all the internet traffic by 2021, investing in YouTube marketing seems like a bankable move to grow awareness, boost your dental practice search engine ranking, and substantiate your credibility in the industry. Moreover, strategically created informative and detailed videos come with tremendous SEO value.
• If judiciously invested, YouTube video marketing tactics can yield a good return on investment. Furthermore, the AI-driven recommendations generated by the intuitive YouTube algorithm can help increase the content views from your target audience.
• YouTube gives the ease of targeted marketing with which you can decide upon the demographics, age, gender, keyword, placements and avoid any possibility of association with unrelated content.
• YouTube, when managed meticulously by dental marketing services can also be used as a potent analytic tool to gain an insight into the content performance and make improvements in your dental practice management, as and when required.

While these benefits might instantly encourage your team to get on with YouTube marketing, it is crucial to keep in mind that with the soaring volume at which the videos are getting uploaded on YouTube, the chances of your content getting noticed are very thin, unless you have an adept strategy to march your way up in the competitive dental industry successfully. These up-and-coming trends and technologies are making dental marketing extensively intricate, managing which might derail your practice and staff from the core objective of dispensing quality treatment to the patients. This is where having a dental marketing service can ensure your robust online presence, giving you a competitive edge over others. Having said that let’s take a look at how you can use YouTube to market your practice to your audience.

VIDEO CONTENT

You can choose from various video topics to start with your YouTube, marketing, to be able to resonate with your audience, attract the patients and strengthen your practice’s standing, such as :

INTRODUCTORY VIDEO

One of the most natural ways of getting your patients to know you, your practice, and the staff is a straightforward introduction video. A brief practice and dentist introduction can help establish familiarity and mitigate the stress when the patient visits your practice. You can also use these videos to inform patients on how to go about their first visit. A dentist's introduction will help the patient know more about the doctor treating them, helping them make a sound decision about going forward.

INFORMATIONAL VIDEO

A significant percentage of users browse through YouTube to get information on a particular subject and topic. You can create a video explaining a specific procedure, why is it essential for overall dental hygiene, how is it performed, etc. You can also subtly incorporate as to why your expertise in dentistry should make patients prefer you over others. Informational videos get shared quickly as they help resolve queries and keep people engaged.

PROCEDURE VIDEO

A video that explains the dental procedure in layperson terms, showcasing live procedure and actual results can help clear misconceptions which make people fear dental visits. But make sure to have the patient consent in shooting a live procedure yourself in a hot soup.

Q/A VIDEO

While answering frequently asked questions on the website and timely updating them is a good practice, why not make it more interactive? An engaging Q/A session can also play a pivotal role in increasing your practice’s awareness, highlighting your expertise.

OUTCOME VIDEO

A video highlighting before and after a procedure help concrete the patient’s confidence in the dental practice. You can also put up some of the most challenging dental cases that you have successfully treated. This will comfort the patients who are otherwise stressed about their dental hygiene and are apprehensive of visiting the dentist. You can also put up a montage of your best works, distributed into the specific procedure to resolve the dilemma of the targeted patients.

PATIENT TESTIMONIAL VIDEO

One of the best ways to demonstrate to the new and existing patients that you deliver what you promise is testimonials by happy patients. Periodically putting up patient testimonials will prove beneficial in attracting new patients and upscaling your practice’s reputation.

FACILITY TOUR VIDEO

Let your patients know how technologically advanced your practice is by creating a video of the establishment. By showcasing the amenities and environment of your practice, you boost the patient’s confidence in your service.

OPTIMIZE YOUR VIDEO FOR BETTER RESULTS

While high-quality content will help you get the attention of your patients, it is the optimization of the videos that will enhance your reach and escalate your number of views. Similar to Google, YouTube has its own algorithm to decide how the videos will be displayed in the search results. Certain factors should be kept in mind while optimizing your YouTube video for better results such as: Video length Watch Time Keyword preference Number of subscribers Interaction with customers (likes, comments) Your dental marketing through YouTube should be capitalized on these metrics. Mentioned below are some of the optimization tips, implementing which, you can enhance your practice’s change of gaining more visibility on YouTube:

TITLE: Targeted keyword with practice’s information

Make sure that the title of the video is search friendly and has the keyword you are planning to target along with the name of your practice as this will serve as a quick call to action and escalate your ranking. Include relevant keywords as YouTube tags, so that the YouTube algorithm will place your video under the “related video section.”

DESCRIPTION: Keep it extensive and informative

Even before the patients watch the video, this section gives you the chance to attract them and make them curious as to what new are they going to find. Be tactful when structuring the description. Keep your web address and other contact details on the top and then design two paragraphs with relevant keywords to describe the video. Mention what the video is about and how can it help the viewers in the first paragraph. The second paragraph can be used to write a small description of your dental practice and expertise.

THUMBNAIL: Select an easy to read and relatable thumbnail

Patients should be able to comprehend the purpose of the video by its thumbnail quickly. In pursuit of making it attractive do not make it irrelevant upon searching. Use a video screenshot with a video title on it to enhance your ranking in YouTube search results.

TRANSCRIPT: Place closed captions

Uploading transcripts or making use of closed captions can add value to your video, helping patients having difficulty comprehending, to understand the video better, thereby ensuring engagement. Closed captions enhance the search engine ranking of the video since the search engine indexes the text which increases the search traffic.

SHARE: Utilize every platform

The more your video will be shared, the more it will benefit your practice’s search engine optimization. Once the video is live, promote it across all the major social platforms, embed it blogs on the website, share with your patient and encourage patients to share it further. You can not just boost your practice’s market by posting videos on YouTube but also by advertising. Every ad of yours played before a video gives your practice more exposure, making it an instant mode of maximum reach.

• With YouTube’s advanced targeting, you can reach a specific audience; take, for instance; you are a pediatric dentist. You can create ads specifically targeted to children or families with children to increase your radius. This way you will reach only those people who have shown interest in topics relevant to children's dental hygiene.
• To make sure that your practice’s message goes to the right audience, you can also use YouTube’s feature which allows you to post ads on relevant and specific channels or videos, to increase engagement of the particular audience.
• Depending upon the advertising models/ format that you choose, you can easily track the ad metrics such as clicks, reach, frequency, engagement, and more. This will help you identify and work on the lagging part and accordingly strategize to meet your goal.

Talking about advertisements models, has it ever occurred to you why some ads can be skipped, while some run to their length and then only you can watch the video? That is because there are various formats available for YouTube advertising:

TRUEVIEW:

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One of the safest and cost-effective forms of advertising, wherein you will only have to pay when your prospective patient watches the video for 30 seconds or more. These are skippable ads and have two sub-forms; in-display and in-stream. Those that appear before a YouTube video are instream ads and those suggested on the top of the video are in-display ads. Although a cost-efficient platform, since it automatically optimized videos ads for views and not click, campaigns with a prime focus on clicks can get expensive. Use Trueview if you want to maximize your visibility and enhance your number of views.

PRE-ROLL:

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These are non-skippable 15/30/60 seconds video ads that are paid for based on click per mille(Latin for 1000) basis. Since they are optimized for the click, they have a higher cost per click than trueview video ads and are more suitable for sales campaigns or for generating clicks for the landing page.

BUMPER:

These are six-second-long, non-skippable video ads that are paid for in the trueview format. One of the most cost-effective modes, bumper video ads are suitable for raising awareness and ad recalling.

Why advertise on YouTube?

As people are increasingly consuming content through their smartphones, every microsecond has the potential to create a long-lasting impact and convert viewers visiting your channel into your patient. Also, search for genuine information especially on critical subjects like dental health on YouTube is escalating day by day; hence YouTube dental marketing seems like a commercially sound decision to make. Video dental marketing is the future, and YouTube marketing is only getting started. You have YouTube, you have your dental practice; what you need is a competent video marketing strategy that makes your dental practice get heard and identified in this virtual noise. Reach out to those one billion monthly users and increase awareness about dental hygiene through your channel. The sooner you implement it, the better will be your chances of establishing your prowess in the industry.