What’s Trending: There have been an increasing number of marketers capitalizing on the dental industry. Notice the uptick in search volume for terms such as “dental marketing” and “dental SEO” since 2016, as more and more dentists are finding that traditional patient acquisition techniques aren’t sufficient to help them grow their practices. 

The dental industry is particularly attractive for marketers because of the relatively high patient lifetime value — about $4.5k — which means that dental practices can comfortably afford a $150-$300 cost per lead (CPL).

Why It’s Important: It is safe to say that the dental industry, like many others, has been turned on its head as a result of the pandemic.  Although it has been turning back to a sense of normalcy, it’s one of the slowest to return due to the nature of the business and procedures.

Dentists have been forced to rethink their model, have been looking to marketers to sell their story. There has been a significant increase in search volume for the following terms:

• “Dental marketing”: 1.9k searches/month then → 6.6k now (+247%)
• “Dental SEO”: 700 searches/month then → 2.4k now (+243%)
• “Dental marketing agency”: 200 searches/month then → 590 now (+195%)

The knee-jerk reaction with unprecedented events is to pull back or go dark when it comes to advertising and marketing which is what most dental practices did.  Rory Halliday, the managing partner of Dental Marketing Australia. He said that most of his clients paused their online marketing campaigns when the pandemic hit, but those who didn’t are reaping the rewards now, as we move toward relative normalcy. “Although demand for elective dental procedures decreased, supply almost disappeared completely as most dentists closed their practices,” Halliday said. “Those who maintained and ramped up their online campaigns have now captured all of the traffic and new patients as a result.”

What’s Next: Telemedicine is another trend that is exploding. A new study has shown that virtual urgent care appointments have increased by more than 600% since the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Teledentistry and virtual dentist consultations are on the rise, too: 

There are opportunities for marketers to help dentists and other medical and healthcare practitioners navigate this new contact-averse world. Consider how you can help orthodontists, occupational therapists, chiropractors, biokinetics, plastic surgeons, physical therapists, and even homeopaths transition. Many of these medical professionals are similar to dentists in that they: 1) have relatively high patient lifetime values; and 2) are extremely proficient at their jobs, but are often less comfortable with the technical aspects of growing their practices (e.g., marketing strategies).

Many of these high-touch medical industries will adjust their business models to changing patient behavior in the long term, which creates plenty of opportunities for Marcom agencies to help practitioners to transition online. In fact, it may be prudent to research ways to capitalize on new HIPAA compliance requirements for telehealth practices.    

You could focus on a niche, like dentistry, or build a more generalized service offering for healthcare practitioners. PatientPop, for example, is a platform that provides SEO and marketing services to all medical practitioners, as well front-office automation, telehealth, and resource management tools to enable dentists to run their practices remotely.

The Opportunity: If you haven’t already thought about this exploding sub-category in health and wellness, it is certainly something to chew on and most likely, take a bite out of… (couldn’t help the puns!).  

Prospect smAARt, pitch with purpose, and most importantly, with passion.