What is a dentist’s personal brand ?

Medicine is an industry in which the human factor is very important. A doctor’s personal brand forms a business reputation and creates an image attractive to patients. Unlike the advertising of a clinic, a single specialist is promoted here. This is primarily necessary for the doctor himself, because he can change the clinic, but patients will continue to come to him personally. The office, in which a popular doctor works, will also attract a lot of new customers.

You can’t develop a personal brand without understanding your niche. “Just a dentist” is not interesting, but a specialist in implantation, periodontology, surgery, work with children’s teeth or VIP-clients, a master of placing fillings has every chance of success. The niche will be emphasized as much as possible during promotion.

The sooner you identify your “thing” and determine what you are better at than others, the more effective the promotion of your personal brand will be. This will be the main idea around which you can build your advertising strategy.

You cannot cater to everyone: if you target too broad an audience, you will only lose money and time. Analyze your current and past clients: who exactly treats you, what is their income and social status, what do they have in common? What kind of people will definitely not come to you for an appointment? Identifying the target audience is very important, because the content will be oriented exactly to their interests, pains and needs.

Suppose you are getting expensive veneers for a perfect smile. The service is expensive, and it is especially in demand among affluent young people aged 25-35. So, you can emphasize aesthetics in your blog or social networks, show the results of your work, allay fears about the procedure, and talk about its benefits.

The archetype should correspond to the target audience you are working with. For an esthetician working with veneers, it is important to build communication with young “advanced” people, while an orthopedist works more often with adult and elderly patients, where a different style of communication is needed.

Children’s doctor can also choose the role of a caring and understanding adult or a fun and reckless older friend. Here it should be taken into account that the promotion of personal brand on the Internet should be designed for parents, because it is they who decide on the choice of doctor. But at the reception, the doctor is in direct contact with the child, and the opinion of the baby is likely to be taken into account when planning the next visit. So it is necessary to focus on both the “customer of services” and the direct client.

No matter how cool you are, you can’t stop evolving. New technologies and methods of treatment, new terms appear in dentistry on a regular basis. Attend dental courses, conferences and seminars. By choosing a narrow area of expertise, you can easily bypass other doctors and even invent something new. Talk about your research, victories and achievements in your blog.

It is also important to create your own website or branding, which will be your doctor’s main business card and source of information about him or her.

Having identified the target audience, you need to determine from which sources people come most often. The main emphasis is placed on them. Options for promotion tools:

✓ social networks, messengers, YouTube;
✓ dental aggregator sites;
✓ blogs, media articles, book writing.

You should choose only those tools that you will be able to use. For example, there is no point in starting a video channel if you have no equipment or desire to make regular videos. Next, paid contextual and targeted advertising is connected to the selected channels. Profiles on aggregators should be filled out as informatively as possible.

It is also important to create your own website or branding, which will be your doctor’s main business card and source of information about him or her.

In addition to creating your core content, try to become as visible as possible by taking advantage of every opportunity to be recognized, seen and heard. Accept interviews, webinars and lectures, take photos with patients, attend professional events and make useful contacts. The more people talk about you, the better.

When forming a content plan, think about what will be of interest to your target audience. In dentistry, the best content is photo and video content, before-and-after comparisons, stories of dental restoration, description of treatment methods in simple language, alleviating fears before procedures, recommendations for maintaining dental health at home. Write in such a way that it is easy and interesting to read you: for this purpose, you can hire a specialist who will write according to your theses. Texts on third-party sites or social networks should contain a link to the main blog.

You should not skimp on visual content. One professional photo shoot will suffice for starters, then you can dilute the text with your own high-quality photos and examples of work. Photos are especially important if you emphasize promotion through Instagram.

You can remove a negative review in several cases:

✓ It is written by a competitor to undermine your reputation;
✓ It violates the rules of publishing reviews on a particular site;
✓ Does not contain specifics: in this case, they try to clarify the cause of dissatisfaction, if it fails – the review can be deleted;
✓The review is elaborated and its author has consented to its removal.

The complete absence of negative feedback also looks unnatural. It is important to look open to communication and friendly: engage in dialog with patients, respond to their complaints, resolving them in correspondence, in a phone call or at a meeting.

Look at who people from your target audience are subscribed to. Offer opinion leaders cooperation on favorable terms – paid advertising or barter.

Team up with doctors from other specialties. For example, a general practitioner, if necessary, refers patients to a certain surgeon, periodontist, and vice versa. In blogs you can link to each other, make mutual advertising.

Creating and developing a professional brand allows a dentist to become known among colleagues and patients, stand out in a narrow niche and earn much more. In addition, a personal brand works for the future: if in the future you decide to open your own clinic, you will already have a ready-made client base, and advertising will require less investment.