Dental Implant Marketing: How to Attract More Implant Cases

Apr 2021
web chat for dentists delmain
Here’s a fact that always surprises us — according to the American College of Prosthodontists (ACP), roughly 178 million Americans are missing at least one tooth. And 40 million Americans are missing all of their teeth.

As a dentist, you probably aren’t blinking an eye at those numbers — you’ve heard them all before and it’s probably part of why you became a dentist.

But allow us to share our marketing hat for a minute and help you understand why exactly those numbers make us excited (yes, excited!).

One of the most common questions we hear from partners is, “how do I get more implant cases?” 

Those ACP stats make us excited because it tells us that there’s a massive market who would benefit from implants. These potential patients are just waiting for your practice to use the right implant marketing strategy to reel them in and point them toward a better future.

The key to an effective dental implant marketing strategy

There are two types of dental implant patients:

  1. Someone who has a real or perceived need for dental implants
  2. Someone who would benefit from implants but doesn’t know it yet

Your practice may prefer one of these patients over the other, but if you want to increase your number of dental implant cases, you need to adopt a strategy that’s reaching out to both.

Patient 1: Has a real or perceived need for dental implants

The key to an effective dental implant marketing strategy
This patient has either been diagnosed as needing dental implants by another dentist or has heard about dental implants and knows that it’s something they need.
 Here are some common scenarios with this patient: 

  • They may have been startled by the cost when diagnosed by their dentist and are price shopping.
  • They may have been told they would need implants in the future and are ready to take the plunge, but still need some hand-holding through the process.
  • They’ve been diagnosed and have spent many months researching. They’re very informed and have specific qualifiers in mind when searching for a dentist.
  • Has had an implant treatment in the past and needs another implant, or is dealing with a failing implant.
  • They may be the child or guardian of a senior. This person is looking for a dentist to help their loved one deal with a known issue and may or may not be funding the treatment.

With this patient, your marketing efforts will be very focused on your implant services themselves. You’ll be up against a lot of competition, so your efforts should explain how you’re the best person to meet their needs — whether through cost, outcome, experience, or all of the above.

Patient 2: Would benefit from implants but doesn’t know it yet

How to get more dental implant cases
This patient has not been diagnosed as needing implants, but has a known problem that you can solve through an implant. 
Some common scenarios with this patient include:

  • They are suffering from dental health issues like periodontal disease, advanced decay, or broken/cracked teeth. 
  • They are missing one or more teeth.
  • They wear dentures but are frustrated by their limitations (always slipping, uncomfortable, difficult to chew).
  • They’re a child or guardian of someone who has one of the issues above.

With this type of patient, your marketing efforts will be focused on these problems and what life could be like if they fix these problems. The goal is to get them through your door to a solution (which will end up being an implant).

How to get more dental implant cases

We’ve been helping dentists drive implant patients for over 10 years. How? By creating customized, effective digital marketing strategies aimed at both types of implant patients.

Most importantly, our approach adapts and evolves based on individual partner results. This is key! No matter what combination of tactics you deploy, your strategy must be based on results. If what you’re doing isn’t working, try something new.

1. Dial-in your website first

Your website is the rock that all your implant marketing efforts are built on. Everything from online ads and social media interactions to word-of-mouth referrals will all direct patients to your website.

Make sure your website is up for the job — it should be focused on user experience, conversions, and SEO. And if your site was designed more than 5 years ago, it needs a refresh! 

We’ve shared a lot on this topic already and even compiled a comprehensive list of the best dental websites of the year right here.

2. Feature implants prominently on your website

Create a page on your website about your dental implant services. Just like your website as a whole, this page should focus on user experience, conversions, and SEO. You can use this page as a landing page for your dental implant ads, but we also see results when used as a source for organic (non-paid) traffic.

We really like visuals, and here’s a great example:

Feature implants prominently on your website

Dr. Catt is a dentist in Medford, OR. We helped Dr. Catt create an implants page focused on answering patient questions, highlighting benefits, and building trust. Here’s why this page works:

  • Features patient testimonial videos
  • Highlights before and after photos
  • Offers a compelling call to action (free implant consultation)
  • Explains the value Dr. Catt offers — same-day treatments available, ASIRD certified
  • Outlines exactly what someone can expect
  • Reminds patients of the benefits of implant
  • Outlines payment information

As an example of what’s possible, in the last 30 days, this page organically delivered 2 new implant cases to Dr. Catt!

P.S. Did you catch a few additional implant marketing strategies we mentioned above? That’s right — video content, before and afters, patient testimonials… don’t sleep on these incredibly valuable assets that you can incorporate into various marketing and advertising efforts!

3. Create a conversion-optimized landing page

Investing in Google Ads is critical to an effective implant marketing campaign. But getting a potential patient to click on your ad is only half the work — make sure you’re sending them to a page that will help the patient cross the finish line and book an appointment.

The dental implant page on your website can be a great landing page. We use this tactic all the time for our partners with positive results. However, for those who want to push their implant marketing to the next level, we recommend creating a conversion-optimized landing page.

This type of landing page is hyper-focused on just one thing — getting a patient to book an appointment. Compared to the dental implants page on your website, this page is much shorter and to the point. The assumption is that someone who clicks on an ad already has the intent to book an appointment — this page should make it as easy to do this as possible.

Take a look at Dr. Catt’s implant landing page to compare the difference:

Create a conversion-optimized landing page

By the way, in the last 90 days, this landing page helped drive 50 paid conversions for Dr. Catt!

4. Focus on the problem before the solution

Remember how we talked about the 2 types of patients at the beginning of this article? 
Ads, service pages, and landing pages focused on implants hit that first patient — the one who knows they need implants. Make sure you also capture that second type of patient — the one who hasn’t been diagnosed yet. 
Here are some great strategies:

  • Create ad campaigns targeting searches around “problem” keywords
  • Speak to these problems throughout your website, including on your blog
  • Highlight the benefits of dental implants on your social media pages and website
  • Put time into guest blogging on the topic — you want to be the go-to expert in your community on the topic of implants and problems where implants are the solution

5. Offer a promotion

People love it when they think they’re getting a deal. Even if you don’t want to offer a discount or special on your implant services, don’t completely brush aside the idea of running a special offer. There are plenty of unique and effective implant promo ideas that might be a good fit for your practice:

  • Free implant consultation
  • Payment plans
  • 0% financing
  • Discount on 2 or more implants
  • 2 years of free dental cleanings for all implant patients
  • No insurance special
  • Advertise a starting price for your implants (example: implants for as low as $3,999!)
  • Advertise average savings that you offer (example: save 10-40% on implants!)

If you’re unsure about offering any sort of discount, test it out for a short period of time. This in and of itself is a great strategy! Remember — scarcity creates value. If someone thinks that time is running out to get a deal, they’ll be more likely to pounce.

A note on advertising the cost of implants

Our most recent research of thousands of Google Ads and dental websites shows that about 25% of dentists are showing pricing for services like implants. Because pricing and finances are major concerns patients have, being upfront about the investment will build trust. It also limits the number of consults you’ll do where the price will be the dealbreaker.

6. Create a Facebook ad funnel strategy

Create a Facebook ad funnel strategy for dental implants
We wrote an in-depth article about Facebook advertising and highly recommend checking it out for a deeper dive on this topic. But we want to highlight one important strategy — creating an ad funnel.
This Facebook strategy carefully targets a sequence of ads to potential patients based on how ready they are to book an implant appointment with you. It involves sorting your audience into funnels and creating ads for each of those funnel stages: 

  • Awareness (top of funnel) — Turns strangers into prospects
  • Consideration (middle of funnel) — Turns prospects to leads
  • Decision (bottom of funnel) — Turns leads into patients

The reason this strategy is so effective is that most people won’t be ready to make a decision about implants after seeing just one ad. Instead, most conversions happen once a user interacts with your practice’s brand over multiple advertising touchpoints.
A Facebook ad funnel strategy does just that. 

Create your personalized dental implant marketing campaign

We’ve only touched the surface of each of these topics, and there’s a lot that goes into putting all these tactics together into an effective strategy that works for your practice.

If you need some support, lean on us. It’s our specialty. 

Reach out and let us know the challenges you’re facing when it comes to marketing your implant services. We’d love to set aside 30-minutes to chat with you.