Marketing for dental practices has evolved at a rapid pace over the past few years. With social media platforms evolving and adding new features ever so often, it can become problematic for practice owners to keep up with the latest trends. Several platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat, are extensively used for dental marketing.
Of all these platforms, Instagram is one of the most popular globally and has higher engagement rates. Moreover, it is a marketing tool that functions well for businesses since consumers willingly follow them on the platform. For example, 90% of all Instagram users follow at least one brand that they like. It also offers valuable features in the “Instagram for Business” category for your dental practice to increase your outreach.
What Are Instagram Stories?
Instagram Stories are images and videos with texts, stickers, and filters that can be posted on the platform for a period of up to 24 hours. They have a portrait orientation for every screen size, and every story is of a maximum of 15 seconds in duration. Stories are displayed at the top of the user’s app screen and are just a tap away for viewing.
Stories also come with additional tools such as asking questions with anonymous answers, setting up polls for your patients to vote on decisions, and more. They can also be used to show some behind-the-scenes views of your practice or to post content that will let your patients find you more relatable.
Using Instagram Stories to Market Your Dental Clinic
The primary idea behind Instagram stories is to deliver short, slightly quirky, and unedited content for rapid consumption by your patients. Approximately 500 million Instagram users across the globe either produce or watch Instagram Stories every day. These numbers include Millennials and Gen Z and go a long way to show the feature’s potential for marketing your dental practice.
On average, brands post stories two or three times a day and use various stickers, fonts, music, and filters to keep things interesting for their viewers. You can also post about your events, offers, new services, and other updates to give your patients a reason to keep checking out your stories.
Factors to Keep in Mind
Whilst Instagram marketing does not come with a rule book, a few factors positively or negatively affect viewership and engagement. These factors are not only limited to Instagram Stories but apply to all your Instagram-based dental marketing.
Frequency
Posting on Instagram, in general, comes with a few unspoken rules about how often you should post. It is limited to one post a day for feed posts, and for stories, it can go up to three stories a day, but it’s best not to post them every day. If you exceed this limit, your followers are bound to get annoyed and unfollow you on the platform.
Process
The call-to-action process should include minimum steps for your patients to reach your website or call your practice for an appointment. This means that if you include text stating “Link in Bio” for every post and story, it will seem a lot more troublesome to viewers to access the link if they come across the post in their feed. Instead, using direct linking using stickers, tags, and URLs will make the process smoother and more accessible for your viewers.
Form and Function
People today expect a certain amount of effort from businesses in their Instagram posts, while not so much in their stories. When posting either, you should be mindful of this and ensure that each feed post has been crafted to perfection. However, you can still show your goofy side in stories and leverage it for long-term relationship building.
Strategies to Implement Instagram Stories for Your Dental Practice
Dental practice branding on Instagram Stories is about making a personal connection with your patients and bringing a sense of belonging to them. It is essential to give them information that outsiders won’t have, such as posting glimpses of your personal life and your staff on occasions. In addition, stories are used for captivating that human-to-human interaction emotion that’s been missing from most social media platforms. There are a few ways to implement them the right way:
Show Behind-the-Scenes Work
You can use Instagram Stories to tell the story of your practice and the everyday routine that you follow there. This will make your patients feel closer to your practice and like they are a part of something greater.
The best way to bond with your patients and make them regulars is by showing tutorials for everyday dental hygiene. You could also post tutorials for in-home whitening kits and recommend dental hygiene products if your practice offers them. This would let your patients know that you care for them and develop something more significant than a mere business relationship.
Post Patient Journeys for Social Proof
Social proof can develop trust in your services by asking your regular patients to join your stories and recommend you to other viewers. This will go beyond the usual comments on your website and Google business page since the story would include an actual human talking about you rather than a mere text.
Post Offers only for Your Followers
Since stories will show up only on your followers’ home page, you can leverage this to incentivise following your practice. In addition, including limited-time offers will help boost patients whenever you need them and make your followers want to check your stories more often, preventing them from missing any future promotions.
Improving the accuracy of your services will be accessible when you get access to more significant amounts of patient data. In addition, polls on your stories will make it easier to split test any new ideas while keeping things fun for your followers as well.
Gaining anonymous feedback is accessible by placing a question sticker on your story. This will let your patients give criticism or even ask you questions regarding your practice. You can even create polls for implementing changes suggested in the feedback to create a more incredible feeling of community.
Create Exceptional Instagram Stories for Your Practice
Creating exceptional Instagram Stories for your dental practice will go a long way toward developing brand loyalty among your patients and boost conversions.
If you need assistance in making the perfect Instagram Stories, perhaps a dental marketing expert can help you. Feel free to contact Head45 Dental for all your digital marketing needs as a dental practice owner. We specialise in providing SEO, advertising, and social media marketing services for dentists and orthodontists.