Facts Dentists need to know about the web?

In 1997, 22% of all small businesses in the U.S. had web sites. In 1999, the number jumped to 42%.

What does this mean to the average dentist? Nothing. The average dentist barely has enough time in his or her day to take care of their patients, let alone design, write, edit and, most important, maintain an internet web site.

Here is how you can make use of this for your practice:

1. As of February 1999, 65% of all families earning in excess of $50,000 annually in urban and suburban markets are linked to the Internet and actively use e-mail.
2. People looking for a specialist or a specific expertise, e.g., cosmetic, implant, sedation, etc., are increasingly using the Internet. They are looking to the World Wide Web to go beyond the static one-dimensional level of information offered by yellow-page ads, office brochures and signage.
3. Affluent rural families are using the Internet as their informational, educational and business link to the outside world.
If this sounds like your market, it's time to position your practice to ride the major marketing wave of the information age.

Only 3 things count in a Dental Web Site success

1. Does it generate more new patients (and increased income) than it costs to design and maintain?
2. Does it help to maintain your current patient base's loyalty to your practice through increased patient retention and improve your practice's recare compliance?
3. Does your site help you promote alternative treatment options (cosmetics, implants, sedation, etc.) to your patients in a cost-effective manner?

A successful web site marketing strategy is defined as one that generates more net income from your web site than it costs to place and maintain the web site. Remember to keep asking yourself, if every time you hand someone $2 and they give you back $3 - how long do you want to keep playing the game?

Why 95% of all dental websites fail?

The average web site designer, while usually a great graphic artist, doesn't have a clue about how to promote, and continually re-promote, a dental web site. Before Ashtel Studios posted its first web site, it spent six months researching and mastering the art of dental web site promotion.

Research shows that less than 27% of all Internet web pages use Meta Tags to help the search engines understand and direct people to their site. The reason so few designers' use Meta Tags is because they're really tough to figure out. The person writing the "sign posts" has to understand the intricacies of the client's business.

And that, in a nutshell, is why 95% of all dental sites rarely get any visitors. The typical web site designer is a fantastic graphic artist, but doesn't know a veneer from a perio probe.

We will customize each of your primary web site pages with over ten (10) key Meta Tags that will meet the search engines' requirements and get you the highest possible response ratings. On top of that, our advanced marketing option continually refines, updates and reposts your meta tags as the search engines change their indexing strategies.

The "Magic" word to capture new dental patients

Getting people to your site is just the beginning. Getting them actively involved in your site is key to capturing them as new patients. While site design is critical, and we will talk about that extensively later, immediate involvement is mandatory.

To do that, we use a time-tested marketing tool that for hundreds of years has never failed. No, not sex. We use the magic word - "Free!" Everyone wants something for nothing. So we at IDA have developed a series of dental Internet "Freebies".

One of my favorites is a "Free Cosmetic Exam". People that sign up for this freebie are scheduling an appointment for you to sell them cosmetic dentistry.

These Internet surfers are raising their hands and saying, "Please let me come down to your office, sit in your dental chair, and have you explain to me how you can give me a younger, more beautiful smile."
This free or reduced-cost strategy for a "Special Exam" can be adapted to almost any area of dental treatment.

Dental E-Mail newsletters - the ultimate Internet marketing too!

How would you like to touch each one of your patient families with your own customized e-mail newsletter? We all know that regular newsletters are time-consuming to put together and cost upwards of $.50 to $1.00 to produce and mail. If you have 500 families in your practice, that's $500 a month to send a newsletter. That's $6,000 a year! No way! We do it for next to nothing!

Once you customize your Newsletter we will send it too every single patient in your database for a very small fee that is no where close to $500/month. If you are a new practice and are looking to get a larger exposure around your area, you can purchase emailing address for your particular area and we can send out a newsletter to all the residents in the local area for you.

How to stay at the top of the search engine charts

The final part of any good web site support program is regularly updating the site with new and exciting content. Search engine software robots come back to your site every sixty to ninety days in order to index new content. If they don't find any new content, they stop coming back and your site drops in response ratings.

You can purchase are support package, which will include monthly updates to your website. You will want to update your site with new patient education materials, articles and newsletters.

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