Most people turn to dental websites or research information about dental practices only when they require treatment or are considering it. As a dental marketer, you should try to make information about dentistry available to the public using blogs, articles, brochures, e-books, guides, and white papers.
White papers aren’t popular communication tools, but they are a good option for a niche business like a dental practice. Held to academic standards, white papers outline a problem or a challenge and explicate a solution, giving their authors credibility and legitimacy.
Dentists can use white papers as marketing tools. Wherever possible, the paper should include comprehensive data relevant to the industry and to your patients as well. An executive summary that briefly outlines what the white paper consists of will give readers insight into what you are about to explain and why they should read it.
A white paper is an authoritative document supported by market research and by the opinions of experts in the field, giving it credibility and making it informative enough that readers receive all the information they require at one go. Depending on your topic and audience requirements, white papers can range from a single page to a dozen.
Most people believe that white papers are used as marketing tools with the sole purpose of generating leads. While that is one of their key benefits, there are many other advantages of including white papers in your marketing strategy.
Generating Leads
White papers have a much higher conversion rate than other communication tools. Their combination of verified information and persuasive writing make them a highly successful medium for marketing. The leads generated through white papers are usually very reliable because they provide people with concrete data and scholarly insights, making people trust them more readily.
An Incentive for Clients
Most websites, blogs, and social media pages ask visitors to sign up for newsletters or to otherwise provide their contact information. These requests often get ignored, so they don’t provide many of your visitors’ contact details. But if you provide a small incentive like access to a white paper to your visitors in return for adding their names to your client database, you might get better results.
When visitors have something for free to look forward to, they are more likely to give you their name and phone number or email address. But this will only happen if they show an interest in your white paper. For that, your white paper must have information relevant to your visitors’ interests.
Brand Image Builder
An academically sound document that catches the interest of your audience is a great image builder for your dental practice. You can include some information about your practice in your white paper so people know more about you as a brand. This will help your patients understand what services you offer and how they should go about contacting you for their dental requirements. Knowing your work and contact information makes people trust you more.
Higher Social Media Popularity
If you can come up with an attractive white paper that your audiences will absolutely want to read, you will have a great tool that can help increase the number of followers you have on social media. You can allow your audience to read your white paper on the condition that they “like” your practice’s Facebook page first, for instance, increasing its reach. And by including a subscribe option, you will grow your followers and get a readymade database of visitor contact information.
Content on Digital Platforms
Whether it’s articles, blogs, or white papers, content rules on all digital marketing platforms. Most businesses today invest in creating white papers along with webpage content and blogs to share extensive information about a particular subject with their audiences and to generate leads. Apart from this, white papers also provide detailed “problem and solution” sets that help people make wise choices.
How to Promote Your White Paper
Publishing a white paper requires time, research, and marketing ideas in place, almost like the detailed process of publishing a book. You need to put in a lot of market research to understand what your audience wants to read and then research relevant content. It is very important to create buzz for your publication so your audience is excited to read it.
First, create a well-designed landing page, which is what visitors will see when they click on your practice’s link in search engine results or on social media pages. It needs to encourage your visitors to leave their contact details, so it has to be persuasive. Also, add a strategically placed call to action (CTA) on your landing page and ask your visitors to provide their contact details so they can receive your white paper.
Next, publish guest posts and articles on websites other than your own to increase your reach and market your white paper better. But remember that the websites you submit your content to should be relevant to dental services. And again, add a CTA button along with the link to your white paper to ensure more traffic reaches your landing page and generate an increase in subscriptions.
Third, share reviews. Get industry experts, other dentists, and researchers to review your white paper and share their opinions on their own websites or blogs. Good reviews from doctors and academicians will increase your credibility and your audience reach. You can then publish their reviews on your website landing page too so your visitors can see how good your white paper is, motivating them to subscribe and read it for themselves.
Finally, email your subscribers. If you’ve succeeded in creating a lot of buzz for your white paper before it is published, email all your subscribers once you do publish it, informing them where it is available and how they can download it.
You can also send PDFs to your patients and other visitors in your audience directly if you already have their contact information. If you have a regular newsletter, make sure you use it to create hype about your white paper and let people know when it is going to be published, what it is about, why they must read it, and what they must do to download it.
All these strategies will provide you with an extensive database of your site or blog visitors, ensure more traffic to your website, and increase downloads of your white paper.
Mr. Arulrajah is president and CEO of Ekwa Marketing, a complete Internet marketing company that focuses on SEO, social media, marketing education, and the online reputations of dentists. With a team of more than 180 full-time marketers, ekwa.com helps dentists who know where they want to go get there by dominating their market and growing their business significantly year after year. If you have questions about marketing your practice online, call (855) 598-3320 or email naren@ekwa.com.
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