Digital marketing in the dental health industry

Background: A Changing Industry

On a global scale, affiliate websites such as booking.com, for the hotel industry, have started to take increasingly bigger market shares since they make use of the digitalization and the sluggishness of traditional companies. These sites have also begun to dominate in Sweden, but we’re still a few years behind. Interestingly, the business opportunities for ambitious dental care companies are substantial.

The above-mentioned should result in a future where we could observe two different ways for generating new customers:

1. Clinics and dentists becoming dependent on affiliate sites since they themselves don’t own the digital customer journey and customer generation process, as well as having generally weak brands. These players will always be on the back foot to those who are digitally agile and take actions, similar to the hotel industry and the dependency on e.g. Expedia or Hotels.com.
2. Clinics, dentists and groups who themselves realize that without a digital customer generation process, they will lose both market shares and profitability. Companies with great digital ambitions and sound marketing efforts will gain ground. These companies invest in a digital strategy to own their sales process and create a satisfactory customer experience which also helps them retain their existing customer base. All the while they build digital resources and gain digital shares.

Speculating about who’s coming out on top won’t be difficult. It’s the companies with the financial power who have the confidence to occupy space and invest, who will be the long-term winners together with the affiliate websites.

The Goal: New patients

When a new B2C company wants to win market shares and do business around existing needs, a huge opportunity arises to become a big part of the customer journey via websites and search engines as the primary channels. This on an even higher level when speaking about seldom bought wares/services that demand a quick conclusion.

GO MO has worked with dental clinics in Sweden, Denmark, and other European countries for over 3 years, in  situations where the marketing is managed centrally by the holding company. We’ve worked with individual customers who’ve invested over SEK 20 M/year through us and who’ve appeared on the other side as clear winners through efficiently reaching new and old patients.

Partnership-specific Objectives

1. Generate new customers online for approximately 30 clinics
2. Retain the existing customer base
3. Develop the customer experience online by working with the website’s structure and content

Adapting to the customer journey

Committing to leverage existing demand and making use of search engines have been the key – a combination of SEO and SEA. Digital marketing and sales has been the leading channel for customer generation, and it keeps on growing for every month that goes by.

The group has four different business areas, all of them with different customer needs and offers, and therefore different purchasing processes. This requires the overall strategy to have specially designed tactics for each area as the digital customer needs can vary considerably. This approach is generally considered positive as the customers’ information seeking (need) is specific rather than general (for example: the needs vary considerably between emergency dental care and routine dental visits).