More than being found online, your dental clinic should also be locatable offline. In fact, the latter is much more important since we’re talking about a service-type business. You can’t just do dental fillings or tooth extractions over the net now, can you? If you want to get any service done, you need to get patients to come to your place of business. Otherwise, all your marketing efforts online will be for naught. Your company can be ranked number one in social media, search engines, and review websites but if you fail at pointing people to the right direction, all those successes will become futile achievements. Popularity is one thing and earning your keep is another. And needless to say, it’s pretty obvious that you should be prioritizing the latter.
If you want to make patients come, you’ve got to be creative with how you tell them about your location. You see, for a dental clinic to receive more visits, you need to consider three things: proximity, convenience, and clarity of directions.
First is proximity. Your clinic being near landmarks or market areas is a big plus for your business. This means that people can find your office easier. Setting up a dental facility inside a mall, for example, allows people to find you easily. All they have to do is to talk to a receptionist and they’d come running for their dental appointment right away! Places near downtown areas are also good as most people will have some sort of business here. This makes it easier for your clinic to make an impression among onlookers passing by.
Second is convenience. If you want to be an easy hit among dental patients, making your clinic accessible and convenient is a surefire way to keep them coming. You need to consider how your patients are going to get to you when deciding where to set up a dental facility. Can patients walk there from downtown areas? Is the road convenient for both small and big cars? Does public transportation (e.g. taxis, buses) pass by the area? When deciding where to put up a clinic, your patients’ needs come first – capeesh?
Lastly, we have clarity of directions. Let’s suppose that you’re a small clinic just trying to make a clean start. You can’t afford an office near the market yet – let alone office spaces inside malls. You plan to set up a clinic at home or in less populated areas. Well, that too is possible. In fact, there will be patients who prefer clinics in quieter areas. However, the only challenge you will be facing is how you can give patients clear directions. Trust me, when patients try to find your clinic on their own and they end up in a completely unknown place, the backfire can be pretty unpleasant. You need to make sure that you provide very clear directions.
This is where Google Maps comes into play. More than mentioning your clinic address on your website, it would be wise to get your clinic correctly placed in the Google Maps registry. People rely on their phones nowadays – like a whole lot. Whenever they come across an issue or a problem, they instantly turn to their phones for help. The same thing happens when they happen to be in need of directions. Since Google released a pretty nifty tool (the Maps) for people who seem to get lost all the time, many users have come to rely on the program ever since.
And why wouldn’t they?
Google Maps is very easy to use. With a simple query, you can get detailed directions as well as tips on how you can get to your destination faster. You can even see what the place looks like and a 360 degree view of everything else around it. It would be no exaggeration to say that Google Maps is one of the best programs has released in recent years.
To place and rank in The Map however, certain measures must be put into place. It’s a rather tedious process that will involve a lot of cross-referencing with other websites as well as inputting new NAP information across other reputable sources. Luckily, however, it is a task we are all too familiar with.
If you want your dental clinic to be a part of the world’s largest map, feel free to give us a call to discuss our Google Map Placement service today!