The holiday season is the perfect time for dental practices to have fun with their marketing and attract patients who want to use their insurance before the year ends. Many dental practices may think the holiday season isn’t ideal for marketing because patients are distracted by the festivities. Still, there’s more to it than that. If you are a dental practice looking to market during the holiday season, we’ll share tips on how to prepare and get the most out of holiday marketing.
Why Holiday Season Is a Marketing Opportunity For Dentists
The holiday season is a time when some businesses slow down operations, while others prepare for an influx of traffic. For the dental industry, this actually can depend on your marketing strategy, and the difference can be drastic. December and January, in particular, are the busiest months for big-ticket dental treatments like crowns, bridges, and even veneers. This is because insurance typically resets during these months, and many people want to use up the last of that year’s benefits. That said, you can expect more repeat patients during this time, not necessarily new patients, so focus your marketing on targeting or upselling current patients.
Your Biggest Target: Benefits Reminders For Current Patients
Your biggest target market for holiday marketing is your current patients. As mentioned, your current patients are the ones who trust you enough to choose a larger service like veneers, crowns, or bridges during this time. Patients often sit on insurance dollars if they don’t use them before the year ends, which prompts many to start looking at additional services around the holiday season. Typically, this influx can begin around Q3 or Q4, but the holiday season is the peak for patients getting in those last-minute appointments. Your marketing during this time should bring in current patients and push them to make an appointment, get the service, and use their benefits before the end of the year. Offers like “holiday teeth whitening” or “end of year cosmetic deals” can get the point across without sounding too salesy.
Holiday Campaign Ideas You Can Implement This Year
Understanding why you should still invest in marketing during the holiday season as a dental practice is the first step, but now let’s put this idea into practice. As a dental practice, coming up with campaign ideas might not be high up on your priority list, but here are a few easy-to-implement ideas that you can use this coming holiday season.
New Year’s Resolution Campaign
With the new year, many people are looking to achieve their New Year’s resolutions, and dental work can be a common one. This is when you can implement things like “New Year, New Smile” campaigns on social media and push the idea of meeting New Year’s resolution goals with a new smile. These campaigns should roll out throughout December and into January to keep it top of mind.
Gift Certificates
Dental care is giftable, especially for whitening, cosmetic touch-ups, and other services. Remind people that dental work can be giftable and encourage gift certificate purchases if you have them available.
Holiday Schedule Reminders
As part of your marketing strategy, keep your patients informed, especially about changing office hours. Keep a pinned post or frequent reminders on your social media so patients understand your office hours and can plan appointments accordingly.
Festive Content
The holiday season is a great time to get creative and lean into the festivities. Festive content, staff holiday spotlights, or community event posts can all be incorporated in the holiday season. Use this time to connect with your audience and bring holiday cheer to your community.
Operational Prep You Should Consider
Marketing during the holiday season aims to bring in more patients and fill seats, but you should recognize the challenges beforehand. For example, filling seats is the goal, but it can only be beneficial if the dental practice has the capacity to seat the patients. It’s also important to consider the no-show risk, which increases during the holiday season, so preparing for it can help. Automated appointment reminders and confirmation messages can help cut those rates.
Your Ideal Holiday Dental Marketing Campaign Timeline
Now that we’ve gone over the ins and outs of how you can prepare your marketing for the holiday season and why you should still be marketing during that time, let’s put it into practice. A strict timeline can help you achieve your goals, stay on track, and make real progress with your marketing throughout this year’s holiday season.
Late Q3-Q4: Start utilizing expiring-benefits messaging to remind patients about their insurance benefit renewal in the new year. You should also look into your scheduling and reminder systems to ensure they are set up properly and ready to go.
November: This is when you’ll start to ramp up on the benefits and gifting angle with full force, as this is typically when people pay more attention. Begin your holiday hours announcements during this month as well.
December: This is the peak for publishing our content directed at expiring benefits and gift certificates if available. Additionally, this is your time to get creative with festive, holiday content that connects with your community and patients.
January: Shift all messaging to new year resolution content angling toward the new year, new smile idea. Additionally, with a new year comes a reset on benefits, so targeting that angle can be beneficial for pulling in new patients.
Building Out Your Holiday Dental Campaigns
Planning for your holiday dental campaigns now can help with a seamless process later on when it comes to implementing them. Coming up with a plan, process, and how it’ll be executed leaves no room for procrastination when you get to the end of quarter 3. The most important thing to remember is not to slow down on marketing during this season, but to change the target angle. If you have questions about your strategy, reach out to our team!