A comparison of dental marketing and advertising from Dental Focus

When it comes to advertising your dental surgery, it can be hard to differentiate between the jargon that marketing and SEO teams are likely to use. We can guarantee that when you are looking to boost your patient list and seek out a marketing team, you will hear the words SEO, dental advertising and dental based marketing over and over again. SEO (or search engine optimization) is the process of making your website more visible to search bots, like the ones used on Google. But what is the difference between dental based marketing and dental advertising?

At Dental Focus, we pride ourselves on educating our clients about the process that we use and when it comes to dental marketing, we know a fair bit! With nearly 20 years of experience and over 1,000 dental websites under our belts, we know how to advertise and grow your dental surgery online while also ensuring your website is visible to those all-important search bots. Perfect!

But, back to the original question and the difference between marketing and advertising. Here, we compare both dental marketing and dental advertising, so you can decide what is best for your dental surgery. Enjoy!

Short-term effects

Advertising is straightforward; you put out a flyer on an advert online about your surgery, and you have an influx of patients, which gives a short-term boost to your surgery.

With dental marketing, the short term effects are minimal, as our team builds your website with original content and works on your branding.

Effort

Both marketing and advertising require a fair bit of effort from you and your team. We will need your help in relation to any marketing for your surgery, to help design your website, prioritise content, arrange photographs of your staff and work on keywords.

Aim and area

The aims of marketing and advertising are slightly different.

When you use typical advertising, the aim is to bolster the knowledge of your surgery to the surrounding community, resulting in a short-term increase in sales and consultations.

With marketing, it is more about turning those one-time patients that were attracted via advertising into long-term patients, which can take up to 3 months.

Cost

Now, onto the bit every potential client wants to know about; is there a cost difference between the 2?

And yes, there is. Advertising can be more pricey, depending on how many adverts you place, how often and the advertising team you use to create the advert. With marketing, there is an initial higher cost (depending on your needs and requirements) which will become a monthly cost.

For more information on our fees for marketing and SEO, contact our team!

Long-term effects

Advertising, in the long term, has to change and adapt to grab the attention of newer audiences.

Marketing does not, and is more about the long-term gains that your surgery can make. You will see your patient list grow, your website getting more hits, which equates to more work for you and your team.