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Should I Open a Private Dental Clinic?

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |dental clinic |Should I Open a Private Dental Clinic?New and experienced dentists often wonder if they should open a private dental clinic. It’s a question without a clear answer but with the right facts in hand, you can arrive at an educated decision that’s right for you.

It’s true that opening your own dental clinic offers unique advantages not found anywhere else. On the flip side, there’s the aspect of risk and stress that comes with getting a new business off the ground. Is joining an existing dental practice really that bad?

Let’s make sense of these complicated considerations. If you’re thinking about opening a dental practice or still weighing your options, read this guide to work through the decision-making process.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Opening a Dental Clinic

Most people can agree: They’d rather be their own boss. It’s hard to put a price tag on autonomy, but if you often disagree with the practices of other dentists, why work for them? Opening your own dental clinic is an opportunity to build and run a business however you see fit.

It’s also no secret that joining an existing practice comes with inferior income packages. It’s not to say that dental employees receive inadequate pay, but it pales in comparison to the owner’s income potential. If you’re trying to earn a small fortune, it may be worth the risk to create your own dental clinic.

But income and autonomy aside, not everything is rosy. If success was guaranteed, everyone would create their own dental clinics. Buying and renovating a property can already cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Not to mention, you’ll have to worry about paying employees and creating a profitable client base. The income potential is there, but the first few years will no doubt be a stressful, uphill battle. In the worst scenario, you could lose everything you invest in the company.

Unless you already have business experience, your dental expertise does not lend itself to business management. To truly find success, you’ll have to further your education to get a grip on the ins-and-outs of running your own business.

Opening a dental clinic is a risk. If executed well, you’ll likely enjoy significantly better pay, prestige, and self-worth.

Creating Your Own Dental Clinic

Still unsure? That’s the nature of risk-taking. But according to the statistics, only about 2% of dental clinics fail within five years.

Still, you could be that 2%. Understanding everything that goes into creating your own dental clinic can help you determine if it’s the right call. Let’s take a short look at the startup basics.

1. Discover Financing

You don’t have to be rich to open up your own dental clinic. Lenders everywhere are happy to finance dental practices, especially since they are likely to find success. However, your personal credit score could impact your ability to find adequate financing options.

Always keep the interest rate and loan term in mind while shopping for dental financing. Fixed rates are usually a better option whenever available. Unless you are sitting on a small fortune, it’s best to take the longest loan term possible, giving you more time to make your clinic profitable.

2. Connect With Advisors

It’s true that you’ll eventually have to hire employees. First, you’ll be working with specialized contractors and certified public accountants. To keep everything up to code, you’ll be paying a premium on contractors with dental renovation and equipment experience.

Why does this matter? Because you should know the upfront cost before seeking out a lender. Building a dental clinic is more than purchasing the space.

3. Get Licensed

As you know, the dental industry is highly regulated. Your dental license won’t be enough to get started. For example, you’ll have to endure the lengthy process of earning credentials and getting approval for a variety of different insurance agencies.

This is to say that it could take you much longer than expected to open up your dental clinic. For this reason, it’s best to secure additional financing for any hiccups along the way.

4. Build Clientele

While it may seem overwhelming, most dental practices are able to get up and running with only a few hitches. The most important factor in the success of your new dental clinic is attracting patients. After all, you can’t build a steady stream of income if nobody makes use of your services.

Opening a dental clinic in underserved areas is a pivotal way to start off on the right foot. In urban areas, you may notice dental clinics just down the street from one another. Although there is more competition, it’s still possible to find success.

What’s the secret? A thorough marketing plan. From magazines to television, consider getting the word out as your opening day approaches.

Whether or not money is an issue, search engine optimization is a must. Create a website for your practice, claim your dental clinic on Google my business, and hire a talented SEO expert like Webileo. Soon enough, your new dental clinic will appear in suggested searches for customers in your area.

Ready to Open a Private Dental Clinic?

Hopefully, this quick guide has given you better insight into what it takes to open a private dental clinic. Most dentists will work at an existing clinic for several years before making the jump. Others are happy to work as employees all their lives, avoiding the stress and uncertainty that comes with running their own business.
Still not sure? Give it some time. You’ll know when you’re ready.

Looking for the latest business strategies and insight? Search our site for more.

Why SEO Is The Driving Force For Your Business

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |SEO|Why SEO Is The Driving Force For Your BusinessIf you have to ask if your business should be investing in SEO, then you haven’t been paying attention. SEO is just one of many digital marketing strategies that you should have implemented into everything you do. Not every company will have the know-how or the time to fully integrate an SEO strategy, which is why working with an SEO agency is one of the most important things you can do for your business.

Ideally, you should choose a marketing agency that is well versed in your sector. Like digital marketing only for dental offices or an agency that specializes in the beauty industry. Their insight is unparalleled.
So if you are looking to increase your conversions, reach more customers, and boost your brand awareness, then SEO is the way to go. And, here are just a few reasons why.

Driving Traffic

Good SEO will help you gain high-quality traffic to your website. While traditional marketing can be fairly slow, digital marketing is lightning fast with incredible targeting tools. You can, of course, use things like billboards and newspaper articles to gain attention SEO delivers the content to them in the form of search results.

When people search online, they are looking for something specific already, which means your website is shown to people who already need your services or are ready to buy your product. People are looking for you and what you do. And, as they are already interested, they are more likely to click your call-to-action.

Non-Stop

You work hard, but your SEO works harder. There is no off button, it doesn’t take breaks, SEO will be your 24/7 golden ticket. 60,000+ searches a second is what Google alone processes. The right SEO agency will help you capitalize on your slice of the search traffic pie.

You can reach commuters who are using their mobile, or CEO’s who are kicking back after work – your information is delivered to their device no matter the time.

Lead Gen

A huge benefit of having the right SEO strategy will be having continuous lead generation and increased sales. You’ll notice this improvement in your day-to-day running of the business.

This increase happens due to the strategy implemented by your SEO services provider, they will improve your search ranking, and put you in competition with market leaders. Once you are appearing on the front page of searches, due to the use of high-ticket keywords, you’ll see a higher amount of clicks and visits from the people who want your services or goods.

If you are someone who still underestimates the value of ranking on the first pages, then you might like to know that according to it has been reported that the first position search appearance receives 31% of the search traffic (taking only organic search into the equation).

Local Marketing

According to HubSpot, 34% of ‘near me’ searches will result in in-store visits. Which means that SEO isn’t just about your global reach. It can be incredibly powerful when it comes to your local area. So if you have a brick and mortar store, you can still see a marked increase in both sales and brand awareness by doubling down on your local SEO efforts.

Put plainly, if you leave local SEO out of your strategy, you are taking yourself out of the running for keen shoppers who are ready to buy.

Digital Marketing Strategy Strength

SEO will strengthen your overall digital marketing strategy, which should already include content marketing, social media marketing, and video marketing. All of these components will give you a bigger online presence, which will increase your competitiveness in the online marketplace.

Always consider that a strong digital marketing strategy is the key to a bigger ROI.

And that bigger ROI can then be reinvested into your company, and drive you forward in other areas, or increase your SEO efforts.

Decreasing Costs

This one might seem like an impossible dream, but when you have an SEO expert on board, you are going to see a decreased spend on your advertising costs. Why? Well, because with a well thought out SEO strategy, you are going to be ranking higher for those high-value keywords.

This means you can take a portion of your advertising budget and reinvest it somewhere else. When you have an SEO expert, they will be able to trim the fat on what you are currently spending, and streamline your strategies so that you are ranking where it really matters.

Investing in SEO is more cost-effective than traditional advertising and marketing, so it is no wonder that businesses will (and should) reduce spending in those areas and invest more in the right SEO strategy.

Brand Awareness

Shoppers can’t be aware of what they aren’t seeing. So when looking at how you can increase your brand awareness, SEO makes the most sense. Consumers will move through a buying funnel when they are looking for a specific item. What you should be looking to do is appear in those searches repeatedly, and over time they will begin to recognize your brand. Once that recognition is in full effect, they will switch from random searches to direct – and when this happens, they are more likely to make a purchase.

PPC Boost

It is highly likely you are already investing in PCC, or have at least toyed with the idea of multiple times. SEO is the key to great PPC. PPC is, of course, a paid strategy, and SEO is non-paid (the cost will be in the company you hire to manage this for you), they work together incredibly.

Which both SEO and PPC, you are going to be reinforcing your search appearance, you will be showing up in both paid and organic searches. This provides more opportunities for consumers to visit your website. Again this helps with brand recognition.

And, we all know that data matters. You can apply your SEO data to the PPC campaigns that you are running. Say you have a web page that leads on conversions; when incorporated into your PPC campaign, it will likely rise in value.

The bottom line is that when you work with the right SEO consultant, you are going to see an increase in both traffic and conversions. And the speed in which online shopping and research grow years-on-years means you need a robust strategy in place to capitalize on the potential traffic.

Digital Marketing Tactics You Must Avoid

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Digital Marketing|Digital Marketing Tactics You Must AvoidWhen trying to get noticed online, it’s easy to resort to desperate measures. Here are just a few ‘desperate’ digital marketing tactics that could end up annoying consumers, as well as a few tips on what you should do instead.

Keyword stuffing

Keyword stuffing involves stuffing as many keywords into an online text as possible. The intended purpose of this is to boost one’s search engine rankings. However, keyword stuffing can often have the opposite effect – most algorithms will negatively rank your content if it comes across as too keyword-heavy. Excessive use of keywords also doesn’t look natural and could make text hard to read.

You’re much better off hiring an SEO expert and finding more subtle and natural ways to boost rankings. This could include off-page SEO and maybe even ways to improving your site’s speed.

Buying followers

Having business social media accounts with lots of followers can make your company look popular and successful. However, you need to be careful about how you acquire these followers. If you choose to buy followers, you’ll be deceiving people. Such followers are also likely to be inactive accounts, so may find that you’re not getting much interaction with your posts despite having so many followers.

There are many organic ways to build followers – such methods may be much slower and not always guaranteed, but it’s much more honest. Paid social media ads is just one example.

Faking reviews

Writing fake positive reviews of your company may seem like a way to quickly restore your reputation, but there are dangers to telling lies. If people find out that you’re lying, they’ll mistrust you even more deeply. You’re also lying to yourself by writing faking reviews of your company – and you’ll likely be left feeling guilty.

Rather than writing fake reviews, you should focus on encouraging happy customers to leave genuine positive reviews. There are lots of ways to encourage positive online reviews.

Pop-up ads

Pop-ups can be intrusive and irritating. This can be particularly the case with multiple pop-up ads. There are times when pop-ups can be used productively such as getting people to sign up to your mailing list or accept cookies. However, pop-ups of promotional deals and adverts can feel a lot like the virtual equivalent of hassling someone in a shop.

Try to use pop-ups sparingly and sensibly. A pop-up doesn’t have to take up the entire screen and you can trigger them to appear at different times.

Email spamming

Email marketing can be an effective way to convert customers. However, you should be careful of how many emails you’re sending per week. Several emails per day could be seen as excessive and you could find that you’re flooding their inbox. If they receive too many emails from you in too short a space of time, you could find that they unsubscribe.

As a small company, there may only be a need to send two emails per week. Focus on quality over qu

How to Kickstart Your SEO Strategy in Eight Easy Steps

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |SEO Strategy|How to Kickstart Your SEO Strategy in Five Easy StepsSearch Engine Optimization offers multiple benefits. The first is within the name – you want your website to appear at the top of certain search engine results. The added benefits, however, include a website that is cleaner, easier to use, and more enjoyable as a whole, as well as content that is more compelling and easy to read.

All of this and more can be enjoyed when you invest in a comprehensive SEO strategy because nowadays SEO is not just for search engine algorithms, it’s for people.

Though each SEO strategy will be unique to your company, it will go through several steps, and you can copy these for your own business and kickstart your strategy today:

Have Your Website Audited

Every website needs to be audited for performance on a regular basis. For high-performing websites, this should be done every three or so months. For others, bi-yearly or annually will do.

Improve the Technical SEO on Your Website

The audit will provide you a guide map on what you need to improve. Before you focus on the content, it is important to improve the technical elements. The site speed, security, page structure – all of these elements are essential to improve beforehand. Making these changes might change the page layout, which is why you will want to wait until after the technical improvements are made before updating the content.

Create Special Pages for Your Business

One of the content changes you will likely have to make (especially if this is your first time improving the SEO of your business) is to create specialized pages.

Location Pages

If your business has multiple locations, or if it serves multiple areas around your business’s location, you will want to create individual location pages. This is great for local SEO.

Service Pages

Alternatively, if you offer multiple services or even product types on your website for sale, then having individual pages with optimized, quality content is key.

FAQ

Voice search is becoming increasingly popular, and a great way to capitalize on voice search is to create an FAQ page in question and answer format.

Optimize your SEO for Local Search

Local SEO is very similar to standard SEO, and up until this point, you will have gone through the same steps as you would regardless of whether you are internet-based (and sell software, for example) or you are location-based.

If you are location-based as many small businesses are, it is now time to focus on local SEO. Have a local SEO agency near you set up your NAP (name, address, phone number) listings, create and optimize your Google My Business, and customize your link building efforts around local media. Local search is far more effective due to the reduction in competition, but you will need specialists to guide you through to success.

Build Your Backlink Profile

Your backlink profile can be built through multiple methods, but all methods must be done using white-hat tactics. Rely on your SEO agency to provide this service for you, and to create the optimized content that will feature your backlink. Doing this the right way will boost organic traffic and your search engine ranking.

What You Need to Know About SEO, SEM, and PPC

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |SEO |What You Need to Know About SEO, SEM, and PPCDid you know that a staggering three quarters of internet users don’t click past the first page of search results on Google? This is the reason why search engine optimization, or SEO, has been and still is a dominating force in the world of digital marketing. However, while SEO is arguably the most important factor to consider, it is not the only factor that is going to help you maximize your online sales. SEO can and should be combined with both SEM and PPC for optimal results.

Here is what you need to know about all three.

SEO

SEO refers to the practice of optimizing your company’s website for search engines. In other words, the ultimate goal of a good search engine optimization strategy is to rank higher in search results, something that MackMedia can help you to ascertain. SEO is comprised of both on-page and off-page factors. On page factors refer to those aspects of SEO that you can control on your own website, including metadata, user experience (UX), keywords, alt tags, and internal linking. Off-page SEO refers to the aspects of SEO that happen off of your website, but have a direct effect on your website’s rankings. Off page factors include backlinks, domain authority, and social promotion.

PPC

PPC refers to pay per click advertising via search engines. Essentially, you decide on a budget for your campaign and create ads that display on Google or on various social media platforms (most platforms have their own PPC tools and procedures). You only pay a specified amount if and when someone clicks on your ad. Generally, the ad directs the person to your website and drives a specific CTA, often resulting in a conversion or at least commencing/progressing the buyer’s journey. You have the power to set a specific budget per day and/or per month so that it is impossible to overspend.

Many business owners put more effort into PPC because it promises immediate results and automatically takes their ad to the top of the Google search results. Many also opt to make use of PPC because they believe that it positively affects their organic rankings. However, this is a myth. No matter how much you spend on PPC advertising, it will not alter your organic rankings in any way.

SEM

SEM is short for search engine marketing and it is very similar to PPC. Most experts will tell you that PPC is a large part of SEM, but that SEM extends further than just PPC itself. While PPC is generally more focused on paid advertising via search engines, SEM is focused on paid advertising across the digital board, including on third party websites like online directories, Amazon, and YouTube.

At the end of the day, a great digital marketing strategy will encompass SEO, SEM, and PPC in order to generate maximum results and maximum brand awareness. Not sure how to get started? It is always a good idea to consider hiring a professional digital marketing company for assistance if you do not feel secure enough in your own skills. That way, you can reap all of the rewards without having to put in the extra effort.