When you became an orthodontist, you probably had no plans to write the next great American novel.

Yet, while you were working hard to learn your trade and launch your practice, the nature of marketing changed. These days, the most successful companies are those that embrace the life of an online publisher.

That’s especially true of service-based businesses like orthodontists – an industry where you have plenty of competition, but customers don’t always know how to tell one brand from another.

When customers aren’t very informed, they tend to make their decisions on price. That locks you and your competitors into a race to the bottom that’s good for no one. When your business is about value, you need to communicate what makes it (and you) unique from the beginning.

Helpful, informative orthodontist marketing enables you to do it.

And the most important online content you produce is your blog.

Blogs Bring the Right People to Your Website and to Your Practice

When someone needs an orthodontist or nearly any other kind of expert, they go online.

From now until the day you retire, most of your customers will see your name for the first time online. Your website is your “digital first impression,” and your blog is how you add value to the lives of those who haven’t even reached out to you yet.

When they first think about getting orthodontic care, a prospective customer might wait for weeks or months before they speak to an orthodontist. Odds are good most of them fall into one of two camps:

• They’ve had untreated orthodontic issues for years and aren’t sure about taking action
• They suspect their child may have an orthodontic problem, but don’t know if it is urgent

In both these situations, they don’t know what they don’t know. When they punch in their first search, they aren’t really looking for “an orthodontist”: just an answer to their immediate problem or question.

They might phrase it in all kinds of different ways, but their worry basically boils down to this:

“Should I take this seriously, or what?”

By the time would-be customers start looking for information, only three things can happen:

1. They Get Reassured (or Misled)

The worst situation for everyone is when someone ends up reading a response on Quora or an article on Medium that tells them orthodontic care is “no big deal.” If they’re persuaded, they might forget about the topic of orthodontic treatment. There’s no telling when it’ll ever come up again, and it’s very hard to reach someone who’s gone into “suspended animation.”

2. They Meet a Competitor

Not quite as dire is when a search leads someone to a local competitor. Sure, this isn’t ideal. But there’s still a long journey between looking at a single local orthodontist and choosing one for your family. With some luck, your reader might continue researching their issue and eventually end up on your website. If they aren’t overly impressed by your rival, you still have a chance.

3. They Come to You

The best scenario is when a prospect’s research leads them directly to your website. Get an early start on blog writing and you’ll have informative content ready for them to browse. If your content answers their questions and solves their problems, they’re much more likely to choose you in the long run. Add email marketing and you can build the relationship over the weeks until the final decision is made.

The goal of any blog is to motivate the reader to take the next step. The most important one is to reach out and schedule a consultation. But even when this isn’t in the cards, your blogs can inspire readers to follow you on social media or join your email subscriber list so you can contact them regularly.

While video storytelling is helpful for orthodontists, blogs form the backbone of your digital marketing strategy. Not only do they pave the way for deeper relationships with prospects and leads, but they do more than any other form of content to get you to the first page of Google.

Your Blog Is Your Most Valuable Asset for Raising Search Rank

If blogs were nothing more than written content with the goal of persuading your readers, they’d still leave you with a serious problem: How to attract visitors to your website in the first place. But thanks to the way Google organizes and ranks websites like yours, blogs are the answer to this challenge.

Every time you write a blog on a topic related to orthodontics, you have an opportunity to rise in the search engine ranks for future searches on that topic. Specifically, you have a chance to show up for local searches within about 30 miles of your office location.

The more frequently you publish content, the more you signal Google that your website is an active and authoritative resource in your space. When users view your website and spend time reading content, it reinforces that message, giving you a leg up on other local orthodontists.

Just by committing to blog regularly, you have the opportunity to pull out ahead of any local orthodontic practice that isn’t publishing online – and that’s the majority of your competitors. Even the ones that do a few things right certainly aren’t doing everything right.

That’s where a marketing agency comes in.

A Marketing Agency Supercharges Your Blogging for Powerful Results

Thanks to the way Google’s local search works, your blogs never need to go head-to-head with the most popular resources from hospitals, professional associations, and medical publications that get millions of hits every year. Instead, you’re always speaking directly to your potential customers.

That gives you a tremendous amount of influence over the future of your business.

But you don’t have to do it all alone. A marketing agency lays the groundwork to publish the best blogs around, showcasing your expertise. That includes three vital elements that make good blogs successful:

1. Keywords

Keywords are the exact words and phrases users type in when they search on orthodontic topics. The content you publish needs to reflect these keywords and weave them into helpful, informative articles.

2. Consistency

It’s true across all industries: The more you publish, the better your results. With hundreds of successes behind us, New York Ave develops a sustainable publishing schedule that gives every blog a bigger impact.

3. Value

To connect with people, every blog must deliver something useful: Information that answers a question solves a problem, or changes their approach to oral health. We work with you to ensure your blogs are aligned with the core promise of your brand.

At New York Ave, we write blogs that pull more of your ideal customers to your website and motivate them to get in touch. Over time, blogs lead to superior search engine positioning, a better-known brand, and a fuller schedule. It’s orthodontist marketing on a whole new level.

Contact us today to learn more or get started.