How Social Media & Email Marketing Can Get Holiday Specials Noticed
The holiday season is officially upon us. With traditions of festive food and family time comes the yearly increase in spending. As we work on our wish lists, many brands are ramping up their marketing efforts to advertise goods and services with one purpose: to get our attention. Just as department stores proliferate their limited-time specials online, so should your dental or medical practice!
Marketing to prospective patients during the holiday season tends to be an especially rewarding endeavor. Whether people are looking for gifts to give or receive, there’s no doubt they’re more willing to splurge on products or elective treatments during the holiday season that they may have hesitated to pursue in the past. For the best chance at reaching your target audience, there are two channels, in particular, where you should direct your practice’s focus: social media and email marketing.
Why Promote Specials via Social Media & Email?
Promoting your practice’s specials via sponsored social media posts and email blasts can motivate interested readers to learn more about what you have to offer. This is especially true nowadays, when the average person checks their email and social media accounts numerous times per day. If you strategically place information about your specials where people are already looking, it’s likely they’ll not only become familiar with the deals you’re promoting, but also click through to decide whether they want to make a purchase. Herein lies the importance of optimizing your social media and email marketing efforts.
Social and Email Marketing Offer Measurable Success
Your advertising is only as good as the number of people it reaches, and how relevant your special is to these individuals. For online marketing, the following factors will have a significant impact on your ROI:
Social Media Benefits to Holiday Marketing Plan
Social media offers (often free) tools to target the right demographics, create branded visual/written content that captures attention, establish a sufficient advertising budget for each platform, and run your campaigns at the most opportune time. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook allow doctors and dentists to hyper-focus on a specific type of user, advertising their holiday specials directly to a given audience with the goal of growing a subsection of one’s patient base. Not only does social media marketing offer tangible metrics to evaluate and improve upon, but social channels also:
- Give your holiday specials unlimited reach — In a 2023 study*, insights found that almost 70 percent of consumers follow brands online to stay attuned to new product/service offerings. The ability to share and proliferate content is one of the most essential benefits offered by social media. These platforms encourage practices to build relationships with a wider range of patients and customers by maximizing the visibility of treatments, products, and specials.
- Build brand loyalty — According to a study* exploring the relationship between social media and AI, 94 percent of business leaders agree that data and insights found on social media build brand reputation and loyalty.
- Allow practices to stay competitive — There’s compelling research to support the idea that a solid digital presence gives modern healthcare practices an opportunity to set themselves apart from local competition. Strong, strategic, and seasonal branding across all of your social channels can lend you more authority and credibility in your market, increasing the likelihood of patients choosing to entrust you with their goals.
Email Marketing Benefits to Holiday Marketing Strategy
The keys to successful email marketing include having a quality email list, enticing recipients to open and read your email, offering useful information for subscribers, and making it easy for users to access and/or pay for specials and gift cards online. Holiday email campaigns can be invaluable for a number of reasons:
- Driving engagement and conversions — Email marketing reaches specific consumers who have already expressed interest in your services. During the holiday season, the potential for conversions is often higher than it is at any other point in the year — Campaign Monitor estimates that email marketing makes up roughly 20 percent of online holiday sales.
- Ensures your brand is top-of-mind for consumers — Email marketing allows promotions and deals to land right in a potential patient’s inbox, allowing you to emphasize your treatment specials and keep your brand at the forefront of consumers’ minds.
- Creates room for personalization — Customizing your email marketing plan with content that relates to your audience’s needs can be highly effective in turning hesitant consumers into longtime patients. Your subscribers will be more likely to click-through to your services if they resonate with your brand and advertising materials.
People Are Already Scrolling for Savings
Ever wait until the very end of the year to schedule your annual dental and medical appointments? You’re not alone. As the last couple of months before the New Year, the holiday season is a very busy time for men and women scrambling to attend last-minute appointments and achieve end-of-year goals. This provides healthcare practices with ample opportunity to push deals, discounts, and treatment packages that will certainly pique the interests of consumers looking to save big—especially when these offerings are presented on the very platforms potential patients spend the most time on.
Part of the reason why email and social marketing are so effective has to do with the increasing mobilization of our world. According to a study conducted by Castor, purchases made on mobile devices have jumped significantly from 3.4% to a whopping 36.7% in the last several years. Since most social and email interfaces are specifically designed with a user-friendly mobile experience in mind, it makes perfect sense that these platforms can act as the perfect venue to take advantage of mobile-leaning trends in consumer spending.
Reach a Wider Audience
With social media ads and email marketing, not only can you reach your current patients, but the content can be easily shared, allowing patients to help you spread the word to the rest of your community. You might even want to consider adding a referral component to encourage them to share the post or email. For example, you could offer an additional benefit to your patients if they share the information and a friend or family member books an appointment. Furthermore, you could create a social media contest that encourages viewers to share the specials content and/or tag friends on the post in order to be entered to win a specific prize.
I’ve Optimized My Email and Social Marketing Campaigns. What Now?
In addition to these optimization basics, it can be extremely helpful to send your social media and email blast readers to a well-crafted landing page. Many practices choose to have a general “Specials” page on their website, which they frequently update with their latest deals. For campaigns you plan to put a larger emphasis on, you may want to consider a custom landing page dedicated to a specific special or theme of specials. For example, take a look at the “12 Days of Christmas” page below, designed to introduce readers to this dental practice’s holiday deals.
On this custom landing page, visitors were able to find specific deals they could redeem on various days throughout December. This is just one of the many possibilities that can take your holiday campaigns to the next level.
While it is critical to spend time crafting offers that are desirable to your patients and provide enticing value for their investment, in the end, successful holiday specials come down to how well they are promoted. With the right planning and execution, your social media and email marketing can be the tricks to getting your specials noticed!
Want help with promoting your campaigns this holiday season and into the new year?
Contact us to speak with a representative about how you can make the most of your advertising efforts.
References
Editor’s note: The original version of this post was published on November 30, 2017.