How to Build a Back to School Dental Marketing Campaign

As summer winds down, families are gearing up for the back-to-school rush. For some practices, this can be a slower season because your patients with families are focused on adjusting to a new school schedule, and a dentist appointment might not be top of mind. Despite that, it’s still a good time for you to reach out and remind families to schedule their dental check-ups so they aren’t delayed. A dental marketing campaign timed to match the back-to-school season can help keep your schedules full of both new and returning patients.

Here's how to build a successful back-to-school dental marketing campaign that drives bookings. Give it a try this school season and see how it does!  

Step 1: Define Your Campaign Goals.

Before launching your campaign, clearly outline what you want to achieve. Here are some ideas.  

• Keep a full schedule: Encourage families with kids to schedule routine cleanings, restorative treatments, and/or orthodontics. ‍
• Attract new patients: Reach out to families who haven’t booked appointments for their kids yet.  ‍
• Educate on preventive care: Help patients understand the importance of regular cleanings and checkups to protect their oral health in the long run and encourage them to make an appointment if they’re overdue for one.  

Tip: Use SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) to make sure they’re clear and attainable.

Step 2: Identify Your Patient Groups.

Before you begin crafting your campaign, get clear on who you're trying to reach. In a back-to-school dental marketing campaign, your audience will likely be:  

• Families with school-aged children who are due for their next routine cleaning or any upcoming treatment
• Parents or guardians of teenagers who may need a cleaning and/or orthodontic treatment
• College students who need a cleaning and/or restorative treatment

Tip: Use patient data from both your practice management software (PMS) and campaign filters in your patient engagement system to segment your audience. Some segmenting options include age group, zip code, insurance vs no insurance, when they last visited to send, proposed services, recall status: soon to be due, etc.  

Step 3: Craft a Compelling Message.

Your campaign’s message should resonate with your patients’ needs and motivations. Make the content easy to skim and direct so they know what to do next. Here are some themes and ideas to incorporate in your campaign. You don’t have to include all these ideas in one campaign or a single communication.  

• Themes: ‍
  • Health and wellness: Emphasize the connection between oral health and overall well-being. Avoid using scare tactics, and instead, keep it positive. Explain how good oral health plays a role in overall wellness. When you have a healthy mouth and teeth, your kids will be more focused and able to enjoy school and their afterschool activities.  ‍
  • Confidence: Highlight how a healthy smile can boost self-esteem, something to foster in all school-aged children, but you can emphasize this message to segmented groups like teens and/or college-age people.   ‍
  • Convenience: Offer flexible scheduling to accommodate busy back-to-school schedules. Kids will be busy with activities so try to offer different options for families, so they’re motivated to make and show up for the appointment. Do the same for college-aged people.  

• Content and design: ‍
  • Orthodontics: Promote back-to-school as an ideal time for braces or Invisalign® consultations. ‍
  • Visuals: Use bright, school-themed graphics and images of happy, healthy smiles. ‍
  • Educational information: Provide helpful tips on maintaining dental health during the school year. This can include tips on brushing, flossing, mouthguards, retainers, and braces hygiene, healthy snacks and drinks and what to avoid, etc.  ‍
  • Special offers: Offer discounts on cleanings, fluoride treatments, dental products, or orthodontic consultations specifically for the back-to-school season.
  • ‍Testimonials: Share success stories from satisfied patients to build trust and credibility. This can be a quote or a video testimonial. ‍

Tip: In your patient engagement system, you can take advantage of existing pre-built marketing templates so you’re not building them from scratch. Many patient engagement systems have templates for this type of campaign so you can edit the content to reflect your message and offering.

Step 4: Choose the Right Communication Channels.

Selecting the appropriate channels ensures your message reaches the right patients effectively. Take a multi-channel approach to increase exposure. Keep the marketing “rule of 7” concept in mind. It takes about 7 interactions with your practice before someone might act. This means you need to send multiple messages through different channels to drive bookings. Here are some channels you can use to promote your back-to-school dental marketing campaign.  

• Email: Send personalized emails with special offers and reminders. You can also include the promo in your newsletters if a large portion of your audience who receives a newsletter are families with kids.  ‍
• Text: 98% of texts are opened so texting is an effective way to promote your back-to-school campaign.   ‍
• Direct mail: Don’t overlook snail mail. It’s still a popular channel so you can reach patients with postcards or flyers highlighting your back-to-school specials.  ‍
• Website updates: Feature a dedicated section on your website with campaign details and easy booking options. Put it in a banner ad or pop-up on your homepage or specific high-traffic website pages.  ‍
• Social media: Utilize platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to share engaging content and promotions. You don’t have to post on every channel. Post on the ones where your patients are most active and likely to engage.  

Tip: Be sure your patients’ communication preferences are up to date in your patient engagement system and PMS so you’re sending campaigns through the channels they prefer. For example, if you don’t have a patients’ email on file, but they’ve indicated they like to be contacted by email, then you can send an email request campaign to collect their information, so you have it.  

5. Schedule and Automate Your Campaign.

Timing makes a difference in the impact of your back-to-school campaign, but this isn’t the only task on your plate. So, automation can help so it runs more smoothly, and you’re not responsible for sending out each communication manually. Use your patient engagement system to automate email and texts and schedule social media posts.

Here’s a campaign example you can use based on your team capacity and tools available to you.  

• Message No. 1 ‍
  • Medium: Email ‍
  • Content: Remind families of openings in your schedule for back-to-school visits and highlight any relevant special offers.  ‍
  • Timing: 6-8 weeks before the ideal appointment time ‍
• ‍Message No. 2 ‍
  • Medium: Mailed postcard ‍
  • Content: Include a photo of a young patient beaming with a new, fresh smile, copy, and a clear call-to-action (CTA), and a phone number and/or QR code for them to make an appointment. For example, it can be something like “Beat the summer rush. Schedule a back-to-school visit now.” The CTA can be “Book an appointment.”
  • ‍Timing: 6 weeks before the ideal appointment time ‍
• ‍Message No. 3 ‍
  • Medium: Newsletter ‍
  • Content: In your newsletter, you can include oral health tips to help kids back into the school-year routine. Emphasize the need for families to get their dental visits scheduled before school starts or in the early weeks of school before schedules get packed.  ‍
  • Timing: 5 weeks before the ideal appointment time ‍
• Message No. 4 ‍
  • Medium: Social media ‍
  • Content: Share eye-catching images of wide-smiled young patients in school and remind your followers of your openings for back-to-school visits. Highlight any special offers that are applicable to your back-to-school campaign. You can also do a post about oral health tips similar to the content you used in your newsletter. ‍
  • Timing: 4 weeks before the ideal appointment time ‍
• Message No. 5 ‍
  • Medium: Email ‍
  • Content: Remind families of openings in your schedule for back-to-school visits and highlight any special offers. ‍
  • Timing: 3 weeks before the ideal appointment time

• Message No. 6 ‍
  • Medium: Text ‍
  • Content: Message parents about current openings and drive urgency by encouraging them to take advantage of them before they’re filled.  ‍
  • Timing: 1 week before the ideal appointment time ‍
• Message No. 7 ‍
  • Medium: Email or text  ‍
  • Content: Send a follow up reminding patients about current openings and include a mention about the special offer expiring, if applicable.  ‍
  • Timing: 1 week before the ideal appointment time ‍

Tip: A back-to-school campaign may not be the only campaign you’re running so use a content campaign calendar to stay organized and ensure timely delivery of all materials. Your content campaign calendar can include things like themes, send dates, communication channels, what kind of communications, etc.    

Step 6: Monitor and Analyze Results.

Tracking your dental marketing campaign performance allows you to measure success and identify areas for improvement for future campaigns. Here are some ways to do that.  

• Key metrics: Monitor appointment bookings, website traffic, email open rates, and social media engagement. You can find some of these metrics in your campaign analytics tool, social media analytics, or a more advanced analytics tool that’s part of your patient engagement system.  ‍
• Patient feedback: Collect feedback through email campaign or text surveys and/or in-person to understand if this campaign was helpful.  

By measuring these metrics, you’ll gain useful insights into what worked and what didn’t so you can fine tune it.  

Tip: If this is your first time doing this type of campaign, use the campaign performance metrics as a baseline for your next back-to-school campaign. For example, if your practice was able to get 25 new bookings from this entire campaign, then you can aim to get 30 bookings from your next one. Set incremental, but realistic goals that set everyone up for success.  

Even though a back-to-school dental marketing campaign is seasonal, that doesn’t mean it has to end once Fall starts. You can continue to nurture your patient relationships by going the extra mile with thank you notes to new and/or returning patients who booked an appointment through a campaign, offer a discount on a future visit or product (if this is in your budget), and of course, maintain ongoing communication so they stay informed about upcoming promotions, new services, and oral health tips. Taking these steps helps to build loyalty and retention over time.  

Next recommended read: Elevate Your Marketing: Key Elements for Effective Email Campaigns