Artificial intelligence (AI) is not just a concept for big companies. In fact, small companies everywhere use AI to enhance their marketing efforts, including independent dental practices. Some of the marketing tools that today’s dental practices use regularly are based on AI. “AI” applies to any computer technology that employs algorithms to learn like humans do, i.e., make decisions based on data patterns. It sounds complicated, and, at its core, it is, but dentists today can easily take advantage of AI to enhance marketing efforts.

How Does AI Apply to Dental Marketing? 
If a practice uses any type of analytics program, such as Google Analytics, it is already using AI. Basically, analytics programs take data from all over the internet and use it to not only analyze past and present trends, but also to predict what will happen — this is called predictive analytics. This type of AI is highly useful when planning future marketing endeavors. It looks at the data for a particular dental practice and compares it to a much larger data set, taking into account internet traffic from a much broader market. Using an analytics program can help a dental practice more precisely target its marketing to attract the ideal potential patient. 

Predictive AI used in analytics software also helps dental practices take what they already know about their ideal patient and customize marketing campaigns that will resonate directly with that type of patient. In essence, AI uses existing data from the practice’s past marketing successes and compares it to information on the internet to predict what will have the greatest chance of increasing engagement with potential patients —not just any patient, but the exact type of patient the practice wants to attract. With the help of AI, marketing can be a precision tool, increasing the accuracy and speed of results because a computer learns and reacts much faster than any human. 

Another important AI application in dental marketing is chatbots. A chatbot is a computer program that simulates human conversation. When it comes to dental marketing, chatbots can be extremely useful because a dental practice has set hours and cannot respond to inquiries 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Even when the practice is open, the phone lines can get busy, and voicemail is not always the ideal way for a patient to communicate a specific need. Chatbots can fill in some of the gaps when staff members are not available to respond, especially when inquiries originate online. When a chatbot is paired with other customer management technology, it can seem like the practice is available when no one is physically in the office. In a world where 24-hour availability is increasingly the expectation among consumers, this perception can make a dental practice stand out among the competition. 

AI may seem like science fiction, but we’re all interacting with it in some form on a daily basis. It has become increasingly important in marketing in a very short time and will only become more prevalent as technology advances. This is good when it comes to marketing because it means that a dental practice that properly takes advantage of AI can more precisely focus its marketing efforts to ensure increasingly beneficial results. 

Jackie Ulasewich Cullen is co-founder of My Dental Agency, a marketing company specializing in dental practice. To comment on this article, email impact@agd.org.