I am thoroughly ashamed. I have struggled to resist seeking solace from psychological props like alcohol or drugs, for many years, but I’ve recently realised that I am, in fact…an addict! I’ve become totally addicted to dental groups on Facebook.
Online advertising campaigns can be adjusted with a few clicks or changes to a banner.
You have the flexibility to respond to incoming data and make changes instantly. Similarly, you always have the ability to pause a campaign or adjust your marketing plan within minutes. This flexibility allows you to stay in front of your customers– anticipate customer needs and adjust your ads before anyone even notices.
At GDPUK we offer extra flexibility because our software gives the customer a number of options when they book a space on our site. Via our DFP software, our customers can actually run more than one advert at once in a given month. This means one of our customers can actually advertise two things or more from the same booking. One of our clients is currently using this method to advertise a number of offers at once. Added value and flexibility from GDPUK!
Having the option to change or adapt a campaign as you go along is another advantage to online advertising. Once you send an ad to a magazine it can’t be changed but with advertising online you can always experiment and adapt as the campaign develops. Online advertising definitely provides flexibility.
Part 5. Brand Awareness can be read here.
A number of new features and opportunities on GDPUK in 2017. Get in touch if you have any questions. Contact details below.
We have had a number of satisfied advertisers recently, which pleases us immensely. Thanks to all our customers for their continued use of the site and all the new clients we have taken on recently. We wrote about an extremely satisfied client a few weeks ago, you can read it below, their offer was extremely well received and resulted in a number of sales, which is very pleasing to hear.
Blog on a satisfied GDPUK Client.
As you will have noted, our website is refreshed and less crowded which we believe makes it look clearer and hopefully easier to navigate. If you have any feedback or would like to provide feedback - please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
2017 marks the 20th anniversary of GDPUK, something we have mentioned a number of times and will keep mentioning! We are close to putting together plans for a 20th anniversary Party and Conference in November and it is something that we would like as many of our members to attend as possible. Would be fantastic to celebrate with as many people as possible.
Our leaderboard banner continues to be extremely popular with our advertisers. It is 728x90px and appears at the top of all our pages as you can see above. A recent option that we added to the site, is the super leaderboard which appears in the same space as the leaderboard but is super sized - 970x90, giving you even greater brand awareness and exposure on every page of GDPUK.
Via our DFP software, our customers can actually run more than one advert at once in a given month. This means one of our customers can actually advertise two things or more at once. One of our clients MC Dental / Repairs is currently doing using this method to advertise a number of offers at once. Added value from GDPUK!
We continue to publish daily news and blogs, that get read by thousands of healthcare professionals on a weekly basis. Via our daily emails, tweets and facebook posts, we help to educate and inform our readers with the latest dental news and opinion. Something we are very proud of.
Banners are now appearing on the right hand side of the news and blogs. Considering the articles attract plenty of readers on a daily basis, it provides even more exposure for your brand.
As you can see GDPUK continues to evolve and improve, even in its 20th year! Thanks for reading.
We recently received a call from a client, that ran an advertising campaign
last year on GDPUK. They were offering free trials of their new product for
members of our community to try in their practice and also to provide
constructive feedback on this particular product to the manufacturer.
Ten units were sent out by the manufacturer and each dental practice was given a
couple of month's trial to see how the product performed.
Rather impressively, 8 out of 10 of these trials turned into a purchase of the
product, which obviously shows the confidence the manufacturer had in giving the
dentists a trial and also that the dentist received impressive results when
using the equipment, that they knew the product would help improve patient care
and safety.
From our perspective, it shows that an attractive offer, catches the attention
of our 10,000 strong community and leads to sales for the manufacturer. The
advertiser found their target audience, produced a campaign that caught the
attention of our readers and turned it into sales.
Always great to receive positive feedback from our clients.
If you would like further information on how we can help you reach your target
audience, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.gdpuk.com/more/about
Ask us, How we can help you?
There has been a recurring theme this week (other than the US Presidential Election) and that is clients or prospects asking how we can help them in 2017?
We see GDPUK as an integral part of a dental companies opportunity to market themselves to dentists in the UK. We believe we have a large, active and engaged audience on the site, which we are very proud of. This is important because dental professionals in the UK are using social media more than ever and GDPUK is at the centre of that.
So we have put together a short list of the ways in which we can help our clients engage with potential customers.
Banner Ads - We offer a range of banner ads on the site and our daily digest emails. Further info can be found in our media pack and by getting in This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
12 month packages of advertising. We have a number of deals with clients that run for 12 months, which offer the client excellent exposure, good value and builds a great working relationship between GDPUK and the client.
Product / Service Launches - We can help launch a new product into the market, with blogs, news articles and banner ads.
Special Offers - Entice new or old customers with a special offer / or sample offer
Case Studies - We can publish case studies for you of products that are working for patients in dental practices. A case study can be a great way of demonstrating how your product works and how it will help the dentist improve his or her skills.
Forum Reviews / Tests - Put your product to the test, use members of the GDPUK forum to test your product and receive honest reviews that can be shared on the forum and published as a blog post.
Surveys - Run a survey, which can be hosted by our site or your site. Use it to do product research etc
Social Media Competitions - Combining promotion on GDPUK and other social media channels, we can run a competition that helps collect data and potential new users of your product.
Promotion of Courses / Events - There are a large number of events, meetings, courses that are scheduled in the UK dental calendar on an annual basis, we can help with promotion and even the sale of the tickets.
2017 Conference. Next year we are pleased to be hosting an event to celebrate our 20th year of a space for dentists in the UK to talk and share opinion. This milestone, will be marked with conference towards the end of next year. Exhibition and sponsorship opportunities will be available.
If you would like to try any other marketing ideas on our site, we are always interested in new methods and always looking to learn. Look forward to hearing from you soon, helping your business thrive in 2017.
Thanks for reading.
Social media is now part of all businesses marketing efforts but below you will find 4 reasons why using an online community as part of your marketing plan can also be extremely valuable.
Likes don’t automatically translate to more sales, so when using social media for your business you need to start measuring engagement - how often your audience is interacting with posted content and of course each other through your channel.
With Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin you are faced with a number of challenges, how do you get more visits to your page? Once they do visit, will users engage with a status update, or discuss content you have posted.
Online communities on the other hand, don't have an identity problem. Online communities are organised around clear defined goals and values. Imagine what an established online niche community offers to the business trying to reach a clearly defined audience. By engaging with a targeted community you are filtering out all the white noise and interacting directly.
So why can an online community be a valuable marketing tool for a business?
You are marketing your business to your actual target audience. Unlike social media, you know that the audience has interest in the content or message you are trying to get across.
When users use a community site, they are doing it for a particular reason, they are interested in the subject and want to learn or share information. There is no distraction of their favourite comedian or band also shouting for their attention. Reaching your audience in a targeted environment, means you can catch them when they are receptive to receiving your message.
Engaging on an online community can be risky but if you are seen to offer good service and advice, it will win you plenty of fans and impress the whole community. Communities dislike being sold to but they like being given good customer service and expertise.
Being seen to interact with a community that contains your potential customers is extremely important, online communities are a form of social media so marketing your business within a community needs to be a part of your marketing strategy. Anywhere your potential customers engage, has to be seen as a potential medium to increase sales.
Thanks for reading, please let me know your thoughts or get in touch to discuss things further.
Jonny Jacobs
Over the years, I have mentioned that online advertising has a number of advantages. You can read those articles here and here.
In 2016, we started using DFP, which is a Google programme that serves ads for our clients on to our main site.
One of the exciting features of this software is the ability to serve more than one ad at a time for our clients, to more than one URL. This is a great way of advertising a number of your services or products at once via one booking of a slot. It also has the added advantage of keeping the ads fresh and distinctive for the audience, who may not have interest in one product but an advert for something else from the same company may catch the eye. So a win/win for both the advertiser and the audience.
Yes it can mean more banner designs are needed but the advantages far outweigh this extra work for your design team.
So as you can see this is an amazing advantage compared to traditional advertising, not only is your advert seen thousands of times a month but when compared to print, you can display more than one advert in one position. Another example of modern technology improving the experience for all.
For further information about working with GDPUK and how we can help you reach thousands of dentists, please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We will be glad to help.
GDPUK will also be visiting next week's BDA Conference and Exhibition in our home city of Manchester. Get in touch if you would This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Cheers
Jonny
Our site is free for members of the dental profession to join. Established since 1997, we are proud to have nearly close to 10,000 members of our online community.
Revenue for the site is generated by companies from the dental industry advertising on the site.
Advertising on the site is done in the form of banner ads. These work well on the platform because they are reaching an audience who are interested in what services or products are available and you are offering something the audience is interested in.
We also offer advertising on our daily digest emails, which get sent 3 times a day and on average get opened over 100,000 times a month. These are opened on a frequent basis because they the content changes as the forum posts change.
As part of this advertising experience, we feel we can offer you more than traditional advertising mediums. GDPUK offers a value added experience.
Exposure on the site or daily digest for a full month or as long as you want. Pricing is on a per month basis. This generates a large number of impressions of your message.
Opportunity to post PR or blogs onto the site to accompany your campaign, these are then shared with our thousands of followers on social media. So as well as reaching our community audience, you are reaching another audience through social media.
By posting content and information to our blog pages, you can be seen as an opinion leader in your sector.
Our ad serving software can display more than one ad at a time, instead of having all your impressions on one message, you can split the exposure between as many messages as you want. This works well for a dental business that has a number of product or service offerings eg. a business that does dental repairs and sells equipment, can advertise both services at once. This is a fabulous way to test what works and experiment with which ads gain the best response.
Click throughs can be to a dedicated landing page on our website, where you can collect data or provide further information to the audience.
Advert can appear on our front page and our news / blog pages, which get viewed thousands of times in a month.
Option to run a forum review of your product or service for a small extra fee.
Option to have a sponsored post on the forum for a small extra fee.
So as you can see, we offer banner ads but we also offer a number of extras that we include in the package that makes it a great marketing opportunity. If you would like further information and are interested in reaching your target audience, please get in touch today. Pricing starts from £299 + vat.
Email - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Tel - 07786571547
We will be attending the Dentistry Show, please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you would like to meet up.
As an online publisher we like to keep an eye on the stats on the site, how the banner ads are performing and also hope to increase the number of visitors and users of the site.
We publish a number of news and blog pieces a week, which all help to bring a steady stream of the target audience to our website.
The daily email digests, which get sent three times a day also keep our members engaged with what is happening on the forum and ensures the community spirit is maintained.
Since our mailing list was turned into a website and forum in 2008, we have seen the site evolve and grow. In early Jan we went past 20,000 threads created since mid-2008. Screenshot below of the most recent threads created and forum posts received.
The 20247 topics have received 229387 replies, which is around 11 replies to each topic, an amazing amount of input from the members of the site.
Below we can also see the amazing growth of the site in numbers since 2013, by using the month of February as a comparison, the growth in unique visitors and total visits made in each month demonstrates the popularity of the community.
February | Unique visitors | Total visits made in month |
2013 | 17409 | 60418 |
2014 | 25477 | 81513 |
2015 | 30287 | 110502 |
2016 | 38038 | 132966 |
As the site continues to grow year on year we have now also moved the serving of our banner ads to Google Doubleclick for Advertisers which we have found improves the serving of the banners and isn’t as susceptible to click fraud as other software. It has a number of advantages, with the main one being that an advertiser can book a certain space for a month and then advertise more than one thing in that space, with each banner getting an equal share of the impressions. Useful for a dental business that wants to advertise a new product as well as an existing service. You can promote both!
There are many ways we can work together to use differing formats for banners, HTML 5, video ads, and we have space ready for a new size banner, the Super Leaderboard.
Advertising is also available on our email daily digests which is sent three times a day to thousands of dentists, who have voluntarily subscribed to the list and use the digests to look at the latest news and forum posts on the forum.
For further information about GDPUK and what we can offer companies looking to reach dentists, please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or give Jonny a call on 07786571547.
So what is Native Advertising?
Native advertising is a type of advertising, primarily found online, that matches the form and function of the platform upon which it appears. Most of the time is is produced as an article or a video, created by an advertiser with the specific intent to promote a product, while matching the form and style which would otherwise be seen in the work of the platform's editorial staff.
Native advertising is the next stage of content marketing. It is a great way to promote the content that brands are creating and an innovative way to reach their target audience where they congregate but in a way that is not seen as being overly intrusive.
Why does Native Advertising work?
It works for businesses whether small or large in their market.
Brands always have content to share and native advertising provides them a way to do this, while also monitoring the results of what works and what doesn’t.
Native advertising works very well in a mobile format. Whether it's a text link, hosted editorial or promoted video, because native content sits in the main part of the site, it is often seen as the same as any other content viewed via mobile.
Leads to greater innovations, brands don’t have as many limitations as traditional advertising. Anything that is innovative and different is sure to attract your target audience.
Native ads work best when placed on social media platforms and news focused websites. Site like these (like gdpuk) are built around content, so exciting native ads will attract attention.
Where can we see examples of Native Advertising?
Below are a few examples of native advertising, I have found by utilising google. I have included examples from buzzfeed because it turns out a lot of their content is actually native advertising! From $4 million of revenue in 2011, they were expected to reach close to $100 million of revenue by the end of 2015, primarily from native advertising articles!
Netflix on Wired.com - http://www.wired.com/partners/netflix/
Nike on SB Nation - http://www.sbnation.com/sponsored/nike-pep-talks/
Cancer Research UK on Buzzfeed - http://www.buzzfeed.com/cancerresearchuk/sunbathing-expectation-versus-reality#.vbGDX25oKe
Spotify on Buzzfeed - http://www.buzzfeed.com/h2/osmo/spotify/bands-that-wouldnt-exist-without-led-zeppelin?b=1#.mc7Rp2zNQP
Call of Duty on Buzzfeed - http://www.buzzfeed.com/callofduty/jokes-only-call-of-duty-fans-will-get?b=1#.ffoNOKPeoj
As we can see in the examples I have randomly chosen, brands have been thinking of some great ways to interact with consumers without appearing overly intrusive. What do you think? Do you spot native ads?
Can this form of advertising be applied to the dental market? GDPUK has recently launched an option available to all potential clients, to do product reviews which gets you interacting with the dental community and getting your brand sampled or tested by our users.
Native advertising could be implemented into GDPUK in a number of ways such as a news story, a regular blog or even a forum post that gets the users engaged. Please get in touch if you have any ideas or methods you would like to try. We are open to suggestions and want to help you get the best experience you can from GDPUK.
Look forward to hearing from you. Contact details below.
How can we help you?
First week back in the office has flown by and like everyone else involved in the world of sales, we have all been working hard on following up leads, arranging meetings and even closing some deals! (always be closing)
There has been a recurring theme this week in my small dental related bubble and that is clients or prospects asking how we can help them in 2016?
We see GDPUK as an integral part of a dental companies opportunity to market themselves to dentists in the UK. We believe we have a large, active and engaged audience on the site, which we are very proud of. This is important because dental professionals in the UK are using social media more than ever and GDPUK is at the centre of that. For example many of the signatures for the letter published in the Daily Telegraph came from GDPUK. NHS unfit for purpose.
So we have put together a short list of the ways in which we can help our clients engage with potential customers.
Banner Ads - We offer a range of banner ads on the site and our daily digest emails. Further info can be found in our media pack here
Product Spotlights - New for 2016, the product spotlight will appear on the frontpage of the site, with a promotion of your new service / product or special offer.
Product / Service Launches - We can help launch a new product into the market, with blogs, news articles and banner ads.
Special Offers - Entice new or old customers with a special offer / or sample offer
Case Studies - We can publish case studies for you of products that are working for patients in dental practices. A case study can be a great way of demonstrating how your product works and how it will help the dentist improve his or her skills.
Forum Reviews / Tests - Put your product to the test, use members of the GDPUK forum to test your product and receive honest reviews that can be shared on the forum and published as a blog post.
Surveys - Run a survey, which can be hosted by our site or your site. Use it to do product research etc
Social Media Competitions - Combining promotion on GDPUK and other social media channels, we can run a competition that helps collect data and potential new users of your product.
Promotion of Courses / Events - There are a large number of events, meetings, courses that are scheduled in the UK dental calendar on an annual basis, we can help with promotion and even the sale of the tickets.
We hope everyone out there has also had an insightful start to the year and like ourselves are always thinking about how they can improve what they offer to their customers. If you would like to try any other marketing ideas on our site, we are always interested in new methods and always looking to learn. Look forward to hearing from you soon.
Thanks for reading.
Our latest media pack can be found by clicking on this link
Look at some of our amazing numbers that GDPUK produces - GDPUK in Numbers
In my role as Sales Manager at GDPUK, I often get asked what kind of campaign works well on the website and I am always happy to give a few suggestions which I hope helps the client and gives them a few ideas to take away and ponder.
Below are a few bullet points of the suggestions that have come to mind in recent times. Please feel free to add to the suggestions.
The idea behind the list below is that it hopefully gets the client creating an interesting campaign that then gets them a return on their investment and builds a long-term business relationship with our publication.
Our users do notice the adverts but it is upto the advertiser to catch their attention enough that they become fully engaged with the message. The fact that a banner gets shown thousands of times in a month is an obvious advantage of advertising online, your brand has an extra chance of getting noticed on a popular blog or forum thread.
So what are some simple, straightforward methods of getting noticed? A few brief ideas below.
A good, simple, well designed landing page, that matches the campaign / campaigns. I have blogged about the importance of landing pages before. Read more on this link.
Experiment with different designs / styles for the banner ads, see what is successful and look to implement banners in different colours and fonts.
A competition or prize draw to get data for your business, as well as create some buzz around a new product or service.
Supplement all advertising campaigns with PR that matches the advertising and is shared on social media. Run the same advertising / PR on your social media pages, so it increases brand awareness.
A successful campaign has been with a company who have used client testimonials "I love using this xxx dental software because...." So showing that fellow dentists use the product and it works for them, creates a positive message.
A social media campaign that includes advertising on dental websites but run in tandem with social media. For example an equipment manufacturer could collate photos of dentists using the handpieces in their surgeries etc. Create a pinterest style collage.
If you would like to discuss any of the brief suggestions above, we will be attending the BDIA Showcase at the NEC in Birmingham. We can be found on stand F215. All my contact details are below.
Our new media pack for 2016 is also now available for download. It is available here and if you click the image below.
Thanks for reading and hopefully see you in a few days. Cheers.
