Content Marketing in Dentist’s Websites. An Empirical Comparative Study between Romania and the UK

Abstract

The dental industry is one of the most attractive segments of the healthcare industry because it has experienced constant growth, in recent years. Existing studies concerning healthcare marketing activity reveal that Internet marketing has become a more important strategy than in the last decade. Moreover, content marketing can be an effective strategy for dental providers.

This paper aims at identifying the core elements concerning content marketing for dental websites. Furthermore, the main goal is to comparatively analyze those website content items that contribute to establishing trust and an educational relationship between patients and dentists. The empirical research is both a quantitative and a qualitative one, based on the assessment of 57 items clustered into nine categories: trust enhancing information, brand awareness, service information, related, educational information, non-related information, mapping, targeting of visitors, feedback tools. The sample consists of 50 Romanian websites and 50 websites from the United Kingdom (UK). We have chosen this sample because, according to [1], UK has the most efficient public oral health care service. The research outcomes exclusively reflect the propensity for education and prevention of UK sites and the propensity rather toward marketing communication of the Romanian ones. The main finding is the following: the degree of content marketing penetration in UK sites is 57%, while in Romanian’s ones, only 23%. The significant disparity between the dental sites from the two countries is encountered in brand awareness content (17% UK vs. 3% RO) and feedback (15% UK vs. 1% RO).