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Ottawa-Gatineau Orthodontists Alliance

Getting Our Teeth into Helping Orthodontists Market Their Profession

McGill Buckley has been working with a fine and spirited group of 30 Certified Orthodontists in the Ottawa-Gatineau region since mid-2016. We were originally approached by a working group to help them develop marketing strategies that would help properly position their profession in the face of increasing competition.

It was the type of marketing challenge we love to sink our teeth into.
 

Orthodontists Are Specialists Through Education and Training

Like Cardiologists, Dermatologists or Oncologists are medical specialists in healthcare, Orthodontists are part of a small group of highly educated and trained specialists in the dental profession. Orthodontists spend more time in school and many more years learning how to help people of all ages correct misaligned teeth and jaws. What many people don't realize is that while every Orthodontist is also a Dentist, not every Dentist is an Orthodontist.
 

First Came Some Interviews and a Discovery Session

We started the project with a series of interviews as well as an intense discovery session where we led the working group through a series of questions to get their views on their profession and patients, their industry associations, the competition they face, technology impacts and their pain points.

After reviewing our notes and conducting more research we came back to the group with an overarching strategy for a marketing campaign, a key messaging platform as well as recommendations for a digital advertising campaign, website and social media.

Certified Smiles takes Shape

Central to the new marketing campaign was the planning, design, writing and development of a bilingual website under the newly coined group banner of the Ottawa-Gatineau Orthodontists Alliance. The new website (www.certifiedsmiles.ca) was designed to provide information that supports the central messaging of the campaign as well as an online directory where members of the public could find an Ottawa or Gatineau Orthodontist in their neighbourhood.

Since launching in early 2017, the Certified Smiles campaign has delivered millions of impressions and an average 8,000 website visits per month, mostly through pay-per-click campaigns using Google Adwords, Facebook and Instagram. The Straight Goods blog, also incorporated into the website has grown a loyal following amongst people want to get the straight goods on Orthodontic issues, conditions and treatments.