Last updated on January 25th, 2019 at 09:48 pm
New year, new patients, new…. marketing strategy? Now is the perfect time to take a look at your marketing strategy and see where there are opportunities to improve – and increase profitability in the new year.
First things first – you’ll want to review where you’re currently at.
1. Examine your website. This means taking a look at photos on your website, removing the outdated and adding new, professional, high-quality images. Additionally, you’ll want to make sure all of the contact information is accurate along with patient testimonials. Last but certainly not least – while you’re going through your website to see if there are any updates that need to be made, check it out on a mobile device. If it looks great – fabulous! You probably have a dental mobile-friendly website. On the other hand, if you have to pinch and zoom or it’s slow to load – it may be time to talk to your website provider on how to upgrade to a responsive, mobile-friendly dental website.
2. Take a look at your online directories. Next, take a look at your online directories. Have you claimed your practice across today’s top online directories including Google My Business, Yelp, and Angie’s List? Make sure to do so by finding your practice on these sites and verifying your listing. You’ll then want to update the contact information and update your profiles to have a consistent name, address, and phone number listed on your website. This makes it easier for search engines to identify your practice and improve your rankings. While optimizing your online directories, make sure to respond to any online reviews – whether they are positive or negative (more advice on responding to reviews here). Mark and report any reviews that might be fake or from a competitor.
3. Make sure your tracking is up-to-date. Add Google Analytics and Google Search Console to your website to ensure you can track its performance (your website provider should be able to do this on your behalf).
Once you’ve updated your current marketing efforts to be in a good spot, you will want to take a look at your past marketing results and see how they performed.
You can do this by first listing all the dental marketing efforts you did in the past year including how much you spent. For example:
Then, identify the various ways in which you can currently track your marketing efforts:
- Do you have Google Analytics on your website to see traffic volumes and other key performance indicators?
- Do you use tracking phone numbers on various marketing campaigns?
- Did you manually record how patients heard of your practice?
From here, add in how many calls/forms, patients and average revenue were received as a result of each effort.
To calculate your ROI (return on investment) from each dental marketing channel, use this equation:
$ generated by new patients minus amount of money spent on advertising divided by ÷
amount of money spent on advertising = ?
Compare all efforts to determine what worked. Repeat what was successful and modify or remove those that didn’t work. If the result is negative, you are paying more than you generate. Aim for a result of .2 (20%) or greater.
Want to brainstorm other ways to market your practice online? Download the Definitive Guide to Online Marketing for Dentists which will give you the best practices, ideas to consider, and common pitfalls to avoid for each major digital marketing channel.
And, talk to our experts! Call us at (888) 932-3644 to learn more.
