If you’re like most dentists, you’re always looking for new and innovative ways to market your practice. But with so much to do, it can be tough to know where to start. A great way to get organized is to create an internal marketing calendar. In this blog post, we’ll show you how to do just that. Stay tuned!
What is a Marketing Calendar?
A marketing calendar is your best friend when it comes to planning, organizing and executing marketing campaigns for your practice. It can help you keep track of all your initiatives, as well as ensure that your messaging is consistent across all channels. On any given day you can look and see which channels are being used and what type of marketing is scheduled.
The Current Dental Marketing Landscape
If you’re not planning on increasing your dental practice marketing budget in 2022 or beyond, here’s why a planned and scheduled marketing calendar is extra important going forward to attract more patients, increase revenue, and stay competitive.
According to a 2022 dental practice survey by ProSites, 73% of dental practices said their marketing budget would remain the same in 2022, which is understandable. Where COVID decreased or flatlined revenue for 56% of surveyed practices, capping dental marketing budgets is a natural reaction to expense control. Yet the dental market is only projected to grow.
By 2028, according to Fortune Business Insights, the dental market is projected to reach $45.7 billion USD, meaning dental practice competition is going to increase. Knowing this, 19% of practices surveyed by ProSites said they will be increasing their 2022 marketing budgets
If you’re not going to be doing this, then making the most of your existing marketing budget becomes an immediate and key strategy, and planning a marketing schedule helps in three important ways:
- Time and Labor Savings: Planning and pre-scheduling things like social posts saves time and labor (which have dollar value) by avoiding last-minute scrambling.
- Brand Reputation Protection: Rushing out content and/or images can result in missed information, spelling mistakes, poor images, and other things that can damage your dental practice’s reputation.
- Opportunity Optimization: Planning and scheduling your marketing ahead of time helps ensure you don’t miss key opportunities to engage and attract patients and keep your dental chairs full.
How to Plan a Dental Marketing Calendar
Depending on your practice, a calendar will generally have 4 types of marketing strategies planned out:
- Paid Advertising
- Email Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Content Marketing
These should be color-coded or otherwise noted on the calendar. Your calendar could be completely full and look fine but one of these strategies could be forgotten without anyone realizing it.
Important Dates to Keep Track of
Birthdays
A birthday is a special day for everyone, and your dental patients are no exception. In fact, you can use your patients’ birthdays as an opportunity to strengthen your relationship with them and show them how much you care.
Here are a few ideas for how to wish your patients a happy birthday:
- Send a card or personalized message
- Offer a free teeth whitening treatment or other discounts
- Make a donation in the patient’s name to a charity they support
- Throw a small birthday party for the patient and their friends and family
There are many ways to show your patients that you care about them on their birthday. Whatever you do, be sure to make it personal and special!
Federal Holidays and Local Celebrations
Here is a list of major federal holidays that should be noted on your marketing calendar:
- New Year’s Day
- Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Memorial Day Monday
- Juneteenth Independence Day
- Independence Day
- Labor Day
- Columbus Day
- Veterans Day
- Thanksgiving Day
- Christmas Day
Additionally, most communities and cities have local celebrations throughout the year. It’s important to plan marketing content for both federal and local holidays to show that you are current and involved.
The End of the Year
It’s important to remind patients to use their benefits before the end of the year because they might not have a lot of time left. Some benefits, like dental insurance, are reset at the beginning of the year, so patients will want to get as much use out of them as possible.
You can also use the end of the year as an opportunity to thank your patients for their business and let them know how much you appreciate them.
These are just a few examples of important dates that should be noted on your marketing calendar. Of course, you’ll also want to keep track of your own events and activities, such as open houses, continuing education courses, and community outreach programs.
Additional Dental Marketing Calendar Tips
What Do You Need the Most?
What obvious marketing strategies are missing from your practice at the current time? Do you already have an active, up-to-date website and social media pages? If not, those are one of the first places to start. More and more patients are turning to social media to see whom their friends prefer to use. The investment and maintenance is a fairly modest and simple process. Tackle these at the beginning of the year before you move on to anything else.
After you have the basics out of the way, write down all the current marketing you are doing like patient recall or external advertising and how they have worked for your practice. This will help you note which methods you have not tried yet, and which ones may have not been working that you could postpone for the moment. It’s good to try many different methods of marketing, but its just as important to track how they are working for your practice so you aren’t throwing money away. If you are looking for a dental marketing plan template, downloading this guide may help you. This social media calendar may also be helpful.
Decide How Often You Want to Implement Your Plan
Do you want to focus on marketing on a month-by-month or quarterly basis? Line these out on your calendar and plan ahead by at least a month. Spend more or less here and there depending on what you want to accomplish that month or quarter. Whatever your budget or timeline, you’ll want to stay on top of it to make sure you are meeting your revenue and new patient goals for the year.
How We Can Help
If you’re looking for help with web design and any other digital marketing needs for your dental practice, contact ProSites. We have years of experience creating successful dental websites and implementing digital marketing campaigns that get results. Let us help you take your practice to the next level!
