New patients are up 143% for this family-owned practice — here’s how they did it

The Goolsbys are a Minnesota family who purchased their practice, Borealis Dental Studio, just 18 months ago. The practice is located 45 minutes outside of Minneapolis in the quaint town of Lindstrom. Sean Goolsby, DDS, covers the clinical side while wife, Becky, manages the front office. Together they tackle their practice’s marketing strategy.

In just one year, this family-owned and family-run practice increased its monthly new patients by 143%. The Goolsbys are now looking to expand this summer by adding an additional doctor to the team. Naturally, I had to get the lowdown on what they did to grow their practice so quickly.

Here are the two key marketing strategies they used.

Increase new patients by 143% with consistent postcard marketing

When the Goolsbys acquired Borealis Dental, they were generating an average of 28 new patients per month. However, with a goal to hire another associate in two years, they needed to generate much more revenue (aka, new patients) before they could justify the cost. So, they set out to increase their marketing.

Becky: “In September of 2016, we attended Joy’s Dental Practice Owners Growth Summit in Florida and learned that if you really want to grow your practice, you need to market way more than you even think you do, and you must be consistent.”

(And no, I did not pay for her to say that or even ask her to!)

When the Goolsbys got back to Minnesota, they were ready to get busy and start marketing their practice. Here are the marketing tactics Becky organized in late 2016:

• Appear at local community events with a booth



• Run local newspaper and bulletin ads



• Mail postcards coordinated with Google ads

Setting up their booth at local events to network with Lindstrom residents helped generate awareness of Borealis Dental. But beyond that, the effort proved to be largely fruitless.

Becky: “We wasted a little bit of money but also a ton of time. Everyone was friendly and interested, but we only got a total of about six people from those events.”

Lindstrom’s residents are a mostly older population, so Becky reasoned that traditional newspaper ads (and community bulletins) would generate new patients. They ran ads for eight months, yet a paltry two people responded.

That leaves only one marketing tactic to credit for their huge leap in new patients.

Becky: “The only marketing that ever worked for our practice was postcards.”

In January 2017, Becky started mailing 6,000 postcards per month to a list of local residents who lived close to their practice. At the same time, she ran Google ads online that coordinated with the postcard campaign. Lindstrom residents simultaneously saw Borealis’s postcards and matching digital ads all across the Google Display Network, which is an ad network made up of millions of websites. This coordinated campaign was especially simple for the Goolsbys because they didn’t have to continually manage it. This is thanks to a set-it-and-forget-it program called DirectMail2.0 that bundles ads on both platforms with call tracking and more.

From January to July, average new patients jumped from 28 to 46 per month. That’s a 64% increase in six months. Excited, they doubled their mailings in July to 12,000 postcards per month. From August 2017 to January 2018, average monthly new patients jumped to 68, a 143% increase from where they had started.

Becky: “You need to constantly keep your business name at the forefront. Even though someone may not need a dentist right when they see your marketing initially, when they do need one they will think of you first.”

Check out Figure 1, which shows how the practice’s monthly new patient numbers have grown since they started mailings every month. The graph makes it easy to see the effect that consistent marketing had on Borealis Dental’s new patient numbers—the more they marketed, the more new patients they brought in.

Now that their automated marketing was generating more and more interest, leads, and new patients, Dr. Goolsby knew that their website would be seen by more people. It needed a makeover.

Create a review-rich, mobile-friendly online presence to reach more mobile users

The Goolsbys revamped their website to make it more professional and (more importantly) mobile-friendly. This was smart, considering 61% of smartphone users are unlikely to return to a mobile site that’s hard to access.1 In fact, 40% will visit your competitor instead.1

Dr. Goolsby next set out to rack up 5-star reviews to boost Borealis Dental’s online presence and credibility. With 68% of consumers in 2017 saying they’re more likely to use a business that has positive reviews (up from 50% the year before), the more reviews a practice earns, the more leads it can expect.2

Initially, the Goolsbys worked on generating Facebook reviews. But they realized from talking to patients that the majority of Lindstrom residents were using Google, not Facebook, to research local dentists’ reviews. Not only do 84% of consumers trust Google reviews as much as word-of-mouth recommendations, but the reviews also help your practice rank higher in Google’s search results.2

The Goolsbys also created a rewards program that incentivized staff to play a role in generating Google reviews for the practice. This strategy worked: Borealis Dental went from zero Google reviews to 28 reviews today with a 4.9 average rating!

Becky: “While we aren’t quite where we’d like to be yet review-wise, we’re getting there.”

Their Google-focused online strategy has helped Borealis Dental rank much higher in Google’s search results for the search term “dentists in Lindstrom”—and that is major!

Thanks to the integrated postcard and Google campaign, as well as their foresight to turn all those new patients into Google reviews, the Goolsbys can count on more organic online leads to start coming in.

Plus, when Becky calculated that 40% of their new patients came from referrals, she turned her attention to creating a practice culture that fostered genuine relationships.

Becky: “We are in a small community that really values the relationships that are built. Patients can tell when staff get along and enjoy being with each other, and it really changes the atmosphere of the office.”

About once every quarter, Dr. Goolsby shuts down the office and the entire team ventures out for a fun staff day experience, such as eating out at a swanky restaurant or visiting an art studio to create their own ceramic pieces. Creating a relationship-driven practice culture isn’t just about rewarding staff though.

Becky: “Since our relationships with our patients are so key, we make it a point to give our clinical staff extra time to visit and build relationships with patients so they don’t feel like they’re getting rushed out the door. While we certainly could make more money by cramming our schedule even more, we feel our patient relations would suffer, and our priority is to make our clinic a great experience for everybody.”

Extra time with the staff means a happier patient experience, as well as more time for patients to learn why they should refer their friends and family in for treatment.

With a new dentist joining the Borealis Dental Studio team this summer, the Goolsbys have officially reached the goal they set out to achieve when they bought their practice. Now it’s on to the next one! To hear more of Dr. Goolsby and Becky’s story firsthand, watch their video case study by visiting postcardmania.com/borealis.

Author’s note: Learn more about adding Facebook ads to your direct mail and Google-integrated campaigns using Everywhere Small Business by visiting postcardmania.com/dental-esb.

References

1. Aufreiter N, Boudet J, Weng V. Why marketers should keep sending you emails. McKinsey & Company website. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/why-marketers-should-keep-sending-you-emails. Published January 2014. Accessed February 28, 2018.

2. Local consumer review survey 2017. BrightLocal website. https://www.brightlocal.com/learn/local-consumer-review-survey. Accessed February 28, 2018.

Joy Gendusa is the founder and CEO of PostcardMania. Using just postcards, a phone, and a computer, Joy built PostcardMania from a one-person start-up into an industry leader. PostcardMania serves 78,589 clients, including 5,750 dentists. Need help promoting your practice? Call one of PostcardMania’s dental marketing consultants at (844) 269-1836, email Joy at [email protected], or visit postcardmania.com/dentaldesigns.