The world of marketing changed drastically in 2020. Dental offices were at the forefront, innovating and adjusting to new ways of doing things while navigating the burgeoning need to reassure patients that their visits would be safe. The type of information being disseminated shifted, with consumers demanding specifics when it came to how their dentist was going to safeguard them from exposure.
It helped that the dental industry is, as a whole, already one of the most health-conscious fields. Many safety parameters were already in place as part of standard sterilization and disinfection protocols, and more were swiftly added. These behind-the-scenes realities were suddenly a focal point of marketing.
As 2021 moves forward, finding the correct balance in dental practice marketing is critical. If you haven’t embraced the power of telehealth and communication through digital channels, it’s time to make that leap. Here are seven ways you can make more from every dollar you allocate to your marketing budget.
1. Stop being reactionary
Don’t “buy” a marketing solution without doing your homework first. It can be tempting to see declines in both production and new patients and start throwing money at the problem. But if you haven’t done your research, that could be money you’ll never see again. Not all marketing plans are the same, and few meet the unique demands of a dental practice or the needs and desires of your patient base.
2. Understand the three main marketing styles
There are only a few primary marketing styles, and each has a different cost of entry, a different conversion rate, and a different return on investment (ROI).
Advertising
Advertising is “interruption-based” marketing. It traditionally costs the most, works the fastest, and takes the least amount of time. However, it can also be a scattershot method with a low conversion rate (due to its impersonal nature) and marginal ROI (due to the prohibitive cost).
That’s why traditional adspend is dropping fast and being replaced with budgets for online marketing and social media campaigns.1 Does this mean traditional advertising is dead? No, but it does mean you need to go omni-channel sooner rather than later.
Digital
Digital marketing is “permission-based,” and operates off of data you’ve collected from patients or potential patients or acquired from third parties who obtained permission for data to be used in marketing.
Digital has a lower cost than traditional advertising and higher conversion rates and ROI if campaigns are appropriately tracked and consistent A/B testing (a randomized experiment with two variants, A and B) is used to maximize gains. In 2020, digital adspend finally surpassed traditional, for more reasons than one.2
Marketing with meaning (MWM)
Word-of-mouth marketing has always been the most effective; referrals work in all industries and dentistry is no exception. However, word-of-mouth has modernized into “marketing with meaning,” and your referrals are now more likely to come from both offline and online communities and be based on your practice’s outreach and efforts to educate and inform.
It is reported that 90% of consumers believe recommendations from friends, and 70% believe consumer opinions; in contrast, 75% do not believe advertisements are truthful. Social media users are 71% more likely to trust a brand they are referred to by another user.3 Learning how to leverage MWM may work the slowest and take more of your time to refine, but it delivers the best results—and the best patients!
3. Be realistic about your budget
Your budget isn’t just money; it’s also time—your time, the time of your team members, and the time of your patients. How much time can you devote to marketing, campaign tracking, and analysis? Some of your marketing spend may need to be spent on a specialist who can handle the specifics. Let me be clear, the agency that sells you the marketing tactic is often not the best specialist for the creation, execution, and measurement of your unique budget.
It’s not just how much you have in your budget, but where you spend it. Social media spend nearly doubled in the first half of 2020, jumping from 13.3% of marketing budgets to 23.2%, and predictions are that social media spend will account for around 23.4% of all marketing budgets within the first half of 2021.4 If you haven’t already, now is the time to diversify your marketing spend.
Consider reviewing both 2019 and 2020 marketing allocations and shifting dollars from the lowest-performing traditional channels to more effective permission and MWM strategies. You can research, build campaigns, test, analyze, tweak, and test again until your new marketing efforts surpass the old.
4. Know what a new patient is worth
How many new patients (NP) did you attract in 2020? What portion of revenues can be attributed to new patient production (NPP)? It’s simple math, but many practices fail to complete this simple step for insight into their practice earnings. Here’s an easy formula: 100,000 in NPP / 100 NP = $1,000 per new patient.
Dig deeper. Which patients are worth more than the average? Which patients have been at your practice the longest? Their lifetime value (LTV) is something to replicate. Also, look at your referral patterns. Who brings in new business for you as an ambassador for your practice? Find ways to identify similar patients and incentivize referral activity.
5. Compare you to you
Every dental practice is different, with its own target demographic, geographic reach, and potential profitability. If you run a small general dental practice in a rural community, you can’t compare yourself to the multispecialty practice in the big city. This seems obvious, and yet dentists are often guilty of sharing stories with their friends without really understanding the true comparison metrics.
Focus on key metrics such as patient acquisition, retention, attrition, and both new-patient and existing-patient revenues. Prioritize turning your existing patient base into a funnel through which referrals can flow. Look at your month-over-month numbers and try to improve on them over and over again. The only practice to beat is your own.
6. Test, track, adjust
This is the key sticking point for many dental practices. They skip testing, they don’t track effectively (or in a reasonable time frame), they fail to adjust, or all three. This leads to a massive waste of money and time, with no actionable results and a return to the same old “proven” marketing efforts.
Failure to measure ROI is one of the top causes of marketing spend waste.5 How can you know whether something is working if you’re not tracking and analyzing results, then adjusting to do better? Learning how to identify cause and effect and accurately measure ROI is key to making marketing efforts more effective.
7. Make marketing a team effort
Marketing will be part of everyone’s job, but it needs to be presented correctly. Every member on your team needs to be aware of your marketing plan and the role they are expected to play in it, and this starts on their hire date. By making marketing a key point in everyone’s job description, you keep it from feeling like something extra they are asked to do, and it simply becomes part of your practice culture.
When everyone is involved in marketing, your practice outreach takes on a life of its own. You can be proactive—anticipating needs and wants and delivering exceptional experiences to your patients—and reactive—responding to events and situations in your community (both physical and online)—in real time.
Being proactive is commonly seen as superior to being reactive, but there are times when a swift response can be both timely and effective. Just make sure that reactivity is carefully controlled by implementing a chain of accountability; it’s better to err on the side of caution than spend weeks or months trying to recover from a costly faux pas on social media because a responsive post wasn’t thought through completely.6
By implementing these marketing initiatives, you can increase your reach, enhance your relationships with existing and potential patients, and maximize your practice revenues in 2021.
References
1. Sloan M. Digital marketing vs. traditional marketing: Is one more powerful than the other? Drift. June 25, 2020. Accessed December 2, 2020. https://www.drift.com/blog/digital-marketing-vs-traditional-marketing/
2. Sterling G. Traditional media suffer as digital ad spend grows in 2020 forecast shows. Search Engine Land. September 2, 2020. Accessed December 2, 2020. https://searchengineland.com/traditional-media-suffer-as-digital-ad-spend-grows-in-2020-forecast-shows-340129
3. Ewing M. 71% more likely to purchase based on social media referrals [Infographic]. Hubspot. June 28, 2019. Accessed December 2, 2020. https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/30239/71-More-Likely-to-Purchase-Based-on-Social-Media-Referrals-Infographic.aspx
4. CMOs turn to social media during COVID-19. Marketing Charts. July 10, 2020. Accessed December 2, 2020. https://www.marketingcharts.com/digital/social-media-113777
5. 10 dental marketing strategies that just don’t work in 2020. Delmain. September 9, 2020. Accessed December 2, 2020. https://delmain.co/blog/dental-marketing-strategies-that-dont-work/
6. Hillier L. What is reactive marketing? And which brands do it well? econsultanty. March 4, 2020. Accessed December 2, 2020. https://econsultancy.com/reactive-marketing-benefits-risks-best-practice-examples/
KRISTIE BOLTZ is the founder and CEO of myDentalCMO, a marketing consulting firm that helps dentists make smarter marketing decisions and trains dental teams to execute on those decisions. As a result of her head for numbers and passion for teaching, people often say their practice marketing dollar has never been more effective. Schedule a chat with Kristie at mydentalcmo.com or call (877) 746-4410.
