Running a dental practice is extremely challenging – and the likelihood of it getting easier is slim to none. As a fellow dental practice owner and producer of an insurance-independent dental practice, I constantly feel like I’m facing some type of task in which I have little to no training or experience. From OSHA and HIPAA-compliance to information technology and dental marketing, you have to either gain enough knowledge to get the job done or hire someone to do it for you. For purposes of this article – we’re focusing on marketing as this is a piece of the running-a-practice puzzle that’s easy to outsource but it’s critical to do it correctly.
But when it comes to dental practice marketing, the available options and level of investment required make the task very arduous. My 25-year career exposed me to a ton of marketing options including: street signs, yellow pages, direct mail, health fairs, community service projects, wedding shows, social media and internet marketing for dentists.
To be honest, I was constantly confused as to what was working with my dental practice marketing, and what was not. Sure, I could see that we had X number of new patients in a given month, but getting staff to ask and properly document referral sources was a constant battle. Even when it was done to the very best of their abilities, I rarely knew anything about the cost to acquire a new patient or more importantly, the value of the patients that were coming in from each dental marketing channel. I simplified the process by hiring a third-party marketing company to not only advise our practice regarding trends and opportunities but also to track and calculate my return on investment. Not surprisingly, this service added a heavy expense to our dental marketing budget.
Dental Marketing Results Revealed
Today, tracking your dental marketing KPIs doesn’t have to break the bank. Ffor a fraction of the cost of hiring a marketing agency to track and manage the results of your marketing campaigns, you can use Marketing IQ to automate the process for you. Market IQ from Practice by Numbers calculates your dental marketing return on investment (ROI) for all of your marketing dollars. Using dynamic phone number insertions, the software tracks where the lead came from (e.g. Facebook, Google AdWords, Bing, etc.) and then records calls to be used as an evaluation of your team’s phone skills. Over a short period of time, dental offices can improve conversion rates and attract more new patients.
How to Maximize Your Dental Marketing Return on Investment
Market IQ integrates with both your practice management software and Quickbooks to give you instant access to your dental marketing return on investment (ROI). The ROI tab reveals the amount of treatment both presented and accepted for all of your leads. With this information, you can easily shift marketing dollars to more successful campaigns which will improve your overall dental ROI. You can also see the broken and cancelled appointment rates for each source which can give you an indication of the quality of leads that your team is managing.
Marketing IQ gives you direct access to your Google Analytics account so you can take an in-depth look at how prospective patients find your practice and which online content holds their attention. With this knowledge, you may choose to create topic-specific pages or micro-sites within your website to further engage leads (new patients).
