Know the numbers….

….and your digital marketing analytics too!

If you run your own business, whether dentistry or something else, you will be very familiar with the phrase “know your numbers”. However, whilst most practice principals are generally conversant with their overall numbers, smaller, but still very important elements, can still elude them.

This often happens when there has been delegation to a nominated team member but where that team member does not have sufficient training or experience to really understand what they are being tasked with.

We regularly see this where a practice tries to manage digital marketing in-house – but without the necessary training or mentoring to actually make it effective. Typical examples are where AdWords (pay-per-click) is set up badly or where a superficial understanding of Google Analytics is used to drive incorrect marketing decisions. And the budget leakage which results from this can be very significant.

But digital marketing is easy right?

As an example of what can go awry, a few days ago we were approached by a practice which had been running a “hotch-potch” of digital marketing programmes but with limited success. Latterly this included Facebook marketing as they’d heard that it was “all the rage”. Frustrated at their lack of progress, they finally contacted our team for assistance. It wasn’t actually the principal who got in touch, or indeed the practice manager, but instead a dental nurse who had been tasked with the digital marketing for the practice “one afternoon per week”. She was actually quite upset and was clearly struggling. Her practice manager had basically implied that “it can’t be that difficult” (digital marketing) and that “there must be some tutorials on the web”. Not ideal.

The practice already had Google Analytics on their website and they had a superficial understanding of overall traffic figures – however, little else, and certainly no idea of how to segment data to understand where traffic originates and what leads to conversion. So essentially they were flying blind and spending in a very haphazard way – some AdWords, some Facebook and so forth.

What can go wrong?

What became clear very quickly is that the £450 + per month they were spending on AdWords was yielding very poor results, around 35% less than what I’d expect. This was primarily due to a very basic configuration of the AdWords accounts which included all of the classic failures you’d expect from an inexperienced user. No targeting, lack of negative keywords, bad advert copy etc.

Even more interesting was the Facebook campaign. This had been set up with the help of the local Invisalign representative and was actually reasonably well done. Evidently there was some experience brought to bear there. However, the practice had no idea how well the campaign had performed – indeed they felt that they had spent a lot of money for no return. Closer questioning and analyis identified that thye had actually spent less than £100 on Facebook promotion and actually received three web enquiries as a result of it. Even better, all three enquiries had resulted in treatment. So in fact a huge return on investment in that particular channel. Ironically, they had switched it off because they thought it was not yielding results. However, they continued to plough cash into and AdWords campaign that was a complete mess.

Fortunately it was easy to demonstrate what was happening and correct these mistakes. At least the dental nurse had the wherewithal to shout up and get in touch; but how many dental practices are ploughing on regardless and making similar mistakes? Because digital marketing is easy right? Well, it’s not rocket science but you do need training and experience to avoid the simple mistakes which can cost you a lot of money.

Summary

It’s easy to make expensive mistakes if you try to set up and run digital marketing campaigns without the correct training and experience and we still see this all too frequently in the dental business.

To get it right you have a couple of options a) either outsource to an experienced marketing team or b) make appropriate resource available in house and have them trained and mentored to make sure all is on track. Don’t just delegate it and hope it will be successful, as evidence shows that it most likely won’t be and the return on your investment could well be negative.

If the above situation sounds familiar in your dental business or if you are looking to start out and want to get it right, please call Dental Media on 01332 672548.