Seeking Value For Money

Controlling dental marketing costs

I’ve been following a couple of threads on dental forums and blogs with interest. One was by coach Chris Barrow on his blog, the other was a thread in the GDPUK forums. Both reflected on the state of UK dentistry and developed into discussions about the pressing need to control operating costs in the face of the mounting financial pressures and static revenues across the industry.

Drawing together a very generalised summary, particularly of the GDPUK thread, comments suggested that the level of “high end” cosmetic and complex restorative procedures are down which has impacted significantly, even for well-established dentists. For less well-established guys, many with sophisticated dental “spas” and high operating costs, the cost/revenue/profit balance could not be maintained, sadly resulting in closure for some. This would have been unthinkable for many back in 2008 before the financial crisis really started to take hold. Back then, few would have considered that dental practices would close due to lack of profitability, or indeed that graduate dentists would struggle to find work.

This rather disturbing back-drop prompted me to revisit how a dental practice might contribute to cost savings by reviewing its marketing spend i.e. which areas deliver best return-on-investment and where, typically, they should be able to reduce spend without compromising on effectiveness. Whilst this may seem like quite a minor area, it is surprising how much can be saved by a rigorous review and adjustment of a marketing budget.

The web versus traditional marketing

The web is acknowledged as providing the best “bang for buck” of all marketing channels and our own data certainly supports this. Whilst practice literature certainly still has a place, the provision of lots of glossy pamphlets is expensive and provides considerably less reach than the web. However, many practices are still spending thousands per year on this type of literature without actually monitoring how successful it is. Rationalising promotional practice literature is certainly worth a look. Some of the savings can be used towards improving web marketing to ensure a prominent position in search engines – the web is the first port of call for patients searching for dental services and deserves priority attention.

Reviewing web marketing costs

Having established that the web typically offers the best return of all the web marketing channels, it’s worthwhile recapping on areas where savings can be made without compromising on quality. Please keep in mind that “expensive” doesn’t necessarily mean “good” when it comes to dental marketing.

• new websites and site upgrades – professional websites with the latest coding standards don’t need to cost large sums of money. Whether you are looking for a complete new website or a simple upgrade, please shop around.  Make sure you aren’t paying large fees for an “exclusive” site that really won’t get you any extra patients.
• extended contracts for site maintenance with large monthly fees – please do the sums. In most cases, an annual hosting fee with PAYG support will save you hundreds and in some case thousands per year and you won’t notice any difference. Why pay for services that you aren’t using? Remember that some companies rely on monthly fees to cover large overheads and this is why they are so keen to sign you up.
• expensive web-site add-ons – did your website hosting just come with one email account and then you have to pay a lot more if you need to add others? Are you paying more to view your website usage statistics? These are just a few areas where it costs very little to provide the service but some still charge large fees for the privilege.
• SEO services that are not designed for the task in hand. If you are in a competitive environment, you will need to pay realistic fees for SEO. However, in less competitive environments, smaller scale campaigns will yield excellent results without costing thousands of pounds. Yet we still see inappropriate SEO sold to dental practices that don’t need it.

Summary

Dentistry is faced with mounting costs and reduced revenues. Consequently it is sensible to examine all aspects of the overall budget to squeeze out unnecessary costs. One area that can yield surprising savings is a practice’s marketing budget. Make an assessment of which channels deliver best results and invest wisely in those. If you feel you are paying too much for certain elements of your marketing, ask for a second opinion and be sure to research your suppliers thoroughly.