Conversions and Goals – Dental Marketing Success

Understanding Analytics.

It should go without saying that whichever type of marketing you do, it’s absolutely essential to measure the results.

However, it never ceases to surprise me that many dentists undertake marketing exercises without really understanding the benefits, or worse, what they are actually wasting. Without such knowledge, it’s impossible to determine what works, what doesn’t and consequently how to adjust to ensure best returns.

Perhaps the easiest way to get a clear picture of your web marketing results is by using the free and excellent tool provided by Google called Analytics. This can easily be set up on your website to provide all sorts of information about site visits, but also integrates very nicely with other systems such as AdWords (pay-per-click), social media channels and telephone call analytics. It’s an extremely versatile system and the main tool of choice for anyone managing digital marketing campaigns.

Goal setting

I’m not going into the mechanics of setting up Analytics in this particular blog post – it’s easy enough for your website developer to do. Instead,  I wanted to draw attention to one aspect which is often neglected (perhaps deliberately?) by marketing agencies who work on behalf of clients to set up and “manage” their digital campaigns i.e. setting up of “goals” or “conversions”. As their descriptions suggest, these are key activities you want your website visitors to undertake after they’ve landed on your website, for example completing a contact form, booking an appointment, submitting their email address to download your e-book and many more. You can “flag” and monitor any particular activity which is of importance when it comes to understanding your marketing campaigns.

Why is goal setting often neglected by dental marketing companies?

I’ve seen many “SEO” reports provided by companies to dentists which range from virtually nothing e.g. an automated report from Analytics emailed without any explanation or human input, to more comprehensive versions which show some data trends and keyword positions etc. However, a lot of reports fail to illustrate how many goals or conversions were delivered as a result of the marketing activity. This is the “acid test” of what is being achieved and something that a lot of marketers shy away from if they can. Unfortunately too many agencies know that their clients don’t really understand what is happening and choose not to report anything which might call their services into question.

The basics you must request

If you have any type of marketing being undertaken on your behalf, then you need to ensure that you receive a detailed monthly report which includes an accurate summary of the main goals/conversions achieved and differentiated by channel. For example, how many website contact forms were completed as a result of organic (free) traffic and how many resulted from any pay-per-click campaign you may be running. If you are gathering email addresses (and you should be) by encouraging users to submit theirs in exchange for a free e-book or similar, it’s also prudent to measure these types of activities too. Maybe you want to see how many people viewed your new video or how long they stayed on a particular web page? All of this is measurable and potentially important for your campaign management.

Summary

If you are running any type of marketing campaign, you need to measure the results. For digital campaigns particularly, Google Analytics is a free and relatively easy way to get the data you need. One very important aspect is goal or conversion measurement – however this is often deliberately neglected by marketing companies because it makes the success (or failure) of the campaign very transparent – so you must ask to ensure it’s included.

If you are looking to establish new digital marketing for your dental practice and want completely transparent results, or perhaps you are skeptical of your current team and need a second opinion, please call Dental Media on 01332 672548 for a no-obligation discussion.