by AdminPosted on Posted in Reporting

Measuring the effectiveness of campaigns and the return on investment

In the first blog of the new year I thought it would be useful to take a look at the type of report we issue to dentists where we are undertaking social media marketing on their behalf. This is the “numbers” report where we illustrate how the campaign(s) is performing and the overall cost per new enquiry. Together with the numbers, we also issue a commentary on what was completed in the previous month and the strategy for the month ahead – the overall objective is to ensure that the dentist can see what is being paid and exactly what the returns on that investment is in terms of getting new patient enquiries.

Let’s jump in….

Overall statistics

Social Media Ad Impressions

The first section of the report shows the name of the campaign (in this case two campaigns) and information regarding impressions and reach. In this example it’s quite self-explanatory in that we are showing the number of times a landing page was viewed by people clicking on dental ads on Facebook and Instagram. We also show how many people those ads reached and also the number of times the ads were shown (impressions).

As background, these were two campaigns with broad reach advertising certain types of dentistry for clients in the north of England – for obvious reasons we have obscured specific names and locations. The reporting period is one month, but noting that ads were paused over the Christmas period.

Costs and clicks

Landing Page Clicks

The second part of the report shows information about the cost of the campaigns, broken down into the number of actual clicks that were generated and number and cost of each landing page view. There is also another metric, ‘frequency’, which shows the average number of times each person in the target audience saw the ads. This is an important indicator of when dental Facebook ads go stale and when they need to be re-configured.

New patient enquiries

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Training

Why your reception team is critical to the success of digital marketing campaigns

I thought I’d sign off our blogs for 2021 with a couple of salutary tales and a reminder of just how critical the dental admin and reception team is in the success of digital marketing campaigns.

This was brought home to me quite dramatically in a couple of similar cases over the last couple of weeks where a lack of communication and insufficient systems at the practice threatened to lose lots of new patient enquiries.

Scenario 1

In the first example, we launched a new website for a long-standing, ‘traditional’ practice, introducing ways for patients to get in touch using mechanisms that the practice clearly were not used to. These were essentially enquiries coming from contact forms on the new website, both general enquiries and also treatment specific ones from different pages on the website.

We had discussed the benefits of a new website with the dentist, including ease of enquiry using the usual website contact forms. The email address for submitted enquiries was agreed and quite soon after the website launch we saw plenty of enquiries coming in via this channel. We could also see the “conversions” being registered in Google Analytics – so all good; at least so we thought!

A few days later, the practice manager called to ask us to remove the contact forms because the front-desk team was apparently being overwhelmed and had no clue what to do with them. We were somewhat taken aback by this as normally we use the number of contact form enquiries as a key indicator of a successful dentist website.

Clearly we did not go-ahead with removing the contact forms, instead we notified the principal and advised what had happened so that the appropriate measures could be taken at the practice to bring the admin team up-to-speed with what was required.

Scenario 2

In the second example, we launched a wide-reaching Facebook and Instagram advertising campaign for a dentist seeking new private dentistry patients. Exactly the same thing happened as in the earlier example with the front-desk team complaining that they didn’t have time to deal with the influx of new enquiries. Again we addressed this to the principal so that the necessary training and resources could be made available at the practice.

What went wrong?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Website

What to expect – from quotation through to design, publishing and aftercare

It can be quite a concerning time when a dentist decides to build a new website for their practice. Whether this is an upgrade to an existing site or starting from scratch, it’s useful to know the process and what to expect in reasonable detail.

Good dental web design companies will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, but it would be wrong to assume that the dentist themselves and possibly their team, won’t have to have any input. Indeed, the websites which work best tend to be those where the dentist is keen to be involved to ensure that his/her ideas are incorporated and to make sure that the ethos of the business is properly represented online.

So what’s involved in the website design process at Dental Media? Let’s take a look at the key steps, from the initial enquiry and quotation, through to the design, publishing and maintenance.

The enquiry

We try to make enquiring about a new website as easy as possible by providing clear contact details on our website. You can complete our online enquiry form or call our team directly – we’ll be pleased to assist whichever method you prefer.

Our aim is to reply to all new enquiries within two days albeit we will send an acknowledgment immediately. We need a short period of time to analyse you request and also check factors such as the competitive situation in your location. We will also ask you any questions to ensure that we have all of the information we need to provide a quotation for a high-quality website solution.

The quotation

Following on from your enquiry, we will assess the information you provided to create a bespoke quotation for you. This could be for a stand-alone website or a package of tools to assist with your practice marketing.

Here at Dental Media, websites for dentists are just one of our core competencies, but we’re also adept with a wide range of promotional disciplines, from SEO to pay-per-click and more. However, we won’t foist unnecessary services on you – we are here to help your practice flourish with the most suitable tools and techniques available. We will provide fully transparent pricing and also illustrations on return-on-investment.

Acceptance and next steps

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Advice

What’s on the horizon to help boost new patient enquiries?

It’s that time of year when we predict the new marketing trends we expect to feature in 2022 and how dentists can leverage on them to help grow patient enquiries. To be clear, these aren’t techniques which will replace the core ‘essentials’ such as SEO and paid ads, but techniques which can be useful to complement or extend them.

We’ve identified five areas where we are seeing good potential and where we’ll be working with our clients next year to generate even more patient interest.

Short-form video

It’s been accepted for some time that video is an exceptional tool to help engagement and boost dental patient enquiries. The old adage “a picture paints a thousand words” is well-known and this extends much further when video is introduced into the mix.

Those practices which go the extra mile to differentiate themselves have been leveraging the power of video for some time now, but where we see “short-form” video introduced, that power can be extended into other niches, not just the practice website.

For example short video clips used on social media are extremely powerful, as are clips introduced into your ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. The returns we see from this type of format typically exceed static images by some way.

So if you can see an opportunity to introduce short-form video into your marketing campaigns, we think you’ll be pleased with the results. Please get in touch with use to see how our video editing team can build a great set of videos for you to achieve just this.

Personalisation

The move away from generic to personalised content will continue apace as business strive to make themselves more relevant than their local competitors. We’ll see even more patient “stories” on websites which will cascade out to social media. Much of this will be supported by the short clips of video we’ve discussed above.

Data will be a key part of this as ads particularly, are tailored to the most appropriate demographic. So expect to see even greater attempts to gather and use user’s data, despite the initiatives by the likes of Apple to curtail some of this on their devices.

Authentic, inclusive advertising

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Invisalign

What’s happening and what can you do about it?

Last week I had a couple of conversations with Invisalign dentists who were looking to switch their marketing partner due to treatment bookings falling away quite considerably. Following detailed discussions and analysis of data from their failing campaigns, it was clear that several factors were in play.

In today’s blog we’ll take a look at why orthodontics campaigns of this type can often succeed but then progressively begin to fail – and what you can do about it.

Competition

This is perhaps the biggest factor and one that will dilute the efforts of even the best social media marketing agency. Quite simply, more and more practices are jumping on the Invisalign bandwagon as the promise of lucrative treatment revenues prove difficult to resist.

To put this into context, we are aware of one dentist in the NW who is training all eleven of his team to deliver “Invisalign Go” across two practices. We believe that the initiative is questionable as even with a high-profile marketing campaign, delivering sufficient new Invisalign patients to keep eleven dentists happy is quite some challenge! Perhaps a couple of trained dentists at each location and then ramp up may have been more realistic and sustainable.

The majority of our clients are now offering Invisalign or an alternative clear aligner, but there are only so many patients within a given area who are looking for treatment at any given time. Competition has increased significantly and it looks like this will continue.

Agency saturation

As the number of dentists offering Invisalign has increased significantly, so have the number of marketing agencies offering ‘magical’ solutions to deliver patients. We are seeing more extreme methods being employed by some agencies to try to keep their ads most prominent. For example using multiple ads and switching ad copy twice a week to keep the content fresh. Regular ad maintenance has always been important but “blanket bombing” of this nature has only started to appear more recently as agencies struggle to remain relevant.

Of course this additional intervention has resulted in increased costs to the dentist with some agencies now charging in excess of £2.5k + vat per month to manage campaigns – this is without the click costs! Increased maintenance costs coupled with reduced number of cases means significant margin erosion.

Agency mismanagement

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by AdminPosted on Posted in seo

SEO working knowledge for dentists

It is widely acknowledged that the ‘holy grail’ of dental marketing is to gain and then maintain very prominent website search results in Google. After word-of-mouth, this is the most sustainable and lowest cost method for gaining new patient enquiries and is a top priority for any dentist who is “web savvy” and aware of the business benefits available from online website prominence.

However, Google is a volatile place and it needs a carefully managed SEO campaign to achieve and then maintain good search results. There are a number of factors which contribute to this, the majority within the website owner’s control but a few extremely important ones which aren’t. One of those uncontrollable elements is Google itself and comes in the form of the regular updates they roll out to the ranking algorithms which dictate where websites sit within the search results.

There are two main categories of Google search engine updates – the first is when ad-hoc changes are made to tackle specific issues they feel need to be addressed to improve the quality of search results. Previous examples included the “Penguin” and “Panda” updates which were introduced to tackle particular types of web spam e.g. bad links and keyword stuffing etc. These were significant updates which have subsequently been refined and re-used by Google.

The other main category of update is the ‘core’ update and if anything these are even more mysterious in that Google says very little about them other than when we should expect to see the effects.

Core updates occur several times a year and typically only a couple of them get formally announced. This tends to be when Google expects the updates to cause significant changes within the search index i.e. some websites gaining ground whilst others are demoted. Those of us in the SEO community tend to sit nervously whilst these updates roll out as they can be quite unpredictable and sometimes yield questionable results. For example, you can see an excellent website fall several places in the search results where only ethical SEO methodologies have been applied. Whilst this is rare, it can happen and it’s often very difficult to understand why – and of course Google won’t tell you!

Conversely you can also see old websites with no SEO and questionable content rise to unexpected heights in the ranking results and this is equally difficult to explain. It’s just these types of anomalies which often cause frustration amongst website owners and their digital marketing partners, but fortunately the occurrences are reasonably rare.

As I mentioned earlier, Google is understandably highly secretive about their methodologies and so there is no simple way of contacting them to find out what went wrong if you feel that a website has been unfairly disadvantaged by a core update or otherwise.

What can a website owner do to minimise any adverse impact from a Google update?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Announcements

Your Dental Google Business Page will become “Business Profile” – What Dentists Need To Know

When we start new marketing projects for dentists, one of the key things we advise the business owner or manager to prioritise, is setting up and optimising the Google Business page for the practice. This has had a few different names over the years but seemed to have stabilised as “Google My Business” and it is this name that most people are now familiar with.

But as ever, Google is re-jigging some of their web tools and moving forwards, Google “My Business” will be known as Google Business Profile. They are doing this to help streamline their various app interfaces and will bring management of the “business” page into the overall structure of Google Maps, Search and their respective apps.

When will this happen?

We expect to see this roll out progressively during 2022 and Google has advised that larger business will likely see the changes first. Initially you will see changes to the branding within the existing My Business management console but further changes are expected as the integration and rationalisation continues. So at this stage it’s a “heads up” to make dental businesses aware that changes to this essential Google tool are in progress and to expect them relatively soon.

If I’m about to set up a new Google My Business page, should I wait?

Definitely not! This is an essential tool and will start to work for your practice as soon as it’s up and running, so please don’t delay. You can be pretty certain that Google won’t lose what you’ve done as the changes take place.

New features also announced….

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by AdminPosted on Posted in seo

Despite advice you may have heard otherwise….

I recently read a blog post from a well-respected dental coach which detailed how one of his clients was seemingly being provided an SEO (search engine optimisation) service which wasn’t delivering results. It also stressed how the dentist seemed to be in the dark about where new patients were coming from and whether the SEO was actually delivering any benefit at all.

The conclusion was that the service was “money down the drain” and that the dentist needed to focus instead on attracting new patients via “internal marketing” and seeking recommendations from his/her existing patient list.

Whilst I completely agree that SEO which isn’t working and worse, isn’t transparent, is indeed a complete waste of cash, it’s also important to stress that SEO, done well, is a huge contributor to the success of a dental practice. In today’s blog we’ll take a look at why that is and why a holistic, multi-channel approach to dental practice marketing is essential for ongoing success.

SEO – what does the data say?

We are fortunate to manage SEO campaigns for lots of dentists across the UK which gives us huge insights into how many new patient enquiries those programmes actually yield. Alongside this we also manage a lot of paid ads and social media marketing campaigns which allows us to compare, in detail, the relative cost of acquiring new patients from different channels. The clear conclusion is that SEO has always provided the best quality new patient leads and at the lowest cost when compared to other forms of digital marketing.

This is not to say that those other channels should be avoided; on the contrary, they can and do yield excellent results. However the “cost per acquisition” from SEO is typically a fair bit lower than paid marketing channels and we see this time and time again.

This is not just our data however. Whilst we have lots of information from the dental sector, other sources will also illustrate the benefits of SEO in a similar way, albeit for different business sectors.

Why do you need SEO for a dental practice?

We’ve already touched on how good SEO is very cost-effective, but you also need to appreciate how useful SEO is when it comes to the actual number of new patients it brings to the practice. This is quite substantial and after “word-of-mouth” referral, new patients enquires from Google comes a clear second. Of course this is only the case where a website is prominent in the Google rankings where it can be found quickly and easily by those searching for dental services. It is the primary role of SEO to establish and maintain that prominence and hence why it is so important.

What does SEO cost and what is the return-on-investment (ROI)?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Chatbots

Love them or loathe them, chatbots are here to stay

You may have noticed a proliferation of “chatbots” appearing on dentist’s websites over the last 12 – 18 months? For those of you who are wondering what one is, it’s the little dialogue box which pops up from the bottom right-hand side of the screen when you visit any page of the site.

A “virtual assistant” greets you and then leads you through a series of questions to determine what type of treatment you are seeking. Depending on the sophistication of the chatbot, different answers can be delivered depending on the specific needs of the website visitor.

How effective are dental website chatbots?

We’ve been installing chatbots on dentist’s websites and blogs for over a year and the feedback has been excellent. Whilst there are website users who don’t like this type of “intrusion” when they are using a site, the data suggests that the large majority do and find the interactivity and speed of response from the dentist to be very useful.

What are the pros and cons of chatbots?

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by AdminPosted on Posted in Website

Set-up costs and ongoing maintenance – “total cost of website ownership”

A few years ago I published a blog post covering what dentists should expect when budgeting for a new dental website, including the initial set up and running costs. Back then the industry was still broadly applying what is widely known as the “dental tax” with many suppliers charging way above the odds simply because they were supplying into the dental business. On average we were seeing anything between a 60 to 100% price hike for dental websites compared to similar sites being built by web companies for general businesses outside of dentistry. We also illustrated that if you shop around, you will be able to find companies, my own included, who will build an excellent practice website much more in line with what any business should expect.

So what’s changed over the last couple of years, particularly with the advent of Covid and other cost pressures affecting businesses? Has the price of web design for dentists also gone up and if so, what should you expect now? Let’s take a look.

Current prices for dental websites

If you look around on the web, it appears that the majority of dental web design companies are still pushing the limits when it comes to charging dentists for new websites. Prices appear to start at the 7-8k mark and then push on over £10k if you’re inclined to pay it. But if you take a closer look, you’ll see that better websites are available for £4 – £5k. If you look deeper still, you’ll also find that some of those more cost-effective websites don’t just look better, they have much better underlying technical performance too. So it really does pay to look around and research thoroughly.

Pushing the pricing envelope

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