When should you expect dental marketing to deliver results?
Short, mid and long term strategies for new patient acquisition
One of the key questions dentists ask when considering dental marketing initiatives is, unsurprisingly, “when should I expect a return?”
Whilst there is no definite answer to this, simply because it depends on several factors, we can give some useful indicators to help inform key operational decisions such as budgeting etc.
Before we move on to the main marketing techniques you can use and how long it typically takes for them to become effective, let’s take a quick look at the factors which will affect their performance and which need to be considered carefully before you begin:
- Your objectives
- The competitive environment
- The economic climate
- Your budget
- How capable is your local team to assist?
- Facebook (Meta)
Let’s break those elements down a little more.
Your objectives – are you simply looking to get “bums on seats” for general treatments or something more specific such as high-spec implant and ortho treatments? Often it will be all of those things but they are not all quick wins unfortunately and you should be prepared for variable results. For example, it’s relatively straightforward to acquire new patients for general treatments using paid ads, however getting a regular stream of Invisalign cases is not quite as straightforward. This leads nicely into a consideration of the competition.
The competitive environment – some treatments e.g. Invisalign and to some extent implants, are very popular in terms of an increasing number of dentists wishing to advertise those services. With Invisalign training courses now lasting just a few days, it seems that most practices are jumping on this particular ortho bandwagon. With that comes a huge increase in the number of practices advertising and overall competition ramping up considerably. The effect of that doesn’t need to be explained but suffice to say you have to try much harder than just 2 or 3 years ago.
The economic climate – this has a clear effect on any dentistry marketing initiatives and irrespective of what your Invisalign rep, marketing company or dental coach might tell you, if the general public is more focused on how they’re going to pay their fuel bills, they will be much less willing to stretch to having their teeth straightened.
This doesn’t mean that all of the treatment cases will go away, but some of them will certainly be put on ice – so you will need to work harder to attract the folk out there who can still afford it. For the sceptics out there, we have rafts of analytical data which clearly demonstrates the effects of what I’ve just mentioned. I’d rather be factual and transparent than try to convince you “all is well” and that your marketing pound will fall on fertile ground – at the moment that’s not always the case and you’ll need to work harder.
Your budget – it’s still quite scary how many dentists enquire about digital advertising and during the discussion inform you that their budget is a couple of hundred pounds per month. Unfortunately long gone are the days when you could spend £5 a day on click costs on Facebook and do very nicely. These days you’re looking at several fold that, and more for Google Ads. This varies by region of course and busy city locations will cost you significantly more. It will also vary significantly by the type of treatment(s) you are targeting.
In addition to this you will need to budget for a specialist team to manage your campaigns and very likely your SEO too – DIY is a risky thing in the sophisticated world of ad management these days.
So unless your budget is pushing up towards £1k/month (lower competition area) and well over £1k/month (higher competition area) then to be honest you shouldn’t expect much. There are some exceptions to this and a diligent marketing company will complete a full and transparent analysis to let you know where you stand before you start.
How capable/willing is your local team with regard to assisting? – Marketing can be split into two main categories – “done for you” and “done by you”, however there is some overlap. It is completely wrong to think that everything can be outsourced (although lots of dentists still think that) and as we’ve discussed elsewhere in this blog, your team will need to play a significant role. For example, securing reviews is very much in the hands of the local team, as is the management of day-to-day social media activity if you want to do it properly. If you don’t want to get involved like that then you should expect your overall efforts to be compromised, and quite significantly too.
Google and Facebook (Meta) – you might wonder why I’ve included these guys in the factors which can affect your marketing performance, but they can and do, often very significantly. For example, Facebook regularly changes the ways it validates how ads can be used on their platform meaning that what worked previously doesn’t work now. Similarly Google periodically makes huge changes to the way they rank websites and you can go from being top of page one to half way down or worse, in the space of a few hours. Those types of changes can have big effects in a short space of time.
Digital dental practice promotion – different strategies, different timescales
There are four main strategies to consider which are web based. Of course you will also need to concentrate on the usual techniques to promote “word-of-mouth” recommendations via your team and existing patients – these off-line techniques are not discussed here but are equally important.
Paid ads – this technique can be used to gain traction in the short term and it’s possible to publish ads on Facebook and Google very quickly, typically within a day. However that doesn’t guarantee instant success, particularly given the increased competition we mentioned earlier. The quality of your ads and how popular they prove to be will also play a big part, so it’s not simply a case of “publish and forget” – you will need skilled intervention to gain initial momentum and then maintain your campaigns to keep them fresh and delivering.
Organic social media – this is more of a mid to long term strategy and takes time to build up. Again it’s not simply a case of publishing a few posts and expecting them to generate traction; you have to be consistent and seek the usual likes, shares and comments to make sure your messages get seen. This is not something to outsource – the dental teams that makes organic social work are the ones that manage it themselves, not the ones who outsource to third-party companies who spin the same generic content to lots of different accounts.
Email marketing – this is another medium to long term strategy but one you need to start working on immediately. Building a solid email list whereby you can send out periodic updates is a proven way to maintain contact with existing patients and to keep your business “top of mind” when they are making decisions about more complex, expensive treatments. Start your email list quickly and then grow and nurture it.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) – this is a “must” if you are to make the most of your website and when you consider that new patient acquisition via websites is second only to word-of-mouth, it makes absolute sense. It goes without saying that you also need a high-quality website but if it languishes on page two of Google, then it’s nearly pointless. Ideally your website need to be in the top three positions on page one and with a prominent presence in the “local pack” (maps) results too.
So how long does it take to gain useful Google rankings? Again this depends, not just on the initial quality of your website but also on the strength of the local competition. Whilst you can gain prominence within a couple of months, in areas of higher competition it can take considerably longer. Typically we aim to get a website onto page one within the first three months and then move it higher progressively, into the upper half of the page within 6 – 9 months and then on from there into the top three positions. Ultimately the goal is position one but this can take over a year to achieve and even longer where competition is significant – remember that your competitors will almost certainly be using SEO too. SEO is mid to long term strategy and a very important one, so please don’t neglect it.
Summary
There are various digital strategies which can be used for gaining and then maintaining dental patients on the web. All will be impacted by the external factors noted above and you need to consider and understand them before you start. Underestimate any of those and you can end up disappointed.
Each of the techniques has different uses, objectives and timescales to return. Whilst they can be deployed selectively, it also important to add that successful practices tend to use all of them to create holistic programmes covering all of the main digital channels.
If you’d like to get started for your own practice or perhaps need a review of what you already have in place, please contact the team at Dental Media on 01332 672548. We’ll provide you with a transparent assessment, realistic estimate of costs and a proposal to take you forwards.