November 2018--To know which marketing channels you should use to advertise your dental practice or dental service organization (DSO), you need to know which marketing is and is not working for you.
My life is helping dentists find patients, and they ask me, “What should I use to advertise?” And my answer is simple, “everything that works.” But how do you know what marketing works?
You have to track marketing results to know where to spend your marketing dollars. This is where a lot of dentists fall down. Typically, they ask the front desk team members what they observe is driving new patients to call. Anecdotal information isn’t the full picture and can be misleading. What you need is real data.
Patient Prism was developed from the vantage point of a marketing company. With Patient Prism, dental practices and DSO managers can see tracked data and analytics that tell them which marketing media are working for them. This is because Patient Prism tracks the number of patients who call the ad-specific phone number to inquire about those services. If
The system also enables you to track:
Data is intelligence to guide you. You want to know what you could do more. If can spend a dollar and get $4 or $5 back, you should do it all day long. Double down and see if at a certain point it levels off.
If you find out a marketing channel isn't showing results, don't automatically abandon it. Learn why it didn't work and adjust it. Many dental practices find one Facebook ad will work and another doesn’t. They may find a traffic stop billboard that advertises dental implants doesn’t work until it is revised to include a special offer. I advocate testing a different message and/or offer. Many times, it's not the channel that has a poor response but the content on the channel.
Join us at Patient Prism Academy to view more Fred Joyal tips and other marketing videos from many of the dental industry’s marketing experts.