Dental practices today need to have a marketing budget to maintain or grow their business. What’s the best use of your investment money? What are the best types of dental marketing to produce the results you want?
There is no one-size-fits all approach to determining your dental marketing budget. Some experts will say as much as 15% of your gross revenue should go to marketing your practice, while others suggest 3-5%. The average expenditure is typically closer to 1.5%.
With a high overhead and competitive business, it can be challenging for dental practices to allocate adequate resources to marketing. However, you need to invest in an effective marketing strategy to grow your business. It’s a great idea to start with your marketing goals, and build your dental marketing plan around what you’d like to achieve.
Online marketing is increasingly popular today given that many patients seek out dentists through online searches. Some practices still invest in traditional print marketing as well. Also remember that internal marketing – most often in the form of training your team on case presentation and closing – is part of your marketing strategy.
Online Marketing for Dental Practices
Investing in online marketing for your dental practice can take different forms – it’s helpful to think of it in 2 large categories: organic content, and pay-per click.
Organic content means content that you’re regularly generating content to point patients and search engines towards your website. This might be in the form of a blog on your website, or activity on social media platforms. Organic content builds powerful, long-term keyword-rich marketing that helps patients find you and see value in your brand.
Pay-per-click is most often in the form of Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Google Ads can be very expensive, so it’s a good idea to have someone manage them for you and maximize your investment. Depending on your goals, they can be effective in boosting your brand to the top of popular searches. Facebook ads are a much lower cost and can be helpful to promote specific procedures or initiatives in your practice.
Print and Traditional Marketing for Dental Practices
Non-web-based marketing is less popular in the dental world than it was 20 years ago. However some practices in certain areas or with specific target markets can find it helpful.
Print marketing might take the form of a postcard mailer in your local neighborhood. Some practices also advertise in print newspapers or magazines that their patients read. The challenge is that these marketing channels are often very expensive, and they do not always draw a large amount of patients directly. Sometimes they can be useful if your target patient population is older and doesn’t use the internet frequently.
Other types of traditional marketing might be radio or television advertising. These are also typically big budget marketing channels, and need to be ongoing to have a long-term effect. They are appropriate for large practices with multiple locations who want to build wide brand recognition.
Internal Marketing for Dental Practices
Investing in your internal processes is also important to your dental practice marketing efforts. Keeping patients in your practice and accepting the treatment you recommend is as critical as attracting new patients.
Your front office needs to be properly trained on phone skills. Your back office needs to be proficient at case presentation conversations with patients. And your treatment coordinator needs to know how to close cases and follow up with patients. Your office manager should be adept at keeping the practice running smoothly to ensure a positive patient experience from start-to-finish.
Make sure you’re investing some of your dental marketing budget to internal marketing – this will help with patient referrals and case acceptance.
How to Maximize Your Dental Marketing Budget
Every dental and orthodontic practice has different marketing needs. After you’ve set your business goals, you can start to allocate your marketing resources.
What does your practice need the most? You may have a stunning website, but if your receptionist is surly, patients will not want to schedule. Conversely, you may have the best team and internal processes, but if your website or online reviews are sub-par, patients may never call your office.
It’s important to look at your areas of greatest need and invest in improving those. Also, make sure you’re spending enough to get the results you want. Often dentists cringe at spending on marketing when they have other expenses to worry about as well. However, you’ll never grow your practice if you don’t make adequate and effective investments in your marketing strategy.
At ClearEdge, we specialize in dental marketing and helping you meeting your business goals! Give us a call today and we can help craft a customized marketing plan for your dental practice.
