Dentists who truly want to grow their practices are constantly on the hunt for new patients, and in order to recover from the pandemic, dentists will have to employ some key online marketing principles for hunting down new patient leads online. They can be elusive.
Market Where the New Patients Are and Use the Proper Tools
Hunters know that they have to hunt where the game lives. Unfortunately, many marketing tactics that are presented to dentists either aren’t designed for finding dental patients or are managed by companies that don’t understand how dental practices work.
They also don’t understand that not all dental practices are the same such as a fee-for-service practice versus a practice that is fine accepting insurance and even Medicaid. They assume that all patients and all dentists are the same. This causes many dental marketing efforts to fail. It’s the equivalent of hunting game out of season or taking a fishing pole on a deer hunting trip.
Tracking to Success
You won’t know for sure that you’re on the right track unless you follow the signs and trends of the market and your campaign. Are people searching more or less frequently than last month? Has your traffic gone down because the search volume is down or because something is wrong with your campaign? Did that change that you or your dental marketing company made help or hurt your campaign? You will have the likely answers to all of these questions if you’re using the proper tracking systems that will analyze your data and help you address any issues..
Accurate Targeting Is Critical
A hunter using a firearm is much more likely to bag an animal if they have practiced with their weapon and can take accurate aim at their target for a lethal hit. They also know that they have to be responsible for identifying their target before they pull the trigger so that they don’t kill an animal they aren’t licensed for or make the terrible mistake of shooting a fellow hunter.
Online dental marketing takes similar expertise in taking accurate aim at the target prospects. We know that dental patients use Google more than any other website to find dentists, so why do so many dental practices launch campaigns to tap into those new patients only to come home empty-handed? Their aim is off.
Correct targeting includes:
- Geo-targeted keywords on the website and in ad keywords
- Geo-targeting in ad platform settings
- Focused keyword targeting that does not waste clicks or make your ads look irrelevant
- Keyword filtration using “negative keywords” that hide your ads when people type in something that makes them a bad fit for your office
Modify Tactics According to Your Goal
Big game hunters use different tactics than geese or pheasant hunters. One stalks their prey or waits silently in a carefully designed blind, knowing that one, accurate shot is all they’ll get. The others take a literal scatter-shot approach after going where the prey is. They wait for birds to fly out or overhead and, because of the multiple targets on the move, have guns designed for rapid-fire with multiple projectiles that can bring down a bird.
If your goal is to get big cases or a niche type of patient, you will need to wait for the right opportunity and then capitalize big on those with a well-designed campaign that will get the click and convert at a high rate. You can’t afford to show up ill-prepared with a dental marketing campaign that is just going to waste your marketing budget and let the prospective patient get away.
If your goal is patient volume and you have a practice designed to pretty-much take all comers, then you need to optimize your campaign for endurance and the lowest possible cost per conversion. It is a literal numbers game where you try to bring in the most leads for the lowest amount of money per lead, knowing that they will not all convert and that your profit margins are probably lower than with the “big game” targets.
Pull the Trigger on Marketing that Works
Your marketing should be working for you on multiple fronts:
- Design
- Tracking
- Planning
- Management
- Execution
- Consulting
If you need help with any of these components, our team at Pro Impressions can help take your dental marketing to a new level of success. Call (970) 672-1212 today and start hunting down new patient leads and stop wasting time and money on dental marketing that doesn’t work.
