With the rush of the holiday season finally over, you might now have some time to sit down and think about your dental practice’s marketing performance. After reviewing your overall year and the past several months, you might feel an instant urge to make a drastic change to your marketing strategy. This might include either slowing it down or speeding it up.
Although January is a great time to start working towards New Year’s Resolutions, it’s not the best time to make changes to your marketing strategy.

The Holiday Months are the Slowest Months
One of the problems with making changes to your marketing strategy in January is that your main reason to make changes is that the last several months were slow for you. This isn’t anything unordinary in the dental field. During the holiday season, your patients are more focused on enjoying the holidays with their families than they are on getting cosmetic dentistry or other non-urgent procedures.
Changing Your Marketing in January Will Slow Down Momentum
Although the holiday months are slow, your marketing efforts are still making an impact. Maybe a patient spent their holiday season searching for a new dentist but didn’t want to schedule their appointment until after the holiday season? If you pull your PPC ads at the beginning of January, this patient might not be able to find you again when the time comes to make an appointment.
On the flip side, maybe patients are waiting until January to start their search for a dentist because they just signed up for new dental insurance. Or they just set some New Year’s Resolutions that regard their dental health and they’re just now ready to find a dentist. If you change your marketing strategy in January, these patients might not be able to find you.
Think of your marketing strategy like training for a marathon. If you’re able to run a few miles during the holiday months and then decide to stop running altogether in January, you’re going to lose all the progress you’ve made. On the other hand, if you go from running a few miles during the holidays to running a full-fledged marathon during January, you’re not going to feel prepared.
At the very least, you should not make any downgrades to your marketing in January. It’s better to have too many patients requesting an appointment with your dental office than none at all. Don’t let your progress (or lack of progress) during the holiday months discourage you from keeping your current marketing strategy in the new year.
When’s the Best Time of Year to Downgrade Your Marketing?
It can take months for a PPC campaign to reach its full potential and if you don’t let it marinate long enough before pulling the plug, you will never get to see how many patients your campaign could have delivered. According to the rule of 20, someone needs to be exposed to your brand about 20 times before they give you a call. If you cut them off too early, it will all just be wasted money. This is applicable to not just PPC, but all aspects of your marketing strategy.
There’s not really a wrong time of year to upgrade your marketing strategy. However, if you’re thinking of scaling back or making drastic changes, we don’t recommend doing so in January. January is usually when your practice will start picking back up after the holidays.
Instead, we recommend making any changes to your marketing strategy during the slowest times for your office. For most dental offices, this is during the holiday season. If you’re not sure what time of year is the least busy, take a look at appointment history through the years. After you determine the least busy time of year, dedicate those months of extra time towards checking in with your marketing strategy. This will help relieve stress and pressure from you. Additionally, your strategy will get a few months to marinate during a less crucial time.
On the other hand, if you invested in a new marketing strategy and six months later it’s not helping you get any new patients, this sounds like a good reason to switch it up. If anything, it indicates that you should change marketing companies.
Invest in Dental Marketing That Works
At Pro Impressions Marketing, we hate seeing dentists waste money on marketing that doesn’t help them grow their dental practice. If your current marketing strategy isn’t working, you probably don’t need to change it. You need to change companies.
We keep your marketing strategy up to date with the latest trends so you never have to worry about paying for outdated marketing. Whether you’re ready to commit to a new marketing strategy or want to keep closer tabs on your current one, we offer several marketing packages that can meet your needs.
If your current marketing strategy isn’t helping you gain new patients, schedule a consultation with our dental marketing agency to find out how we can help your practice grow. Call (970) 672-1212 to book an appointment today.