As we start off another New Year, dentists and dental practice managers are scurrying to figure out the secret ingredients to boost patient flow and case acceptance in 2015.  While there is no one “secret sauce”, there is a key driver for dental practice marketing success.  And, unfortunately, it is a necessity that many practices overlook when putting their marketing plans together for the year.  This key is marketing channel metrics, or, more specifically, marketing channel ROI.

Generally speaking, there are two major components to understanding, and then unleashing, the power of your dental practice’s marketing channel ROI:

1. New Patient Channels

2. Conversion Rates

New Patient Channels

Before engaging in any new marketing tactics for the New Year, it is imperative to know where your new patients are coming from and which marketing tactics or channels yield the best ROI.  There’s no need to throw away money, time, and effort on new patient generation tactics and channels which don’t measure up.

Conversion Rates

It’s not just about the number of new patients coming to the practice website and then through the door.  What marketing efforts are yielding the highest rate of new patient appointments set AND KEPT?  What steps can you take to improve them?  Make the extra effort to know which tactics are producing the best results for your practice.  Use this knowledge to adjust tactics, teach team members, and inform the practice to elevate everyone’s game.

 

Your Marketing Practice, a marketing agency focused on dental practice marketing, has taken the mystery out of understanding these components with a new service called, simply, Marketing Channel ROI.

 

The Marketing Channel ROI program identifies where new patients are coming from (radio ads, internet search, website, referral, etc.)  In addition, it tracks missed calls.  Did you know that the average practice misses almost 50 calls per month?  By using the “call audit” feature, where an actual human listens to every call that comes into the practice, the practice learns EXACTLY why patients say “no” and how the staff handles phone calls.

 

Marketing Channel ROI is like an X-ray on dental practice marketing – it gives dentists and their teams the necessary information to plan effective marketing strategies.

Still not convinced?  Check out these 5 benefits that Marketing Channel ROI can deliver to your practice:

 

1. Identification of exactly where new patients are coming from
2. Pinpointing exactly where the BEST patients are coming from
3. Tracking missed calls
4. Recording and auditing calls
5. Objective ranking of staff effectiveness – who is closing and who needs more training

 

So, before you begin to execute new marketing tactics or continue with old ones from prior years, get a handle on what is working and what isn’t.  Understand your new patient channels and conversion rates.  Give your dental practice marketing plan an x-ray with Marketing Channel ROI.