Find Your Dental Marketing Return
Are your marketing programs working?
By Jill Nesbitt, Mission 77, LLC
www.dentalpracticecoaching.com
How many new patients are your marketing programs bringing in? What kind of
production and collection do they generate? Do you know which dental marketing
programs are performing well for you – and which ones you should kick to the curb?
You can find out.
Most dental consultants recommend a dental practice spend 2% - 5% of their income on
marketing. Let’s say the income is $500,000 – that means you have between $10,000 and
$25,000 to invest to generate new patients. Today, how do you decide where this money
should be spent?
Quickly, let’s create a list of some marketing choices that dentists often choose:
 Yellow Pages directories
 Sponsor a local baseball team
 Newspaper ads
 New mover direct mail
 Website
 Google AdWords Pay-per-click advertising
 Sign up for insurance plans
 Booth at a local festival or health fair
 Referral thank you programs
 Radio
 TV
With all these choices – and only a limited budget – which method should you choose?
We hear all the time about the latest & greatest marketing strategy that is “guaranteed” to
bring us 30-40 new patients every single month. But, for now, do you know which of
your existing marketing programs is working today?
Start with the numbers
First of all, let’s start with the goal that our marketing programs generate more income
than they cost. We want the return on investment (ROI) to be positive. Let’s say we
would be satisfied with a ROI of 3:1 – meaning that for every $1 we invest in this
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marketing program, we have revenue of $3. Obviously, the higher the return the better,
but now that we have a goal, the next step is to start tracking our current performance.
Choose one of your existing marketing programs – let’s say a yellow pages ad you ran
last year. Hopefully, you set up this yellow pages directory as a referral in your practice
management software. For example, if you work with Dentrix, you would go to the
Family file, open the Referred by box and then select Add Referral – you can add a new
referral right here. Once you enter this referral, it is available for all patients and once
selected, provides regular tracking for how your new patients find out about your
practice.
Ask every patient
Your secretary should ask every new patient “Who should we thank for referring you to
our practice?” – this automatically suggests that there was an individual recommending
your office (the strongest kind of referral) but patients will also tell you if they found you
online or through another channel. This gets documented in your dental practice
management software for every new patient.
I also recommend that you run a report at the end of the month to find all your new
patients by name and to make sure that you have a referral documented in the computer.
Then, if you find any blanks, assign your secretary to call each new patient to touch base
saying “Hi Mrs. New Patient, this is Jill from Dr. Smith’s office. I see that you were here
for your first visit to our practice just the other week and I was calling to make sure that
everything went well and all your questions were answered.” – pause, while she responds
– “That’s great, I’m so glad to hear it. By the way, I wanted to follow up – Who should
we thank for referring you to our practice?” Now you have a referral documented in your
computer for every new patient.
Gather the data
At the end of the year you will run a dental practice management report to find how many
patients were referred by each source. In Dentrix, go to Reports, Management, and select
Referred by Doctor/Other – here you can choose the production and referral dates for the
year and then generate this report. Now, look at each of the referral sources and you can
count two things. First, count the total number of new patients. Second, add up the total
production from these patients.
Now you have the data needed to evaluate performance. Just fill in the boxes (here is a
sample):
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Yellow Pages Directory A
2010
Cost
$8,000
Number New Patients
23
Total Production NPs
$15,500
ROI*
.94
*To calculate ROI: (Production – Cost) / Cost
You should create a tracking box for each and every significant referral source. Then,
each year, just add another column so you can compare year to year. This is a great way
to spot trends – for example, my practice’s return on investment for all our yellow pages
directories went from 11:1 to 5:1 to 1:1 in just a three year span. So I knew for a fact that
investing in yellow pages advertising was no longer working for our practice – I saw the
numbers.
You can do the exact same evaluation.
Make informed decisions
Once you see the results for each referral source, now you can start to make good
decisions. Drop the marketing programs that aren’t providing a positive return. Try out a
new marketing program with the money you would have invested in the failing program.
Track this new program as well – and then see how it stacks up in 6 months and 1 year
intervals.
By taking the time to document in your dental practice management software how each
and every new patient was referred to your practice and then running reports to determine
how many patients and what production they generated, you have a system to manage
your marketing budget. You can confidently know how your current marketing programs
are performing and you can look for opportunities to replicate this success. You can also
drop programs that are failing and avoid being talked into renewing a program by a good
salesperson when the bottom line dollars just don’t make sense. Finally, you can speak
candidly with new businesses that promise truckloads of new patients by focusing them
on measurable results.
For other ideas on dental practice management, please visit
www.dentalpracticecoaching.com.
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