dental practice marketing

Yearly Dental Marketing Budgets and Marketing Trends

January 24, 2012 By Catherine Hughes 3 Comments

A recent dental survey revealed that the average yearly dental marketing budget for dental practices is $48,000. In this The Wealthy Dentist survey, we learned that for 9 out of 10 dentists, dental practice websites remain the top priority for marketing budget money in 2012.

6 out of 10 dentists also include Internet dental marketing in their annual budget, while 5 out of 10 allot a portion of the budget to internal referral programs.

Email newsletter marketing and Yellow Pages advertising remain in the dental marketing budget for 53% of the survey respondents, while 30% still include radio advertising and direct marketing.

Less than 10% factor TV advertising into their yearly dental marketing budget, reflecting a national trend towards developing a a media plan that does not include TV advertising.

dental marketing budget

“We hired a dental marketing firm and are getting better results. We think that marketing is the key to getting the number and type of patients you want. Return on investment is good,” said a Virginia dentist.

“We are very happy. Our marketing has shown consistent growth of over 100 new patients a month for the last 4 years. The newest being the low cost, proprietary CRM that we have implemented that is above and beyond anything I have been shown before,” said a general dentist.

Some dentists feel dental marketing costs are too expensive, with one pediatric dentist saying, “It’s too expensive. Everybody raises prices for dentists because they feel we have more $.”

On average, dentists employ eight different dental marketing tactics to achieve their marketing goals.

What dental marketing vectors are the most effective use of your yearly dental marketing budget? Let us know in the comments!

If you want more how-to advice to address the dental marketing challenges facing dentists today, sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Survey was conducted by The Wealthy Dentist.

Why Your Dental Marketing Should Include Google Plus

January 24, 2012 By Jim Du Molin 5 Comments

If your dental marketing plan doesn’t include social media and a geo-targeted dental website yet, now is the time to do so if you want your dental patients to find you online.

Google has just announced that it is introducing three new features to connect Google+ search users to their social networking profiles when they search the web.

According to Google when a user is signed in with Google+, they will receive personal results and profiles of people they know or follow. They will also be able to expand expand their results by discovering people related to their search.

Included in search results will be Google+ profiles and pages, personal photos and posts, and items that have been shared with the search user on Google+. This will mean that whatever Google+ circles a user belongs to and interacts with will have an influence on the Google search results returned.

This marks the beginning of more personalized Google search results.

Also added is a People and Pages feature where Google matches search queries to posts on Google+ that are linked to compatible content. This means when someone writes about a subject on Google+, and people in their circles Google search that subject, the comments and links are displayed automatically on Google’s page one for the Google+ users.

Google has also added the ability to see shared topics by Google+ power users on the right sidebar of the search results page, offering search users the option to connect with them on Google+. All of these are reasons why you want to add Google+ to your dental marketing plan.

Google+ just hit sixty million users and is still in its infancy.

It is important for you to create a dental practice brand page on Google+, and become an active user. Begin asking your dental patients if they are on Google+ and consider offering some incentives for patients who add your practice to their circles.

Internet experts feel more businesses will now be forced get more involved in Internet marketing and hire established internet marketing companies to ensure that their business will be found on the Internet.

Internet dental practice website design has become a major dental marketing strategy for many of The Wealthy Dentist subscribers. How many new patients you obtain from your dental website is determined almost entirely by one factor: your website’s position on the major Internet search engines including Yahoo, MSN and Google.

The Wealthy Dentist is here to help you with the ever-increasing changes in dental marketing.

Filed Under: Dental Marketing, The Wealthy Dentist Tagged With: dental marketing, dental practice marketing, dentist, dentistry, dentists, geo-targeted search, Google, Google plus, Internet dental marketing, marketing

Dental Marketing with Smile Cards

January 17, 2012 By Melinda Spitek 1 Comment

Word-of-mouth dental marketing—the spoken word carries great weight.

The fact that one person believes something tends to convince another person that it must be true, else why would he/she have said it?

Strangely, word-of-mouth is the most neglected of all the forces at work in a dental marketing.

Word-of-mouth has probably destroyed more dental practices and, conversely, made more practices successful than all the other forces in the marketplace put together. Why isn’t it more researched/systematized/budgeted/planned for?

The principles of word-of-mouth advertising are particularly relevant to dentistry because patient referrals generate an estimated 68% of all new patients. Sound like something you’d like to try?

Here are the steps:

1. Ask! Patients are honored when you ask them to refer more people “just like them.” Use a Smile Card (referral card) to punctuate the request.

2. Track! Know who referred your new patient so you can thank them. A personal thank you card can get patients motivated to refer again.

3. Reward! The reward? A small amount gift card from a local merchant with a hand-written thank you note stimulates the recommender to do more of the same.

4. Winner! Have a contest to promote referral. When a new patient is referred by your patient with a Smile Card put that card with the name of the referrer in a “fishbowl” for a drawing. Once a quarter draw a winner who receives a gift card for say, $250 to a local mall. Make a big deal about the Smile Card drawing with a sign sporting the photo of the latest winner up in the office, on your website and in your newsletter. This is a win for the new patient, a win for the referrer and a win for you!

Dental marketing can be as simple as asking for a referral with a Smile Card when a procedure has pleased one of your patients—or sending out helpful reminders like a personal letter or a quarterly newsletter promoting your Smile Card drawing.

A little dental marketing can go a long way. Doing nothing—especially in times like these, can really deteriorate your practice.

Melinda Spitek is CEO of Hycomb Marketing Inc. Hycomb is an authority in marketing for dentists. Melinda has had plenty of hands-on experience as well, having worked 23 years in dental offices. For help with marketing, just call Hycomb at (800) 523-6961 or visit www.hycomb.com.

Filed Under: Dental Marketing Tagged With: dental marketing, dental practice marketing, dentist, dentistry, dentists, marketing, Melinda Spitek, smile cards

Dental Marketing: The Power of Words (video)

January 17, 2012 By Jim Du Molin Leave a Comment

Dental marketing is an opportunity to reinforce your dental practice, market your dental treatments and build your name online.

Using the right dental marketing phrases can create a connection with new dental patients and establish credibility.

The following video is being shared by Purplefeather on YouTube to illustrate how the power of words can change your marketing message and engage your readers.

Alonso Alvarez Barreda created this short film originally called, “The Story of a Sign.” It was the winner of the NFB Online Competition Cannes in 2008 and was produced in Mexico/U.S.A. The music is by Giles Lamb. The director is Seth Gardner. The cast is Bill Thompson and Beth Miller.

Some of the most powerful words used in marketing are you, free, save, easy, health, and guarantee. Does your dental marketing include powerful words that connect you with your dental patients?

Filed Under: Dental Marketing, Dental Videos Tagged With: dental marketing, dental practice marketing, dentist, dentistry, dentists, Internet dental marketing, marketing, viral videos

Warning: Dentists in Texas Should Use Internet Dental Marketing

January 10, 2012 By Catherine Hughes 1 Comment

While direct mail marketing doesn’t even come close that of Internet dental marketing, there are still dentists who prefer it as a method to market new dental patients.

Lord Dental in Fort Worth Texas probably wishes they had gone the Internet dental marketing route after resident Jill Dominguez received their mail piece and thought it was a scam.

The mail piece outlined the upcoming changes for children enrolled in the Texas Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program and how they will be managed after March 1st. It included an advertisement for the services of dentist Leyla Lord.

Upset, Jill Dominguez wrote to Dave Lieber, the watchdog reporter for the Star-Telegram. She stated, “Nowhere on these forms does it say ‘solicitation’ or ‘advertisement’ or any such thing.” Dominguez felt the mailing could be a violation.

Lieber contacted Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman for the Texas health commission who told him,“Our rules do limit direct marketing for health plans and providers, and this mailing violates that rule. We’ve contacted this dental office to let them know. The state rules that apply to our managed-care organizations and providers are new territory for dentists, so the dental office may not have been aware of these rules.”

Goodman further states that, “Direct marketing is defined as marketing that targets an individual. It’s someone calling you, knocking on your door or sending a mail out directly to you. Direct marketing doesn’t include radio, TV or print ads because the audience there is broader. When someone hears a radio ad, they know that the ad wasn’t meant specifically for them.”

The state then contacted Lord’s dental practice after Dominguez’s complaint.

It turns out dentist Leyla Lord’s husband is an attorney and he responded to the claim that Lord’s dental practice was using direct mail marketing for advertising her dental practice by saying, ”The mailings blanketed the 76103 ZIP code as a way to alert his wife’s patients and others in the neighborhood about the change (when Texas moves to a managed-care system).”

In response to Watchdog Leiber’s quote of the Texas law, that a dental practice “shall not conduct any direct contact marketing except through enrollment events,” Lord’s husband pointed out the ridiculousness of the “direct contact” statement and asked what it means.

I guess it means you better be careful what you mail to your dental patients in Texas. Stick with Internet dental marketing. It’s safer.