Ed Ridgway Archives - The Wealthy Dentist

Why Dental Marketing Requires Long-term Thinking

March 19, 2019 By Guest Author Leave a Comment

Sometimes it’s frustrating to hear that dental marketing results will take time. When dentists spend thousands of dollars on something, it’s only natural to want a return as soon as possible.

But marketing is really more of a marathon than a sprint.

The best results come over time.

It’s not unheard of for an advertising campaign to produce an immediate return, but that’s usually the exception to the rule. We hope for short-term response, but we plan for long-term results. Keep this in mind when you choose among your dental marketing options.

Once you pick your method, give the media enough time to produce. In most cases, the approach of “I’ll do this for a couple months and see how it goes” is a mistake and a waste of money.

Why are dental marketing results better over the long run?

One of the main reasons is because patients are likely to need multiple exposures to a message before they respond. Radio advertising provides a good example. Radio is a frequency medium, which means it works best when your ad makes repeated impressions on the same listener.

It can be expensive to make multiple impressions on a listener, especially in the larger markets, so it’s important to buy a station that you can afford. If you can’t afford to commit for at least six months, then you need to pick a less expensive station or put off radio until such a commitment is realistic.

One good media buyer I know tells his clients, “In the first month, you’re going to lose a (heck) of a lot of money. In the second month you’ll lose a little less. By the fourth or fifth month, you’ll start breaking even. And after six months, you’ll start making a lot of money.”

Now that first part might sound a little bleak, but if you’re planning long term, your investment won’t be evaluated by early results. At the end of the year the aggregated profit over the months should more than make up for a slow start.

I’ve seen dentists get multiple new patients the first day they ran a radio ad. That’s great for morale, but it’s not necessary for a successful campaign. Some of the best campaigns I’ve seen have started slow and built up over time.

Make sure you choose dental marketing methods that reflect this reality, and that your decisions are made for the long-term.

Ed Ridgway has executed dental marketing campaigns for hundreds of businesses in the U.S. and Canada. He is nationally recognized for his ongoing campaigns with many of the top dental practices across the country.

Filed Under: Dental Marketing Tagged With: Dental Marketing, dental practice, dental practice management, dental radio marketing, dentist, dentistry, dentists, dentists on the radio, Ed Ridgway, Internet dental marketing, marketing, radio advertising

Dental Marketing: What Kind of Dental Practice Should Advertise on the Radio?

March 19, 2019 By Guest Author Leave a Comment

Dental marketing is all about efficiency. It’s always best to keep doing the things that work and provide the most bang for the buck.

I’m one of the biggest proponents of radio advertising in the dental marketing industry because I’ve worked with so many practices who have seen great success from it. My company, Ridgway Consulting, is best known for our dental practice radio campaigns.

That being said, it’s not right for every practice.

Radio is a broadcast medium, like TV. This is significant because the radio signal often reaches a larger geographic area than what you might normally consider your practice’s base. Depending on the population in your area, you may mostly see patients that are within five, ten or twenty miles of your practice.

By contrast, some radio stations have the signal strength to reach listeners that are hours away.

The challenge with enormous “reach” of a broadcast like that is cost. When you advertise, you get what you pay for; in radio terms, that means radio stations charge you based upon the amount of listeners. So the problem is this: how can you be efficient when you are spending a portion of your marketing dollars to reach people who won’t travel as far as your office for dentistry?

The answer is simple – you need to have something that distinguishes you from the competition.

Radio only makes sense if you can offer something the other local practices are not offering. You need to give people a reason to pass by all the offices that are closer to their work and home, and make you their dentist of choice. That unique service, whether it be Invisalign, implants, sedation dentistry, or whatever, also needs to be a relatively profitable service.

It’s difficult to make an acceptable ROI when you advertise a low-dollar service like cleanings or whitening. Instead, use radio to advertise something like sedation. One big case, from someone who’s been away from dentistry for years, can pay for months of radio time.

Ed Ridgway has executed marketing campaigns for hundreds of businesses in the U.S. and Canada. He is nationally recognized for his ongoing campaigns with many of the top dental practices across the country.

Filed Under: Dental Marketing, The Wealthy Dentist Tagged With: Dental Marketing, dentists, Ed Ridgway, Internet dental marketing, radio advertising

Dental Marketing: The 3 Elements to Successful Radio Advertising

March 19, 2019 By Guest Author Leave a Comment

Radio can’t sell everything.

But for dental marketing, we know it can sell high-end dentistry.

Any dental advertiser who says, “radio doesn’t work,” used it wrong.

The 3 elements to successful dental marketing with radio advertising –

1. The right audience.

The first element to successful radio advertising is picking the right audience. This is done by selecting the proper radio station and the appropriate time of day to reach your target demographic.

2. The right frequency.

Next you need to find the right frequency. Radio is a frequency medium. Your results get better as time goes on, and you make repeated impressions on the same listener. Media buyers have different opinions as to how many commercials, or spots, is enough. The key is to spend just enough, without wasting money.

Underfunding a campaign is even more inefficient than over-funding it. If you can’t afford enough frequency on the most popular station in town, pick one you can afford or use another medium besides radio.

3. The right message.

The most important element to a successful radio campaign is the message. This includes the words, the voice, the music and the length of the commercial. Remember that we’re not trying to win awards for the most clever commercial – the only thing that matters is that the audience we are targeting picks up the phone and makes the call.

The simplest-sounding commercial often out-produces the slick polished spot with the smooth voice and the professional jingle. Don’t take your eye off the ball here. It’s not important that your staff, friends, and family all like your new commercial.

The only thing that matters for successful radio advertising is whether the commercial generates income.

Filed Under: Dental Marketing Tagged With: Dental Advertisements, Dental Marketing, dentist, dentistry, dentists, Ed Ridgway, marketing, radio advertising, successful radio advertising

Dental Marketing: Use a Media Buyer to Make Your Campaign More Efficient

September 13, 2011 By Guest Author

I’m not a media buyer.

While I understand radio and TV more than most, and I have done a good deal of media buying, it is not my strength. Whenever possible, I like to rely on experts to do things that I don’t do as well.

If you rely on someone else to design your dental website, do your taxes, or fix your car, you can understand my logic here.

Buying commercial time on radio and TV is not unlike buying a car, in that it is very common for two customers to pay very different prices for the exact same thing. The radio or TV station has a rate card that is the equivalent of a “sticker price.”

The typical customer knows intuitively that they don’t have to pay sticker price, but is often unsure what price is fair.

Those armed with the most knowledge, research, experience and negotiating ability will usually get the best deal. If you bought new cars for a living, eventually you would be pretty confident that you could strike a very good deal for yourself every time. But you don’t buy cars for a living, and you don’t buy media professionally either.

I use a media buyer.

When my dental clients buy commercial time, I know they’ll get a good rate because my media buyer knows exactly what the time is worth. She’s represented hundreds of dentists on hundreds of stations in hundreds of markets across the country. When she negotiates a price, she uses years of experience and extremely accurate and detailed ratings data to determine what price is efficient and fair.

Price is just one factor in the media buy.

Other considerations include the demographic composition of the market’s radio stations, the format of the programming, and the time of day to effectively reach the advertiser’s target market. So in addition to cost, a good media buyer can help you figure out where and when to advertise – and how much advertising is enough.

One benefit to using a media buyer that I cannot stress enough is their objectivity. They are only interested in your needs, not the needs of the various stations we must choose between.

Consider the car buying example again, because the representatives of a radio station have much in common with car salesmen. They believe in their product, they try to get the best price since their commission depends on it, and they don’t get paid if you buy from their competitor instead of them.

I used to be a radio sales rep, and I have no issue with car salesmen. Both can be an invaluable resource, but . . . you don’t want either to be your sole source of information.

Filed Under: Dental Marketing Tagged With: Dental Marketing, dental radio advertising, dentist, dentistry, dentists, Ed Ridgway, Internet dental marketing

Dental Marketing: When Buying Radio, Cheaper Isn’t Always Better

August 30, 2011 By Guest Author

In dental marketing, you get what you pay for.

Radio advertising offers a good example.

Radio stations base their rates on the size of their listenership. Typically 80% of their audience can be reached during the “prime time” of 6am to 7pm on weekdays.

Correspondingly, this is the most expensive time to advertise.

The “off hours” of weekday evenings, overnights and weekends have smaller audiences and are sold less expensively. They are cheaper because fewer people are listening.

Radio stations still need to sell this time. To do so, they often establish “packages” that contain little or no “prime” and a good deal of the nights and weekends. On paper, and especially to the untrained eye, these deals look good.

If the station sells time for up to $200 per minute, a package with an average rate of $50 looks like a steal. The efficient dentist, however, needs to make sure that he is not comparing apples to oranges. $50 is less than $200, obviously, but does it offer the same bang for the buck?

Experienced media buyers determine the value of commercial time by analyzing statistics like cost-per thousand (CPM) and cost per point (CPP). These figures illustrate the price per listener, which is the key number. Even more important is the price-per-target listener.

Your plan to reach middle-aged women cannot be efficiently executed if the listeners are largely teenage boys. When you examine a potential schedule, you need to look for the times when your money will work the hardest. It’s quite likely that the $200 spot in prime time will reach more than four times the target audience than the $50 off-hour commercial.

Let me be clear on a one thing. Non-prime commercials can be an effective part of your dental marketing radio campaign. I use them all the time to build frequency in campaigns that use mostly prime time. Some campaigns can be efficiently built on broad rotators, which run through all days and day-parts.

You just need to be clear on what the time is worth to get the most for your money.

And remember that cheaper is not always better.

Ed Ridgway has executed marketing campaigns for hundreds of businesses in the U.S. and Canada. He is nationally recognized for his ongoing campaigns with many of the top dental practices across the country.