Acquiring customers for your dental practice is and always will be an ongoing process.
Acquiring customers for your dental practice is and always will be an ongoing process. But, the process costs money.
And that can really hurt your bottom-line when it comes to advertising. There are a lot of things you can do very easily and very inexpensively to get your practice out in front of people.
Most of those practices are going to be in social media engagement and in how well you monitor your costs and effort ratio. Here, we will touch on how you can do this using the free or mostly free tools that are already available to you.
1. Tracking your metrics for customer acquisition and cost
Twice per year at the very least or maybe quarterly as well as after every campaign you participate it’s wise to track your advertising results. This is especially true when you are involved in social media Facebook ads and other platforms that cost money to put a blog out.
If you can create a content schedule that aligns with an advertising schedule and budget you should be able to look at what works; what works best; what doesn’t work at all and what to get rid of.
Your digital marketing manager will keep you on track with the new trends and changes in your advertising choices. Knowing what’s what and what’s not is pivotal in saving money and getting the most bang for your buck.
Without this knowledge, you may be throwing good money after bad.
Take a look at the infographic from a great resource for this type of thing. You can see more on the link but this infographic gives you a good idea as to what you’ll be tracking and why. You also must weigh up what it costs you to retain your patients that you want coming back How are you targeting them and encouraging repeat?
Using the channels on the infographic will allow you to reduce costs in customer acquisition by simply sorting out what has not yielded a satisfactory per customer profit. In other words if your organic search isn’t doing it then get with a digital marketer and fix it. So much is attached to your marketing that is on the back-end. It could be your links it could be the misuse of hashtags etc.
It’s not hard with qualified help. You simply look at your report and attack what is not working then let the professionals do the rest.
2. Communicate directly with your existing patients and your potentials directly
Social media is one of the greatest tools you have to work with to acquire new patients. Twitter is one that you can utilize the same way big-name companies do.
The few good suggestions they give you are all ways to acquire new patients, they work regardless of the business. It’s all about engaging your clientele. If the content is good then asking for a retweet or a follow or even an opinion will be a no-brainer.
Make a meetup at the same time and same day each week and talk about some real issues with dental health and treatment. Then, strategically ask for the aforementioned three things once within your talk show and once at the end.
Bottom line- call to action is the key to using this type of social media. Once you have a captive audience and you have regularly given them useful information–you’ll then be able to make an offer to get them into your practice.
Suggestion one of a download is brilliant. You could give away a guide to oral health or better yet, recipes to tooth healthy foods. Then, BAM you’ll have local business in no time. What did it cost? Nothing but some time.
3. Become an expert in your field or specialization
Is there something you can use all your digital marketing tools to prove your expertise with? Using social media and press releases is an easy and inexpensive way to generate new custom. There are people out there that need expert information and questions answered about the latest dental procedures and technology.
Can you help them? Then, at the same time invite them to come to your practice. Schedule a meetup for all your local followers at an open house. What it costs you for a few light refreshments will pay off in new patients.
This can be a valuable tool. Early childhood dental care. You can use this as a bulletin on social media and share it. Talk about it yourself on twitter and Google +. There is no greater draw to your practice than your expertise. If you can solve health issues for your followers, you have a patient for life.
4. Continually improve your content and change it up
Content is one of the most effective ways to acquire new patients that will cost very little. After all, your digital marketing management company are the only people you’re paying to do all of this for you. From white papers to dental health and other health guides and tips this is what draws people to you.
But, you have to change it up. From video to twitter talk shows as we mentioned before to giveaways and contests this is what people are paying attention to. They want to know where they can get the cheapest cleaning or whitening as well as the most high-quality professional job.
5. Leverage organic search
The amount of people using online search is at 78% Pay per Click is a fantastic traffic driver to the website; however, there is a lot to be said for organic reach. Getting all the content marketing and tie it into creating organic search and flawless local search is what you need to grow your dental business before anything else.
This can lower the cost it takes per lead. In turn it gives you the option of weeding out the other more expensive methods you’ve been doing.
One of the ways you can increase your organic search is optimizing your website and refreshing your content regularly. Blogs are great for this. If need be get your digital marketer to post at least once a day and on your social media 2-3 times a day.
Conclusion
These are some of the ways you can use dental digital marketing and platforms to reduce customer acquisition cost in a measurable way. If you feel like your practice could use our help, fill out the contact form to get in touch.
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