Tracking digital marketing return on investment is not easy accomplish. In this episode, Linda discusses different digital marketing approaches and how to determine your ROI.
Linda provides dental professionals actionable marketing knowledge they can use to grow their dental practice.
Linda Mettler: PPC is paper. And this is the non organic, non organic or paid advertising. When it comes to digital marketing, most people do this on Google. And again, the trick to really good pay
per click Welcome to the matalin Marketing Podcast where we will talk about marketing strategies and tactics to grow your practice. I am your host, Linda Mettler and I have worked with dental
practices for several years now. And I want to share my knowledge and experience with you so that you can gain valuable and actionable steps on how to grow your practice. We will talk about the latest
and greatest and marketing features some guest speakers so that you can hear firsthand what is and is not working and help you unravel the complexities of the digital marketing world. I work really
closely with my clients. So we will also delve into some other issues that affect your practice from time to time, such as staffing problems, COVID protocols and similar issues. Well, good morning,
everybody. Or should I say good morning sports fans because right now there's a quite a bit going on in the sports world. We've got Wimbledon going on, and the NBA Finals all at the same time. So
that's what's happening in my house. We're just bouncing back and forth on TV channels watching tennis and basketball. Exciting times. So But anyway, let's let's dive into some dental marketing this
morning, if you're not interested in the NBA Finals, or Wimbledon, and this morning, I want to chat with you about a little more about digital marketing channels, and how to figure out your your
return on investment or ROI term that everybody knows, and how to kind of look and see which digital marketing channels will give you the best ROI, the biggest bang for your buck. There's a lot of
options to choose from when it comes to digital marketing channels. And it's really important that you collect data and analytics so that you can figure out your ROI. Because ROI in the world of
digital marketing is not really easy to figure out. It's not like selling a dress that costs $5 to make, and you sell it for $20. And your ROI is 15 digital marketing is not that easy to to track all
the time. So it's really, really important that you pay attention to your analytics. And there are a lot of analytics, every digital marketing platform offers them. They're just not always easy to
interpret. So you either need to spend some time getting educated on how to interpret those analytics. Or make sure you work with a marketing firm, that or marketing consultant that absolutely knows
how to interpret those analytics, Google Analytics being the number one you want to know what's happening on your website, how many impressions you have, how many clicks, people that are clicking onto
your website from those impressions, all those kinds of analytics you want to look at all every month at least. And the other thing you want to do when it comes to analytics is you want to make sure
you have a good tracking system inside your office. So make sure that front desk or intake person is on and your new patient paperwork is asking people how did they hear about your office. And a lot
of times where analytics get a little murky or a little tough is that someone may have heard about your office through a referral. But they're also going to go to your website and check you out. Or
they're going to look you up on social media. So that's where it gets a little bit hard with digital marketing to, you know, track those analytics, but just keep that in mind. And just do your best to
ask your patients where where they heard of you. Or you can even say, you know, did you visit our website before coming to our office. So in talking a little more about digital marketing. A good ROI
in digital marketing is typically around five to one, although it might be a little different for your office, but that's typically typically about the right
ROI is about five to one. So and one of the but if you want to have some really good ROI, without a lot of cost, your best. Your best chance for that is SEO and content marketing. So SEO is search
engine optimization. And that's obviously the process of making your website work. rank higher on the digital marketing platforms, namely Google, which for not without doing paid advertising, and as
we discussed in a prior podcast, that's known as organic digital marketing or organic SEO, the best way to do that is through content on your website, and keywords. So you definitely want to make sure
you have the best keywords, you want to set your, your web developer or your marketing person to do a lot of research and figure out what those best keywords are for your site. And then that's going
to get you a great ranking, great content ranking for the good keywords, and that's going to really pay off for you, that's going to give you a higher ROI, probably closer to seven to one or eight to
one ROI. And not a lot of cost. But that is Seo or something that should absolutely be considered a long term digital marketing strategy, because the value just increases over time. It's not a pay per
click campaign or social media ad campaign that can give you results instantly or, or quickly. It's something that takes time to build. But SEO content, SEO keywords are something that, again, take
time to build are a long term strategy, but can give you the best bang for your buck, the best ROI out there. Another way for content marketing on your website, to really rank high, besides your
keywords, is to write some long form blog posts. What do I mean by long form, meaning, you know, 500 words or more. So start writing those blogs, you guys have lots of stuff to write blogs about in
the dental world for sure. You know, you guys are doing lots of see and lots of work and and learning new things in dentistry all the time. So as you go, write your blogs about that write a blog
about, you know, attaining your your fellowship in the Academy of general dentistry, write a blog post about charity work you do for the mission of mercy, or other charities in your area, write a blog
post about cosmetic dentistry and all the different options out there. And put those blogs on your website, as well as your social media, all your digital channels, put those blog posts out there. And
that will definitely help you not, again, is something that gives you great ROI with digital marketing, because it increases the content on your website gives you higher ranking on Google. And is is
very cost effective or no cost to do that at all is to write those blog posts. If you don't have time to write your blogs, you can actually hire a blog writer to do that for you. However, if you do
that, I caution you to read carefully what they write, because the best person to write a blog post for your website is you. You're the dentist, you're the expert, you're the one that has the
experience. So
if you do hire that out, be sure to proofread that Be sure to edit that and throw in a paragraph or two or a couple sentences that have your voice and your experience in that blog post. So that's a
really good way, you know, to help with SEO, and content marketing, and increase your ROI with very little cost. Another great way that I really think is great with that to increase your ROI. Your
marketing ROI that has a low cost a low marketing cost is email marketing, when it's done correctly, it can really be great. And it does a couple of things for you as a dental office. It increases
your brand awareness, and it helps with retention with your existing patients. And it also increases visibility for new patients. And how does it do that? It does that because your emails can go out
on your social media. You can also host those email newsletters on your website. So when new patients are coming to look for you or they find you online, they can see those emails that have gone out.
But your existing patients, you can offer them a lot of great information you can you know give them links to good health content. Gosh, lots of post pandemic pre not pre pandemic but pandemic and
post pandemic health information you can keep them up up To date with things going on, you can offer them discounts and specials and referral discounts for referring new patients to you, they can
share those emails with people. And they can forward those emails to their friends. So email marketing is really popular in the digital marketing world, and it can give you some really high ROI. And
it definitely just increases your brand and reinforces your relationship with your existing patients. And there's so many great email channels out there, you can use Constant Contact, or MailChimp, or
a lot of your practice management software. I know revenue, well has a built in email platform dentrix, I think does as well. So you can just, you know, upload your patient database of emails, write
into that practice management software, and send emails out right from your, your software on your desktop very easily. And I highly recommend that you do that. I don't think you need to send an email
every month, but I think maybe every other month, so bi monthly emails are a great way, just stay in front of your patients. Put some personal, personal professional pictures in there, maybe if a
staff member has an anniversary, they've been with you for five years or 10 years, maybe put that in an email, a quick email blast, send out email blasts to everybody on holidays, you know, Happy
Fourth of July, Merry Christmas, Happy Thanksgiving, that kind of thing. those emails, you just want to be about the holiday. But then in between those times, send out those emails, offering specials
offering, you know, good health information content for your patients. So that's, that's great. And email marketing will definitely be a great, I'll give you a great ROI for sure. So, and then social
media, of course, social media has some great ROI in the digital marketing world. The trick, social media can definitely be tricky. It's a very broad category. You know, one of the best social media
platforms, in terms of ROI is Tick tock, but I don't know a lot of dental offices that are on Tick Tock. The younger ones are for sure the younger dental offices you guys out there are super social
market, social media and social marketing, savvy and able to do those fun Tick Tock videos, which all your, you know, younger patients love so that that's awesome. But for sure, definitely you want to
be on social media. And we'll talk in another podcast episode, a little more about social media and why it matters for your dental office and what some of those best platforms are. But the one thing
that you should know with social media marketing these days, is it's all about video, and
video and images. So you've absolutely got to be on Instagram, and YouTube. That's where your social media is going to really give you the biggest return on investment. And I know nobody likes to be
on video, at least none of my clients do, including me. I don't love it either. But we've got it all up our game on video and images when it comes to social media. And we'll up our ROI as well. If we
do that. Another thing, great thing for ROI on social media is contests and giveaways. So definitely consider that they're, they're trickier, they're a little you've got to set them up the right way,
you've got to use the right tools have to spend a little bit of time and money on your contest. But if you do it right, it'll definitely help improve brand awareness. You can promote a specific
product or generate leads, you know, obviously, I always think of brown cosmetic surgery or cosmetic dentistry, if you want to go that way. You know, do do a contest lets people win some whitening,
free whitening. Or maybe they can, you know, get $400 off of veneers, that kind of thing. So social media contests and giveaways are definitely a great way to offer long term value.
You know, reach a big new new audience of potential new patients and get some leads. So don't overlook that. You know, your cost on that is minimal, might take a little bit of time to set it up
correctly. But just you know, give a little bit of thought and strategy to that. And that can be a great ROI for you. So another another area that that a lot of people go into With return on
investment or strategy for, you know, greater ROI in the digital marketing world is known as PPC. And PPC is pay per click. And this is the non organic, non organic or paid advertising. When it comes
to digital marketing, most people do this on Google. And again, the trick to really good pay per click getting a good ROI is to understand your data and your analytics, you've got to understand
exactly what you're targeting. So pay per click ads on Google take some strategy, and they take some time to set up, and you've got to understand where your money's going. And this is probably the
most expensive form of digital marketing, you know, if you want to boost your ROI. So you've got to figure out your strategy. You know, how, how long do you want to do this? How much money do you want
to spend on display ads? Again, I think in terms of Google, there's other platforms out there. There's there's Bing, there's, you know, other things, but Google ads, when you look at Google, the
average ROI is about an $8 return for every dollar spent. So that's, that's a pretty good ROI. But you do have to optimize your ad campaign so that you can target the right keywords, so that you can
become visible to the right and potential new patients, so that your digital marketing campaign can reap those high rewards. So it does take some planning, it does take some strategy, when you're when
you're going into paid ads on Google, what I what I like to do for our clients is run two of them at the same time, and then watch those over a period of a couple of weeks or a month, and then change
those up. So I like to see which one gets me better traction. So maybe one that focuses a little more on general dentistry, maybe, you know, five star dental office locally, or you know, 50 to 85,
Star dentist 50 to 80 is an ad that, or is a magazine in Colorado, rather, that promotes all the local great dentists. So we might focus on that. And then a sister ad maybe that focuses on a specific
service, maybe implants or crowns and veneers, restorative dentistry, or cosmetic dentistry. And I run those at the same time, kind of in a beta mode and just try to see which one gets me better
attraction. Or maybe I'll run two ads on general dentistry with a little bit different content on each ad for two weeks and see which one gets me better traction, and then tweak them from there. So so
that's definitely probably as far as ROI Pay Per Click might be your biggest bang for your buck, but it's your most expensive, you've got to throw in probably at least $500 a month on Pay Per Click
ads to get any traction at all, if not more. So keep that in mind. You know, your email marketing, your social media, also going to give you great bang for your buck and be a lot less expensive. And
then over time, just your organic content and keyword marketing on your website is going to really help you out. So whatever marketing channels you use, make sure you track the new patients and the
leads that are coming in. Make sure you look at your data and your analytics every month, so that you can tweak things as you go develop a strategy on the front end. And then look at your your data
and your analytics metrics as you go and then adjust those core, you know, quarterly or monthly so that you can really get the biggest bang for your buck and the biggest value on your ROI on your
digital marketing. So that's it for today. We'll talk a little bit and our next podcast will expand a little more on social media. Why it's good for your dental office and what platforms you should be
on and give you a few tips and tricks. And just remember if you want to have a good day go out there and make it a great day.
Ed Bejarana: Are you committed to the growth of your practice Mettler marketing can help at medtner marketing. We help dental practices gain new patients increase referrals and maximize patient
retention with customized Marketing Solutions tailored to fit your needs. Visit www dot medtner marketing.com to schedule a free consultation and learn how we can help grow your practice. Thank you
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