Adam Zilko, CEO & Founder of Firegang Dental Marketing, recently sat down with Dr. Glenn Vo, Founder of Nifty Thrifty Dentists, to discuss the evolution of online dental marketing, and why most dental marketers are stuck in a place where they can no longer help dentists grow their practices. Click below to hear Adam explain the progression of dental marketing.

To watch Adam's full interview in the Nifty Thrifty Dentists group, click here. 

To learn more about Firegang's Revenue Generation Marketing & claim the Nifty Thrifty Deal, click below:

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How Online Dental Marketing Has Evolved

Over the years, online dental marketing has changed. Originally, dental practices were looking to increase their website rankings, and all that mattered was search-engine optimization (SEO). But that only took dentists so far, because Google became more complex, and started to push websites down. This caused SEO to become a necessity for all practices, and allowed dental marketing strategies to really evolve, moving past rankings to focus on lead generation. Even today, most dental marketing companies are still prioritizing lead generation over anything else.

For the marketing companies that recognized lead generation wasn’t enough to help dentists succeed, they are now measuring their marketing success based on the number of new patients. At Firegang, this is something that we evolved into as well, not only sending leads to dentists, but getting new patients in the door, to actually show up.

Stuck on New Patient Numbers

The current problem, however, is that the dental industry is now stuck in this place: a narrowed focus on the monthly number of new patients. At Firegang, we realized this wasn’t enough to help dentists. What happens when you don’t have the right types of new patients, or they can’t spend money?

When you think about how new patients landed on your calendar, does that number really equate to how much money you will make, and help you grow your practice, or hire an associate? And most importantly: how come practices that often hit their new patient goals, still aren’t growing?

To get more specific, think about new patient special offers: how many of those new patients came in for a free consultation or an over-discounted cleaning, and never came back? How much revenue did that new patient actually produce for your practice?

A dental marketing strategy that is measured by the monthly number of new patients, is broken. The number of new patients doesn’t equate to revenue that grows a dental practice, and can often decrease the worth of a doctor’s time if a portion of those new patients came in for free consultations or discounted services.

The Future of Dental Marketing

The first step most marketing companies take to look beyond new patients, is by measuring and improving marketing ROI. But that only justifies the marketing cost, and it still doesn’t indicate whether your marketing is effectively growing your practice.

The future of dental marketing, where Firegang has moved to, is revenue generation. 

To learn more about Firegang's Revenue Generation Marketing & claim the Nifty Thrifty Deal, click below:

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We’ve identified that if we don’t target the same goals that the practice is focusing on, at the same time, then our goals aren’t aligned. Even practices with great new patient numbers and excellent ROI wonder why their business isn’t growing, or feel like they need to try something new to improve the results. 

Why do practices that have great marketing results, according to their marketing companies, want to jump ship to something new? Potentially, because the practice isn’t generating enough revenue, or it’s not moving in the right direction. 

How Firegang Achieves Revenue Generation

Most practices that hire marketing companies don’t have someone else looking at all of the facets in the business that are causing these roadblocks or barriers for revenue generation, including:

• Issues with case acceptance
• Front-office handling the phones
• Not collecting & analyzing the correct data (such as where the best new patients are coming from, or why certain leads aren’t booking appointments)

At Firegang, we tie all of those things together. Every step of your marketing, from the first time a patient searches for a new dentist until they walk in the door, is managed by Firegang. It makes it easy for us to remove the obstacles and roadblocks to get the outcome to where the dentist needs it to be, in order to grow their practice.

If the outcome we are measuring is new patients, it’s harder to nail down what’s holding the practice back from growing, because the marketing team and the dental practice aren’t focusing on the same outcome. The real end outcome, always, for any business, is revenue generation, and that should be the outcome your marketing company measures.

To learn more about Firegang's Revenue Generation Marketing & claim the Nifty Thrifty Deal, click below:

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Firegang Client Results...

One recent example of how we prioritized production and revenue for a client, is with our marketing strategy for Tulip Tree Dental Care. We adapted their marketing to attract high-quality new patients that were willing to overlook their insurance to pay fee-for-service for Tulip Tree’s treatment. By doing this, Tulip Tree was able to drop bad insurances and increase their production by 58% in fewer appointments. Click below to hear what Tulip Tree General Manager, Corey Hurcomb, had to say about the results, and click here for the full case study on Tulip Tree Dental Care.

To learn more about Firegang's Revenue Generation Marketing & claim the Nifty Thrifty Deal, click below:

Click Here for the Nifty Thrifty Deal