Your 2020 Internet Marketing Plan

We are already well into 2020, and in an ideal world, you would be executing your new internet marketing plan by now. At Firegang, we’ve worked with thousands of dentists across the country, so we understand the overwhelming schedule of a dentist often gets in the way of planning the future of your practice. If you haven’t had time to create a 12-month plan to skyrocket your practice, don’t worry, you can still take 2020 by storm with an internet marketing plan that will have you in awe of your remarkable practice by the end of the year. Click the video below to watch the full webinar on Your 2020 Internet Marketing Plan.

 

Set Clear Goals for Your Practice in 2020

When you are setting goals for 2020, you want to have concrete objectives written down, so you can plan your marketing towards them. If you set a goal to generally “grow your practice,” it becomes difficult to measure your goals in a profitable way. Choosing abstract goals can lead to overspending both time and money on haphazard marketing, because it is unclear what tangible objectives you are trying to achieve. When you get specific with your goal-setting, you can measure if your marketing is on track, and create a prosperous practice.

There are three types of goals you should set for 2020:

• 1-Year Goal - What is your practice revenue going to be at the end of 2020?
• Quarterly Goal - Do you want to be able to afford to hire a new associate by the end of this quarter?
• Monthly Goal - Do you want to triple the amount of new patients each month?

If you start the video above at 10:35, you can calculate exactly how many new patients you need in order to reach these goals. The most important part of goal-setting is to set stopping points at the beginning and end of each quarter to reflect on your progress, and ask: How did our practice do based on the goal we set? What can we continue to do or change entering this next quarter?

Hit Your Goals with the 3 Components of Profitable Dental Marketing

Let’s say your practice needs 30 new patient opportunities a month in order to reach your revenue goal for 2020. That’s 30 potential new patients, calling your practice, to possibly schedule an appointment. As much as we wish those patients would just dial your number right away, marketing works as a funnel, and it starts with advertising your practice

Use the 3 Components of Profitable Dental Marketing to create an internet marketing funnel that will help you reach your 2020 goals:

1. Visibility  - Patients need to know that your practice exists. Visibility is established by strategically choosing where to advertise online: whether it’s on Google, Facebook, Instagram, or in positive reviews.
   
2. Differentiation - Give patients a reason to choose you over anyone else. When you update your marketing message for 2020, you will communicate to your ideal patient that you are the #1 dentist for them
3. Conversion - When a potential new patient sees an ad, clicks it, visits your website, calls your practice, and books an appointment, they have been fully converted through your funnel. You need a curated website and a brilliant front office to convert more new patients.

Once the 3 Components of Dental Marketing are set up for your practice, you will be able to predict how many new patients you will book based on your marketing budget! This will help you adjust your marketing budget to maximize your ROI.

Visibility Trends in 2020 

Every year, the way patients search for a new dentist drastically changes, and 2020 is no different. While search-engine-optimization is still important, your marketing needs to put a higher priority on visibility optimization in 2020. Visibility optimization divides ad spend across multiple platforms, such as Facebook, Google, and Instagram, to guarantee your practice is showing up everywhere new patients are looking. Compare your ad spend to stock investments: if you went all-in on one platform, you are risking to lose a lot of money. When you diversify your visibility, you increase your chances of booking more new patients, with less risk.

The graph below shows how one dental practice has optimized their visibility, so they are seen and noticed by new patients across every marketing channel.

Update Your Marketing Message for 2020

In 2020, dentists need to speak directly to their ideal patient if they want to win them over. Your ideal patient is surrounded by a lot of “noise” made by your competition’s marketing, but if you can cut through the noise and strike a chord with your ideal patient with specific messaging, they will choose you every time. Think about who your ideal patient is and what they really want from a dentist: Are they a mom with kids? Are they a young adult with concerns about cost? Are they a senior worried about accessibility?

Once you have defined your ideal patient, you can create a marketing message that speaks to them. We could say “we provide great care” or “appointments available,” but these phrases are used by every dental practice out there, and they aren’t specific enough to speak directly to our ideal patient’s needs. 

Instead, choose specific messaging that speaks to convenience, money, and time. For example, a mother looking to get an appointment for their kids might need Early Morning Appointments before school. For the young adult, 0% Financing Options might help them pay for Invisalign. For a senior, 1-2 Day Implants might be exactly what they need. If your practice is the only one in your area that offers a feature like this, you need to include that everywhere in your internet marketing message! When updating your 2020 marketing message, keep in mind: What benefits does your practice offer that your ideal patient will resonate with?

Get a Website That Converts

Once you have taken the steps to make your practice visible and updated your entire marketing message to ensure patients click on those ads, you will have hundreds of new patient leads landing one place: your website. If your website is not set up to convert those potential new patients, then all the work you did to create visibility and update your messaging will not be profitable. The fastest way to instantly improve your website conversion is to display your dental practice’s phone number in a prominent way. Use large, easy-to-read font, and enable click-to-call so patients can call right away. You also want to confirm your updated marketing message on your home page. You don’t want potential new patients to have to go looking for a reason to book with you...answer all of their questions and concerns before they even call your office!

After working with thousands of dentists, we have calculated that the average dental website converts 2% of visitors into new patient opportunities, but with this website below, we have tripled that to 6% conversion:

Here are a few ways you can set up your website to convert:

• Replace stock photos with actual photos of your office and staff
• Leverage video & multi-media
• Display social proof - link your reviews from Google and Yelp
• Display testimonials from patients
• Put clear calls-to-action on every page
• Allow for online booking
• Make your website mobile-friendly

How Much Can Conversion Impact Your Revenue?

We have found that, in our 10+ years in the dental marketing industry, the average dental website converts 2% of website visitors into calls. Take a look at the chart below to see how the same practice’s revenue changes when they simply optimize their website for conversion.

If we refer back to our goal of 30 new patient opportunities every month...2% website conversion isn’t going to get us there. But when we utilize all of those website features (real photos, call-to-actions, mobile-friendly, book online) to upgrade our website conversion to 6%, we will have 30 new patient opportunities, and 15 scheduled new patients every month. 

According to the ADA, the average value of a 1st-year patient is $1400, which helps us calculate the difference between a low-conversion website and a high-conversion website. A low-conversion website will generate $7,000 of new patient revenue each month, while a high-conversion website will generate $21,000 of new patient revenue each month.

The Biggest Marketing Issue Facing Dentists: Unconverted Leads

If you have committed to spending money on your visibility, and have distributed your ads throughout several platforms with your updated marketing message, but patients are not calling or booking with you, then you have a conversion problem. People are actively choosing not to call or book with you. But this is not a unique issue, in fact, according to a study by VIVA Concepts, for 100 new patient phone calls the average dental practice receives, only 23 of them convert. That leaves 77% of calls unconverted! How are so many dental practices losing these new patient leads? Why are only a small percentage of calls booking? 

Many practices struggle to train their staff to properly convert phone calls into new patients. While no one wants to call a dental practice and hear a sales-person on the other end, you cannot deny that the front office staff is essentially “closing a deal” by booking an appointment. Finding the balancing act between being kind and understanding, while convincing a new patient that an appointment at your practice is a valuable opportunity, should be the goal at every practice. Click here to learn how we help the front office staff of practices across the country build rapport and book more new patients.

Your 2020 Integrated Marketing Approach

Your 2020 internet marketing plan is made up of three major components: Visibility, Differentiation, and Conversion. Without one of these pieces, you will not be able to hit your monthly, quarterly, and yearly goals consistently. But when all three pieces are working together, it forms an integrated marketing approach. Your ads are showing up where patients are looking, they are giving new patients a reason to choose you over anyone else, and your website and front office staff are ready to convert them into scheduled new patients. When that happens, your monthly new patient revenue multiplies...

In this example, choosing to use an integrated internet marketing approach in 2020 created a difference between adding $84,000 in new patient revenue in 2020, or adding $453,000. Are you ready to make up the $369,000 difference in 2020?

Finalizing Your 2020 Internet Marketing Plan

Setting concrete, measurable goals for your internet marketing is just the beginning to build a remarkable and rewarding practice in 2020. Once you have diversified your visibility, updated your marketing message, and optimized your website for conversion, you will finalize your plan by connecting all three components through an integrated marketing approach. If you want to learn more about how Firegang’s proven Integrated Marketing Approach can transform your dental practice in 2020, then schedule a free assessment call with us by clicking below.