by Did you know that the difference between success and failure in dental marketing comes down to one essential thing – that your dental practice probably isn’t doing?
If you want to separate yourself from the pack and develop a steady, consistent new patient pipeline, you’ll need to take a step that they don’t teach in dental school.
What are we talking about? Tracking and measuring your marketing data.
Now, you’re probably thinking, “Hey, wait a minute. We collect new patient data. Right?” Wrong.
Sure, you’ve got records. You know how many new patients come through your doors each week. If you work with a marketing company, they may even present you with monthly reports stuffed full of arcane figures like click-through rate or ad impressions.
But are you measuring the SUCCESS of your marketing? Almost certainly not.
Here’s a question to ask yourself: do you know how well each step of your marketing funnel is performing? How much are you spending to generate an opportunity and convert them into a new patient – and how good are you at convincing them to keep coming back for routine checkups and cleanings?
To get clear answers to those questions (and open the floodgates of new patient growth) you’ll need to track 3 key data points
1. Cost per Opportunity (CPO)
How much does it cost to get a potential new patient to call your practice asking about an appointment (contacting you via chat or email counts too)? CPO measures your top-of-funnel performance – like your ad campaign, website, and social media.
2. Cost per Acquisition (CPA)
How much does it cost to bring a real live new patient through your doors? CPA builds on CPO by including not just your top-of-funnel costs, but your conversion costs. If your call team is only converting 50% of your marketing calls, for example, then your CPA could be double your CPO.
3. Average Time to Appointment
Did you know that most dental practices make new patients wait a week or more for an appointment – and that the longer a new patient waits, the less likely they are to actually show up? By tracking your average time to appointment, you can start moving that number downward and plugging a big hole near the bottom of your marketing funnel.
Since we’re having such a good time, let’s throw a bonus data point on the table: your recare rate. After all, you know that consistent, recurring patients are worth their weight in gold. Be sure to track how many of your new patients show up for future appointments. That number holds the key to establishing predictable long-term revenue.
Marketing is More Fun with Friends!
If you’d rather perform back-to-back extractions than tackle data-driven marketing alone, meet your new friends at SMC. We’ll give you the efficient, predictable new patient growth you need – scaled to fit the size of your group and with NO long-term contracts.
Open the new patient floodgates today at smcnational.com!
