Printer Friendly Email Article

April 3, 2009 | dentalproductsreport.com

Increase your ROI

Accurately tracking your practice’s marketing efforts can help you determine what brings new patients to your office and what doesn’t.

Dental professionals, out of necessity, must pay close attention to detail. It is surprising, then, to learn how little attention is paid to monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of dentistry marketing tactics.

The good news is, with a little planning and preparation, the process is simple and the benefits are huge. When it comes to marketing your practice, the more complete, timely and accurate the tracking, the better equipped you are to capitalize on opportunity and minimize cost.

Asking your patients "Who may we thank for referring you?" is an unreliable, risky way to assess marketing tactic efficacy. Here’s why:

• The lag between exposure and response to a message means the new patient may not know or remember what prompted him or her to contact you
• Because people often need to be exposed to multiple instances of the same message before they respond, it is likely you will only hear about the last thing they saw or heard that caused them to respond 
• It takes up team member time 
• It risks alienating prospective patients by interrogating them instead of selling them on practice benefits. People are contacting you to make an appointment, not to tell you about your marketing.

Monitoring quality, not just quantity, of response 

Automating your response tracking allows you to identify opportunities to improve the quality of your communication with prospective patients, as well as eliminate obstacles to success.  Because telephone calls can be recorded, you actually hear what scenarios are playing out at the front desk. This allows you and your team to work together to find better ways to field inquiries.

Perfection remains elusive

It is important to recognize it may never be possible to completely track the benefits of a marketing program. Do not expect your tracking system to monetize the benefits from increased name recognition and contribution to brand awareness. But remember it is possible to establish, implement and maintain a reliable tracking methodology (see, "Have a plan").

Tracking with TTNs

Tracking most strategies is greatly enhanced by using tracking telephone numbers (TTN). TTNs make it possible to monitor and evaluate response quantity and quality. In choosing a TTN provider:

• Make sure the area code and three digit prefixes are as close to the practice’s as possible. This helps reduce any confusion in the minds of prospective patients who may wonder why they are being asked to call a number that appears to be outside of the area.  
• Avoid using toll-free numbers, as any benefit from offering the caller toll-free service is overshadowed by the perception that yours may be a large, impersonal entity. Do everything you can to convey a local flavor to prospective patients.

Be sure the tracking telephone numbers are new or, if recycled, have been inactive for at least 60 days. Otherwise, you run the risk of being interrupted and distracted by (and paying for) wrong numbers.

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

1 of 2