{"id":1923,"date":"2021-08-12T19:18:30","date_gmt":"2021-08-12T19:18:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tntdental.com\/blog\/?p=1923"},"modified":"2021-08-12T22:53:20","modified_gmt":"2021-08-12T22:53:20","slug":"is-your-dental-marketing-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tntdental.com\/blog\/is-your-dental-marketing-working\/","title":{"rendered":"How Do You Know if Your Dental Practice’s Marketing is Working?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DentalIn our previous \u201cSecrets of How Top 10% Dental Practices Build Their Marketing Budget\u201d<\/a> article, the goal you want to strive for when building your marketing budget is an average of $100 per dental patient. With that budget, if you get 30 patients a month, that comes to $3,000 a month and $36,000 a year… but, how do you know your dental practice’s marketing is working?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n


\nUsing Software to Assess the Effectiveness
\nof Your Dental Office’s Marketing
\n<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"DentalThe best way to determine if your dental office’s marketing strategy is working is through assessing metrics, sometimes known as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). There are some good dental practice management software overlay tools out there to use, but be prepared to tack on another $4,000 – $5,000 to your marketing budget!<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Dental Intel<\/strong> \u2013 software built for dentists to overlay on top of your dental practice management software, designed to help track numbers and increase production.<\/li>\n
  2. Practice by Numbers<\/strong> \u2013 another dental practice management software overlay option that assesses practice analytics and call tracking.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This leaves you with a couple of options… 1)<\/strong> you can either lower your overall marketing budget to account for additional software expenses, or 2)<\/strong> you can do basic KPI tracking on your own by maintaining a spreadsheet to measure the practice\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n
    \n

    Prefer a DIY Approach?<\/em>
    \nHere’s 5 Key Dental Patient Metrics
    \nYou’ll Want to Track Each Month<\/h2>\n

    If you’re desiring to crunch the numbers yourself and provide your dental office with its own KPI tracking, you will need to make sure you evaluate the below figures each month to determine if your strategy is working.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n
    \n

    \"How<\/strong>1) New Patients<\/h3>\n

    This is the simplest metric to measure! It is simply the number of new dental patients entered into your dental practice management software.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n
    \n

    \"Best<\/strong>2) New Patient Sources<\/h3>\n

    This is where your dental patients came from. Remember, the five best sources<\/strong> to focus on when it comes to new patient acquisition are:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Referrals from Existing Patients<\/li>\n
    2. Google \/ Search Engine Optimization (SEO)<\/li>\n
    3. Community Outreach<\/li>\n
    4. Dental Insurance Marketing<\/li>\n
    5. Paid Marketing (Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      There can<\/em> be a slight challenge sometimes when pinning down dental patient sources on your own. Sometimes, a patient can technically come from more than one avenue, making it hard to determine where you attracted any given person. This is where practice management software overlays like Dental Intel and Practice by Numbers can oftentimes remove a little more of the guesswork (but, even they are not perfect).<\/p>\n

      Keys to Getting Accurate New Patient Information<\/h4>\n

      When a new dental patient calls the dental practice, encourage your team to ask where they heard about you. You can also review new patients in your morning huddle and challenge them to find out any missing information pertaining to where new patients came from. By your next morning huddle, they\u2019ll hopefully have the answers you need to tie up any loose ends!<\/p>\n

      Don\u2019t forget<\/strong>… any information you pin down, you have to put into your dental practice management software! What good is it to get the information if you don\u2019t track it?!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

      \n
      \n

      \"How<\/strong>3) Total Monthly Production
      \n<\/strong><\/h3>\n

      This is how many dental patients you\u2019ve seen and how much production was generated per appointment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

      \n
      \n

      \"Total4) Total Number of Monthly Appointments<\/h3>\n

      This figure is the total number of dental patients who came into your practice. This total has a direct impact on your production!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

      \n
      \n

      \"Average<\/strong>5) Average Production Per Patient<\/h3>\n

      You can determine this by dividing your monthly production number by the number of dental patients seen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

      \n
      \n

      No One Said It’s Easy
      \n<\/strong><\/h2>\n

      \"BestIf you cannot, or do not, want to commit to tracking these numbers and completing an ongoing analysis yourself… it\u2019s important to remember practice management software overlays and other paid measurement tools probably aren’t going to be the magic bullet you are looking for. While this type of software can provide innumerable benefits and deep analyses, they also do require a personal time commitment \u2014 as well as a culture change on how you and your team evaluate success and communicate with one another. Don\u2019t throw away your marketing dollars on software to do the analysis for you if you’re not ready to commit!<\/p>\n

      It could be advantageous to start slow and track the numbers yourself until you feel as though you’re ready to “level up” and dig deeper. In tracking these numbers on your own, you can and will discover the information needed to make smart, tangible decisions about your dental practice’s future. These include:<\/p>\n