Use Data Analysis for More Well-Informed and Effective Dental Marketing

A dental marketing “crystal-ball” would be useful, right?

Before you attempt to locate one realize that you already have the closest thing to it – how you use your data to market your dental practice.

There’s some “mystery” associated with marketing. Factor in ROI discussions and you’ll probably wonder how many new patients are a result of your spending.

Data de-mystified for better dental marketing

Consider how much you rely on technology in your dental practice(s) or across your DSO. The same reliance can be applied to your dental marketing strategies.

What drives technology in favor of marketing has much to do with the data you gather and analyze by using it.

• Identifying the data
• Collecting the data
• Analyzing the data
• Strategizing around the data

Those data-based insights can appear overwhelming. But processing each step by step makes it more manageable and thus more scalable as relates to your dental marketing.

Data (applied one step at a time) for well-informed dental marketing

Remember to keep your dental data in perspective. It ultimately helps define your patient demographics and how they engage with your practice.

You can get a good idea of your “ideal” patient by comparing specific data points. You’ll understand how and why they choose your practice, why they schedule, how they interact with a diagnosis, treatment plan and present cases, follow-up, and much more.

Data helps pinpoint steps along their oral health journey and relationship with your practice. It’s worth investing time and energy to unpack what the data tells you – so you can market more effectively.

Identify and collect the data showing how patients connect with your dental practice

This is about “channel” discovery. What marketing “channels” are preferred or chosen by specific segments of your current or new patients.

Channels typically fit in two categories these days.

• Digital marketing (online/website, social media, email, SMS/text, etc)
• Traditional marketing (direct mail, media ads, billboards, etc)

Here are some specific applications of those two primary categories:

• Digital Ads – Google Ads, Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads, etc
• SEO
• Review creation platforms
• Radio, TV, newspapers, magazines
• Email and social media
• Billboards and signage
• Direct mail flyers and postcard mailers

Patient demographics can reveal how patients are inclined to connect with your practice or organization. Don’t pre-judge and skew your analysis.

For example, it’s natural to assume that an older (senior) demographic would be less influenced by digital marketing and more so by traditional marketing. Data might reveal otherwise.

It’s vital to have a means of unpacking your data to determine who and what (medium) appeals to specific segments of your patient base – suspending all assumptions along the way.

Those assumptions could lead to poorly timed or ineffective dental marketing campaigns. This makes data identification and collection all the more essential to effective dental marketing.

Analyze the data by tracking how patients engage with your dental marketing channels

Keep in mind while most marketing channels can be tracked in some form – others are more difficult to analyze and track. For example, unless you ask them to mention a source such as a billboard/sign or radio/tv promotion, these are hard to track.

It’s a good idea to train your business team to have an intuitive and inquiring mindset when interacting with potential new patients. Combine this basic strategy with other intentional tracking strategies.

• Use a reflexive – “how did you find about us…?” – question to discover what channel is working. This is effective if you’re using print, signage, or media coverage (radio or tv).
• List a dedicated phone contact number or email address on non-digital marketing campaigns (e.g. a direct mail flyer, postcard, etc). The number and/or email provides trackable data to segment responses.
• Monitor clicks/opens/views on your social media platforms. This can give you perspective on the type of content viewers are interacting with and sharing with their network.

We could deep dive into the more technical aspects of analytic tools here. It’s recommended that you do an online search for software solutions that provide marketing analytics and tracking data (e.g. Google Analytics, etc).

Strategize around your data discoveries to refine and improve your dental marketing

Your marketing strategies help you set and achieve goals for practice growth. That growth starts with engagement around the channels you use to connect with current and potential patients.

Set dental marketing goals you can measure and monitor

• Daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly production increases
• New patient acquisition
• Social media visibility and engagement

Test and refine your dental marketing initiatives

Split-testing or A/B testing helps you determine what’s working or what’s not. This gives you the perspective to invest your marketing budget wisely.

Running a split test can include:

• Tracking your call-to-action content to determine the highest click-rate on a promotion, scheduling request, etc.
• Determining the email subject line that creates the best open rate.
• Monitoring ad response based on a particular image, tagline, headline, etc.

Experiment with split-tests across your dental marketing channels. Use them for Ad copy, social media posts and promotions, email subject lines and leads, call-to-action content, etc.

Personalize your dental marketing messages based on demographic data

Your ongoing data analysis helps you create or discover what ultimately leads to production. An audience focus will enable you to refine your strategies to make sure you’re connecting with each of your practice’s target demographics.

• Personalize your content around demographic segments
• Look for alignment across patient demographics so you can maximize your marketing campaigns for more than one segment
• Use the results of split-tests to determine what personalization works (or doesn’t)
• Engage with new demographics according to your data analysis

Data gives you the forward-thinking perspective you need to build out effective dental marketing campaigns.

Dive into these resources to refine your dental marketing strategies using available data:

Data-Centric Strategies to Pivot Your Dental Marketing

The 6 Questions Every Dental Marketer Needs to Answer

Marketing Matchback could be the analytics and tracking tool that helps improve your dental marketing strategies

Jarvis Analytics Marketing Matchback module tracks your patient journey from lead to production. And after all…isn’t dental marketing an ongoing journey leading to what could be lifetime patient relationships?

What’s a “matchback?”

• They’re a new or existing patient who visits your practice within 60 days of their first contact.
• They assist you in assessing the dental marketing campaign that generated the most patient production and how those patients found you (e.g. Facebook, a referral, etc).

The Jarvis Analytic Marketing Matchback tracks key metrics such as:

• First visit revenue (FVR): the production from each unique marketing campaign to the patient’s first investment.
• First-year revenue (FYR): the production from each unique marketing campaign to the patient’s first-year investment.
• Cost Per Lead (CPL): total cost calculation of the marketing campaign divided by the number of leads.
• Matchback Visit Production (MVP): calculation of the total production generated by all matchbacks.

The Jarvis Analytics platform and the Marketing Matchback module help assure that you’re tracking the important metrics and staying on track with your goals as your dental practice and/or DSO grows and expands.

Request more information about the Marketing Matchback module or experience Jarvis in action.

Request a demo today!

And…

Contact us for more information about data tracking that leads to better dental marketing and organizational profitability.