Dental advertising campaigns: your 6 steps to success
If you’re using dental advertising to attract new patients to your practice, great idea!
But remember, you probably won’t be very successful if you’re just randomly running standalone dental ads. To bring more patients in, you’ll need to take a strategic approach. And that means structuring complete dental advertising campaigns.
If the word “campaign” sounds a bit overwhelming, it’s nothing to be afraid of. There are really just six things you need to focus on to get great results.
Six things you’ll need for successful dental advertising campaigns
Define your goal
Before you even begin to think about your dental ad, you need to determine what exactly you want your campaign to accomplish. In most cases, dentists simply want to attract more new patients and fill their schedules. But it helps to define your goals more clearly. Using the SMART framework is a good way to do that.
Having goals that are Smart, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based can help you focus your campaign and make it easier to see if it is producing the results you’re looking for. For your next campaign, you might establish the following goal:
“To generate ten new hygiene patient appointment calls during the month of September to offset our typical slow production month.”
Understand your audience
With a clear goal determined, you need to define who your target audience is. By zeroing in on the demographics and behaviours of your ideal patients, you can make smart choices as to what types of dental advertising to use so you are spending wisely and reaching the right people. If, for example, you are targeting younger millennials, digital ads may be more effective than traditional print ads (which may be better for the Gen Xers and Boomers).
Make an offer
You also need to consider what your audience is looking for right now, based on where they fall in the new patient journey. People who are researching dental care options — like whitening or straightening — may just be gathering information to help them make decisions. Others who are actively looking for a dental care provider might be looking for the most cost-effective care options or to schedule an appointment right away. Knowing what is important to them will help you choose the right thing to offer them in your dental practice advertising.
Drive traffic with the perfect ad
Now comes the fun part — creating the perfect dental advertisements and pushing them out through your chosen media. Whether you are using billboards, radio commercials, pay-per-click or print ads, make sure you stay focused on the purpose and planning of your dental advertising campaigns. It can be easy to get lured into an idea that is clever and creative, but not aligned with what you’re really trying to accomplish. Before launching, step back from your final ad and ask yourself who will respond to it, and what action they will take.
Nurture your leads
Once your ads are running and leads start coming in, make sure you have a plan in place to nurture them and keep them engaged until they are ready to become new patients. The earlier they are in the patient journey, the more nurturing they will need. Email campaigns work great for keeping your practice front-of-mind with these leads until they are ready to schedule that first appointment.
Track your results
In the end, the success of your advertising campaigns will be determined by the numbers they produce. Digital advertising metrics are easy to compile, but traditional methods of advertising can also be monitored if you use custom urls and tracking phone numbers to accurately count the number of responses your campaign generates.
Need ideas for your irresistible offer?
If you need great promotional offers for your dental advertising campaigns that will get new patients to take action, download our FREE Dental Promotional Offer Idea Guide to find the incentives that will get new patient leads pouring into your dental marketing funnel.
