Marketing your dental practice is the best (and only!) way to see the growth. In order to build your brand, bring in new patients, and keep current patients coming back, you have to keep your practice in front of them consistently. There are four steps to building a bulletproof marketing system that will accomplish each of these three goals on an ongoing basis. The end result is that your practice grows, as well as your income. Here's how to do it.
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Step 1: Start with tried and true postcard marketing.
Postcard marketing is a proven method for bringing in new patients to your practice. Direct mail casts your marketing net. You use targeted mailing lists to put your message right in the mailbox of qualified prospects, such as those who are new to the area and have dental insurance. When these prospects contact your office and book appointments, your professionalism and treatment quality turns them into long-term patients.
Another use for postcards is to bring current patients in for checkup appointments. Growing your practice is about growing every aspect of your patient base, so that means getting more from your current patients too. Direct mail marketing gets you results for both of these goals.
Step 2: Use the latest technology to track your postcard campaign.
Some direct mail companies can give you the option to track your direct mail campaigns through the mail as they ship to your prospects. This is important because it allows you to make the necessary preparations to handle the influx of responses that you WILL be receiving. You may need to have an extra person in the office to help field the phone calls or give tours to new patients, but it is not cost-effective to have them there until you are sure the postcards have been delivered on time. Mail tracking gives you this crucial information.
Step 3: Use online resources such as Google Remarketing for targeted follow-up.
So you have designed your postcard campaign, mailed it, and tracked it. Now you’re done, right? Not quite. You have cast out your marketing net, but now you have to make sure no prospects fall through holes in your net. You need to plug these holes with follow-up, and there are some great resources online. The best of these is Google Remarketing.
Google Remarketing is a follow-up tool that displays targeted ads to your website visitors AFTER they leave your site. For example, if a prospect comes to your website, but leaves before setting an appointment, Google will know that they haven’t taken the action you wanted them to take, and it will display your follow-up ads to try to get them to go back to your site and set up an appointment. This works on any website that is part of the Google Display Network, including high-traffic sites such as CNN.com, dictionary.com, and hgtv.com. And you don’t pay a cent unless your potential patient clicks on the ad.
Step 4: Track and analyze your results to keep on improving.
Once responses start pouring in, it is critical to keep track of what's working and what's not. The easiest way to track responses with a call tracking service. These services give you a unique phone number to use for each mailing. This acts as a filter that allows you to track how many phone calls each of your postcard designs are generating. Then you can judge the effectiveness of certain messages and tactics to find the most effective strategy for your prospects. Some of these services also record your phone calls so you can quality check your reception staff and processes.
Key takeaways
- Use consistent direct mail postcard mailings to generate leads and build your brand.
- Stay involved in your marketing efforts by tracking mailings, so you are well prepared for the influx of responses.
- Use Google Remarketing to create automatic targeted follow-up with your website visitors.
- Stay on top of the results that your marketing is bringing in to empower yourself to continue improving your marketing efforts and continue GROWING.
This advice is based on 15 years of trial and error with my own postcard marketing company. That is how I know it is proven to work.
Author bio
Joy Gendusa is the owner and CEO of direct mail marketing firm, PostcardMania. She started the company in 1998 with nothing but a phone and a computer, never taking a dime of investment capital. PostcardMania originally began as a full-service postcard marketing company, helping clients create turnkey marketing campaigns with graphic design, printing, mailing list acquisition, and mailing services. Since then, the company has expanded to offer website and landing page design and development, email marketing, and full marketing evaluations, in addition to educating clients with free marketing advice. Visit www.postcardmania.com for more information. Find Joy on Google+.
