According to New York Magazine’s December 2018 article, “…roughly half of traffic and engagement is fraudulent.” In other words, the numbers that you hear about the impressions, likes, shares, unique visitors, and so forth that you get are fake.
That may apply more to the big brands – there may well be a bot farm in China or Russia driving their numbers — but it doesn’t mean that it can’t apply to your practice. A dismaying possibility, to be sure, but it doesn’t have to be fatal.
If you can’t trust your engagement numbers, you need to drive genuine engagement. You can tell when that’s working because your phone rings with new patients wanting to schedule appointments. That’s a number that’s very hard to fudge.
See, that’s the thing: all those “numbers” don’t make you one thin dime. They’re the means to realizing the only metric that really matters – new patients in your chairs.
Cart, Meet Horse
There’s an old saying that “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” While that’s true enough, metaphorically speaking, that journey will never end if you don’t keep the destination firmly in mind.
Every aspect of your marketing must drive toward one goal – getting more patients in your chairs. Ideally, you’d get the patients you want – people interested in lifetime dental care and with the resources to go fee-for-service for the procedures they want.
Without enough new and/or better patients in your chairs, a large part of your marketing investment is wasted.
So, begin with the end in mind. Tell your story compellingly. Let people see the real you as well as your technical abilities. Give your prospects someone to relate to, someone they’ll like and feel comfortable trusting to solve their dental problems.
When you truly engage prospects, you’re setting yourself apart from the great mass of dentists. You’re giving prospects reasons to choose you instead of a competitor. And the prospects who call for an appointment will arrive at your practice predisposed to trust you, your staff, and your case solutions.
Enter Content Marketing
Content marketing includes written words, photos, and videos that appear on one or more online channels. Those channels can include your website, a stand-alone blog, YouTube, social media, and more. There are very good reasons to expand your online channels beyond your website.
Content marketing is ideal for fostering engagement, and your content should be focused on influencing people to be curious enough to visit your website. That’s where the rubber meets the road, so to speak – the vast majority of prospects visit a practice’s site before scheduling an appointment.
Constantly updating a website’s core content – services, the practice’s culture/philosophy, and the like — is very difficult for busy dental practices. However, one of the best and most productive ways to keep your website content current is to feature your blog on the site. One advantage to putting your blog on the website is that you can cross-promote your blog content and practice photos on social media to get more prospects to your site.
What’s Your Goal?
Whether you want more new patients, better patients, higher average case value, or an easy retirement, SmartBox can help you get there.
Discover what’s possible for your practice by scheduling a Roadmap call. Invest about the amount of time you need to place a single crown or a dental implant.
Following the call, we’ll send your completely personalized Roadmap to your practice’s future success.