Continuing on from the previous post, here are questions 6 through 1o of SmartBox’s Top 10 Questions You Should Ask Your Marketing Company… current or future.
- Do I own the website and all associated content once the contract is over?
It’s the difference between leasing and buying a car – you don’t own a leased car, and you’ll either give it back at the end of the contract or pay through the nose to keep it. Make sure about this one before you do anything, and get it in writing.
- Do you offer a guarantee of new patient opportunities?
Get it in writing. The only companies that will do that have confidence in their abilities and the optics to put more new patient butts in your chairs, not just a guarantee of “hits and clicks.”
- Will my paid media be diversified, or does it rely solely on the Google “machine”?
Google is still the “800-pound gorilla” of search, but Bing and Facebook also offer significant new patient opportunities for dentists. Your paid ads need to be fully optimized across platforms.
Google Ads gets all the buzz, but several other Google products can be combined with Ads to optimize the optimization, so to speak.
Optimizing your social media also means not overspending. Your Google Ads Quality Score is a completely transparent 1 to 10 scale. A low Quality Score, which can be caused by lack of relevance between the keyword phrase, ad copy, and landing page, can significantly raise your cost per click – as much as 400 percent! Be sure the company won’t make you pay Google’s “dumb tax.” A great Quality Score can lower your cost per click by up to 50 percent!
- Will I have only stock images on my site?
With stock images only, you’re going to miss new patient opportunities. Prospects want to see you and your staff, not just staged images from a library. And stock photography can harm your SEO because the photos are not optimized for search engines, which will hurt your page ranking.
- Do you actively monitor and optimize my local listings?
NAP (Name, Address, Phone) consistency is one of the two major factors in local search optimization (LSO). The company should manage your NAP through the top three Tier 1 data providers (Factual, Infogroup, and Acxiom) instead of manually trying to manage hundreds of sites. Yext, one of the best-known LSOs, only helps you with 62 percent of what’s needed to ensure success. Our Local360
platform has a direct relationship with the top three Tier 1 data providers for local search optimization, giving you the best results possible.
How Did Your Current Provider Do Against This Checklist?
If the dental marketing company – to which you pay a significant chunk of money – can’t post a passing grade, it’s time to switch. Here’s a suggestion.
Schedule your Practice Growth Call. Invest some time in discovering what’s possible for your practice. You’re going to leave this call with an action plan to add immediate revenue into your practice and overcome your most pressing problems.
Dentistry is too good a profession to pay a company too much for too little in return.