The answer to that question depends on the type of dentistry you practice and the current state of your local economy.

General Dentists

If you’re a general dentist, you can benefit from both push and pull marketing strategies because your services include preventative, elective and compulsory dental treatments. Push marketing techniques like direct mail marketing are great for promoting preventative and elective dental treatments like regular checkups and teeth cleanings.

Pull strategies like dental website marketing, search engine marketing and yellow pages advertising are good for promoting compulsory dental procedures like filling cavities because they help to ensure that your patients can find your practice easily when they’re looking for your services.

Dental Specialists

Push marketing strategies aren’t nearly as effective for dental specialists as they are for general dentists because the majority of treatments and procedures offered by dental specialists are compulsory and not elective. Patients aren’t likely to respond to a postcard in their mailbox that reads, “We had a great time with your last root canal. How about we do another just for fun?”

As a dental specialist, you should focus most, if not all, of your dental marketing budget on pull marketing strategies. Advertising your practice in online dental directories and in print and internet yellow pages directories will make your contact information readily available to patients seeking emergency dental health services and general dentists looking for candidates for patient referrals.

Economic Conditions

In addition to the type of dentistry you practice, the current state of your local economy should also affect your dental marketing decisions.

When times are tough, many patients in your community may decide to put off elective treatments like cleanings, checkups and cosmetic procedures until their finances improve. As a result, push marketing strategies in a rough economy are likely to fall upon deaf ears.

The best thing to do during tough economic times is to focus your dental marketing budget on pull strategies. That way you’ll attract patients actively looking for your services and not waste money targeting people who can’t afford it.

In Summary

1. General dentists can benefit from both push and pull marketing strategies in a good economy
2. Dental specialists should focus their budget on pull marketing strategies
3. All dentists should utilize pull marketing strategies in a bad economy

Next week’s question: “Why didn’t you read the summary first?”.

All it takes to measure the success of your marketing efforts is a little effort, some basic record keeping and a bit of simple math.

Ask Your Patients

The easiest way to track the effectiveness of your marketing efforts is simply to ask your dental patients how they found your practice. The best time to do this is during their initial visit or phone call, when it’s fresh in their minds.

If a patient finds your phone number on the internet, odds are that they still have the web page open on their computer and can give you the name of the website where they found your listing. If they saw an advertisement for your dental practice in the yellow pages phone book, ask them which yellow pages they used.

Offer Coupons

Coupons are also a great way to track the success of your dental marketing campaign. If you’re marketing your dental practice through direct mail, make sure you include a coupon on your postcard.

A coupon for a free checkup or teeth cleaning will encourage new dental patients to hang on to your postcard and give you an easy way to track the number of responses your direct mail campaign generates.

Monitor Your Web Traffic

If you market your practice through your own dental website, make sure you have traffic monitoring software installed. Web traffic reporting software like Google Analytics can tell you where new patients visiting your website are coming from and let you know how many leads your site generates through email contact forms.

Your dental website may also generate phone leads. As I mentioned before, your receptionist can track these referrals by asking patients where they found you during their initial phone consultation.

Check Your Figures

Record the source of your new patient referrals in a spreadsheet or in a notebook. After collecting data for a few months, divide the total number of new dental patients you received from each marketing strategy by the amount you spent. Compare the cost per patient totals and see which strategies in your dental marketing campaign were the most cost effective.

Once you have your comparison figures, see if you can adjust your budget to increase the efficiency of your dental marketing campaign and maximize your return on investment.