Tracking essential marketing metrics allows dental practice owners to make informed decisions, optimize their marketing strategies, and continually enhance their practice’s growth and profitability. Regular review and strategy adjustment based on these metrics ensure sustained marketing success and a strong competitive edge in the dental market.
Effective marketing is essential for a dental practice like yours to develop prominence in its service area, attract valued patients, and grow. Your marketing matters, but just as important as your marketing is the data produced from each solution you rely on. Tracking your metrics ensures your marketing strategies deliver optimal results. On the flip side, failing to track your data is a surefire way to overspend and underperform.
Why Tracking Marketing Metrics Matters
Tracking your marketing metrics is crucial because it provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of your marketing strategies. Regularly monitoring these metrics allows your dental practice to:
- Make informed decisions based on data-driven insights.
- Quickly identify successful marketing tactics and areas needing improvement.
- Allocate marketing budgets effectively to maximize returns.
- Enhance patient experiences by responding promptly to patient needs and feedback.
- Increase overall profitability through targeted and efficient marketing strategies.
Take a look at some key marketing metrics every dental practice should monitor to evaluate success, improve performance, and grow the patient base:
1. Website Traffic
Your website is (or should be) your most valuable piece of digital real estate. Other than maybe your social media profiles, it is the place people check out first to get an idea of who you are, where you are, and what you can do for those in need of dental care.
You want to know a number of things about your site, and regularly tracking your website performance through tools like Google Analytics will help you understand the effectiveness of your online presence and visibility.
Several of the metrics you want to track on your site include:
- Total Visits: Monitor monthly site visits to gauge overall online interest.
- Traffic Sources: Identify which platforms (organic search, social media, PPC) drive visitors to your site.
- Top Pages: Discover which pages your visitors most commonly visit to get an idea of their interests.
- Conversion Rates: Calculate the percentage of visitors who follow through with a desirable action, such as calling to set up an appointment, submitting a contact form, signing up for a newsletter, or doing something else.
- Bounce Rates: Evaluate the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page.
- Average Time on a Page: See how long people spend on your site before leaving.
There are many other metrics to look at when it comes to your website, all of which can help guide your choices with your site’s future design, content, and function.
2. Conversion Rate
As mentioned, your conversion rate is the rate at which visitors actually complete a desired action. You can track conversion rates for a number of marketing tactics:
- Website: Evaluate the number of people who visit your site compared to those who complete an action (call the number on the site, submit a contact form, book an appointment, sign up for a newsletter, etc.).
- Landing Page: Whether it’s for a Google Ads campaign or a social media ads campaign, you can track the percentage of users who click on your ad and complete a conversion.
- Direct Mail: If you place a call tracking number or vanity URL on a postcard sent in the mail, you can track the number of people who call the number or visit the URL to understand the conversion rate of your direct mail campaign.
Measuring your website’s conversion rate helps you assess the quality and relevance of your website, landing pages, and direct mail efforts.
3. Patient Acquisition Cost (PAC)
It’s beneficial to know how much you spend on marketing to attract new patients and how many patients you actually attract.
To calculate how much you’re spending to acquire each new patient, divide your total marketing spend by the number of new patients gained.
Ideally, you want your PAC to be much lower than the lifetime value (LTV) of an average patient, ideally three to four times lower than the LTV. For instance, let’s say it costs $500 to attract just one new patient. And let’s say your patients tend to stay with your practice for an average of 10 years, visiting twice a year for routine cleanings. If your routine cleanings cost $150 per visit, your average patient is spending, at minimum, $3,000 with your practice. Plus, when you factor in rate increases over time and other dental issues they may experience in those 10 years, the overall value rises. A $500 PAC is a pretty desirable cost.
4. Return on Investment (ROI)
Your ROI is more involved than your PAC, as it shows how efficient your marketing efforts have been in increasing revenue and growing your practice.
To track your ROI, compare the revenue gained in a period of time (let’s say one year) to the total marketing costs within that same year. Also, evaluate the marketing channel with the biggest ROI and those that could improve with a few tweaks or pivots. Then, focus more of your efforts on what’s working than on what’s not.
5. Social Media Engagement
Similar to your website, there are many metrics you can track from each of your social media platforms.
Trackable social media metrics include:
- Likes
- Shares
- Comments
- Follower increases
- Reach
- Impressions
- Engagement rates
- Video views
- Click-through rates
Plus, you can evaluate the demographic information of those engaging with your post, including their:
- Age
- Race
- Gender
- Location
These data points will help you understand the effectiveness of your social media strategy or strategies. Higher engagement levels typically indicate valuable and appealing content.
6. Email Open and Click-Through Rates
If you implement email marketing into your strategy, you can track a variety of metrics, which may include:
- Delivery rates
- Open rates
- Click-through rates
- Conversion rates
- Unsubscribe rates
- Bounce rates
- Spam complaint rates
Monitor your email campaign performance through these metrics to help you refine your messaging and offers and better resonate with your patients.
7. Online Reviews and Ratings
Regularly monitor your profile on review sites like Google, Yelp, and Healthgrades to track patient satisfaction. Compare the number of 4- and 5-star reviews to any 1- through 3-star reviews to see if there is a significant discrepancy between the groups. If reviewers leave comments, analyze them to see if there are some common talking points among your patients, either good or bad. And be sure to respond to all the reviews you receive. If you get a positive review, thank them for their kind words and their trust in your practice. If you receive a negative review, respond professionally with tact, grace, and an intention to resolve the complaint or issue offline. How you respond to a positive review doesn’t carry a ton of weight, but how you respond to a negative one can positively influence the way other users view your practice.
8. Call Tracking
As mentioned, call tracking numbers are easy to track to see how many people call because of your marketing efforts. Implement them in both your digital marketing services and your more traditional marketing solutions, like your print pieces, billboards, and more.
Through call tracking numbers and call tracking software, you can monitor:
- The calls you receive
- The origin of the calls
- The number of calls that become booked appointments
This data and others help refine your offline and online marketing channels.
Ready to launch a new campaign for your dental practice and track your marketing metrics? Talk to the pros at M&R Marketing! 478-621-4491
When you turn to the team at M&R for your marketing needs, you can be sure we track everything, from website and digital ad campaign metrics to the results produced from your more traditional ad strategies. It’s our mission to ensure you get the most out of your marketing efforts, which can only be determined from diligent, routine tracking.
Tell us about your practice’s goals, and let M&R craft a well-tracked marketing strategy to help you reach those goals. Reach out to one of our business development managers today! 478-621-4491
Additional Dental Marketing Articles
- Your Dental Marketing Matters: Here’s Why
- Brand Building: Set Your Dental Practice Apart From the Rest
- Top Marketing Channels for Dental Practices
- How M&R Marketing Has Served Dental Practices Like Yours
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