How to scrimp on your marketing
How to scrimp on your marketing
Like any business, dental practices do need to invest in marketing for growth and survival, and marketing is a process that’s simple to conceive but hard to implement.
July 13, 2017

By Luc Wade, Marketing Director at Hive Business.

The other day I came across a guide to low cost marketing for dentists. It began with the fascinating statement: “I’m going to confess that I’m not a huge fan of external marketing — especially that which involves heavy financial investment.”

I found the document extraordinarily short-termist, and dangerously blithe to the effects such advice could have on dentists taking it at face value. The author pointed out 10 “low cost” resources that are apparently freely available to dental practice owners, and emphasised that the first port of call should be to look for new business from your existing patients, rather than invest in “external” marketing.

It’s true that you can find a lot of new business from word of mouth referrals, and existing patients are low hanging fruit, but this isn’t anything like a serious blueprint for the growth, or even survival, of your business.

Like any business, dental practices do need to invest in marketing for growth and survival, and marketing is a process that’s simple to conceive but hard to implement. This guide suggests it’s simple to implement, and the results of this ideology are everywhere: dysfunctional people, suboptimal collaboration, businesses that don’t understand their audiences.

Firstly, the checklist approach to marketing activity is one to be deeply wary of. Checklists are worthless because they pretend that marketing is a box ticking exercise that doesn’t need a strategy. Wrong — you should only make tactical moves that serve your strategy and strategic decisions that serve your objectives.

There’s a misunderstanding of cost here too. If you only ever take into account the financial cost you are probably making a big miscalculation — time isn’t low cost or free. If you are asking your team members to write blogs, update social media and your website, that has a huge time cost, and arguably a morale cost too.

And don’t forget, if your team keep pushing out bad content, either badly written, full of mistakes or with legal problems (for instance, breaking patient confidentiality, which we’ve seen happen) there’s a reputational cost.

Another problem here is the idea that if you keep your website updated and keep doing social media then people will find it. That’s not the case, and where your website ranks on Google matters. On the first page alone, the first five results account for 67.60% of all the clicks and the results from six to 10 account for only 3.73%.

And there’s a deeper strategic problem with the low cost marketing model: you need new patients to sell more big ticket treatment plans. You won’t get enough of them from patient referrals because even if your list is remarkably long, you will reach the point where you have asked everyone for online feedback and a referral. You’ll end up with a list full of old patients who don’t want any more medium or high value treatments.

Strategically, every time you get a new patient you’re creating a new brand advocate, and it’s the longtail value you’re creating here that matters, not the short term revenue. You obviously need both. It matters that you know what type of patient you want, because your marketing will dictate the type of patient that you get in.

Maybe the most important error here is that the author thinks your marketing strategy should be designed and implemented according to the existing structure of your business. No, structure must always follow strategy. In the past decade, what businesses do to engage customers has changed almost beyond recognition, for example chat boxes are now ubiquitous on websites in the service sector, yet most dentists’ thoughts on how they structure their marketing hasn’t changed — which is why I found this document so disturbing.

In this market you need to grow to survive, and in five years, when you’re surrounded by boutiques and corporates with clearly defined brands and marketing plans, this parochial approach just isn’t going to cut it. If you are planning to exit shortly, why not work the value of your practice up to the best price possible?

I have noticed pronounced differences between high and low-performing dental businesses: the worst performers lack shared purpose and trust, they maintain an internal focus, do not leverage customer insight, do not imbue their brands with purpose, do not have a plan and as a consequence do not deliver a rich customer experience.

Dental businesses that have appropriate strategy and structure, and are a little more sophisticated in their marketing, grow faster. They have clear brand purpose and sense of identity, and a plan.

I say this not to be discouraging, rather to illuminate where there’s work to do. Most businesses generally haven’t been able to pull all those pieces together, but many are trying, after all dentistry is more competitive than ever.

It all comes back to how you consider marketing, is it really a cost or a part of the way your business operates? The difference with our outlook probably stems from who we work with: businesses interested in growth rather than settled, mature practices. Our dataset of practices suggests that those growing by 15% to 20% per annum are investing 5% of their revenue as part of a dedicated plan. What I’ve mentioned above would seem normal in any other sector, but the enlightenment didn’t happen till five years ago in dentistry, and evidently some suppliers are still trying to keep dentists in the dark…

Call us on01872 300232 or email us at hello@hivebusiness.co.uk.

The information contained in this article is based on the opinion of Hive Business and does not constitute formal tax advice. Any tax outcomes will be based on individual circumstances, tax legislation and regulation, which are subject to change in the future. You should seek specific advice before embarking on any course of action. Hive Business does not provide regulated Financial Advice, including advice on investment, insurance or lending products or their suitability for you. This article is provided for information only and does not constitute, and should not be interpreted as, investment advice or a recommendation to buy, sell or otherwise transact, or not transact, in any investment including Bitcoin and other crypto. Any use you wish to make of any information contained within this article is, therefore, entirely at your own risk.

By Luc Wade Marketing Director
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