Episode 485: Find Your Marketing Patterns

If you’re a loyal podcast fan, you know Kiera has a hard time with the world of marketing. That means when she talks about her marketing successes, you’d better listen! In this episode, she dives into tracking your practice’s marketing return on investment with KPIs. You’ll learn tactics for…

1. Tracking new patients (AND where they’re coming from)

2. Funneling patients to those successful marketing channels

3. Tracking your promos

4. And more!

Learn the patterns of success for getting people to your practice and you’ll know exactly where to put your dollars and get the biggest bang for your buck.

Episode resources:

Reach out to Kiera

Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast

Become Dental A-Team Platinum!

Review the podcast on iTunes

Transcript: 

0:00:05.6 Speaker 1: Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental A Team podcast. I'm your host, Kiera Dent, and I had this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective. Because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, filler, office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants where we have travelled to over 165 different offices coaching teams. Yep, we don't just understand you, we are you. Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental, and I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress, and create A Team. Welcome to the Dental A Team podcast.

[music]

0:00:51.1 S1: Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And you guys! Alright, let's talk marketing...

[vocalization]

0:00:58.5 S1: I really do not like marketing, guys. [laughter] I love people who love it. So that's not true, I like parts of marketing, I also don't like a lot of marketing companies, I've been burned. I was actually just chatting with somebody yesterday, and they said, so many people in the dental industry have been burned by marketing, and our job is to change how people view marketing, and I was like, "Hallelujah. You've won my vote. I'll vote for you for president. Like, what do I need to do?" But today, I wanna help you guys figure out how you can track your marketing ROI with KPIs, okay? So I know that sounds real sexy, don't worry, you can just stop the podcast right there if you'd like, or keep listening, because if I heard that, I'd be like, "I don't wanna listen."

0:01:40.6 S1: Bottom line is, because I don't wanna listen, I should listen, so I'm gonna try and make this as fun as possible. I'll give you guys a few pieces to take on, but the reality is we need to be tracking our marketing ROI to see, is this working or is it not working. So I want you guys to first and foremost, the first tip is we've gotta be tracking our new patients and where they're coming from. I remember when I was an office manager in Colorado, we were doing quite a bit of different marketing, we were attending the Pride Festival, we had a float in the Pride parade, I also was doing flyers, we were also asking for Google reviews, we were also incentivizing our team to get these new patients in here. I had so many different marketing things going on, and I wasn't tracking it really, really, really well, so it was just like... They heard about us on Google. Dig a bit deeper if you want.

0:02:30.4 S1: First things first is you gotta track every single new patient. If we're not doing that, start there. If we are already doing that, maybe dig a little deeper. When people say they heard you on Google, fantastic. Where else did you hear about us? Was there anywhere else? Or did you just Google our Dentist in Colorado? Because I wanna know, have they only heard about me on Google or maybe they actually saw me at the parade first, then they Googled me and saw my awesome Google reviews, well, guess what, that just told me: They had to see me in three different areas, one, at the parade, is probably their first exposure, two was when they googled me, and then three was when they saw my Google reviews that got them to call me, bam, I need to focus on those three areas.

0:03:09.8 S2: Pending upon what this patient's net worth, if you... Not their network, but their patient lifetime value and our practice is... Because then what you can do is you can actually take all this information and you can drill down in it and you can find out where is the marketing coming from that's actually bringing your ideal patients there, so many people don't wanna go dig through it and guess what, you already have, a lot of this already tracked for you that you could go figure out what this is, so you could go back in time, you could actually pull up your new patients for the last... Let's say two years. Okay, this is like something that I would suggest each of you do because so many of us have the data around us, but we don't actually use it, so what good is that data? Data is only as good as one, how good it was collected, and two, if we do anything with it. Guess what, you probably already know what your marketing is bringing in and who your ideal patients are, if you would just go look at the data. So go back one, two years, let's go through and let's find out how many patients are coming from different sources, you can probably run this in your software and actually find it per source that you have in there, so how many came from a Google search, how many came from this, how many came from that, you could actually figure out our top referring things.

0:04:17.6 S1: Most practices, it's Google and referrals. Well, if that's where most of our patients are coming from, why are we dumping a ton of money into SEO to get our Google... To get our website higher ranked, there could be a reason for that, but make sure you know what that reason is and you're confident with that decision, because I'm gonna ask you, is that marketing actually making sense... Is this marketing actually making sense, so many of us just wanna throw a bunch of money at marketing, but we don't actually check to see what the ROI return on investment actually is, so I want you guys to go and look to see where are the top things coming from. Next, what are we doing to get more of patients into those funnels already? If we want more Google reviews, maybe we should ramp up our Google reviews, if most of our people are coming from there, let's get those top notch because that's what's pulling the bulk of our people in here, if it's patient referrals, do we have a cool referral program in play that's thinking our patients for when they send people... And I'm not saying incentivizing them, 'cause most people don't like to do that, I mean, some will.

0:05:13.1 S1: Sometimes raffles can help out with that, but generally, it's thanking them and doing a really awesome service for them that people just naturally wanna refer. Guys, I have a favor restaurant here in Reno, if you ever come, it's Liberty Food and Wine, it's in downtown, it's right across from one of my favorite escape rooms, they didn't ask me to leave them a review, they didn't ask me to send more people there, I just love the experience, I love the food, I love the atmosphere. So I'm going to tell you about it.

0:05:37.1 S1: So we might be being able to get more referrals just by upping our experience for our patients, but you wouldn't know that if you don't know that most of your patients are coming from referrals, if you also look at their referrals, look to see the patients who are actually referring.

0:05:50.5 S1: I'm not kidding. We're gonna go deep dive on them, how old are they, where do they live, what zip code are they in, do they have kids, do they not have kids? What do they do for their career? All that information is gonna start to tell you the type of patients who will refer to you; instantly, you just figured out your avatar, it's right there, it's in the data for you guys, so go pull that information. So we're gonna find out one, who's referring to us the most, let's figure that out. Number two, we're also gonna figure out the type of people that are referring to us, all the demographics around them, then we're also gonna look at our new patients, now we wanna take this a step further and we wanna find out from this information, and guys, I'm just gonna tell you is, I'm like talking about this, I'm geeking out on how excited I am for you offices that are actually gonna go do this, 'cause you're gonna find so much cool goodness, and it's not gonna be hard for you to grow your practice. I'm also sensitive to the office manager that was Kiera Dent, and if I heard this podcast at that cool idea, super busy, I'm gonna put that on a pan for the next six months and I'm gonna try and come back to this.

0:06:48.9 S1: Bottom line is, I'm probably never gonna come back to this, so to that office manager, to that Kiera Dent out there, I'm gonna say schedule a meeting for yourself where you give yourself maybe an hour, maybe two hours, not kidding, do this, and at a minimum, do some of the first things, are we tracking other referrals and could you pull what the top one or two referring things are to your practice? Third, make sure you're tracking if we're ever doing promos, make sure you're tracking... Honestly, guys, I don't wanna just know a postcard, I wanna know the postcard that talked about emergency dental care with this exact verbiage is what pulled in these patients. The reason being is sometimes it's one or two words that actually is what made the difference, it's not postcards, it wasn't postcard, it was was on the postcard, it was how the postcard was written that actually got the results. So marketing, the ROI around it. This is why I love it, and I hate it, I love it now, and I'm geeking out on it. Because guess what, I just found a way to actually make marketing makes sense for me.

0:07:44.4 S1: It's not this like, let's throw a bunch of darts to the wall and see which one sticks; it's literally great, if I actually take the time to go deep dive in on this and start reviewing it on a more consistent basis and start getting better with my front-office tracking this, when people call in and having them ask maybe one or two deeper questions, I'm actually gonna figure out what marketing's working. Have you guys heard, but really, have you heard and are you the type of person that loves to take a massive action? Well, if you are, I would love to invite you to Dental A Team's virtual summit, April 22nd through 23rd. And yes, right now, guys, it's early bird, that means it's $200 off the normal ticket price. You guys are going to learn how to optimize your practice this year, we know it's been a rough here, people have quit. We've had COVID, we've had changes, so we wanna teach you guys how to optimize within your practice now and execute. Friday is full team, Saturday is all things leadership, so bring your team, get some CE, take massive action, head on over to the dentalateam.com, coupon code is Summit early bird, and it's valid until March 31st, that summit early bird, all one word.

0:08:52.5 S1: And it's valid until March 31st. So guys, head on over, I can't we to have you take massive action, optimize your practice and execute, let's make 2022 your best year. I also wanna find out with these new patients, so there's gonna be another step for you, I want you to go find out for the patient who's coming in on that type of marketing, what's their dollar value? Now, I'm not trying to like grade patients, every patient is amazing, but I'm trying to find out which patients are coming in off of which treatment, so maybe the people coming in from the parade actually only came in for cleanings, none of them accepted treatment. Well, guess what, I'm probably not gonna wanna market there next year, but if I had...

0:09:31.7 S1: And then, you also have to look through the demographics of these patients, look to see, was there a certain zip code that pulled certain people, and did those people only schedule for cleanings? Maybe there were some people that came from the parade, so I've got 25 people that came from our parade advertising case that were there, they called us... Yes, I said they found us on Google, but I did it a little deeper digging and they came from the parade, or I was smart, and I set up a separate phone number from the parade so I know those actual numbers, actual people calling or coming from the parade. You can do this, you can have your postcards have different phone numbers, you can have certain things have different phone numbers, all that come to your practice, but it's actually tracking the marketing better for you.

0:10:08.2 S1: Okay, you can do the same thing with clicks. Like so much cool stuff out there. So with that said, then what you can do is you can find out, okay, of the 20 people who came in from the parade over the last three months, 'cause guess what, we might have some people like, it might be hot and then it might not... It might be not, we'll find out, but then from there, what we do is we're actually gonna shift it down. Okay, of these 20 patients, 10 only scheduled for cleanings, 10 actually scheduled for treatment. Fantastic. What kind of treatment? Let's put those into categories as well, we're looking for patterns, that's all we're doing with marketing, is it's literally sifting through the data to find the patterns. So then within those 10 patients who actually scheduled for treatment, maybe I've got five of those who did implants and the other five did crowns and fillings. Cool, I wanna look to see, are there any patterns with those five people who scheduled implants, I know they came from the parade, they might have similar zip codes, they might have a similar age range, they might have similar demographics, they might have a similar job...

0:11:02.9 S1: Let me see, are there any patterns within that, and if not, that's okay, but at least I dug deeper to find out what were those patterns. Then on the flip side, the 10 people who only came in for cleanings, is there anything within them that's a pattern? Maybe it was a zip code, maybe it was a demographic, maybe it was a job, but that way I can start to fine-tune and cater, so that way if I decided to do the parade again next year, I'm gonna say, "Great. People in this area are the people who were for implants, well, if I know that zip code, I can actually do geo-targeting within my social media and start to target these types of people in that area. Maybe I send a flyer and I pre-prime them before we come to the event." All this information actually makes your marketing makes sense. So yes, I know this is a little bit more elaborate of a podcast, this one I'm going a little bit deeper with you guys, this is the crazy cool stuff that I geek out with and I work with my clients on, because this is the type of stuff that actually matters.

0:11:56.0 S1: This is the type of stuff that if I spent an hour, two hours, three hours on this, maybe I plan an hour a week to focus on my marketing, guys, I literally... I've had to learn how to master my time, and one of the things I do is I have set days, so Tuesdays are coaching calls on podcast, Monday's Business Development, Wednesday is Marketing. So I spend time on marketing. Cece and I have a meeting, I need to... Shelby has been awesome, she's created my schedule even more, and now I'm gonna put a block to actually dive through this marketing with Cece, so we're gonna actually pull apart the data. We have all the data there. Let's go back and look, let's see where these people started coming from, we realized we weren't even tracking this information, so Cece did awesome, and she got the tracking in place when people come through, we can see where are they coming from, what's their zip code, what's their address, where are they at, let's find out certain sizes of practices, so that way we can decide, "Yeah, we wanna keep doing that, or no, we don't wanna keep doing that." You guys...

0:12:48.2 S1: It's fishing bait. What is our bait bringing in, is that the type of fish we wanna have, if not, change it up, shake it up, let's see, because not that we're trying to get people, but we are... Dental A Team is always looking for clients, you better believe, my favorite clients are the people who come from the podcast. Why? You already know me, love me and you're going to follow through. You wouldn't listen to this podcast, you wouldn't call me if you're not a GSD, I love people off this podcast as clients, you are primed for it, you've already listened to us, you already know our style, you already know you're gonna vibe with us. I freaking love it, I love it so much. It's what gets me up and excited to do this podcast, 'cause I know I'm changing your life, whether you call me or you don't call me, but I also know that you're the type of person that I actually need to work with. We're gonna gel and vibe, so that's marketing that works, that I love, and I'm happy to do it. So I want you guys to review all this information within your practice to see where are these people coming from, can you place in those meeting blocks once a week, once a month, to just review it, because at the end of the day, if you know what your marketing ROI is on this.

0:13:54.9 S1: This is gonna change your practice, this is going to be part of the KPIS, doctors and office managers, you'll wanna have a meeting about. I love meeting with Cece and we get to dive into this information, I have it blocked, like I was saying, I have set days to work on certain things and I just keep ramping it up, had to master that, had to create that time in my world. So I would suggest guys, dive into this, there's so much to unpack in this podcast, I think this could be one you come back to over and over and over again, but find the gold within. It's already sitting there, you just have to take the time to go through the data to find it, so keep me posted if we can help you, if we can deep dive with you, I'd love to help you out, and I'll be on... Let's make sure your marketing money is actually making a difference, let's make sure it's actually working. So guys, if we can help you, email us hello at the dentalateam.com. Let me know, I'd love to hear from you guys, I'd love to know how you're diving this, and if you have any tips of how you track your marketing, let me know. As always, guys, it's so fun to podcast with you.

0:14:49.9 S1: I'm so grateful for so many of you that come from the podcast that work with us, I love you guys as my ideal client, you guys are the people that... GSD, you are the people that I wanna work with, you are the people that I wanna make insanely successful, I wanna increase your profit, I wanna help your team to be happier, I wanna help you have your dream life. That's the type of person I love to work with. That's what we're finding out more and more and more of how can we attract more doctors and offices like you, how can we track those office managers that call us up to say, "Kiera, we wanna work with you and you make it happen." You are the type of people I wanna work with. You're the people that I've been able to find through the years, of going through this, diving through this, who are you, where are you at, I actually know my top states. I know the ideal states for us to work in, it's not always, but most of the time we come in the Midwest, upstate New York, Florida, and then the Colorado, Utah scene, and then we have some over in the Oregon, Washington zone.

0:15:41.0 S1: Those are our hottest states, that's where the bulk of our practices come from. Now is not all of them, but that's where they are and the practices who work with us, they've all cut out Midwest, Southern charm, just good humans. They love their teams, they love growing their teams, they also know that there's a better way to do it, that's the person that we work with and we love them, doesn't mean they're a start-up, it doesn't mean that they've been in business for 10 years, and it doesn't mean if you are in those states, hey, be the first person in that state... We love it. Our Rhode Island office, shoutout to them, our Marley office, shoutout to them. We have nobody in Montana, so if you want be our first Montana office, let us know, we don't have anybody in New Mexico, so if you wanna be that first office, we'd love it, and I'll be a... It doesn't matter where you're at, I've just done the marketing, I know where these practices are at, I know where the bulk of our people come from, why we attract those areas, still beyond me. I have no idea why, maybe it's 'cause I'm fast-paced like a New Yorker, but I've got that southern charm, like down in the South, I don't know.

0:16:35.0 S1: I don't know what we do. Maybe it's just because that's where you guys are at, and we know we need to reach you, but if you guys... I love working with you, I love knowing that this is who our ideal clients are, I love knowing the information because it's sitting within the data that we receive. You guys are the data, you're the ones calling us, just like your patients are the data, they're the ones calling you, so don't miss out on the gold that's sitting right in front of you, it's there, you just have to prioritize it and make time for it.

0:17:00.8 S1: And then maximize and optimize the data that you find; it's all there.

0:17:05.9 S1: Can't wait to hear from you. If you guys need help, I've got some great marketing company, so be sure to reach out, "Hello" at the dentalateam.com, and as always, love you guys so much. Thanks for listening, bye, catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.

0:17:18.8 S1: And that wraps it up for another episode of The Dental A Team podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.