Are you worried about rising patient acquisition costs?

If so, you’re not alone…

Recent surveys show that 57% of businesses are concerned about rising customer acquisition costs and the effects on their 2022 sales goals.

Obviously with the events of the past year (COVID, competitive labour market, talks of a recession), keeping costs low is a big priority for businesses across the board.

But you definitely still want to keep that flow of new patients and leads alive.

So, how do you continue to market online while being savvy about rising acquisition costs?

Well, here are a few ways you can go about it…

 

1. Target your Ideal Patient Avatar

It’s important to remember that your marketing isn’t for you.. It’s for your prospective patients – and more specifically, it should be written with your ideal patient avatar in mind.

One of the most powerful concepts in practice ownership is really drilling down your ideal patient avatar, and then directing your marketing communications at them.

This allows you to work with the kind of people you really want to work with, and stop wasting time and energy on people who aren’t a good fit anyway!

 

2. Nail your SEO

SEO is a crucial part of any business’s marketing strategy – and your practice is no exception.

Dentistry isn’t something people just browse for fun, they’re looking because they need your services and fully intend on purchasing.

So when people go searching for “dental practices near me,” you want to make sure they find you.

Whether you manage your SEO in-house or engage someone to help you, be sure to consider:

  • Your objective. (What are you hoping to get out of your SEO investment?)
  • The analysis. (Have you looked at comparative websites? What content are they creating?)
  • The tools. (Is Google AdWords your best bet? Are there other tools you should engage?)
  • Your business needs. (Is your SEO plan relevant for your business and its location?)

Like every plan, one specifically for dental SEO will need periodic reviews and revisions. Once devised, it’s not a hard line in concrete that’s never revisited. Rather, based on results, changes and improvements will need to be made.

 

3. Publish blog content

Writing blogs and articles is a great way to create content that can then be repurposed many different ways and go pretty far in terms of ROI.

It costs nothing except time to write and publish a piece that educates, inspires, explains, re-assures, or raises awareness.

What you want to be able to do is to understand your ideal patient; what are their fears and frustrations that they might experience when they go to the dentist? What are their hopes and aspirations? And think about creating content that really resonates with that particular audience.

Once you have the content, you can leverage it by posting on social media, repurposing as captions or text posts, compiling blogs into an e-book that you then use as a lead magnet – the sky’s the limit.

 

4. Engage with other local businesses

One of the things that you can do is look at other local businesses like hairdressers, beauticians, accountants etc. and take a look at what they’re publishing.

If it’s content that’s specific to your local area or likely to be of interest to your ideal patient avatar, you could consider sharing and reposting or commenting on the posts.

It helps you build a relationship with other local businesses, and really connect with each other’s communities.

You might just find it opens the door for potential referrals and partnerships…

 

5. Generate reviews

Make sure you’re asking for and generating reviews onto your Google My Business and Facebook pages.

You can let patients know at the start of their appointment that you’ll be asking for feedback at the end, and then if the patient is satisfied, ask if they’d be willing to leave a short Google Review if you emailed them a link.

While it might not seem like a crucial part of marketing, that level of trust and social proof is often the deciding factor for patients.

So you see, there are many ways to adapt your marketing strategy to keep acquisition costs low. Whether you incorporate all these tips or just a few at a time, you really do have a tonne of options and different approaches.

Happy marketing!