How to Track and Increase Your Dental Marketing ROI

Even the most effective dental marketing strategy is only as good as its Return on Investment (ROI). When planning your marketing budget, you need to clearly understand what the current ROI is and how to increase it.

While seemingly straightforward, calculating the ROI of your dental marketing strategy isn’t always straightforward. However, with the right data and tools in your arsenal, it’s possible to calculate, track, and increase the ROI while getting excellent marketing results.

The Problem with Determining the ROI of Dental Marketing

The biggest issue with determining the ROI of dental marketing is the complexity of the strategy. The ROI of lead generation depends on how many leads eventually become patients.

For example, imagine your lead generation tactics brought 100 leads to your website. While this seems to be an excellent result, if only one person converts into a patient, the ROI is low. Meanwhile, if 30 leads convert into patients, the ROI is much more impressive.

How to Calculate the ROI of Dental Marketing

There are several ways you can calculate the ROI of dental marketing. The more tools and data you have, the more accurate you can be.

Basic ROI Formula

The basic ROI formula for dental marketing is:

ROI = (Total monthly revenue generated – monthly marketing investment)/monthly marketing investment.

You can break the revenue into (number of new patients) x (average patient spend).

For example, in May, your clinic generated $10,000 in revenue. You invested $1,000 in marketing. The ROI for May= (10,000 – 1,000)/1,000 = 9 or 900%. That’s a high marketing ROI.

Advanced ROI Formula

The key problem with the basic ROI formula is that not all of your practice’s revenue depends on your direct marketing efforts. Some of it could come from word-of-mouth marketing, which is organic.

The advanced ROI formula for dental marketing is:

ROI = (Sales growth – organic sales growth – marketing expenses)/marketing expenses

To figure out what part of revenue directly depends on your marketing efforts, you can compare months you paid for marketing with months you didn’t. That’s not always easy because marketing is an ongoing process, and it can start producing results long after you make an investment.

Patient Lifetime Value (LTV) Varies

If your clinic is offering a variety of services, the amount of revenue each patient generates can vary dramatically.

For example, one converted lead could take advantage of semiannual cleanings while another could be in line for several implants. As a result, the ROI of your lead generation efforts could differ depending on the services the patient chooses.

Over time, patients that use minor general dentistry services may need more complex procedures. That’s when you can start getting a significantly higher ROI.

Opportunity Cost

The time you spend learning marketing tactics or working with a marketing agency could be invested in revenue-generating activities. By choosing to focus on marketing, you are ignoring other revenue-generating options.

To calculate the opportunity cost, find the difference between expected marketing returns and the returns of other options. Then, when calculating ROI, you need to subtract this cost from revenue.

For example,

• Revenue generated - $10,000
• Organic revenue generated - $5,000
• Opportunity cost - $2,000.
• Marketing expenses - $1,000

ROI = (10,000 – 5,000 – 2,000 – 1,000)/1,000 = 2 or 200%. That’s much lower than the results you get with a basic ROI formula.

How to Track the ROI of Dental Marketing

By tracking the ROI of your dental marketing strategy, you can figure out which tactics are working well and which approaches require changes.

Metrics to Track

To track the ROI, you need to pay attention to several essential marketing metrics:

• Impressions – how many people view your advertising content (doesn’t single out repeat views).
• Visits – how many people visit your website (doesn’t account for how long they stay there).
• Leads - how many leads your marketing efforts generate (doesn’t account for conversions).
• Conversion rate – how many leads take action in response to your marketing efforts.
• Lead close rate – how many leads turn into patients.
• Patient lifetime value – how much money a customer spends during their lifecycle with your clinic.
• Cost per lead – how much money you are spending on each lead.
• Cost per acquisition – how much money you are spending on conversions.

When you have the above information, you can get a clear picture of how much money you are spending on marketing and how much revenue your efforts are generating.

Call Tracking Technology

For dental clinics, a large number of leads contact you through the telephone. When a lead appears at your virtual doorstep through an online form or a clicked ad, it’s easy to track. When a patient calls your clinic, figuring out which marketing channel they came from can be complicated.

To track lead sources, you can take advantage of call tracking technology which assigns a unique phone number to each marketing channel. When the call comes in, you already know where the patient got your clinic’s phone number. This is essential to figuring out which marketing tactics and channels work best.

A Note on HIPAA Compliance

When tracking leads, it’s essential to stay compliant with HIPAA requirements. Your clinic has an obligation to keep the obtained health information secure and confidential. Accordingly, if patients share this data in web contact forms, you need to make sure it stays safe.

To do that, you need to follow specific guidelines for website security, including:

• Choose a HIPAA-compliant hosting for your website.
• Purchase an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate for the website.
• Ensure full data encryption for all web forms.
• Publish HIPAA policy on the website

You also need to make regular data backups and ensure secure deletion of unnecessary PHI.

How to Increase the ROI of Dental Marketing

Whatever your current ROI is, it’s always possible to improve it by adjusting your strategy, using innovative tools, and taking a fresh look at the competition.

Determine ROI by Marketing Channel

Tracking ROI by following key metrics, such as cost per lead and lead close rate, allows you to see which channel the majority of conversions come from.

With this data in hand, you can shift the marketing budget toward high-ROI channels. This can increase the overall marketing ROI while driving more high-quality leads.

Experiment with New Channels

If you aren’t happy with the current ROI, you may not be exploring the proper marketing channels. Consider experimenting with new options, including:

• SEO
• Paid ads (Paid search, Google Display, Social Media Ads)
• Content marketing (blogging, guest posting, creating lead magnets)
• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• Video marketing
• Word-of-mouth marketing

Multichannel marketing is integral to a successful marketing campaign for dentists. The more channels you try, the faster you can figure out which ones generate the most revenue.

Implement Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) increases your conversion rate by implementing on-site tactics that encourage visitors to take action. The most effective CRO practices include:

• Incentivizing patients to take action
• A/B testing CTAs
• Posting gated content
• Beefing up the internal linking tactics

To improve CRO, you need to pay closer attention to your target audience. Addressing pain points in the most efficient way possible drives visitors to take action.

Improve Patient Retention

The more patients remain loyal to your clinic, the higher their lifetime value becomes. This increases the overall marketing ROI. Besides providing stellar services, you can improve retention rates for your practice by:

• Delivering high-quality content that builds authority.
• Improving the lead nurturing process.
• Automating some processes such as online appointment scheduling.
• Offering discounts and bonuses to loyal patients.

Improving patient experience is the key to reducing the churn rate. Keep in mind that the experience on your website is just as important as the in-clinic experience.

A Case Study in Tracking and Increasing Dental Marketing ROI

Recently, DoctorLogic helped a well-established Californian dental practice, Emigh Dental, improve its marketing ROI. The company helped design an effective website with high-quality content that used 479% more keywords than the previous version.

DoctorLogic also used call tracking technology to segment ROI by channel and identify top revenue-generating opportunities. As a result, the clinic benefited from a 30% increase in website leads and a 21% spike in conversions.

Calculating, tracking, and increasing ROI are essential to the success of a dental practice. To save time while taking advantage of the latest technologies, some companies choose to outsource ROI improvement to marketing agencies. With experts at the helm, it’s possible to cut costs, increase conversions, and steal market share from the competition.