From teeth whitening to implants, the demand for cosmetic dentistry has skyrocketed in recent years. Now, the typical dental patient is more aware and educated on the aesthetic options available in modern practices than ever before.
In fact, a report by the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry discovered the dental industry has seen a 46% increase in cosmetic patients compared to general patients (18%) and with 2019 fast approaching, this number is certainly set to rise through the ’new year, new you’ buzz.
Naturally, upping your marketing spend is the natural reaction to meet this increased demand and out-perform your competition. But simply throwing money at your campaigns isn’t enough without multi-channel marketing attribution. Otherwise, how can you tell if your increased budgets have been worthwhile?
Whether you’re using offline print, social media or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, utilizing multi-channel marketing attribution is exactly how cosmetic dentist businesses can determine their precise return on investment (ROI) for each marketing avenue.
Campaign Tagging URLs:
Measurement is undoubtably the most important factor in the marketing cycle; especially with dental patients moving into the online world. Now, it’s estimated that eight out of 10 patients start looking for dental assistance online.
With multi-channel marketing strategies driving traffic to your website being able to measure the success of each campaign is critical, if for no other reason than the deployment of budget, regardless of the channel. How can you achieve this?
Campaign tagging allows you to add tags to the website links used in your marketing campaigns, these tags can pass information through to Google Analytics on the links that were clicked. This way you can determine which marketing campaigns are driving the most traffic, analyse your sales funnels and use this information to optimise your efforts.
Setting up your own tagged URLs is very straightforward. All you need to do is fill out Google’s Campaign URL Builder and use the generated link for your campaigns.
Using this tool, you can add up to five parameters to URLs to identify traffic. These are:
1. Source: Identify the site, publication or advertiser that’s driving traffic, e.g. Google, newsletter or a poster.
2. Name: Identify the specific campaign, e.g. summer_promotion or appointment_follow_up.
3. Medium: The source a user clicked to visit your website, e.g. email marketing campaign would be ’email’.
4. Term: Only used for paid search to identify keywords.
5. Content: Differentiate similar content or A/B testing, e.g. if you had two calls to action (CTA) links within the same email message you can use this to identify which version is more effective.
Each parameter must be paired with a value which will contain campaign-related information. For example, let’s say your dentistry practice was running a campaign for a new year’s discount on teeth whitening. Your parameter values could be:
utm_source: ’new year-mailer’ to pinpoint traffic that originates from your new year email campaign
utm_medium: ’email’ to identify the traffic from the email campaign vs a PPC campaign
utm_campaign: ’new year’ sale to identify the overall campaign.
Your final campaign URL could look like this:
You can track and monitor your campaign traffic using Google Analytics using Acquisition -> Campaigns -> All Campaigns.
Call Tracking for Calls-to-action:
In an online-centric world, calls-to-action (CTAs) are the foundations to any marketing initiative. They’re your practice’s chance to motivate your audience to take the first step towards becoming a patient.
If a patient clicks a CTA, then your campaign, whether a touch button or a download, has clearly done its job. But measuring the success of these campaigns goes beyond number the of clicks. Obtaining data on the success for each CTA across your campaigns should be at the centre of your marketing analytics.
Remember – the path to conversion isn’t a straightforward one. The majority of prospects now use several CTAs before they finally decide to book an appointment, so knowing exactly which channels are playing a crucial part in your patient’s journey is essential.
Mediahawk offers an integrated call-to-action tracking solution for healthcare providers, enabling you to follow any interaction a patient makes with your marketing channels, providing a full view of their journey.
For example, imagine you sent a potential patient an email containing a downloadable eBook on teeth whitening. If they click the ’download’ CTA, then decide to activate a chatbot before deciding to pick up the phone to call your practice, you’ll be able to analyse this individual experience from start to finish.
The data from the call tracking software will help formulate the foundations for your marketing budget – invest more into channels that are driving the highest quality leads and plug the holes in under-performing campaigns to ensure you’re generating the highest ROI possible.
Social Media Analytics:
Social media has become a key influencer in the healthcare niche. It is estimated that, in the USA, 40% of patients have identified information on social media which has affected their health decisions.
If your dental practice is new to social media marketing, then knowing which channels to choose can be difficult. However, Facebook seems to have emerged as one of the most profitable, and cost-effective, social media channels for the dental industry. One method that is particularly proving popular on Facebook is Live Videos.
Facebook Live allow businesses to create live videos within Facebook as the action is happening. Once you’re streaming, viewers can comment on videos and you can respond offering your practice a great way to engage with potential and existing patients, for instance, your practice could create live videos focusing on the following areas:
- Office tours
- Chats with dentists/hygienists
- Demonstrations of new equipment and technology
- Promotional announcements.
For example, the Favero Dental Clinic in London has used Facebook Live to share videos on a range of their cosmetic treatments. This particular video (above) has had 9,300 views, indicating that their video campaigns are proving to be a success. After all, visuals are particularly important for cosmetic dental practices as patients will rely on being able to see the results from treatments more than anything else.
However, viewing your video campaigns at baseline isn’t enough to provide sufficient actionable data. You need to drill down on exactly how much engagement you have received and this is where Page Insights come in.
Using Facebook Page Insights allows your dental practice to gather metrics on how much engagement you have received on an individual post within a specified date range.
In the image above you can see that although this page has high reach, their engagement metrics are rather low. Remember – a high reach doesn’t necessarily guarantee high engagement. Just because someone has viewed your video, it doesn’t guarantee they have commented, e.g. asking about the price for an implant treatment.
Videos with highly engaged users are likelier to indicate awareness, for they are willing to take the time and share their connection with your practice.
You can also look at Viewer Retention metrics (see above) by going into ’Post Details’ and selecting ’Video’. These metrics include the following:
- Peak Concurrent Viewers: The highest number of viewers who were watching the video while it was live
- Viewers During Live Broadcast: A visual representation of the number of viewers during each moment of the live broadcast.
Following these metrics, your practice can understand how long it takes people to tune in to a live broadcast, how many viewers a broadcast has at its peak, how many viewers are staying and when they’re dropping off.
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