Accurately Assess Your Dental Practice’s Digital Marketing Budget
With more and more patients going online to find dentists, having a website, social media profiles, positive online reviews, and other digital assets has become a necessity for dental practices that want to remain competitive and attract new patients. However, digital marketing requires an investment of both time and money. For dental practices with limited marketing budgets, figuring out how much to allocate towards digital can be challenging.
At Now Media Group, our San Diego, CA-based digital marketers can help determine how much time and energy to devote to each part of your practice’s digital marketing strategy. With data-backed results and up-to-date SEO best practices, we can make your marketing dollars go further.
Call (858) 333-8950 today to schedule your free website consultation with Now Media Group. We’re here to grow your dental practice through evidence-based SEO and digital marketing strategies.
Take Stock of Your Current Digital Assets
Before deciding how much to invest in your digital marketing strategies, take inventory of what online assets you already have in place. These may include:
- Your Website: Is it mobile-friendly? Easy to navigate? Kept updated? Optimized for SEO?
- Social Media Profiles: Which platforms are you active on? How many followers do you have? How frequently do you post?
- Online Reviews: Look at the volume of reviews on Google, Facebook, and Yelp. What’s your average rating?
- Online Listings: Have you claimed and optimized your practice listings on directories like Healthgrades?
- Email Marketing: Do you collect emails to send newsletters/promotions? What tool do you use?
- Paid Ads: Are you running any pay-per-click or paid social ads? How are they performing?
Conducting a digital audit will help identify strengths and weaknesses so you can allocate the budget accordingly.
Set Measurable Digital Marketing Goals
The next step is to define tangible goals for what you want to achieve through digital marketing. Setting metrics-driven goals helps direct where to focus efforts and how much budget is needed.
Some examples of measurable digital marketing goals are:
- Increase website traffic by 30 percent in six months
- Generate 40 new patient inquiries per month
- Grow email list subscribers by 15 percent this year
- Get 25 new Google reviews in the next three months
- Reduce cost-per-click by 20 percent for paid ads
- Increase social media reach by 50 percent in 12 months
Establish Benchmarks for Budget Allocation
So, what percentage of the total marketing budget should go toward digital marketing? Digital marketers recommend allocating five to 10 percent of your annual gross revenue. This provides a good benchmark range to work with. You can also base targets on previous years’ spending and results.
Prioritize Investment in Your Website
Your website is the hub of all digital marketing efforts, so devote a major part of your budget to website design, development, and maintenance. Invest in a custom-designed dental website that accurately reflects your brand and services. Ensure seamless mobile responsiveness, fast page speeds, and simple navigation. The content should be written for both search engines and humans.
At Now Media Group, we provide all of these services to ensure you get the business you’re looking for! We’ll tailor your SEO strategies and make sure your website is built exactly how you envision it to look.
After creating your website, budget funds for things like:
- Web hosting, backups
- Content creation
- Website security
- Periodic redesigns
Allocate for Paid Search Advertising
Paid search, like Google Ads, allows you to advertise your practice when prospective patients search for specific dental treatments or procedures in your area. When you use PPC (pay-per-click), the ads should focus on the services you offer, your geographic location, and keywords patients use when looking for a dentist. Track conversions and optimize ads for maximum ROI.
Maintain and Grow Your Social Media
While managing social media accounts is free, you may want to allocate a portion of your budget to paid social media advertising. Promote your Facebook business page and Instagram profile to increase followers and engagement. Consider sponsoring relevant Facebook groups and Instagram influencers to raise awareness. Use ads to target local audiences that can turn into new patients.
Track and Evaluate Results
Continuously measure the results of each digital marketing initiative to determine ROI — website traffic, leads generated, conversions, engagement, etc. Optimizing based on the hard data will indicate where to increase or reduce budget allocation moving forward. Improving ROI over time is the goal.
Call Now Media Group Today!
An effective digital marketing strategy is invaluable for dental practices looking to grow their brand and attract new patients. Allocating a portion of your marketing budget to digital is vital to success. Partnering with a full-service digital marketing agency like Now Media Group is an investment in your practice, so call (858) 333-8950 today to schedule your consultation with our representatives.