Dental Marketing Success Story
How do you define dental marketing success? Maybe with terms like growth, leads, new patients, revenue, or production. As an agency, we’ve talked to many practice owners who believe improving these metrics will give them more freedom to work and live the way they want. Is it true?
As marketers, we’re fluent in ROI, KPIs, and practice growth. But we also know there’s more to marketing than simply driving leads. For us to be successful, it’s essential to understand our clients’ long term vision for their practice. What do they love about dentistry? And how can marketing help them do more of what they love?
That’s where Dr. Grantham from Cove Family Dental comes in.
You can watch our co-founder Eric Hubbard talk through the case study in this video. Or, scroll down for the summary.
The Client: Dr. Grantham at Cove Family Dental
When Dr. Grantham came to us, he’d tried different marketing companies and tactics for his dental practice. He was ready to consolidate his efforts with one marketing company. Here’s a quick overview of the practice when we first started.
- Location: Copperas Cove, TX
- Demographic: Family dentistry serving a rural, relatively low income area
- Production: About $165,000
- Insurance: All
- Marketing Goals: Increase production and new patients
Our Approach: Increase New Patient Volume and Production
With Dr. Grantham’s initial goal of increasing production and new patient volume, we created a marketing strategy to drive in local patients. We’ll walk you through a few of our tactics:
- Targeting local SEO and keywords, like “dentist near me,” “dentist no insurance,” “dentist that accepts my insurance,” “dentist in my city,” “dentist and my zipcode,” and others
- Pushed social media campaigns
- Created consistent content and pushed through social and other platforms
The result? It worked! Dr. Grantham saw higher production and more patients. However, about a year into this strategy, he realized something crucial: higher production did not make him happier.
We sat down with Dr. Grantham to talk about his true vision for dentistry and his practice. He told us that he’d assumed more patients and more money would lead to more freedom. Instead, he felt stuck.
We decided it was time to change our approach.
The Pivot: Refine the Brand Image and Promote High End Treatments
Dr. Grantham’s vision wasn’t for more work–it was for more freedom. Understanding this helped us pivot the marketing strategy. Here’s how:
- Focus on high end treatments and technology: We began marketing veneers, sleep apnea treatments, implants, and Invisalign
- Improved the website’s appeal: We maintained some focus on families, but slowly began to elevate the website’s aesthetics to match high-end services
- Created video content: Our team produced video’s of Dr. Grantham describing treatments and technology as well as patient testimonials videos. We tracked video performance to understand which were best resonating and bringing in patients for those services.
- Broadened our geographic target: We began targeting a larger area around Copperas Cove to reach a wider audience, understanding that patients are more willing to travel for high end treatments than routine hygiene appointments.
The Results: A New Definition of Dental Marketing Success
When we first set out, Dr. Grantham defined dental marketing success with higher production and new patient volume. When that didn’t align with his vision, he found a new definition. Here’s what his practice looked like after implementing the new strategy:
- Production: About $165,000 (same as where we started, but now without an associate)
- Production per Patient: Dramatically increased
- Profitability: Increased
- Dr. Grantham’s Work Week: Reduced from 5.5 days to 3.5 days
- Lifestyle: More joy, more travel, more freedom, and planning an earlier retirement
Most importantly, Dr. Grantham met his goals and fell back in love with dentistry. If that’s not dental marketing success, we don’t know what is.
What’s your vision for your dental practice?
How do you define success? Whether you have visions of expanding your practice, retiring sooner, or having time for dental mission trips abroad, we’d love to help you get there. Contact us for your own dental marketing success story.