If you have embarked on a digital marketing campaign before, you may of been disappointed with the results. Despite the growing list of digital marketing opportunities, there’s a general feeling amongst many dentists that digital marketing strategies – such as Google Adwords – are difficult to make profitable. In a recent conversation I had with one independent dentist, this was what he told me:

“I’ve had a very poor experience with Google Adwords with a campaign that was run by a fairly reputable online marketing company.”

This sentiment is shared by many dentists, but there’s a reason why a dental marketing campaign doesn’t deliver enough leads and patients.

You see, there is a component missing from most dental marketing campaigns that even most “reputable online marketing companies” aren’t doing. And when this component is missing, the campaign often struggles. The following case study will show how a dental marketing campaign is impacted when this component is missing.

So what exactly am I talking about, you ask?

Well, keep reading as this case study will show how this missing component helps to turn more website visitors into patients.

But let me start by telling you the mistake almost every dentist makes when launching their digital marketing campaign. Whether it’s a paid advertising, social media or an SEO campaign, this one mistake is made almost every time.

You see, most Dentists seem to think that by simply getting more people to their website, those people will automatically turn into patients and profits. And while you can be forgiven for thinking this too, the truth of the matter is it’s far more complicated than that.

To have a thriving and profitable digital marketing campaign you must understand the game that’s being played. The game is a numbers game and only when you understand the numbers, do you give yourself a fair chance of winning the game.

A conversion strategy improves those numbers because it turns more visitors into patients. As you will see in the case study, when your campaign is without a conversion strategy, you waste your marketing budget and miss out welcoming many new patients to your practice.

Whilst reviewing a conversion funnel campaign that was recently set up, I noticed how the numbers from the campaign provided a solid example of how conventional marketing – the type most dentists are doing – is the root cause of their underperformance. It also highlighted how a conversion funnel strategy is a surefire way to increase leads and turn more visitors into patients.

The client is the owner of two independent practices. The purpose of the marketing campaign was to increase dental implant and All-on-4 patients with Google Adwords. We set up 2 Google Adwords campaigns, one for each practice location. Within each campaign, we built a conversion funnel. However, from Sept 2016 to Nov 2016 the Google Ads directed prospects to the client website, while we built the conversion funnel. The two screenshots below are taken from Google Adwords, the first set of data was before the conversion funnel, the second screenshot shows what happened after the conversion funnel was launched.

The campaign was paused over the Christmas period for nearly 4 weeks (from 20th December to 13th January). This meant the conversion funnel was running for 7 full weeks, while the campaign without the funnel ran for just over 11 weeks.

The most important numbers to look at here are ‘conversions’. A conversion for this campaign is counted when (a) the visitor opts in or (b) requests an implant consultation. If the subscriber opts in, they go onto a mail list where they receive a series of emails that are designed to educate the prospect about the treatment, differentiate the dentist from all the other dentists and build trust and rapport with the prospect so they are significantly more likely to choose this dentist, when they eventually decide to go ahead with the treatment.

There were no conversions from September to November 2016 when traffic was directed to the client website (without a conversion funnel), yet nearly $3,000 was spent on Google advertising. This meant that every visitor that arrived on the client website left without taking any action. A clear example of how marketing budget is wasted when there is no effective conversion strategy.

Compare this to the conversion funnel, only $1,632.97 was spent on advertising, almost half of what was spent when there was no conversion funnel, yet there were 47 conversions, of which 38 subscribers and 9 implant consultations.

The other noticeable number is Avg. CPC (cost-per-click). Which is the amount charged by Google each time a prospect clicks on an Ad.

The Avg. CPC was $12.50 (without the funnel) and $9.55 (with the funnel). Which is a drop of 26% ($2.95) with the conversion funnel. The reason for this is Google’s algorithms evaluate the effectiveness of each advertiser to determine what they pay. The criteria they use:

1. Expected CTR (Ad click through rate)
2. Ad relevance (how the ad relates to the landing page)
3. LP performance (this includes both time on site and landing page performance).

With an effective conversion funnel you not only get more conversions than your competition, but your advertising costs can significantly decrease. Basically, Google rewards your effective marketing by charging lower rates. It is a huge competitive advantage if you can pay 25-50% less than your competitors for the same traffic. When you can pay less for traffic, but get more people to your website, and when you convert more visitors into patients, you are in the driving seat to win more business and outperform your competition.

At location #2 there were 32 conversions and 7 consultations. We also track phone calls, and location #2 received 10 dental implant phone leads. These calls were from the subscribers who received the email follow up series. The Avg. CPC also dropped for this campaign, from $9.04 to $6.89. Which is a 24% drop in advertising cost with the conversion funnel.

The purpose of this case study is to illustrate the impact a conversion strategy has on the overall numbers of a marketing campaign. What this demonstrates is that an effective conversion funnel strategy will significantly outperform a conventional marketing strategy by turning more visitors into patients at a far lower cost.