There are plenty of so called digital dental marketing companies out there that it may be difficult to decide between them. So if you are looking for a new dental marketing company – what are the factors you need to take into account before committing to any of them.
- Speak in plain English – You need to be able to talk to a company who can explain in plain English, what they will and will not do for your dental practice and website. A dental marketing campaign will usually involve many channels, each with their own jargon: SEO (onsite optimization, off site link building, link baiting etc), social media, citation, Google local, not to mention three letter acronyms – CTR, CR and CPC to name but a few . A company is doing their job if they can tell you what they will do, how long it will take and how many new patients it will deliver. At the end of the day – that is why you are doing the digital marketing campaign.
- Establish the cost and the length of time required for your dental SEO campaign to deliver the rankings and results. If you are not seeing good improvement in your rankings within the time stated, consider moving your business elsewhere.
- Ask to speak to your dental SEO company’s existing clients – if they won’t provide contact details for practices they have done dental marketing for, take the warning and walk away. Speak to the practice manager or one of the senior dental practitioners – this will give you a real indication as to the dental marketing campaigns and results the dental marketing company has achieved on behalf of the dental practice.
- Be wary of long term contracts – try and negotiate a trial period where you can start to see the results, then consider moving to a long term contract.
- Before signing a contract understand exactly how many more new patients your investment is going to deliver. Is this more cost effective than other channels? Compare and adjust your budget accordingly.
- If they don’t talk about access to analytics for your site then be worried. The name of the game is to drive new patients – not just traffic. A good reputable company will want to understand how the traffic behaves on your site. If they are not calling or enquiring then why? It could be something to do with the website design.
- Understand what reports they are going to deliver, how often and what will it report. You want this to tie down to their projections in terms of search rankings and new patients (you will need to work together to track the latter).
These are just a few of the questions a dentist should be asking themselves when looking for a digital dental marketing company. If you would like to know a little more then please get in touch as we would be happy to advise.