We have been working with dental practices and clinics for a number of years.
We’ve done the testing, we know what works and most importantly what doesn’t work.
The grim reality is that 96% of all businesses fail within 10 years, with 80% failing within the first 2 years.
The remaining 4% who do make it, just because they are still around, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are successful or profitable – it just means they’ve survived.
The question is ‘Why do so few practices or clinics grow and become profitable?’
You see, what separates these clinics from the rest is drive and dedication of the practice or clinic owner to apply the skills that matter.
And the number one skill is being able to produce revenue.
Being able to regularly top up the cash register in significant volumes with high enough margins to sustain and grow the business.
If there is one piece of advice that you decide to take from this report then it needs to be this one because just this on it’s own will transform your business beyond belief.
Investing in advertising that attracts high-value prospects and then converts that traffic into sales and patients is the most profitable investment you can make.
Yet despite this reliable, lucrative return many practices almost brag that they don’t spend any money on advertising.
It’s as if they wear their lack of investment in their own business as a ‘badge of honour’.
And usually they don’t advertise because they think of it as an expense, crowing that all of their business comes from word of mouth.
Don’t get me wrong, word of mouth is great. It’s free and it comes with social proof that you’re good at what you do.
But you can’t plan your growth just through word of mouth referrals.
It’s passive, unreliable, you can’t control it, measure it or turn it up or down when you need to.
And that is a huge sign that you are playing it small.
Advertising is an investment that makes more money than anything else.
I’m not talking about a passive investment where you stick a bunch of money into something and hope you end up rich someday.
Because when done properly, advertising can start to make you money immediately.
So, just like the billionaires who leverage (often other people’s) money to make more money, you can also rapidly grow your revenues by attracting the high-value patients using smart investments in paid advertising.
Now the big question is, how much should you invest in advertising for your business?
I hear people referring to the business course they went on, where they were told about budgets and having a ‘defined budget’ as a percentage of sales.
“Spend 10% of turnover on marketing” or something ridiculous like that.
You should only have a marketing ‘budget’ if your marketing isn’t working!
Why?
Because if each £1 you invest gives you £3 back, you want to invest as much as your cash flow allows.
Sometimes, you might be wise to even borrow cash to invest – as you have essentially created a money printing machine.
You are effectively purchasing cash at a huge discount.
Why stop or hold back on what you would spend on this?
Step one is to make sure you actively drive as much traffic to your business as possible.
And you shouldn’t just limit yourself to one channel either.
Let’s say that all of your traffic comes from Google AdWords.
Straight away, you’re leaving all the traffic you could be getting from other channels like SEO or Facebook Ads on the table.
And if for whatever reason your Google AdWords account gets shut down, you’re left with zero traffic – and zero sales.
But by maintaining multiple sources of traffic, you can keep a constant flood of leads coming to you. You’ll have a much larger audience to work with.
And with more traffic sources, the less likely you are to be affected should one of those sources dry up.
It’s really important when using multiple traffic sources to start small. Start with just the one channel.
Build up that channel to the point where you have an offer that’s converting profitably (as in you’re making more than you spend) and then calculate your cost per lead (CPL) and cost per acquisition (CPA) for that particular channel.
Then, take the profit from that channel and open up a new channel.
Repeat the process across different channels and compare the various CPL and CPAs so you know which of your traffic sources are the most profitable.
Once you know which traffic sources convert best, you can choose the three most profitable sources and spread your resources across them; that way, if your main traffic source has problems, you still have two other sources of traffic that are bringing you leads leaving you to work on getting your main source of traffic back up and running.
