In dental practices, there are three kinds of herd in the dental business. The first herd in dental practices is the current patient base and inactive patient base. This base should be nurtured and offered more services every single month. The second herd in dental practices is the herd of all the people that we have relationships with. They are our friends, our family, and all the business owners that we go on the other end, where they call us and we write our checks to. And now for the third herd…

The Third Herd In Dental Practices:

The third herd in dental practices is what we call the “interested but not ready herd”. In other words, they are your lead. I have already talked about lead generation marketing in my previous articles . Take for example, if we’re going for cosmetic dentistry, and we call on a certain patient and ask them this question: “Are you embarrassed by your smile?”. Then we give them two options – first option: they can call directly to the office just to set up a consultation; second option: they can come in and get them to call toll free order message hot line number or go to a website to get a frequency awareness report. Then as time goes on, that group of people who requested would build up in number. And in a span of over a year, you might have 3,000 people or 5,000 people who are on that list. However, there are some people on that list who just will never come in. But on the other hand, the good thing about marketing with these people and getting a ton of leads of people who are interested is the fact that we know that they’re really interested! That’s why they requested for a report, which means that they’re interested of whatever it is that you have to offer them. Then you can do anything you want to in your business: you can have headache sufferers; you can go to implant patients; you can do cosmetic dentistry. So you get to decide on how you want to do it. You can mail them until the time comes that they ask to get off your list, or after 18 months minimum and they drop off and you just get rid of them.

Nurturing And Targeting The Herd In Dental Practices:

Truth be told, this is the herd in dental practices that most people fail to nurture and take care of. So how do you nurture or target them? You can do many things: first, you can run a website campaign for the tv; second, you can do radio advertisements; and third, you can send out tear-sheet mailing wherein they opt in and out of our funnel (wherein we mail them a direct mail package, then we go to postcard, postcard, then direct mail package and all on that time where we send them e-mails all at the same time). Now, the challenge here is how you manage all of them. Right now, I’m personally running five different companies under the same umbrella. There’s so much marketing that’s going on automatically every month, and it’s close to impossible that we’ll be able to manage all of them if we try to use the contact management system; or even try to use traditional management software we have. As a remedy, what we have done for the last couple of years is that we actually work with the company called Infusion and they’re speaking our next super conference, and probably in every event. If you would like to sign up for the next event, you can do so and just log on to our website over the next days.

Visit our website at www.DentistProfits.com and get a free CD and Book titled, “How To Predictably Grow Your Practice 25-35% Every Year While Enjoying More Control, Time Off, And Bottom-Line Net Profits!”.

My name is Ed O’Keefe, and over the past 7 ½ years I have shown over 5300 General Dentists world wide how to flood their practice with patients using my counter-intuitive, yet extremely effective dental marketing, internet dental marketing secrets, and dental advertising secrets that are proven, guaranteed, and unmatched by anyone else in dentistry!

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-tips-articles/dental-practices-nurturing-the-third-herd-in-the-dental-business-1448656.html

In this article, dental practice management consulting adviser Lloyd Irvin will share to you the importance of “traffic” and “conversion” in online dental marketing. The dental practice management consulting adviser will share to you the definition of traffic and how getting it to your dental website is a must in online dental marketing. And the dental practice management consulting adviser will also share to you the definition of conversion and how to find your conversion rates in online dental marketing. And this is something that we focus specifically at our dental practice management website!

Here’s what the dental practice management consulting adviser will share to you about traffic and conversion:

On Traffic:

What is “traffic”? Traffic refers to the number of people coming in to your website daily through the Internet. Before, people use the yellow pages to look up and search for things they want to buy. Today, although some people still use the yellow pages, there’s an entire sector of people that if they want to go and buy things that they want, they go to the Internet, use search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, wherein they type in whatever they’re looking for and they spend time just trying to find out what they’re looking for, and they do their research online! As a dental practice management consulting adviser, I would tell you to understand this fact: traffic=real people! Hundreds and millions of people are searching for things online every single day. Online, they look in for Cosmetic Dentistry, Implant Dentistry, dental terms, etc. People are searching on the Internet because they have problems, desires, and want them fixed/achieved right now! In online dental marketing, your job is to make sure that you get these people into your dental marketing website, and into your dental practice as well!

On Conversion:

What is “conversion”? Conversion means that the people visiting your website becomes your new patient (and this should be your goal for your dental marketing business!). As a dental practice management consulting adviser, I would tell you to structure your website in a way that you get people to enter their name, contact number, and personal information, and then they would call your office and they officially become your patient in your dental practice! Now, conversion rates can be found in four areas:

• Website Opt-In Rate: If you have a website and you are collecting names, e-mails, and full contact informations, you can track down and see what your conversion rate is with this. If you are using postcards or any other kinds of media, you can track your conversion rate for your online traffic.

• Website Call-In Rate: You can also have conversion using call-in rates; wherein potential patients call into your office through your website, and in the process, they become your dental patients!

• Office Appointment Rate: For this, as potential patients are calling into your dental office, you can get your staff to have useful “scripts” that they can follow so that there’s a big chance of getting that potential patient into your dental practice. And having these scripts will definitely make a big difference in your practice!

• Auto-Responder Conversion Rate: Now, a lot of people have heard about the auto- responders, but are the e-mail that are in the auto-responders converting? If you have a 10-step auto responder that is automatically done, what is the percentage of people that call your office after they get e-mail#1? Or e-mail#2? Or e-mail#3? Or e-mail#4? You should also be converting these. Imagine this, if you track your results, you found out that 40% of those people got email#4 and called; and only 5% called from e-mail#1; 15% called from email#2; and 20% called from e-mail#3. With this, you can move e-mail#4 to position#2. In here, we’re trying to get them in as fast as possible! And while there in your auto-responder if your email#4 came in one day into position#8, but on that same day people are on Google looking for a dentist, and if they also opted into your competitor’s website, and your competitor’s first e-mail got them, then you’ve lost them! And if losing them is worth, say, $20,000.00, you should be concerned and worried, and you should be interested in how you can improve that!

Now, given these facts, as a dental practice management consulting adviser, I’d tell you to get as much traffic as you can into your website, be mindful of your conversion and track it down always, and increase both your traffic and conversion in order for you to make more money in your dental marketing business. Always remember and keep in mind my “magic formula”: Traffic + Conversion = Cash! Log on to our dental practice management website, www.DentistProfits.com and get a free CD and Book titled, “How to Predictably Grow Your Practice 25-35% Every Year While Enjoying More Control, Time Off, and Bottom-Line Net Profits!”.

My name is Ed O’Keefe, and over the past 7 ½ years I have shown over 5300 General Dentists world wide how to flood their practice with patients using my counter-intuitive, yet extremely effective dental marketing, internet dental marketing secrets, and dental advertising secrets that are proven, guaranteed, and unmatched by anyone else in dentistry!

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-tips-articles/dental-practice-management-consulting-adviser-lloyd-irvin-on-traffic-and-conversion-1308834.html