Marketing can fail to work effectively for a variety of reasons. Here are some common factors that can cause dental practice marketing in New Zealand to be ineffective:

1. Capacity. If you only open while people are at work, you only effectively target about 15% of your market.

2. Patient-perceived service. How patients are handled through every touchpoint of the practice profoundly affects marketing effectiveness, from phone calls to the case presentation, future appointments process, patient handoff, financial policies and more.

3. Design without dental consumer insight. Creating your ads, promotions, digital assets, headlines, copy, and imagery must be laser-focused on the incredibly sensitive dental consumer. If you do not understand what they want or need, how can your marketing message hit home and cause them to try your practice?

4. Not tracking core data. We are not talking about digital impressions here. We are referring to what patients are actually doing, case acceptance, cancellation rates, pre-appointment rates, fill rates and more. IF YOU DON’T MEASURE, YOU CAN FIX IT!

5. Consistency. Are all your messages and visual branding consistent across all your visual media? Signage, brochures, business cards, digital assets, and place of business. Consistency increases trust!

6. Persistence. If all of the above is met, it takes time for any message to take hold, especially with higher competition. Think about the average buying frequency of a dental service. Minimum 6 months and maximum 5 years. Have you given up after 5 months?

7. Inadequate budget. Any business has a cost metric for advertising. We recommend 4% to 7% of turnover on average for dental. If you are starting out or producing under $500k per annum and want to grow, your marketing budget should be around 7% to 10% of the predicted turnover or more. As your income increases, that same marketing $ cost as a turnover percentage will be half. That means more profit.

8. Unfulfilled expectations. ALL staff must deliver internally what you promote and advertise externally, as unfulfilled expectations are a business killer.