By DAN ROGERS
Daniel Rogers is a young award winning dentist who took over Bamboo Dental in Cardiff two years ago. After a year with no online presence bar a holding page Dan rebranded the practice and launched an online marketing campaign which saw new patient numbers rise by 400 per cent within six months. New patient numbers have since remained stable, with each new patient bringing in 12 times what it cost in marketing to acquire them.
Dan Rogers has achieved formidable results for Bamboo Dental through his online marketing campaign
Here Dan shares his top tips for online marketing success:
- Be clear on your proposition: I knew what I wanted to do with the practice but I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing, so I talked it through with Breathe and they reassured me a low cost, high volume orthodontic and cosmetic offering would work in my area. It was important to nail this right at the start because all the online collateral, from the copy on the website to tweets, key phrases and AdWords (paid copy that appears in particular Google search results) had to speak the same language and seamlessly communicate the low cost proposition. This is Bamboo’s unique selling point and we made sure it came through so our target market – people of all ages within an hour’s drive who want low cost dentistry – had multiple channels to see the same consistent message. Now we are the most popular practice in the area and people are travelling up to 50 miles to see us.
- Be consistent in your data gathering: I talk to Breathe Online Marketing once a month for an hour or two and we go through the previous month’s performance reports. Obviously as a principal you don’t have time to go into the nitty gritty so I listen to the guys who collated the data and we review the top line trends, then we’ll consider tweaking parts of the campaign; is the pay per click (PPC) budget right? Are there enough inbound call leads from the new landing page? You have to change tactics throughout a campaign depending on the data. Initially we spent a lot on PPC, but we reduced the budget once the organic search activity – which takes longer to take effect – started to yield results.
- Remember your website is a marketing tool, not a vanity project: There is a difference between a good looking website and a good website. Don’t be precious and remember the primary function of your website is to sell treatment plans. It’s probably the most important tool you have to feed your business, so be honest and if you are only just establishing a significant online presence like we were 12 months ago, be honest about your current presence. Don’t be afraid of doing a complete overhaul.
- If you haven’t got time to do your social media properly, outsource it: Twitter and Facebook can support your SEO campaign if you use your key phrases in the posts, so it’s an opportunity to make your money go further. Breathe Online Marketing do two or three Facebook and Twitter posts a week for Bamboo and they also do blogs for us which are posted on the Bamboo website.
- Never stop working on your organic rankings: There are no short cuts since Google changed the rules but there are some straightforward things you can do like creating a few extra landing pages. This is a way of casting your net wider than your key phrases to suck more generic traffic into your site.
Best
Dan Rogers
If you’d like to talk to Dan about his online success get in touch with Breathe on 0845 299 7209 to arrange a group Skype.