Abacuses out. What should you be spending on digital marketing this year?
That time of year has rolled around again, the spreadsheets are out, the accountant is asking sensible questions, and someone has inevitably said, ‘Right, what are we actually spending next year?’ When a private dental practice is planning its budget for the next tax year it’s tempting to focus on the big costs of staffing, equipment, materials, refurbishments and so on. However, there’s one line item that too often gets treated as an afterthought, namely digital marketing.
It’s important to remember that, for a long time now, digital marketing isn’t a nice to have, it’s the engine that keeps new patients walking through the door. Without it, even the most cutting edge practice with the best clinicians will start to feel very quiet, very quickly. So here’s the million pound question, just how much should you be spending?
While there’s no one size fits all answer, the data says that private dental practices in the UK allocate somewhere between 5% to 12% of annual turnover to marketing, with the lion’s share of that going to digital channels. Practices that are aggressively growing, launching new treatments like Invisalign, implants or facial aesthetics or who’ve recently opened their doors often sit at the higher end of that range and they usually do so for good reason.
Digital marketing works because it’s measurable. Unlike old-fashioned advertising you can easily track exactly where your money is going and what it’s bringing back in. Website traffic, leads, calls, appointments, average cost per enquiry, it’s all trackable. Many practices fall into the trap of ‘on/off’ marketing, spending only when diaries are quiet, then tightening the purse strings once the books fill up. However, digital marketing doesn’t work like a tap you can turn on and off without consequences. It’s been proven that algorithms favour consistency and that audiences need repeated exposure. The 10 touch points before a sale is still areal thing.
I’d argue that the question ‘how much do we have to spend?’ is inherently a negative one, and a simple reframing of that question will put any investment in a much better light. ‘How much growth do we want, and what level of digital investment will get us there?’ is a far better question to ask yourself. And whilst you might not be popping champagne and singing Auld Lang Syne for the new tax year, you can still make a resolution not to neglect the one thing that’ll help your business grow.
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