Figure Out What’s Working: Measuring Results and Managing Budgets 

If you’ve been following our blog, you’ve seen the first four parts of our dental marketing guide that cover the components needed to create a holistic marketing strategy, like website design, local SEO, paid advertising, and social media. 

So once you’ve implemented these, you can just sit back and watch your search engine ranking increase, right? 

Unfortunately, no. 

Local marketing is an ongoing, and ever-changing, effort. It takes time, thoughtful consideration, and ongoing upgrades to reap its rewards. Once you’ve kicked off the initiatives we outlined in this guide, you should consistently be measuring their effectiveness. Because in the end, what’s the point of putting so much effort into a strategy if it’s not providing a return on investment (ROI)? 

To do so, you should be tracking website analytics, like traffic, user behavior, bounce rates, and conversion rates. Also be sure to monitor online reviews on GBP, social media, and directories to measure client satisfaction and identify areas for improvement. 

Key Metrics for Analyzing Website Success

• Page Views: Your overall traffic, or how many “clicks” your site receives.
• Unique Visitors: How many individual visitors are interacting with your site.
• Engagement: Metrics like how long visitors stay on your website and how many pages they visit will help you understand whether your site keeps visitors interested in your content.
• Bounce Rate: The “opposite” of engagement, how quickly users leave your site. Higher bounce rates could mean that your homepage or landing pages take too long to load or fail to attract and engage.
• Top Pages: Your site’s most-visited pages visited most frequently – often your home page.
• Exit Pages: Pages that users visit most often right before leaving your site.
• Referrals: Web technologies like UTM parameters can track the links users click elsewhere to arrive at your site. External links can reflect traffic from other websites that link to yours.
• Keywords: Which keywords tend to generate the most search engine traffic to your site.
• Conversion and cost per action. As you attract visitors to your site, you want them to interact with your calls-to-action (CTAs) and convert to a lead or a sale. And if you’re running paid advertising for your site, you’ll want to measure how much a conversion or sale costs you by dividing the amount you’re spending by the number of actions completed.

The Takeaway 

We know the cumulative aspects of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy might sound daunting. But alas, this is an important aspect of the gig – Attracting and retaining clients is essential for the growth and success of a dental practice. And, frankly, if you aren’t garnering the attention of qualified potential clients online, someone else will. 

Here at Socius Marketing, we have the expertise to interpret analytics specific to the dental industry to provide meaningful insights about your online performance, audience behavior, and marketing campaigns.  

We can assist in configuring analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, to track and measure key performance metrics on your website; executing A/B testing to compare changes in design, messaging, user experience, etc; and analyzing that data to identify trends and areas for improvement. We’ll provide custom reporting that consolidates and visualizes those data points in a clear and understandable format to help you stay informed because you didn’t go to school to sit at your desk and analyze online data, but we did! 

With these metrics ironed out, you can adjust your digital marketing strategy and budget accordingly to capitalize on what’s proving to work. Here at Socius, we have the expertise to interpret analytics specific to the dental industry to provide meaningful insights about your online performance, audience behavior, and marketing campaigns. 

About Socius 

Socius Marketing provides full-service, agency-model digital marketing services that drive leads for healthcare clients. The Socius team brings more than 300 years of combined experience in all aspects of digital marketing, from SEO content writing and web design to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and web development.  

Socius serves as an extension of your practice. That means that as your business grows, our team will work with you to make sure we have the right marketing strategies in place to reach your practice goals.