Expanding your dental practice to offer multiple locations is an exciting and overwhelming time. Among the many important considerations that must be made is how you plan to market each location and how much of your marketing budget will be spent on them. Many business owners attempt to be fair when making such decisions by simply dividing their efforts and money evenly between locations.
However, it is important to understand that each practice location has its unique circumstances. Dividing your marketing efforts and your budget evenly can often lead to increased costs, or may even leave one of your locations in a bind. This is where a professional marketing company can help you determine how much of your budget to allocate to each location.
Why Dental Marketing and Budgeting Needs Vary By Location
When you have multiple practice locations, it is important to understand the unique qualities of each. For example, if one of your locations is established in a busy part of town that has plenty of foot traffic and recognition while your other location is brand new and in an up-and-coming area, their marketing needs are very different. Splitting your budget and efforts evenly will likely leave your new location without the special focus and attention it deserves.
Determining the needs of each location requires research to understand the demographics, operational efficiency, capacity, and service mix. If one location provides a specific service that is not offered at other locations, it is important to market that service. If one location is receiving more interest and more patients seeking appointments, it is often a good idea to put a greater share of your marketing efforts into highlighting the availability of another location that can also serve the needs of those patients.
One of the most important resources when determining the needs of a specific location is the staff that works in that location. Your staff can answer many of the questions you have about the patient demographics in that particular area. Involving the staff in the discussion of marketing needs gives you and your marketing team a more insightful foundation for budgeting. Knowing your competition is also important. You will want to conduct a competitor analysis to determine how other practices in proximity to each location are performing online.
Determining What to Divide and What to Combine in Your Efforts at Each Location
When determining how to divide your marketing and budget to ensure each location gets the attention it deserves, it is also important to stay consistent with your brand. Often, this results in a budget for marketing your whole practice, such as search engine optimization for your website, as well as a budget for marketing each location.
While multiple locations often have widely varying market needs, maintaining your brand identity across all locations is also an important part of the marketing equation. Creating a brand guide keeps your efforts consistent and establishes standards that govern the marketing for each location. Brand identity is what your patients and prospective patients use to readily identify your practice, regardless of location. This includes color schemes, logos, a mission statement, and the primary services provided at each of your locations.
What happens after your brand guide has been developed and you’ve conducted the necessary research to fully understand the specific needs of your locations? At that point, businesses often discover that one location needs assistance with getting new customers, while another location needs assistance in marketing a new service or specialist. A process must then be created to regularly track the success of these marketing efforts to modify or refine your strategy over time.
Achieving a Dynamic Optimization Strategy for Each Office
The reason marketing strategies are consistently reviewed and modified is because the needs of the practice and the community it serves are constantly changing. Budget allocations should be revisited on at least a quarterly basis, taking into consideration any changes that have been experienced in the demographics of the neighborhood, operational efficiency, capacity, and service mix. The money and effort you put in during this quarter may need to change in order to compete with a new competitor at a long-established location next quarter.
Dynamic strategies for marketing each location and the overall brand of your practice involve looking at historical data as well as prospective information to understand how much of a budget you have after factoring in operational costs. Knowing how much you have to invest in marketing your practice also helps you develop a baseline for your return on investment.
Market My Market Can Help You Handle the Marketing Needs of All Your Locations
Market My Market provides marketing and development services aimed at maximizing your return on investment and helping your practice succeed at all its locations. Our experienced team doesn’t just develop a single comprehensive marketing plan for your business. Rather, we develop 30, 60, and 90-day plans that incorporate your goals, competition, and budget so that you can move forward with the peace of mind that there is a sound strategy in place. Beyond the strategy, we offer transparency as to what our team is focusing on and why, along with real-time reporting so we can understand what is and isn’t working to quickly implement changes.
With a commitment to providing you with the customer service and communication you need to make important marketing decisions and month-over-month analysis, Market My Market aims to be your digital marketing partner. For more information about how we can help you market and budget for multiple locations, give us a call at (866) 270-2250 or schedule a Zoom call through our online contact form.
