Marketing Plans vs. Running an Ad
The majority of hearing healthcare practices use a "shot gun" approach to marketing. Spend money on several ads and directories then hope something hits the target. There are two main problems: first, you don't know what's working and second, most of your money is wasted.
Many companies spend 5-7% of revenue on advertising without a plan or realistic goals. It's not surprising that many business owners view advertising as risky and want to avoid it as much as possible. Without a plan, tracking or realistic goals, advertising is very risky. Done correctly, advertising can be a very profitable investment for your practice.
What To Do Before You Place An Ad
In order to improve your advertising results create a marketing plan and budget before you run your ads. A successful plan will include testing and tracking to calculate how each tactic performs. This makes it easy to determine which tactics to continue using and which to drop. Our clients use customized versions of ads that are proven successful for hearing healthcare practices and physicians/surgeons. Clients achieve immediate results (more patient appointments and fittings) and save time because the testing, calculating and refining is done for them.
How Much Is A Client Worth To Your Practice?
If you are creating your marketing budget on your own the first step is to calculate how much a client is worth to your hearing healthcare practice (the lifetime value of that client to your practice). Next determine how much you can afford to spend to get a new client.
Most hearing professionals and physicians/surgeons don't realize the importance of calculating how much they spend to attract new customers (cost per customer). Knowing the cost per customer tells you how cost effective your marketing is. By reducing your cost per customer you can increase your profitability.
The more clients you want to attract the larger your advertising budget will need to be. This assumes you have tested ads that bring predictable results.
Making Your Advertising More Profitable
We work to set up custom marketing plans based on proven successful results marketing your hearing healthcare or physicians/surgeons practice to potential patients. When you create your own plan be sure it includes details such as your ad content, where the ads will be placed (specific newspapers and directories) and the frequency of the ads. Since our clients are located across the United States we assist in analyzing the results from each ad and determine which ones pull best in their area. You'll want to test every ad, too. Soon you'll have a "play book" of winning ads that pull a predictable number of prospects which turn into a predictable number of clients. This is the stage where you can increase revenue simply by placing more ads.
How to Calculate the Percentage You Are Spending on Advertising
Ever wonder what percentage of your revenue you spend on advertising? Simply add your total advertising expenses, divide by your annual revenue and multiply by 100 - the result is the percent of revenue you spend annually on advertising. For example, if your revenue is $540,000 per year and you spend $1,500 per month on yellow pages and $3,000 per quarter on a promotion you are spending 5.5% of revenue on marketing.
Contact us today to learn about an easy, cost effective way to grow your hearing healthcare practice and increase your profits.