By far, the best and most effective dental marketing strategy you can use to help turn strangers into patients is a well-designed funnel. For those who are new to dental marketing: funnels allow you to automate the process you or your team would normally do in-person or on the phone to accomplish a particular goal. Many times, the goal is to acquire a new patient. Other times, it can be to sell a particular procedure. The funnel acts to automate the process of achieving the goal, thus freeing up your and your team’s time to make money serving existing patients while your funnel works in the background. Because funnels serve a dual role of freeing up your and your team’s time while efficiently and effectively achieving goals in the background, creating dental-marketing funnels is one of my favorite dental-marketing tactics I teach my dental coaching clients. Here’s how you can build your first dental marketing funnel this week:
1. Set a goal for your funnel.
For this example, we’re going to use Invisalign as the procedure we’re looking to promote with a funnel. The goal for this funnel will be to get more people to come to you for Invisalign treatment.
2. Create targeted, high-value opt-in content.
Create a short piece of content that will help and attract your ideal funnel target. The more connected this checklist or guide is to the goal, the better, because the goal is to get people who fit your goal into the funnel and exclude everyone else. For example, doing a drawing for a free iPad would attract everyone, and you’ll end up with a list of people that have no connection to the goal. On the other hand, offering a checklist for people to find out if they’re a candidate for Invisalign or a guide that answers the most frequently asked questions about Invisalign would attract people who are considering Invisalign and not attract anyone else. In this case, we’ll use the checklist to find out if someone’s a candidate for Invisalign as the content.
3. Schedule a Facebook Live event to attract people into your funnel.
For this example, I suggest scheduling a Facebook Live Q&A Session about Invisalign because it’s a simple event that requires very little preparation. All you need to do is show up and answer the questions you normally answer from people in your chair. This Facebook Live is designed to get the attention of people who have considered Invisalign but who haven’t followed through to get Invisalign treatments.
Promote your upcoming Live Event for the two days before the event, letting people know you’ll be doing a live Q&A session right on Facebook answering any and all questions they have about Invisalign. Promote the event to your Facebook fans, patients, and any other relevant audiences. Send an email to your patient list letting them know about the upcoming Live Event and, if you have a Facebook Chat Bot set up (you can do this through Many Chat or Chat Fuel), let them know there as well. During the live Q&A session, give people a call to action to go to a separate page to sign up for the checklist to find out if they’re a candidate for Invisalign. I suggest using ClickFunnels for this.
On the thank-you page, which is the page they will see once they sign up, create a button that takes them to a page on your website, where you have before and after pics of Invisalign patients. Deliver the checklist through an introductory email.
Make sure to put a Facebook pixel on the opt-in page and thank-you page so if they don’t opt in, you show them a different ad that reminds them to take up the PDF and get the promotion.
4. Promote the event replay to get more people into your funnel.
After you record the live Q&A session, spend an additional $50 on Facebook ads for the video, targeting your patients, past website visitors, people who have engaged with your page, or a Facebook-matched lookalike audience. This will put your video in their feeds. After two days, invest more money continuing to run the ads that are performing well. Stop the ads that aren’t performing well. For example, if the website visitors ad is performing well, but the lookalike audience isn’t, stop the ad targeted to the lookalike audience and invest more into targeting past website visitors.
5. Create a relationship-building email sequence with a call to action.
In this case, I suggest a five-day nurture email sequence, as follows.
Day 1: When they sign up, immediately send them the checklist with the following email:
Subject: Here’s Your Invisalign Checklist
Content (to personalize): Thanks for signing up for the Invisalign Checklist! Invisalign provides patients with an opportunity to [insert the benefit you want to promote].To tell you a little more about our practice, [insert a brief description about what makes your practice special].
We also want to give you a thank-you gift for taking action, which is an offer to save [insert a discount] off of your Invisalign Treatment, good any time in the next six weeks!
We can’t wait to meet you!
Day 2: Subject: How Invisalign Changed [Suzi’s] Life
Content: Share a story of a happy Invisalign patient. Even better: add a testimonial video if you can.
Day 3: Subject: Why we serve
Content: Share a short story of why your practice serves people, why you went into dentistry, or what makes your practice unique.
Day 4: Subject: Our Guarantee to You as a VIP Patient
Content: Be bold. Make a guarantee for them. For my practice, we let people know we guarantee on-time appointments, peace of mind, and WOW experiences.
Day 5: Subject We’ve Got Something Special for YOU!
Content: Recap who you are, why you serve, the benefits of Invisalign, how Invisalign changed [Suzi’s] life and give them call to action to come in for Invisalign. Reiterate the discount.
6. Review, revise, and repeat the process.
As with anything, you will find places to improve your funnel. Pay attention to what can be improved, make the improvements, and repeat the process. For example, you might swap out testimonial videos, change the thank-you gift, or re-record the live Q&A. Improve what you can, then continue running the promotion to get people to opt in to your email sequence.
Take the first-funnel challenge!
A marketing funnel is an essential tool that every dental practice needs to have to convert potential clients into paying customers — but it doesn’t end there! You need a steady stream of potential patients to go through the funnel and become leads.
TAKE ACTION TODAY:
If you haven’t created your first funnel, I challenge you to follow these steps to have your first funnel working for you in the next week. If you need help, you can work from a template like one of the funnel templates we provide in our Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind Program.
Are you intimidated by technology? Don’t worry! ClickFunnels makes it easy. You can learn step-by-step instructions, or you can outsource it to our experienced team. I’d be happy to talk with you about how my team can work with you.
You can also check out our upcoming Marketing & Practice Growth Challenge that walks you through the step-by-step process on launching your first or next successful marketing campaign. Click here to learn more and see what other practices had to say — and if you want to save your spot, use the code CHALLENGE at checkout for 20% off!
