Growing a dental practice can literally change people's lives. It can change patients' lives. It can change your team members' lives. It can change your life, and your family members' lives, too.
Maybe you grow by automating your marketing to get dozens of new patients every month on autopilot. Maybe you grow by using dental marketing funnels to attract high-value Invisalign, crown, or dental implant patients. Maybe you grow by adding people to your team or expanding your office.
When you are growing your practice, it is easy to become overwhelmed. Automating your dental marketing is great but somebody has to serve those patients. Dental funnels are amazing but somebody has to put them in place and manage all the leads they will attract. Expanding your office is exciting but somebody has to manage the process.
No matter what your practice vision is, the journey of getting there can feel overwhelming. Here is how you can prevent overwhelm from the start.
Get support from your entire team.
Setting a big vision for your dental practice is one of the most important things you can do for your practice. Your vision helps you set priorities in your practice and choose what activities will lead you to your practice vision. Activities that do not lead you closer to your vision can be eliminated. Activities that do get added.
All that activity can quickly lead to practice leaders taking on too much work themselves. With all the other work required to manage a practice and care for patients, adding even more to your plate is a recipe for disaster. Not only will you get overwhelmed but you will also likely not do as good a job in any of your duties because you will be spread too thin.
Avoid the tendency to do too much work by getting the support you need from the start. Include your team when putting your practice vision together. Let them know why your vision is what it is. Let them know how your practice vision can help them achieve their personal goals, too.
Make systems and processes part of your growth plan.
Getting your team to buy-in and support your practice vision is important. Making it easy for them to support you is even more important. Without the right systems and processes in place, the excitement they felt about your practice vision can quickly turn.
The best time to put systems and processes in place to support your team is at the start. Make sure you work with your team to establish internal systems and processes for key tasks relating to your growth plan. Write them down and encourage your team to suggest improvements as they get into doing the work.
Documenting what needs to get done and encouraging your team to improve the tasks helps make your growth plan much easier for everyone.
Have the right tools in place to support you and your team.
Dental software has never been as helpful as it is today and it is only getting better. We can do more in a few clicks of the mouse today than we could do with hours of team member time a few short years ago. After identifying the tasks that will help you achieve your practice vision, look for software and other tools to make performing those tasks easier.
Are dental marketing funnels part of your growth plan? Use ClickFunnels to make funnel-building easy. Is automating your dental marketing part of your plan? Consider joining our next Dental Facebook Bootcamp to get our best tools for running Facebook Ads for dental practices. Do you need to collaborate with your team? Use tools like Dental Intel and Google Sheets to keep the most important information organized. Having the right tools and resources to support your growth plan helps everyone do their best work.
Are you ready to grow without getting overwhelmed?
If you are sick of struggling to grow your practice, setting a strong practice vision is the first step to a better life. But your growth plan can easily become overwhelming. Get the proper support, systems, and tools in place to help prevent overwhelm from the start.
To learn more about growing your practice without getting overwhelmed, check out the team of expert coaches, training, and resources we offer in our signature Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind Program.
But many dentists avoid or delay using dental-marketing funnels, sticking to old, expensive, inefficient dental-marketing tactics because those are familiar to them or because they think dental-marketing funnels aren’t a good fit for them or their practice. I’ve heard every objection imaginable, but after helping thousands of dentists grow their practices, I’m more convinced than ever that every dentist can implement a dental-marketing funnel into their practice to make their marketing easier (see how here).
For those who are on the fence, here are three common misconceptions about dental-marketing funnels.
1. They’re only for existing practices
Although dental-marketing funnels are cheaper, automated, and more effective, there’s not much of a difference between them and traditional marketing methods with respect to what type of practice can benefit from a funnel.
In fact, Dr. Ashley Joves didn’t even have a practice when she got started, and by the time she opened the doors, she had over 1,000 Facebook fans, almost 300 people on her Very Important Patient email list, and over 50 appointments booked.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve been in business 40 years or 40 seconds, or if you’re still 40 days away from opening your doors, dental-marketing funnels can help you grow.
2. They’re complicated
Mistakenly assuming dental-marketing funnels are complicated is a common error. The truth is funnels can be complicated, but they don’t need to be. They can be a multi-step, sophisticated series of emails that adapt to what each subscriber does based on internal email links that act as triggers for different email sequences. All of that’s possible.
But they don’t have to be complicated. In fact, the technology Dr. Joves used to get almost 300 people on her VIP wait list and have over 50 people schedule appointments before she even opened the doors involved two simple steps: (1) setting up a squeeze page in ClickFunnels for people to enter their name and email address, and (2) an automated email delivering a coupon to them. Everything else was done on Facebook and by sending emails to her growing list.
3. They’re hard to set up
If you have any experience managing patient contact information for emails or direct mail, you or your team can set up a funnel. Software like ClickFunnels makes it super easy, with a visual workflow approach and drag-and-drop technology to set up your pages. ClickFunnels makes setting up your funnel simple.
To get the most out of your funnel, I recommend either working with experienced funnel experts to help you design the best funnel for your goals or working from a marketing-funnel template that’s known to have worked for others. My team and I have helped a number of dentists implement funnels in their practice and love celebrating with each of them as their practice starts to grow.
Why haven’t you started using dental-marketing funnels?
If you haven’t used funnels to grow your business, let me know in the comments what’s kept you from implementing dental-marketing funnels in your practice.
Is it because your practice is new or not even open yet? Don’t worry. You can build warm leads and raving fans before you even open the doors!
Is it because funnels sound complicated? Start with a simple one like a squeeze page to deliver an offer to prospective patients. Or you can work from a template like one of the funnel templates we provide to Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind members.
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.
TAKE ACTION TODAY:
Dentists pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month for advertising services that don’t have even close to the results you can get with simple dental-marketing funnels. Don’t let these or other misconceptions keep you from building the dental practice of your dreams! Dental marketing funnels work when you have people to send through those funnels. And guess where those people come from? Successful marketing campaigns!
In our upcoming Marketing & Practice Growth Challenge, every office learns the simple, step by step process to launch their first or next successful marketing campaign where you can grow your visibility in your community AND get new patients through your doors, and they also implement the campaign during the challenge! This is your best next step if you are thinking about getting leads and setting up your dental marketing funnel! Want to be one of the practices in our next challenge? Save your spot here and see what other practices have said — plus get 20% off when you use the code CHALLENGE at checkout!
If you’ve been reading my blog or listening to my podcast, you know my favorite way to grow a dental practice is through dental-marketing funnels. I believe every dentist needs at least one dental marketing funnel in their practice. If you want to grow your dental practice into a busy, high-profit dental practice full of patients who rave about you to their friends and family, dental-marketing funnels are your answer!
Dental-marketing funnels are so powerful, they can help you even if you haven’t opened the doors of your practice yet and don’t have a big marketing budget.
For example, in a recent Delivering WOW podcast episode, I shared the story of Dr. Ashley Joves who used a simple funnel to add over 1,000 Facebook fans, grow an email list of almost 300 patient leads for a waiting list, and have 50 people schedule appointments before she even opened the doors.
The best part about it for Dr. Joves was she accomplished all that by spending only $685.00 on advertising. The best part for you is the process she used to get those results is simple and can apply to a number of different situations, such as if you want to expand your office in a different location, add a new doctor, or renovate your building.
Here are three keys to attracting hundreds of new leads before your big opening, expansion, or renovation!
1. Start early.
Announce your new practice, expansion, or renovation as soon as you commit to making it happen. In addition to public accountability, this allows you to share your journey while building a warm, excited audience and having multiple opportunities to get people to opt into your simple dental-marketing funnel.
Dr. Joves started the day she left her associate position by posting a Facebook Live video where she announced she bought a building and would be opening her own practice. She then worked with me and my team to build a practice page and set a goal of having over 1,000 relevant likes by the time her doors opened.
2. Share your journey.
Let people look behind the curtain as you embark on your new journey. With Dr. Joves, this meant sharing pictures, live videos, and other exciting posts about all aspects of her new practice, starting with her vision and what would make her practice different and better (Check out our list of free dental advertising ideas). She shared design choices, construction updates, and more, boosting some of the posts through Facebook to get important updates in front of even more potential patients!
3. Incentivize participation in your new venture and make it a winning situation for prospects.
Give people a big reason to go from social-media contacts to real leads. Dr. Joves did this by offering people a $50 coupon off their first visit just for joining her VIP waiting list and announcing one sign-up would win a choice of $1,000 to spend toward dental care at her office or free teeth whitening for life! She also offered to invite everyone on her VIP waiting list to an in-person celebration!
This made it an easy decision for people in her practice area to join. Her incentive was great because it was all tied to services at her office, so the only people who were incentivized to join were potential patients. If she had given away an iPad, she’d have gotten signups from people around the world who would never come to her office.
4. Add an extra incentive for people who act fast to schedule an appointment.
As your opening, expansion, or renovation is nearing, announce an extra bonus for people who act fast to schedule an appointment. This could be something like a free service for people who make an appointment by a certain date, or even a discount for the first 25 people who schedule an appointment. Whatever it is, tie it to making an appointment and either limit the number of people who can take advantage of it or the time by which they need to take advantage of it to push people to act fast.
Dr. Joves gave an extra bonus for the first 25 people to schedule an appointment.
5. Use a simple funnel to make it easy to implement.
Dr. Joves worked with my team to build her funnel using a ClickFunnels two-step funnel. The first step was setting up a squeeze page to collect names and email addresses. After people opted in, they went to a landing page that reminded them of the benefits of being on the list and let them know they would be receiving their $50 coupon by email. That’s all she needed to manage her funnel. All her online promotion was Facebook ads and boosting some posts, working with my team, and she an ad spend of only $685! Because she didn’t have web traffic or an existing email list or Facebook page when she started, we mostly targeted people who had watched her videos or people who engaged with her posts for paid promotions and let her funnels do the work of collecting email addresses and sending out the incentive coupons and invitations!
6. Open your doors with patients excited and ready!
By starting early, sharing your story, and using smart incentives and a simple funnel to build a warm, excited audience, you have the opportunity to start a practice or kick off an expansion or renovation project with people ready to jump in your chair, just like Dr. Joves had!
Take a peek behind the curtain!
If you want to see exactly how Dr. Joves went from no list, no facebook page, and no patients to over 1,000 raving Facebook fans, almost 300 patients on a VIP waiting list, and more than 50 scheduled appointments in a matter of months, before she even opened her doors, check out the team of expert coaches, training, and resources we offer in our signature Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind Program.
One of the best parts of leading dentists around the world in the Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind program, my Inner Circle, and the free Dental Marketing and Profits Facebook community is celebrating with my students, clients, and community members as they get better results for their practice in less time and for less money.
One surefire way to get better results in less time and for less money is through implementing and optimizing dental marketing funnels.
Even if you’ve developed a high-performing, leak-free funnel, you can still improve your results and lower your costs by optimizing the way you attract people into your funnel.
Send People to Your Dental Marketing Funnels
The best way we’ve found to do that is through targeted Facebook ads that send people into your funnel by delivering a highly relevant guide or promotion to people to encourage them to give you their contact information.
The most basic form of Facebook ad that gets people into your funnel is a simple post presenting your guide or offer. Although the technique is predictably effective, results can vary from time to time, even if you use exactly the same text, image, and audience—for two reasons.
First, people are often unpredictable. What works in one demographic might not work in another. Also, people tend to act in groups, so if one ad gets many likes, shares, or comments, others will join in. Second, Facebook’s algorithm is set to build momentum in similar ways in order to ensure their members are shown the most relevant ads. Thus, Facebook will give more exposure to ads that get more engagement, and Facebook will do that at lower costs.
The most effective Facebook ads take advantage of both human behavior and Facebook algorithm tendencies in order to reduce costs and increase results.
Get More People Into Your Dental Marketing Funnels (While Lowering Your Costs)
Because it’s impossible to predict which posts will get the most engagement and better results, the best way to get more people into your funnel at a lower cost is to test multiple versions of the same ad, making only minimal changes to each version in order to find the best ad for your goal.
In marketing terms, this is called split testing, or A/B testing. With traditional marketing, split testing is expensive and difficult to do because you need to either print multiple versions of the same physical mailer or place multiple ads in different newspapers, television programs, and more. It’s also difficult to get reliable statistics quickly or to run ads without spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
With Facebook marketing and dental marketing funnels, split testing is super simple and can be done with a few clicks. Even better, you can get reliable data in a matter of a few days for just a few dollars.
For these reasons, the most successful marketers split test every Facebook ad they post.
Here’s how to split test your Facebook ads to get more people into your funnel for a lower cost.
Set Up Your Split Test
The good news is everyone who sets up a Facebook ad to send people to a funnel is already doing the first step of a split test. That first step is to set up a Facebook ad. We recommend setting a budget of between $3 and $10 for the ad. That’s plenty of money to get reliable data.
Once you have your Facebook ad set up, you need to duplicate the ad. You can choose as many copies of the original as you would like and keep your budget for each ad the same as the original. Usually, we advise people to choose one, two, or three copies; so they have two, three, or four versions of the same ad running. Some people choose to have eight versions of the same ad running.
Once you’ve duplicated the ad, edit each of the ads to change one element. The most frequently tested elements include the headline, copy, images, audience, or the offer itself. For example, you might send two ads to the same audience, with one offering a free guide and the other offering a deal, to see which converts better. You can also test two, three, or even four different images with the same audience and ad copy to see which one resonates better. You can even test two different audiences with the same elements. We recommend keeping it simple when you’re starting out or outsourcing your Facebook ads to an experienced ads manager, as we do with our clients, to help you.
Evaluate Your Split Test
After a few days, you check the performance, go back into Facebook Ads Manager or Power Editor and check how each ad is performing. You may find that all ads are working well, producing similar, great results. In that case, you might choose not to change anything. You may also find that one or two versions are performing at significantly higher costs or attracting significantly fewer leads. In that case, with one click, simply shut off the ones that aren’t doing well, and let the ones that are performing best keep going. It’s that easy!
Start Testing!
Split testing your Facebook ads can push even your best-performing funnels to new levels. Imagine setting up a split test and discovering your originalad performed at double or triple the cost of your other versions and attracted fewer people. Had you not split tested, you’d be stuck with those results.
With split testing, you can click one button after spending less than $10 on a $3/day budget and let the other versions continue to perform at levels your original ad couldn’t touch.
If you’re running Facebook ads to your funnel, I challenge you to conduct a split test this week!
In recent weeks, I’ve been talking a lot about dental marketing funnels, because they're my favorite way to skyrocket the profits of your dental practice.
If you're new to funnels, I believe every dental office needs a funnel as part of their dental marketing plan. It sounds complicated, I know, but they don't have to be. Funnels are really just an online or automated way to lead a prospect or patient through an onboarding or sales process that you normally would do in person or on the phone. If the normal sales process is simple, your dental marketing funnel can be simple, like this Invisalign sales funnel.
Even better, a well-designed funnel can even prequalify people so you and they can know they're a candidate for what you're looking to promote through your funnel, so neither you nor your prospect waste time or money on something that won't be a fit for either of you.
Like any onboarding or sales process, the more qualified leads you get into and through your funnel, the better your results will be!
But what if you did everything right, set up your funnel, and the leads aren't coming? Your marketing funnel might have a leak! Don't worry, it happens all the time. The more funnels you build, the better they will work. And the longer each funnel is in place, the more you'll learn about it and how you can improve it.
Here are three ways to spot and plug leaks in your funnel.
Unqualified people are making it into your funnel
A good marketing funnel is designed with a goal in mind. Your goal might be to acquire a new patient, offer a new service to existing patients, or to promote an existing procedure. Whatever it is, your funnel needs to attract people who are a good match for the goal and offer a piece of targeted, high-value opt-in content to get their attention and get them to opt in to your funnel sequence.
If you notice a number of unqualified people making it into your funnel, it's likely because either your opt-in content isn't targeted enough, or your efforts to attract people into your funnel (like Facebook ads) aren't targeted enough.
For example, if you're looking to attract people into an automated Invisalign marketing funnel, opt-in content about teeth whitening would likely attract a number of people who would not be interested in Invisalign. On the other hand, content that answers frequently asked questions about Invisalign or shares how to know if you qualify for Invisalign would only attract people who are interested in Invisalign.
If your opt-in content is targeted and high-value content and you're still seeing unqualified people getting into your funnel, like people from outside of your service area, it's possible your outreach isn't targeted enough. For example, your Facebook ads audience might need to be adjusted by location to your area to make sure you're only paying for clicks from people who are interested in your service and likely to come to you if they decide it's for them.
People getting stuck in your funnel
If you're getting mostly qualified leads into your funnel, but people aren't making it through, take a close look at that part of your funnel. Does it deliver on the promise from the previous step? Is it off topic? Does it skip too far? Does it encourage people to move to the next step?
Adjust that step to make sure it delivers a promise from the previous step, is a logical next step in the onboarding or sales process, and delivers a promise or some other reason for your ideal prospects to want to move to the next step.
People who aren’t ready to take the next step at the end of your funnel
If your funnel is attracting qualified people and leading them through the end, but they’re still not taking action, it's possible you have an incomplete funnel. In this case, it's likely that you've presented your funnel well to attract qualified leads and offered valuable content to them each next step along the way. The issue is likely that
your call to action is too big a step from where your funnel ends,
your funnel doesn't address at least one question prospects typically have, or
you haven't built trust and rapport into your funnel.
Take a look at your funnel process with your ideal prospect in mind. Is your call to action too big a step from the end of your funnel? Are there additional questions you need to answer? Did you build enough trust and rapport with them so they get to know, like, and trust you and don't just take your info and go somewhere else?
It’s your turn.
Are you using funnels as part of your dental marketing plan? If so, take ten minutes to examine how prospects are making into and through your funnel. How can you improve each step of your funnel to get even better results? Do you see any leaks? If so, take action to improve your funnel or plug leaks to get even better results!
TAKE ACTION TODAY:
If you’re having trouble optimizing your dental marketing funnels, these steps can help you! For more help, check out the team of expert coaches, training, and resources we offer in our signature Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind Program.
You can also join our 21-day Marketing and Practice Growth Challenge where you’ll learn what you need to do to build relationships with your potential patients’ favorite small businesses in your community, and how to launch a successful marketing campaign that will build a warm audience of potential patients for your funnel! Ready to learn more or save your spot? Click here.
This week on the Delivering Wow podcast I’ve recorded a solo episode on the topic of email marketing and funnels.
Email marketing really can explode your practice growth, and this can be achieved by having an effective, automated funnel in place.
I’m so excited to announce that we have just launched our Facebook Bootcamp course in the Platinum Mastermind – it’s free to all of our members! So, it seemed timely to record an episode on this topic.
On the podcast I discussed:
What funnels are and why they are so effective
The journey of Dr. Ashley Joves who launched her start-up entirely on social media and through having an effective funnel she managed to get 275 email addresses and 50 scheduled appointments before her practice opened
An example of a really effective funnel for dental implants
The many benefits of email marketing funnels and how they take people on a journey of trust
How to setup a funnel for your practice
The role that Facebook can play in email marketing funnels and it’s powerful targeting capabilities
Funnels enable you to build trust with people. The whole process can be automated and it can provide you with a consistent number of new patients…without you even having to pick up the phone.
If you want to know more about funnels, join me on Delivering Platinum Mastermind Facebook Bootcamp Course, my signature Email Marketing Course, which teaches you how to get an AUTOMATED new patient flow – click here.
The power of marketing funnels for growing your practice is nothing short of revolutionary. Not only do they help you automate time-consuming conversations you or your team would normally need to do in-person or on the phone, but they can also help you test and refine marketing efforts without having to invest thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours. In short, dental marketing funnels help you make more money in less time while taking more control over the direction of your practice.
For these reasons and more, every dental office should implement funnels into their dental marketing plan. Here are three types of marketing funnels to add to your dental marketing plan to help you skyrocket your profits and patient numbers.
1. Dental Marketing Funnels Designed to Sell Additional Existing Services to Current Patients.
One of the easiest ways to increase your profitability is through offering additional services to current patients. This is because you’ve already broken down the four biggest barriers to business with them, including getting them to know, like, trust, and have already paid you money either directly or through their insurance plan. With those four barriers broken down, you don’t have to worry as much about getting their attention and convincing them that you’re trustworthy and likable enough to do business with you.
The only barriers you’ll have to break down through your funnel is the barriers they have with additional services that can benefit them.
To implement this type of funnel, follow this process for building a dental marketing funnel. Once you have that funnel set up, with a high-value piece of opt-in content, you can reach out to your current patients in whatever way you typically get the most engagement to get them to go to your squeeze page and opt in.
In many cases, this will be by email or a Facebook ad or event targeted to your patient list, but it doesn’t have to be. If your patients respond best to text messages or Facebook Messenger bots, send messages there letting them know you have a great free piece of information about the service you’d like to promote with a link to your squeeze page.
2. Dental Marketing Funnels Designed to Introduce New Services to Current Patients.
Another great way to grow your dental practice is to add new, high-profit services to your procedure mix and offer it to your current patients. Dental marketing funnels are a great way to gauge interest in new procedures and even pre-book appointments without investing thousands of dollars or hundreds of hours building a traditional marketing plan.
Not only are funnels more effective and affordable than traditional marketing, they can be tweaked and evaluated instantaneously with sophisticated statistics to let you know what’s working and what’s not working. It can even save you time and money by helping you test the appetite for specific procedures before investing significant time or money incorporating them into your practice.
To implement this type of funnel, all you need to do to is build your funnel for the procedure you’re considering adding and send your patients to squeeze page to opt-in, just like with the first funnel strategy for selling additional existing services.
3. Dental Marketing Funnels Designed to Attract New Patients
If your practice already has a robust procedure offering and high-revenue patients, a funnel to attract new patients into your practice might be the right next move.
One way to design this funnel is to present an offer, like a half-priced whitening procedure to anyone who comes in for a cleaning, and then introduce your practice to them in the funnel to build a relationship with them and show them why they should choose you as their dentist. By using a funnel to build a relationship with them instead of just letting them download a coupon, you can help reduce the risk that people who take advantage of the offer will come in just for the one service and move on.
Another way to design this funnel is to promote a specific procedure like dental implants or Invisalign. With these types of funnels you can attract patients for a high-value service and nurture the relationship in the funnel and by serving them well when you perform the procedure.
Dental Marketing has never been as simple or effective as it is today when we can use automated funnels and highly-targeted marketing to attract more patients to our dental practices, instead of the inefficient and expensive marketing options we were stuck with years ago.
The opportunity that dental marketing funnels provide is so much better than anything we’ve seen before, that I highly recommend them to all of my dental coaching and Inner Circle clients, as well as my Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind members, and have even added done-for-you funnel services to our service mix.
As effective as they can be, however, even the best-planned automated sequence won’t help you grow your practice if you aren’t attracting enough of the right people into the funnel.
Here are three ways to attract more of the right people into your dental marketing funnel, so your automated sequence can guide them to your call to action.
1. Create and promote high-value opt-in content
In my post about how to set up your first dental marketing funnel, I shared that creating a piece of high-value opt-in content was the second step in setting up your funnel. This is because high-value opt-in content like guides, checklists, ebooks, explainer videos, or answers to frequently asked questions have been proven to attract people to your funnel, giving them useful information in exchange for their opting into your automated funnel.
Although it’s important to create high-value opt-in content while you build your funnel, that doesn’t mean you can forget about opt-in content after you create it. To attract more people into your funnel, consider creating multiple pieces of high-value opt-in content for each funnel. For example, you might have a short checklist, pre-recorded video, and a pre-recorded audio interview that align with the goal of your funnel.
Having multiple pieces of high-value opt-in content allows you to attract more people into your funnel because different people have different learning styles. Some people prefer video. Others prefer audio. Others will only consume written content. Also, creating multiple pieces of content on related, but slightly different topics helps you connect with people using multiple messages.
2. Create and recreate multiple Facebook Live events.
Promoting replays of live events is a great way to leverage your time to attract people into your funnel without having to spend additional time doing multiple Facebook Live events. If you’re not attracting as many people to your funnel as you want, consider creating multiple Facebook Live events to lead people into your funnel. The more Facebook Live events you do, the more comfortable you’ll get with them, and the more effective you will be at leading people to download your opt-in content to get them into your funnel. Thus, consider recreating the same Facebook Live events as you get more comfortable with live video and sending people to your opt-in. You can also experiment with hosting Facebook Live events at different times of the day to see if one time is more effective than another.
Finally, as with the opt-in content, you could host Facebook Live events on slightly different topics until you find one that works better than others. By creating and recreating multiple Facebook Live events, you’ll have more touches with people live, better content as you become more comfortable with live video, and multiple video replays to boost on Facebook and promote to your email list.
3. Promote your opt-in content to your patient email list.
If the goal of your funnel is to sell a specific service, rather than to attract new patients to your practice, your existing patient list can be a great place to go to get more people into your funnel.
Because your current patients already know, like, and trust you, they can be much more open to opting in to your funnel for additional services than others who don’t know how great you and your practice are!
Thus, emailing them to let them know about your great new opt-in content or event with a link to your squeeze page can be highly effective at attracting people into your funnel!
Are you ready to fill your funnel?
Because an effective automated funnel cuts your intake time down to nearly nothing, getting people into an automated dental marketing funnel is one of the best uses of your marketing time.
If you’re having trouble getting people into your funnel, these three tips should help you get more people to opt in. If you need more help, check out the team of expert coaches, training, and resources we offer in our signature Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind Program. You can also join thousands of other dentists helping each other in my Free Dental Marketing and Profits Facebook Group!
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!
Every patient of your practice went through the same four steps before becoming your patient. First, they became aware of you. Second, they became interested in you or something you offered. Third, they decided to interact with you. Fourth, they took action to become your patient.
Typically, this happens either through personal relationships and referrals or through traditional advertising.
When it happens organically through personal relationships and referrals, patients get to know you because of a relationship with you, a team member, friend, or other patient. That relationship causes them to become interested in you or your services, decide to become your patient, and take action to make an appointment and come to your office. Organic practice growth through personal relationships and referrals, while important, only expands your practice to the extent of your ability to build personal relationships with people who refer others or become patients. And we all know our time is limited, which means our time to build relationships is limited.
When it happens through traditional advertising, people get to know you through a paid advertisement on radio, TV, direct mail, phone book, or other traditional way. Generally, these people become interested after repeatedly seeing advertisements or looking for referrals or reading reviews of your practice. They make a decision based on additional interactions with you, often either through more advertising or by calling your office to ask questions about your service or business practices. Finally, after all those advertisements and interactions, they either become a patient or they forget about you.
Traditional practice building is expensive, time-consuming, and ineffective.
If you only attracted new patients with whom you have a personal or referral relationship, your practice would grow very slowly. It would also grow with little patient-demographic control because the common thread across your patients is who they know, not who they are and what services they want.
If everyone beyond a personal and referral relationship required traditional marketing and personal attention, you would spend a lot of time and money attracting people into your patient-acquisition process.
Advertising to people in traditional ways like radio, TV, phone books, direct mail, and newspapers is expensive and inefficient. Even if prospects respond to an ad, you then have to take time away from serving patients to answer questions, follow up, and build relationships with a number of people, many of whom will never become patients. You could pay a team member to do some or all of the intake, but that would be an additional out-of-pocket cost without knowing the return.
Funnels solve all three problems.
Building your practice through funnels is the best way to experience real practice growth. Funnels solve the time and cost problems with traditional practice building because they get better prospects to you by more effectively targeting prospects, automating and optimizing much of the interest, decision-making, and action-taking process, and do so at a fraction of the cost. In other words, funnels are both better and more efficient.
The term funnel evokes the visual of a funnel used to pour liquid into a container. If you picture this tool, the general population of prospects is represented by the space outside of the funnel. The top of the funnel represents the process of attracting as many ideal prospects as possible. A little lower into the funnel is the generally smaller number of prospects who become interested. The middle of the funnel contains the even smaller number of people who decide to engage with you. Finally, the smallest part of the funnel represents the people who take action by accepting your offer to become a patient (or to take advantage of a more specific promotion offered).
How to design a high-performing funnel for your dental office.
Funnels can be created for any number of purposes. For example, you can use a funnel to get people into your office for a specific high-value procedure. You can also use a funnel to build an email list of people to contact if you need to fill a last-minute cancellation. No matter what your goal, you can design a funnel to attract prospects to you and turn them into action takers.
No matter what your goal, here’s what you need to do to build a basic funnel:
1. Attention: An online ad to get the attention of your ideal prospect for the goal of your funnel
Most of the time, this is a Facebook ad that offers something of value to a prospect in order to get them to pay attention. Facebook ads are currently the best and most efficient use of your ad spend because they’re very inexpensive and have the most sophisticated targeting capabilities in the market. That means you can target your ad to a group of your ideal prospects for less money than you would spend on less-targeted ads.
For example, you can target existing patients. You can target people who Facebook knows to be like your existing patients or like people who interact with your Facebook page, which is known as a lookalike audience. The options are almost endless.
For example, you may want to promote teeth whitening to a lookalike audience of your patients with the goal of getting new long-term patients by offering 50% off teeth whitening when someone books a cleaning by a certain date. We did this with someone in my Inner Circle Mastermind, who saw great engagement.
Your ad has one goal: to get a prospect to notice you and click on a link in the ad, which will automatically send them to the next part of your funnel, which is your squeeze page or landing page.
2. Your squeeze page or landing page
A squeeze page or landing page is a single page on a website designed to collect contact information from a prospect, otherwise called “opting in” to your offer. It then triggers the next step of your funnel.
This is often done with squeeze-page software like ClickFunnels, which makes it easy to set up landing pages to collect information and trigger the next part of your funnel, delivering on your ad’s promise.
3. Delivering on your ad’s promise for people who opt in on your landing page
When people opt in on your landing page, the next step is to deliver on your ad’s promise. Depending on your funnel’s goal, the next step might be to automatically email the prospect a checklist or guide, a link to a video you recorded, a sequence of messages answering common questions about a procedure, a promised coupon, or even an appointment scheduler.
Using simple-but-sophisticated software like ClickFunnels makes this easy, but no matter what software you use, once someone opts into your squeeze page or landing page by giving you their contact information, the next step is to deliver on your ad’s promise.
4. Reconnecting with (or retargeting) people who don’t opt in on your landing page
When people click on the link in your ad but don’t opt-in on your landing page, chances are they were initially interested in your offer but either lost interest or got distracted. This is natural because it often takes multiple touches to attract people’s attention and get them to accept an offer. In fact, the typical landing page only collects information between ten and twenty percent of the time.
Because of that, the best practice is to use another ad to target the people who click on the first ad but don’t opt in on the landing page. This second ad is often a reminder to take advantage of the offer that appeared in the first ad.
This is called “retargeting” and is simple to set up with Facebook and software like ClickFunnels. Essentially, the way this works is you place on your landing page a small piece of code that Facebook provides. The code gets read by Facebook and tells you who landed on your squeeze page but not your confirmation or thank-you page.
You then target that group of people with a new ad. The new ad acts similarly to the initial ad, asking them to click a link to land on your squeeze page, where you ask them to opt in again.
5. Ask your prospects to take action.
Once someone opts in and you deliver on your ad’s promise for a guide, coupon, or other piece of value, your funnel software will email them to complete the patient-acquisition process.
For a simple goal such as getting people to come in for a cleaning and teeth whitening, you could ask them to take action in the email where you deliver the coupon. For more complicated or higher-ticket items such as dental implants, before asking them to make an appointment, you might send them a number of emails introducing them to your practice, answering frequently asked questions, and delivering a video where you compare the differences between a bridge and implants.
6. Retarget those who opt in but don’t take action to become patients.
The best funnels are the ones that build on themselves based on the actions of your prospects. One way to make sure your funnel works for you is to export a list of people who made it to the end of your funnel but didn’t take action, and send them a different sequence of emails to build a deeper relationship with them and Retarget them with Facebook ads to stay top of mind and encourage them to take action.
Do you have funnels working for you?
The most effective and efficient way to build your dental practice is to design a funnel and have it working for you 24/7. It’s the best way to fill your schedule with ideal patients whom you choose, rather than relying on personal or referral relationships or expensive, inefficient, and time-consuming traditional advertising followed by a manual patient-intake process.
