The first step to creating a dental marketing strategy is knowing who you are marketing to. Next is setting realistic and achievable goals. It’s difficult to set goals when you don’t know who your target audience is, so that’s always the first step.
Be specific with the goals you want to achieve. You cannot be vague and say “as many as possible.” That cannot be measured. That’s not realistic. That’s unachievable… or is it? The fact is, you don’t know how to set realistic goals if you don’t know who you are targeting. But once you have identified who your target market is, there’s another important thing you need to do: set a number.
Be realistic when setting a number. How many clients do you think you can target in a month? How many clients can you accommodate? How many of your target audience needs dental products and services? If you say you want a million followers on your Instagram account, we all know that isn’t possible in a month. Even Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez took years to amass that much following.
How about 20? Or 50? That’s possible, right? The reason why you want to set an achievable goal is that more often than not, failing to realize lofty goals will result in being disheartened and disappointed. The next time you will set a number, you might not have the confidence that it’ll be achieved since you lost heart on your first goal.
At the same time, try not to ease the goal too much. Too easy a goal will make it achievable sure, but it will also make you complacent. It will not provide you with the right motivation.
But how do you know which goals are rightfully attainable and which are too lofty or easy? You begin by getting to know your market and reaching out to them. Once you have gotten to know who your audience is, that will help you identify the impact of each marketing strategy. On Facebook, for example, you can set a range that will be your posts’ parameter.
If you set the range to five miles, for example, you can have a pretty good idea how many of your market is going to be in that range. That then will help you specify the right number to target. And once you have set the number, you must stick to the plan and consider that number every time there’s a new dental marketing strategy in tow.