A New Experience
Dr Murchie of Goochland Dentistry turned to Whiteboard Marketing because he sought to get more out of his marketing spend. He had worked with other marketing companies before, but expressed frustration that he never knew what was going on when it came to marketing efforts, successes and investment.
“Dr Murchie and his team partnered with us to get more value and new-patient return from his investment,” shares Whiteboard Marketing account director Jason McCurdy.
After a comprehensive marketing services audit, Jason and our Whiteboard Marketing team helped Dr Murchie develop new goals as part of a fresh marketing strategy.
Goochland Dentistry’s new marketing goals included:
- Refreshing the website to optimize conversion rates and user experience.
- Optimizing the website and other digital marketing elements for search engines (SEO).
- Obtaining more patient reviews to improve digital word-of-mouth.
- Increasing engagement and awareness on Goochland Dentistry’s social media channels, including Facebook, Google posts, and Twitter.
- Clearly communicating ROI and maintaining transparency throughout the relationship.
Website Improvements
Our Whiteboard Marketing team views website improvements as an opportunity to make the website easier to use, better represent Goochland Dentistry’s brand, and modernize the patient experience.
The modernization elements added to Goochland Dentistry’s website included:
Online scheduling option — We added an online scheduling program to boost conversions by giving patients a way to schedule appointments without a phone call. This increased new patient appointments for Goochland Dentistry by more than two patients each month.
Online patient forms — We digitized Dr Murchie’s patient forms to be filled out online to improve the patient experience and save time during the appointment process. This feature is also easier for his front desk staff since the paperwork is automatically logged into their database.
A smile gallery — Before and after photos of satisfied patients offer visual, real-life proof to prospective patients while showcasing the great work done at Goochland Dentistry.
Live website chat — Engages the curious website visitor who doesn’t like talking on the phone but would like to ask questions about Goochland Dentistry. This feature brought in 76 more leads in the first year.
With form tracking, Dr Murchie and our team at Whiteboard Marketing can see how often the website’s online forms are filled out. From July 2019-September 2020, Goochland Dentistry received more than 120 form submissions. More than modernizing the patient experience, these new website elements put Dr Murchie’s marketing dollars to work by increasing the conversion rate on his website. According to DentistryIQ, “a conversion is someone who picks up the phone and calls your office or someone who submits the contact form on your website. That’s a lead.”
“The (new) website is customized…it doesn’t look like a cookie-cutter website.
Dr Murchie
It is crisper and better reveals who we are.”
DentistryIQ also highlights that the average website conversion rate for the dental industry is 3-5 percent. Comparing Goochland Dentistry’s website performance from January-June 2019 (before using Whiteboard Marketing’s services) to January-June 2020, the conversion rate jumped to 42.86 percent. And this was during COVID-19!
Search Engine Optimization
Getting people to convert on your practice’s website is essential. But how do you get people to visit your website in the first place? That’s where SEO takes hold to attract qualified leads from search engines like Google.
Moz, a leader in SEO and digital marketing, defines SEO as “the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.”
The goal of SEO is to rank highly on search engine result pages (SERPs)—ideally on the first page. To do that, Google has to scan, or crawl, your website to make sure it has helpful information for users. Making your website easy for Google to crawl means ensuring the website layout is intuitive by improving the structure of the pages and the website as a whole. Another component is creating content rich in keyword search terms that users are searching for on Google.
Core SEO improvements made on Goochland Dentistry’s website include:
- Quality keyword research.
- Content improvements that Google deems relevant and users find informative.
- Site and page structures that make the website easier for both Google to crawl and for users to navigate.
- Backend tags based on keyword research.
- Integrated implementation across marketing departments.
For SEO to prove lucrative, many elements of digital marketing must work cohesively. Whiteboard Marketing’s team of website designers, SEO experts, Google My Business specialists, Pay-Per-Click managers, and content writers all work in tandem for websites like Goochland Dentistry to achieve success in SEO.
These SEO improvements led to a dramatic 106.68 percent increase in new users to the Goochland Dentistry website in the first half of 2020, compared to 2019, as seen in the chart below.
The orange line illustrates the months in 2019 before Dr Murchie employed Whiteboard Marketing’s services. The blue line shows the website’s growth between January-June of the following year, after website and SEO improvements.
To look more closely at how Goochland Dentistry ranks on Google, our SEO experts rely on SEMRush, a search engine marketing analytics platform.
According to our data tracked on SEMRush, Goochland Dentistry has the most website traffic out of any of its direct competitors.
SEMRush’s Competitive Positioning Map
Call Tracking
Understanding where people find your business phone number online is an important part of analyzing your digital marketing efforts and knowing your ROI. For our clients, Whiteboard Marketing can track calls coming from online sources like:
- Google Maps
- Google Pay-Per-Click Ads
- Google My Business
- The client’s website
- Social media channels
- Other online directories
From July 2019-September 2020, Goochland Dentistry received more than 3,390 calls from the sources listed above.
The majority of these calls came from Google My Business, social media, online directories, and Goochland Dentistry’s newly optimized website.
Pay-Per-Click
In search engine advertising, a popular form of Pay-Per-Click (PPC), ads appear at the top and bottom of search results pages to attract users to your website; versus gaining that visit organically. Practice owners then pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked.
For practices like Goochland Dentistry, PPC works efficiently by targeting ads based on specific demographics like age and household income, as well as the geographic area in a given mile radius. Also called geotargeting, these ads can be customized to appear at specific times of the day and certain days of the week based on the target audience’s behavior.
Dr Murchie started PPC campaigns in July 2019, paused in April 2020 during COVID-19, and increased his PPC budget from May 2020 onward. Comparing year-over-year, September 1-October 31 in 2019 and 2020:
- Click-Through Rate increased by 3.1 percent
- Conversion Rate increased by 25.22 percent
- Cost-Per-Conversion decreased by $26
In the above cases, Goochland’s PPC saw an increase in users visiting the website and contacting the practice to schedule an appointment via contact form, live chat, or phone call. Cost-per-conversion references the dollars spent on these ads compared to their attributed conversions. A decrease here means Dr Murchie made more conversions for his investment as the year progressed.
In total, from July 2019-October 2020, our PPC experts at Whiteboard Marketing generated 845 calls and 45 contact form submissions directly from Google PPC ads.
Google Reviews
Having ample (and positive) online reviews is a key aspect of gaining trust with potential patients. Search Engine Journal says, “Among Millennials, reviews are empowering, helping them make an informed and thought-out purchase decision.”
Potential patients often rely on online reviews when looking for a new dentist. A comprehensive reviews strategy contributes to the practice’s local and overall reputation. That’s why Whiteboard Marketing optimized Goochland Dentistry’s presence on review websites like Google Reviews. From June 2019-October 2020, Whiteboard Marketing helped generate 126 reviews; a significant improvement compared to the 48 reviews generated in the year prior.
Building a fully integrated reviews program involves many elements working in tandem. To the new website, we added a live reviews feed so visitors can see what patients are saying on all review sites. This webpage includes the option to write a review on Google, Facebook, or on the Goochland website itself. There is also a Request an Appointment button for users who are ready to convert.
Our reviews strategy includes sending post-appointment surveys automatically from existing tools (SolutionReach, LH360, DemandForce, etc.) to patients, as well as review campaigns sent every 2-3 months to all active patients. A steady inflow of positive reviews boosts the digital word-of-mouth reputation for Goochland Dentistry while strengthening its presence on the internet.
Social Media
Whiteboard Marketing’s plan for Goochland Dentistry’s social media presence focused on post engagement and brand awareness. To achieve this, our social media team:
- Included Goochland Dentistry branding on all social posts.
- Increased organic posts.
- Created posts containing calls to action.
- Posted relevant and informative thought pieces and articles.
- Shared dental service spotlights.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
If social media, engagement is a priority, so it’s important to also consider your posting frequency. For example, it is best practice to ensure at least one day between posts on Facebook to comply with their algorithm. Being compliant with Facebook’s algorithm means Facebook will allow more people to see Goochland Dentistry’s social posts.
Our social media specialists take great care in analyzing optimal posting times for different kinds of posts. For example, they found that posts containing calls to action perform better during dental office hours, while informative articles perform better in the evening when Goochland Dentistry’s social media audience has more time to read them.
Goochland’s new social media strategy increased social post engagements, including reactions, likes, comments and shares. The new strategy also generated a 100 percent increase in incoming messages on their Facebook account that led to 41 new conversions.
This speaks to the audience’s heightened awareness and trust in the Goochland brand. “This also illustrates the overall availability and improved capacity of the practice to interact with new and existing patients on social media,” adds Jason.
Going Forward
With an understanding of Dr Murchie’s difficulties with his previous marketing partner, Jason continues to maintain transparency throughout their relationship. As with all Whiteboard Marketing clients, Jason shares marketing reports with Dr Murchie on a regular basis. This way, Dr Murchie sees the full scope of his return on investment to ensure he’s getting the most out of his marketing spend.
“I have been very happy with Whiteboard Marketing — who took over my website, SEO, social media, and Google Ads. They redesigned my website and I am very happy with the results. Jason and his team have been very helpful and work well with my business team to make our new patients increase. Thank you so much!”
Dr Murchie
Contact Whiteboard Marketing today if you need a marketing partner to help you get the most out of your marketing investment.
