Tips on How to Get More New Dental Patients Through Demographic Data
I received this question from a viewer named Kevin which says, “Dear Ginger, I just sent out a huge mailing of about 1600 postcards from my area and I didn’t get any response out of it. “What suggestions do you have?”
One of the things that came to my mind and I think every viewer needs to take into account is “Who did you send it to?”
And when I asked Kevin that, he said, “I send it to a list I got from a mail broker.” Definitely that can provide information and be a start. But what information are you asking them for and what are you getting?
Most of the time, our marketing target lists goes under the criteria of “demographics.” So let’s say, for doing implant marketing, you need to be marketing to that age appropriate group. In the implant marketing example, anywhere from 45 to about 69 is the best age. That’s the first criteria in demographics.
I asked Kevin about “What kind of household did he send it to?”
He said he sent them in his area by zip code. Well I also started asking him big other important questions like, “What kind of income levels do they have?” He didn’t provide that as a criteria and he didn’t even know to ask that.
Demographic would be things like age, it could be sex especially relating to cosmetic dentistry. Sometimes, I recommend sending it to female home owners because they are more likely to buy and also they are the decision makers in the household.
So there are things you need to take into consideration when purchasing a list to be most effective.
Demographic makes up all these little things and traditionally, this is only where lists have come from. That’s why we go through a good list broker or some other source when we are sending out external marketing.
But I always tell my clients to go back to your core patient pool. Why don’t you go through and see who is your best clients are within your existing practice, then try and figure out what things they have in common to attract more people just like them?
See where they come from, what zip codes they are in, what occupations do they have, what hobbies, how many family members do they have, what kind of organizations do they belong to and try to get in through those channels to create demographics data. This is very valuable.
So that’s a good question from Kevin. If you have any questions, go ahead and send it to us Results@GingerBratzel.com and we might use it on a future episode.
I hope this was helpful.
We are going to dive deeper into target lists and focus on something else…psychographic data and how this, combined with demographics will increase your response level and fine tune your marketing.