The Dental Marketer

When you look at a report that shows automatic phone tracking results, you may conclude that more people find you through the yellow pages than from any other source.  This could be misleading.

The practices using automatic telephone tracking systems see an unusual number of patients generated by the yellow pages.  This illustrates the inherent weakness of attributing leads based on tracking numbers.  A tracking system is an excellent tool, but cannot be expected to be completely accurate.  Yellow Pages ads and web sites generate many leads that are “secondary” – that is, people go to the web and YP for information after their interest has been piqued elsewhere.

Look at the statistics generated by your website provider to see how people get to your web site.  A business that does little external advertising, but uses Search Engine Optimization, will see that most of their leads come through keyword searches.  A business that uses external marketing sources that include the domain name, will see that many of their leads come from people who have navigated directly to them.  The dual purposes of the web site make it the most indispensible part of any ad campaign.

Similarly, the YP may not be the primary generator of as many leads as it seems on the surface.  It still serves an important function, however.  When people are looking for you in the YP, they have to be able to find you.  Or they may find your competitor instead.  When my clients tell me that “the yellow pages  are dead” or that they want to cancel their ad, I suggest that they just scale back the ad.  That way they save some money, but the large number of people who still look there can still find them.

I’m a big fan of automatic tracking for your phone numbers.  Just make sure that your front desk keeps asking new patients how they found out about the practice.  And if your TV campaign is a significant investment, don’t be afraid to ask a direct question like, “Have you seen the doctor on TV?”.  Every day my clients hear that patients found them through the internet.  When the patient is directly asked if they ever heard the doctor on the radio, they often hear, “Oh yes.  I’ve been hearing him for years.  That’s why I went to the web site.”