The Application of Marketing Techniques in a Difficult Economy and Tracking Return on Investment

Abstract

As the national economy has declined over the past few years, the majority of orthodontic practices have suffered. While most orthodontic practices have experienced a decline in patient starts, there remains a select few who have managed to maintain their practice growth despite difficult economic times. It is unknown as to whether marketing techniques can give a practice the necessary competitive advantage to weather the current economy. The objective of the survey was to extract information on the following topics: practice demographics, practice growth rate, aggressive and innovative marketing techniques used, tracking new patient referrals, and return on marketing investments. Two surveys were used in this study. The first was an online survey intended for practicing orthodontists to fill out. Out of the 99 Temple Orthodontic Alumni emailed, 57 Alumni began the survey and 49 completed it, giving a completion rate of 86%. The second was a paper survey for new patients. Twenty-six (26) Temple Orthodontic Alumni out of the 96 contacted agreed to participate in the new patient survey. Each participant was sent 120 surveys and asked to distribute them to all new patients over a period of 12 weeks. Out of the 26 Alumni who agreed to participate, 19 returned a total of 1,024 new patient surveys that were used in this study. Based on the result collected from the two surveys, the following conclusions were drawn: 1. Solo, suburban practitioners have been affected the most by the difficult economy. New graduates who have been in practice less than ten years appear to have had the most success. 2. There is no magic marketing plan to guarantee practice success. 3. Thriving practices have spent more money on extravagant external marketing methods while those experiencing the effect of the economy focused efforts on budget friendly methods such as internal marketing and marketing to the local general practitioners. 4. Successful practices report much more confidence in their marketing return on investment than those whose practices experienced a decline in gross income. It is unknown how these practices are tracking their return on investment or, as the investigator suspects, their response is based on a hunch rather than collected data. 5. New patients still report their general dentist as the primary referral source, followed by friends and family. Despite this, marketing experts continue to push extravagant marketing ploys and social networking, even though there is no reportable return on investment.