Meaningful Marketing Goals - Moving Beyond Vanity Metrics Towards True Achievement

Are you looking for ways to grow your dental business and make a lasting impact on both potential patients and existing ones?

Setting marketing goals is an essential part of any successful marketing strategy. By having clear, achievable goals in place, you can focus your efforts and ensure that every marketing move you make brings you closer to reaching them.

To help get started, let’s explore the basics of setting effective marketing goals; from understanding the SMART framework, to identifying platforms (channels) and methods (tactics) that will reach your target patients. With these tips in mind, you’ll be well on your way to achieving measurable success with your marketing activities.

What Are Marketing Goals?

Marketing goals are specific objectives, or targets, that focus on how your business will promote and communicate your products or services to reach your target audience, or prospective patients. They are typically short term and focus on activities such as increasing awareness of the practice and your treatments, improving patient satisfaction, and driving lead generation.

These goals differ from business goals as they are more focused on the actionable steps needed to achieve desired results. For example, a business goal may be to double revenue in the next financial year, while a marketing goal could be to increase website traffic by 20% within 6 months, which may or may not help you to achieve the business goal of doubling the practice revenue.

How Marketing Goals Help Your Business

Your marketing goals will essentially, support your business goals and help you to achieve them. You should take care that the right marketing goals are chosen to support your overall business goals, or it will be a waste of your time, and potentially money.

By having clearly defined marketing goals in place from the start, you can ensure that your marketing activities are working towards achieving your desired objectives and prevent you from just posting random things on social media, every so often, because that’s what everyone else is doing and seems to be flavour of the month.

Let’s look at how to set effective marketing goals that will help you reach your desired outcomes.

The Importance of Setting Marketing Goals

Setting marketing goals is an essential part of any successful overarching marketing strategy. It allows you to focus your efforts and ensure that every step taken brings you closer to achieving desired results.

With clearly defined targets, you can also measure the success of your marketing activities and track progress over time. By having a clear understanding of what you want to achieve with your marketing, you can make informed decisions about which marketing methods will best reach your ideal patients – leading to measurable success.

Using the SMART Framework to Set Effective Goals

The SMART framework is a way for you to set intentional goals for your dental practice. It stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. This means that your goals need to be clear and easy to understand, so you know exactly what you want to do. You should also have ways of measuring progress and success, so you can tell if your marketing activities are working, or not, and tweak where necessary.

Your goals should be something you can achieve with reasonable effort, and they should relate directly to your business mission. Lastly, each goal should have a deadline so you and your team know when it needs to be achieved by. Setting marketing goals this way helps make sure your efforts are successful, and holds you and your team accountable.

Marketing goals are the why statements for your marketing; why you’re posting on social media, why you’re writing that blog, why you’re holding that open day, why you’re promoting whitening.

If you don’t have a why, then why are you doing it?

Identifying the Right Marketing Platforms to Achieve Your Goals

Once you have set your marketing goals using the SMART framework, you need to identify the channels that will help you reach your ideal patients. This will include deciding which channels (social media platforms, email, physical ads, mailers etc) and tactics (promotions, testimonials, before and afters etc) you will use.

For example, if you’re advertising on BBC 1* but your ideal patients are watching Channel 4*, then no matter how much money you throw into your advertising, it won’t improve your results. Interchange the tv channels with social media platforms, and this will give you more of an idea of an analogy more relevant to your practice.

 *Other television channels are available.

This is why it is critical to know which channels you should be using for your practice’s marketing efforts to be successful. If you fish in the wrong pond, you’ll either catch the wrong fish, or none at all.

To successfully achieve your business and marketing goals, you also need to be crystal clear who it is you want to talk to, or your ideal patient persona. If you want more implant patients, what is the best way, and platform, to grab their attention? It will most likely be different compared to wanting more clear aligner enquiries.

Different platforms, or channels, can be used for different types of marketing campaigns and for different patients, depending on what type of results you are looking to achieve. For example, social media can be used for showcasing before and afters, offer behind the scenes footage of the team and the practice, and build relationships with existing or potential patients, while email marketing can be used as a method to promote services and offers quickly and directly to your current patient base.

Additionally, it’s important to consider other offline tactics such as physical advertising (e.g. flyers and leaflets) and events (e.g. local wedding fairs). By selecting the right mix of channels and tactics that best suit your target market, you can make sure your message reaches the right people at the right time with maximum impact.

Resources Needed

The implementation of your marketing goals and tactics will require the right resources to ensure success. Depending on your budget, you may need to invest in specific software, such as social media management tools or email automation platforms, alternatively, you need to decide who will actually working on your marketing.

Will you or a member of your team be responsible, or will you hire outside help in the form of a freelancer or marketing agency? You will also need to consider the costs, including the cost of time, associated with each option.

For example, physical advertising requires budget for design, printing and publication or posting, which must be factored into your overall marketing strategy, whereas delegating to a member of the team will cost them time away from other responsibilities they have in the practice. 

When creating a budget for marketing efforts, make sure it is realistic and achievable.

Setting Realistic Timelines and Deadlines to Track your Progress

When setting realistic timelines and deadlines for marketing goals, it is important to consider the duration of each marketing activity, and how long it takes to execute from start to finish. For example, social media campaigns may take a few weeks to complete, while email campaigns can be launched within days or even hours.

Additionally, some activities such as online advertising may require a longer time frame to track results and analyse performance, as well as outside help from an advertising specialist.

Having solid timelines and deadlines will help keep you on track with your marketing goals, enabling you to evaluate each activity’s success in a timely manner.

Setting Measurable Targets

Setting achievable goals is essential for tracking the progress of any marketing efforts. Make sure that any targets follow the SMART framework detailed above, to ensure that you are able to measure success and keep track of progress. It is also important to establish what stats, also known as metrics, need to be tracked in order to accurately measure success.

For example, if your goal is to increase website traffic, then measuring web page visits and clickthroughs should be included in your objectives. Tracking these metrics will help you determine whether or not your marketing efforts are successful.

Don’t forget, more web page visits or social media likes do not necessarily mean more money in your bank account.

Ultimately, the goal should be to generate more business or you’ll have yourself a very time expensive hobby! Try to measure which activities generate more enquiries, for example.

It’s best to set your big picture, or macro, goals into smaller bitesize chunks, or micro goals. In terms of marketing goals, 12 months is the farthest you should look, with algorithm changes and the digital landscape changing so quickly. Break your goals down into quarterly goals, then look at the actions you would need to take to achieve them. What does that look like on a weekly basis, to keep the momentum and motivation?

Analysing the Data and Course Correcting

Once timelines have been established and measurable objectives set, it is important to analyse the collected data regularly. This will enable you to identify areas of improvement and make any necessary changes in order to optimise your marketing goals.

Knowing your numbers before you start is key so you can measure the before and after figures of your particular marketing activities, to establish if your marketing is working, and how well. Much like you would use a shade guide to demonstrate before and after to whitening patients after their treatment.

Don’t fall into the trap of only measuring vanity metrics such as likes or followers. Can you see any other needles moving in your business as a result of these increased numbers? You’re here to run a business, not a popularity contest and I say this from a position of respect and support. Sometimes we all just need a little reminder to remove our ego from the mix.

It doesn’t matter if the practice down the road has 5,000 followers and you only have 500. More than half of them may be in countries like India, Russia, USA – how many of them will be catching a flight for a checkup or treatment? None, so it’s irrelevant how many more followers they have, it won’t necessarily help their bottom line!

Remember it’s ok to pivot. If the business needs change, don’t forget to change your marketing goals and activities to match. It doesn’t mean you have failed, just adjusted course. If you’re sailing to Barbados, then mid voyage, you want to go to Mexico instead, that’s ok!

Looking Back as Well as Ahead

Also, celebrate your wins. Don’t just move onto the next thing. 

If you hit the target, jump up and down, do your victory dance, or even let out a little squeal of excitement. You’re allowed to be excited, you hit your goal and that’s worth celebrating, even if it’s a round of high-fives with the team. Failing to do so will put you on the hamster wheel of misery, without looking at how far you have come. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.

Make sure that you are regularly reviewing performance data and adjusting your strategy accordingly to ensure that you are getting the best results from your marketing efforts.

By taking the time to set clear objectives, establish timelines and analyse data regularly, you can ensure that your marketing efforts are being used effectively and efficiently to achieve your desired outcomes. With a well-defined plan of action, you can ensure that your marketing efforts are being used to their fullest potential and ultimately reach your desired goals.

Final Toughts

The key to setting successful marketing goals is having a plan and monitoring it regularly. In order to achieve the desired results, it’s important to analyse data regularly and adjust the strategy accordingly.

Knowing your numbers before starting will give you an idea of how effective your marketing activities have been. Vanity metrics such as likes or followers are not always the best measure of success, so make sure you focus on metrics that can directly help your bottom line.

Last but not least, make sure you set realistic goals and timelines. Doing so will help maximise the potential of any marketing campaign, while also ensuring you don’t become overwhelmed or stretched too thin. 

With a well-defined plan in place, you should be able to achieve your desired goals in an efficient and effective manner, and if you don’t, no worries. Learn the lesson, course correct and try again. Once you figure out what works, you can double down on that.

Over to you

Now that you know how to set marketing goals, it’s time for you to take action and start creating your own. 

Take the time to think about what success looks like for your dental business, establish realistic timelines and metrics, then track them regularly. Doing so will ensure that your efforts are being used in a way that is most effective for achieving those desired results.

With careful planning and consistent monitoring of progress, there’s no limit on what you can achieve with your marketing strategy! 

So don’t wait any longer – get started today by setting achievable goals and tracking them consistently as part of an overall plan of action towards your uniquely defined success.

I’m here cheering you on!