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11 Tips from Award-Winning Dentist Howard Farran and His Peers

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CallSource works with both major and niche industries. As a content writer, I make sure to stay up-to-date with these industry groups to provide relevant and compelling content to you, our readers.

One person that I’ve been following is Dentist Howard Farran, DDS, MBA. Dr. Farran has a long list of accolades, some being the founder of and CEO of Dentaltown.com, Orthotown.com, Hygienetown.com, TodaysDental.com, and author of #1 Amazon best-seller, “Uncomplicate Business.” Dr Farran is also an international lecturer as well as the host and founder of the podcast “Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran.”

In Incisal Edge magazine’s second annual “32 Most Influential People In Dentistry,” Dr. Farran was named number 5. Incisal Edge gave him the title of “The Connector,” which seems very relevant as Dr. Farran does connect many people together both in the dental community and a bit outside of it.

All of that being said, I’ve found Howard to be a very useful as well as entertaining person to follow on LinkedIn and other social media platforms to gain new insights into the dental industry and its trends.

I know that dental professionals are very busy people – and that’s why if you don’t already have the chance to follow Dr. Farran and listen to his podcast (which I highly recommend you do), I’ve gathered up some great tidbits from a few of his podcasts that I have shared with our dental audience here at CallSource.

Below is a round-up of great facts and expert advice from Dr. Howard Farran and his podcast guests.

Podcast Episode 1066: Generate Reviews with Leonard Tau, DMD, FAGD

In this episode, Howard and Leonard focus on the importance of online reviews for dentists.

Some Key Takeaways:

  • Google dominates online reviews
    • “I think the most important site, no matter what, 100% is Google. There’s no doubt in my mind that you have to dominate Google no matter where you are in the country because Google runs the world. Google runs the Internet. So if they don’t like you, they don’t trust you, they won’t show you online. And if they don’t show you, you’re invisible and if you’re invisible, people can’t find you.” – Leonard Tau
  • Online reviews should be the main focus before spending too much on marketing
    • “Well, I think that they need to focus their attention on making themselves credible and visible before they spend their money on marketing, and too many people throw too many dollars into paper click advertising, whether it’s on Facebook or Google, social media, display advertising, SEO without making themselves credible. And if you don’t have reviews online, no matter what you’re doing, you’re not going to be effective with your ROI.” – Leonard Tau
  • Online reviews are just as important as word-of-mouth, no matter where you are located
    • [Dentists] always say, “I’m a word-of-mouth practice. I don’t need reviews,” or “I’m in a small town and there’s no dentists. There’s only a couple of dentists in my town.” Well, what happens when that young guy comes into town who has a ton of social capital, has a ton of followers online and opens up two doors down from you and all of a sudden he takes a number of insurances and he pulls out some of your patients from your practice. You don’t have a lot of reviews. Then you have to react. I don’t want you to be reactive… Reviews are literally the foundation or the building block to doing other things online.” – Leonard Tau
  • You have to actually ask for reviews – you can’t just hope that patients will choose to go online and write you one
    • “The first thing, the most important thing you have to do is ask patients. You have to make it a culture in your office to ask patients to do it. If your patients aren’t doing it, and you’re not asking, you never going to get them.” – Leonard Tau

 

Podcast Episode 1047 Social Media Marketing for Dentists with Shannon Gilpin of Nonnahs Marketing

In this episode, Howard talks social marketing with Shannon Gilpin, owner of a social media marketing agency, about how dentists can use social media marketing to their advantage.

Some Key Takeaways:

  • Just because you own your own practice doesn’t mean that you should feel obligated to be able to “own” every aspect of your business on your own – it’s ok to have help in some areas
    • “The problem we dentists have is we went to school for eight years because we want to do surgery on teeth, we want to do root canals, fillings and crowns, and then you graduate and they tell you, “Oh, you got to own a business too.” And I’m like, “I don’t own a business. I’m a dentist. I do surgery and operatory all day.” But they can’t do their root canals, fillings and crowns if they don’t have patients.” – Howard Farran
  • Trust is very important to consumers when choosing a dentist – so make sure you have an active social media presence and online reviews to have great social proof
    • “People are scared to go to the dentist. We deal with that a lot, and they’re worried about costs and everything. So, when you see those reviews, those positive reviews that this is a trusted dentist, this dentist is going to treat me like family and take care of me, that’s important to them.” – Shannon Gilpin
  • A good, personal social media presence helps your branding
    • “You have to have photos, but then 70% of those photos with a human face that you recognize, get higher engagement rates. So, that’s what I like to do for branding photography, is go in and show the hygienists, show the dentist, in that way people become more familiar with them, more familiar with their brand and them as a person rather than just some stock dentist.” – Shannon Gilpin
  • Address your negative reviews with the reviewer – but don’t try to be too defensive or remove the review
    • “I would suggest never deleting the reviews because that shows up bad on your part. That shows that you’re hiding something. So, always reach out to them and make sure it’s visible and take care of it as much as you can, and once you’ve handled the situation, ask them to either update their review or change it, whatever it may be. But I would never delete it or try to hide it because that just shows that you’re not trustworthy.” – Shannon Gilpin

 

Podcast Episode 1043 Effective Dental Marketing with Ken Newhouse, DC

In this episode, Howard talks to marketing expert Ken Newhouse on how to earn more patients with effective marketing strategies.

Some Key Takeaways:

  • It may not come naturally, but dental professionals need to start measuring data in their offices
    • “I always tell everyone there is one business I would never go into; it would be helping dentists advertise themselves. I would never want to go into a dental marketing business, because the dentist doesn’t measure anything. If you go to any dentist and say, “How many people land on your website each month?” “I don’t know.” “How many of them convert?” “I don’t know.” “How many people called your dental office last month that was a new number that hasn’t called your office?” “I don’t know.” “How many of them did your receptionist convert to come in?” “I don’t know.” “How many treatment plan presentations did you present?” “I don’t know.” “How many of those did you convert?” “I don’t know.” “So, what do you think of that new marketing company?” “It didn’t do [anything].” – Howard Farran
  • There are a lot of areas to pay attention to for a successful marketing program – and it goes all the way from your website to your internal staff
    • [An effective dental marketing program is] “certainly multi-faceted, there are a lot of different components to a successful dental marketing program. . .Number one I would say, ‘It has to be multi-faceted, so number one I would say it has to be automated, and I can expand on that in just a second. Number two, you’ve got to have a website that can convert.’ Then lastly, you’ve got to have a sales staff including the dentists, I know most dentists don’t like to talk about money, and maybe they shouldn’t. That’s something I can’t answer, but the staff, if they understand how to use very persuasive communications, how to actually talk to people.” – Ken Newhouse
  • Incentives matter! (And if you need help coming up with an incentive plan for your office, download our Incentive Plan Checklist here!)
    • “Well, incentives matter.” – Howard Farran
    • Your staff sees you making money, they’re working harder, you’re seeing a lot more patients, and you’re making money, they’re not stupid, they know what you’re making, and bottom line, they’re bothered by the fact that they’re really working hard for you and not benefitting from it? I’ve had a couple people say to me, ‘Why should I pay them, I’m not going to give him any of my profit.’ They don’t understand that you’ll get the performance of your staff if they’re worth keeping will dramatically improve. . . If you have the right person in your office, they’re going to really work hard and they’re going to make you a lot more money, and your office is going to run a lot, lot better.” – Ken Newhouse

Hopefully just a few of these tidbits from some of Howard Farran’s podcast have been helpful to you – and you should definitely check in to listen on a more regular basis when you can.

Who else do you follow in the dental industry that you think your peers can benefit from? Let us know in the comments below!

Correctly Attribute Your Consumers’ Complete Journey with EveryLead

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Automatically Attribute the Source of Every Call, Text or Chat

Westlake Village, CA: CallSource debuts EveryLead, the integrated CallSource and ELEAD1ONE Dashboard to help automotive clients analyze every step of their consumers’ journey to their dealership.

The EveryLead dashboard was first premiered at the NADA (National Automobile Dealers Association) Conference in March in Las Vegas and officially became available to all automotive clients as of June 2018.

“Nothing like this currently exists in the automotive space,” says Pogo Parr, Senior Vice President of Automotive at CallSource. “I am confident the EveryLead platform will give dealers the key KPI’s needed to manage key trends from site visitors, total prospects and appointment trends.”

EveryLead gives you the complete customer journey – both online and offline – from when they first became aware of your dealership to when they ultimately called, emailed, or made an appointment with your business. With this dashboard, you will see the complete consumer journey to your dealership.

Awareness: Accurately tracks each channel at every stage of the buying cycle.
Interest: Tracks and records each consumer’s interaction with your dealership.
Consideration: Gathers data to help you understand their buying intent and make the sales process simpler.
Purchase: Arm your sales team with the details they need about their customer to get them in the driver’s seat.

For the first time, you can know the model and trim package of each vehicle a prospect has viewed – both on your website and on the websites of other dealers. While other web analytics systems report only the last website visited before yours, EveryLead can track the entire consumer journey across multiple domains both before and after they visit your website.

Monitor your dealerships inventory traffic through EveryLead’s Inventory Analysis. See what vehicle make and models consumers are in the market for in addition to seeing what other competitor sites they are viewing.

EveryLead also enhances Google Analytics data; it does not replace it. EveryLead works alongside Google Analytics to refine consumers online interactions, give more accurate reporting, add a level of precision to lead acquisition, and update goals.

“EveryLead also has a built-in, best-in-class texting solution,” Parr says. “This includes the unique ability to run both voice and SMS messages on all static and digital campaigns. This will give the customer the option to call or text, and dealers will see a 10% increase in total lead volume.
We’re really excited to bring EveryLead to our dealers and give them a competitive advantage.”

About CallSource
Own Every Lead

CallSource is the premier technology-enabled business performance system that optimizes our clients’ revenue, profit, and brand reputation. CallSource pioneered the call tracking industry and has become the leader in actionable analytics. CallSource delivers insights to solve, strategize, and implement solutions for our clients using their sales performance data.

For more information on CallSource, visit www.callsource.com.

16 Easy to Miss Analytics Health Checks

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Running a digital marketing campaign without analytics is a lot like throwing darts in the dark. You may get lucky on occasion, but chances are you’ll waste a good deal of time and resources.

Clear and accurate data allows you to make better decisions about website improvements and digital marketing campaigns. Unfortunately, it’s easy to lose sight of analytics when you’re going through the process of a new launch or initiative.

If you use Google Analytics, and most of us do, it’s easy to add the default tracking snippet and move on. But there are a number of configurations that will help you capture better data – so you can make the right decisions to make your product successful.

Like Chris Mercer of Seriously Simple Marketing says, we need to “trust, but verify” the data we collect. These 16 health checks will help you audit your analytics setup to gauge where your analytics can improve – so you don’t make good decisions on bad data.

1. Are Analytics Installed on Each Page You Need to Track?

You can’t track what you’re not tracking, as simple as that sounds. Depending on your website setup, it’s surprisingly easy to not have analytics installed on each page. Luckily, checking on this is pretty simple.

If you’re using Google Analytics, check to see if the tracking code snippet is between the <head> </head> of your code.

Depending on which version of Google Analytics you are using, you’ll want to look for the following snippets:

  • Classic Google Analytics (the oldest version of Google Analytics): UA-xxxxxxxx-xx
  • Universal (the second oldest version of Google Analytics): ga(‘send’, ‘pageview’);
  • Global Tracking (the newest version of Google Analytics): gtag(‘config’, ‘UA-xxxxxxxx-x’);
  • Tag Manager (more about this in health check 2): _gaq.push
Tag Manager Code Example
For Tag Manager, you’ll want to look for two code snippets: One between the <head> and </head> tags and one between the <body> and </body> tags. Look for more information in Health Check 2 about Tag Manager

Tip: Navigate to your website and right click the page. In the toolbar, select View > Developer > View Source. This will display your site’s source code. Press Control+F, type in the code snippet for which you’d like to search and press Enter/Return.

Tip 2: You can also use a website auditor like Screaming Frog to easily check your code. This simple tool can search your entire site to identify pages with broken code. Screaming Frog also identifies broken links (404s) and duplicate content, which can harm your site’s rank.

2. Is Google Tag Manager Installed Correctly?

Since Google Analytics was first rolled out in November 2005, it’s made substantial advancements. The first major update was real time tracking in 2011. However, things got a lot more interesting when Google Tag Manager was introduced in 2012.

Traditional GA Tracking Code easly tells you things like pageviews, bounce rate, session duration, and referral sites. Unfortunately, that’s about the extent of it unless you write a lot of manual code to use GA to send other events. To track additional details, such as email opt-ins and product sales, your web developer would need to add specific Javascript to your website for each item you wanted to track – on the correct pages. (That’s A LOT of code.)

Not only does this laborious process take a lot of time, it can also cause errors to commonly occur. Inaccurate information skews results, causing you to be misinformed.

Tag Manager simplifies this process. It allows you to easily see how visitors are using your site.

Initially, setting up Tag Manager is a more time intensive investment than using Google Analytics’ Javascript. However, once it’s installed and setup, it delivers accurate, real time results that give you actual insight into how your website’s being used. Plus, you can easily test.

In addition to making sure ‘ _gaq.push’ is within the <HEAD> </HEAD> of your source code, you’ll want to make sure an <IFRAME> with a src=”//www.googletagmanager.com is within the top of the <BODY> </BODY> of each page you wish to track.

The admin settings of Google Tag Manager have step-by-step inspections you can follow.

3. Is Your Analytics Setup for Cross-Domain Tracking?

Building a comprehensive and secure online retail funnel is a substantial investment. Big dogs, like AlaskaAir, Nordstroms, and Amazon have obviously made this investment. However, for the vast majority of businesses and organizations, it’s simply too expensive.

The frequent solution is using a third-party to process online purchases. This means customers are actually directed to a separate domain. For example, many event vendors use Vendini to process ticket sales and many airlines use Takeflite.

The problem is, sending a user to an outside domain makes it difficult to track them. Luckily, it’s not impossible. With Universal Google Analytics, you’ll want to check your code for the following two snippets:

  • ga(‘require’, ‘linker’)
  • ga(‘linker:autoLink’, [‘example.com’] );

For Google Analytics’s gtag.js, look for:

  • ‘linker’: { ‘domains’: [‘example.com’] }
Cross Domain Code Example
If you’re using a third-party site to process payments, cross domain tracking allows you to follow your customers through their entire purchase path. This is an essential element for identifying and correcting any barriers in your sales funnel.

If this code is not on your site, cross domain tracking isn’t setup, even if you’ve installed analytics on your third-party site. (Additional documentation about setting up cross domain tracking with Google Analytics. Additional documentation about setting up cross domain tracking with Google Tag Manager.)

Cross-Domain Traffic Depends on Cookies

In order to determine a unique user, analytics must embed a client ID stored in the browser’s cookies. This ID is also used to successfully implement cross domain tracking. The cookie information allows Google to count the time spent on your site and the third-party site as the same session.

When cross-domain tracking is set up successfully, you’ll see the external site(s) in your Hostname report (Audience > Technology > Network > change Primary Dimension to Hostname) instead of your Referrals report (Acquisition > All Traffic > Referrals) because your tracking code will be on those pages.

If you’re looking for more information about cross-domain tracking, this article is helpful. Tag Manager simplifies this process. All you need to do is add the desired domain and appropriate options to your pageview tag.

Pro tip: There have been new laws enacted, and still more coming, about online privacy. Be sure to chat with your business’ legal team to discuss what steps you need to take to limit your liability and make your tracking optional – and understandable – to your users.

4. Is Your Analytics Setup for Remarketing?

Remarketing is an incredibly clever way to connect with visitors who have shown an interest in one of your products, but didn’t make an immediate purchase. It allows you to strategically place ads throughout the internet as they browse.

In Google Analytics, visit: Admin > Property Settings to see if Demographics and Interest Reports are enabled. Also, be sure your AdWords account is linked to your Analytics account via: Admin > Property Settings > Adwords Linking.

With Universal Google Analytics: Check your code for ga(‘require’, ‘displayfeatures’).

With Global Tracking: Just make sure that Adwords is linked and Demographics and Interest Reports are enabled.

With Tag Manager: Start by navigating to Admin > Property > Tracking Info > Data Collection > Enabling Display Advertising Features to ‘True’. (Please Note: You will need to have ‘Edit’ permission to access this setting.) Once tracking is enabled, go to Admin > Property > Product Linking > AdWords Linking. This will allow you to ensure the accounts are linked in your analytics.

Finally, no matter what version of Analytics you are using, you’ll need to update your Privacy Policy so it abides by Google’s current requirements. You can find them here.

5. Is Your Hostname in Your URLs?

Does your website use subdomains to separate large batches of content and functions? To determine this, look at the URLs associated with your site. For example, if your root domain name is mysite.com – you may have the following three subdomains: www.mysite.com, blog.mysite.com, and store.mysite.com.

Here’s the key, if you are using subdomains, are the hostnames included in your content reports?

Why does this matter? Because by default, Google only tracks Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). (A URI is the snippet of your URL that appears after your domain name. The URI of mysite.com/my-page is /my-page.)

It’s not uncommon for your subdomains to use some of the same URIs as your root domain (such as www.mysite.com/my-page, blog.mysite.com/my-page, and store.mysite.com/my-page). Without the hostname included in your content reports, the traffic for all these pages will be lumped together.

IMPORTANT NOTE: While setting up a filter to include the hostname is important, you will need to test and potentially update your goal URLs, as they may break depending on how they were set up. Also, it’s best to add this filter on the first day of the month, as it makes for easier reporting.

6. Are You Using UTM Codes in Internal Links on Your Site?

Don’t.

We repeat, don’t use UTM codes in internal site links. This causes a new session to be triggered for a person who’s already on your site. UTM codes should only be used on external links that bring traffic to you.

Screaming Frog is an easy tool that can search for relative or absolute URLs to your domain or site, or other domains (if you are using cross domain tracking). Add or remove any improperly placed UTM codes that are found.

UTM Codes Let You Create Custom URLs

Tracking the source, medium, and specific campaign in which a URL is used can be next to impossible, unless you created a unique landing page for each campaign. UTM codes are the solution. This piece of code snippet is attached to a URL, creating a custom URL so you can track this key data. Google has a great tool for creating UTM codes for a URL.

7. Are You Filtering Employee and Contractor Traffic?

Whether it’s employees checking information on your FAQ page or your web designer testing a new site update, traffic from these individuals can skew your analytics. To avoid this, you’ll want to filter in your Google Analytics to exclude traffic from those specific IP addresses.

LunaMetrics shares a list of other filters that may potentially be helpful. Not all filters are right for every website. To determine which filters are right for your site, you need to take a look at your goals and how the site is being used.

You’ll also want to pay attention to the order in which your filters are applied to ensure they make sense.

8. Do You Have a Raw View in Analytics?

There are a variety of ways you can filter your analytics, but sometimes all these filters can make it difficult to know if your tracking is actually working how you want it to. A ‘raw view’ or ‘default view’ is a view that shows data without any filters set or goals applied.

To create this ‘raw view’ go to: Admin > Property > Property Settings > Default View > Save.

Raw View Example
Applying filters is an exceptional way to parse data into useable chunks. However, it’s important to make sure your analytics and your filters are working correctly. A ‘Raw View’ allows you to do this, by tracking your data without any filters applied.

Pro Tip: While you don’t want to apply any filters to your ‘raw view,’ we do recommend linking AdWords and turning on Ecommerce tracking if you are using them. If you don’t take these two steps, then you won’t have all the necessary data.

9. Are You Tracking Your Error Pages?

When a user tries to visit a URL that doesn’t exist, they’ll be shown a 404 error page. Alternatively, if your site’s JavaScript, or the server hosting your site, has a substantial error, visitors will be shown a 500 error page. It’s essential to track when these error pages are being displayed.

Google will only index a certain number of your site’s pages. You don’t want the indexed pages to be consumed by error pages. This can substantially hurt your rank. Plus, frequently displaying them isn’t good for user experience.

Third-party services like Rollbar and Sentry can help you monitor for errors, so they can be quickly fixed. Errors can be as simple as a misspelled redirect. It’s easy to have happen. The key is to get it corrected quickly.

But even with a monitoring service, also make sure your analytics tracker is on your 404 and 500 pages. Remember: Trust, but verify 😉

10. Are You Tracking Site Search?

Do you have a search feature on your site? If so, you can (and should) track it. If you don’t, each time a user searches, it could just be tracked as a pageview and be very difficult to filter and review what searches are being made. To add search, go to:

View Settings > Set Site Search Tracking to ON > Enter the parameter(s) that indicate(s) a site search > Enable categories > Enter the parameter(s) that indicate(s) a category search > Apply.

NOTE: Most sites will only have one parameter. However, if you have multiple search fields then you’d have more than one parameter. For example, an online clothing store’s parameters might include size, color, and gender.

It’s also worth using a filter to force search terms to lowercase to avoid duplicate terms tracked.

11. Do You Have Proper Goals Setup for Conversions?

For all intents and purposes, Pageviews and Visitors are vanity stats. What really matters are conversions. These conversions could include:

  • Leads
  • Trial signups
  • Account creations
  • Newsletter opt-ins
  • Downloads
  • Purchases

Google’s Conversion Goals allow you to track these goals. They can be tracked in five different ways:

  1. URLs – This goal is triggered when a visitor lands on a specific page. You may use this kind of goal is best reserved for a thank you page triggered when a visitor buys something or opts into something.
  2. Time (Visit Duration) – This goal is triggered when a visitor stays on your site or a specific page for a predetermined amount of time. Websites may want to use this goal when they’re focused on educating visitors.
  3. Pages/Visits – Similar to Time, a page goal is determined by the minimum number of pages you want a visitor to view before leaving your site. Traditionally speaking, the more pages a visitor views, the more likely they are to convert.
  4. Events – Event goals are a tad more complicated to set up, in that you must first create an event. Events could include clicking an external link, downloading a document, watching a video or clicking on a social media widget.
  5. ECommerce Tracking – when set up correctly, you can send product and anonymous purchase data like price and purchase time to Google Analytics to help you monitor purchase behavior.

12. Is Your Home Page Setup Correctly in GA?

You may have multiple versions of your homepage to better serve visitors from different countries. For example, you may have a French version, which lives at: mysite.com/fr.

It’s important to specify one authoritative version, so you can accurately track its performance and your other versions. This authoritative page is specified within you Google analytic settings.

However, if this authoritative page is set incorrectly, it can cause some serious problems within your analytics. These problems include breaking filters, breaking conversion goals, and diminishing your Google rank. We always recommend working with a web professional to accomplish this task.

Also note, if your homepage is just mysite.com/ then you can leave your default page blank.

13. Have You Turned on Bot Filtering?

Turn on Bot Filtering. If you don’t filter out bot traffic, it can substantially skew your analytics, giving you an unrealistic picture of how your site’s performing.

This task should be filed under, “No brainer.” Simply navigate to Admin > View > Select view from drop-down menu > View Settings > Bot Filtering.

Pro Tip: If you are using an uptime monitoring service (like pingdom ), check to see how they are testing your site. The Google bot may not pick up all of their traffic. Depending on the test, the service may try and simulate how a person accesses your site. It could require a seperate filter to remove this traffic.

14. Do You Have Your Time Zone Setup?

An incorrect time zone or territory can render your reports confusing, at best.

To check your time zone setting navigate to Admin > Profile > Profile Settings > General Information > Select the appropriate time zone > click Apply.

15. Have You Added Your Social Settings?

Social media can be an amazing source of free traffic. Unfortunately, without the right filters in place, it can be hard to know which platforms are performing the best.

To check that you’ve listed all of your social properties (social media accounts), navigate to Property > Social Settings. You should see all of the platforms on which you participate listed.

16. Have You Recently Reviewed Your User Permissions?

Employees and contractors can come and go. When they go, most of us think about taking things like employee badges and company computers. However, it’s not uncommon to overlook their permission settings.

Take a moment to review who has access to your analytics account and what level of permission settings each individual has. Are there any individuals who need to be removed or their permission status changed?

To do this navigate to: Admin > Account/Property/View > User Management.

Bonus Tip: Use a Dynamic Phone Number to Better Track ROI

Even the best of staffs can struggle to identify where a call originated (where the caller found your number). This can make it incredibly difficult to track which promotion is really driving leads and delivering a quality return on investment (ROI).

Dynamic phone numbers (like the ones provided by CallSource) simplify this process because they allow you to pinpoint the specific ad from which the number originated. We’re particularly fond of using dynamic phone numbers in video ads, as it helps us to maximize our adspend.

Looking for more ways to strengthen your online presence? Learn how to claim the coveted ‘Spot Zero’ search rank.

Your Analytics Can Always Be Better

At RWL Design, we invest a lot of time and resources making sure our team stays focused on helping our customers make sure their analytics improve. Even still, there are always new ways to make it better.

Data is important, especially as your business grows to the point that can sustain and utilize A/B testing.

But without the right tracking, you won’t have the data to understand the successes and barriers that users face while using your product. Without that data, you’ll have a much harder time making the improvements that really matter to your customers’ success and your business goals.

Try these 16 checks to see if there could be shortfalls, or hire an agency to help you. It’s a good investment.

If you can any questions, reach out to CallSource or RWL Design on Twitter.

Are Your Inbound Marketing Efforts Creating Enough Lead Generation?

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Make sure your marketing content is reaching the right audiences and actually working – by tracking it.

Your marketing efforts are wasted if they aren’t reaching the right people – and you cannot know what is working the most successfully without learning, failing, learning more and succeeding – which requires data. By tracking your marketing efforts to receive inbound leads, you can stop wasting marketing dollars on what isn’t working, and start perfecting more of what is working to do more of it.

So what avenues exist to successfully track your marketing success? Let’s go over the options that you should be utilizing at your business.

Call Tracking

If you have an appointment-based business, call tracking is essential for correctly attributing inbound phone leads.

It is not serving your business to put the same, main phone number on all of your marketing pieces. Sure, your call handlers may ask callers where they heard about you to try to guess and attribute which marketing piece drove their phone call, but what there are many possible ways this can go wrong.

One problem is that the call handler will most likely forget to ask this question of every caller, which gives you zero information. Also, the caller may not remember where they saw your number, or state where they called from incorrectly. For example, the caller may have first heard about your business on the radio, but then it was a direct mail piece they received that really drove their call to you.

When you place unique tracking phone numbers on all of your different marketing pieces, there is no more guesswork or hoping that you will get the correct attribution.

Call tracking correctly tells you what marketing pieces are driving the most inbound calls, and even can break down how many actual leads you are receiving from each piece versus junk phone calls – so you can really invest your marketing dollars into the ones that are working and get rid of underperforming advertising sources.

Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI)

Dynamic Number Insertion, often referred to as simply DNI, is a more detailed hybrid of call tracking and digital attribution.

DNI is a great way to correctly attribute phone calls that come in from your online marketing sources. Instead of placing a static phone number on your website, dynamic number insertion will display a different phone number based on each unique visitor. This way, you can not only see from a call tracking standpoint that this lead called in from your website, but you can also then go back and see what search terms drove this person to your website in the first place.

Digital Attribution

We’re living in a digital world – so you better be able to improve your online presence and successfully attribute how you are earning leads in your internet campaigns and marketing efforts.
There are a few different digital attribution models, so it is up to you to pick the one that best suits your business needs. Here are some of the most popular:

Last Click Attribution Model: The last click receives full credit for the conversion

First Click Attribution Model: The first click receives full credit for the conversion

Linear Attribution: Each touch point receives equal credit for the conversion

Time Decay: The touch point(s) furthest away from the conversion receive the least credit

You can always create your own custom model for attribution – but it is important that you do choose and stay consistent so you can compare data to make informed decisions. Google Analytics is a great tool for your digital attribution that anyone can use.

Of course, having a combination of all of the above tracking models will yield the highest results. That is why CallSource delivers products to help you in all of these areas. Curious to learn more? Reach out to one of our representatives and we will be happy to help your business succeed.

Millennial Customers Are Moving the Car Buying Process Online [Infographic]

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While it’s still true that the majority of car purchases are made in person at the dealership, much of the actual process leading up to the sale has shifted to the internet.

Most millennials (people born between 1981 and 1997) are old enough to be purchasing cars now – and they’ve helped change up the game when it comes to car buying.

So the question now remains – how can you accommodate this new car buy process at your dealership? Take a look at our infographic below for some great tips and stats!

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Millennials-Moving-Car-Buying-Online

Why Your Dental Practice Needs Call Tracking

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Start implementing call tracking metrics into your practice ASAP to improve its success.

As a dentist, you have far more things to worry about in your office than marketing and employee performance

Like – caring for your patients and looking into 30+ mouths a day, for one thing.

I’m sure that you can still agree that marketing success and performance management are imperative areas for your practice’s success.
This is where utilizing call tracking services come in handy to serve and partner with your practice.

So what exactly is the value of using call tracking for your dental office?

I’m glad you asked.

Improve your marketing spend

One of the easiest and most straight-forward reasons that people and businesses invest in call tracking is to ensure that they are spending their marketing dollars wisely.

By using unique tracking numbers on each of your different marketing pieces (website, direct mail, newspaper ads, etc.), you can easily view which campaigns are receiving the most phone calls, leads, and appointments. By investing more dollars into the marketing sources that are working, and less (or zero) into ones that aren’t, you will improve your spend without wasting precious marketing dollars.
 

Be “in the know” of the front office’s new patient phone call handling

When you’re busy running from room to room to work on patient’s oral surgeries, check on patient’s teeth during their regular appointments with the dental hygienists, and much more – you don’t have much free time to check in with your front office staff to see if their work performance is up to par with what your practice requires.

With call tracking, you don’t only have access to view your marketing campaigns’ success, but your employees’ success as well. You can view front office staff’s appointment conversion rates, see what times of day you are getting the most calls, and who is most successful on the phone – as well as listen to audio recordings to really learn how employees sound on the phone with your current and potential patients.
 

Use call recordings for employee feedback, engagement, and training

So you now have the ability to know what is going on up front while you’re working with patients – now what?

How can you use these call recordings and call tracking reports to help your practice?

When you’re able to listen back to your front office staff’s phone calls with new and returning patients, you can actually use them for internal improvement.

Have gatherings with your staff to go over what they are doing well or what they should be doing differently on the phone, and utilize the call recordings and reports in annual reviews and regular team or one-on-one meetings.
 

Improve front office staff phone skills with call coaching

Depending on your call tracking service, you can implement your own internal call coaching for the phone handlers, or with a company like CallSource, you can utilize third-party call coaching to supplement your team.

You’ve analyzed what’s going on. Now the second part is call coaching (or the actionable side of this equation) to correct and improve any opportunities over the phone. Much like Newton’s First Law of Motion: An object will remain at rest, or uniform motion in a straight line until acted upon by an external force. Without a call tracking and coaching provider, the practice will continue to improve, remain the same, or decrease at the same rate until acted upon by an outside force.
 

Take hold of your online reputation

You may not think of “online reputation” when you hear of call tracking services, but a full-service company will assist you in bettering all aspects of your business.

By using an online review platform that aggregates all of your online reviews in one space and easily lets you request reviews and reply to submitted reviews, you can stay on top of your online reputation.

Why is this important?

When someone is choosing a new practice, whether it be for their or their children’s dental needs, orthodontic needs, or oral surgery, they will want to be sure that who they are choosing is trustworthy, reliable, and good at what they do. One way that people are finding this out now more than ever is on the internet – through online reviews.

Ready to take your dental practice to the next level with CallSource call tracking, performance and reputation management? Contact one of our representatives today to learn more.