What Services do you offer?

We offer a set of defined services that you can sign up for ala carte, but really our services are everybody’s.  (huh?)

There’s an ugly little secret in the marketing world other agencies don’t want you to know.   Most will make it appear that “they” are doing all the work with their employees sitting in a big office at their location.  They don’t tell you that much of the work will be “outsourced” – We do.

The reality is that it’s not practical to employ all the specialists needed for the execution of a dental marketing plan.  Having a large portfolio of experts to call on when needed is really what’s best for you.   It’s very similar to building a custom house.  If you were hiring a builder to build you a custom house, you wouldn’t expect to hire one guy to personally do all the work.  Nor would it be practical for him to have framers, plumbers, electricians, landscapers, and all the other subcontractors as employees.  Smart dental marketing management works like that too.

We partner with the best vendors who provide dental website design, dental social media, dentist search engine marketing, dental ppc, dentist SEO, Google maps optimizations, graphic design, web hosting, email marketing.   Each of these specialties is a science, changes almost daily, and requires a pro who is committed to constant re-education to stay on top.  We know what “right” looks like, we know how to monitor and measure results, and we hold our employees and vendors to a higher standard for you.  If they aren’t delivering, we have leverage to have them make it right, as they want our continued business.  If one of the vendors working on your project stops being a good vendor, we fire them and switch to a new one.  (Yes we’ll fire your other non-performing vendors too if you want us to)  This arms-length objectivity and obsession with results is why you should want us on your side.

How much do Local Elephant services cost?

Effective marketing combined with good sales practices produces revenue in excess of what’s invested, so there should be no “cost” after a normal sales cycle or payback period.

Most of our packaged services will have a fixed price for a defined scope of work.  A proposal listing the scope of work and price will be approved prior to beginning.  Any changes to the scope of work are approved and paid for at the time of the change.

For small tasks, marketing management, and similar tasks that are better done on an hourly basis, time is billed based on the rate of the person doing the work.   We’ll provide an estimate when asked.  Each type of skilled professional has a certain fixed, monthly, or hourly cost.  We constantly shop for the best combination of quality and price in all our service providers (and employees) and switch out vendors when appropriate. 

All time worked on client projects is tracked and billed against the monthly service fee.  Prepayment or partial prepayment is required prior to any work beginning.  Most of our clients don’t worry about who’s doing what at our end, or what it costs, as we justify our fees by making the phone ring, taking the marketing execution burden off your back, and always looking out for what’s best for our clients.

The best part is that you only pay for the actual time and services you need now, and stop paying once you get all the patients you need.

What’s a reasonable marketing budget?

Some clients may spend $600 per month, some $16,000.  A full answer to that question would fill a chapter in a dental marketing manual (we’re writing one by the way)  The quick answer is that the goal and the speed you want to get there determines the budget.  For most dental practices there are two ways to go about setting the marketing budgeting.  1.) Pick a marketing goal and then fully fund it. Or 2.) Fund the immediate urgent dental “marketing” work, then each month spend the available budget on the highest yielding projects, accepting the results that are produced.   As unlimited money is rare, most dental practices pick #2.

Whatever the budget, the marketing program and results should be reviewed and adjusted every few months when compared to goals, if additional funds become available, seasonality, or factors.

We strive to get our clients cruising on maintenance mode as quickly as possible.  A few fillings or crowns might be needed initially, (meaning the budget for the first few months is bigger) but getting on client on regular 6-month cleanings is our goal.

Won’t this cost me a lot more than hiring each company myself?

Not really.  As a marketing Agency we negotiate wholesale prices from our vendors not available to the general public.  We don’t have the high overhead of a big company, so we can keep our prices rock-bottom low.  Plus, the difference between doing dental marketing, and highly effective dental marketing, will reduce the “dumb tax” making Local Elephant Marketing Management more than pay for itself many times over.

What’s the term of your contracts?

We hate long-term contracts so we don’t have one.  You simply agree to pay us for the marketing services and actual time we spend implementing your programs.  Some of the services you might choose have a minimum commitment, (three months for SEO services for example) but you’ll know what that is going in.  To save you money, we let you pay directly for SEM advertising to Google, Bing, and Facebook without a markup.

Aren’t call tracking numbers bad to use?

Yes it’s bad if you spread lots of different phone numbers for your business all over the internet.  The search engines do best when they see one phone number for every physical local location.

The right way to use them, and how we do it, is to have your website automatically show your visitors unique call tracking numbers depending which marketing source originated them (Google paid or organic, print, radio, Bing paid, Yelp paid, email, etc.)  Doing it this way isn’t known or understood by many, so call tracking continues to get a bad undeserved rap.  Once you see proof that your marketing is working – or not, you’ll wonder why someone didn’t tell you about it sooner.  We guarantee it is way better than the alternative of not knowing.

Do you have a guarantee?

Sure do.  Our Guarantee… We guarantee that we will manage or provide the marketing services as agreed.  We guarantee we’ll call you back as quickly as we can.  We guarantee to communicate with you as frequently as you want, and take the time answer your questions to truly understand what we are doing.  We guarantee that you’ll get great results commensurate with your financial investment.

But wait, do you guarantee I’ll get new patients?

We implement marketing services.  The end result of good dental marketing execution is the generation of leads and new patient inquiries who are positively inclined to do business with you.  These could come to you by the telephone, email, web forms on your website or other places.  We guarantee to deliver potential new patients via leads and inquiries.   Whether you convert 1% or 90% of these leads to new patients depends on things YOU will do.  Some of the critical things we’ll advise you to do to increase your lead to patient conversion rate are:

  • Answer the Phone

  • Have a live person answer the phone 24/7 – An answering service is the answer

  • Have enough phone lines or voicemail so callers don’t get a busy signal

  • Have the person answering the phone trained to sell your practice and set the appointment

  • Respond to Email inquiries

  • Follow up with all Inquiries until they set an appointment or tell you to quit calling/emailing

You will get the most new patients if you do all of these things well.  If you do all these things AND provide great patient care and in-office operational excellence, will drive down your overall marketing expense due to more referrals and more patient inquiries turning into patients.

If you’ve read this far it’s a sign – call now to discuss how we can grow your practice – 425.296.6337