If you are aware of any great growth hacking examples from your business, be sure to share them in the comments section below.
By now you heard you've heard about the amazing results that growth hacking can deliver to your practice, and if you haven’t I have a question for you:
What rock have you been hiding under?
Whether you've heard of growth hacking or haven’t, I’ll give you a brief rundown on the term and then reveal how it can transform your ability to generate quality new patients, improve case acceptance, and substantially increase your production… your patient retention and your profits.
The term “growth hacker” was first introduced by the man who primarily responsible for the meteoric growth of DropBox.com – Sean Ellis in 2010 in 2010. Before founding GrowthHackers.com and becoming CEO of Qualaroo he summarized a growth hacker as:
“A person whose true north is growth”, and is disciplined in prioritizing and testing marketing ideas, and religiously analyzing such results to see which tactics worked the best and should be scaled out further.”
To me, growth hacking is the intersection between marketing, human psychology/behavior and technology. Growth Hacking targets what can you do, track, test and improve as it relates to your:
- Web page design
- Consumer behavior (why and how consumers make decisions – something that will dramatically impact the marketing strategy you use – if your dental marketing expert is smart enough to know and use it)
- Email templates
- Purchase process
- Product Development
- Social sharing links
- Website analytics
- Content creation and curation
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Social media marketing (SMM)
- Search engine marketing (SEM)
- Social media optimization (SMO)
- Landing pages using Conversion Centered Design CCD)
That you can iterate (i.e., “test 2-versions to find the best performer – continually) with A/B testing, to continually improve until you find that “Aha Moment” that will lead to rapid, viral and affordable growth in your:
- Quality (niche specific) new patient traffic
- Case acceptance rate
- Patient Retention
- Referral Program
- Employee Engagement and Performance Program
As opposed to expensive traditional media buys (Yellow Pages, YELP, AdWords, etc.) which most Dentists can’t afford to waste money on).
Here is a comprehensive (but certainly not complete) list of growth hacking tactics you can use for more inspiration and direction. But growth hacking is more than just the implementation and use of dental marketing tactics, it is knowing how to apply and track them within the patient’s lifecycle in your practice:
- Acquisition
- Engagement
- New Patient Appointment (NPA)
- Case Acceptance
- Retention
- Referral
- Advocacy of your practice
At each step within this process, you have to figure out the key datapoints to be managing and optimizing. As examples, maybe it is click-through rate from your conversion centered design-based landing pages for acquisition of new patients; opt-in ratio for engagement; and ratio of site visitors to scheduled new patient appointments (Users/NPA); and lifetime value of your patients (time in practice x production); and for referrals you can not only track (the obvious) action of direct referral, but you can (and should) track the number of times each patient (establishing an average) clicks a social sharing button on your site (or landing page) that generates referrals.
Growth Hacking figure out what the key drivers are for each, and vigorously uses A/B testing to continually improve your results along the way. Growth hacking is a never ending process, that continues to iterate in a virtuous cycle over time.
Growth Hacking is a never-ending process?
The hugely successful companies I list below have a team of growth hacking experts on staff, but that’s not feasible for our dentist clients. In order to enjoy rapid and sustainable growth that growth hacking delivers (without keeping me around forever) I’ll come into your practice, get everything set up and get your practice moving in the right direction – then train your certified dental marketing assistant to take over from there. If she (or he) hits a bump in the road or needs assistance a quick phone call to me can usually resolve the issue rapidly.
As examples of companies that have built very large businesses via growth hacking tactics, here’s a list of the top-ten growth hacking strategies used by the world’s largest companies (you’ll be surprised to know that they use growth hacking strategies):
One of my favorite growth hacking strategies not listed here was Groupon’s use of a 24-hour ticking clock and tipping point of 500 people needed to spark the viral feeding frenzy for their deals.
You can piggyback on all these proven growth hacking strategies, check these 21-Growth Hacking Strategies You Can Use In Your Dental Practice, (or contact me for information about how I’m successfully growth hacking my client’s dental practices) for implementation in your practice.
Here's an example of my Paducah Dentist IV Sedation that uses growth hacking in his marketing. Columbus Ohio Dentist Terry Hughes and the Premier St. Louis Cosmetic Dentist Barry Brace both use growth hacking strategies in his practice.
At the end of the day, growth hacking is all about driving as much growth as you want for your practice, with spending as little money as possible. And, every highly-skilled growth hacker is driven by the challenge and the “game” of it.
As you may already know, I have detailed plenty of low-cost growth hacking strategies within my Free eBook – The Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking Your Dental Practice. So be sure to download and read it those for more details about how best to market your dental practice in 2014 and beyond.
Townies who want to know how Growth Hacking can totally transform your dental marketing program as well as your new patient traffic, case acceptance, referral program, patient retention, production and profit can receive a FREE 20-Minute Non-Sales Phone consultation by contact Dr. Ken Newhouse - click here.
