How to Budget Advertising for a Dental Practice

Budgeting advertising for a dental practice can seem like a complicated process. How much of your monthly income should you dedicate to finding more patients? Is advertising really even necessary? These are important questions for a dental practice. Budgeting advertising is actually relatively simple; by using online practice management tools and thinking about your practice environment, calculating an advertising budget is moderately easy.

Instructions

• 1

  Review online practice management resources like those found on the American Dental Association's website or on the website published by Dental Economics magazine, a leading trade magazine for dental practice managers. Find links in References. These sites host robust resource sections that help make business decisions for dental practices, including worksheets and toolkits for marketing, advertising and budget management.

• 2

  Use online tools to determine what the return on investment is for specific types of advertising, such as website banner ads, ads in the Yellow Pages, or newspaper and magazine advertising. What are the costs for these specific types of ads in your area? Call local media outlets and speak to their advertising departments to determine costs.

• 3

  Think about how necessary advertising is for your practice. Are you currently drawing a reasonable amount of business by patient recommendations or other kinds of referrals? Are there other dentists in your specialty area who compete with you for patients? These are important considerations when you decide how much to budget for advertising.

• 4

  Decide what proportion of your monthly or yearly office budget will represent advertising costs. Track the results of your advertising investment to determine your own individual return on investment; evaluate your advertising budget every six to 12 months as needed. How has your patient load changed since the beginning of an advertising campaign? Have patients mentioned one particular type of advertisement more than another? Ask your staff to ask new patients where they learned of your practice. Did the amount of money you attracted through new patients cover or exceed the cost of the advertisements that brought in new patients? These variables will help you evaluate the effectiveness of your advertising budget and ultimately more accurately budget for advertising year-over-year.