How much is a patient worth? Part II

Editor's note: Richard Geller's column, Marketing Madness, appears regularly on the DrBicuspid.com advice and opinion page, Second Opinion.

Many doctors want to increase their growth rate beyond organic growth. If you want to increase the growth rate in your production, you have two options:

1. Get more people to come in and become patients.
2. Increase the size of your cases.

Many doctors I have worked with over the years have focused on fewer but bigger cases. These are the guys and gals who get into sedation, placing implants, and doing porcelain veneers and full mouth reconstruction.

As economic times change, it may become important to get more patients into your office. So option No. 1 may be the key to growing production and profits.

That means advertising. But how much should you spend? Advertising works differently than, say, buying gloves in bulk. If you buy gloves in bulk, you can save a bit of money. But with advertising, the more advertising you buy, the more expensive each new patient becomes.

Here's an example. If you spend $10 a month on Google, you might get one patient. It costs $10 for the patient. Great!

(I am simplifying by not considering any losses you may incur in the first visit, such as a cut-rate exam.)

But you want more volume. So you increase your spending on Google.

If you spend $100 a month on Google, you won't get 10 patients. You may only get three patients. Cost: $33 per patient. (And that assumes there are enough clicks to buy on Google. In many areas there aren't.)

If you spend $1,000 per month on Google, you may only get 10 patients. Or just five patients. Cost: $100 to $200 per patient.

So how do you know when to stop? The determining factor is how much a patient is worth to you. Go over your production in the past 12 months and run the numbers (for a detailed discussion, see part I of this series).

You will find that certain patient marketing sources provide a higher-value patient than others. A patient acquired through a Google ad, for example, might bring in more or less money than a patient acquired through direct mail. So you have to track where patients come from and how much production they bring in. If you make enough money on each patient, you can spend a lot on advertising and do very well.

And please see my insider's special report on a specific advertising strategy that actually pays you to lose money, so that 18 months from now you have all the patients you will ever need and can quit advertising.

The comments and observations expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinions of DrBicuspid.com, nor should they be construed as an endorsement or admonishment of any particular idea, vendor, or organization.

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