While I was logging in some web browsing miles the other day I came across Wayne A. Kurzen, a dental practice consultant out of Georgia.  He had written a blog post that immediately caught my attention titled, “How Much Should Your Practice Invest in Marketing?” Great question I thought, one that many Dentists find themselves asking on a regular basis.

Wayne suggests, “Basing your marketing budget off of a range between lasts years collections, and this years projections at an estimated 5%. Therefore, if you are projecting to bring in $700k this year, then your marketing budget should be $35k.”

Now to make things interesting, two of our dental practice clients have been working with a $4k a year budget in online advertising and getting 14 – 18 new patients a month from it. At $4k a year, that’s only 11.3% of their originally projected budget of $35k. If a dentist really has that kind of a marketing budget, they need to go and get more advertising space online, and probably spend some money in the yellow pages where return on investment will be minimal, but probably still significant enough to go and get it.

– Trevor