In a little over a year since opening his practice and HealthEngine account, Dr Vincent Goh of Allied Dental Centre Port Coogee in Perth, Western Australia, has grown his patient pool consistently. He has expanded his team of associate dentists to three and his practice from one chair to two, with plans to add a third. And all this despite the disruption of the COVID crisis.
So we caught up with Practice Principle Dr Goh to get some insights into what’s working, what isn’t, how he’s changed his dental marketing strategy since launch, and how much value he’s getting from his HealthEngine account.
It was around May 2019, and four years into his career as an associate dentist, that Dr Goh decided to make the bold leap into practice ownership and management. He opened Allied Dental Centre Port Coogee with one chair and a good mix in his dental marketing plan. He started with some traditional dental advertising, including local print ads and a mailbox flyer drop, plus a little social media, some basic SEO, Google Ads and a listing on HealthEngine.
“Being a brand new practice, obviously, we were keen to grow as quickly as possible. And given that so many patients now expect to be able to connect and book with their health providers online, at any time, we wanted to make ourselves as visible as possible to new patients actively looking online” said Dr Goh.
“We’d seen other practices have success with HealthEngine and heard rave reviews about how well it integrated with Praktika – the practice management software we’re using. That gave us more confidence in HealthEngine than competitor platforms.”
”“HealthEngine instantly got our practice name and available appointments in front of their extensive network of active local patients, so from day one we were getting bookings and patients coming through the door.”
Dr Vincent GohPractice Principle - Allied Dental Centre
New patients from day one
We know from our own experience that social media can be hit and miss and Google Ads is a bit of a longer game – it takes at least a month before you begin to see any return on your investment. So, we were interested to find out how HealthEngine stacked up against the other marketing channels Dr Goh had used to launch.
“We received a good initial response from the flyer mailout, and it was a relatively low-cost exercise. But you can only do that so much. With Google Ads and SEO, it was a good few weeks before we saw any returns, and we had to wait patiently for the advertising agency to iterate the campaigns before we started to see some results,” said Dr. Goh.
Instant returns on HealthEngine
“With HealthEngine, the return was instant. And one year on, we’re seeing 30 to 35 percent of our bookings coming through HealthEngine each month, with an ROI of 10x. That’s a consistent 900% return for every new patient we receive directly from HealthEngine.”
“We’re achieving about the same with our Google Ads now, but we don’t really need to look at or change anything on HealthEngine. So in terms of an overall investment of time, effort, and money, HealthEngine is our top-performing marketing tool”, said Dr Goh.
Like many start-up practices, Dr Goh manages the marketing himself, which made HealthEngine’s seamless integration and time-saving dental marketing tools two major drawcards.
“If we have an appointment logged as available in our practice management system, it’s instantly visible to patients actively searching to book on HealthEngine. We don’t need to log in and double handle booking availability, it all syncs and updates seamlessly. But we can choose to remove and reserve appointments just for walk-ins if we want. We’re in complete control.”
Future opportunities with My Care Team
We also asked Dr Goh if his team had been encouraging patients to save Allied Dental Centre Port Coogee in their My Care Team to build on their digital dental marketing success.
“No, but it’s something we certainly should be doing,” said Dr Goh. “Once a patient comes through our door, it’s our responsibility to give them the best patient experience and retain them. But we know from our stats that the convenience of booking online, anytime, through HealthEngine would help bring patients back to rebook with us.”
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