Four weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about general re-targeting of ads across the web. By using this technique, once someone has visited your website, you can follow that person around the web with ads specific to what they were searching for. This is an excellent solution for dental practices that already have great web traffic.

Today I want to discuss a different strategy called search based re-targeting. This solution is best for dental practice websites – that for whatever reason – do not have prominent Internet visibility. A beautiful website is of little value if prospective patients can’t find it. These practices might be located in a very competitive Internet marketplace like a large metropolitan area flooded with other dentists. Or perhaps they are a relatively new dental practice website. Google gives serious preferential treatment for rankings based on the length of time a url has been active. So a new website has tough sledding to get noticed. Perhaps these dental practices do not have other mechanisms in place such as Facebook ads or Google Ad Words to drive traffic to their websites.

Search re-targeting allows a dentist to follow consumers around the web based on what they searched for even though they never landed on YOUR website. How this works is a bit confusing even for a sophisticated Internet savvy person. So by definition, this is way above my pay grade to explain. But essentially there are data programs that can identify an individual who has performed a search on Google, Yahoo, or Bing and landed on another website. These programs capture the url and the search term that was just used.

As an example, let’s say a consumer in Worcester, Massachusetts does a search for “best dentist in Worcester”, or perhaps “dental implants/Worcester”. For reasons mentioned above, that person does not land on your website. But using search retargeting, a dentist in Worcester can target that consumer with ads about his or her dental practice providing information on exactly what that consumer was searching for. Even better, those ads can be further refined by income level, age, and gender.

When you place an ad on the radio, you certainly don’t need to understand the mechanics of radio signals and broadcasting for the ad to be effective. That same logic applies to these more advanced Internet ads. The bottom line is that search retargeting is simply a prospecting tool, and when executed properly with effective display ads, it can be a great strategy to find potential new patients who otherwise would never find you.

If you have any interest in learning more about this cutting edge marketing approach, please call Heather LoGrippo at 617-957-3868.

When a dental practice is sold, the purchase is almost always financed by a bank. With rare exception, the borrower is able to obtain 100% financing of the purchase price. Accounts receivable associated with that same dental practice are financed very differently.  Banks do not finance at 100%. The typical arrangement is payment of 90% for balances that are under 30 days, 75% for accounts between 30 and 60 days, and only 50% on accounts that are 60 to 90 days old. Banks understand that there is only a 57% chance of collecting in full on an account that is 60 to 90 days past due.

In the ideal world, there would never be a need to send a patient a bill. With a properly executed financial policy, payment should be received at the time of service. I always wonder why is a dental practice the only store in America where you can leave without paying for your purchase? That, of course, is a topic for another day.

For any number of different reasons, dental practices send out a large number of monthly statements. It is a time-consuming and expensive task. Obviously the cost is a great deal more than the 47 cents for postage. And it apparently is not an effective tool for collecting money when you look at a typical aging report. We all know that the older the account gets, the harder it is to collect. But what should you do to shorten the cycle? When do you consider an account to be delinquent? Is it after two or three monthly statements with no response? Is it after a few attempts at making a collection call?

I would like to suggest for your consideration a different approach that involves outsourcing much of the collection process. Transworld Systems Inc (TSI) is a leader in dental collections. They’ve been in the business of helping dentists collect money for 46 years. TSI has partnered with Sikka Software Company to bring dental practices a unique receivables management tool called Dental Collect.  Dental Collect  integrates seamlessly with all of the major dental practice management systems. It helps to increase overall cash flow while saving time and maintaining patient diplomacy.

The Dental Collect platform begins when a practice identifies a non responsive patient payer. In my opinion, that should be 15 days after the second statement was mailed. The data is sent securely to TSI and is totally HIPAA compliant. TSI Technology generates five contacts with the patient over the next 30 to 40 days. They use a combination of written reminders and telephone calls that appear to come from the practice itself. This is a frequency of touches that no practice has the time or technology to do on their own. The systematic approach is designed to help keep the patient in the practice for a lifetime. No practice wants to lose patients. With TSI, all patient payments go directly to the practice. TSI charges a fixed fee per account of about $10.

The take away message here is that to improve collections, patients with overdue balances need to be contacted earlier than later. The results speak for themselves. I recently wrote a blog about leaving your comfort zone. This may be the perfect opportunity. Setup and training with TSI is accomplished remotely in one hour. Their customer support is free and responsive. Give Charlie Colarullo a call at 508-361-2095. He can arrange an online demo to further explain the details of this remarkable technology.