Case Studies
Business: Winning Smiles Cosmetic Dentists, Romford, Essex
Objectives: Increase new business; improve visitor experience with interaction and feedback from existing patients
Delivered: Website based on WordPress Content Management System, Digital Search Marketing (inc Search Engine Optimisation & Adwords) Article based blog
Success: New patient numbers from the internet have quadrupled and performance is still improving with extra new business well into 6 figures (turnover up over 30%).
Winning Smiles is a growing cosmetic dental practice, based in Romford, on the M25 on the edge of Essex.
Owner Andrew Fennell had recently taken over the practice and had noticed that more and more patients were mentioning the Internet. He was looking for a better performance from the website and to deliver a better experience for visitors.
Working out the costs
When we met Andrew, he’d received quotes for between £5K and £10K purely for website design. As someone who focusses on the way things look, we were still able to persuade him to concentrate on the website content and structure first, and to defer the design phase. He says he went with us on a hunch.
We got going based on a monthly contract, enabling him to phase his investment over time, with an idea that the extra income would grow to cover the monthly expense.
Building the website with search engines in mind
The site was constructed on the search engine friendly platform, WordPress, and was designed to support both natural and paid (pence per click) local search campaigns.
Sadly, it was necessary to start a new website URL from scratch, which meant we had no history with the search engines, and it took a little while to generate volumes of free traffic. Although, it meant we could run both sites for a while.
In the meantime, we had a small amount of paid traffic from Google Adwords, and within 3 months it was clear that it was paying off. At which point we added Yahoo Search Advertising to better performing phrases.
Since then we have dropped the amount of paid traffic, mainly to those terms we know will generate quality business, and have seen a rapid increase in free traffic from each of the search engines.
Website Visitor Engagement
The strategy has been to present a very human face in what is traditionally a conservative industry. The blog articles have allowed a blend of education and re-assurance to help potentially nervous patients and a conversational style, and video clips have helped people get a better sense of what to expect before committing to a consultation.
Choosing a dentist can be a stressful experience, especially if people haven’t been for a while. Trust is a big issue in these circumstances, and the ability for existing patients to interact and leave reviews has helped enormously.
Tracking the lead generation numbers
The key was tracking exactly how patients discovered the business. Andrew’s staff are well drilled (pun not intended) to ask people how they found Winning Smiles, and email enquiries are automatically tracked on the website from their original search term. An 0800 number was acquired to help count the numbers of telephone calls coming from the web.
This allows us to concentrate on performing terms, or spend more time on under-performing areas that are key to the business.
The numbers show that the Internet has now overtaken referral and ‘drive by’ business combined.
Andrew says “The most successful thing we did was to write regular articles for the website. It seems that everyone visits the website first -whether referred by our existing patients or completely new to the surgery. And now when people come through the door, they know what to expect. It feels like they have already started to get to know us, and it makes conversations easier”.
As for us, we’re proud to have been a part of a growing practice success story. They’re extremely nice people and we hope for more success this year!
Download Short Version. winning-smiles-case-study
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