Summary
This video presents a detailed case study on the challenges of geographically constrained advertising for acquiring patients, particularly for a dental practice located near a mountain range. The core message is that traditional radius-based advertising models can be inefficient or costly when geographic factors reduce the effective target audience within that radius.
Key Concepts and Insights
- Advertising as a primary patient acquisition method:
Advertising remains the main way to attract patients on demand unless strong word-of-mouth marketing is developed. - Radius-based targeting limitations:
Typically, advertising targets a fixed radius (e.g., 5 miles) around a practice. However, natural barriers like mountain ranges reduce population density within that radius, causing inefficient budget allocation. - Uneven budget distribution:
For a $2,000 budget, if half of the radius contains no potential patients (due to mountains), the entire budget is concentrated in a smaller geographic and demographic area, increasing frequency of ad exposure to the same people. This can lead to:- Burnout and ad fatigue
- Increased distrust and disengagement from ads
Simply increasing the budget in the same constrained area does not solve the problem.
- Cost per acquisition (CPA) impact:
The case study shows that the CPA for the office near the mountain range is roughly double that of an office with a fully populated radius, due to limited and uneven audience reach. - Expanding the radius is problematic:
Increasing the radius to include more people can reduce frequency issues but introduces:- Targeting individuals who live too far to realistically choose this office
- Increased competition from closer offices offering similar services
This leads to higher CPA and lower conversion rates due to geographical inconvenience and competing options.
- Geographical factors are critical:
Even psychographic targeting (targeting based on beliefs and values) cannot fully overcome geographic constraints because location convenience remains a dominant factor in patient choice. - Word of mouth and alignment as alternatives:
Instead of relying solely on advertising, the video advocates for focusing on:- Deep alignment with patient values and beliefs about good dentistry
- Increasing awareness that the practice aligns with those values
This approach can reduce the impact of geography, as patients become willing to travel farther for a practice they strongly identify with.
- Equation of attraction:
Attraction is defined as a combination of alignment + awareness. The stronger the alignment, the more patients are willing to incur additional costs such as travel time. - Marketing strategy implications:
- Location choice matters significantly for advertising efficiency.
- Without strong word-of-mouth and alignment, geographic barriers create costly advertising challenges.
- Creating a unique, well-aligned patient experience differentiates the practice and reduces the disadvantage of location.
Timeline of Key Points
| Time Range | Content Summary |
|---|---|
| 00:00:00–00:00:56 | Introduction: advertising as a main strategy unless word of mouth is leveraged. |
| 00:00:56–00:02:21 | Case study setup: office near mountain range, radius-based targeting, and uneven audience density. |
| 00:02:21–00:03:28 | Budget impact: limited audience leads to higher ad frequency and burnout, increasing CPA. |
| 00:03:28–00:04:24 | Challenges of increasing radius: distant targets, competition, and rising CPA. |
| 00:04:24–00:05:33 | Importance of geographical factors and word-of-mouth marketing as an alternative. |
| 00:05:33–00:06:04 | Conclusion: focus on alignment + awareness to overcome geographic disadvantages. |
Definitions and Comparisons
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Radius-based advertising | Targeting potential patients within a fixed geographic distance from the practice. |
| Frequency | The average number of times an individual sees an advertisement within a campaign period. |
| Cost per acquisition (CPA) | The average cost incurred to acquire one patient through advertising efforts. |
| Alignment | The degree to which a practice’s values, services, and messaging resonate with the target audience. |
| Attraction | The result of combining awareness of the practice with alignment to patient values and needs. |
Core Recommendations
- When location has geographic barriers limiting population, expect higher advertising costs and inefficiencies.
- Increasing advertising budget without addressing geographic constraints often leads to wasted spend and ad fatigue.
- Expanding geographic radius can increase reach but introduces competition and lowers patient conversion due to convenience factors.
- To overcome location disadvantages, focus on building strong word-of-mouth through alignment and awareness, which motivates patients to travel further.
- Marketing efforts should emphasize differentiating the practice’s values and patient experience rather than only increasing ad spend or radius.
Conclusion
This case study highlights the critical influence of geography on advertising efficiency in healthcare patient acquisition. It emphasizes the limitations of standard radius-based ad targeting in geographically constrained areas and advocates for a strategic shift toward deep patient alignment and word-of-mouth marketing to reduce cost per acquisition and create sustainable patient inflow despite natural barriers.
00:00:00
Hey guys, welcome to this video and I want to share a very interesting case study with you and I’ll get into exactly what this diagram is. But um let’s go back to the idea that advertising is our last remaining method for getting patients at will unless we leverage word of mouth. And if you don’t know how to create more word of mouth, check out my course in the description. Um but if we are looking at advertising or if we want to leverage a platform in order to get more patients at will, it’s going to be
00:00:27
advertising. And so in this case study, we have a very interesting case where we have a client and this is let’s say this is his office location. And surrounding his office is a big mountain range. So how we traditionally do marketing or advertising, excuse me, is what we’ll do is we’ll take a radius around their office location. So let’s say this is a 5 mile radius and the people here would basically be our target audience. These would be the people who receive our advertisements
00:01:05
whether that’s meta or uh Google. Now the problem with this is that because in this mountain range there’s not many people this part uh portion of the radius is essentially null. So, if we had a $2,000 budget, let’s say this 2,000 budget, $2,000 budget would be just um concentrated into basically half of a radius. Whereas, let’s say there’s an office in a different location, for example, here. And I know this isn’t proportional, but say this is a 5 mile radius. they would
00:01:47
have the same budget distributed evenly across all people. Now, why is that important? It’s because at a certain budget, you start to get into frequency of advertisements and when frequency gets too high, it burns people out there. It actually grows more distrust. Um, people just won’t engage anymore. And for that reason, if you just increase the amount of money the increase the budget in order to if you just increase the budget in the same radius, it won’t necessarily help. So what we’re seeing is that compared to
00:02:22
other offices that in this office it’s just getting very expensive to get patients through advertising because of this mountain range. Uh as they increase their budget, it’s just increasing frequency. So it’s not really helping out as much. So what can we do? Uh so let’s say in this example they’re only able to target 500,000 people and in this example they’re able to target the full 1 million. All right. So and this is kind of what we’re seeing in the numbers that the
00:02:58
cost per acquisition is about double for these people because of this issue. So this this budget is just not working out as well. And so what we can do is we can increase the radius. But now the problem with that is that as the radius increases, it’s basically going to be targeting further out. and the people in further distances don’t really have an incentive to choose your office versus one that’s close to them that might be offering a similar promotion or it just um it aligns with
00:03:31
them to the same degree that your office aligns with them. And so as we go further out as well, this also runs into the issue of increasing cost per acquisition simply because there’s other choices out there. All right. So, this is one of the drawbacks with advertising is that even if we can try to target psychographically, like try to target people who would align with this type of dental practice, we’re still going to run into geographical factors. And so, that’s what we’re seeing here. So if you
00:03:58
happen to be in a situation where you can choose a geographic location, this is a very important one that I would suggest you consider that if you’re looking to leverage a platform to get patients on demand, uh geographical factors are definitely going to come into play, especially with how things are targeted. And the alternative though is how they can get around this situation is that if they focus more on word of mouth, if they focus more on alignment and if they focus more on basically creating more attraction and
00:04:31
go back to the equation of attraction, which is attraction happens when you have deep alignment as well as awareness that your practice is aligned with them. So alignment, what do they believe is good dentistry? How should a dental office be? All this sort of stuff. When you create strong alignment, geographical barriers become less of an issue because when you find something valuable, you’re willing to spend more on it. You’re willing to take more costs. And that costs might be times uh
00:05:01
time traveling. Um so if they’re able to create deeper alignment through well, check out the word of mouth course. If they’re able to do that work, then what they can do is create stronger attraction and have people who are further away willingly come regardless of this geographical boundary. Because in this scenario right here, they’re basically fighting an uphill battle because there’s more convenient offices and they’re showing up in a way that is similar to these different offices. And
00:05:31
so if I was close to this office and everything looked the same, why would I travel further to this office? So the the game we’re trying to play here, the game of marketing, one critical element of it is how do we show up? What do we look like? Do we align with their views of what good and bad is? And so if you check out the course, it’ll go through all of the steps to identifying and creating a practice like that. Um, I hope you check it out. I hope you found this video valuable and I’ll see you guys in the
00:06:00
next one. Thanks.