Back in August, I asked you 10 short questions to try to get a sense of how dental practices, laboratories, and product & service providers are incorporating content and social tactics into their marketing strategies in 2014.  You responded.  Some answers were expected – Facebook is the most popular channel being used, and there were some surprises.  As promised, here is a summary of the results.

1.  Which of the following best describes the primary nature of your business?

2.  Does your business currently use content marketing?

3.  Which social media channels does your business currently use for marketing purposes?  Select all that apply.

4.  Does your business use internal (employees) or external (e.g., contracted vendor) resources to manage your content/social marketing efforts?

5.  Do you use any marketing automation software or service(s) to help with your content/social marketing activities?

6.  Approximately what percentage of your annual marketing budget is dedicated to content & social media marketing?

7.  Do you anticipate the percentage listed in the previous question will increase or decrease over the next 2 – 3 years?

8.  Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?  “My content and social media marketing efforts are worthwhile.”

9.  Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?  “My content and social media marketing efforts yield a positive ROI.” 

10.  What are your greatest challenges in implementing content and social media marketing tactics?
This was an open-ended response question.  And the most cited challenges were creating quality content and, you guessed it, time.

Thank you to everyone who took a few minutes to engage in this survey.  It will be interesting to see how your content and social marketing strategies evolve in 2015.

If you are struggling with your marketing efforts – content creation and curation, social media & PR management, events, or even alignment to strategy – you don’t have to do it alone.  There are resources out there to help.  Let’s talk.  And as always, thank you for reading.