In 2024, we’re seeing dental marketing transform through AI-powered patient communication, video marketing dominance, and the rise of teledentistry. AI is revolutionizing appointment scheduling and patient support, while video content is becoming vital for virtual tours and educational materials. Teledentistry is expanding patient reach and streamlining operations. We’re also witnessing a shift towards personalized digital patient experiences, with customized treatment plans and targeted communication. Social proof and influencer partnerships are gaining importance, leveraging patient testimonials and authentic collaborations. These trends are reshaping how dental practices connect with patients and build trust. Let’s explore each of these game-changing developments in more detail.
Three key trends are emerging in AI-powered patient communication for dental practices.
These AI-driven communication tools aren’t only enhancing patient experience but also freeing up staff time, allowing dental practices to focus on providing high-quality care.
While AI is reshaping patient communication, video marketing is taking center stage in dental promotion strategies. We’re seeing a surge in practices leveraging video content to engage potential patients and showcase their services. This trend isn’t just a fleeting fad; it’s becoming a cornerstone of effective dental marketing. Patient-centric design principles are being incorporated into video content to guarantee maximum engagement and conversion of website visitors into patients.
It’s highly shareable on social media platforms. Videos can convey complex dental procedures in an easy-to-understand format. Potential patients can “meet” the dentist before stepping into the office.
To stay competitive, we recommend incorporating video into your marketing strategy. Start small with smartphone-recorded content and gradually invest in higher-quality production as you see results.
Virtual consultations and teledentistry are revolutionizing the way dental practices interact with patients. We’re seeing a significant shift towards remote dental care, offering convenience and accessibility like never before. In 2024, we expect this trend to accelerate, becoming a cornerstone of dental marketing strategies. This aligns with the growing emphasis on digital solutions for dental practices, which include advanced patient portals and booking systems.
Expanding Patient Reach
Virtual consultations allow dentists to connect with patients beyond geographical limitations. This broadens your potential client base and makes your services more accessible to those in remote areas or with mobility issues.
Enhancing Patient Experience
Teledentistry offers a less intimidating first step for anxious patients. It’s an opportunity to build trust and rapport before in-person visits, potentially increasing treatment acceptance rates.
Streamlining Operations
By incorporating virtual consultations, you can:
Marketing Opportunities
Highlight your teledentistry services in your marketing efforts. It’s a unique selling point that sets you apart from competitors and demonstrates your commitment to patient-centered care and technological advancement.
Personalization is revolutionizing digital patient experiences in dentistry. We’re seeing a shift towards tailored interactions that make patients feel valued and understood. By leveraging data and advanced technologies, dental practices can create unique, memorable experiences for each patient. Dental website design plays an essential role in delivering personalized content and user experiences, ensuring that patients can easily access relevant information and services.
Customized treatment plans based on individual patient histories
Targeted communication through preferred channels (email, text, app)
Personalized content recommendations for oral health education
In 2024, we expect to see more dental practices adopting AI-powered tools to analyze patient data and predict future needs. This allows for proactive care suggestions and timely appointment reminders. We’re also noticing an increase in personalized patient portals, where individuals can access their dental records, view treatment progress, and interact with their dentist.
Social proof and influencer partnerships are rapidly becoming indispensable tools in dental marketing strategies. As we move into 2024, we’re seeing a shift towards leveraging patient testimonials, reviews, and social media influencers to build trust and attract new patients. Digital marketing strategies for dentists now emphasize the importance of social proof in improving online presence and patient acquisition.
Patient Testimonials and Reviews
We can’t overstate the power of authentic patient stories. Prospective patients are increasingly relying on reviews and testimonials to make decisions about their dental care. It’s essential to:
Influencer Partnerships
Collaborating with local influencers or micro-influencers in the health and wellness space can greatly boost your practice’s visibility. We recommend:
We’ll need to adapt our dental marketing strategies to comply with stricter data privacy regulations. We’ll focus on:
These changes may limit some targeting capabilities, but they’ll build trust with patients. We’ll emphasize creating valuable content and fostering genuine relationships, which will be key to successful dental marketing in this new landscape.
As the digital landscape evolves, voice search optimization is becoming the new frontier in dental SEO. We’re seeing it rise like a tide, lifting the visibility of practices that adapt.
At Dental Marketing Guy, we’re fine-tuning our strategies to capture this growing trend. We’re focusing on natural language keywords, question-based content, and local SEO to guarantee our clients’ practices are easily discoverable through voice commands.
It’s not just about being heard; it’s about being the first answer when patients ask their devices for dental care.
We believe dentists can effectively leverage augmented reality (AR) for patient education and engagement. By using AR apps, you can show patients 3D models of their teeth, demonstrating treatment options and expected outcomes. This visual approach helps patients better understand their oral health and proposed procedures.
You can also create interactive AR experiences in your waiting room, educating patients about dental hygiene or showcasing before-and-after results. These engaging tools can improve patient understanding, reduce anxiety, and increase treatment acceptance rates.
We recommend dentists explore emerging social media platforms to expand their reach. TikTok’s short-form videos can showcase quick dental tips or behind-the-scenes glimpses.
Instagram Reels offer similar opportunities for engaging visual content. Clubhouse, while audio-based, allows for hosting Q&A sessions or discussions on dental topics.
Pinterest is great for sharing infographics and oral health advice. Don’t forget about LinkedIn for professional networking and sharing industry insights. Each platform offers unique ways to connect with potential patients and build your brand.
We expect blockchain technology to greatly impact patient records and dental marketing. For patient records, it’ll enhance security, privacy, and accessibility, allowing seamless sharing between providers while maintaining patient control.
In marketing, blockchain could enable more transparent and verifiable patient reviews, build trust, and potentially create new loyalty programs. It might also streamline payment processes and insurance claims.
While adoption may take time, we believe blockchain will ultimately transform how dental practices manage data and interact with patients.
When it comes to SEO for dentists, we’ve identified several common mistakes to avoid. First, neglecting local SEO strategies can severely limit your visibility in your area. Don’t overlook mobile optimization, as more patients are searching on-the-go. Ignoring website loading speed can lead to higher bounce rates and lower rankings. Inconsistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) information across platforms confuses both search engines and potential patients. Ultimately, insufficient quality content creation fails to address patient concerns and misses opportunities for optimization. By addressing these issues, you’ll be well on your way to improving your dental practice’s online presence. Let’s explore each of these pitfalls in more detail.
One of the biggest mistakes dentists make in their SEO efforts is neglecting local SEO strategies. As a dental practice, your primary audience is within your local community, making local SEO essential for attracting new patients. We’ve seen many dentists focus solely on general SEO tactics while overlooking the power of local search optimization. Local SEO importance can’t be overstated, as it directly impacts your practice’s visibility in the community and helps potential patients find you more easily.
To avoid this mistake, start by claiming and optimizing your Google My Business listing. This free tool is critical for local visibility, allowing you to appear in Google Maps and local search results. Guarantee your listing is complete with accurate information, including your practice name, address, phone number, and business hours.
Next, focus on generating local citations and reviews. Consistently list your practice’s information across various online directories and encourage satisfied patients to leave reviews on platforms like Google and Yelp. These factors substantially influence your local search rankings.
Don’t forget to optimize your website for local keywords. Include your city and nearby areas in your content, meta descriptions, and page titles. Creating location-specific pages or blog posts can also boost your local SEO efforts, helping you connect with potential patients in your area.
A fundamental mistake many dentists make in their SEO strategy is overlooking mobile optimization. In today’s digital landscape, where more than half of all web traffic comes from mobile devices, it’s vital to guarantee your dental website is fully optimized for smartphones and tablets. We can’t stress enough how imperative this is for attracting and retaining patients who are increasingly using their mobile devices to search for dental services. Responsive web design is a key feature of successful dental websites, ensuring a consistent experience across all devices and improving patient engagement.
To understand the impact of mobile optimization, consider these three scenarios:
In each case, if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re likely to lose these potential patients to competitors. Mobile optimization isn’t just about responsive design; it’s about creating a seamless, user-friendly experience that loads quickly and provides easy access to essential information. By prioritizing mobile optimization, we’re ensuring that your dental practice remains competitive and accessible to all potential patients, regardless of the device they’re using.
Beyond mobile optimization, website loading speed is a critical factor that many dentists overlook in their SEO efforts. We acknowledge the unique challenges faced by dental practices and tailor solutions to address their specific needs, including optimizing website speed for better patient engagement.
User Experience: A fast-loading site keeps visitors engaged and reduces bounce rates.
Search Engine Rankings: Google considers page speed as a ranking factor, favoring faster sites.
Conversion Rates: Quicker load times lead to higher conversion rates and more patient bookings.
To improve your site’s speed:
Concerning local SEO, inconsistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) information can severely hamper a dental practice’s online visibility. When search engines encounter conflicting details across various online platforms, they struggle to determine which information is accurate. This confusion can lead to lower search rankings and decreased trust from potential patients.
Comprehensive dental marketing services often include NAP consistency checks as part of their SEO strategies, guaranteeing dental practices maintain a strong online presence.
To maintain your NAP information consistent, we recommend the following steps:
It’s essential to maintain this consistency even when minor changes occur, such as a new phone extension or suite number. Remember, search engines and patients alike rely on accurate information to find and contact your practice. By keeping your NAP details uniform across the web, you’ll boost your local SEO efforts and make it easier for potential patients to reach you.
Regularly review and update your online presence to guarantee continued accuracy and maintain your competitive edge in local search results.
Quality content lies at the heart of successful dental SEO strategies. We often see dentists make the mistake of neglecting their website’s content, believing that simply listing services is enough. However, search engines and potential patients alike crave informative, engaging, and regularly updated content. Our proven SEO methods for the dental industry have shown that content is essential for improving online visibility and attracting more patients. This approach aligns with our commitment to ethical and long-term SEO practices.
To avoid this pitfall:
Time flies when it comes to website content, and we recommend updating your dental website regularly. We suggest invigorating your content at least once a month, but ideally, aim for weekly updates.
This doesn’t mean overhauling your entire site; instead, focus on adding new blog posts, patient testimonials, or updating service pages. Rejuvenated content keeps search engines coming back to your site, potentially improving your rankings.
Patient reviews play a pivotal role in dental SEO rankings. We’ve found that they substantially impact local search visibility and patient trust. Google considers reviews as a key factor in determining a practice’s relevance and reputation.
They’re indispensable for improving your practice’s online presence, boosting click-through rates, and enhancing your overall SEO performance. We always recommend encouraging satisfied patients to leave reviews, as they not only influence potential patients but also contribute to better search engine rankings for your dental practice.
Yes, social media profiles are important for a dentist’s SEO strategy. We’ve found that active social media presence can markedly boost a dental practice’s online visibility.
It’s not just about direct SEO impact; social media helps build brand awareness, engages potential patients, and drives traffic to your website. By sharing valuable content and interacting with your audience, you’re creating signals that search engines recognize.
Plus, social profiles often appear in search results, giving you more real estate on the results page.
Like a dentist examining x-rays, we’ll help you track your dental SEO ROI. We recommend setting up Google Analytics and Google Search Console to monitor website traffic and search performance.
Track key metrics like organic search traffic, conversions, and keyword rankings. We’ll also suggest using call tracking software to measure phone inquiries from your website.
Don’t forget to ask new patients how they found you. By analyzing these data points, we’ll help you gauge the effectiveness of your SEO efforts and make informed decisions.
We recommend several effective keyword research tools for dental SEO. Google Keyword Planner is a free, popular option that provides search volume data and keyword suggestions.
SEMrush and Ahrefs offer thorough keyword analysis, competitor insights, and trend tracking. For dental-specific research, try DentalSEO.com’s Keyword Tool. Ubersuggest is a user-friendly tool that’s great for beginners. Ultimately, don’t overlook Google Search Console, which shows you the actual queries bringing traffic to your site. These tools can help you identify valuable keywords for your dental practice.
In today’s digital age, effective marketing can make or break a dental practice. According to a 2023 survey by the American Dental Association, practices that invested in professional marketing saw an average 27% increase in new patient acquisitions compared to those that didn’t. This article delves into the strategies employed by successful dental marketing agencies, providing insights and practical tips for dental professionals looking to enhance their market presence.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) remains a cornerstone of digital marketing for dental practices. The importance of dental SEO for patient acquisition cannot be overstated. Successful agencies employ a multi-faceted approach:
For a more in-depth look at local SEO strategies, check out this comprehensive guide for dentists.
To stay ahead of the curve, dental practices should familiarize themselves with the comprehensive SEO guide for dental practices in 2024.
Case Study: A Denver-based dental practice saw a 45% increase in organic traffic within six months after implementing a comprehensive SEO strategy that included location-specific landing pages and optimized Google My Business listings.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising offers immediate visibility for dental practices. Understanding how PPC can complement your dental SEO strategy is crucial for a well-rounded marketing approach. Successful agencies focus on:
For more insights on creating effective landing pages and optimizing your dental website, explore these dental website optimization best practices.
Case Study: A suburban Chicago dental practice achieved a 300% return on ad spend within three months by focusing on location-specific ads and procedure-based keywords, resulting in a 40% increase in new patient appointments.
Social media platforms offer unique opportunities for dental practices to connect with patients and showcase their expertise:
| Platform | Strategy | Benefits |
| Before/after treatment photos, staff spotlights | Visual storytelling, humanizing the practice | |
| Patient testimonials, educational content | Community building, trust establishment | |
| YouTube | Procedure explanations, oral health tips | In-depth education, improved SEO |
| TikTok | Short, engaging dental facts or tips | Reach younger demographics, viral potential |
Case Study: A New York City cosmetic dentistry practice gained over 10,000 Instagram followers in one year by consistently posting before/after photos and partnering with local lifestyle influencers, resulting in a 25% increase in cosmetic procedure inquiries.
A strong brand identity sets a dental practice apart in a competitive market:
Case Study: A family dental practice in Austin, Texas, rebranded with a focus on eco-friendly practices and community involvement. This resulted in a 35% increase in new patients who cited the practice’s values as a key factor in their choice.
Successful dental marketing agencies employ a mix of strategies to attract and retain patients:
Case Study: A suburban dental practice implemented a multi-channel strategy including targeted Facebook ads, a redesigned website with online booking, and community health fairs. This integrated approach led to a 50% increase in new patient acquisitions over 12 months.
As technology evolves, so do dental marketing strategies. Some emerging trends include:
Successful dental marketing agencies focus on key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure and improve their efforts:
Regular analysis of these metrics allows for continuous optimization of marketing strategies.
Effective dental marketing requires a comprehensive, data-driven approach that spans multiple channels and tactics. By focusing on SEO, PPC, social media engagement, strong branding, and innovative patient acquisition strategies, dental practices can significantly enhance their market presence and patient base. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, staying current with emerging trends and consistently measuring performance will be key to long-term success in dental marketing.
In today’s competitive digital landscape, dental practices need a robust online presence to attract and retain patients. While Search Engine Optimization (SEO) remains a cornerstone of digital marketing, integrating Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising can significantly enhance your dental practice’s visibility and patient acquisition. This article explores how PPC and SEO can work synergistically, providing actionable insights and addressing potential challenges.
Before diving into specific strategies, it’s crucial to understand how PPC and SEO complement each other:
PPC’s primary advantage is its ability to place your practice at the top of search results instantly. Here’s how to maximize this benefit:
Effective demographic targeting can significantly improve your ROI. Consider these strategies:
For dental practices, local visibility is crucial. Here’s how to optimize your local PPC strategy:
While PPC provides immediate visibility, it can also contribute to long-term SEO success:
To ensure your PPC efforts are paying off, focus on these key metrics:
While PPC offers numerous benefits, it’s important to be aware of potential challenges:
For maximum impact, integrate PPC with other marketing channels:
As healthcare providers, dental practices must adhere to strict ethical guidelines:
When implemented strategically, PPC can significantly complement your dental SEO efforts, providing immediate visibility while supporting long-term organic growth. By focusing on targeted demographics, enhancing local reach, and continuously measuring and optimizing your campaigns, you can create a powerful digital marketing strategy that attracts and retains patients.
Remember, successful PPC management often requires expertise. Consider partnering with a dental marketing agency to maximize your results and ROI.
For more information on dental marketing strategies, including SEO for orthodontists and web development for dentists, visit Dental Marketing Guy or contact us for personalized advice.
Optimizing dental websites is vital for boosting online visibility and patient engagement. Employing strategic SEO practices, such as using patient-centered content and building high-quality backlinks, can substantially enhance organic reach. Regular technical audits optimize site performance, while implementing HTTPS guarantees data security and improves search rankings. Mobile responsiveness and simplified navigation enhance the user experience, making it easier for patients to access information. Local SEO fine-tunes these efforts by incorporating location-specific keywords and fostering community trust through accurate directory listings and positive reviews. By focusing on these best practices, you can effectively elevate your dental practice’s digital presence.
Optimizing a dental practice’s online presence through dental SEO is paramount in today’s digital landscape. As the dental industry navigates a competitive marketing environment, leveraging emerging technological trends becomes essential to maintain an edge. Dental SEO strategies are no longer optional but a necessity to guarantee practices remain visible and enticing to prospective patients.
A patient-centered content focus is crucial in crafting an online presence that resonates with current and potential patients. By emphasizing relevant and informative content, dental practices can address patient concerns and build trust. This approach not only attracts new patients but also fosters loyalty among existing ones.
Moreover, implementing cost-effective marketing strategies through dental SEO enables practices to maximize their reach without exorbitant advertising expenditures. This is achieved by optimizing website content and local listings to enhance organic search visibility, attracting more patients at a lower cost.
Reputation management considerations are also integral to dental SEO. Positive online reviews and a strong digital footprint contribute to a practice’s credibility and attractiveness. By managing and responding to patient feedback effectively, practices can enhance their reputation and appeal in the digital sphere, ultimately driving patient growth and retention.
An array of key optimization techniques can markedly enhance a dental practice’s online presence, making it more discoverable to potential patients. Firstly, ensuring mobile responsiveness is indispensable. With an increasing number of users accessing websites via mobile devices, a responsive design ensures that a dental practice’s website is easily navigable and visually appealing on any screen size.
Secondly, implementing robust security protocols, such as HTTPS, not only protects patient data but also boosts search engine rankings, as security is a ranking factor.
Technical audits are another essential component, as they help identify and rectify issues that may hinder a site’s performance. Regular audits ensure ideal website functionality, speed, and search engine compliance.
Consider the following techniques to enhance your dental website:
Enhancing user experience on a dental practice’s website is essential for converting visitors into loyal patients. A mobile friendly design guarantees that users accessing the site from various devices encounter seamless functionality and aesthetics. Prioritizing navigation simplicity allows visitors to find information quickly and effortlessly, reducing bounce rates and boosting user satisfaction.
Visual hierarchy plays a pivotal role in guiding users’ attention to important elements, such as appointment scheduling and contact information, thereby streamlining the conversion process. Content readability is paramount; using clear, concise language and well-structured content helps users absorb information easily, fostering trust and engagement.
Engaging visuals, such as high-quality images and informative graphics, capture attention and effectively communicate the practice’s values and expertise. These elements together create an extensive user experience that can drastically impact patient acquisition.
For dental practices looking to enhance their online presence, considering professional dental web design services can ensure a user-friendly and visually appealing website that aligns with modern design standards and SEO best practices.
| Key Element | Benefit |
| Mobile Friendly Design | Seamless access across devices |
| Navigation Simplicity | Quick information retrieval |
| Visual Hierarchy | Focus on key conversion elements |
| Content Readability | Easy understanding and engagement |
| Engaging Visuals | Enhanced communication and appeal |
In the competitive landscape of dental services, local SEO strategies are vital for practices aiming to enhance their visibility within specific geographic areas. Effective local SEO not only involves optimizing a practice’s website but also ensuring that the practice is prominently featured across various online platforms.
Directory Listings: Ensure that your dental practice is accurately listed on major directories like Google Business Profile, Yelp, and local dental directories. Consistency in NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) details across all listings is essential for search engines to validate your practice’s presence and location.
Online Reviews: Encourage satisfied patients to leave positive online reviews. These reviews not only influence potential patients but also enhance your practice’s credibility and visibility in local search results. Responding to reviews, whether positive or negative, demonstrates engagement and customer care.
Local Content and Keyword Localization: Develop content that resonates with the local audience by incorporating location-specific keywords. This could include blog posts about local dental health concerns or events. Additionally, building robust backlink profiles from reputable local websites can greatly boost your practice’s authority and search engine rankings.
For specialized dental practices, such as orthodontists, implementing targeted SEO strategies for orthodontists can help attract patients specifically seeking orthodontic treatments in your local area.
While local SEO strategies are instrumental in establishing a dental practice’s presence within its community, evaluating the effectiveness of these efforts is equally important to guarantee sustained growth. Measuring SEO success involves a thorough analysis of website performance indicators, which include organic traffic increases, bounce rates, and session durations. These metrics provide insights into how well a website engages visitors and retains their attention.
Conversion rate optimization is another vital aspect, as it directly links SEO efforts to tangible business outcomes. By analyzing the ratio of visitors who become patients, dental practices can fine-tune their strategies for improved patient acquisition. Link optimization strategies play a pivotal role as well, with the quality and relevance of backlinks significantly impacting search engine rankings and authority.
On page optimization metrics, such as keyword usage and content structure, should be regularly assessed to ensure alignment with current search engine algorithms. Additionally, competitor analysis insights offer valuable benchmarks, enabling practices to understand their position in the local market and identify areas for improvement.
Utilizing tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console can provide valuable data on website performance and search visibility. For practices seeking expert guidance, partnering with a specialized dental SEO company can offer in-depth analysis and strategic recommendations tailored to the unique needs of dental practices.
By systematically measuring these components, dental practices can adapt and refine their SEO strategies to maintain a competitive edge and foster continuous growth.
As the digital landscape evolves, staying ahead of emerging trends in dental SEO is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge. Here are some key trends to watch:
For dental practices looking to stay at the forefront of these trends, partnering with a specialized dental marketing agency can provide valuable insights and implementation strategies.
A dental website should undergo a website content overhaul and search engine optimization every 6-12 months. This includes evaluating responsive web design, hosting provider selection, and updating the content management system to maintain ideal performance and visibility. Regular blog updates and minor content refreshes should occur more frequently, ideally on a monthly basis.
Common technical issues impacting dental website optimization include sluggish mobile site performance, poor website loading speed, ineffective search engine optimization tactics, inconsistent content marketing strategy, and flawed user experience design, all detracting from engaging and retaining potential patients. Regular web development for dentists can help address these issues proactively.
Dental practices can protect patient data by implementing data encryption strategies, adhering to HIPAA compliance requirements, establishing patient consent policies, conducting regular website security audits, and utilizing secure cloud storage protocols to guarantee robust online data protection. It’s crucial to work with web developers who understand the unique security needs of dental practices.
Social media enhances dental website optimization by implementing a social media content strategy, boosting user engagement metrics, integrating dental reviews, and supporting search engine optimization through targeted ad campaigns, effectively increasing visibility and attracting potential patients. Social media platforms can also drive traffic to your website and improve overall online presence.
Achieving website accessibility in dental websites—akin to opening doors for all—entails adhering to compliance standards, enhancing user experience through screen readers, and ensuring mobile optimization. These elements are vital for inclusivity and effective engagement in digital spaces. Implementing features like alt text for images, keyboard navigation, and proper color contrast can significantly improve accessibility.For more in-depth information on dental SEO and marketing strategies, be sure to check out the Dental Marketing Guy blog. If you have specific questions or need personalized advice, don’t hesitate to contact a dental marketing expert for guidance tailored to your practice’s unique needs.
In an increasingly digital world, dental practices must prioritize Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to enhance their online visibility and attract local patients. This guide provides ten essential SEO strategies tailored for dental practices in 2024, incorporating the latest trends and best practices in the field.
A well-optimized Google Business Profile (GBP) is crucial for local SEO success. Here’s how to make the most of it:
Pro Tip: Implement schema markup on your website to provide search engines with structured data about your practice. This can improve your visibility in local search results and increase click-through rates.
For more specialized advice, check out these guides for SEO services for orthodontists and SEO services for pediatric dentists.
Local SEO is vital for dental practices aiming to attract nearby patients. Key strategies include:
Case Study: A dental practice in Austin, TX, saw a 45% increase in new patient appointments after implementing a comprehensive local SEO strategy, including optimizing their GBP and building local citations.
For a deeper dive into dental SEO, visit our dental SEO company page.
A positive user experience is crucial for both SEO and patient conversion. Focus on:
Learn more about creating an effective dental website on our dental web design page.
Content remains king in SEO. Develop a content strategy that includes:
Remember to update your content regularly. While bi-monthly updates can be beneficial, the key is to focus on quality and relevance rather than a strict schedule. Update when you have valuable information to share or when industry trends change.
Long-tail keywords are more specific and less competitive than general terms. They often align closer with patient intent. For example:
Use tools like Google’s Keyword Planner or SEMrush to identify relevant long-tail keywords for your practice.
Patient reviews are crucial for both SEO and building trust. Implement a review strategy that includes:
With the rising popularity of voice-activated devices, optimizing for voice search is crucial. Consider:
Technical SEO ensures search engines can crawl and index your site effectively. Key aspects include:
Backlinks from reputable sources can significantly boost your SEO. Strategies include:
While social media doesn’t directly impact SEO, it can indirectly boost your online presence:
Implementing these SEO strategies can significantly improve your dental practice’s online visibility and patient acquisition. Remember, SEO is an ongoing process that requires regular monitoring and adjustment. Stay informed about algorithm updates and industry trends to maintain your competitive edge.
For more insights and expert advice on dental marketing, explore our blog or contact us for personalized assistance.
Remember, while these strategies are effective as of 2024, the SEO landscape is constantly evolving. Stay informed about the latest trends and algorithm updates to maintain your competitive edge in the digital marketplace.
Local SEO is vital for dentists to attract patients in their target area. Optimizing a Google Business Profile with accurate information, relevant keywords, and regular updates improves visibility. Leveraging local keywords in page titles, meta descriptions, and content helps attract more clicks. Managing online reviews demonstrates commitment to patient satisfaction and influences local rankings. Building high-quality local citations with consistent NAP information enhances visibility. Creating location-specific content that addresses unique patient needs and leverages local events establishes the practice as a valuable resource. Implementing these strategies can greatly boost local search rankings and drive targeted traffic to a dental practice’s website. Let’s explore each strategy in detail.
Claiming and optimizing a Google Business Profile is a pivotal first step in local SEO for dentists. A well-optimized profile enhances visibility in Google Maps and local search results, making it easier for prospective patients to find and contact the practice.
To optimize the profile, ensure all information is accurate and complete, including the practice name, address, phone number, website URL, hours of operation, and services offered. Incorporate relevant keywords in the business description to improve search rankings for targeted queries.
Encourage satisfied patients to leave positive reviews on the profile, as a high rating and review count can greatly influence local search rankings and patient decision-making. Regularly update the profile with fresh content, such as photos, posts, and special offers, to maintain engagement and relevance. Consistently monitoring and responding to patient reviews demonstrates attentiveness and builds trust.
Incorporating local keywords into website content and meta tags is a critical component of local SEO for dentists. By strategically using location-based keywords, such as the name of the city, neighborhood, or nearby landmarks, dental practices can improve their visibility in local search results. When creating content, focus on naturally integrating these keywords into headings, paragraphs, and meta descriptions while maintaining readability and relevance.
Conduct thorough keyword research to identify high-volume, location-specific search terms. Optimize page titles and meta descriptions with local keywords to attract more clicks. Create location-specific pages or blog posts to target specific areas or neighborhoods. Use schema markup to provide search engines with structured location data.
Online reviews play a pivotal role in shaping a dental practice’s reputation and influencing potential patients’ decisions. According to a BrightLocal study, 87% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses, and 79% trust them as much as personal recommendations. Proactively managing online reviews is essential for dentists to maintain a positive online reputation and attract new patients.
Encouraging satisfied patients to leave reviews on platforms like Google, Yelp, and Facebook can help boost a practice’s overall rating and visibility. Responding to both positive and negative reviews demonstrates a commitment to patient satisfaction and can mitigate the impact of unfavorable feedback. Dentists should monitor reviews regularly and address concerns promptly and professionally.
Implementing a review management strategy can greatly improve a dental practice’s online reputation and local search rankings. A study by Moz found that review signals, such as quantity, velocity, and diversity, account for 15.44% of local search ranking factors. By focusing on generating and managing online reviews, dentists can enhance their local SEO efforts and attract more patients to their practice.
Local citations, which are online mentions of a business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP), serve as a foundational element of local SEO for dentists. Consistently listing accurate NAP information across reputable online directories, such as Google My Business, Yelp, and industry-specific platforms like Healthgrades, helps search engines validate a dental practice’s legitimacy and relevance for local searches. Building a strong citation profile can improve a practice’s visibility in local search results and drive more targeted traffic to its website.
To effectively build local citations for a dental practice, consider the following strategies:
Creating location-specific content is a crucial aspect of local SEO for dentists. By incorporating location-based keywords and phrases into website content, blog posts, and meta descriptions, dental practices can improve their visibility in local search results. This content should address the unique needs and concerns of patients in the targeted area, such as common dental issues, local insurance plans, and nearby landmarks or attractions.
When creating location-specific content, dentists should focus on long-tail keywords that combine dental services with geographic terms, such as “teeth whitening in [city name]” or “emergency dentist near [neighborhood].” This approach helps search engines understand the relevance of the content to local users and increases the likelihood of appearing in localized search results.
Additionally, dentists can leverage local events, news, and partnerships to create content that resonates with the community. By demonstrating a deep understanding of the local market and establishing themselves as a valuable resource for dental information, practices can attract more local patients and build a strong reputation within their target area.
In the fiercely competitive digital arena, local SEO is an indispensable tool for dental practices to skyrocket their online visibility and attract a flood of new patients. By meticulously optimizing Google Business Profiles, strategically leveraging local keywords, proactively managing online reviews, building authoritative local citations, and crafting compelling location-specific content, dental practices can dominate local search results, establish an unassailable online presence, and secure a commanding position in the minds of potential patients.
Dental SEO is essential for patient acquisition in today’s digital age. By optimizing website content, improving local search visibility, and managing online reputation, dental practices can drastically increase their online presence and attract new patients. Effective SEO strategies include keyword optimization, local citations, content marketing, and review management. These tactics enhance search rankings, drive organic traffic, and build trust with potential patients. Implementing a thorough SEO approach can lead to higher conversion rates, reduced cost per lead, and improved ROI for dental practices. Understanding the key components of dental SEO is indispensable for practices looking to thrive in a competitive market.
Three fundamental aspects form the foundation of dental SEO: keyword optimization, local search visibility, and content relevance.
Keyword optimization involves researching and strategically incorporating dental-specific terms that potential patients use when searching for services. This process requires analyzing search volume, competition, and user intent to target high-value keywords effectively.
Local search visibility is indispensable for dental practices, as most patients seek nearby providers. Optimizing Google Business Profile listings, ensuring consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) information across online directories, and garnering positive reviews are essential components of local SEO strategy. These elements signal search engines that a practice is a legitimate, reputable local business.
Content relevance focuses on creating and optimizing website content that addresses patients’ needs and questions. This includes service pages detailing procedures, educational blog posts, and FAQs. Search engines prioritize content that demonstrates expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T). By providing valuable, accurate information, dental practices can improve their search rankings and attract more qualified leads.
Implementing these dental SEO basics requires ongoing effort and adaptation to search algorithm changes, ensuring sustained online visibility and patient acquisition.
Building upon the foundation of dental SEO basics, local search optimization strategies are paramount for dental practices aiming to capture their target market. These tactics focus on improving visibility in local search results, indispensable for attracting nearby patients. Key components include optimizing Google Business Profile profiles, generating location-specific content, and acquiring local backlinks.
Implementing a comprehensive local SEO strategy involves:
| Strategy | Impact |
| GBP Optimization | Increased local visibility |
| Local Citations | Enhanced credibility |
| Location Pages | Targeted geographic reach |
| Patient Reviews | Improved trust signals |
| Local Link Building | Stronger domain authority |
Dental practices must prioritize accurate NAP (Name, Address, Phone) information across all online directories and platforms. Consistency in this data strengthens local search signals. Additionally, creating location-specific landing pages for each service area allows practices to target multiple geographic regions effectively.
Encouraging patients to leave reviews on Google and other platforms not only improves local search rankings but also influences potential patients’ decision-making process. Implementing a review management system can streamline this process and help maintain a positive online reputation, indispensable for local SEO success.
Content marketing’s pivotal role in dental SEO cannot be overstated, serving as a cornerstone for attracting and retaining patients. By creating and distributing valuable, relevant content, dental practices can establish authority, build trust, and improve search engine rankings. Effective content strategies encompass various formats, including blog posts, infographics, and videos, addressing common dental concerns and procedures.
Keyword-optimized content targeting specific dental services and local search terms enhances visibility for relevant queries. Data-driven content calendars, informed by search trends and patient inquiries, guarantee a consistent flow of timely, engaging material. Implementing long-tail keywords within content helps capture niche audiences and address specific patient needs.
Conversion-focused content marketing integrates calls-to-action (CTAs) and landing pages, guiding potential patients through the decision-making process. Metrics such as organic traffic, time on page, and conversion rates should be monitored to refine content strategies continually. By leveraging patient testimonials, case studies, and educational content, dental practices can demonstrate expertise and differentiate themselves in competitive markets. This approach not only improves SEO performance but also nurtures patient relationships, ultimately driving practice growth and patient acquisition.
Online reviews and reputation management form a fundamental component of dental SEO strategies, substantially impacting patient acquisition and practice growth. Search engines prioritize businesses with positive online reputations, making review management essential for improved search visibility. Dental practices must actively monitor and respond to patient reviews across platforms like Google Business Profile, Yelp, and Healthgrades.
Implementing a robust review acquisition strategy is pivotal. Encouraging satisfied patients to leave reviews can dramatically boost a practice’s online presence. Studies show that 72% of patients use online reviews as their first step in finding a new doctor. Additionally, practices with an average rating of 4 stars or higher are more likely to convert website visitors into patients.
Reputation management involves addressing negative reviews professionally and promptly. This exemplifies responsiveness and commitment to patient satisfaction, potentially mitigating the impact of unfavorable feedback. Dental SEO companies often provide reputation monitoring tools and response templates to streamline this process. By maintaining a positive online reputation, dental practices can enhance their search rankings, attract more potential patients, and ultimately increase conversions and revenue.
Effective measurement of SEO success is essential for dental practices to evaluate the return on investment of their digital marketing efforts. Key performance indicators (KPIs) for dental SEO include organic search traffic, keyword rankings, conversion rates, and patient acquisition costs. Dentists should track website metrics using tools like Google Analytics, focusing on organic search sessions, bounce rates, and time on site. Additionally, monitoring search engine rankings for target keywords, particularly those related to specific dental services and local search terms, provides insight into visibility improvements.
Conversion tracking is pivotal for assessing SEO efficacy. Implementing call tracking, form submissions, and appointment booking analytics helps quantify lead generation from organic search. Dentists should calculate the cost per lead and cost per new patient acquired through SEO, comparing these figures to other marketing channels. Analyzing the patient lifetime value in relation to SEO costs offers a comprehensive view of long-term ROI.
Regular reporting and analysis of these metrics enable dental practices to refine their SEO strategies, allocate resources effectively, and demonstrate the tangible impact of SEO on practice growth. By consistently measuring and optimizing SEO performance, dentists can guarantee their digital marketing investments yield substantial returns in patient acquisition and revenue.
Dental SEO emerges as a cornerstone of patient acquisition in the digital landscape. Like a beacon guiding ships to shore, effective SEO strategies illuminate practices for potential patients traversing the vast sea of online information. By implementing local search optimization, content marketing, and reputation management, dental practices can drastically improve their visibility and credibility. Continual measurement and refinement of SEO tactics guarantee sustained growth and patient influx, ultimately fostering practice success in an increasingly competitive market.
Dental hygienists who can encourage your patients to book their next appointment are the key to increasing your dental practice income.
Instead of pushing them to see more patients, focus on enabling them to build strong relationships. That trust will lead to increased income through more appointments and fewer cancellations.
Dental hygienists who have the best people skills can increase their own salaries. And the dental practice they work for won’t even mind because their profits will more than pay for it!
Did you know that dental hygienists in some states make as much as 3.5 times more? So a dental practice in Alaska or California pays much more than an office in Alabama or Ohio.
Interestingly, dental hygienist salaries do not correspond to the locations where dentists earn the most or least. Alaska is not even in the top 20 for dentist pay. And California barely makes it at #20.
This disparity most likely reflects the availability of dental hygienists in a particular area. Dental practices could take advantage of this when choosing a location for a new office.
Or they could advertise for dental hygienists in other areas and encourage them to move where needed.
Another explanation for why dental hygienists make more money in some locales is the difference in laws governing their work.
For example, in Texas, hygienists only work under the supervision of dentists. But in 42 states, they can offer direct access care if they meet all requirements.
Owning your own oral hygienist office could greatly increase income potential in states that permit more extensive work to be done independently of a dentist.
Practices that make dental hygienists a core part of their continuing care team increase their incomes. And their dental hygienists are better paid due to their contributions to the profitability of the practice.
Image Sources: Dental Care Alliance
Dental hygienists are required to attend college for a minimum of two years. According to Zippia, 25% of hygienists have a four year college degree and average $9,000 a year more in salary.
Extensive training, licensing, and regular renewals are required. After 26 years experience, Denise Bundy wrote:
“The National Board exam is extensive (it was a 7 hour written exam when I took it) and then regional practical (with an approved patient) exam. You have to be licensed in each state with very little reciprocity between states.”
Although it may seem like a lot of money, many positions do not include any retirement, benefits, or even dental coverage.
Many ask whether hygienists or nurses make more money. Their salaries are very similar. Which earns more depends on where they work and their duties and skill level.
The US Department of Labor Statistics updated their dental hygienist job outlook numbers to 9% growth between 2021 and 2031.
The duties of a dental hygienist are expanding beyond tooth cleaning responsibilities. Some consultants even recommend avoiding talking about “cleaning” in favor of more expansive wording.
For example, Dental Consultant Debra Seidel-Bittke, RDH, BS, points out that hygienists are in the best position to pre-schedule patient appointments.
A career as a dental hygienist appeals to many employees with families who prefer to have flexible schedules or work part-time.
They may be willing to make less money to dedicate more time to other priorities. Also, the physical demands of hygienist work can take a toll on the employee’s back, arm, hand, and wrist.
Because of all these reasons, many dental hygienists choose to work part-time. Consider their value to your practice over the number of hours worked or cleanings scheduled.
Seidel-Bittke lays out a full strategy to make dental hygiene a profit center. Her vision of how hygienists can contribute to the bottom line can benefit both hygienists and dental practices.
She emphasizes the importance of giving your dental hygienists time to become a brand ambassador for your services.
Hygienists often see your patients quarterly. The relationships they build lead to increased trust. They are in the best position to schedule follow-up appointments in advance.
And they can also talk to your patients about the importance of following the treatment plans laid out for them. They can be a key reason patients show up instead of canceling.
Seidel-Bittke’s vision of what hygienists can advise on is quite advanced. It is worth considering whether your dental practice has hygienists that qualified.
You might prefer to have the dentist decide what the hygienist should recommend regarding future procedures.
Regardless of how a hygienist or practice decides to expand their offerings, it makes sense to increase profitability. And that can increase pay for the entire team!
Increase your value as a dental hygienist by learning marketing tips on my blog.
What exactly is a cosmetic dentist? That is a very good question. There is no clear answer because it is not recognized as one of the ADA’s 12 recognized dental specialties.
Today, procedures that were once performed only by specialists are more commonly done by general dental practitioners.
Cosmetic dentistry appears to be primarily a marketing term. It covers many dental procedures, some general and some performed by specialists.
Technically, only ADA’s Prosthodontics specialty mentions appearance. Prosthodontists work with dental prosthetics in prosthetic dentistry.
While a dental prosthesis could definitely be part of cosmetic dentistry, it is obvious that many other types of dentists are doing what they market as cosmetic dentistry.
Not surprisingly, the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery specialty is the highest earning dental practice.
According to Payscale.com, the average salary of an oral surgeon is $244,663. Other sources quote much higher figures.
Whether an oral surgeon has a medical degree or not can account for the differences in reported salaries.
However, this specialty also requires much more training. Oral surgeons complete three to six years of residency after dental school.
It is faster and easier to make a high salary as a cosmetic dentist. Then, if you want to add to your qualifications, you can become an oral surgeon later.
The average salary of a cosmetic dentist is $161,087, according to Salary.com. However, some cosmetic dentists make as much as $208,668. Many cosmetic dentists will earn more, depending on their level of production.
This earnings range is likely due to which cosmetic dentistry services a particular dentist offers and how many hours they choose to work.
By adding additional dental specialty services, a cosmetic dentist can increase their earnings over time.
Today, many regular dentists offer services that were once specialties performed only by cosmestic dentists.
The Columbia College of Dental Medicine defines cosmetic dentistry as “the procedures that focus on the look of your smile.”
That could include anything from tooth cleaning and whitening to crowns, veneers, and implants. Some dentists even offer facial fillers.
Everything a dentist does that can improve the appearance of someone’s smile could be considered part of cosmetic dentistry.
This includes:
While many do not consider braces and orthodontics cosmetic dentistry, they can improve dental appearance.
No, orthodontics is not the same as cosmetic dentistry. Although they both do improve dental appearance, cosmetic dentistry includes services orthodontists do not provide.
And orthodontics is a specialty that requires additional education. Orthodontic offices do not typically provide other dental procedures except for cleaning.
Some states do permit dentists to offer some orthodontic treatments. They may only have a weekend’s worth of training versus the two to three years required to become an accredited orthodontist.
Orthodontists focus on correcting tooth position and jaw alignment. Think of them as being more concerned with function.
But, obviously, both play a large part in improving the appearance of a person’s teeth and smile.
Offering cosmetic dentistry services may be the easiest way to get referrals. Your patients’ friends and family are bound to notice improvements in their smiles.
And that opens the door to your services being recommended by those patients!
According to statistics compiled by SEMrush, “88% of people had the highest level of trust in a brand when a friend or family member recommended it.”
So what could be a better way to grow a new or existing dentist office than offering cosmetic dentistry?
The answer to this depends on what aspects of cosmetic dentistry you plan to focus on. Any dentist can offer teeth whitening.
Porcelain veneers are the most common method for improving the appearance of teeth. A dentist who chooses to perfect their ability to place veneers can increase their income.
Potential clients choose a dentist to apply veneers by researching their veneer before and after photos.
They need to see for themselves whether they like the results a particular dentist has achieved. You will be judged on every veneer you place!
Eventually, if you wish to earn the highest income from cosmetic dentistry, you may wish to become an oral surgeon.
However, any dentist can increase their income by offering cosmetic dental procedures.
Learn more at the best dental marketing blog.
Many dental marketing companies will put a great deal of effort into selling you their services, signing a long-term contract, and then disappearing when you need something. Accountability is lacking from them. You can prevent this!
Here are the top 9 things you can look for when avoiding what I call the “do-nothing” dental marketing scam.
It may seem strange that a dental marketing company would straight up ignore you, but I talk to dentists all the time who experience just this. The company is hot to trot with the sales process. They really make sure to answer your questions in order to get you to pay. Then, after you pay them, they are impossible to reach a few months later.
It can be natural to not understand some technical reports. After all, it’s in a marketing foreign language. Sometimes this is on purpose. For instance, do you ever feel like you need a dental SEO course just to understand what you’re buying? I offer such a course that can allow you or your dental practice team members to assist you and hold everyone accountable. If you don’t understand what SEO is for your dental practice, and how it helps you get more new patients, then it’s time to consider a shift in trajectory.
Nothing has been more common in my years as the Dental Marketing Guy than seeing people become self-professed “PPC experts” with zero experience. If you think that you are paying your marketing company to simply run your credit card with Google with no real improvements and adjustments made, then it’s possible you are. If your dental marketing company doesn’t allow a third party to review your account, this is a big red flag. It is all too common in dental marketing to just say “trust us” and not allow a PPC expert to audit your Google Ads account.
If your marketing company is claiming “SEO” is working while counting your Google Ads generated leads, this is a huge red flag. Be sure to distinguish as best you can the difference between paying for a Google Ad and actually succeeding in Google’s unpaid rankings.
If you’re familiar with my SEO course for dentists, you’ll recognize that SEO oftentimes depends on building what are called “backlinks” to your dental website. Be sure you’re getting backlinks that Google actually counts as authoritative and relevant. Dental marketing companies who don’t have the right connections to help you with PR-style SEO will simply create a piece of content on an open-source platform such as Medium or Blogger or similar websites. They will then link to your website and present to you that it’s a “backlink.” While technically true, why doesn’t every other dentist in your hometown just do this to rank?
Some dental marketing companies use words like “SEO” to describe a service that is ill-defined. This means they can do nothing and say they fulfilled their end of the bargain.
Nobody knows everything. Some dental marketing companies may claim to be experts in every area of dental marketing. While a very credible, long-standing agency may truly be a one-stop shop for all your marketing needs, be careful!
Did you get a cold call from a “Google-certified” SEO company? Be careful! Google offers Google Partner status to Google Ads experts, but they have no SEO certification course. Although there are a few very good SEO courses out there, they probably aren’t something you as a dentist would be familiar with. Name dropping big companies like saying they’re somehow associated with Apple, Bing, Google or Microsoft isn’t by any means a guarantee that they’ll serve a dentist well. In many cases, they aren’t associated with these companies, at all!
This is a huge one. Testimonials in dentistry can be offered for reasons other than good performance by the marketing company.
How did the testimonial(s) come about? Can you contact the dentist to confirm exactly what this marketing company did (if they are even associated with this dentist, at all)? Causation needs to be proven. Just because someone is popular doesn’t mean they offered their testimonial, and it certainly doesn’t mean they offered it for free. Beware of pay-to-play testimonials! Also, be sure to understand this marketing company actually caused the increase in new patients. Verify, verify, verify.
Whether you are selling services or products (physical or digital) your goal is to convert visitors into paying customers. You’ve heard many times that content is king, and while that is true, great content isn’t enough. You can write valuable information but it matters a lot how you deliver it.
The design of a website is the first thing that the visitors see before starting to read a single word. If they don’t like how it looks then they won’t stick around to evaluate the content.
For this article, we wanted to find out more opinions so we reached out to 80 web designers and internet marketers and asked them the following question:
Keep reading to find out what they had to say.
Spotlight Your Unique Selling Point
Your site visitors must immediately understand what you’re all about, and what sets you apart from your competitors. If you communicate your unique selling point well, you’d be conveying the value of your company and showing customers that you’re aware of their pain points. Both of these are good for increasing conversions.
Save the Best Designs for the Crucial Pages
Whether it’s that extra spark of color, motion effects, animation or a mouse scrolling effect, make sure you save the best for the most important pages. Pages conveying your unique selling point or your services should be the most eye-catching.
Top-Notch Copywriting Matters
Not everyone will read every word of your site, it’s true. However, it’s important to think about the approximate 10% of prospects who comb through every inch of your site.
Invest in good copywriting for all areas of your site. Use catchy words, power words or buzzwords to capture and hold attention. Write with a sense of humor to help humanize your brand.
Include Testimonials
I insist on testimonials appearing before the sign-up form. Testimonials give your potential customers a vote of confidence, and speak to the authenticity of your skills and ability to deliver.
Improve Your Page Load Speed
Your good content and excellent designs will go to waste if your page load speed is not up to the viewers’ expectations. Slow sites will have high bounce rates, and that can negatively affect your conversions.
Make sure to optimize your images and keep the number of installed plugins to a minimum.
At LAD Solutions, we’ve designed and developed many websites across various industries, and all have the below design tips implemented in them to help with conversions.
1) Choose the right colors and make sure your color palette matches your logo colors. Also, make sure that the color you use for your CTA buttons is eye-catching and contrasts with your main colors.
Green is generally a good color for CTA buttons since it reminds people of either money or “go” signals. Similarly, we recommend avoiding “red” since that reminds people of “stop”.
2) Add CTAs like phone numbers or buttons on the top right section of your header. Studies have shown that the eyes start at the top left corner, and end on the top right corner after reading in a straight line so having those CTAs there will help increase the chance of someone calling you or filling out a form.
3) Make sure your website has a good user experience and is designed to be responsive on mobile phones or tablets. CTAs should be easily visible on phones so that the user can take immediate action if he or she desires.
4) If adding a banner image above the fold, make sure the image is high quality, engaging and has a CTA button on it. Avoid sliders if possible as many tests have shown that websites with static images convert better than ones that have sliders.
5) Make your menu navigation simple and easy. We recommend creating a user-friendly sitemap layout of your site first and then matching your menu to it. It is best to limit the number of menu items to between five to seven.
6) Improve your website loading speed and make sure things above the fold load first and fast. Studies have consistently shown that websites with fast page speeds have a much higher conversion rate than those that do not.
If you want to turn your website visitors into leads, make it easy for them to find what they need, understand what you want them to do, and then do it. The key areas to focus on are layout, navigation, and content.
The layout should be simple with minimal widgets, pop-ups, or unnecessary movement. Remove anything that distracts your visitor from finding what they need.
Minimize the number of calls to action. The more choices, the more likely your visitor won’t take any action.
Navigation should be intuitive and help guide your visitor towards what you want them to do. Menus should be easy to find. Make navigation sticky so visitors don’t need to keep scrolling to the top.
The content layout needs white space to make it easier to read. Add space around images and graphical elements. Shorten your paragraphs, use simpler words and take advantage of bulleted lists when possible.
Finally, test your website design and layout for mobile users. Make sure your website is responsive and the layout collapses properly on a mobile device. Include easy-to-click call-to-action buttons and simple forms.
Just like with any business, it is important to make it as easy as possible to convert. Meet them with content that best answers their questions or gets them over the hurdles they may have to come to visit.
Some people know exactly what service they need while others just know what their problem is. You should have content addressing each of these types of issues or questions.
Whether it is cost, payment process, or even the reason why they should come to you over a local competitor. That information should all be there for them and be easy to find. You should have content addressing each of these types of issues or questions.
Provide options for schedules that fit their different personalities. Some people are phone call people while others like to do to it all online.
Give them those choices and provide as little friction as possible to get them into your office. Some people know exactly what service they need while others just know what their problem is.
When it comes to designing websites with conversion optimization in mind, we stick to several key principles:
1. Calls to action above the fold
2. Show, don’t tell–especially above the fold
3. Make sure the site is stupid simple on mobile devices
Failing to adhere to these simple rules will most assuredly tank your on-page conversions.
Follow the habits of the users. I’m all for new ideas in web design, but visitors have common habits.
For example, they know contact links are often in the footer. They know a shopping cart is usually in the top right.
When you alter things to be uncommon, you will get people who have no patience for the change. A competitor who has a better, common usability is only a click away and ready to steal your business.
Ongoing CRO (conversion rate optimization) campaigns are not nearly as popular as they should be.
CRO helps your revenue, your brand stickiness, and even your SEO (so much so that we force it into all our SEO deals as a default function of the service).
Don’t design a website based on hunches. Design it with data from your users.
When we get a design project, we’re always looking at how to do things better. If we have the freedom, we’ll use WordPress; otherwise, it’s whatever platform the client wants to be on. We look at the right coloring; what colors give the user warm fuzzies, and which push them away? We want to know that.
Does the F pattern work in the white space? From the top of the page down, is it easy for the user’s eye to track down the page? Is the important information showing in the top 1/3 of the page?
Is the navigation understandable and does it make sense? Navigation is a huge plus; it has to make sense to the visitor or it’s not much use.
Last, but certainly not least, how do those golden CTAs look? What about placement? Are they hidden? Do they draw the eye? Is the expected action clear?
I’m sure I’ve forgotten several things here – designing sites isn’t for the faint of heart – but for me, those are the top areas to look at.
When people are presented with too many options, they can become overwhelmed and not be able to make a choice.
A good conversion strategy is to limit the number of available options to two or three. That way the user can easily compare each offer to each other without getting confused.
When designing for this type of conversion strategy, it’s best to use a table format with columns for each choice and rows that display the various benefits included in each option for making easier comparisons.
The color of your call-to-action (CTA) buttons are also important for conversions. You want them to stand out on the page and not blend in.
My recommendation is to always use a contrasting color for the CTA buttons to the user cannot miss them. For example, if your website design includes a lot of blue on the page, then an orange CTA button would be a good contrasting color choice that stands out to the user.
Stock photos with people always look fake. And anyone can buy and use them on a site.
Consumers are smart and tend to ignore stock imagery because they know those pictures are not authentic to the website.
You can increase conversions by using real photos with real people that don’t look staged or altered with Photoshop. The more real the image looks, the more your visitors will trust its authenticity.
It’s kind of like on social media. You know when a post with an image is an ad because it looks too perfect to be real and you scroll past it.
But if the post includes an image that looks like it was taken on a phone, then you immediately become more interested and willing to stop your scrolling to look at it.
The more fields you have on a submission form, the fewer people will fill it out.
To boost your form conversions, only include what’s absolutely necessary to start the lead genre process. Ask yourself, “Can we get by with just a first name and email address and ask for other details on the phone?” If so, limit your form to those two fields to get more submissions.
Pop-up forms that take up the entire web page are intrusive and don’t give the user the ability to opt-in at a later time. If the person clicks out of the pop-up, they can’t revisit the form.
Therefore, it’s better to use a slide-in form that only takes up a small portion of the viewable screen. Slide-in forms make their presence known while also letting the visitor read the contrasting on the page.
And if that person does want to opt into your offer during their session, they can easily still do that through the slide-in form that’s still available.
One of the things I focus on to increase conversions on websites I develop is what I like to call “reducing friction.” And by reducing friction I mean, make it easier for your audience to perform your desired action.
Therefore on sites I develop, I will be sure that there is always a click to call button shown on mobile phones as a call lead is so valuable to businesses.
And on desktops, I will always ensure that visitors do not have to take multiple steps to fill out a form to get in touch. They click a button to “get started” and a pop up is instantaneously available with a form to fill out.
By making it easier for your website visitors to contact you, then they are more likely to do so.
Stop new visitors leaving your website without connecting with your business by adding a relevant and clear call to action to each web page, whether it’s inviting people to sign up for a free newsletter, book a demo or buy something.
The design and placement of call to action buttons directly impact conversions. Use a contrasting colour so the button stands out and think about how design elements such as arrows or empty space around the call to action can help to draw attention.
Let people know what they stand to gain when they click on a call to action button. For example, instead of “Order information”, try “Get information”. The first is something they have to do, the second is something they’ll receive.
Test different versions to see which attract the best conversion rates. Change one element at a time – e.g. colour, position, size, wording – to pinpoint what works.
My top tip to increase website conversions— get rid of the paragraphs of text and testimonials. Replace them with stories of patients on vertical video.
Nothing convinces patients more than seeing and hearing other patients just like them. Instead of a testimonial, which is clearly a one-sided self-promotional view of the company, flip the angle to feature THEM.
Talk about more than their teeth, gum health, your equipment, and your staff. Instead, talk a little their dreams, favorite coffee shop in town, their interests, and their family.
There are a ton of dentists within a 10 minute drive. Same for real estate agents, mortgage brokers, lawyers, and other service providers.
Repurpose this content to your social media channels and turn the stories into blog posts.
This is how you stand out.
The things I keep in mind related to website design in order to increase conversions are the following:
1) Use the best colors for the industry. Most of my work is in the senior care industry. Therefore, I always suggest to my clients to use colors like blue and orange. This avoids brilliant colors that can be too vibrant.
2) Optimize the website for mobile. I like to work with websites that have good speed. Also, that they are responsive with simple forms, and call-to-action buttons that are visible and easy to understand.
3)Use enough white space: A website clutter is confusing and won’t convert. It will have even more issues in mobile. Therefore, white space is key in the design.
4) Place Your Website’s Elements following the F Pattern. Users look at a website in an F pattern. The top left corner of a web page is where users start to look.
Therefore, I make sure the design offers relevant information at the beginning of the top left corner and continue to the middle part that forms the letter F pattern.
5) Finally, a tip that always works is to keep simple navigation. This will keep things easy to find. It also allows you to make them do what you want with very little effort. Remove the confusion from your website if you want to increase conversions.
When people land on your website, it should be immediately clear what you do and who you serve. As a dentist, you may think this is fairly obvious. You provide dental services. But that’s too general. And it’s a sign you don’t have a clear brand, which is slowing your business growth.
Take the time to think about what differentiates you from other dental practices in your area. Maybe you work primarily with children. Perhaps you have a relaxing atmosphere. Or you could offer specific expertise others lack, such as having an oral surgeon on staff. What sets you apart?
This is what you need to communicate at the very top of your home page. Be concise. Get it down to 8 words or less. Then support that text with a large image that also communicates this message.
And finally, include a direct call to action to book an appointment. When built correctly, this will be the most powerful section of your site.
There are many design factors that play into increasing website conversions but the most important is an obvious, purposeful CTA (call to action).
Yes, color, spacing, copy, images are all important for conversions but the one item that can immediately ruin your conversion rate if you do it wrong is the CTA. Every page on your website should have a strong, consistent CTA.
At The HOTH, we spend a lot of time thinking through our customer journey to determine what next step we should push them to in the CTA.
The key is to not overwhelm the user with options. You need one, clear, distinct big bright button on your page that makes the user think “This is obviously what I have to do!”
For example, on lead generation landing pages, the only CTA is to download our guide so we can collect their email. If it’s a webpage for someone whos already given us their email, the CTA could be Create Your HOTH Account Now.
If it’s a landing page for someone who already created a HOTH account, the CTA could be Schedule A Strategy Session With Us Now.
The goal is to always be moving your lead up the ascension ladder until they purchase. And the best way to do that is with an obvious and purposeful CTA.
There are a few super simple things you can do to boost your website’s conversion rate.
Firstly, make your CTA (call to action) clear. Ideally, use a button that stands out and pulls people towards it. Try to use a single word or at most two for the text. E.g. “Learn more”, “I’m in”, “Let’s go”, “Buy now”.
The simpler and more obvious your CTA is, the more likely your prospect is to take action.
Second, test everything. I know this sounds like cheap advice you’d read on any other blog, but it’s true. Aim to test one item each month. With CTAs, for example, you could try different copy, text colours, fonts, font sizes, and even the location of the CTA.
Third, use a heat map tool to see where your potential customer gets stuck or gives up. These tools are a superb way to understand how your visitors use your website, allowing you to gather data and informing the A/B tests you could run.
Fourth, talk to your customers. The more you can do to get in the mind of your customer, the better. You can use the information you gather to inform how you design your website, offers, and CTA.
The best design tips for increasing website visitors’ relies on the UX design which is also known as UX design.
UX design is one of the most important rely on to determine your website brand and trust to your visitors.
Also, there is something that is called load time.
If you have a huge graphic that is not optimized for the web your visitor will leave your website and go elsewhere. You can have the best website but if it doesn’t load fast enough it doesn’t matter.
Make sure all your images are optimized correctly for the website which is 72 dpi, RGB color, and jpg or png format.
Now there are several others that help as well like colors, optimize for a mobile or responsive website that adapts to a visitor’s device like desktop, cell phone, and tablet.
User navigation is a good one too if your visitor can’t find where to go or what they want they will leave.
Minimal design, more white space, 1-2 colors as a color palette is preferred this makes you look professional.
By using these simple techniques your visitors will stick around for a better experience and higher conversion.
One of the best ways to increase website conversions is by using live chat or a chatbot. Live chat can be operated by your internal team or a third party, while a chatbot can be built and optimised over time.
Again and again I’ve seen this strategy work tremendously well with service based businesses (like dentists!) all the way through to eCommerce based businesses.
Think of live chat as a concierge service where your job is to steer possible customers in the right direction through solutions based selling, and aim implement that same philosophy into a chatbot.
Focus on how logical copy and design work together.
Labels and microscopy (those little bits of text surrounding different design and action elements) can help a reader greatly in understanding what they’re reading about, where they can and should do with a certain user interface, be it a website, app, or other forms of UI.
Not to mention button copy for conversion flows. You want the reader to know what will happen after they click on a button. If I click a button that says “Book” I want to know if I’ll get charged immediately.
If you show me prices, then maybe changing the button copy to “Check prices and availability” is much less committing and people will click on it more.
So, what does this mean?
In our experience at Briefer Copy, we realized that having a clear idea, conceptualization of goals, and planning of user flow, helps us grasp how SEO, content, and copywriting messages should come together on a certain page, or entire interface (website, app, etc), thus laying the grounds for designers to build their part of the product.
To increase website conversions, I recommend using both text-based and image-based call-to-actions (CTAs) sporadically throughout content such as pillar pages and blogs that are designed to convert.
These CTAs should ideally be the opposite color of your website theme (based on the color wheel). Ie, if your theme is blue, your CTA should be orange to make it stand out from the rest of the content on the page.
I also recommend bespoke related links to relevant information and a CTA image in the right-hand side margin on blog posts.
Internal linking is another important method to guide users around the site and lead them towards the desired goal.
Finally, and these can be controversial, but in many cases, on-exit popups work well to increase the conversion rate. This is especially true for the goal of getting users to subscribe to a newsletter.
Of course, all conversion rate optimization needs to be split tested. What works for one site may not work for another!
My design tips for clients looking to increase website conversions are informed by two different techniques. The first is to go back to the start and take a really deep dive into your target audience.
Who is your most likely consumer – who is your ideal consumer? What is the ‘pain point’ they are looking to solve when they come to your website?
For example, their pain point may be that they need to buy a new swimsuit, but they’re a normal-sized woman, not a tiny model, and most online swimwear retailers focus on perfect figures and skimpy designs.
How does YOUR brand and online store firstly understand, and secondly solve this pain point better than any of your competitors, and how can you convince them that you do?
What do they love and what are they drawn to outside of your own category? What are their priorities?
You need to completely inhabit the mindset of the people who will be visiting your site, to really understand what they want, then weave this throughout the design and 9critically) the copy.
The second tip is to go through your website ‘blind’ – by this I mean, imagine you’ve never visited it before, and land on the homepage. Begin there. Do you know where to go from a cold landing like this? Does the website draw you in?
Do you feel there’s a logical path, are recommendations and other automated features ‘on the money’ or not? Which hurdles are in your way from landing on the homepage to checking out?
Typical hurdles include navigation issues, illogical groupings of products, illogical recommendations, pricing too high, shipping price too high or complicated, checkout process too long, website overall messy and cluttered, poor photography (or insufficient photography), too many pop-ups and non-brand widgets, a design which doesn’t appeal to your target audience in terms of age, gender, likes and dislikes, etc.
Remove every barrier you can find, make your website flow and ensure it presents your brand in the best light, solving your customers’ problems neatly, easily, and attractively.
This is the essence of increasing website conversions from a design perspective.
Every visitor on your site operates from one of two systems of thinking that influence decisions. System 1 operates quickly and without much conscious thought or control, system 2 involves deliberate, mental activity to reach a decision.
I always prefer designs that cater to both systems: stripped of all distractions with just one clear CTA, that will keep the mental effort to a minimum (system 2), with subtle visual cues to point towards the one thing you want your visitor to do (system 1).
It’s a straightforward and perhaps obvious principle, but I see a lot of sites still overwhelm their audience with choices, without guidance to conversion.
To increase conversions I recommend applying the next tips.
Websites must be optimized for voice search
Voice user interface allows users to interact with websites through voice commands so it adds usability and functionality to your site making it more accessible to all users
Content quality and length matter for rankings
Web pages that contain long high-quality content get more visibility and shares so becoming that trusted source and influencer with timely and helpful answers to questions get rewarded quickly
Mobile UX determines your ranking
In a mobile-first world, you have less time to grab people, attention spans are shorter than ever so video will be used even more to boost rankings.
The world is moving to mobile-first or mobile-only, with fewer people accessing the web on big screens so everyone is tailoring their site, message and content accordingly.
Better use of bold colors and white space to stand out from the competition.
The trend toward simplicity and minimalist design means less is more in the new year as the world becomes crazier and technology gets smaller, faster and more complicated, people are finding new ways to simplify their lives more than ever.
With every website that we take on – whether it’s a new business or a website redesign – we always focus on 4 major things to increase website conversion.
1: Call to Action above the fold
2: Phone Number on the sticky header
3: Simple layout
4: Mimic your GMB’s hierarchy (if applicable).
Having a call to action above the fold is important and it’ll let visitors take action right away. Whether that CTA is calling a phone number or filling out an online form to generate a lead.
On website redesigns, we often see absolutely no call to action anywhere on the site over and over again; which leads us to believe most businesses or web design companies understand the value and importance of conversions.
Along with having a CTA above the fold, having a phone number in the sticky header is an easy win (make sure you track it in Analytics) that allows someone to connect with that business at any time during their site visit.
Having a sticky header allows that part of the site to always be visible no matter what page you are on, or how far you’ve scrolled down.
With everything, keep it simple. We don’t like to complicate or create designs that make it difficult for visitors to navigate through. At the end of the day, make sure you design with your audience in mind.
Bonus points: If you are a local business owner or have a Google My Business setup, then make sure to keep the hierarchy of your GMB copied over to your website.
Almost every business owner that we speak with doesn’t understand the importance of GMB. Google actually prefers their own properties to help with a ranking over any 3rd party site (yes, our own websites).
When you incorporate things such as driving directions, site hierarchy, service pages, and other relevant information that you can grab from your Google My Business profile… you’ll see some magic happen.
I usually follow a certain number of rules when it comes to design and increasing website conversions.
That’s it.
Website design is important to increase website conversion. Here are 3 things to consider
1. CTA’s that POP:
It is important that along with strong “call to action” text, your buttons are a distinct colour that stands out from the rest of the site. Your visitors need to know where to click and why.
2. Just Be Real (Images):
Your images should be of your actual business or product. The main image should show your product or service used with success. This way site visitors can easily relate to the success and say “I want that!”.
3. Design & UX:
Based on research websites are scrolled and viewed a certain way. These frequently or first viewed areas need to be taken advantage of. Call to Action buttons should be placed in the top right corner of the site as well as prominently throughout the home page.
Professional design is important to improve the trust of your business and increase conversions.
To optimize for conversions you’ll need to consider these tips:
Design is one of those things that can make or break the success of your website. Good design will draw more traffic and good conversions. Bad design can have the opposite effect.
Crowded and messy web pages are one of my pet peeves. Without a doubt, a poorly designed webpage will directly affect your conversions.
Although I am not technically a web designer, I am an eCommerce expert and digital marketeer and I have built many websites for both my own businesses, affiliate sites, and friends’ businesses websites.
I have a non-negotiable rule for web design, which says that user-centric design is the cornerstone of the website.
The attention span of the average online user is around 8 seconds. Therefore the site must be easy to use, easy to navigate, easy to read, and it must be easy to buy your product or service!
It should be abundantly clear what the user is supposed to do once they arrive on your site. If it is not, there is a high probability of you losing the customer.
Whitespace and the size of your fonts are important. Don’t use single line spacing, it is better to use 1,5, or even 2. If you have an older audience, possibly bigger.
I prefer 1,5 line spacing and 14 or 16 sized fonts. But it really depends on the site and who it is for. But I will not go below font size 14.
When it comes to conversion, in particular, your CTA’s needs to be on point. One mistake I see many sites make is using different fonts, colors, and buttons on their CTA’s.
Your CTA’s needs to be in a contrasting color to your main color. Use a color wheel to find out which color is the contrasting one. If your primary color is green, your contrasting color would be red.
You can deviate slightly from using the exact opposite color in the color wheel, but the central point here is that the CTA is in clear contrast with the primary color. And be mindful of color blindness!
Our website is designed to be as informative as possible without being overwhelming. The process of receiving our product is a little bit different so our website is designed to educate potential customers to make them feel comfortable in the process.
Websites need to be optimized both for mobile and desktop versions. People tend to browse more in mobile, but purchase in desktop so it’s important to have a website that is intuitive on both.
One of the biggest improvements we’ve had over the last year was increasing the speed of the website through design. We cut back on oversized images and implemented plugins designed to reduce the loading times of our content.
It brings the content immediately reducing the risk of a customer becoming impatient and exiting the website. We saw our conversations immediately increase after improving the speed through design.
My biggest design tip for increasing website conversions is to include product and brand testimonials on the top half of your home page.
Indeed, when a top of funnel customer is initially landing on your website, they need to know that your product and services can be trusted.
By showcasing (1) customer testimonials, (2) press and publication mentions, or (3) social proof/visuals via influencers, you can do exactly that.
Research shows that almost half of internet users rely on a website’s design to assess its credibility. Nail these three essential website design elements, and you’ll see conversions rise.
1. Strong and clear call-to-action (CTA) buttons
Call-to-action buttons need to grab your audience’s immediate attention. Use a contrasting color to distinguish it from the text and graphics above it.
Use language that conveys a sense of urgency, tells them exactly what to do, and explains what they will get when they take action. Phrases like “Start a Free Trial” or “Book an Appointment” communicate clearly and drive action.
2. Effective use of white space
Using plenty of space between the visual elements and text on a webpage makes it easy for people to focus on your main message.
Trying to cram too much information or visuals onto a single page confuses readers. And, in the worst-case scenario, it can even cause eyestrain.
3. Clear and simple navigation
Neil Patel explains the need for clear, easy-to-follow navigation best. “Websites that make me jump through hoops drive me nuts…I prefer to get from point A to point B via the shortest path possible.”
So do your website visitors. Don’t make them guess where to find the information they need.
Clear signposts that guide them to where they want to go in mere seconds will mark your brand as one that they’ll want to do business with.
After all, if your website is efficient, your products will likely be, too.
Create a Buyer Persona
To improve the conversion rate, your content should provide value to your target audience. To make sure your website visitors receive what they are looking for, that content needs to address each visitor’s pain points.
For example, if you are targeting large companies, the content on your service pages should address decision-makers.
It could list such benefits of working with your company as cost efficiency, time savings, higher productivity, and an appealing ROI (Return on Investment).
If you want to capture the attention of an industry professional, you may want to go deeper into the technical aspects of your offer while still addressing the reader’s point points.
To do all the above, you may need to create a buyer persona for each segment of your target audience. This persona creates a clear picture of what each part of your audience needs and wants so you can adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
Educational and Organized Content
The content on your service page could be the first thing a potential customer learns about your company. The first impression you make on the visitor relies heavily on the quality of that content.
The service page should explain “why” visitors need to follow your CTA (Call to Action). It should take the user a few seconds to scan the service page and understand how working with your company can solve their problems.
Besides elaborating on your offer in a clear and concise manner, you should provide transparent instructions on what needs to be done next.
Make it easy for the visitor to get in touch with you. Contact details should be readily available in more than one place on the service page.
Be Smart with CTAs
Make sure your CTAs aren’t just descriptive. They should be creative. A simple “contact us” is overused and bleak. Come up with something more exciting, such as “Start saving money now.”
While CTAs are highly important for CRO, overdoing them can lead to a negative effect. Don’t put more than one CTA on the page. This could confuse the visitor and keep them from taking any further actions on your website.
Leverage Visual Proof
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, allow it to do its job. Website visitors have a much easier time processing visuals than reading plain text. In fact, they are more likely to stay on your page if they see something visually appealing.
If you can add examples of your work, before/after photos, product videos, and other visuals, you are likely to capture the audience’s attention. This, in turn, could lead to higher conversion rates.
The best design tips for increasing web conversion rates include making sure that your contact information is always visible (top, side, or bottom of a page).
Make sure to consider including a chat bot, live chat, or a way to leave a message in a contact form easily.
The easier it is for a person to contact you once they are on your website the better chance you have of gaining a new client.
Use quality photos. According to research, 56% of users look at photos and illustrations first when they visit a page. Low-quality pictures can alienate some visitors, and they will close the site.
Compress photos. Users don’t like to wait. Compress pictures to make the site load faster.
Show a real team. Instead of stock images with smiling people, download a section with your heroes – real employees.
Make user-friendly navigation. Have a convenient menu with links to other sections.
It is much more pleasant to wander around the site when everything is intuitively clear and the desired section is easy to find. Easy navigation can even affect the position of the site in the search results.
Test your headers. They should be short and at the same time clearly convey the essence to the user. Do not be foggy – it is better to speak clearly. Especially, this concerns articles: from their title it should be clear what is the benefit for the reader.
We’ve increased website conversions time and time again by implementing these two things in all our designs.
1) Providing some kind of immediate call-to-action at the top of a page and above the fold accompanied with a bold headline and a few subheadings. These will be the first thing your customers see on a page and it’s often all you need to capture leads.
2) If you’re an eCommerce website your checkout process needs to be multi-step. Long gone are the days where customers fill out 12+ text fields all on the same page in order to checkout. Abandoned checkouts are way too popular now.
Make the process seamless and instead break it up into bite-sized pieces. An example would be:
step 1) contact info
step 2) shipping info
step 3) billing info
step 4) place order
If you serve a market with one currency, remove the currency from the price. People will understand what currency they pay, but the omission of the currency sign will make it feel less like they’re spending money, resulting in more sales.
Obviously, this won’t work for websites serving multiple countries, although it can work when you have country-specific TLD’s or can somehow switch currencies based on location or the visitor’s own choice.
Another tip is:
Choose a distinct color for your calls to action (buttons). People should easily note them to click and do what they’re supposed to do. It should be a total contrast with the other colors, so it cannot be missed.
One of my EASIEST tips to implement design-wise is the URQ rule.
URQ stands for upper right-hand quadrant, which is ironically and surprisingly the spot on a website our eyes naturally go first.
Why? Well, it’s because that spot is usually home to the “Login” button on Gmail – or the “Cart” when we’re shopping. We go to that spot intuitively to take action.
Dental offices should make the best use of this spot by including a Scheduling Button there, a link to their portal, or, at the very least, their phone number. Whatever their # 1 priority is, this spot is a great place to put it.
Use a responsive design and A/B test your designs
A responsive design will automatically scale the size and placement of content and elements to match the screen size of the user.
It keeps images from being larger than the screen width so that users don’t have to take extra steps, such as swiping sideways or zooming out, to read your content.
Most traffic now comes from mobile devices, so it is important to ensure your site loads quickly and looks good on all screen sizes.
Using a responsive design that avoids clunky images, large tables, or links that won’t work as intended on smaller screens will ensure a high-quality user experience for everyone who visits your page.
A/B testing is probably the most valuable tool available for a web designer. Instead of following your gut feeling or blindly implementing what “experts” recommend, make data-based decisions.
Always test your design changes to see whether they help or hurt conversions. We test every change we make to our landing pages and we’re often surprised with the design option that provides the best conversion rate.
Websites should be easy to read and not overwhelming. Many people mistakenly pack information into their websites, when clean minimalist designs win.
On the internet there is so much noise and it’s hard for website visitors to pick where they should focus their attention.
But if designers can make browsing simple by adding a short paragraph at the top of the website that highlights the key points they will keep viewers engaged longer and there have more conversions.
Another tip is to have a simple call-out form in addition to a phone number. A short contact form can give customers who aren’t ready to call a simple way to request more information.
After filling out the form customers can be redirected to a calendar where they have the option to schedule a call. This two-step funnel with a lead form followed by a calendar page has been a moneymaker for SoFlo SAT Tutoring.
1. Less is more. When you have a lot of things on the website, people are distracted and they may not do business with you. They want something simple so they can navigate through it much easier.
2. The site needs to look great everywhere else before marketing online (on your social media and business cards, etc). If you can’t make a good impression online, why would people do business with you?
3. Meticulously think about your font choices and what they say to customers. Stay away from complicated fonts because it makes the page look unprofessional.
4. Make sure that your logo stands out on the page. This way, customers know who it is they are dealing with and what to expect.
5. Be sure your business name shows up on every page so people don’t have to search for you when they want to do business with you again in the future. It also helps in link building and brand building as people of your industry will be aware of your brand.
6. If there’s a lot of text on the webpage, make sure it is broken up with bullet points and sub-headers. This makes the content easier to read and digest, and people can quickly skim through everything they need to take action.
7. What’s the call to action? At the end of your content, you need a final paragraph that clearly states what you want people to do next. Make it obvious so the path is clear. Don’t make people guess!
8. If you want to sell a product, your image needs to be crystal clear and high-quality (no blurry or dark images). People need to be able to see everything they are about to buy. It’s important that they can zoom in close on any details they need to see.
9. Make sure your website loads quickly! When people go on a website, if it takes too long it’s very frustrating for them and they may leave (and you don’t want that). It needs to load in 3 seconds or less.
10. Your site should be optimized for both mobile and desktop viewing so people have the same pleasant experience with your site no matter what device they are using.
11. Take note of where people spend most of their time on your website and optimize that area for maximum impact. Where do most visitors look at first? Where do they go next? Where do they spend most time looking around?
An important first step to designing your website is to have a thorough understanding of your dream client.
This is important because you want to tailor the website so that your dream clients have a good first impression and feel a strong presence with whatever you are selling.
If you can point out your features and how they solve your dream clients’ problems, it will be a lot easier to sell them on your product or service that you’re promoting.
The next biggest step after this is to have a clear and concise call to action that solves their problems. You want to set your website up like a funnel so that you can convert interested visitors into clients or sales.
Try to keep things minimal on your website, but be detailed enough that customers understand what you do and why you do it.
Far too many times, I come across websites that I can’t even figure out what they are selling because they get to into the weeds but don’t identify any customer problems they are solving nor do they have a call to action.
Here are some of my web design tips:
When it comes to website conversions, the guiding question we have to ask is ‘how do we get the user from point A to point B (conversion) quickly and easily?’
With this in mind, my top design tip for increasing website conversions is to have one clear CTA (call-to-action) per page.
In saying that, you can have more than one CTA button on the page, but how you incorporate that into the design should be balanced and the goal should be the same every time.
The most common mistake I see when it comes to CTAs is landing pages with multiple buttons (worse yet, if they are all the same colour) with different call-to-actions.
Having multiple call-to-actions means you are asking the user to do different things – go to point B, consider point C, read more about point D, etc.
Having too many directions to choose from can create barriers to the user reaching the conversion point.
For me, one of the best tips for increasing website conversions is to make navigation easy. I’ve lost count of the number of websites I’ve seen that make a user’s life difficult.
If you’re lucky, you have a maximum of 30 seconds of someone’s attention. It could be and usually is, much less than this. There are many ways to do this.
Your navigation bar is probably the most important. Hamburger menus work well here, as they clearly tell a user how they can get to different pages on your website.
Have a footer that makes sense and has links to the important pages on your website, as well as your social media accounts.
And finally, your navigation should go hand-in-hand with the main priorities of your business. Do you want users to purchase? Do you want them to book a call with you? Do you want them to download something?
Navigation is a make or break for your business, and should not be ignored.
Website builders are a perfect solution for individuals and small businesses to start a website without hiring a developer.
Squarespace, Wix and Weebly make it simple for even a newbie to put together a polished site in a relatively short amount of time, even when they need more advanced features like email marketing or an e-commerce platform.
Here’s a simple list of do’s and don’ts in making your website.
Do’s:
Don’ts:
Web design is all about knowing exactly who your target audience is and what they struggle with. Your visitors are searching for valuable, helpful information or a solution to a specific problem.
Hence, you can only generate conversions if your website addresses that need or desire. Each conversion is a sign that you delivered exactly what they were looking for.
Therefore, your website design, structure, and layout should all serve the same goal: to offer real value to your visitors. When it comes to increasing your conversion rate, you should start with the end in mind:
Keep your design as clean and clear as possible – less is more in web design. Don’t distract or overwhelm your visitors with too much information.
Moreover, make sure each sub-page or landing page only targets one specific issue or topic. That way, you will generate highly targeted leads and conversions interested in one particular product, service, or offer.
These visitors are highly likely to make a purchase and become loyal customers and regular visitors in the future.
Let’s face it, the only reason why a person or a company has a website is to get conversions. Could be someone signing up for an art class, or a corporate SaaS company looking to book more demos for their software. Conversions make the difference for sales.
Have you ever had the intention of filling out an online form, just to be scared away by too many required fields?
It’s one of the best ways to kill your conversion rate. Remove all unnecessary form fields, leaving only those that are essential to accomplishing your goal.
No one wants to be the first person to use a product or service. So, you can put their mind at ease by providing testimonials and/or reviews from past customers. Social proof, including video testimonials, can put consumers at ease.
Many visitors want to buy your service but are on the fence.
They have lingering questions that keeps them from taking that next step
Live chat tools are perfect for helping these people feel at ease and take the leap of faith. Especially after you have helped them with a pain point-type question.
Most live chat tools are easy to add to any site and can add an immediate boost to your conversion rates.
When I write content for a dental website or any other website, I don’t think just words. I also think design. That’s because one of the quickest ways to lose a visitor is with a page that looks intimidating to read. It’s actually not very hard to score big on this aspect of design.
On a dental page, I often begin with a general introduction, then a factual section about the specific procedure or ailment, possibly a section on the cool tech, definitely a section on the caring dentists, and finally a section on taking action (location, hours, call to action).
Most importantly, I write in plain English, which means shorter words, shorter sentences and shorter paragraphs. Not only are they easier to read, but they look less intimidating. And less intimidating is what marketing dentistry is all about.
My top design tip to increase website conversions is to make a site that is usable and inspires curiosity. To make a site usable and enjoyable, web designers and marketers should stop reverting to pop-up forms and huge click-to-call buttons.
That might have worked with older generations, but the younger Internet users are quicker to discern between well-intentioned design and click-bait.
Designers must simplify the experience and give users the basics while empowering them to continue on their journey.
Simple design choices such as teasing continuity, using contrasting colors that attract your eye, and making the conversion process quick and painless, are – in my opinion – the best “hacks.”
For local businesses creating additional landing pages for each service offered and optimizing those pages so that they are easily accessible ensures your potential customer will find what they are looking for and that all of their questions get answered right away.
This is a big deal for conversions and it changes from desktop to mobile so it should be optimized for both.
For example, a desktop website can have a mega menu that displays all pages and services along with an additional menu in the footer highlighting your services and contact information, however, when accessed via mobile there is a single hamburger menu with a clickable submenu along with click to call and basic business information.
This may seem like basic common sense advice, but there are countless small business websites out there with a single service page and dodgy experience when comparing desktop and mobile.
Designing a modern and professional website has been known to increase the chances of converting traffic into subscribers/ leads/ sales.
One forgotten issue is that lots of website owners did not focus on, is the loading speed of the website. An additional second of loading speed could mean traffic going to another website when they are already 1 foot into your webpage.
Here’s how you could improve the loading speed significantly;
1. Do not use a website builder. As they have lots of codes to load. (Important)
2. Get fast reliable SSD web hosting.
3. Reduce the file size of all images on your website.
4. Get CDN, like Cloudflare.
5. Manage your codes in Google Tag Manager. Clear those not using.
6. Clean website database at least quarterly.
7. Use caching if possible.
When you need to use a website builder, then all other steps MUST be implemented.
Blog content typically generates a high percentage of a site’s traffic but has a particularly high bounce rate. This is to be expected but at the same time presents a great opportunity to improve website conversions.
A Call-To-Action at the end of the post is often used but it won’t be seen by every reader. I recommend one or two CTAs within the body of the post.
Avoid using them in the first third of the post, you want the reader investing in reading the whole post and any small distractions in this early part may lead them to bounce.
You should also keep the CTA in context with the preceding content and this will improve the likelihood of a reader clicking.
From a pure design perspective, you want it to be compelling enough to take action, while not interrupting the natural flow of reading.
Aside from the CTA within the body of the content, I love seeing sticky sidebars or headers that maintain a CTA as readers scroll down the page.
What do professionally-built websites do differently than DIY’ed websites? Here’s the thing! You have less than 10 seconds to create a representation of your brand on the top of your website. 99.9% of the visitors to your website are not going to buy that visit. So how can you create a vibe that keeps people coming back time and time again? Let’s go through it!?
1. Use WordPress. WordPress is the gold standard for creating custom, beautiful websites while allowing your team to manage your content, orders, etc. There is no argument for any better CMS platform.
2. Say what makes you unique immediately! Your most creative copy should be in the header of your website. Get straight to the point, but punch people with uniqueness and what makes your brand valuable!
Stop using cookie-cutter templates or themes! Custom and unique sets you apart immediately from your competitors.
4. Have the right Call to Action(s) (ex. Don’t have a “See Plans and Pricing” button. Instead, have it say something creative or something like “Let’s Get Started!”.
5. For every second it takes your site to load consider that a 7% loss in conversions so make sure your website is loading fast. Terrible WordPress or Shopify themes slow this down so make sure you hire a good developer who understands site speed testing.
6. Create an Exciting Loading Page to get your visitors engaged while the site loads.
A common problem that I see with website design is that the designers lean towards an informative website, that only educates the visitors. I frequently see websites that have no call to action anywhere on the page!
The simple solution to improving conversions is to have several CTAs throughout the website. I like to have slight variations on what we are asking the visitor to do, as different visitors will respond to different offers.
I recommend always having on call to action visible no matter where the visitor is on the site.
Additionally, adding a contact form in the footer of the website ensures that not a single page goes without a good way to get in touch with the business.
Using these strategies, I’ve worked with countless businesses to take a website with zero conversions, and turn it into a lead generation machine.
If you want to design your website to increase conversions, then you must design for User Experience (UX).
Your visitors want a seamless, straightforward, and positive experience while on your website and, if you can give them that, you increase the chances of having them convert.
A positive experience for the user also improves your credibility in the visitor’s mind and can make them feel more at ease when they decide to purchase something or provide personal information.
Do not overlook the User Experience when designing your website!
Limit your options. Choice overload is real. If your webpage has too many options for consumers, they’re likely to become overwhelmed and not choose anything.
Use the hierarchy of customer thought to influence what you put on the page. What questions or objections do customers pose during your sales process?
You should be answering objections to get micro “yes” moments as the person works their way down your web pages which lead up to the final “yes” which is the lead/sale.
Meet your audience where they’re at. In automotive, we know that the majority of consumers visit websites on their phones.
That means that the website user experience should be designed for mobile-first, then fitted to desktop instead of having a desktop-user experience that is responsive to mobile-sized screens.
1. Using heavy images and animations will kill your conversion rate
The longer it takes for your pages to load, the more likely visitors are to bounce.
More precisely: 25% of people bounce after 4 seconds, and half of the web users say they don’t come back to a website if it offered poor performance the first time.
Improving your page speed is the most efficient way to improve your website conversion.
2. Being too subtle with CTAs.
Soft-colored buttons that blend perfectly might be the most aesthetic option, but it’s never the right business option.
When it comes to CTAs, high contrast and bright colours systematically lead to higher conversion. And buttons perform better than hyperlinks.
So if you want people to click and convert, make your primary CTA as prominent as possible.
Users of eCommerce websites are 7-10 times more likely to convert than regular users. If you have an online store and you want to increase your sales apply the following strategies.
Make the search box easy to spot
The search box is an important part of any website. It’s where users can find information about your site, and it also serves as a way for them to navigate around your site. If you don’t make the search box easy to spot, then people will either ignore it or miss it altogether.
The best place to put the search box is at the top left corner of the screen. This makes it easier for users to see the search box when they first land
Make the search box big enough for typical queries
Most sites only allow one word per query. But, sometimes people like to type multiple words together. To accommodate this, you should increase the size of the search box to let people enter multiple words.
Also, you should consider adding a dropdown list to let users select the category of the product they are looking for. This would make it easier for them to narrow down their search.
Place a search box on each page
This is another great strategy to improve conversions. When people visit your site, they expect to see a search box somewhere on each page. So, if you don’t have a search box on every page, then they may not bother using it.
This is especially true if there are no clear navigation options. You could also try placing the search box near the top of the page. This gives users a better chance of finding it before they get lost.
Avoid zero search results
People often think that zero results mean that there are no products available. In reality, it just means that there aren’t many products available.
If you want to improve your conversion rates, you should always display at least five results.
Use different search filtering options
Include different search filters so people don’t get confused by too many choices. For example, you could add tags and categories to help people find what they are looking for. You could even add prices to help shoppers find exactly what they want.
If you want to improve your conversions, you should encourage users to leave reviews about your products. These reviews can be used as filters to sort out the best products.
It’s so important to have a strategy behind your design and map out your customer journeys from the start. We usually work by planning the content and structure of the website first and developing a design that brings that structure to life.
One creative way to make your design stand out, improve the user experience and conversions is with micro-interactions.
These essentially provide feedback to the user for taking action – this could be in the form of a transition, animation or a simple change in the text.
An example we did for one of our clients incorporates animation as part of their members’ rewards experience.
Once they have enough points, the user is encouraged to ‘open a box’ for a free treat, and the confetti animation reinforces the feeling of being rewarded, making the interaction enjoyable and memorable.
These little ‘rewards’ help encourages engagement, and they can be used at almost any stage in the journey – from adding an item to your basket to completing a form or checking out a purchase.
They make the experience memorable and motivational, and that in turn will help boost those conversions.
Create design and content that is ADA-compliant. If the design of your page lacks contrast, it may be difficult for visitors to read the text.
If you are missing ALT tags for images, videos and audio files, then those who rely on screen readers will not be able to experience all of the content on the page, resulting in a poor user experience.
Tip: you can check the contrast between color combinations with free tools, such as Contrast Checker.
Create mobile-friendly experiences. Make sure your website design and content are easy to access, navigate and read on all screen sizes.
This will ensure that as many users as possible are able to access your content seamlessly and easily, and will boost the results you see from your website.
Tip: you can check if your site is mobile-friendly just by entering the URL here.
Insert CTA buttons that stand out. Use bright, contrasting accent colors for your most important CTAs on-site, to draw the eye to them. This makes it as easy as possible for visitors to convert when they’re ready.
Don’t make them hunt for this feature. Don’t hide the Contact Us button in a drop-down menu, or leave a product landing page without a clear path to purchase.
Check your page load speed. This is now especially important because, with their most recent algorithm update (Core Web Vitals), Google has started prioritizing the ranking of websites that load quickly.
Additionally, web pages that take too long to load waste the user’s time, and they will likely bounce as a result.
Tip: you can check how fast your site loads using GTmetrix or Page Speed Insights from Google.
In today’s online world, it’s not enough to just have a good product or service anymore. You need to be able to promote it in a way that stands out, beats your competitors, and resonates with your target audience.
One of the most important aspects of promoting your business or product is design and aesthetics.
So, what does that look like? Here are a couple of easy tips to keep in mind when designing a website that will help you increase those conversions:
Navigation is critical: The last thing you want is for your users to be confused about how they can find the information that they are looking for.
High-quality graphics: Remember, you are competing for people’s attention with other websites and quality images are a must.
Responsive design: If your site isn’t responsive, then you are losing out on a ton of potential conversions. Everyone is on mobile now.
Simplicity is more: Remember, you want your website to be as simple and easy to navigate as possible.
In order to effectively increase your conversion rate, you need to be able to design your website in a way that is easy to navigate, aesthetically pleasing and gets across your message without being too distracting.
One of the top tips I have found to increase conversions is to create scarcity that feels immediate. Essentially, the way we do this is to create a CTA which embeds in it the current date and month. If this includes a discount so much the better.
For the sake of example, Buy Product with 10% OFF Only in. This creates a sense of urgency and FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) in the user and has helped us increase conversions. If you make such a CTA dynamic, then you have manufactured scarcity every month.
An easy way to do this with WordPress is to sure the Current Date plugin and add a shortcode [current_date format=’F Y]. The plugin can be found here.
If you add this to the pricing section, so much the better, because it is at the point that a user is considering whether to make a purchase or not.
Introduce Micro-interactions:
Although they’re little, micro-interactions play a big role in web design.
They make navigation more simple and humanize the entire browsing experience by offering feedback, allowing users to see the results of their actions, and delivering feedback.
Visitors can learn how to use your website by using animations, as well as visual and sound effects.
For example, a pleasant sound notice can indicate that an action was done accurately, while a flashing, red visual cue can indicate that they made a mistake.
Micro-interactions readily promote engagement and result in a nice user experience, which in turn encourages conversions, because they’re catchy and interesting.
Paying attention to such minor details shows that you care about your users’ opinions.
At the same time, flawless execution is technically hard, which is why, if you want great results, you need to hire a reputable web designer.
Be clear in your webpage’s headline what you are offering. This ensures visitors know whether the content is relevant to them or not.
People will not necessarily stick around to explore your site just to figure what it is you actually do.
Also, being clear and descriptive in the heading and subsequent text, will likely mean including some keywords which will be good for your SEO and relevance of the content.
To increase website conversions for my clients (coaches and entrepreneurs), it surprisingly starts BEFORE the design itself.
The words you use matter so much and strategically using short and benefit-driven headlines that cut straight to the pains and secret desires of your target audience is critical.
Make your copy incredibly specific! It converts better as people think you’re reading their minds, which gives them more trust you can solve their problem and hire you.
Then in the page design, forget walls of text. Break up sections and stick to one column for increased focus. And make sure your page width isn’t too wide as it causes too much eye effort to keep scanning so far across.
Keep sentences on the shorter side and have 1-2 sentences per paragraph. I love interspersing testimonials throughout a website because there’s no such thing as too much social proof after all.
And lastly, increase conversions with a clear next step at the end of each page. Invite for a consult call, contact you, buy now. But don’t leave ‘em hanging!
Focus is the key. To increase conversions on a website, home in on what you want your visitor to do on each page.
Limit your calls to action to one clear, primary call to action per page. Too often, it’s tempting to add multiple calls to action on a website or fill pages with unnecessary clutter.
This is especially true with websites that offer a variety of products and services. Website owners want to draw attention to all of it, all at once. But what ends up happening is the opposite.
When you don’t have a clear focus on each page, nothing stands out. Even if your visitors can’t verbalize it, this lack of clarity makes it difficult for them to make a decision. When the visitor can’t decide what to do next, they leave.
When you make it absolutely clear what you want your website visitor to do on a page, you will increase your conversions and lower the frustrations of your customers.
These days, it’s essential to think beyond the desktop. Web design needs to meet consumers where they’re at and, increasingly, that means mobile-responsive and mobile-optimized design. Today’s consumers are easily distracted.
They’re generally on their phones or tablets, and you’ve got about two seconds to catch and hold their attention before they move on to the next shiny hyperlink on the SERP.
For this reason, mobile-responsive and mobile-optimized designs are no longer a “nice-to-have.” They’re a necessity.
So, how do you improve the mobile user experience? Start with the data. Where are your website users coming from? When are they accessing the site? Which pages do they linger on, and which contribute to your bounce rate?
Once you’ve separated the late-night doom scrollers from the catching-up-between-meetings crowd, it’s easier to design your website around your audience’s particular needs.
Above all, simplicity is key to effective web design. This is especially true when considering the mobile experience. Cut the fat in your copy, make sure your load time is lightning fast, and make the buying portal easy to navigate.
One of my favourite techniques for increasing website conversion rate is removing every unnecessary button. Whenever we build a landing page we always A/B test it.
What I like to do is completely remove every button that is not a buy button. This includes header and footer too! I simply remove them so that the visitor cannot be distracted by anything else on the site.
It’s part of a theory in neuromarketing, which suggests that a part of our brain called amygdala (our “lizard brain”) makes us notice a lot of different things in our environment.
It is the part that is responsible for human instinct and survival, so it’s said to be the part of the brain responsible for our decision making on a fundamental level.
Studies have shown that fewer choices actually make the customer more likely to buy, so by removing all unnecessary distractions from the page you’re much more likely to convert them.
We have found an increase of 30-80% in conversion rate of our landing pages when we remove the unnecessary choices and funnel the visitor through the exact steps we have designed.
1. Offer a clear price offer on your website landing page. Most buyers understand tiered price packages. So, it’s best to put that on your site. This way, you can attract leads who have the capability to pay for your services.
2. Avoid sliding images in the HERO banner. You should clearly mention your brand messaging. For example, you are a wellness expert for new age first time entrepreneurs.
3. Promote your lead magnet or a video section of your brand. If visitors find information about your services, they are more likely to enquire.
4. Add an exit intent pop up when someone is about to exit. This puts an urgency and lets you capture leads information for a quick follow up call.
5. Well optimized mobile website is a MUST for high conversions. You can integrate a chatbot or a phone call icon. Most visitors are scanning, not reading. You have very limited opportunity to grab the attention.
Web design, SEO, and branding are closely intertwined, so to increase conversions, you need to keep all three in mind when working on your website.
SEO comes into play based on the keywords you use to get organic traffic to your website. If you focus on keywords that are less related to your products or services, you’ll see less conversion.
For example, if you own an e-commerce store that sells a specific cut of women’s sweaters, using niche keywords that describe your product (ex. “women’s cowl neck cashmere sweater”) will likely have a higher conversion rate than a more general keyword like “women’s apparel.”
The next step is branding. Once you have the keywords you’d like to use, you need to incorporate them into your website copy.
Using your brand colors and voice throughout your site helps people get to know your brand and feel more comfortable reaching out or making a purchase.
Finally, the star of the show – web design. Adding calls-to-action (CTAs) is the first step to increasing conversion. If people don’t know what you want them to do next, how will they do it?
CTAs on e-commerce websites are straightforward (ex. buttons that say “Shop Now” and link to a product page). Service businesses can be more nuanced, depending on the next step in their marketing funnel.
One conversion could be signing up for a newsletter, another could be submitting a contact form, or you could prompt people to schedule a consultation.
No matter what action you want people to take next, you need to make it clear with calls-to-action throughout your website.
You also want to make sure that your website is easy to navigate and search, so that people can find exactly what they’re looking for and convert accordingly.
If you are looking to increase the conversions on your website there are a number of different things that you can do. I’m going to go over a few of the most important aspects Dentists should consider for their site.
1. Make sure to look your site over on mobile to ensure everything looks good as many users will only access your site through their phones.
Furthermore, you should ensure that you have mobile-specific elements such as “click to call” buttons that will auto-dial your number for patients when they click them.
2. When your website first loads you should have a “call to action” in view without the user having to scroll down or look for it. This can be a button to book an appointment, a click to call button, or a contact form. Determining the best call to action depends on your business and how you prefer patients to contact you.
3. When you first start building your website you want to have a clear goal in mind for how users will navigate through it and find the most important information. Make sure you are leading users to not just read about you online but to contact you.
4. Make sure to include testimonials and reviews of previous patients in an easy-to-find spot for additional social proof and to ensure new patients feel comfortable reaching out to you.
5. Try and avoid using stock images when possible, having authentic high-quality photos of your practice and team will give patients more confidence in your business. Especially in a field like dental where patients want to ensure they are in a clean and comfortable environment.
6. Have you donated to the community, won an award, or been featured in any local papers? Make sure to mention it on your website!
7. Add a social media feed to your website to encourage patients to engage with you online! This will make it easier for you to retain patients and keep them coming back.
These are just some tactics that we recommend you employ when deciding on a dental marketing strategy for your practice and looking for the best tactics to increase conversions.
The number one factor that makes or breaks conversions is trust. Building trust is paramount to increase website conversions. Implementing trust-building factors into the design is done in several ways.
Be transparent by having contact info easy to find.
Make sure that your grammar is solid. Typos and poorly written content lower trust.
Place “as seen in”, “has worked with”, and badges for professional associations. This will help website visitors know that you are proficient and reliable.
Other trust badges are “Free Shipping” and “Money Back Guarantee” depending on your industry.
Another major trust factor is the use of real reviews and video testimonials. The best practice is to use a review aggregator so users can see the actual reviews from your GMB, Facebook page, or Amazon page so they can click and see the actual review.
And on a broader scope design itself can make or break trust. Having a clean, user-friendly mobile responsive website relays that. Whereas a poorly constructed website does not inspire trust.
It’s best throughout the design process to keep in mind that people are skeptical, and for good reason. Each element of a website will either create more trust or lessen it. So think of the user and how they may interpret the design.
Something often overlooked is the commitment that people have to make to follow through with a conversion.
A service or product that costs $100 is far more likely to have people convert compared to something like a vehicle or new home build. Buyer journey and the length of journey are extremely important to take into consideration.
Once you understand this, it becomes easier to know what you need to be offering. For home builders, free brochures will always download (convert) higher than phone calls or form submissions.
A call to action banner is always a great go-to option, particularly for pages with a lot of content. If users are having to scroll a long way to get to the bottom call to action, you’ll be losing customers.
It also works to break up your page and give a bit of breathing room.
You have to be strategic though. I’d recommend putting it at about the halfway mark of your page. Far enough down that users have read a decent amount, but not too far that you may have lost them.
Always follow these call to action banners with more content. It needs to act like a quick half-time pep talk before getting back into the good stuff, and then rounding out with another final call to action in the form of copy.
A/B test your website design and messaging.
2. Create a compelling reason to buy from your store.
3. Use bright colors to attract visitors, but keep the colors consistent throughout your website.
4. When designing a menu, make sure it is easy to use and doesn’t distract visitors from the main call to action.
5. Make your site easy to read by using sub-headers and bullet points to break up text into smaller chunks.
If you want your website to have success with conversions, the two most important page elements to include are a well-crafted message paired up with a strong call to action.
Without a powerful headline, you’re unlikely to attract the attention of website visitors. The message has to resonate well with website visitors, so it’s important to think about who is going to be landing on this page when writing this.
Your message should quickly summarize the solution or product you’re offering to the visitor and why it’s going to help them overcome a problem they are having.
After attracting enough attention to keep a visitor on your website, you’ll need a way to push them into converting.
Your call to action should work as a direct follow-up to your primary headline. Any text, including the words on the button itself, should reinforce that your offer is the best way for the visitor to get what they are looking for.
It takes about the first 3 seconds for the visitor to decide whether they want to continue on the website or exit.
Hence, it is important to avoid cluttering your website with multiple widgets, pop-ups, flashy graphics, etc., that can distract the visitors, resulting in a higher bounce rate.
Single column layouts and minimal widgets, and sticky pop-ups should be the ideal choice for designing a website.
Over 80% of the website traffic typically comes from mobile devices. Most of your prospects will ideally be visiting your website from their smartphone.
Furthermore, Google tends to prioritize websites that have a mobile responsive or mobile-friendly website for their SERP rankings. Hence, it is essential to create websites that are mobile optimized and suit different devices.
The key to maximizing conversions from a website is to use strong and compelling CTAs. The stronger your CTAs, the better are your chances of scoring a conversion.
In addition to that, ensure to place the CTAs prominently and use different color contrasts to make them pop which will help in encouraging visitors to take the desired action.
When it comes to design websites, it is no longer solely about how aesthetically pleasing and unique your site is because websites today, play a tremendous role in converting potential buyers into actual sales (hello digital world!).
To help you with the process of designing a website that increases conversion, consider these tips: Stay true to your brand. Reference your brand style guide to ensure you stay ‘on-brand.’
Remember that the best brands are those that are able to humanize and make themselves relatable- consistency here is the key which is why you absolutely need to reference your brand style guide during the design phase.
Design with the user experience in mind. Ensure your potential customers enjoy visiting your site and can navigate easily – this also means that you must consider the mobile experience as well (this is critical!).
Something as simple as whether a pop-up will help or hurt your chances of keeping a customer engaged should be discussed (test and learn). Minimize options whenever possible.
Choice overload can cause paralysis by analysis causing your potential customers to not make a choice.
Where possible, simplify your website messaging and solutions- if need be, elaborate once you get the customer further down the sales funnel with a phone or in-person conversation.
Creating a homepage that reads like a story seems to be an effective way to lead the viewer through your desired funnel right up to the point where they purchase what you’re selling.
To do this, you’ll need to meticulously plan and design a homepage that does the following:
Quickly explains who you are, what you do, and why they should care. Explain the problem you solve. Provide examples to make you appear reputable and legit.
Impress them with your advanced tech, expert team (or whatever your major selling point is).
Offer a deal that is ‘too good to be true’ and wrap it up with a call to action.
An expertly designed homepage can quickly increase your conversions and make a big difference in how a website visitor becomes a paying customer.
Negative Space is Your Friend
It’s tempting to offer as much information as possible on your website, but this might harm you. Negative space allows your pieces to breathe and guides the visitor’s attention around the screen.
Allow your viewers to scroll down the page to see each aspect independently.
Negative space does not just refer to the gap between your page’s major parts, such as the space between your header and your content or the space between your sidebar and your content.
It also refers to the space between all of the smaller components on your websites, such as the space between paragraphs, lines of text, and even letters.
Keeping all sorts of negative space on your site in mind helps to maintain everything readable, scannable, and easy on the eyes. All of this, of course, leads to greater conversions.
Make your call to action stand out.
It’s easy for signup buttons, buy now prompts, and other calls to action to get buried by other information, so you need to make sure everyone sees them.
The easiest way to do this is to make your calls to action a color that contrasts with your main theme.
The easiest way to do this is to make your calls to action a color that contrasts with your main theme. (I’ve included an example below. I like the way that the “See if you qualify button” contrasts against the greens.)
Another tactic, especially if you’re incorporating your call to action into a blog, is to style your call to action in a different font or font size than the rest of the text.
For instance, you might make your call to action bigger, or stylize it with an H3 header tag to ensure that everyone sees it.
For instance, you might make your call to action bigger, or stylize it with an H3 header tag to ensure that everyone sees it.
Keep in mind that if you make your call to action button the biggest thing on the page, your content is going to come across as too salesy, and readers are likely going to bounce from the site.
The trick is to incorporate your buttons and prompts into the content in a way that feels natural while also highlighting them.
1. Simplify by default
If it takes too long to find something, visitors will leave. Some websites are so packed with widgets, pop-ups, and flashing graphics that users lose interest and leave.
Sidebars, supplementary menus, and pop-ups may keep visitors on the page, but they deter action. If visitors are overwhelmed with options, they may do nothing.
2. Stunning graphics and visuals are in.
With people spending a whole day online each week, it’s vital that websites give a holistic experience. Hire an expert photographer for unique images.
Remember that visitors will notice if your photos are irrelevant. Also, remember to use appropriate ALT tags and captions for optimal website visibility
3. Design responsively
Mobile devices account for over 52% of all website traffic. Asia and Africa have significantly higher figures at 65.1% and 59.50%. Visitors will leave a website if the links are too small or the site doesn’t render appropriately.
Rather than establishing separate mobile and desktop websites, we propose embracing responsive web design. With responsive design, your website will appear great on any device.
4. Use heatmaps
Most web users skim a page from left to right and down, rather than reading every word. Heatmaps help you see where users interact with your site.
Thank you so much to all the experts that have contributed to this expert roundup! Please share this post with your friends and followers on social media.
There are risks involved with every aspect of our lives, but when it comes to dental procedures all risks must be shared with the patient in advance. Not only is this information essential to their decision of whether to go forward with the procedure, but it also can protect you from malpractice lawsuits if there is a negative outcome.
Once a patient has signed that they acknowledge the risks, it’s difficult for them to sue a medical professional for malpractice as they would need to prove medical negligence, lack of informed consent, negligent prescriptions, or improper use of medical devices.
While there’s no way to completely protect yourself, understanding dental malpractice can help you mitigate your risk. Let’s take a closer look at dental malpractice and 10 dental malpractice statistics.
Dental malpractice occurs when a dental professional performs a medical procedure incorrectly or fails to diagnose or treat a patient correctly. The term “malpractice” does not necessarily mean that the dentist is committing negligence specifically.
Instead, dental malpractice encompasses any type of dental treatment that deviates from acceptable standards outlined by the American Dental Association (ADA).
If a dentist is not performing the treatment according to accepted standards, then they can be held liable for medical malpractice or dental malpractice.
It is important to realize that the standard of care that a dentist should maintain is different for each patient. In order to determine if a dentist was negligent, one needs to look at the specific medical situation of the individual patient.
Negligence, as we know, is the failure to do something which a reasonably careful person would do under similar circumstances. It’s difficult to prove medical negligence as the patient must be able to show that there was some violation of duty on the part of the dentist.
Dental malpractice is considered to be a personal injury tort and therefore an actionable claim. A dental professional may be liable for medical malpractice or dental malpractice.
Working as a dentist always comes with liabilities and risks. It’s good to know what to avoid when dealing with patients and where to proceed with caution.
Here are 10 statistics about dental malpractice so you can be better-informed:
1. There were 3,833 medical malpractice claims in a five-year period ending in 2020. (Source)
Healthcare is a hot topic in recent times with the COVID-19 pandemic occupying media streams. With increased access to medical information, more people are becoming aware of the benefits of seeking medical care when ill. However, the increased awareness of the importance of healthcare has also increased patients’ sense of ownership in regard to their healthcare.
With increasing responsibilities being placed on healthcare and likely more people using healthcare services, the number of malpractice claims is likely to increase.
Suing a clinic is typically difficult as patients are made aware of risks when seeking medical care. Medical malpractice is within personal injury law and thus it’s up to patients to prove there was negligence, lack of informed consent, negligent prescriptions, or misuse of medical devices.
2. Approximately 8% of all medical malpractice trials involve dentists. (Source)
There aren’t nearly as many dental malpractice claims as there are medical malpractice claims. However, dental malpractice is still serious and patients can experience nerve damage, infections that may affect the brain, and other serious consequences.
The largest number of medical malpractice claims were issued for family practices where the most commonly reported allegation was a “failure to diagnose.”
Seemingly, a more common complaint about dental practices is prescribing overtreatment and fraudulent behaviors. It’s difficult to determine what constitutes necessary treatment, and it’s hard for patients to evaluate advice rationally when they lack the knowledge themselves and are trusting health professionals.
As regulations surrounding dentistry increase, it may be easier for lawyers to prove wrongdoing on the part of the dentist. The medical field is under increased scrutiny, and dentists and doctors alike are being evaluated strictly to ensure they are acting in the best interests of their patients and society.
3. The majority of allegations against dentists are treatment-related. Technical skill risk factors are the highest category with 85% of claim volume. (Source)
Treatment-related issues more often occur during procedures such as root canals, crowns, and implant procedures. These procedures contain more circumstances that can often contribute to allegations since they contain higher degrees of clinical judgment, technical skill, and patient behavioral issues.
When the claims are reviewed, nerve damage claims appear often during implant procedure malpractice suits.
4. 82% of treatment-related injuries are classified as medium clinical severity. (Source)
Injuries during dental procedures are often not life-threatening, instead of resulting in medium clinical severity. Usually, injuries are non-permanent and if they are permanent they do not disable the patient’s oral function.
Dentists can damage oral structure and tissue or cause infections. However, it is hard for patients to prove that the dentists caused the infection because the mouth is a hive for bacteria, so infections may be from an endemic source.
5. 10% of injuries involve high clinical severity outcomes. (Source)
Only 10% of injuries are highly severe, including disabling paresthesia, septic infections, or procedures that have a significant negative effect on tooth and jaw functionality.
Sepsis can be life-threatening and is an extreme response to an infection. It is difficult to sanitize the mouth area.
As well, anesthesia-related suits were some of the most costly due to high-severity patient injuries. Sedation and anesthesia are an important part of reducing pain and anxiety, and for dental patients with special needs.
Improper use of anesthesia can result in notable side effects like cardiovascular collapse, depressed breathing, mental or physical impairment due to hypoxic brain damage, and even death. Cases involving the misuse of anesthesia are rare but are high risk.
6. Dental implant cases are, on average, the most expensive to defend, and comprise 9% of case volume. They are more than twice as expensive to defend as root canal and crown-related procedure cases, which take up 19% and 17% of case volume, respectively. (Source)
More than 15 million root canals are performed each year in the U.S. The number of dental malpractice cases for root canals is a small fraction of the number that are performed.
Crowns and root canals go hand in hand and often occur in conjunction. Both of these are common procedures that many people in America undergo with little ill effect.
A dental implant is a more invasive procedure, and it is becoming an increasingly popular choice for replacing missing teeth. The need for dental implants is increasing as the population ages, with around 19% of Americans over age 65 missing at least one permanent tooth. The patient risk with dental implants is higher than root canals and crowns.
Dental implants are becoming preferred over dentures or bridgework, and it’s expected that these trends will continue as Americans receive more dental coverage.
7. Cases involving nerve damage, while accounting for just 10% of patient outcomes, are among the most expensive on average, with total dollars paid more than three times that of damaged teeth and more than twice that of infection-related outcomes. (Source)
Nerve damage can occur during root canals, implants, orthognathic surgery, and during extraction of impacted molars. While it’s uncommon, during these dental procedures the inferior alveolar nerve and the lingual nerve can be injured.
This leads to loss of feeling in a patient’s lip, tongue, or mucosa. This can result in severe social difficulties as the patient may experience loss of taste and difficulty speaking.
Since nerve damage has a profound effect on the patient’s life, it’s clear that payouts would be more costly for dental practices. Nerve damage can be alleviated with microsurgical repair and many cases of nerve damage can be treated.
8. With approximately 125,000 dentists in active practice, approximately 2,000 (1.6%) will face a civil malpractice case in any given year. (Source)
A medical malpractice lawsuit is initiated when a patient sues a doctor or other health care provider. A malpractice lawsuit is filed in state court. Dental malpractice lawsuits are also referred to as medical malpractice lawsuits.
Certainly, most of these cases are resolved without the need for trial. But, when litigation does occur, it can be costly, time-consuming, and emotionally draining.
9. On average, dentists can expect to be personally charged with three to five legal cases over the course of their careers. (Source)
Dentists in America can opt out of carrying a malpractice insurance policy. Since the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) in 2010, more patients received health insurance and there has been a rise in some forms of dental treatment due to increased coverage.
Notably, there was a rise in the number of tooth implants. This is speculated to have been caused by lower-income individuals who previously could not afford dental care seeking treatment.
As the sudden increase in insured individuals potentially strains system availability and increases malpractice claims, malpractice insurance premiums have seen some increases. So, while dentists can currently expect to be charged between three to five times over their careers, it’s likely that those numbers will increase.
Other professionals who are employed by or contracted by a dentist can also be held liable for malpractice. For example, patients can sue dental hygienists for failing to keep medical history current and leaking private data.
Typically, dentists are more likely to face cases with higher payouts due to the nature of their job and level of responsibility.
10. The average paid indemnity for a dental or group practice is nearly $81,000, and the average defense costs are just over $31,000. (Source)
The median annual income of dentists in America was $164,010 in 2020 with 139,200 dentists in America. Successful malpractice claims can result in average costs of $112,000, which is a large part of a dentist’s salary.
Thankfully, dentists can choose from a variety of insurance companies to protect themselves from large payouts. Some popular choices for liability insurance for dental practices include MedPro Group, Professional Solutions, CNA, and Professional Protector Plan for Dentists.
The number of malpractice claims with a paid indemnity was 140 in a five-year period ending in 2020. Though the yearly rate of cases may seem low, the risks of a given dentist facing a successful malpractice lawsuit throughout their career are increased.
It’s unlikely for a dentist to be successfully sued for malpractice, however, all dentists likely will face litigation at some point in their career. As well, the cost of malpractice insurance for dentists has increased over the past few years.
With the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), more people have health insurance and this could strain the system. As a result, malpractice could become a more prominent issue for dentists in the coming years.
Dentists and other dental healthcare professionals with malpractice insurance are financially protected when they are sued by patients. Without insurance coverage, malpractice lawsuits can result in a large financial loss for a dentist and can result in the dentist being unable to practice.
Some patients seek dentists that have general liability insurance for added security.
Dentists should note that malpractice cases are often treatment-related and the cases with the highest payouts are typically due to medical errors in more invasive procedures and the use of anesthesia.
Dental health professionals should always put patient care at the forefront of their business. If their patients’ needs are the primary concern, it’s unlikely that they will face successful malpractice suits.
Dentistry’s top marketing company.
“Backlinks” in SEO terminology are when another website links to your website.
Earning backlinks is an essential part of competitive SEO campaigns, so you might wonder why you haven’t heard about this term before.
Most orthodontist and dental websites don’t require backlinks in order to rank well in less competitive markets. Blogging and on-page SEO can help you gain traction by covering your SEO fundamentals.
But for those who are in highly competitive markets, it helps to have others cite you as an authoritative source of information. Let’s talk about what this looks like:
You’re familiar with Google My Business and Facebook and perhaps even less well-known websites such as BBB or Yelp. These websites allow you to link back to your dental or orthodontic website by listing your name, address, and phone number along with your hours of operation and directions to your practice. When you link to your website, this counts as a backlink. This is a standard form of backlinking that every dental professional can expect from an SEO company.
However, there is another style of backlinks that causes a much more competitive advantage. It is when you are able to be linked back to your website by becoming an authoritative source of information. Simply put, when someone editorially links to your website as a supportive resource, Google notices you being editorially cited.
The more prominent a source that mentions you and links to one of your webpages, the more Google believes you must be an authority on the matter that you’re being linked about.
For instance, Kreeb Family Dentistry was cited as a dentistry expert. It’s not a far stretch for dentists to be a dentistry experts, but having other websites publish an article on dental, orthodontic, or health-related topics and then link to your website is different. The link allows Google the opportunity to see who is generating the most link-worthy (or useful) content.
Creating content in the form of writing, photography, and video is proven to increase your SEO presence and help you get found by prospective patients. But with all the unique content out there, some competitive markets leave Google wondering who the best dentist to rank really is.
When Google sees a unique, helpful blog post or another web page on your website is linked to by journalists, bloggers, and other content creators, Google shows preference towards you for earning backlinks
Google’s algorithm, designed originally by Google’s founders, was from academia. In academia, the studies and journals, and research papers that were published had an authority scale. That authority scale was based on how many times the article was “cited.” Google took this lesson to their search engine algorithm by deciding who ranks at the top should be linked, or cited, the most.
Over time, the algorithm has become more sophisticated regarding how much weight it gives various links. Working with a seasoned SEO analyst can help you decide whether or not what’s holding you back is actually a lack of backlinks. This applies to both dental SEO and orthodontic SEO.
I talk to dentists who are interested in getting more new patients every day. One common theme I’ve noticed with dentists who are unhappy with their current or previous marketing provider is that there was always a lack of sufficient research before signing the contract.
Many dentists feel that signing a marketing contract is the problem, but upon closer inspection, I’ve discovered that in every case where a dentist regrets signing a marketing contract, it involves little to no research before signing. The research, should it be sufficient, will actually cause many dentists who think they want a particular kind of marketing to learn it won’t help them reach their goals. For instance, ⅗ dentists who contact me about SEO for their dental practice website have found that I don’t recommend my SEO services automatically. That’s because the research I perform disqualifies the dentist for SEO.
Just as not everyone who calls your practice is qualified for one particular procedure or another, not every dentist should do SEO or Google Ads or any other specific kind of marketing avenue.
The goal isn’t to do a particular kind of marketing tactic. The goal is to get you more and better patients. That’s why my marketing analysis is such a critical part of my initial process. Without a marketing analysis that turns over every stone, we’re basically flying blind as to what kind of marketing should work best for you.
Sometimes dental professionals think I only do SEO for dentists. This isn’t the case, but I do have a strategy that revolves around it. I do many forms of marketing, including but not limited to SEO, Google Ads or PPC marketing, dental website design, social media marketing, and various forms of advertising. But why should I offer any of these to you when we haven’t had an opportunity to see which one is right for you? I’ve noticed is that many marketing companies who offer product A always seem to think product A will get you the new patients that you want. Somehow, they just seem to know. Every. Time.
What if we started with what tends to offer the highest ROI and then used a process of elimination to rule it out, given evidence that indicates as much? What if we used actual logic instead of sales pitches? What if you thought of SEO in the same way as other decisions you make in your life…fully informed? What if we did the equivalent of an initial oral exam, only for marketing instead of dentistry?
With these two steps in my marketing analysis, you can find yourself fully informed about what course to take. Just like a new patient who accepts an initial oral exam.
The patient calls your office and demands “just a cleaning.” What do you do? Every office has its own policy, but the vast majority of dental offices will instruct the patient that while meeting with a dental hygienist is a great idea for overall dental health, they need an initial oral exam in order to have a complete understanding of what’s going on in their mouth.
Self-diagnosis can lead to mistakes by dental patients. Without expert research by an actual dentist, patients lead themselves to all sorts of erroneous conclusions about their dental health. The same can be done in dental SEO.
In this article, we’ll talk about the two questions few dental marketing companies ask before selling SEO. We’ll talk about how to use common sense when assessing a dental SEO company. Finally, we’ll discuss how you can perform the equivalent of an initial oral exam, but for marketing instead of dentistry. By the end of this article, you’ll realize what dental SEO companies have been doing wrong all these years, and how you can virtually guarantee new patients
We’re all familiar with the patient who wants “just a cleaning.” No initial oral exam. No need to talk to a real dentist. No interest in diagnosis. No interest in prognosis. No interest in perio issues. No interest in hearing gobbledegook about good oral health care. They want a cleaning, and all your years of clinical research and experience are flushed down the toilet, regardless of the complexities going on in their mouth.
You can probably remember some of these patients because they might name a tooth number, say something like “occlusion” in the middle of a sentence, and overall just know better than the dentist who “wants a new boat.”
The irony of this scenario is that you are actually doing a major disservice (and possibly harm) to this patient by ignoring potential dangers, yet you ultimately have to decide if allowing them to do “just a cleaning” is the right thing to do.
Some dentists would try to persuade the patient to take a more balanced, informed decision and allow for an initial oral exam. Others would quickly dismiss the patient. Regardless of what you might do, this scenario is as relatable as it is important to consider.
In dental SEO, I see this kind of “just a cleaning” logic applied all the time. Only, instead of being an arrogant know-it-all, the vast majority of dentists are told by marketing companies to suspend their logic when considering marketing decisions. In particular, I see a lot of marketing companies who sell sell sell without any process which mirrors an initial oral exam. Dentists are logical enough to realize something is missing, but when every marketing company you talk to is telling you the same thing, it seems like there is only one option. Just buy whatever it is that they’re selling.
After all, you contacted them so that you can get new patients, right? You do want to grow your practice, right? Sales pitches are so abundant that until you hear a more logical option, it can be easy to become overwhelmed and cave into the belief that this must be the only way available to you.
But, you know deep down that the scientific method that you’re used to has been suspended. Just because Dental Marketing Guy offers SEO has nothing to do with you. That’s when you realize that something is missing. The equivalent of an initial oral exam, but for dental SEO.
Over the years, I had great success with doing SEO for dentists. My services speak for themselves, as I’ve ranked some of the most competitive keywords in existence in the dental space. Even ranking #1 for “dental SEO expert,” despite a 3-year layoff from doing my own SEO. The reviews on the Dental Town forums are plentiful, and I always appreciate dentists like you leaving me glowing reviews about the results I’ve brought you.
But there are a handful of cases that didn’t go my way. Unlike other marketing companies, I don’t shy away from my past failures. Few as they may be, I learned powerful lessons in each and every case. Lessons that allowed me to think in a new way. Lessons that took my mindset beyond just being good at SEO. I needed something more powerful. I needed to apply the scientific method to everything I do as a dental marketing specialist. Simply being good at something isn’t enough. Just as you may be confident in your clinical skills, imagine how your hands would be tied if you disallowed yourself to do a comprehensive oral exam. You may even call it a “fool’s errand,” and you’d be right.
When I talk about SEO which is “doomed for failure” in the subheading of this article, I’m talking about SEO which doesn’t include such comprehensive research.
Comprehensive research in dental marketing is that which turns over every stone by assessing the myriads of factors that might impact both your level of risk and also your potential upside. It’s taking a detailed look at exactly what you’re up against and determining what your viable options are, and also what I’d recommend you do if I were in your shoes. The same way you do for patients who are wise enough to accept an initial oral exam.
In fact, the initial oral exam is so paramount as the first step for any logical dentist, that it’s usually required as an official policy. Such is the case with my company when it comes to what I call a “marketing analysis.”
My marketing analysis, much like an initial oral exam, involves a thorough step-by-step process that is flexible enough to allow for new findings when the situation calls for additional research in any one particular area. This flexibility is critical so that you don’t create any misunderstandings or avoid any pitfalls, hidden dangers, or missed opportunities.
My marketing analysis has a basic framework, which I’ll share with you in the form of two questions. Without the answer to these two questions, we’re just flying blind.
In my marketing analysis, which you can learn more about in the first-ever dental SEO course, we go over the entire step-by-step process which allows me to determine risk and opportunity with SEO, and then eventually all marketing strategies outside SEO available to you.
If you check out my SEO course, you’ll find expert help from some of the best and brightest minds in the SEO industry. *Notice I didn’t say dental SEO industry*
The best people in SEO. Period.
For now, let’s talk about the logic behind these two questions we seek to answer in our marketing analysis.
The first question, asked another way is: Suppose we eliminated everything we know about logic and just approached SEO with a “just a cleaning” approach. I also have referred to this in years past as the “pay and pray” approach. You just decide that The Dental Marketing Guy has done a good job in the past, and therefore he must do a good job in the future. You partner with me to offer you SEO because it worked for some other dentist and every other marketing company says you absolutely need SEO to compete in dentistry.
What would happen?
Would you get 100 additional new patients? Would you get 0? Would you get 30? Would you get 10?
Until we can answer this question, we really have no idea what we’re getting into. This is the madness that currently is being offered to dentists who look for SEO services.
In fact, it’s so mad that if someone tried to sell you any other form of dental marketing this way, you’d immediately know to walk away.
Imagine trying to get TV ads, but there is no discussion of how many people watch the channel at the time your ad was to appear. Or a direct mail campaign, which never specifies how many houses you’ll hit. Or a billboard at an unknown location, with unknown traffic levels. One of the first things you’d ask about a radio ad is the number of listeners when your ad appears. Even Google Ads and FB Ads provide data, albeit it may not always be accurate when it comes to FB Ads.
The more you think about my marketing analysis, the more you realize that it’s not just a preferred way of approaching marketing…it’s the only logical way.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. You can get the number of searches (often called “search volume” by industry leaders) from many tools which I go over in my dental SEO course. It’s commonly available, and even some dental marketing companies I speak to offer some ballpark idea of the data to dentists seeking SEO Which, to their credit, is far more than most dental marketing agencies out there selling SEO to dentists every day.
The first question could also be asked as simply: what’s in it for you?
But even armed with this knowledge of search volume, and even when you use my formula for boiling down the likely number of new patients you’ll get from a given search volume, there is a much bigger piece of the puzzle missing.
The second question is where the rubber really meets the road! With this second question, you can’t get some SEO newbie. You need a seasoned SEO analyst who is familiar with identifying risks and forming a prognosis that is both accurate and reliable.
The second question, asked another way is simply: what are other dentist’s websites doing differently from yours? Why, specifically, are they ranking above you?
The formula for assessing this is simple yet complex. The complex part is knowing which things to identify as SEO factors, and also knowing how much weight to give each factor in determining why other dentist’s websites rank above you on Google.
The simple part is going line by line and discovering this data.
Just like an initial oral exam, looking at the mouth is simple, but diagnosis and prognosis require a professional clinician.
One thing to keep in mind is that you cannot control some factors. Start-up dental practices, for instance, can’t control whether or not they are getting into the Google race 12 years after most practices in their neighborhood.
Domain age is but one factor outside our control. And we’d be foolish to ignore it just because of our lack of control.
Among factors that are within our control, we have options based on the competition level. We are then able to determine how aggressively we need to approach SEO, if at all. If SEO is a good idea in the first place, or if we should move to other marketing avenues.
The bottom line is there are two types of marketing philosophies, and they are both legit. I write about the two major marketing philosophies in this article.
The two major marketing philosophies are the process of diversification and the process of elimination.
This marketing analysis is based on the marketing philosophy of the process of elimination. We start with SEO, which is what I know best. Then we move on to the next option, but only after safely eliminating SEO as a viable marketing option for you.
Until SEO can be eliminated, based on a discussion with you about your goals and what type of marketing you’ve tried in the past, my opinion is that you’re going to waste some money with the diversification approach.
This doesn’t mean the diversification approach is wrong. It simply means that as I’ve been doing dental SEO over the years I’ve found the diversification approach to be best suited towards certain types of businesses, and although there are definitely exceptions to the rule where I have moved into the diversification approach, I believe that for the overwhelming majority of dental practice owners, my usual approach of using the marketing analysis in an elimination sequence is far superior because it respects your marketing budget.
Speaking of marketing budgets for dentists, if there is one thing you should take away from this article, it’s simple:
Don’t spend one penny on dental marketing until you’ve done a marketing analysis. Not one penny on a website. Not one penny on a domain name purchase. Not one red cent.
Unless, of course, you really are just looking for cleaning. Then, I’d recommend contacting someone other than a marketing company.
Learn more about dental SEO.
That is right. You will have fewer page views in those one-to-two seconds, decrease customer satisfaction, and see fewer conversions.
Today’s consumers have high demands that they expect, especially regarding the speed at which they browse the web.
They want an unhindered user experience to quickly and effortlessly find what they are looking for on the web.
Fast loading websites have become a requirement to remain competitive and not lose visitors to your website.
Before making changes to your website, you will need to measure its performance first. Several tools on the market will enable you to test and measure your homepage speed, including:
This article will use the GTmetrix tool and The Dental Marketing Guy website to measure, analyze, and recommend improvements.
You can either use the public version of GTmetrix or register for a free account. The public version always uses the same configurations.
With a free account, you can change the conditions, such as the testing location and connection speed, for a more accurate result based on your target audience.
Start by heading over to the GTmetrix home page, entering the URL of the site you want to test, and clicking Analyze.
GTmetrix generates a performance report with Web Vitals and a Grade when you run your speed test. The GTmetrix grade is derived from two sources:
Web Vitals, introduced by Google in 2020, is a standardized set of user experience and web performance metrics.
GTmetrix focuses primarily on the following Web Vitals metrics:
In our example, using Dental Marketing Guy, the GTmetrix speed test results are:
Now let us see where we can make improvements on specific metrics. Boost Your site speed with these five ways to cut the time it takes your home page to load.
When visitors land on your home page, their browser requests to access your site’s content. However, if your website has excessive JS, CSS, HTML, and other assets, the page load is reduced because they take longer to process.
Minification refers to stripping out unnecessary characters in your site’s code and does not change its functionality.
Examples include removing unnecessary line breaks, white spaces, comments, redundant code, and characters.
WordPress (WP) users can use a plugin such as W3 Total Cache to minify JS files, CSS, HTML, and other assets.
Non-WP users can use online tools to minify codes.
Assets refer to elements such as images and favicons. Naturally, you want to make them as small as possible and compress them without sacrificing quality.
Minification increases page speed by making the transfers smaller and more efficient. In addition, GTmetrix triggers structure audits after scanning your site.
The audits are based on Google’s best practices for optimal front-end website performance. They are assessed and ranked according to their impact on your performance and how well you adhere to the best practice standards.
Even though the structure audits do not directly affect your Performance score, they can improve overall page loading time.
Click on the down-arrow to open the specific suggestions for each element. GTmetrix suggests focusing on this top issue section first as they have the most considerable impact on page speed and performance.
Each time a page on your website redirects somewhere else, it prolongs the HTTP request and response process while reducing loading times.
There will be some situations where a redirect is necessary. However, remove any unnecessary redirects on your site to increase the speed at which pages are loaded.
Dental Marketing Guy has no issues with too many page redirects.
WP users can use a plugin to reduce redirects. However, GTmetrix recommends redirecting necessary URLs on the server-side because they are cacheable, fast, and universally implemented.
Image source GTmetrix
Browser caching can significantly improve page load times by asking website visitors to save and reuse your site’s files.
It works by enabling browsers to store various information and files, such as JS files, stylesheets, and images, so that the entire page does not need to reload every time the same visitor lands on it.
In our example, the impact is low under the structure tab for cache policy. However, GTmetrix still offers recommendations for improvement.
GTmetrix identifies a resource as cacheable if it meets all of the following criteria:
GTmetrix will flag all the static resources that need attention and improvement when you are not leveraging browser caching.
Click Audit to see the list of resources with transfer size and the cache time-to-live (TTL).
When your site does not have the correct HTTP cache headers on the server, site speed is affected and slows down.
Many site owners struggle with leveraging browser caching, especially when it occurs on resources you do not control.
For example, if your Audit shows a third-party ad network as a cache issue, you can do nothing as it is not a resource you control.
WP users can use one of the many powerful caching plugins, such as WP Rocket, WP Super Cache, and W3 Total Cache, to optimize and create lightning speed page loading times.
TTFB is the total amount of time browsers need to wait before receiving the first byte of a response request.
It refers to how long it takes for a page to start loading. The metric is made up of the Redirection Duration + Connection Duration + Backend Duration and is a key indicator of web performance.
A slow TTFB might result in website visitors only seeing a blank page while the browser waits for your server to respond.
Requests for your web page from users are sent to the server. The server, in turn, generates an appropriate response and sends back your page resources to the user.
Below are a few ways to improve TTFB:
Using the Waterfall tab in GTmetrix, TTFB is measured from the test’s start until right before receiving the page requested.
One of the best ways to reduce TTFB is to enable browser caching.
A CDN is a network of servers with nodes located in different regions. The servers are spread around the world.
The benefit of using a CDN is to reduce load times by caching your page’s static content, such as JS files, images, and CSS.
When a visitor lands on your site, resources are served from the cache of the closest CDN node. This is instead of loading resources from your original server.
Leveraging a CDN will improve page loading speed by hosting and delivering copies of your website’s static content from servers located in various locations across the globe.
It works by reducing the distance user-requested data has to travel between your servers and the visitors’ browsers.
Image source GTmetrix
GTmetrix will look at page request response headers, identify those not served from a known CDN, and trigger an audit.
While CDNs can significantly improve website performance across different locations, they are not essential to your website’s functionality.
Whether or not to use a CDN will depend upon your performance goals and the location of your target audience.
We cannot overstate how critical site speed is to success. You must regularly monitor page loading speed and make improvements where necessary.
As we have shown above, several factors affect home page loading speeds. Therefore, using a tool to help identify issues and provide valuable suggestions on areas to optimize performance is invaluable.
Be sure to look beyond just the scores. Instead, do a deep dive into the specific aspects of your website’s performance that have the most impact on your page load times.
Do not forget that every second it takes your web page to load significantly increases visitors’ chances to leave.
For help with your dental website design let’s talk!
In addition to the obvious SEO factor, your dental website design – or any web design for business – must be optimal for attracting search engines and humans.
Getting a visitor to your site is only the first step. The next and most crucial step is to keep them there long enough to read the content and take action.
Better search rankings are associated with original and relevant content and the website’s overall design and aesthetics.
Think about the process of how users search for content. They start by typing keywords or phrases into a search engine to find the information they are looking to find.
For example, if a dentist is looking to build a website, he would type “how to build a dental website”.
The best-optimized websites for accessibility, design, and content will appear higher in the search engine results pages.
The user will choose one of the sites, almost always on the first page, and then land on the corresponding website.
If they find it too confusing, irrelevant, or cannot quickly locate what they came to see, they will leave the site very quickly and move onto the next result.
Alternatively, if a website owner’s SEO optimization efforts align with the UI and UX, its rankings will increase.
Below are the top ten design tips for ranking in Google.
Most people do not have the patience to wait for a website or page to load, and neither do search engines.
This is why how fast web pages load is still an essential factor in how Google ranks sites. Pages that take too long to load result in high bounce rates, affects user experience, and hurts rankings.
Optimizing your website for speed enhances user experience and helps boost search engine rankings.
The time it takes for a specific page on your website to load when a user lands on it is referred to as page speed.
Numerous factors affect page load speed, including the:
Not only do the above examples affect how fast a web a page loads they also impact UX. If a page takes too long to load, users will leave the site.
It might surprise you to know that even a second or two can significantly impact how long a user stays on a web page.
Research conducted by Google shows a 32% increase in the probability of a visitor bouncing off a site when page load time increases from one to three seconds.
Engagement, conversions, and increased rankings are all affected by slow loading web pages.
How should you design your website for optimal page loading speed? To focus on optimizing page speed, you first need to measure their current performance.
There are several free and simple-to-use tools to test your web page speed, including PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, and GTmetrix.
Web design elements are often the culprit of slow loading web pages. The good news is that there are several actionable steps you can take to make improvements. We have listed a few below.
It becomes a balancing act between enhancing web pages’ appeal with engaging visuals and increasing loading times.
Professional services sites, such as dental sites, benefit from showing smiling patients and friendly staff faces.
Luckily, you can have the best of both worlds by optimizing and compressing image files. The objective is to use the smallest file size possible without compromising quality.
If you use WordPress, there are a variety of plugins to optimize images, such as WP-Optimize and Smush.
Several sites on the Web will reduce image file sizes to varying degrees for those using a different CMS, such as TinyPng, Squoosh, and Online Image Compressor.
Be sure that you are using the right image format for your needs. For example, if you need to use transparent images, the PNG form will offer that option but is a larger file than the JPG format.
Resize and optimize your images before uploading them to your site. You want to use the smallest and final image size on your web pages.
When someone lands on your website, what have you gained if they leave without taking any action? If you want conversions, you must use strong calls-to-action (CTAs).
A CTA is usually displayed as a text link or button that asks the website visitor to click the link and act. It should be action-driven, specific, and offer value. Examples include:
The bottom line is if you do not tell your website visitor precisely what you want them to do, they will not do anything. Look at CTAs as a bridge between sales and marketing.
You spend time and resources to get more exposure and engagement for your brand to convert visitors into paying customers.
The last thing you want is to turn away potential customers because your CTAs are not effective, persuasive, or convincing.
Ensure that your CTAs clearly outline what is in it for the website visitor. If they are self-serving or do not meet your target audience’s needs, they will not resonate with them and will be ineffective.
Other suggestions for creating and using effective CTAs include making sure they:
Below are several examples of clear and compelling calls-to-action.
Dropbox uses a clean and straightforward design. The “Sign up for free” CTA not only stands out but is also available in two locations on the page.
Image source Dropbox
Netflix anticipates a fear many users have when trying out a service. That fear is the difficulty in cancelling if they do not like it.
Image source Netflix
Notice how simple it is to get started using Netflix and how the CTA lets visitors know that they can cancel their membership at any time if they choose to do so.
What dentist does not want more patients? This clear CTA addresses precisely what dental professionals want.
The CTA above tells site visitors exactly what they will achieve. It is minimalist and visually compelling.
By using a caching system, your website will only need to call up and create the content once rather than every time an individual user lands on one of your web pages.
Some content management systems offer static caching features to convert dynamic pages to static HTML files, thereby reducing server processing that is not necessary.
For example, WordPress offers numerous caching plugins. And Drupal has a Dynamic Page Cache module in its core.
When one page on your site redirects to a different page, it prolongs the HTTPS request, response processes, and reduces loading times.
There will be times when it may be necessary to use redirects, such as when you are moving to a new domain.
Try your best to minimize your use of or limit redirects.
CSS and JavaScript delivery are essential because they also optimize the critical render path. The critical render paths are the events that occur in the background before a web page is displayed.
It is also instrumental in determining what events need to occur to show your web page’s section above-the-fold.
Remove characters, spaces, comments, and any other elements that are not necessary to run your site to reduce these files’ size.
You should also minimize the number of tags you use when writing code. For example, instead of using alt tags, such as headers and bold commands, use CSS to define the header type and style property.
This will not only reduce CSS and HTML documents, it will also make your site easier to maintain.
Google pays attention to other sites that link to and from yours, as well as to websites linked to from yours.
Your internal links are treated by Google as outbound links and counted as votes for your page. Therefore, you should carefully plan your internal links to ensure they lead to other relevant pages on your website.
Internal links are hyperlinks that point to a different page on the same website. They are usually used in the main navigation of a site because they:
When creating internal links, use description keywords and phrases for the anchor text and be sure you link to a page about the same or relevant content.
In addition to internal linking, be sure to include external links to relevant authority sites to increase brand exposure and improve your brand authority.
Clean and straightforward navigation leads to seamless and straightforward user experiences. Search engine crawlers will also have fewer barriers and URLs to dig through to find relevant and valuable information.
When users have positive UX and search engines have less work to do, your website ranking will increase.
Try to keep your URLs short and easy to remember and limit the number of categories you use.
We already know that useful, relevant, and unique content is critical to increase traffic and boost search rankings in Google.
However, that is only half the battle. In a perfect world, your content’s quality would be a magnet to attract a targeted audience interested in what you write and share it with others.
However, what sounds great in theory does not work in real life. This is where content hubs can have a significant positive impact.
A content hub is a branded microsite resource where users can find curated, branded, user-generated, social media, or any other type of content related to a particular subject to increase brand awareness and reach a wider audience.
They let Google and your target audience know which pieces of content are the most relevant and valuable on your site.
An effective content hub strategy lets your audience and search engines know that you understand your target market’s interests and needs.
Like a magazine, hubs enable readers to delve deeper into a narrow topic to explore, discover the latest trends, conduct research, and gain new insights.
When your content is included in a hub, it gives your brand authority as a thought leader in your niche.
Consistently publishing quality content will drive traffic, increase search engine rankings, and improve cross-channel brand visibility.
Hubs increase the chances of visitors viewing multiple pages of content because many are linked together.
Not only does this help SEO, but it also improves the user experience and increases engagement by showing multiple pieces of content to an interested visitor.
Content hubs help get attention in a crowded field. They work because they are structured and help you arrange internal links to let Google know which of your pages are the most important.
By offering a curated collection of content, hubs enable readers to quickly find what they are looking for without searching for it.
Below are several examples of successful content hubs.
American Express provides a forum or hub to educate businesses with tips, advice, and insights into adapting to changing times.
Image source American Express
Unilever’s All Things Hair is a content hub that delivers beauty tips and insights for all types of hair.
Image source All Things Hair
It includes different categories with information about everything related to hair, including hair color, hair care solutions, and hairstyles.
The categories are then broken down further into subcategories, making it easy for users to find exactly what they are looking for to make informed decisions about purchases they can make on the site.
The Etsy Journal features content in categories such as home décor, event decorating and fashion.
Image source Etsy Journal
All the tips, advice, and ideas tie back to where users can purchase items through the Etsy marketplace.
It also highlights many shops that sell their merchandise on Etsy while engaging readers with relevant and useful information.
According to Google’s John Mueller, headings and title tags no longer play the same role they used to in ranking websites.
H1 headings are no more important than H2 headings as a ranking factor. He explains that Google reads headlines to get an understanding of what the topic following the headings is about.
Rather than factor into a website’s rankings, header tags indicate hierarchical information levels and proper web content organization.
For example, H3 headers are sub-topics of previous H2 headers which are sub-topics of previous H1 headers.
One headline type is no more important than another when it comes to ranking. Mueller also explains that using keywords in headings will not necessarily increase rankings.
Their main purpose is to explain what the text and page content under them is about. So, headline tags still play an important role in communicating to Google what your content is about.
From a UX experience, headers break up large chunks of text to make it less overwhelming and easier to read.
So, header tags do indirectly influence rankings by providing keyword-rich context about the page content and making it easier for your site visitors to read.
When SEO is done correctly and built into the web design process, it will add value to the user by providing a better experience, making the site search-engine friendly, and improving your business’s online marketing goals.
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On-page SEO is easily the most important, long-term means for getting your site to rank in Google. You don’t need pages and pages of information, analysis and hours of training. You only need to know a few on-site optimization techniques and to be able to implement them consistently throughout your site.
We have spent years implementing on-page SEO for clients and enjoying the success that comes with ranking in Google through basic and advanced on-page search engine strategies. Here, we distill the 7 most important website SEO strategies. Strategies that deliver website design and content that Google rewards and which site-users appreciate.
On-site or on-page search engine optimization means developing a website that:
Taking this basic definition of on-site SEO and applying it to each area of your site is the art of on-page search optimization.
Here are the 7 most important on-page elements that you should apply your search engine optimization strategy to.
Many site developers and SEO agencies spend a frantic amount of time trying to unload a bag of golden keywords. Keywords do matter. Google reads your words and uses them to determine the purpose of the site.
But Google is also interested in the quality of the overall content.
So, do your research, but keep it simple.
Pro-Tip: The best way to find out which pages are optimised in a way that Google rewards in its rankings is to search Google. Forget all the technique. Type in the thing you want to find and go and examine the pages that appear in the top five results. These are sites that Google is rewarding. If you want to compete, you need to imitate them – then go one or two steps beyond.
As a general rule, use your most important keyword (the basic purpose of your page) early on in your content, whether it’s the URL, title, meta tags or alt tags in images. Also, be sure to use naturally occurring variations. Google gets variations in natural language and so you should use it.
Take a look at on-page optimization task number two. Notice the natural way that the URL’s are structured and the way that they naturally incorporate the most relevant keywords for the site as well as each page.
Your URL, or web address, should reflect the exact nature and purpose of the page you are building.
For example, service pages that promote “dental hygiene” should include the phrase in the URL itself.
Example: https://www.yourdentalwebsite/dental-hygiene/
The structure of your URL should be as simple and as clear as possible.
Pro-Tip: Google grades the importance of words from left to right. So, the words you are wanting to rank for should be at the start of the structure when it comes to your URL. This is not so critical for the body of the text, but very important for page titles and URL’s.
At this point, keywords and keyword research are not the most important thing. The most important thing is to state what your page is actually about in the most natural and common way so that a user could tell what was on the page by the URL alone.
Inner pages that publish articles and other content should be kept equally simple and straightforward. Your use of keywords should flow naturally from the purpose of the page.
Example: https://www.yourdentalwebsite/how-to-maintain-good-dental-hygiene/
Your website should be mapped out from the beginning with your subject matter (keywords) in mind so that each URL is unique and logical.
This will also inform your menu structure later on.
Headings and titles are read by Google in order to understand the main idea, as well as the subsequent (and related) topics within the main idea.
Just as Google reads left to right and orders the earlier words in a URL as more important, so too with titles and headings. Google considers the title most important, followed by the sub-headings that follow.
To help structure this both for users and Google, the H1-H4 structure is typically used in order.
Pro Tip: You do not (and probably should not) need to use every conceivable heading style. The important thing is to keep the structure consistent across the site.
Don’t be too concerned about keyword research. Your keywords will naturally appear through these headings.
Example:
<H1>A Guide to Dental Hygiene</H1>
<URL>https://www.yourdentalwebsite/a-guide-to-dental-hygiene/<URL>
Your sub-heads might look like this (or be entire articles themselves)
The important thing above is to avoid switching up and down in your use of titles. Don’t move from H2 to H4, then up to H1, etc. Make the title and subtitles logical and sequential.
When setting up your site, do not neglect the importance of proper image attributes. While Google is learning to read images more and more, it still relies on image tags and image data, written into the image file, to determine the subject matter.
Alt tags and title tags should be optimized using naturally-related keywords They should not be stuffed with the same phrase over and over but should genuinely reflect the image content and purpose.
For an easy-to-use site design platforms like WordPress, this is as simple as entering in the appropriate phrase into the image properties screen or text editor and would look something like this:
<p><img src=”https://images.dental-floss.jpg” alt=”How to floss your teeth” title=”Best Teen Flossing Techniques” width=”800″ height=”533″ /></p>
Don’t be lazy about this. Optimize every image you can for the page it appears on.
You should be optimizing all kinds of rich media, including video, infographics, charts, drawings and more.
As noted above, your actually written content should follow a natural sequence, from title to subtitle, from heading to the subheading.
The flow of content should be equally natural in the body of the text. On-page optimization for the body of the content includes:
One way to think through your content optimization is to ask, “Is it easy to read”? Is it engaging? Is it spaced well for online viewing?.
The use of bullet points, summaries, numbering and proper paragraphing are all things that Google looks at to determine the quality of the page beyond the actual words used.
Pro Tip: Remember, Google is in the business of satisfying user queries with reliable results. Think about users and you will be thinking line with the kind of on-page optimization that Google rewards the most.
View the Quick On-Page SEO Checklist for Your Site NowGoogle notices the company you keep. Many people are under the false impression that to link out is to rob yourself of DR (domain rating) or DA (domain authority) or, what used to be called, “link juice”.
There is some truth in this, but it is a qualified truth. Just as Google gives priority to the first words in a URL and titles, so it will invariably give priority to the first outbound link, a second outbound link, etc.
For that reason, you should link to a relevant page on your own site before you go linking out to other sites. Google treats your internal links as outbound links and counts links as votes. A vote for your own page first makes sense.
Beyond that, be generous and link to authority sites where it is relevant and feel free to cite authoritative sources.
When linking internally, try and keep your links highly relevant and heading in one direction. Creating a content hub will help you achieve this and increases the authority of your most important pages over time.
In short, you want to be seen and associated with the right crowd. Continuing our examples within dentistry, it makes sense for you to link out to high-authority medical institutes and brands. It doesn’t make as much sense linking your site to a site that sells mouth guards for footballers.
Users love fast sites which means Google does too. All of your other on-site attempts and search engine optimization will fail to bring results if your site is slow and sluggish.
Keep your site fast by:
Google’s Page Speed Insights for mobile and desktop can also help you identify loading and presenting problems for your website’s pages.
There is no doubt that Google uses site speed as a metric. Those elements include efficient use of javascript, render-blocking resources, server requests, sitemap and .htaccess file optimization and a wide range of other technical aspects of site SEO and operation. It’s worth investing in an on-site audit to look at these elements once a year for a relatively quiet site and every three months for busy sites and eCommerce sites.
Implementing these essential on-site SEO steps can have a dramatic impact on your site in only a matter of days.
Once you have understood these 7 essentials for optimizing your on-page content and website, it’s time to get to work. Here is a complete checklist to get you started with your on-site optimization efforts that will get your site indexed and ranking in Google in no time at all.
Learn more from the best marketing blog for dentists.
So, you have built your website (or you are thinking about it), make sure that your design and branding touches on the best marketing practices and you are now wanting to build your brand in order to gain future business.
It’s at this point that most people begin to consider PPC marketing. PPC is one of the most popular marketing techniques businesses use nowadays. It’s easy, has very big sales potential and most importantly, is budget-friendly. But the thing about PPC is that it can quickly cost you a lot of money.
Yes, it is budget-friendly, but only in a way that it allows you to set the amount you are willing to spend. It is in no way capable of giving you direct sales.
Client-based businesses are at risk of losing money from PPC marketing if they do it wrong – or if they neglect to do it as part of their overall web design and marketing strategy.
To help you skip the phase of learning from a costly mistake, here are some solid ways to generate clients using PPC marketing.
Let’s start by focusing on your branding and PPC marketing on Facebook. The design is mostly taken care of for you – but you still need to brand the page in a manner consistent with your web design in order to build continuity and a community that identifies with your service.
Then comes the steep learning curve. Using PPC marketing on Facebook is very tricky. You’d think that putting up branded ads promises you clicks, likes and shares.
Unfortunately, this is not always the case. If people see that you don’t have enough of an audience who believe in you, this could also pull them back.
The best way to solve this sales hindrance is to build an audience, and you can’t focus on PPC marketing alone to achieve this. This advice would be quite useless if you do that.
You need to incorporate your design and branding into the PPC process. This not only creates social trust but also imbeds brand consciousness on the prospective client or consumer.
There are a plenty of PPC management tools and services used by both PPC management agencies and business that can help you to create the perfect campaign. But there are also a good number of easy-to-establish strategies that almost anyone can begin to implement.
One way to build an audience on Facebook is by creating a business page.
To begin, always build a page using that company’s name. If you are working alone, name that page with your name and the services you offer.
Once you have done the legwork (Web design, interactive page content like contact forms, blog, about and privacy page) it’s now time to start gathering a clientele. You might start with “false” followers (i.e. people you know personally).
Eventually, you’ll end up with a significant number of followers and your credibility will rise with that number. With enough of a following, search engines will also begin to value your online presence.
Once you have this at hand, the PPC clicks you receive will more likely end up leading to a new patient or client acquisition.
It’s understandable to be hungry for new patients or clients. Closing leads the goal of every small business. But more often than not, the old saying “slowly but surely” is the path of greatest success.
Every once in a while, offer relevant, informative content in your ads instead of just promoting your business. Articles and videos are some of the best ways to gain people’s attention and trust.
Once you have successfully acquired people’s trust, you can eventually squeeze in your sales pitch. Sometimes, you don’t even have to do anything. Once you get people to believe in your knowledge and skills, they’ll knock right on your door to do business.
Come up with a number of informative articles and videos that you can promote on interest-based platforms like Facebook. Creating content for your ads – say, on dental hygiene and perhaps significant advances in dental treatment can help expand your authority and your audience over the long haul – even if they don’t garner immediate conversions.
Video advertorials that have solid content – useful to your target audience – can also create a steady stream of new visitors and is a good long-term strategy.
For keyword-based platforms like Google, you’d want to retain the people who click through an ad to enter your website. Having a low-quality website design with zero relevant content could push potential clients away.
Make sure to fill your website with all the information people expect to get. Incorporating regular articles and blog content as well as rich media can increase readership and consumer loyalty. and other site content. This is not only great for retaining site visitors, but it will also help your organic search engine rankings.
Value Adding as part of your web design and content strategy is a key component to the success of any PPC campaign.
Some of the things you can do are explain what your business is about and showcase your work, your experience and your qualifications. These should be standard for any branding endeavour.
Create pages for the reviews you have received and then show off your portfolio – if you have one.
The best thing about your own website is that there is no limit as to what you can put in there, unlike Facebook or LinkedIn. So grab this opportunity to beautify your site and fill it with content that will prove to be valuable to your target audience.
Good design leads to good conversions, which in turn ensures that your PPC campaigns and other marketing efforts provide an acceptable ROI.
High-intent keywords refer to the type of keywords that are obviously directed towards a purchase.
For Example: “buy [brand] sneakers”, “the cost of sneakers”, or “discounted sneakers”.
People who type in these keywords are generally at the decision-stage of their online browsing. They have already made up their minds and are now looking to spend. To make your PPC marketing worth the investment, target these kinds of “Buyer-ready” keywords.
Some niches are more competitive than the others, so add a number of other keyword techniques to take advantage of this strategy. Some of the things that you can do are make your high-intent keywords long-tailed.
Adding a geographic location to your keywords is also a clever way to get good leads.
Some business owners are so sales hungry that they end up misdirecting potential clients. To generate clients and to close sales, don’t forget to match the keywords and titles you used in your web design with those being used in your PPC ads.
If you promised content that tells them “How To Find The Best Dental Clinic in Michigan”, give people just that. Don’t lead them to a landing page that is irrelevant to their search query.
To close a new client, patient or consumer, consider the mindset that people have when they click on your ads. Are they looking for immediate service? Are they just looking for a long-term family practice?.
Focal Point: Give the Site Visitor What They Anticipated: Both in Word and Landing page Design.
The answer to these questions will have a direct effect on the wording and web design used in your PPC campaigns and your landing page web design.
Overall, PPC marketing is one of the most effective marketing techniques any business can take advantage of. It is a top strategy for dental and orthodontic clinics and allied dental health services.
If done right, and in harmony with your site design, content and usability, it can provide an excellent return on your investment, reach thousands of new clients and, keep your existing clients coming back.
Learn more from the best dental marketing blogger.
It’s almost a full-time job to keep up with the ever-changing digital landscape. When it comes to designing your dental website, your primary goals are to make sure your site is found in search for your location and enticing enough to convert your visitors into patients.
Your website should tell your brand story as well as your patients’ experiences. Because choosing a dentist is a very personal decision, your dental website design and site messaging should be unique and clear to help prospective patients trust you enough to make an appointment.
The following tips will provide some insights into how you can create an effective web design that will help you grow your business.
Getting visitors to your website is only the first step. You also want them to stay long enough to read it and take action. Some of the ways to create the best user experience are:
Check your site carefully for broken links or missing images because these errors will make your site look less professional.
We have all heard that a picture speaks a thousand words because it’s true. If you are a pediatric dentist, showing photographs of smiling children will grab the attention of a parent looking for a dentist for their children.
It is best to avoid stock images that are used on other websites because they are not unique and they are not an accurate representation of your practice.
You can either hire a professional photographer or take pictures yourself with the permission of your patients and showcase real images on your site.
Photos of the dentists in your practice interacting with patients is a great way to help build trust with your website visitors and make it more likely that they will call your office to make an appointment.
Be sure not to overcrowd your site. Leave plenty of white space. It makes focus and comprehension easier for your site visitors.
The content you include on your website needs to be concise, clear, and to the point creatively and engagingly.
Don’t forget that most people are visiting your site from their mobile device where too much text can be overwhelming.
Also, many people tend to scan through text rather than read it thoroughly while they are searching for the most relevant and helpful information. Make sure they can find what they are looking for quickly and easily.
Dental website quality content should include professionalism and industry-expertise to convert more website visitors into patients.
It is advantageous to include a blog on your site as well. Blogs not only keep your website dynamic, they also give you the opportunity to show your expertise by providing relevant and helpful dental information.
Not only should you have good quality content, it needs to be laid out in the most accessible manner possible. When it comes to reading online, small font sizes, thin and low contrast fonts are the number one complaint by users.
So, think carefully about the most readable fonts and formats when designing your published blogs.
As stated above, choosing a dentist is an extremely personal decision, so you want to make sure your website helps prospective patients see that you are credible and trustworthy. How can you do this?
Including a video of the dentists in your practice goes a long way in helping your website visitors get to know your staff and to connect with them on a personal level. They will feel like they already know you and will be more likely to call your office.
The value of testimonials cannot be overstated. Prospective patients will put more weight in how others describe your services than what you say about yourself.
Although you want your content to be reader-friendly and sound natural, you also have to write for the search engines. If your site can’t be found in search, it won’t matter how great the design is if no one sees it.
You need to carefully choose keywords and phrases to make sure your website is prominently placed in organic search engine results.
This is accomplished by search engine optimization (SEO). Patients are searching in Google for your dental services. You want to make sure they find you.
The more helpful and valuable information you provide to your website visitors, the more likely they will be to return to your site and the higher the likelihood they will call your office. Why is that?
By publishing articles, blog posts, or videos that describe specific dental procedures offered by your practice, you are helping possible future clients understand exactly what they might need to have done and what to expect.
What makes your dental practice different than others in your geographic location? Do you specialize in one specific area that your competitors don’t?
Whatever it is that makes you unique should be consistently advertised and promoted on all channels including social media, newsletters, and brochures.
When designing your dental practice website, keep in mind that there is a psychology behind why patients choose a dentist.
Keep this top-of-mind when creating your site and crafting your messaging. Also, focus on earning the trust of your prospective patients and getting found in Google search. Learn more about my dental SEO services.
Small business professionals and dental surgeries know that in order to be successful, they not only need to acquire new customers, they also have to keep their current customers happy so that they become repeat customers.
Client retention is more valuable and costs less money than finding new customers. Current clients (or patients, or customers – depending on your industry) are already familiar with your business offerings and have already been exposed to your brand. New customers are a more difficult sell because you are essentially starting from scratch.
To acquire a new client, you have to spend money on marketing, lead generation, analytics, and advertising.
If you still need convincing of the major role customer retention plays in helping your business grow, take a look at a few statistics:
It’s also important to note that client retention is no longer simply the domain of traditional marketing. Search Engines like Google are also factoring in retention as part of its ranking algorithm.
In providing SEO for Dentists, which is what we do around here, we are very mindful of the fact that Google is looking at things like time on site in order to determine client retention and loyalty for the purposes of organic ranking in search results.
So, in understanding the importance of retaining your clients, here are some simple, yet effective customer care and business strategies for you to utilize in your business that doesn’t require any additional financial outlay.
Happy and satisfied customers are more likely to become repeat customers and more likely to recommend your business to others. Therefore, it is obvious that the success of your business is directly related to the satisfaction of your customers.
However, good customer service goes way beyond simply answering a question or replacing a defective product.
It is vital for you to understand what is important to your customers by listening to them and resolving any issues they might have in a professional and timely manner.
Although it is important to get back to customers in a timely manner, research shows that the quality of your response is actually more important than the speed.
A study conducted by the Gallup Group shows that customers who evaluated the service they receive as helpful, courteous, and willing, are nine times more likely to be engaged with a brand.
This is in comparison to those who viewed the customer service as speedy and are only six times more likely to be engaged.
Such insights into consumer psychology are priceless for those who want to retain their customers. Every customer wants to be treated as if they are your most important customer and want your undivided attention. In other words, you should give every customer the VIP treatment.
Be sure not to rush, ignore, or minimize the importance of an issue from one of your customers.
Remember that the purchase decision is based on emotions and you want to be sure to provide your customers with a welcoming, helpful, and attentive customer experience to keep them happy.
Relationship building should be part of your marketing and long-term customer engagement strategy because of the value of developing strong relationships with your customers.
I have learned this through marketing and dental SEO. SEO may build search results, but you need client results. It’s not enough to have all your on and off-site optimization in order. You need to actually meet the client, patient or customer where they are at in order to build trust.
Focusing on understanding the needs, problems, and behaviors of your existing customers help build the foundation for trust where your customers will feel like they have a personal connection to your brand.
Trust should be at the center of every customer relationship because it increases loyalty, sales, and referrals.
Trust is earned over time by providing an outstanding customer experience every time contact is made with your company. Some of the ways to earn trust are:
In today’s highly competitive business world, building relationships that enhance trust with your customers become paramount. As soon as you lose the trust of your customers, you have lost their business.
A customer loyalty program is a type of reward system where those who make frequent purchases receive special perks. In other words, long-standing customers will be given special benefits such as:
Loyalty programs serve major functions. They incentivize new customers to make more purchases and ensure that existing customers feel valued by your business.
Some companies who offer loyalty programs are:
For some, the ability to achieve a higher status from your customer loyalty program is a great motivator.
Many loyalty programs give their customers exclusive offers, elevated status, and increasing rewards as they buy more from your business. The more they shop, the more they earn.
Loyal customers are paying customers, spending more on average than one-off purchase customers. Part of nurturing that loyalty with your customers is to stay in contact with them and connect with them frequently.
For example, you can send periodic regularly scheduled emails or make personal phone calls to your customers.
This is especially easy to do when your business offering is a process where you can check in with your customers in the middle of the project, and then again after the project is completed.
Asking them for their feedback, discussing progress made, and reviewing deliverables is an effective and valuable way to stay in touch. Make sure you are ready for their input and be sure to be open, honest, transparent, and professional, even when dealing with negative feedback or complaints.
Ensure you have made use of the best free citation services (I have a list of citation services for dentists here) as a way of further connecting – and staying connected – with your audience.
In order to develop and nurture a strong, trusting relationship with your current customer base you have to know what their needs are, how they rate their customer experience and any concerns or problems they might have.
Reviews that clients and customers provide are a vital means of engaging – and understanding your user-base.
This is especially true when it comes to why they decide to no longer be your customer.
Filiberto Amati, the Founder of Amati & Associates, points out the importance of being able to measure and understand why your customers are leaving.
As an International Business Development Expert, he emphasizes that in order to solve a problem, you first need to know why it exists and to what extent.
It is only then that you can implement procedures and strategies to solve problems or fix processes that are causing customers to leave.
Some of the most effective ways to assist you in understanding your customers are:
Surprises make us happy, bring us pleasure, and are good for the brain. Using the element of surprise with your customers motivates, inspires, and nurtures your relationship with them.
To help your customers trust your business, going beyond your normal service impresses your customers.
Receiving an unexpected valuable offer, a handwritten note of appreciation, or discounts and free gifts will not only affect how your customer views your business, it will help build loyalty and increase customer retention.
The worst thing you can do after acquiring a new customer is to do nothing once they have made a purchase.
In order to build a strong and trusting relationship, you need to not only stay in touch with your customers, you should show them that you value their business by providing helpful and relevant information.
Offering training or ongoing classes on a product they have purchased, giving advice on how to maximize the potential of purchased products or services, and making recommendations on how to get better results are effective ways to provide continuous value to your customers.
In order to consistently nurture relationships with your customers, you should keep a record of all communications each customer has had with your business.
For instance, if someone calls you about a problem or issue, it is important that you have access to the necessary records of any previous conversations that took place with the same customer.
In situations where more than one call is made by the same customer about the same problem, it would be in the best interest of your business to react differently than if the call is the first one made by that customer.
You would probably want to offer more assistance, discounts on future or add-on products, or perhaps even offer to return their money in an effort to turn a negative into a more positive experience.
Keeping records of customer preferences, ongoing issues, support tickets, and phone calls for your customer base is especially helpful when there are changes in your personnel because it enables any member of your team to pick up as a business partner with any customer at any time.
Because consumer behavior has evolved, it is incumbent upon the business to interact and engage with their customers where they are online and where they want to engage.
This is especially important when customers have a problem or issue they want to be resolved.
Being available, visible, and responsive on all channels will provide a seamless and consistent customer experience, help build relationships, and increase brand loyalty.
Research indicates that 87% of customers don’t think businesses are putting enough effort into providing seamless customer service experiences. (Zendesk). Don’t let your company be one of those businesses.
In the age of increased automation, businesses need to make an extra effort to let their customers know they are people and not just a number.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t automate many of your business strategies and practices.
You can and should incorporate personalization into these automations by using personal notes and proper and relevant follow-up strategies based on customer behavior.
For example, you can customize text, images, and promotional pricing on landing pages based on how a user behaves on your site and how they found your site.
This personalized and relevant experience can increase customer loyalty.
Improving customer or client retention in an effort to increase sales is not one-dimensional nor does it happen overnight.
Try different tactics, measure and analyze the results, and do more of what is working and less of what isn’t. Your main goal is to create and maintain stellar customer service while building and nurturing relationships with your current client base.
This will keep your customers happy and increase sales.
Images, Pexels CC0 License, Canva .
Learn more at the best dental marketing blog.
Whether you’ve been casually researching SEO best practices, or you’re a seasoned SEO pro, Cora can help lift the veil on what others in your neighborhood are doing to get (and stay) ranked.
But first, a little history on Cora and why it matters to your SEO:
Cora SEO Software was created by Ted Kubaitas, a veteran of the SEO game for over a decade. Ted has seen SEO change rapidly over the past several years. Ted’s approach towards SEO is different from some of the more creative mindsets in our profession. Ted is very analytical and data-oriented.
In fact, Ted’s background is in mathematics. Ted believes that quantifying your SEO is a big part of his success in ranking websites in some of the more competitive niches (often more competitive than dentist “your city” type keywords).
And because of the high competition, there was a serious problem.
…and much more.
It took vast amounts of time to go over SEO data. Ted found himself spending countless hours going over a sea of SEO data which needed to be cherry-picked for action and a clear path to SEO victory.
Ted did what many entrepreneurs do. He looked to solve his own problems.
That’s when Cora came into the picture. Ted created a software to compare correlation data (correlation is the root of the brand he framed in “Cora”). He created this software to help him more quickly and efficiently solve SEO riddles.
You might ask yourself…Why isn’t your website ranking, yet? What factors are at play which causes one website to rank over another? What actions can you take (beyond the normal, standard optimizations), which will help my clients rank highly?
How do you know your SEO company is fully engaged in the problem-solving process of getting you ranked?
Ted and I have the same kinds of questions as you do.
Ultimately, the problem Cora strives to solve is simple. What’s holding you back?
“The problem Cora strives to solve is simple: What’s holding you back?”
Many SEO companies find themselves asking the same question. “What’s holding us back?” I’ve used Cora, and I’ll let you in on a little secret…it’s not easy to decipher this data.
Cora uses the term “matches,” which is to describe an exact match of your keyword in a certain aspect of your website. For instance, you could label one of your images “dentist in San Luis Obispo wearing black scrubs.” This would lead to a match of your image label to the keyword dentist in San Luis Obispo.
Cora is a double-edged sword for many website owners. The complexity of this tool is what makes it so effective, and yet what makes it difficult to understand. Additionally, once you’ve been able to interpret the data, diagnosing specifically what’s holding you back requires a certain level of expertise.
That’s why I’ve decided to help you better understand how to read, interpret, and take action on Cora’s data.
There are over 500 SEO correlation factors which Cora helps you identify. We’re going to build this list, over time. Please return to this blog post, bookmark it in your browser, and stay tuned for updates to this new, software’s ultimate guide.
Here are some of the most important SEO factors which Cora can help you identify:
If you ever hear someone refer to your “title tag,” that’s what is meant by “meta title.” Your meta title is what appears on Google’s search results as the clickable link. It’s usually a blue or purple link that offers a brief description of what a searcher can expect once they click on your result.
Since your title tag describes what your page is about, it is a very important ranking signal to Google. Knowing what your keywords are can help you best choose which title tag is optimal for each page on your website.
Adjusting your title tag to include keywords which match searcher intent, compelling your prospects to click on your result, is widely regarded as one of the fastest, easiest ways to lift your Google, Bing, and Yahoo rankings. It only takes a few moments (once you know your best keyword for that page), and because of the dramatic lift you can get in your rankings, I’ve listed this as the top priority which Cora can identify for you.
If you join my dental SEO course, one of the first things you’ll find out is that the domain name you choose is an important, foundational element to how SEO will turn out for you.
Having your keyword(s) in your URL has been proven in controlled SEO studies to help you appear as more relevant to search engines for your keywords.
One of the most important aspects to your SEO is to learn who is linking to your website, and who is linking to your competition. Ahrefs founder Tim Soulo decided to integrate his platform with Cora in order to best allow you to gain access to this vital data.
Competitive analysis in SEO is made much more clear when you integrate Ahrefs and Cora, together. Since most websites fail in gaining editorially-granted backlinks, Cora and Ahrefs allow you to see just where the low hanging fruit is regarding backlinks.
For instance, you might be ranked #7 for “dentist [your city]” and find out that the only difference between your dental website and the #1 ranked dental website is the fact that this #1 ranked dentist has several links from local businesses’ blogs, directories (such as Chamber of Commerce in your city), and appears in the local news website, with a link back to this dental website.
Ted tells me in an exclusive interview that Cora does require some SEO expertise to interpret and analyze the data.
However, the whole point of Cora is to try to find a single, meaningful piece of data that essentially proves why one website ranks over another. In our current hypothetical, it would be clear to me that the locally-relevant backlinks to our #1 ranking dental website is part of why this dental website ranks #1.
Cora is all about using the process of elimination to determine which SEO factors will most efficiently boost your authority and relevance to your target keywords.
In my experience, backlinks typically play a substantial role in rankings. That’s why I’ve listed Ahrefs Backlinks at the #3 position.
This blog post is a work in progress. Please come back often to see this list grow into a comprehensive resource. I didn’t want to have you wait several months for me to finish the entire guide. Please feel free to contact me if you’d like more help with using Cora.
Cora is a no-obligation, month to month SEO software. And if you purchase Cora, you’re welcome to use my discount code I’ve negotiated on your behalf! Just enter “DMG” as your discount code, to get 25% off for life!
Need help with dental SEO?
If you own a business, simply having a website and some social media profiles isn’t going to cut it anymore. To interact with your customers you need engagement. For many people, nowadays, video content is much easier to access because it requires less effort than reading or just listening (like we do with podcasts).
No matter the goal or type (how to tutorials, music, funny videos etc), the place where everyone goes for video content is YouTube.
YouTube is the third most visited website in on the web, with approximately 1.5 billion monthly users. That’s where your business needs to be.
Youtube, just like Google has a number of algorithms that are used to rank videos in their search results.
With over 90 videos on YouTube, I’ve received some great results from this platform. It’s helped me get great results in doing SEO for dentists. Being aware of how important is this topic, my team decided to reach out to 86 SEO experts and ask them:
This way you don’t benefit only from our experience. You also get tips from successful SEO consults that do this for a living. We received some awesome tips that we would love to share with you
Tim Soulo
If you go to Ahrefs YouTube channel and sort our list of videos by “Most popular” you’ll see that the top video on our channel has over 600k views. Which is an insane result for an SEO tutorial.
And one of the reasons behind it is that it ranks #1 in YouTube for its primary keyword – “SEO audit”.
Another video from our channel ranks #1 for “how to rank in Google” keyword. And some other videos that we have also rank for their target keywords quite well.
But in all honesty, we didn’t have a goal of ranking in YouTube for any keywords. That happened naturally.
Our focus has always been in providing value to our audience. And clearly, we followed all the best practices of having a cool descriptive headline for your video, as well as fill in the video description with some copy about that video.
So my advice would be super simple and straightforward:
– think what your target audience is searching for on YouTube
– create a high-quality video that tackles this issue
– write a great descriptive headline for your video, try to use the language that your audience may use when searching for it
– write a good description for your video, because it will help you to get traffic from some long tail searches.
At least that is our experience with YouTube, but I want to stress that we’re not experts in YouTube marketing, so there may be some other things that influence your ranking in YouTube.
Steve Wiideman
Ranking YouTube videos has increased in complication and focal points due to the amount of software and spam used by publishers who sole business model is monetizing ad clicks within their channel(s).
Our best advice is to stick to fundamentals. Do what you do best and avoid automated tools or techniques that could appear to be gaming the system.
That said, in a talk, I had with Video SEO Expert Mark Robertson, it was obvious that ranking now had less to do with how many completed views a video has or the length of the view, but had more to do with the YouTube holistic session duration. Meaning, YouTube wants videos that keep people on YouTube.
Here are a few ways to boost rankings, views and (hopefully subscribers) that have worked for our clients:
1. Obviously do your keyword research and write “better than alternatives” titles and descriptions so your video gets clicked on the most
2. Choose or upload a compelling thumbnail, but avoid using a hot model as click-bait
3. Add your video to one or more of your playlists containing similar content
4. Make friends with creators and get your video on as many relevant playlists as possible
5. Work with those same friends to get them to suggest the URL during or at the end of their similar-vertical videos
6. Provide thumbnails and links to other relevant videos during and at the end of your video
7. Use Buzzstream’s Link Prospector to identify web pages with similar content and suggest they link to or embed the video to boost the value of their video-less pages
8. Share on social media, in groups, pages, and timelines, not because YouTube will reward you with higher rankings, but because it garners engagement, boosts views, and may result in curation and sharing off social media
One of the best ways to quickly rank YouTube videos is to add videos to an existing page that already ranks well for a relevant phrase. This works particularly well if a standard Google search for the targeted search query already shows some videos in the standard search results as Google understands video is a good way to answer this question. If you then create a video and feature that video on a well-ranking page you get two benefits here.
Firstly the page itself may do better as it now has a video. Secondly, the video gets views via the pages which help build engagement metrics for YouTube. Typically this then helps the video rank on youtube search or as a video shown directly on Google searches.
I like this approach as it works in lots of different ways. It improves your organic visibility of your initial page. It helps the video rank on YouTube.com and it helps the video appear in blended organic search results. Win win win.
The number of plays in a search ranking factor in YouTube. To increase the number of plays, you need to first increase the clickthrough rate. To increase the clickthrough rate, you can use a custom thumbnail that includes two things:
A person’s face
The headline or topic of the video
The face will draw the viewers attention and the words in the headline will indicate the benefits of watching and give them a reason to click. Once you have the thumbnail address, embed the video on your own site within a popular blog post to start increasing the views.
Here’s an example of what it will look like when you’re done:
How to Improve Your Google Rankings: 9 Steps to Rank Higher Fast Using Analytics
Google Ranking
Once the video started to get clicks and views, the ranking within YouTube started to rise. Today that video has 130,000+ views. This would never have happened without the custom thumb or the blog post embed!
The best strategy is to have an integrated approach with the following:
Be consistent with adding new videos and content
When you post a video to YouTube publish and write a video summary description that is keyword friendly
Create a custom thumbnail cover page to attract viewers
High user engagement in the initial 48 hours is important so post on all the social forums and link back to your video- make as big a splash as possible
Create effective metadata for your video (title, description, tags, and annotations) – higher visibility
Use keywords and keyword tools (SEMrush, Google Search Console, etc.) to drive traffic
Boilerplate at the end with a CTA
These strategies tackle the SEO algorithm that is a challenge to master!
Optimize video title and description with ‘video keywords’ – these are the keywords that trigger videos to show on Google’s search result pages and are used on YouTube (such as “how to keywords”). Find these video keywords using tools, such as SEMRush and Soovle.
Second, get a lot of video views early through social media and promotional efforts. A video that is already performing well (getting views) will be likely ranked well by Google.
When I get a VSEO (video search engine optimization) project, I look at the category of the video in order to optimize it for YouTube. The following videos are the most popular ones:
1. Commercial
2. Tutorial ( how to) related to tech, makeup, training, fashion, training, weight loss etc))
3. Complaining ( about anything politics, competitors, politicians, climate change, companies etc.)
4. Funny videos
First, I ask my client about his/her desired keyword which s/he wants to rank on YouTube. Then I optimize the video based on client’s keywords and work on off page SEO.
So basically you have to do both on page and off page optimization for the video, just like what I do for SEO-ing a website. Embedding video on an article helps with SEO as well.
Lately, I have modified my link building strategy and added some extra components in my YouTube SEO VSEO campaign.
I also do video content marketing in order to increase video ranking. The best video ranking turnaround takes between 30-40 days depending on the competitiveness of the keyword and niche.
Youtube ranking signals have changed a lot over the years. Just back 2-3 years ago all you had to do was name your video file around your chosen keyword, put the keyword in the title, write a long description with the keyword in the description, buy views and you would rank the video in youtube with no worries. Then if you wanted to take things to the next level you could throw a few links at the video and it would even rank in Google.
These days the story is different.
Google looks at the authority of the channel, video stats, and relevance before they make a decision how the video should rank.
So it’s not just an SEO strategy anymore to rank a video but more a marketing strategy.
It’s important to build up the quality of your YouTube Channel – get subscribers, shares & comments on your videos.
The best way we have found to build up this audience is to make use of our own email list, so every time we release a video we actually drive traffic via our own subscriber lists at the video to get views, interaction and increase in subscribers.
This is exactly what Google is looking for and is what’s working NOW in 2017.
Ranking videos on Google and YouTube is all about SEO and understanding the differences between ranking sites and videos. For example, on YouTube, there are plenty of factors that go into play — such as the video completion rate, ratings, comments, embeds, views and more.
Still, backlinks to videos will come into play as well, and this will help videos rank in regular Google results as well. Social shares also play an important role in this process as well. It’s also important to have a custom attention grabbing thumbnail as well, as this will increase click-through rates when people are searching for other videos on YouTube.
For more information and methods on what is working best today, be sure to read through these latest YouTube SEO guides. In each of these reports will find expert tips from Brian Dean, Neil Patel, Sean Si, Ryan Stewart and many others who have mastered the art of ranking at the top of YouTube and getting their videos to list within actual Google search rankings.
YouTube, although it is the second most popular search engine (and also owned by Google – the largest search engine), is quite a fair way behind it’s bigger brother as far as ranking algorithms go!
You might want to consider what it took to rank a website two years ago and do that
But as you’re no doubt looking for my best advice to ranking your YouTube video, you need a few elements working together:
1. A catchy title that includes your relevant keywords. Keywords in your title is important to rank, and so is audience clicks. The best videos have short and sweet titles, and aren’t afraid of getting a bit sensational for those sweet click bait clicks.
2. Write a detailed description of your video. For goodness sake, don’t leave this section blank, and no – two lines is not enough! You’re going to get better ranking and trigger for a greater variety of keyword searches if you spend some time in this section.
3. Make sure to caption your video. In 2017, people want captions. If you plan on getting people to watch your video for any extended length of time as the result of a social share, you’re going to do well with correct captions. Don’t forget — Google and YouTube read the captions too!
4. Seek to promote your video online. Social shares are a very powerful way to get your video watched, and videos that are watched rank higher than videos that aren’t. Sounds like a chicken and egg situation, no?
5. Build links to your video. Link building tactics will boost your video’s YouTube ranking. I recommend going for white hat organic links – “natural” links will give you long-term success, whereas spammy links will get you punished.
Here are my tips on how to create SEO-friendly YouTube videos to rank in Google and on YouTube:
1. Make sure the title of your video is SEO-friendly. You can use free keyword research tools like UberSuggest and Google’s Keyword Planner, to find top keywords to target in your title.
Of course, make sure the title is also engaging and not blatantly stuffed with keywords.
2. Make sure the description of your YouTube video is SEO-friendly and that it includes a hyperlink at the beginning of the description and at the end. Make sure that the URL is the full URL – http://www.yourwebsitehere.com, otherwise, it will not be clickable.
When crafting SEO-friendly descriptions for YouTube, think of it like writing a mini blog post. A lot of people think that having long video descriptions is bad, but in many cases, a longer description that is SEO-friendly actually helps boost rankings. As long as the description is relevant and helpful, you don’t really need to worry about having “too much” in there.
You can also paste the video’s transcription in the description area if you don’t want to create a custom description.
3. Use tags. Make sure to tag your video appropriately. I suggest not using more than 10 tags in a YouTube video and make sure they are keyword-specific and actually relevant to your video.
4. Use closed captioning. It’s proven that using closed captions in YouTube videos helps increase rankings. If you don’t have a caption file, YouTube will use its speech recognition feature to generate a file for you.
5. Promote! You must build links to your YouTube video if you want it to rank – especially for a competitive keyword.
You can acquire backlinks by posting the video:
– On your social media
– On your blog
– On web 2.0 properties
– Via social bookmarks
– On press releases
… and the list goes on and on and on!
If you’re wanting to rank a video for a non-branded keyword term, you must build links to it!
Balance three things for a successful youtube ranking result. Topic, watch time and thumbnail. To achieve those you need research, first about the topic and then using search suggestions to expand the vocabulary. Watch time optimisation needs getting the right length of a video and keeping people involved. That’s why you see so many countdown and list videos recently, as they maintain the viewer interest and stop them from either abandoning the video or skipping to the end.
For great watch-time aim for videos that are 10 minutes or longer so that you stand out from the crowd of mini videos but have plenty of content to keep people engaged. Tell people up front, in the first 10 seconds, that there are great things coming later in the video.
Make sure that the words of the video are just right. The title should be a close match to actual search terms and have an interesting hook that makes the viewer curious. A substantial description with another hook in the first line, and several hundred words at least of great reference material will help greatly.
Then the vocabulary in your audio needs to be on-topic and comprehensive as well. Make sure that Google has subtitled it correctly and manually correct or re-record if it is wrong.
Lastly, the thumbnail can profoundly influence your CTR, and good relative CTR will push you to the top. Research what thumbnails you are competing with, and make sure you stand out from the crowd. If everybody else is using a dark thumbnail with text, go for a bright one without. Conversely, if thumbnails in your niche do not typically include words try putting text overlays on your thumbnails to stand out. This works well on mobile in particular.
Bonus tip: Ask specifically for likes, shares and subscribes. Do it more than once, at the beginning of your intro and then also in the middle before giving your primary content, and at the end of your video.
I have heard over the years so many ‘ways’ to rank a video in YouTube. In fact, if you go to many video marketing forums you will hear stories of being able to hack the algorithm through backlinks and ‘clever tricks’.
In truth, the secret to YouTube lies in picking the right keywords and then creating a great video.
Just choose the right keyword for your industry, make a great title and then also a description with the keyword in and that is step 1.
Step 2 is to create a great video that people will watch.
If people spend less time trying to hack YouTube and more time becoming a good creator I believe they will have better results.
In addition having a great video will encourage trust.
That is trust in your business, trust you enough to click a link to go to your website, trust you enough to hire you.
So keyword in the title, keyword in the description and a great video and have faith in YouTube. It might sound over simplistic but this really is all there is to it! The trick is knowing that you should spend more time on the video and less on the SEO when it comes to YouTube.
My favorite way of ranking YouTube videos is to make sure you’re doing keyword research specifically for video search intents. If your target keyword doesn’t return video results, your YT video probably won’t be on the SERP. For the video itself, make sure you’re titling, labeling, and describing the videos in such a way that makes it relevant to the search terms.
Finally, and maybe anecdotally, use closed captions on the video so an algorithm can more easily understand the content. Finally, if you can produce a few pieces of content in the text-based form, and then embed the video into those pages, it can help improve the relevance of the video itself.
YouTube is slightly different to the search engines, and there are more ways for you to personally rank your video without having to get involved in link building. To start off, you want to create a click bait title (yes you want – they works great!), but also make sure to include keywords in it that you want to be found for.
You’ll also want to create a lengthy description to go along with your video, that again includes any keywords that you want to rank for. Around 200-300 words should do the trick, but longer is fine as well. One good way to do this is to transcribe your dialogue in the description. This is ideal for people who don’t have the time to watch your video or are struggling to understand what you have to say. You’ll also want to consider the length of your video. This will depend on what you are covering, so just make it as long as it needs to be.
With YouTube, you get more positive signals for the number of views, likes and comments you get, so the user experience is key. Encourage your viewers to like, comment and share your video both in the description and in the video itself for maximum exposure.
The best way to rank Youtube videos from our clients’ experience at Prosperity Media, is to create amazing content which is relevant for the query. You also need to complete keyword research to find out which terms are actually driving traffic.
Once you know the terms driving traffic, ensure that you have your video marked up with all the correct terms and ensure that you fill out the relevant tags and information. It’s also important to name the raw file of the video your target term as well which you want to target. =
You need to drive engagement to your videos as this is highly important so driving traffic to a video can be a wise strategy to kick off the engagement on your content also ensure that you share the video with your email list. You also want to drive links to your video.
Overall ensure that you spend the bulk of your time driving engagement to your videos.
Your videos will be most likely to succeed if they are high quality, so the first priority should be creating a good video. If it’s low quality, you have a much lower chance of success.
Ranking YouTube videos is very similar to SEO for anything else: links! Fortunately, posting links to YouTube videos often looks less spammy than your own website so it is not too difficult to do. Start by finding relevant sites where people are asking questions about your niche (that the video is in). Join those communities and start answering questions. When it makes sense, link to your YouTube video. If it helps solve a problem or answers their question, people will share it themselves. Make sure to use a range of places – forums, social media platforms and Q&A sites like Quora are a good place to start.
YouTube also relies on views, ratings and other engagement to rank videos. Try to encourage people to rate/like/comment on videos if they like them.
Rank on Youtube: Optimize the best possible way because everybody else is busy creating content and ignoring the basics practices to optimize their content. Optimize the video file name, the title, description etc. Those alone will help you rank for terms that people search for on Youtube. One more thing, everybody knows about the push of Google to rank videos higher for those that are more engaging. Try to collaborate with other YouTubers and don’t forget a simple call to action directed to your followers. Even a simple request to tap on the “bell” notification icon will help as it gets people viewing your video.
Rank the Video on Google: Try different keywords in the title of your video but I normally start off with the brand. I need to make sure that Google can see that the brand is related to the Youtube channel. For my current startup at https://seriousmd.com – I put up a quick video channel that I haven’t focused on yet and it’s been sending consistent leads to us. Also, embed the videos in your blog posts or guest posts. You’ll start to see those videos ranking.
Being the second biggest search engine, YouTube is an untapped traffic source.
To get your videos ranked, this is what I suggest.
First, start your keyword research, then create your video around them.
Get the most SEO value, by optimizing the following:
– video filename;
– video title;
– video description (include your keyword within the first 25 words, writing at least 300 words);
– video tags.
Then, build views and mentions by posting about it on social media networks, your blogs, your guest posts, on bookmarking sites, on Q&A Sites, or commenting on related content.
First, you have to understand your end goal, YouTube’s end goal, and what topics are achievable. Ranking on YouTube is very different from Google Search. It’s an internal search engine that wants to keep people on the site, not send them away. You have to choose topics/keywords where you can not only rank, but also where you want to rank. Choose wisely.
Second, you need to invest in high production value and take care of all the details. Your video needs to be watchable and discoverable. Plan and edit ruthlessly to maximize attention. Spend time creating a good description. Tag effectively. Invest in captioning. Create a custom thumbnail. Do anything you can to make the video watchable and discoverable.
Third, create both a short and long term promotion strategy. In the short term, you need some numbers to “prove” to YouTube that people will watch the video and like it. In the long term, you need embeds, related videos, and long tail search traffic. These will “prove” to YouTube that it’s an evergreen video worthy of ranking in search.
Over time, all three factors will work together in a feedback loop to help you rank for your target terms – and stay there.
After several years of managing different Youtube channels, I have developed a checklist, that I don’t really share with anyone. This is an exception! So here’s my Youtube SEO checklist:
Keyword research: Find the keyword you wish to rank for in Youtube and/or Google. Since YouTube doesn’t have a keyword research tool, you have to use Google’s Keyword Planner. Find the query how your audience will search for your video
Video File must be saved as the main keyword before the Youtube upload.
In the Title Section of a Youtube video, there should be an exact match keyword.
Video Description: Make sure it’s no longer than 300 words and try to include the keyword’s variations (LSI keywords).
Tags: Don’t abuse this section like many people do. Just add the top 3-8 keywords.
Video Annotations: Annotations are the text pop-ups that appear during the video. This is a great way to add additional optimization.
Captions: Add the text transcript.
Video Engagement: When YouTube first launched, part of the algorithm was based on views. The more views your video got, the higher it ranked. While they still count aggregate views they do so in conjunction with engagement metrics – number of seconds viewed, comments, likes, social shares
I hope it helps to rank your videos both on Youtube and Google
The best strategy to rank Youtube videos is to focus on user interaction.
That means the number of shares, number of likes or dislikes, number of subscribers, and user retention during your video playback.
These are all signals that Google takes into account when ranking videos based on what users are searching for. Obviously, a video has to be relevant but that is easy to achieve.
After that, the quality of your video plays a big part in how well it ranks because the quality influences user interaction with your video.
There are many ways to promote your YouTube videos, but first, it’s important to understand the platforms most important ranking factors.
The reason?
Well, it’s not just for ranking in YouTube search.
The name of the game is to show up in the suggested videos for topics you want to target.
So, what are the key YouTube ranking factors?
1. Audience Retention
Audience retention is the percentage of your video that people have watched.
The higher your audience retention, the better.
2. Engagement
Another very important YouTube ranking factor is engagement signals.
Likes, comments, subscribers, shares etc.
3. Keyword Optimisation
This is all about optimising your video for specific target phrases in your title, description, and tags.
4. Total Watch Time
Total watch time is arguably the most important YouTube ranking factor.
It’s the total time that has been spent by all viewers watching a particular video over its lifetime.
So, again, the higher the total watch time for a video, the better.
—
So, now that we know the key ranking factors, how can we use this information to better plan, create, optimise and promote our videos.
Steps for Creating and Promoting a Killer Video
3. Keyword Research
YouTube keyword research is often the complete opposite of the type of keyword research you’d perform for search engines, like Google.
There’s so much to cover, there’s no way I could cover it here, but here are the basics.
– Brainstorm and find some great topic ideas.
– Find and create a large keyword list.
– Narrow down the list to pick the best keywords to target.
There’s a whole process of doing this correctly, but I just can’t cover it here.
That said, often you’ll hear the ‘gurus’ telling you to target the long tail, lower competition keywords.
This really isn’t the best advice for growing a YouTube channel, fast.
The lower the competition and least amount of people searching for or watching videos targeted towards these terms, the fewer viewers you’ll have.
Sure, you’ll grow slowly over time, but in order make any headway with this strategy you’ll have to constantly pump out video content.
Trust me, you’re gonna burn out.
There’s a much better way.
2. Video Structure
When creating your video it’s important to structure the flow in the right way to help increase audience retention and total watch time.
Essentially, you need:
– A great intro and no this isn’t about introducing yourself or your brand, but instead what the viewer will learn or get out of the video. You need to hook them in.
– The meat of the video, where you concisely explain what you mentioned in your intro.
-A strong ending with good CTAs and a recap.
There’s lots of nuance and details here, but this is the basic structure.
3. Promotion
There are tons of ways to promote your videos.
The common knowledge or advice often given is to create and publish as many videos as possible.
This is just plain bad advice.
Firstly, you’re gonna end up burning out, and secondly, your quality will suffer.
Don’t get me wrong. You’ll grow, but you’ll grow slowly. There’s no need to pump out content regularly to grow your channel.
Some people advise you to publish videos daily.
That’s just madness.
There are better ways. Work smarter, not harder.
Remember, quality over quantity.
So, here’s the thing, spend less time creating videos and more time promoting those videos.
Here are some strategies for promoting your videos.
– Email (If you have a list, you should have a list)
– Social Media
– Paid Ads
– Guest Posts (Link to your videos)
– Post Video Snippets on Social Media
– Embed Videos in Your Posts
– Promote on YouTube
Now, here’s the key.
You need to strategically and consistently promote your videos.
This will lead to bigger and faster channel growth.
Again, quality over quantity, with 80% of the time spent on promotion activities.
The best strategy for ranking on YouTube is the approach with having an active channel that’s being updated frequently with high-quality videos, then doing whatever you can to increase the number of subscribers to the channel, and most importantly to increase the engagement of the viewers.
You need to work on getting the viewers to watch your videos for longer and to also take actions after viewing such as liking, sharing or commenting. All these in one package signal to YouTube the value that your content is creating and it will contribute to your videos ranking better. I have more on this in my full “being a YouTube blogger” guide.
With all videos I upload the absolute priority areas in my opinion are:
1) Include the keyword in the video filename, video title, and video description. I also call the YouTube thumbnail by the keyword as well.
2) Secondly, you need to have a high-quality video and for the engagement / watch time to be high which highlights that people are watching and finding the content to be valuable. Youtube wants to rank videos that have the highest engagement.
3) Encourage user interaction through likes, followers, shares, and comments. If the content is valuable then people will typically engage in one of the above actions.
4) Creating the video is only a small portion of the process. Marketing the video will take much more time. If you want to get more views on your video, which are a ranking factor, then you’ll need to market it appropriately. This doesn’t mean spamming views but legitimately finding natural opportunities to share and promote your video online.
5) If possible, I also believe that it’s worthwhile adding videos to your blog with repurposed content i.e. the Gary Vee approach. Take the video, repurpose into a blog, add a blog to site with video included. This will provide you video with a second opportunity to rank in Google through your new blog post.
As everyone knows, videos can be a great source of sharing information and traffic for your website. Although doing SEO for your (Youtube) videos is not as hard as doing it for Google it can still be a challenge. According to Youtube people upload roughly 100 hours of content per minute. So you need to do something with all those massive amounts of content being created. I’ll share a few tips on how to rank in Youtube.
There are a few key parts in ranking your Youtube videos to make sure you get the most out of it.
– Make properly optimized title tags
– Your viewers’ retention (How much do your viewers pay attention to your video?)
– Keywords and LSI words in your video’s description
– General video tags
– The length of your video
– The number of subscribers
– Comments
– Likes en dislikes
-H2- Very long video descriptions
When you try to rank for certain keywords and long-tail keywords treat it like you are optimizing for Google. Use at least 300 words in your video description.
-H2- Optimize your video around so-called ‘video keywords’
Some specific informational search queries are more suited for videos than others. This kind of categories show the most videos in the Google result pages
– How-to terms
– Reviews
– Tutorials
– A lot of fitness and sports-related terms
– Funny (cat) videos
-H2- Social signals for Youtube SEO
The Youtube algorithm doesn’t rely as heavily on backlinks like Google, so there are a few other things to pay attention to when trying to rank. The 2 most important signals for Youtube are followers/subscribers and the amount of frequency of likes.
I would break down ranking YouTube videos as the following:
Keyword Research
On-Page Optimization
Off-Page Optimization
For keyword research, it will depend on what type of company you are. If you are a locally based business, I would initially start with going for the major keywords for your area either using a tool like keywords anywhere or Ahrefs. For a national company or a company has an online store, the best way to rank would be informational content or tutorials. Here, I would research how to topics using the same two tools mentioned. A good example of such a topic would be New Egg’s How To Build A PC Rig on YouTube
The next step is the on-page. You are going to want to optimize your tags and match them to the keywords you identified in your keyword research. Once you have that, add in an optimized description of the video that is roughly 350-500 words. Next, you will want to add in a custom thumbnail to increase your click through ratio.
For off-page optimization, you will want to use a number of sources. Utilize your website to embed the video. If you are a local business, you should be able to embed your video on a number of the local citations that you have. These steps alone are enough to get you ranked on YouTube for many keywords. To take it further, we can do link and embed outreach for your video. If you are doing how to videos, you can post the video on various niche forums. Forums will happily take a video, but usually, will try to ban you if you post the blog post or homepage URL directly. A YouTube link is usually seen as neutral, especially on sites like Reddit. The other source of outreach would be to do link building on the blog post itself if you embed the video on your blog. Here you can get links to your website and also get links to your Video.
It is obviously important to get all the basics right such keywords in the title of the video (ideally towards the beginning) and descriptions. Even making sure you have relevant tags are in place is something that shouldn’t be overlooked. However, for
However, for me the most important strategy that has helped videos rank is gaining views. The more views a video has the more popular it appears and the better it has ranked. Our strategy to get views is relatively simple, like most things it just takes time and effort.
Pushing your videos on social media is a must and getting it shared by influencers is even better. Also embedding the video on your website and sharing it on other sites helps gain genuine views. If you have an email list I would suggest sending it to them and asking them to like, share and comment. Another win for views is to have the video you are currently pushing as the main video on your channel. Increasing views comes with one caveat and that
Increasing views comes with one caveat and that is don’t buy fake views on sites like Fiverr however tempting – YouTube is wise to this and it won’t help you
One of the best ways to rank video (especially YouTube videos) is to turn every question a client has ever asked you into a 3-5 minute educational piece. Once the video is uploaded to YouTube the question you answered should be part of the title. So if the question was, “If I’m getting dental surgery will I be administered novocaine or nitrous oxide (aka laughing gas)?” then the title of the video could be “Novocaine vs Laughing Gas During Dental Surgery”. But, the title should also include the town or city and state your office is located. So now the title of the video would be…Novocaine vs Laughing Gas During Dental Surgery | Hollywood, Los Angeles CA
When a viewer is typing in keyword combinations that might match what you have in your title, your video may pop up as an option to watch. Now, viewers click on and watch your video.
Now don’t forget the description of the video. If you’re video is between the 3-5 minute mark then have the video transcribed and add the transcription directly into the description box, along with your URL and phone number for viewers to visit your website or call with questions. I see way too many people make the mistake of not filling in the description or not filling in enough information and the viewer will watch but have no idea how to get a hold of the viewer maker to ask questions or hire them for service.
Adding keywords will also aid in your video ranking. Now, since Google and many search engines scan titles and descriptions you might not need to duplicate or double up on posting the same keywords or using variations of the same keyword, so try using similar keywords or phrases that add to the searchability of the video instead.
Captioning your YouTube video will contribute to both improve its engagement and SEO visibility
Adding closed captions to your videos will not only make sure your videos are searchable and indexable by search engines but they will also help increase user engagement especially when your videos are shared on social media platforms.
Closed captions come from a text file that your video references as it plays and that text file is readable by search engine robots which is why adding closed caption text files to videos should rank very high on your YouTube video SEO checklist. These files are readable by search engines, meaning they are able to index and rank your videos in search results according to the content of your video.
In addition, it’s a proven fact that captioned videos drive more views and engagement than uncaptioned videos. Because videos shared on Facebook and Twitter autoplay without sound, the majority of social views your video will receive are without sound and it’s very likely that if your video doesn’t have captions or subtitles users will stop viewing and scroll away.
What I found works the best, and what most businesses don’t implement (and should I also add that is the easiest?) – quite simply, you need to talk about your video.
The search engines can’t “see” what your video is about, so you need to tell them what it is all about.
Here are some quick tips to be able to tell the search engines what your video is actually about
1. Get a caption created for your video and install it onto Youtube
2. Change the filename from “my-video-1-is-awesome.mp4”, to something that actually is about your business or your industry, such as “best-teeth-implants-for-men-new-york-city.mp4”
3. Write a full title and a full description – you get about 5000 characters for the description. Use them. Explain about the details of the video, what it’s about etc. Same goes for the title – make it keyword rich
4. Use tags that better identify the content of your video.
5. Get it out there – it’s just going to sit there if you do nothing. Share it and share it again, explain it when you share it, tell people why it’s important
Ranking Youtube videos seems to be getting more difficult than it was a few years ago.
There was a time when you could throw up a video and send a ton of GSA links at it to rank, but those days are over.
When I was actively ranking Youtube videos I got a lot of mileage out of using Microworkers.
Using Microworkers, you can get video embeds pretty quickly. If you don’t have access to a network of sites yourself, Microworkers is a decent alternative that isn’t incredibly costly as well.
Another thing we also would do is link to the video from social profiles. These can be set up rather easily and give a decent link, like from a Twitter profile for example.
We utilize YouTube videos to rank in Google search in two ways:
First, let’s say you’d like to rank for the keyword “tmj treatment austin tx” in Google search. Our first step would be to create a highly informative video on TMJ treatment. You’ll want to make sure the video is 90% informative and only 10% commercialized. Next, you’ll need to make sure to optimize the title of your YouTube video. A good title might be “TMJ Treatment Austin TX | TMJ Specialist Dr. Fred Smith. It’s important to place your primary keyword at the beginning of the title. The great thing about YouTube is that you get to take advantage of their existing SEO authority which makes ranking these videos much easier than ranking a typical page or blog post on your own website.
Second, don’t forget to use your video on your blog. This will enable you to potentially rank both your YouTube video page and blog post on the 1st page of Google for your desired keyword. Taking up more search engine real estate on the 1st page is always a good idea! For your blog post, make sure to embed your video and include a 500 to 800 informative write up to go along with the video. Finally, optimize the Title, URL, Meta Description, Heading Tags, and Body copy for your primary and secondary TMJ keywords.
This alone won’t ensure that both your YouTube video and blog post will rank high in search engines. That’s why you have one final step to execute on… Link Building. It’s important to get links from external websites to both your YouTube page and blog post. To do this, I recommend guest blogging for relevant industry or local publications. You’ll often be able to include two links within your guest posts. Use this opportunity to double dip and acquire backlinks to both your YouTube page and blog post. Eventually, with enough links (shoot for 10) both pages will have the ability to rank on the 1st page.
Ensure that your video is valuable, interesting and engaging. Quality is everything.
One of the most important ranking signal is the amount of user engagement that the video is able to attract.
Allow others to embed your video within their content. If your video is interesting people will love to use your video content to enrich their own content. This multiplies the engagement and sends positive signal all across.
Optimise the thumbnail with your target audience in mind. Just think what will enhance the inquisitiveness of your target audience and convince or attract them to view your video over and above the videos that are being displayed close to your video.
Use transcriptions to add the much-needed food (i.e. relevant textual content) for the search engines. This is helpful for your audience as well. You will be able to repurpose this transcription to create a blog post.
Hire the experts wherever required.
The capacity of the video to attract engagement plays a major role in the success. A bit of additional effort and you will be able to multiply the ROI of your video.
YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine by volume, second only to Google.
Which means that all your content needs to be optimized for YouTube the same way it would be for a Google search. SEO alone is one of the easiest and most reliable ways of increasing your traffic and overall ROI. Start with your video title and description. Choose one keyword and make sure you work it into your video title, descriptions and tags. Make sure you use your primary keyword at the beginning of the title, with any secondary keywords or variations used later in your copy.
Steps
– Select a keyword
– Make sure it shows up in YouTube auto suggest
– Do keyword research in Google Keyword Planner
– Double up on keyword research with Keywordtool.io, keyword eg, SerpStats or
– TubeBuddy.
– Add tags
– Write unique YouTube copy (500 words)
– Create custom YouTube image
– Add link inside of content to web page
– Create end screen subscribe and view more videos
– Create card on each video linking to product or web page
– Ensure video settings are correct
– Update and optimize your playlists
The strategy to ranking youtube videos splits into two different parts – SEO & Engagement.
The most obvious things to do are optimising the title and description of the video. We also suggest renaming the video file before uploading it to youtube, to something more relevant than the usual MV0232 etc. Also, Youtube allows you to select a category for your video and also allows you to add tags, so make the most of that too.
As mentioned earlier, the other element to all of this is engagement. The more engagement your video has, the more likely it will show higher on Youtube. To improve engagement, you first of all need to have a good quality video, as people won’t watch junk. You could also spend more time making a more attractive thumbnail. Small things such as making your Youtube profile more attractive, such as channel art, profile picture, channel description etc.
Once that is all done, the next best thing to focus on is links. Have you covered a topic that might sit well on a related blog post on a third party site? Reach out to them and suggest the idea, they may just add it and credit it with a link.
Based on my experiences over the years and having hit the YouTube homepage many times in the past (when that was a thing), there are three main things you can do.
First of all, look at your competition and figure out how long their videos are. If every competing videos is only two minutes and you’re posting a one hour webinar, you’re probably not going to rank. Replicate what already works but do it a little bit better.
The second biggest factor is retention – what percentage of your video do people actually watch? Clickbait views, where people leave right away, can actually hurt your YouTube rankings.
The third biggest thing you can do is get your video embedded on different sites – it’s like the YouTube equivalent of backlinks and counts more than a “traditional backlink” to your video.
Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world – so if you aren’t in the video game, it’s time to get onto it. Inexpensive production values are fine, as in many cases, freshness and timeliness are the key. But how do you rank your videos?
1. Firstly, research the long tail keywords related to the video and convert these into the form of a question.
2. Create a transcript of the video. If you’ve written a script, that’s easy, you can use this in the description of the video on Youtube, of course adding in your links back to social media and your website. If you know your subject well enough to wing it, you can use a service such as speechpad.com to transcribe your video for about $1 a minute. This ensures that the keyword you naturally talk about in the content are now in text form for search. You can also use this file to create closed captions or subtitles – which allows people to watch even if they can’t use audio.
Everyone thinks you need to focus on keywords like on “normal” Google to rank on Youtube, but after wasting my time on that for a while I have found out that the biggest thing you can do is – increase watch time.
Youtube is all about keeping you on their platform for as long as possible in order to show you more ads, and obviously, earn more money.
How do they do that? By showing you the videos that will keep you on there longer.
And those are the videos that have a longer average watch time. Of course, just like with the modern Google algorithms, you can’t just tune your on page SEO (for videos) and hope for the best. You actually have to have great content.
So, if you plan on making a splash on Youtube, you will need to produce content that gets people’s attention, keeps them watching and coming back for more. Because, without the longer watch time statistics, Youtube just isn’t going to promote your videos (ie. rank them higher or show them on related videos).
If you want to see what I am doing on Youtube you can pop over and see if these ideas are working for me (hint: so far this year I have 4x my watch time and almost doubled my subscriber base)
When attempting to rank a video, the main goal should be to get the video to rank in Google for your keywords. If you can get the video to rank in Google, then a lot of the searches that are being performed in YouTube will click on your video in the results. YouTube will judge your video based on how people interact with it. User engagement is the most important YouTube ranking signal. Video retention is another very important signal of user engagement, meaning the percentage of the video that people tend to watch – the more, the better. I’ve listed some tips on how to boost viewer retention below:
User engagement is the most important YouTube ranking signal. Video retention is another very important signal of user engagement, meaning the percentage of the video that people tend to watch – the more, the better. I’ve listed some tips on how to boost viewer retention below:
1. Start off with the topic of the video – provide a quick summary of the video in the beginning. (20% of people that start a video will leave after 20 seconds)
2. Jump right into the content that the viewer wants to see.
3. Add open loops – open loops are a preview of what’s coming up in the video which encourages people to keep watching.
You’ll also want to make sure that your video comment section is enabled so people can leave comments. Another big signal is whether or not someone subscribes to your channel after watching your video. Shares and favorites are also signals, as well as Thumbs up / Thumbs Down.
YouTube Ranking Tip
There are a range of YouTube video marketing tactics, but my top tactic for getting videos to rank well on YouTube starts with choosing the right keywords. What’s really been working well for clients lately is targeting trending keyword searches.
There are two steps to uncover trending keyword opportunities with proven demand on YouTube.
YouTube Autocomplete: You can start by leveraging YouTube’s autocomplete feature. Like Google autocomplete, you type in one of your core keywords into the YouTube search bar and you’ll get a list of the most relevant, closely-related variants that are the most popular searches on YouTube. These are your potential trending keyword targets.
I like to use examples, so let’s imagine we’re doing YouTube trending keyword research for a manufacturer of home automation products. One keyword we might want to target is “smart home.” Here are the results from YouTube.
Smart home
Google Trends: Next you want to drop these smart home variants into Google Trends. In Google Trends, you can select YouTube Search from the drop-down to get trending data specific to YouTube.
Here are the results we get when we add some of the top suggestions we got from YouTube autosuggest.
From the results, we see that the keyword “smart home automation” is the clear winner from a popularity and trending standpoint.
So for keyword targeting on YouTube, it would make sense to develop some video content on smart home automation so you can capitalize on a trending topic and reach your audience.
You could create a video guide on smart home automation or some expert tips on smart home automation. And make sure you optimize your video accordingly.
Finding the right key phrase to target is probably the most fundamental part of video search engine optimisation. A key phrase is a search term that people will type into YouTube to find your video. In an ideal world, you should pick the key phrase you want to rank for before even creating your content. However, you can also retroactively optimise your material, although it’s not the best way to approach things.
When looking for the right key phrase to use, you want to strike a balance between how often people search for the phrase and how much competition (the competitiveness) there is trying to rank for that phrase.
A couple of tools that I use to show me this information are Tubebuddy and the Google Adwords keyword planner. The Adwords Keyword planner will show you Google search traffic and competition so be mindful when looking to create a video that it might not always correlate.
First and foremost, you NEED to get into the mind of the searcher. Who is going to be searching for this content, why are they searching, and what words are they going to be using to search? How do you do this though? You ask them! Find someone, or a group of people, who fit the mold of the perfect person that will be searching for your video and ask them what words they would use to make that search.
Maybe they would say “best newborn baby gifts” instead of “how to buy for a newborn”, this is crazy valuable information. Beyond being in their mind, you can also use Google Keyword planner and the search bar on YouTube itself to see what people are searching for the most and how much competition there is around those terms.
In addition to searching out the right way to structure the title of your video, you will also want to:
– Use the same keywords within your description.
– Tag your video appropriately so YouTube knows what type of content is in your video and how to recommend it to people based on their interests and behaviors.
– Create thumbnails that draw attention so more people click and show YouTube that this is, in fact, a good video.
– Keep the content valuable for the person searching. The more watch time a video gets (aka, the better the content since people wouldn’t watch batch videos), the more YouTube feels like it is a good choice for it’s viewers.
– Embed the video on your website with the same researched keywords and optimize the post as much as possible. Google will LOVE that you have a video from YouTube (since they own the platform) on your website and will rank your post on your website higher because of it.
The best strategy I have for positioning videos is to silo the content. interlinking the videos in the playlist in a linear fashion. So link each video in the playlist, to the previous video, and the next video in the description. With each video also connecting to the head of the playlist. This serves the purpose of helping google and the viewer to consume the content. It also helps users through navigation. Keep videos interesting and not too long, encourage comments and sharing
Be sure to flesh out the descriptions fully on each video. Say what the video is about, and take the opportunity to link to other social media profiles too.
Use a good description in the title of the video. One that is descriptive but also keyword orientated to help drive traffic to you.
Live streaming can have an advantage for topical or event based news, as it is happening right now… or not! You can use software to schedule live broadcasts of your stream.
Once your video is created, share it! use social media, relevant influence rs and groups who will like your content. remember you can embed the video too, so is ideal for press release, including in your blog or news content too.
Ultimately having a creative video is the win, as it will encourage interaction and sharing naturally.
For me, the best strategy to rank Youtube videos in the top-of-the search result is the implementation of target Keywords. For this, you could make use of the YouTube keyword tool or the Google Keyword Planner tool and find out which are the highest searches in your niche and then incorporate these Keywords in your file name when uploading it.
To further optimize your video so that it is easily findable through search, write a click-worthy title that includes keywords along with an engaging description that provides a brief on what the video is about. You could also include a CTA button such as like, subscribe, share etc, which will help boost your video’s visibility, in turn, improving your video’s ranking on the search result.
However, having said, the above strategy will only be effective if the video that is being uploaded/published is of top-quality and provides benefits. Thus, it is crucial that you focus on the quality of the video, its duration and the content when creating a video for Youtube, as then half your battle is won.
Ranking videos on Youtube is not an easy task but everyone gets better at it after working on it over and over.
Beyond optimizing your youtube for more views and visibility organically, you must ensure the video is engaging and you do not sell yourself too early. These two factors can ‘kill the vibe’ of your Youtube video, no matter how well you optimize it.
Kindly note that Youtube has search algorithm, just the same way Google search has. So, keep that in the back of your mind when trying to rank your Youtube.
Having said that, these are aspects of your Youtube video you should optimize for it to rank high in Youtube search:
Video Title: Make it as explicit as possible. Do video keyword research to identify keywords that both Google and Youtube already identified with videos. Use video keywords to start your video title.
Video description: Make your video description at least 250 words. Include links to your website, social media other channels where you can be found. Optimize your video keyword for the same video keywords you used the in Video Title.
Tags: These are very critical to other videos that Youtube will show your video besides. Include more keywords and relevant search terms for the video in the tags. 8-10 tags are great to make them short and topical. Lengthy tags are NO NO. Use similar terms, concepts or popular terms synonymous with the theme/topic idea of your video for tags.
Video subtitle: there are various options for video subtitle, but make sure you subtitle your video so they could rank high in Youtube.
These tips will help you rank your Youtube videos. I have used and re-used them so, I’m sure they work.
Ranking well on YouTube is very similar to ranking well on Google. First and foremost, your videos need to be of high quality and relevant to what you are trying to rank for. When trying to judge the quality of your videos, consider the video’s click-through-rate, engagement and watch time.
In addition to creating high-quality videos you also need to optimize the videos. Be sure to craft an attractive title and include one of your core keywords in it. Your description should cover at least 200 words of unique content and can also externally link to your website or social media profile. Lastly, include video tags on your video. These tags send signals to YouTube about the relevancy of your video.
As with anything there will be some guess, check and revise your strategy. Ensuring that your videos are of the highest quality and offer value is the first step in ranking well for competitive terms.
My best strategy for ranking YouTube videos is as follows:
1. Create great video content, and try to attract viewers’ attention in first 5 seconds. It’s good to have an intro at the beginning of your video. Make your texts shorter and easy to understand and try to keep your viewer engaged during the whole video.
2. Optimize your titles, so they look original, not spammy and match your video content. The more they are optimized the higher your ranking chances are.
3. If you have any link to include in your video description, put it at the beginning of the paragraph. Then follow with short and well written description. Turn your targeted keywords into your title as much as possible and include them in the description too.
4. Make your thumbnails catchy and informative. Imagine how many people click to a video due to the appealing thumbnail. You should make it unique and attractive.
5. Be patient. You have to be patient when working with search engines like YouTube. Wait at least a week after optimizing your video. If the result isn’t satisfying enough, try again until you get what you want.
My best strategy is thinking long-term and treating the YouTube channel like a website – giving it consistent and quality content related to your niche, sharing that content with the right audiences, and growing a viewer base.
We often see that last step as being either very difficult or impossible with some industries, but I believe that this is because many of us in digital marketing focus directly on the sale and neglect indirect sales funnels. For a dentist, you can make your sales videos, but you can make simple advice videos, you can make guides, you can make explainer videos, affiliate videos, and even interview your staff. This not only helps viewers, potential buyers, to gain trust in the company, but it also shows YouTube and Google that your content and your channel is an authority in your industry.
Then, every time you upload a related video to that channel, you’ll see it rank higher and faster.
YouTube algorithm wants new viewers to open the app, watch an entire video, then stay and watch another. Here’s how you do that:
– RETENTION
If viewers leave your video at the beginning, your goose is cooked. The first 10-15 seconds is crucial. If you “hook” a viewer then, he or she will usually watch the entire vid.
Show the viewer exactly what they’ll get from watching the entire video. For example, if your vid is a tutorial, preview the finished product in a before and after shot. Bribe them to stay.
– Bring in External Traffic
YouTube’s algorithm loves when you bring users to their site.
If you have a mailing list, send your YouTube videos out to the list. Use all of your social platforms to promote your videos. If you don’t have a following, then post them on Reddit.
If you know SEO, use keyword rich descriptions, social shares, and website embeds of your videos to rank them in Google.
– Copycat Keywords
To rank in YouTube search, copy the top videos, but add a twist.
Literally copy their keywords from their descriptions and titles. (You can also a video’s keywords by viewing the source code of its YouTube page.)
Use these on your own video. Plus, spice it up with a little clickbait in the title. Doing “X” in “Y” (unbelievably short) amount of time is a reliable, winning clickbait title.
I’d say consider your YouTube channel page as your website homepage and the video pages as landing pages and then start working with the same anatomy as you do for a website.
The very first important step is to perfect the On Page SEO factors for your channel and individual videos. Go to keyword planner, select your targeted keywords (of course with a decent search volume) and try to add your keyword towards the beginning of your video’s title. Do the same for the description tag as well.
Also, make sure you add proper tags for your videos, including the synonyms and variations of your main targeted keywords. The video name should also use your keyword. For example, if your targeted keyword is “Dental SEO Tips” then your video file name should look something like “dental-SEO-tips”. Once the video is live, the next focus should be to get as many likes, shares, and comments as possible. So, make sure to share it in
Once the video is live, the next focus should be to get as many likes, shares, and comments as possible. So, make sure to share it in your social network. Join relevant groups on Facebook, Linkedin, Google+ etc. and also find other relevant communities such as Reddit.
On Reddit, you can find a sub-Reddit for almost every niche and it can bring quite a number of visitors if posted at the right place. Also, if you own a website or blog make sure to embed the video in your popular posts.
What you need to do before creating a YouTube video:
Keyword research to find opportunities (one of the most important steps)
This can be done with simple tools like YouTube or Google Trends as well as more advanced tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs or Moz. If you are just starting out, you want to look for longer tailed keywords (avoid very broad and highly competitive queries)
Ask questions to determine difficulty to rank
How recent/old are the videos currently ranking for my target keywords? Can I improve/offer something better than what already exists? Do the videos have a lot of engagement? (Likes, comments, subscribers, etc) How many links are pointing to the video? Tools like: vidIQ and TubeBuddy can help drilling into statistics.
Select keywords
You want to focus on high volume keywords in your niche that currently rank low-quality videos (outdated content, low engagement, little to no backlinks, etc).
When creating a video:
Don’t cut corners
User engagement is rapidly becoming the most important ranking signal on YouTube (and several other search engines for that matter). “Watch time”, CTR, likes, clicks, comments, shares tell YouTube if your video was interesting and if it deserves to be shown to other people. So, you need to think about every detail when creating your video: music, pacing, style, intros, outros, script, CTA’s, etc.
Make your video memorable
The best way to rank a video is to do something that stands out. Usually, easier said than done, this can be the difference between a video that gets seen a few dozen times or a few million times.
Publishing your video:
Title
Your target keyword should be at the very beginning of the title and be written in a manner that will maximize clicks
Description
Add your link at the top of the description to maximize CTR (linking to another YouTube video is a great idea here: YouTube really likes when you keep people on their platform)
Include your keyword in the first 25 words
Make the description at least 250 words (break into multiple paragraphs)
Include your keyword 3-4 times +
When possible, add multiple links to relevant information. (Once again, favor YouTube links)
Keywords
List keywords in order from longest in length to shortest in length, separated by commas. Use very specific keywords, try to use the least amount of keywords possible. Place brand keywords at the end, they are the easiest to rank for.
Thumbnail image
Often underestimated, this is one of the easiest ways to improve your CTR. A strong title with enticing thumbnail always produces great results.
Distribution your video:
How your video performs in the first 48 to 72 hours is critical to determine how it ranks. You want to share it with your most engaged followers like your Facebook groups. Try and get it placed or linked to from high authority pages. (Techniques like “Broken link building” and “Skyscraper technique” can be used.)
Same as with traditional SEO, getting quality links and great engagement are the keys to high rankings on YouTube!
If YouTube notices a video performing well above average, it will test it higher in search results to see how it performs. If the performance continues, you just successfully ranked a YouTube video!
(Be aware of black hat tactics here, they will not help you in the long run)
YouTube – the second largest search engine in the world, owned by the largest search engine in the world, Google. YouTube is a terrific source for traffic and when tapped into properly, can be an absolute game-changer for your business.
At WebDesign499, when we want to rank a YouTube video for a client, we have a system that works for us very well.
First off, make sure your video title and description is optimized for the keyword you want to rank for. This is extremely important. I have seen many YouTube Videos ranked just by proper on-Page optimization alone, depending on the competition for that keyword.
Once you’ve optimized those and your video is uploaded, we have seen tremendous upward movement by utilizing embeds. Embed your YouTube video on Web 2.0 blogs, PBNs, Guest Post sites and other blogs that are niche relevant. Embeds and proper optimization of the title and description will go a long way for your YouTube Video rankings!
If you have the budget for it, you can then build links to the actual YouTube URL directly and also through a Goo.gl shortener to pass the power of Google’s Domain Authority. Let’s get ranking!
Here is my best strategy for ranking Youtube videos:
This free Chrome extension from vidIQ will provide you with valuable competitive data for current videos that are going viral or videos that are ranking well in general for your key terms.
These insights include tags, social shares, average watch time, velocity, and more.
Even more importantly, vidIQ will provide details around the content length of these fields. For example, is your video description too short compared to videos that are ranking and going viral?
Additionally, ranking factors that are largely ignored (like velocity of views) are uncovered with the tool. This will help identify if a small promotional budget can help you compete in more competitive video search results.
Armed with this data, you can now apply these learnings strategically to a video’s title, tags, and description.
Youtube is one of the best platforms you can use to get traffic to your website. Since Youtube is a Google property, you can rank a Youtube video very easily on Google. In addition to that, Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world so you get traffic from within Youtube too.
The best strategy that I use to rank Youtube videos is social signals. I use Youtube ads to get low cost, high relevance traffic from Youtube to my Youtube video. If the traffic and engagement of the video are high, automatically, you start ranking higher as they are social signals.
In addition to that embedding, the video on posts on various websites too help. An embed of a Youtube video is equal to a link in Google’s eyes so more the embeds the higher the ranking.
When it comes to Youtube SEO, user engagement is essential. Optimizing file names and descriptions are basic must-do’s, but creating a video that keeps visitors watching is key to ranking high.
If visitors are coming to your video and leaving immediately, your user engagement metrics will be poor, and because of this your video won’t rank highly.
Like blog posts, YouTube videos also need some On-Page SEO like:
SEO rich video Title (Use Google Trends to finalize your title)
Meta description containing your targeted keyword in the first paragraph. (Earlier the better)
Video file name: Rename your video file name with your targeted keyword like YouTube-
Video-SEO.mp4
Upload custom Thumbnail that too having your main keyword in the file name.
Tag your each and every video with relevant tags. It helps YouTube understand your video topic.
Upload video transcripts.
Apart from these basic On-Page SEO, make sure you do below things as well:
Every time you upload a new video, add that video to a particular Playlist. Name your playlist as your broad category you are targeting.
Whenever you share your videos on any platform, instead of sharing your video URL directly, copy the video URL from its playlist. So whenever someone will watch your video, more videos from that same playlist will be displayed at the right side of their screen. Means, more views, more watch time and higher rankings.
Include your “channel name” into your tags. It will help your other videos get ranked in the suggested videos section. It will encourage your viewers to watch more videos from your channel which will accumulate more Watch time for you.
This is my YouTube SEO Checklist.
Remember one thing, you need MORE watch time to get higher rankings in YouTube. If you can hook your viewers to keep watching your videos, you’ll get success on YouTube for sure.
My best strategy for ranking Youtube videos is all about 2 things: saturation and conversion.
1) You want to saturate your video content in all the ways possible. Be sure to fill out the title, description, keywords, etc. as well as the other lesser known areas like uploading closed captioning (super cheap through rev.com) and adding videos to playlists and groups. Engage with the comments and use keywords wherever natural. Saturate your video with good SEO practices like you would your website home page. Make sure your video includes the keywords you want at the beginning and end as well – so the closed captioning has that depth to it.
2) Conversion: make sure your video content is actually something that converts! Who cares if someone gets to your video and clicks play only to leave after 3 seconds. Does your video actually entertain and educate? Make sure your video actually engages your audience in ways that are natural and powerful. Does your video actually convert to traffic or purchases? If it doesn’t, then all the ranking in the world and views won’t matter.
As you can make a video that has good saturation and results in meaningful conversions, you’ll actually be in a position to profit from your video marketing rather than just rank up on Google. Oh yeah, doing these tips will also help you rank on Google.
There are two very important metrics which YouTube uses to rank videos – and they are both related to the quality of the video.
In essence, just like on Google you need to have the best content for any given query to rank, the same applies on YouTube.
The first metrics is whether users have seen the full video or abandoned it mid-way. Videos which are viewed in full rank better. What you need to do is create an open loop within your video. That means, in the first few seconds you need to engage the user and show them you’ll be answering the query later on in the video. Every so often you should keep the loop open by reinforcing that you’ll be answering the question soon.
By keeping the user curious, they’ll stick around to watch the video. Of course, your video needs to be engaging enough to keep the user watching.
The second metric is also related to quality. Essentially, it is whether a user subscribes to a channel following a video. If a user has subscribed to a channel, that means they loved what they saw and what to see more.
What is therefore VERY important is to get your watchers to subscribe to your channel. You need to ask them, beg them even bribe them to subscribe, because this is a critical measurement of quality.
These two tricks should boost rankings of your videos significantly.
One of the best ways to rank YouTube videos is to focus on engagement.
It’s almost become a joke at this point for YouTubers to beg their viewers to like and subscribe at the end of their videos, so the effectiveness of it has diminished. Instead, give your viewers a good reason to leave a comment, since that kind of engagement is also a strong ranking factor. Some of my favorite approaches include:
Including something controversial that viewers can’t wait to debate. WatchMojo likes to put surprise twists at the end of their “top # countdowns,” which are often debated in the comments.
Forgetting a small detail that will drive users nuts, then add “let me know in the comments if I missed anything.”
Literally, ask the viewer “which video should I make next?”, give them options, and let them fight it out in the comments.
Mentioning comments from past videos in your latest videos, along with screenshots, to show viewers that their comments will actually be read.
Increase the engagement by giving viewers a real reason to leave comments. Don’t just tell them to like, comment and subscribe, because the incentives are weak.
If you’re uploading a cooking video, finish it with “what do you want to see me cook next? Bacon cheddar ranch egg rolls or fried chicken and waffle quesadillas? Let me know in the comments below.” If you’re making a video about the top 10 rides at Disneyland, leave out Space Mountain and add “did I miss your favorite ride? Let me know in the comments below.” And if you’re making a video about the best way to turn a Roomba into a BattleBot, finish with “If anyone’s interested, I can also put together a PDF of the new schematics. Let me know in the comments below.”
Not only will the comments themselves help your video rank better, but once your audience starts interacting with your video they’re also more likely to take the time to upvote it or subscribe.
Name the Video same as your target keyword e.g., my target keyword is “weight loss in two weeks”, when you upload video make sure to make video name as “weight loss in two weeks”.
Add your target keyword in title too
Add your keyword in tags too but don’t forget to use LSI keywords in tags.
Always create a custom thumbnail, use any free online resource. (The ideal size for thumbnails is 1280 x 720 pixels)
When the video is online and ready, get a freelancer and get maxi embed of such video.
I published a post on my site about ranking videos on YouTube. In this post, I detail every aspect of how one of my most popular videos on YouTube ranked really well. In a nutshell, I did the following.
I created interesting content. The content needs to be interesting to the right audience. I happened to choose an audience of people that wanted to see a foreigner speak in Korean. I optimised the video for my target keyword. I optimised the video title, description and the naming conventions of the files so that the video could rank well on YouTube. I was also hoping that it would rank in both the search results and the recommended results on the side. I hoped that the watch time of the video would increase.
Previously, my video content was very long (Around 10 minutes) and it wasn’t interesting enough to retain people. So I experimented with making shorter clips that were a bit more humorous. This one worked well. But you have to tailor the content to your audience.
I also published this case study about one of my videos going viral on Reddit. The video gets so much viewing time that it is always ranking well and it is always being recommended for watching due to its high watch time. We SEO experts can optimise the videos all we want to, but it is important that the content in the video resonates with the audience. I hope that this helps.
There are many ways to rank a video. When you’re creating your video, try to make it at least five minutes long. Similar to text-based articles, longer videos rank higher. They consistently outperform shorter videos in YouTube and Google. You should also upload the video with YouTube SEO in mind. You’ll want to optimize things like the video filename, title, description, and tags. I’ve listed some tips below for each of those:
1. Video filename – use your keyword in the filename
2. Video Title – the title of the video should be at least 5 words long. By doing this, you can include your full keyword without keyword stuffing. You should also aim to include the keyword at the beginning of the title.
3. Video Description – Since Google and YouTube can’t “listen” to videos, they rely on a text description to figure out the video’s content.
put your website link at the top to maximize click-through rate to your site
include the keyword in the first 25 words
make the description at least 250 words
include the keyword 3-4 times
4. Tags – include keywords so you show up for your target keywords, but also so you show up more often as a related video in the sidebar area of YouTube.
Once your new video is created and then optimized correctly, you’ll be set up to rank for it.
Youtube ranking is similar to Google rankings in many ways yet it does have its differences. In order to rank youtube videos, here’s what I usually do:
1. Keyword Research
Keyword research is important. You’ll want to target keywords that have enough search volume and know the competition. I know a lot of people don’t think keywords are important for youtube because it’s just video. I use the ‘keywords anywhere’ google extension and this shows me the worldwide volume, CPC and competition. It’s not 100% accurate but it’s a good guideline.
2. Video Optimisation
I make sure that the video is not too short, at least a minute and a half. Then from here, I’ll have a 200+ word description or a transcript. Generally, if the video is about a certain topic, it should have words related to the keyword.
3. Optimise Channel Page
I know people might just want to rank 1 video but the channel page is really important. You have no idea how many people actually reach the video or videos from the channel. Make sure you have a good header image, a welcome video and playlists.
4. Off Youtube
Make sure you link to your video from your blog using a post to introduce it. It doesn’t have to be a long post, just introduce the video. That’s the minimum I’ll do but I’d also want to try to get links to the video from other sources.
5. User/engagement metrics
Make sure your video is interesting. The better engagement it gets, the more likely it will shoot up the search. Get less bounce, more people watching the full video and commenting/liking it.
6. Get social
Share your video across your social media and ask people to share. The more your video gets seen, the better. This will also increase the likelihood of the video getting good engagement metrics.
7. Paid Ads
I don’t always do this for videos but it’s worth looking at. If the video has a good potential ROI then I’ll test Youtube ads and Facebook ads on the video. The more people watch it, the higher your chance to get found on search. For FB, remember to make them watch it on Youtube and not Facebook.
First and foremost ranking a YouTube Video is an extremely valuable ability that will drive your business above and beyond. Ranking a video is a simple process of recording valuable content in which viewers are going to want to watch.
Outsourcing for this sort of thing can be done by connecting with someone on Fiver.com and getting a quality video completed within a matter of days. Of course, there is always making a video yourself in which video editing software will be required.
Once you have your video ready and set to be published on YouTube the next step will be to ensure your description is accurately filled out. You will want to make sure your description is of the good length and contains your website URL and social profile URLs as well.
Most importantly you are going to want your money website contained within the first sentence or two of the description so that it appears immediately without having to expand the description.
Lastly, optimizing the YouTube URL on your own business website and your social profiles with be the immediate way to maximize the viewers. There are other methods in which can be used to maximizes viewers such as paid ads on Facebook and hashtags on Instagram.
Like anything in SEO, keyword research plays a vital role in the YouTube optimization process. But how exactly to do it right? There are lots of keywords which have high search volume in Google while very low in YouTube. So you should find the so-called “Video Keywords”.
My advice: look into YouTube Suggestions. Many views come from these suggestions, as viewers are most likely to end up clicking one of them.
You can also check the chosen keywords in Google and see if any of them you searched for have YouTube video results. Typically videos are shown in SERP for keywords containing “How To…”, “Video”, “Watch”, Songs/Movies, Reviews, Anything fitness and sports-related or Tutorials.
After you have found your “Video Keywords”, make sure you have them in your title and description but do it naturally. Do not keyword stuff video description and tags.
Create longer videos with relevant and interesting content. Make your video at least 5-minutes long. Watch time is the most important ranking factor in YouTube algorithm. So if your videos are longer than the competitors one, your watch time will be more than his/hers and your videos will rank higher.
Our best strategy is the approach we take. Shoot your video as human and natural as possible.
The video itself needs to produce a human feeling, that’s the best SEO strategy you can have.
By getting a human reaction from someone watching the video, the magic happens on its own afterward.
The first thing I usually do is to optimize the filename of the video itself afterward I also optimize the image thumbnail.
I always utilize the end screens and optimize the tags in the video as such that it would target the keywords I want it to rank for in YT.
As for the description itself, I usually go for the URL of the website I want people to go to and then proceed with writing a good copy for the description that doesn’t need to be lengthy.
Instead, I gather bite sized info that anyone can digest in a jiffy.
Afterwards, the title of the video should also be the same as the filename and the thumbnail filename.
This technique has worked wonders for me.
I consider getting a video captioned to be absolutely essential. It’s table stakes. With services like Speechpad.com and Rev.com charging just a buck fifty per minute of video, there’s no excuse not to. Not only does it help YouTube and Google understand the contents of the video, it’s the right thing to do to make your videos accessible to people with disabilities. Assuming that you already have captioning in place,
Assuming that you already have captioning in place, an often overlooked signal in YouTube ranking is what users do after watching your video. Obviously, you want them to watch your entire video, so edit it for have snappy pacing.
If you help YouTube with that goal, your videos will be rewarded. So, always set up a few pathways to compel users to stay on YouTube after they’ve watched your video. Including an endplate with links to other videos is a very useful tactic, and be sure to place your videos inside a well-curated playlist whenever possible.
Most importantly, abandon the misinformed idea that your goal should be to get viewers to click through from YouTube to your website. You can get them to do that later, by running remarketing ads. Instead, make your calls to action in your video all about staying on YouTube: watch another video, subscribe to our channel, like this video, leave a comment below, or share this video with your friends.
I’ve been doing a lot of observations of various youtube channels for marketing-related tips and serps as well and here’s a little something I have to share:
People, LOOK INTO SUBTITLES!
Even though it might sound simple at first, Google seems to scan content within subtitles, looking for relevant pieces and I what I see is an increase of SERP results, where the #1 results is a youtube video. When you click it it starts at a pre-defined moment, at the exact second where the answer to your query lies. How awesome is that? This means that producing videos with well-descriptive narrations might be the next best thing after a thorough and well-formated blogpost, especially if you have both!
If you really want to be as professional as possible – base your actual speech on keyword research. This is the one sure way to make sure you have the best answer out there!
One of the sure-fired ways to help a YouTube video to rank is by writing a well-optimized title and description. Ensuring that both the YouTube video’s title and description contain the keywords for which you want to rank are important factors in helping the video rank well in search engines such as Google, Bing, and even YouTube itself.
Keep your keyword phrases at the beginning of the title and to limit the characters to 70. As for the description, make sure that your first line is succinct as only ~157 characters will appear in the featured snippet, although many search engine results will truncate that even more.
In the first sentence, include your keywords and a call to action if you can fit it. You have 5000 characters to squeeze in as much information as possible for your description, however, you will want to devote some of those characters for links back to your own website’s landing pages.
Most users of YouTube will only read the first two lines of a description, so try to get your message across as fast as possible.
Lastly, you want to use words that speak to your intended audience, given a specific age range, geographic location, and many other factors.
We all know that there is a huge opportunity to grow your business & build brand awareness with YouTube but the point is to where to start and build a proven system in place which works every time when we launch any new video. I remember when I first started YouTube SEO, I followed advice of every so-called expert which includes
Put your keyword in title
Find and write appropriate tags
Save the video with keyword filename
Upload them as a live video to fool Google ?
Write juicy keyword rich video description etc.
But I was wrong and failed so many times before I learnt that “Finding a winning topic” is very important to promote the video.
Just like Google SEO, Keyword research is the first critical step to rank better in YouTube as well. YouTube kW research is completely different than the keyword research you do for Google SEO. So, it’s important to optimize your video around the right keyword.
Here’s a step by step strategy I use to rank my videos on YouTube;
Step 1 – So to start with, focus on finding the winning topic ideas for your video which can be done by looking at your competitor channel to see what type of content is working best for them and put the ideas on your list. Use the same strategy for 10-15 competitors of yours and you will end up with a golden list of proven topics which has proven well. (pro Tip – You can use the filter “most popular” to look at their most popular videos based on views and likes)
Step 2 – Create a better video with more juicy information in that. This can be done by looking at the popular blog posts in Google and curate content from there.
Step 3 – Not to forget that video promotion still plays an important role which includes do an outreach campaign and let people know of your video and ask them if they can watch and embed that in their relevant published post.
The first point is to create some useful, valuable content. You’ll never rank if the content is poor. Content drives engagement, and engagement is really important. Views, comments, and video responses are all used as a metric to rank your video. If people are watching your content through to the end, they are fully engaged, and YouTube is going to rank you better than a video where only the first 10 seconds is watched.
Inbound links, social shares, and video embeds are also important. Use your social media channels, use your website, use your blog, and use email to share your video to your audience and start to drive those views and engagement and links.
You can also optimise the video content. Conduct some keyword research to identify what you want your video to rank for. Ensure this is in the title. Write a real description for your video – think 300 to 500 words, write this naturally and for the reader, and include the keywords where relevant. Add tags – at least ten of them, also including your keyword and related keywords. Also take the time to transcribe your video manually, word for word. Don’t rely on the automatic translation, which is often poor. Make sure it’s done manually.
Also, you need to replicate this across your whole channel. Be aware of your videos as a whole and your channel – if it follows best practice and has engagement, there is more opportunity to rank for your new videos.
SEO and achieving good ranking results always starts with keyword research. Ranking in YouTube is no different. And what’s more, using “video keywords” in the optimisation will help you rank not only within YouTube’s internal search engine but also in Google!
Google gives a huge preference to YouTube videos, so ranking here usually requires very little effort.
Here’s my Youtube ranking strategy:
Google often shows a selection of video results on the first page and these video results tend to be “How to” videos, tutorials, funny videos and anything fitness related so using this type of keyword will give the best results.
I find the best “video keywords” by searching for keywords in my niche and see if this results in any YouTube videos showing up in Google. When I’ve found some video keywords I then check out the search volume for the keywords. I use Google’s Keyword Planner to help with this. Targeting keywords with about 300 monthly searches ensures I get a decent volume of searches actually in YouTube as well as the 300+ monthly visitors from Google straight to my video!
To optimise the video use the video keyword at the beginning of the title and make the title at least 6 words long. The title is the most important factor in ranking YouTube videos so I spend some time on this to get it right. I like a relevant and compelling title as this will lead to more views and better user metrics.
Adding a long description that describes in detail what the video is about, helps Google and YouTube understand the content of the video. Putting your link at the very top of the video description will maximise the CTR to your site, and then as with the title tag, I use my video keyword at the beginning and a few more times throughout the description where it makes sense to do so. Google isn’t good at interpreting video so relies on the video file name, the title and the description, meaning that these are crucial if you want to achieve good ranking. Tags aren’t so important, but they help a little, so I include a few keywords in these too.
Apart from choosing and optimising your video for the right keywords, you obviously need a great video!
Hitting those user experience metrics are incredibly important – likes, dislikes, comments, subscribes, shares, etc, are things that YouTube uses to figure out the quality of your video. Audience retention is another metric that YouTube uses to measure the appeal of your video.
Create a quality click-worthy thumbnail image. CTR is a ranking factor in Youtube’s ranking algorithm. Implement a great image as well as a call to action. YouTube viewers are just like anyone web surfers, they will click the most interesting image or headline. Also, a great thumbnail goes a long way when you share your video on social media.
Embed your youtube video on authoritative websites and share it on social media. Using expired web 2.0’s is a great way to rank your YouTube videos. First, find an expired web 2.0 (e.g. WordPress.com, Blogger.com, Tumblr.com or, Medium.com), register the site and add quality relevant content.
A general rule for content is 500++ words of unique content. The keyword should be included in the title and the body. The keyword should be linked to the YouTube video, the video should be Embedded onto the page and you should also link out to an authority site. To optimize the page further, add the keyword into a H1 tag and a keyword variation as alt text of an image.
Once you have a few posts live, go ahead and embed your video and add surrounding relevant text.
Embedding YouTube video’s on authoritative sites is an important ranking factor in YouTube’s algorithm. I’ve tested this method for clients, and it works well. The great thing about ranking videos for highly targeted keywords, even though they might not have a ton of traffic, they are VERY qualified visitors.
Optimizing your YouTube videos with the best SEO sounds like a difficult task, but is actually quite easy! There are a few simple tricks you can use to make sure your video shows up when a relevant topic is searched for. Here is my short task list on how to have the best SEO for your YouTube videos.
Title your video specifically to the content in your video
Use the keywords that people are searching for in your title and description
Apply relevant and distinct tags to your video
Include a detailed description, treat it as a miniature blog post filled with your keywords
Use closed captioning or upload a transcript for added SEO value
Include a link to your website or your other relevant content in the description
My last piece of advice is to simply create quality content. YouTube and Google rank videos based on a formula that includes watch time, subscriber amounts, keyword relevance, viewer interaction, and video length so make sure your video rocks and pulls in viewer attention. If you check off all these little tasks, your videos will be popping up all over the internet!
Just like regular websites, there are keywords that will trigger Google to show your YouTube video. You can set these keywords on YouTube itself. But if you’re wondering which keywords to choose, there is a perfect tool for that. On Google Adwords, there is a tool called the Google Keyword Planner.
This will show you the number of monthly searches and other important information that will help your video grow. Although this is meant for pay-per-click ads, the effect is still the same. Use the given keywords for your YouTube video, and it is sure to grow!
I have three tips to optimize SEO for a Youtube video.
1) Perform extensive keyword research to identify keywords that target people searching on both Youtube and standard search queries. The reason for this is that your video will now rank higher for both searches, and may be ranked higher by Google, even during Google text queries. Here’s an example. Someone needs to know how to install a TV wall mount. Your video is a detailed how-to on this topic. Applying this suggestion: You’d use a keyword phrase like “How to Install a TV Wall Mount”. Now, the person searching may see your video as a top result on a standard Google search because of the keyword and content relevance.
2) Target your video content to the specific needs and desires of your target audience. There are a million tactics to improve SEO, but the king of the hill still reigns – content relevancy. In order to improve SEO, make sure your videos are stay on message to the desires and needs of the target viewers. Don’t start talking about your favorite TV show during your how-to mount a TV video – it will decrease your time per session due to lack of relevancy.
3) Backlinks, backlinks, backlinks. If can get other, content relevant, reputable sources to include links to your video, then Google will increase your page ranking. It’s true for any type of SEO optimization – the more popular the source of the backlink is, the more it will improve your SEO. Here’s a tip, ask for a “follow” when the backlink. Unfortunately, some sources will backlink your content, but put you on a “no-follow”; in other words, you get no SEO benefit.
You’ve created a killer Youtube video, so how do you get it seen? By getting it ranked. What is the best strategy? 3 actionable steps: Research, outreach, and distribution. Begin this process by asking yourself a few questions:
How will this video benefit the viewer?
What are the keywords people will use to search this video?
Lastly, what is the goal of the video?
Are you trying to increase brand awareness, drive leads, or push a competitor’s video down?
Once you have all of these questions answered, it’s easy to figure out how the title tag and description of the video should be written.The most important keywords should always be at the beginning of the title tag, and in the first 150 characters at least twice – preferably towards the beginning. Just be careful not to “keyword stuff” your title and description.
Once the video is on Youtube, focus your efforts on outreach and distribution. Share it on social media, post it on relative blogs, get your friends to share it. Use every platform you can to get it out there. Youtube actually provides you with plenty of sharing options right below the video.
A key tactic is to grab that embed code, reach out to bloggers and get them to embed it on their websites. The more your video is embedded, the more it’s seen, and ultimately – ranked.
Finally, post the video, along with an engaging blog post on your website’s blog. If you have an email list, distribute the video post through there as well. People will read the post, and watch the video. Done right, that page will organically receive links to it from other sites – essentially helping the website itself AND the Youtube video get ranked and be seen.
After doing SEO for over 10 years a see a lot of similarities between Google search ranking results and YouTube ranking results. Let’s assume you have created an awesome piece of content that is both relevant and entertaining to the watcher. But how to rank it?
The very first thing you have to focus on is a descriptive and enticing title without being “clickbaity”. This title should include a keyword or phrase that you want to rank for such as “best hacks for college students”. Furthermore, you should continue this phrase into the description of the video which should ideally be 150-200 words.
This description will furthermore add relevant content to your video which YouTube can pick up on. One last tip is to add a custom thumbnail to your video with some keywords that will stick out while users scroll down YouTube. While this isn’t necessarily an SEO tactic, it will help get more clicks on your videos which in return and bump it up the ranking of the video.
The first and foremost point that needs considering is the quality and relevance of the video, even before you try ranking your youtube video.
Saying about strategy; you must have a title – this phase starts with keyword research. There are few keywords come up as the top result while you search; these are video keywords. Most commonly used keywords that start with, ‘how to’, tutorial or reviews are the video keywords. You must identify them.
Youtube search engine is another way for keyword research. When you enter the chosen keywords, you can find associate other words. Using ”_” gets you more suggestions. Google trends is another method that will help you to find your targeted audience. Use good tags and video description before you take the video public. TubeBuddy is a good source to find your competitor’s video tags.
Once you have published, you can start on with its promotional activities. Embed your video on your site and other sites will improve its rating. If you have other videos that are ranking well you can link your video with that using annotations. Some website SEO tricks can also work-out here.
Embed the video in your web2, Quora commenting and forum commenting for better visibility. Find the articles that describe your video keyword. Reach them with your video.
Youtube is one of the best platforms for sharing a visual medium of your content. Today with cheap editing software and low-cost video recording devices, it is easy to make a Youtube video.
I mainly use web 2.0 embeds to link to my Youtube video. I use IFTTT to automatically post every new video from my Youtube channel to my web 2.0 sites which include Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr and Google Sites.
I have tested with both, no web embeds and with web embeds and there is a significant difference in the ranking.
YouTube’s ranking algorithm is complex, so complex in fact that even YouTube developers can’t fully understand it. That’s because the algorithm is controlled by Google’s machine learning AI – the same AI that beat the world’s best Go player. What we do know though, is that the algorithm prioritizes watch time, so we can focus our efforts there.
There are a number of ways we can do this. Creating interesting and entertaining content is the most obvious, and the one that everyone is attempting to achieve. Another is ensuring that you get your content to the right audience and get them to click on it. You have two amazing tools to help you achieve this – tags and thumbnails. Make sure you correctly and comprehensively tag your videos, using every single one of your 500 available characters.
Come up with the key searches you expect people to use to find your video, and then go through every variation you can think of. If you can get these tags right, you’re going to be able to focus in on your key audience, increase your watch time, and work your way up the rankings.
– The way YouTube rankings work is quite different from the traditional outlook. You can’t just throw a couple of links with a couple of content pieces and expect to rank.
In order to rank well on YouTube, you need to establish channel authority. You need to produce quality content constantly and make sure that it is effective too. Now, there are a couple of ways to do it but you gotta remember that just like traditional SEO, YouTube SEO also takes a lot of time to work.
So, how can you build this channel authority? Here are the top 3 things that I recommend you to follow:
1. Work on the on-page optimization of your video. This includes working on the description, tags, and other usual stuff. You gotta make sure you keep your targeted keywords within the first paragraph of your description. But don’t write for the crawlers. Write it for the people.
2. What many people ignore is working on their source file. But you’ve gotta work on that as it plays a major role in ranking your site. You can actually edit your video rating, description, meta information by opening up the properties of your source file.
3. The last thing that you must follow is outreach. You see the more people you will reach to the more people will get to know about it. So, I suggest on following influencer outreach. But you must remember that for outreach to work your content needs to be worthy of sharing on their social media profiles and sites.
There are two key tactics that stand out to me as perhaps the most important when getting a YouTube video to rank.
The first step is to find target keywords that Google uses to show YouTube results. For instance, some keyword searches won’t display any videos, whilst others might display a few. I use SEMRush for this part, where I can simply start plugging in my initial draft of keywords and it will show me if the SERPs are showing video results. After refining that list, I look at the keyword volume and competitiveness to find the ideal target.
The actual production of the video plays an important role too.
There’s been discussion around Google using ‘searcher task accomplishment’ as a key indicator of value to the user and with video, this can be measured quite simply with ‘view time’. So the aim must be to get your viewers hanging around watching. I suggest longer videos to give you the best chance of demonstrating value. For example getting viewers to watch 4 minutes of a 5-minute video is likely more convincing than watching all 30 seconds of a shorter video. There are also production tactics to keep viewers engaged and for this reason, it’s worth consulting film professionals.
Just having an optimized description and keyword stuffing won’t help much with ranking Youtube videos. one among my simplest tricks is to consider Youtube as my own website and building back-links from relevant Q&A platforms.
Quora would be an answer for better exposure. The link can drive many viewers and these viewers are perfectly capable of sharing the answer and indirectly promoting the video if it is worthwhile. More the traffic, more the attention, Better is the positioning in Youtube suggestions. It is that simple.
My other favorite strategies include Reddit and Pinterest.
One can utilize Reddit groups for promoting a Video URL and the archived sections are still valuable for bringing in the traffic.
Pinterest is an image sharing platform. However, Youtube provides direct option to share the video. Also, you could add a thumbnail and provide the Youtube URL there.
For starters, I would recommend creating a video that has a potential to go viral ( For example funny videos, videos with deep messages etc.) and provide a short and concise description, where the first line should describe what the video is about.
Blogging Surgery
When you search for a particular keyword let us say Affiliate Marketing, You will see many times that there will be some videos who will have fewer views but are ranking above then some videos with more views. The reason behind this is such videos includes a well-written description. Hence as the Youtube search looks for the keywords particularly in the description as well such videos rank better.
Tip: If possible always add a written transcript of your video in search description. It will help the video to rank better and there are chances that this description can also be part of Google Featured snippets
For ranking Youtube videos, first thing is to do a basic stuff – place the keywords in the video title, description, and tags. Make a bit longer description, at least a few sentences.
When it’s published, share it on all main social networks. On Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus use the keywords a hashtag. Share it not only on your profiles but also on few Facebook pages, Linkedin groups and everywhere where it’s appropriate and where you have control.
Find few websites/blogs where video can be embedded and do that. It would be great if you can choose title on that blogs/web pages, so you can use keywords in that titles.
Track when someone leaves a comment on your video and answer them.
If you have more YouTube videos, place the link to the new video, somewhere in the description, but somewhere in the comment, also.
If Youtube profile has more subscribers, that will help to rank uploaded video, too. So try to get more subscribers, too, with sharing whole profile on social networks.
Make useful or fun playlist, with videos from different YouTube profiles, and include your video in it.
Ranking videos on YouTube isn’t a lot different than ranking pages on Google if you’re only going to search traffic only. The best way to get views is to find a search term that people are searching and isn’t too competitive.
Once you find a keyword (or words) that people are searching for and you have a good video that meets people’s needs optimizing is next. The optimization part is all about having your keyword as close to the front of your title, reiterated in your description a few times, and using it in your keywords also.
If you’ve done that right then it’s all about a captivating thumbnail that captures interest and looks like it will meet people’s needs. That’s it for on video SEO but then you can also improve its ranking by reaching out to people who would be interested in the video and sharing it with them.
This is a very detailed topic and in fact I wrote a whole article on it here.
Ranking Youtube videos is similar to ranking a regular webpage. You have the usual items like the Title and Description area, but you also have a Tag area as well.
To optimize the Title, keep your targeted keyword phrase near the beginning. You have up to 100 characters to use before it gets truncated, but try to keep it about 70 characters in length. Many people don’t know that you are allowed to use emojis in the Title. It helps get your video to stand out a bit more.
Optimizing the Description area is similar to optimizing a page on a website. You have up to 5000 characters, but minimally try to use about 300 words. Use the keyword phrase in the first sentence, with variations throughout the text. Use it again near the end of the text. Put a call to action at the end, asking people to comment and subscribe as well.
The Tag area is where you insert stand-alone keyword phrases. Use at least three. I have seen videos rank very well solely on the strength of their channel that hasn’t included any Tags, so I am not sure how much it is used for ranking purposes, but Youtube’s suggested section will show other videos that contain the same Tags.
Youtube will also scan the audio for clues about how to rank the video. You can help this process by uploading a text file of the audio for closed captioning.
We also know that the video is scanned visually as well. Given that Google has patents on reading text from image and video files, it’s not far to assume that inserting text (of your keyword phrases) within the video can also help rankings.
Making your videos interesting is not only good for your viewers and getting subscribers, but also helps ranking since overall watch time is another factor that Youtube uses to rank it’s videos.
Thank you so much to all the experts that contributed to this expert roundup! Let us know in the comments below what was were your favorite tips on how to rank YouTube videos. Also if you enjoyed reading this post, do share it on social media with your friends and followers. Looking for SEO services for dentists?
It’s no secret that building authoritative backlinks requires a combination of passion, creativity, relationship-building with key influencers, and perseverance.
But, what about the easy to attain backlinks? Isn’t there a way you can build links to your website that doesn’t involve some sort of SEO wizardry? Yes!
I’m about to give you my list of internet directories (often called “citations”) that I set up for all of my clients. I’m also going to tell you my step-by-step process which I use to ensure my client’s websites rank atop Google search results for some of the most competitive keywords in the dental industry. This process is almost 100% fully automated and it can potentially rank your website on search engines for keywords that bring you new patients every month.
For example, SLO Smiles (a dental office in San Luis Obispo California), was able to improve their Google rankings in record-breaking time by earning Google reviews and improving their citations. Even early on in their SEO campaign, they’re ranking on page 1 of Google. I go into the SEO secrets that I use to rank dental websites all over the world at the end of this article.
But first, here’s my list:
| freedentalcare.us |
| health-local.com |
| everydentist.com |
| ehealthscores.com |
| medevnet.com |
| labdraw.com |
| geodentist.com |
| dentistdig.com |
| implantdirectory.com |
| clinicbook.com |
| dentists.com |
| dentalcenter.com |
| freeclinicdirectory.org |
| thedentisthub.org |
| optometrist-directory.info |
| dentistsdirectory.us |
| dentistintown.net |
| cosmeticdentistsearch.co.uk |
| 24hrdental.net |
| dentist-network.com |
| dentistelist.us |
| dentistfind.com |
| dentistreg.com |
| healthcarenearyou.com |
| itriagehealth.com |
| ladentalsociety.com |
| localreviewdirectory.com |
| worldweb.com |
| wellness.com |
| 1800dentist.com |
| dentist-pro.com |
| dentalprofy.com |
| denture-dentist.com |
| healthprofs.com |
| doctoroogle.com |
| usatopdentists.com |
| realself.com |
| fsnhospitals.com |
| DentistDirectory.com |
| dentistryinworld.com |
| elocaldentists.com |
| nationaldirectoryofdentists.com |
| smileguide.com |
| usa-dentist.com |
| mercuryfreedentists.com |
| denstom.com |
| dentalhealthreference.com |
| Yelp.com |
| brownbook.net |
| Superpages.com |
| Dexknows.com |
| cylex-usa.com |
| foursquare.com |
| merchantcircle.com |
| yellowbook.com |
| expressupdate.com/search |
| pennysaverusa.com |
| kudzu.com |
| manta.com |
| local.com |
| mapquest.com |
| elocal.com |
| mylocally.com |
| local.botw.org |
| hotfrog.com |
| tradeford.com |
| fyple.com |
| citysquares.com |
| magicyellow.com |
| 2findlocal.com |
| angieslist.com |
| city-data.com |
| trantr.com |
| myhuckleberry.com |
| n49.com |
| forlocations.com |
| makeitlocal.com |
| yellowbot.com |
| golocal247.com |
| gomylocal.com |
| yellowpagecity.com |
| tuugo.com |
| zumvu.com |
| cityinsider.com |
| lacartes.com |
| hometownandcity.com |
| chamberofcommerce.com |
| pitnit.com |
| lookuppage.com |
| askmap.net |
| clickblue.us |
| connect.data.com |
| yellowusa.com |
| callupcontact.com |
| usnearby.com |
| igotbiz.com |
| routeandgo.net |
| sanmateocountybusinesslist.com |
| us.kompass.com |
| zipleaf.us |
Keep in mind that this blog post might need to be updated periodically, and my preference for the top-level citations might change. This also doesn’t include the top 12 citations for dental SEO, which we’ll get to later in this blog post.
The goal is to have your dental practice name, address, and phone number be as consistent as possible across all these directories/citations. The reason why this is helpful for your local SEO is because search engines want to make sure that they’re displaying the most accurate contact information possible for your Google, Bing, or Yahoo listing. They want to make sure they show the dentist’s office real information on their search engine results page.
To illustrate the importance of consistent citations, imagine 3 of your existing patients referred to you to a prospective patient. One of the patients says your office is located on 388 Pacific Way, Suite B. your second patient says that you’re “somewhere on Pacific Street…I can’t remember where, but it’s by the McDonald’s.” Your third patient says you’re located at 378 Pacific Way, Suite A “or something like that.”
Odds are, your prospective patient will find you, no problem. But if you put yourself in the position of Google, you realize that in order to be a trusted referral source, you need to be certain. Google likes to list the information that has no split of authority. If Yellow Pages has you listed at Suite B, but Yelp has you listed as Suite A, this results in uncertainty for Google’s algorithms.
We want to remove all the uncertainty because uncertainty typically results in lower rankings.
Now that you have the list of the top 100 citations I use to make sure Google, Bing, and Yahoo are certain of your practice’s name, address, and phone number (often called “NAP”), and you understand why citations matter for your SEO, we can talk implementation.
Here’s the bottom line:
If you want to do dentistry, you can’t spend all day establishing, verifying, and periodically correcting your citations. There is no guarantee this will help your SEO, as other dentists will probably employ the same SEO strategy.
Even though I have a very hands-on SEO approach when it comes to content creation and link building, I don’t waste my time doing the copy n paste dance involved in citation building. I use a few different tools and hire some help.
This person usually does only citation building as their living. You can typically find someone good for around $5/hour. You provide the citations they should build for you (see above), or sometimes they already have their own list that they use. I’d recommend websites such as Guru.com or Freelancer.com.
While I hire a virtual assistant to help me with the lion’s share of citation building & correction, I also follow up with some tools. If you’d like the simplest approach, you can hire my company to help you.
Sticking to the DIY route, you can cut out the management of an overseas virtual assistant (which comes with it’s own challenges), and simply use a service such as the following:
Bright Local, Moz Local, Yext, or Loganix.
Loganix and Bright Local hire people to manually build and correct your citations. This will make sure that you get the citations I covered, above. They send you clean, easy to understand reporting. The process usually takes around 6 weeks, but it depends on how many citations need building, verifying or correcting your citations.
Yext and Moz Local work a bit differently. They automatically correct many of the top citations, and some of them might not be included in my above list. Yext owns/controls many citations, and they don’t always make it easy to correct the information listed (at least until you subscribe to their service).
Yext and Moz Local are great if you plan on changing locations within the next year, simply because they can change tons of citations with a single re-entry of your new practice name/address/phone number.
Depending on the case, I will use manual (virtual assistant), Moz Local, and Yext in combination. This will usually get you the best, fastest results.
If you want to go the DIY route, you’ll want to check all (or at least most) of the citations, yourself. Periodically, citations tend to change for a variety of reasons that are outside our control. I tend to check citations every 6 months to ensure we keep them as consistent as possible. Obviously, if you’re experiencing SEO issues, you’ll want to check more often.
Summary:
In my experience, citation building and consistency is just par for the dental SEO course. While citations are important, you may not see any new patients from instilling this tactic, alone. The secret to gaining a huge competitive advantage is to join dozens of other dentists who are enrolling in my dental SEO course. To find out more about my course, simply Google “Invisalinks Method,” or click here. Dental SEO full service here.
Call it a crystal ball. Scientific research. Or even just plain common sense.
Velscoping your keywords is the opposite of the traditional approach used by dentists who invest into SEO, which I call the “pay and pray” method of SEO.
The fact is, if you’re a dentist looking to learn SEO or hire an SEO company, you’re probably inclined to do so expeditiously. SEO is something that many claim to be “always changing,” and what wet-fingered dentist has the time to be reading about meta tags and Google algorithms? None that I know of.
Until something dramatic happens, months (or years) after you started paying for SEO…
Turns out, that SEO company’s approach didn’t get you new patients. Their ideas didn’t drive production. And what’s worse is they seem to have no adaptation to the first strategic failure. It’s as if they had a one-size-fits-all SEO approach, but you’re just beginning to find that out after they took your money!
If this has ever happened to you, you already know the drill.
You hit the internet, searching for whatever semblance of consistency you can find regarding the dark, enigmatic art of “SEO.” You learn of the major publications and some of the most prolific thought leaders. You start watching YouTube videos on how to rank a website. You read up on the latest algorithmic changes. Of course, you ask around for references of SEO companies that worked for your colleagues.
Then it hits you like a bag of bricks. You’re no longer practicing dentistry. You’ve literally studied yourself into becoming an SEO “expert.” This is the exact thing you were trying to avoid by using the traditional “pay and pray” model of SEO.
And yet, with each prolix, nebulous article you read, you feel less and less like an expert. You could always just Google “dental SEO expert” to see who pops up, but what guarantee is there that this person will actually garner you new patients (amidst other practice goals you have)?
This is often when dentists give up on SEO, or even start claiming that it’s completely random and no SEO company knows how or why Google serves up some dental website designs over others. Some dentists even wonder if all SEO isn’t one big scam.
And what if you just want more specialty procedures, such as Invisalign or dental implants or all-on-four? Now who are you going to call? Who can guarantee anything in SEO, much less a precise forecast of how your new patients will accept treatment? The doubt grows as you pour over an endless sea of data.
You’ve totally lost your way, haven’t you?
I help dentists like yourself avoid the above pitfalls and dangers involved in selecting an SEO company. Velscoping your keywords (or velscope your keywords) is the phrase I’ve coined to describe the process of examining what SEO means to your practice. We’ll get into the nitty-gritty of how this works, and I’ll walk you through the quick & free version of how you can velscope your keywords, step by step in just a minute.
In the mean time, let’s go over why velscoping your keywords is so essential:
Most dentists hire an SEO company the same way a dental patient will call many dentists in town asking “how much is a crown?” Let’s break down the parallels of why price for both a new crown and SEO can both lead down the road of disappointment and mal-investment:
First, diagnosing a patient over the phone isn’t just plain difficult, it’s unethical. Sure, you can tell them how much a crown typically is (and many dentists may be perfectly astute to train their front office manager this way), but that doesn’t change the many clinical variables involved in diagnosis.
When you velscope your keywords, you are eliminating SEO variables which can dramatically increase or decrease your investment in SEO. These variables are analogous to the new crown pricing phone calls you receive. An initial oral exam is absolutely necessary in order to provide the proper diagnosis (and therefore an exact treatment plan of the cost of this particular patient’s crown).
Second, the dental patient assumes they need a “crown,” much in the same way that a dentist assumes they need “SEO.” In both cases, how can we be sure that either service is truly what’s best for them? Not only is it dangerous to assume SEO will bring you a certain number of new patients, but at least a crown is somewhat tangible. SEO is much harder to identify as real when compared to a small chunk of porcelain-fused-to-metal.
The nebulous, intangible nature of SEO makes it all the more necessary for you to have a firm understanding of what SEO means to you. If you velscope your keywords (the first step shown in the above video), you’ll be in a much more advantaged decision to move forward in the right direction.
Third, whether it’s a call asking you about the price of a crown, or asking many SEO companies for a proposal for the price of their “SEO,” the price is almost always wrong. When it’s the cheapest, it’s often the shoddiest work. When it’s middle of the road pricing, that offers zero indication that it’s any better quality. When it’s the highest price the patient or dentist has ever heard, it shuts down all conversation. This results in many dental patients not getting the treatment they sorely need. And when a dentist contacts me, I insist that they velscope their keywords before cutting any SEO company a check. My philosophy is that you need to be in full control of your SEO, whether you hire a full-service SEO provider or you take the DIY SEO approach.
Much like an initial oral exam allows you to make any variety of clinical suggestions that are appropriate (based on the patient’s needs and wants), velscoping your keywords allows you to assess the SEO variables which dramatically affect whether you get 0-10 new patients per month, or over 100 new patients per month. Whether you invest $0 (and a little sweat equity with your team), or whether you’d be wise to invest over $10k/month in your SEO.
So here’s the bottom line:
When you velscope your keywords, you’re going to shine a light on what you can expect from SEO. Either you’ll be enlightened that you absolutely must invest in your SEO, or whether you absolutely must avoid SEO (due to a low ROI). I love it when you velscope your keywords because it allows both of us to know what you’re getting into.
Velscoping your keywords is based on two major aspects that will determine whether or not SEO is the right fit for your goals. First, we need to know how many prospective dental patients are using Google to find a practice in your geographic area. Second, we have to assess what other dental websites have done in order to rank for the keywords your prospective patients are entering in Google.
In a nutshell, Velscoping your keywords is about answering the ultimate question in any marketing endeavor you consider:
What does success look like, and how do I get there?
There are two types of SEO examinations. The first is the quick & free exam, and this is best for most dentists who are just beginning to look into SEO as a possible marketing option. I go in depth in my Invisalinks Method SEO Course on the comprehensive version of velscoping your keywords, but here’s the quick and free version:
Take this data with a grain of salt, because in my experience there is significantly more search volume than indicated on SEM Rush. That said, if you find there is at least 10 searches per month on Google, it may be a good idea to enroll in my dental SEO course and learn how to perform a comprehensive SEO exam. In my Invisalinks Method SEO Course I show you step-by-step how to velscope your keywords in great depth, so that you can learn the step by step process I use for my website when deciding what strategy to employ in order to rank #1 on Google for many different keywords. For SEO for dentist full services, contact Dental Marketing Guy.
The analogy Sean offers us is that you’ll always pick up all your bags from an airport’s carousel before departing from the airport (or at least file a “missing bag” claim and returning later for your missing bag). Here are the 7 red bags you need to deliver on the dental patient’s analogous airport conveyor belt:
If you’re looking to attract new patients from search engines, be sure to check out my dental SEO services. Together, we’ll create and display a sense of uniqueness on your dental website.
1. The six “bases” you need to cover in order to get an authentic video testimonial.
2. How constructing a video testimonial can tell you the Achilles heel in your business model.
The problem with most Google and Yelp reviews is that they are like resumes. They’re one-sided. They appear less credible, because they aren’t how we refer in real life. For example, I might say “You know that hole in the wall looking Mexican restaurant? Let me tell you, I wasn’t sure about it because of the exterior, but a friend invited me to eat there one day. She swore up and down that it’s the best Mexican food she’s ever eaten. And you know what I found? She was right! It is the best Mexican food I’ve ever had!”
This is a natural, credible testimonial. Notice it starts with the objection, “it’s a hole in the wall looking place.” This puts you in the shoes of the potential customer of the Mexican restaurant. It’s how we actually refer friends and family to places.
So why are Google and Yelp reviews 100% positive? Because your staff don’t know how to construct a testimonial, and thus, your patients don’t know what to say.
These 6 questions solve both those problems.
If you follow anything I post on my blog, you’ll learn that my SEO services are only one piece of the puzzle to earning you new patients. I believe that testimonials offer you the chance to do some of your best marketing. You see, testimonials are not meant to be 100% flattery of the dentist. They aren’t mean to be a pep rally. They’re meant to be credible, relate-able endorsements which are the inverse of the objections people have against choosing you as their dentist. In this blog post, I’m revealing how you and your staff can construct a video testimonial, without feeling awkward, pushy, or needy.
What was the obstacle in your mind that would have prevented you from choosing us as your dental office?
We ask this question because there are always obstacles to everything in life. Our question does two remarkable things to help you construct the perfect testimonial. First, it assumes that there was either an obstacle or some perceptive misconception about an obstacle. Most Google and Yelp reviews make things sound absolutely perfect. If life actually worked perfectly, these typical Google and Yelp reviews should get your prospective patients to immediately pick up the phone. But we know better. Life isn’t perfect, and that’s why our testimonials need to start with the hidden objections of your website visitors. Our best shot of achieving this is to let the objections come out of your patient’s mouths. But that’s not all…The second remarkable thing this question does is that it starts relating to where your prospective patients are actually at, mentally. When a prospective patient visits your website, they aren’t fully convinced that you’re the dentist for them. In fact, their psychology is almost the opposite. Because of this, you need to unearth the “hitch” that your prospective patient has against calling you right now.”What’s the catch,” as many people will say. Even the most optimistic person on the planet knows that a dental office visit is less enjoyable than Disneyland. So why do our testimonials talk about dentistry as if it’s something amazing? By starting with the negative (the objection against visiting you), we cause your patient to put themselves in the shoes of your website visitor. The patient providing the testimonial is telling a relate-able, authentic story. One that immediately hooks the attention of your prospective patient as something worth paying attention to.So the bottom is this: A good testimonial is one that grabs someone’s attention.
What did you find as a result of choosing us as your dental office?
After we’ve started with the negative, we immediately resolve that negativity. This allows your prospective patient to learn about the journey your patient has been on, which lead them to offering you a video testimonial.When your patient offers this resolution, it becomes clear exactly why they got over their objection or mis-guided perception of your dental office. It allows the patient to defend their position as belonging to your tribe.This is particularly important in converting regular patients into “evangelical patients” who strongly endorse you when friends and family ask for a dentist referral. Everyone wants to do two things in this question: first, we all vigilantly defend our purchasing decisions. We become “lawyers,” if you will. We advocate why our purchasing decision was rational and logical. We defend the choices we make. Secondly, we want to belong to those that we support. We vote with our dollars, but if we ever have buyer’s remorse, it is often because we feel that we can’t relate to those that we just handed our money over to. By being part of the club, we will be much more likely to feel good about our purchasing decision.That’s why this question is so powerful. You’re giving your patient the “floor,” so you can both align yourself towards a common goal. You’re allowing the patient to talk themselves into being an evangelical supporter of your business, and you’re showing that you care what they really think, which is a step towards making them feel at home.(Pro Tip: This “aligning” of values is part of what I teach in building links to your website for improved dental SEO.
What specific thing did you like most about our dental office?
This question is asked in the past-tense. Which might seem strange, because stories are often best told in the present-tense. The reason why we ask this question in the past-tense is because we don’t want to put the patient on the spot. Why? There is a subtle reason…Your patient has a main reason why they like your dental office, and although many people will be flattered that you want to hear their opinion, leaving a video testimonial isn’t why they chose you.So we ask about what they “did” like most. This does a couple things:This allows your patient to isolate the one thing they appreciate most about the way you do business.Much like a barnyard cat can only catch a single mouse at a time, your prospective patients only want to focus on one key differentiation at a single time. It’s critical that we allow your patient testimonials to focus on the one big thing that makes them proud to be part of your tribe.
What would be two other benefits about this office?
Now that we’ve captured that one barnyard mouse, we can broaden the scope a little bit. This allows you the opportunity to learn about differentiating factors within your practice that you may have never realized.For instance, patients may say that the fact you offer free parking, organic tea or bottled water is something they appreciate. We might naturally think a $0.25 bottle of water would be meaningless, but it could make all the difference in the world for your dental marketing.That’s why constructing these testimonials can help you improve your business, by allowing you to come up with new ideas to grow your practice, and allow you to cut expenses on things which you find out have little to no meaning for your patients.(Pro Tip: Offer a gift card to your staff for video testimonials.)
Would you recommend our dental office? If so, why?
Here is where we transform this patient into evangelical patient who refers to your practice over and over. The psychological principle at play is known as “The consistency principle.”When someone publicly professes to recommend your office to their friends and family, they decide to stay true to that promise. Up until the point that they publicly said they would, they might not ever refer to you.What’s best about this question is you’ve now given your patient the script for all the reasons why your dental office with worth referring to. It’s as if you just trained them to become advocates, or evangelists of your brand!
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
By now, your patient has probably said all they want to say. But there’s no harm in asking this question. In fact, this question can help you discover even further hidden objections. It can even help you discover your Achilles heel in your business model. The Achilles heel being the one thing you’re missing, or the one thing you’re doing, that can dramatically hurt everything from case acceptance rates to a lack of re-care attendance.Your patients are the best judge of your business model. They may not be able to help you with your clinical skills, but they are more equipped than anyone else to help you mold future changes in your practice.(Pro Tip: If you ask these questions via email or a written/typed response medium, you’ll get much less detailed, helpful response. If you ask these questions in person or over the phone, you could be in for a 5+ minute response.)
These 6 responses can even help you craft which words to use on your dental website, aside from testimonials. By creating this kind of content on your website, you’ll be much more likely to actually to hit the optimal “buzz words” that your prospective patients are looking for when selecting a dentist.
Your staff will be able to ask for video testimonials confidently, without feeling pushy or needy. You’ll gain more word-of-mouth referrals. You’ll have more personable, relate-able content on your website. Your search engine rankings will rise. And you can even use this compelling content to help your patients who are stuck weighing the pros and cons of the treatment plan you’ve offered them.
For more information on how this ties into my style of SEO called “The Invisalinks Method,” feel free to check the availability for the first and only dental SEO course, where we go over detailed, step-by-step case studies of real dentists like you ranking their websites on Google and earning 30+ new patients per month.
Many dentists have heard of my trademarked Invisalinks Method, which is my style of doing SEO for dentists. The keystone of the Invisalinks Method is building links to dentist’s websites. In my Invisalinks Method course, we discuss the step by step process I use to lift my Google rankings, and help dentists all over the world do the same. In this guidebook, we’ll go over the 3 main principles you must grasp in order to successfully build backlinks to your website (and thus increase your new patient flow through lifted SEO).
Here are the 3 top reasons why another relevant dental website would link to your dental website:
If you’re looking for more ideas on how to build backlinks to your dental website, be sure to email me personally. I’ll let you know if enrollment to The Invisalinks Method SEO Course is open for enrollment.
PS-
Here is a very advanced Q&A I did with Dr. David Wank of New Jersey. David owns a web development firm (Short Hills Design) which caters to dentists looking for new patients from Google.
David engages me in a very advanced line of questioning regarding some more the more nuanced and esoteric aspects of link building for your dental SEO.
If you’re not advanced when it comes to link building, be sure to check out the first few videos in The Invisalinks Method SEO Course. If you are advanced, you’ll definitely enjoy the fact that David delves into some of the less often considered dangers and pitfalls associated with link building. The interview was completely unscripted and the questions were ad lib, so this was a fun and challenging interview!
Link-Building Q&A with Dr. David Wank and Justin Morgan, the Dental Marketing Guy (04/2017) from Short Hills Design, LLC on Vimeo.
You can learn a lot about getting Google and Yelp reviews (that don’t get filtered) after asking 1,000,000 patients to write a review for you. Please note that we did not personally ask a million patients to write a review for us, but our customers did and here’s what we learned from them.
Rule #1: If you want Google reviews, ask your patients to review you on Google and provide a link directly to your Google Business page. If you want Yelp reviews (that don’t get filtered) ask your patients to review you on Google … just make sure that you have a link to your Yelp business listing for active Yelpers. An active Yelper will write a review for you on Yelp even if they tell you they will review you on Google. Make it easy for them to do so. You should never ask a patient to go to Yelp (or automatically open an app on their phone that takes them to Yelp) to write a review. Asking patients to go to Yelp is against Yelp’s TOS and they will more than likely filter all of those reviews.
By the way, Yelp is a big deal … not because patients go to Yelp to read about your practice, but because they go to Bing, Yahoo and Apple (all of which show Yelp reviews) to read about your practice. If you’re ignoring Yelp because they’ve filtered your reviews in the past, you’re making a big mistake. Learn from your mistake and take full advantage of what Yelp has to offer.
Rule #2: If you want to get the highest response rate from your patients and the most reviews, send the review request to your patients manually while they are engaged with you or your front office staff. Patients are four times more likely to write a review for you if they are engaged with you when you send them the review request. Let me say that again. Your patients are four times more likely to respond to your review request if they are engaged with you (or your staff) when you send them the request.
If you or your staff are too busy to send a review request manually, you can always send it automatically through your scheduling software or through any of the review gathering services including the Five Star Review System on Best Local reviews, but your response rate will suffer for it. Yes, you will get Google reviews, but not at the rate of 400 Google reviews/year. If you send a review request after your patient leaves your office, your response rate will be 1/4 of what it will be if you send the request to them manually while they’re engaged with you or your staff when you send the request. Engagement is the key to review success.
Rule #3: Make sure the last thing you say to a patient after they offer to write a review is “I’m looking forward to reading your comments.” This one phrase will increase your response rate by 20%.
Rule #4: It is not OK to reward your patients for writing a review. It’s against the TOS of every review site on the Internet, it’s against the law and it’s downright yucky. You can however reward your staff for getting reviews from your patients. Based on our experience the best reward system we’ve see so far is to reward your staff members individually, not as a group. And the most effective reward we’ve seen is to provide your staff with a $50 gift card or cash for every five Google reviews they get or a combination of Google reviews and Yelp reviews written by active Yelpers. When you reward people for getting 5 reviews, they will work very hard to get 5 reviews.
Two weeks ago one of our dentists told me that she had to stop rewarding her staff for getting Google reviews because she could not afford to pay them for all the Google reviews they were getting. We should be so lucky.
Rule #5: If your patients like you, they will jump through fiery hoops to write a review for you. In layman’s terms that means if your patients like you, they will take the extra effort to create a Google account (if they don’t already have one) in order to reward you with a review. Nothing is more important when it comes to getting 5-star reviews than your likeability. Nothing!
(If you want to learn more about the laws of likeability, here is Bob’s article on the 12 laws of likeability.)
Rule #6: Don’t send a review request to your patients by text only. Text is great but nothing is more effective than a combination of text and email. Either give your patients a choice as to how they want to receive their review request or send them an email and ask if they would like to receive the review request by text too. This plays a HUGE factor in your success in getting reviews.
Rule #7: Don’t ask patients to write online reviews while they’re in your office. Half of the people who do, will resent you for it. You may get more reviews that way, but at the cost of getting referrals from those patients. Let your patients who want to review you while they’re in your office do so, but make it clear that they can write their review at their convenience. And never let a patient write a review on your computer or from your IP address. It will likely be flagged as fraudulent and get filtered by Yelp or Google.
Bonus tips on getting online reviews for your dental practice:
The exception to this rule is if your staff member is more likable and has a better relationship with your patient than you do. If you’re fortunate enough to have someone like this working for you, congratulations.
If you’re interested in learning more about my style of SEO, known as “The Invisalinks Method,” feel free to check out my dental SEO course, or my done-for-you SEO service for dentists.
I worked in sales for about a decade since I turned twenty and I started in selling alarms door to door and worked my way up to enterprise software sales. Something I learned in sales was called, “Pre-Suasion.” Dr. Cialdini recently wrote a book about it, but salespeople (at least great ones) have known it for years. The premise of pre-suasion was that your current relationship with your patient or customer was sailed from how you communicated yourself earlier in your relationship. We would use pre-suasion to eliminate specific objections before they even come up. So if a company has a common objection that’s giving its salespeople trouble, you can change the beginning of your sales process in a way that reduces or eliminates that objection being brought up.
A perfect example is luxury cars. A Rolls Royce Ghost has the same body chastise as a BMW 7 series, it’s arguably the same car with slightly more luxurious features and a different logo; yet, it costs about 3x. How do Rolls Royce consumers (proudly) justify paying triple for a similar car and why does price rarely come up as an objection when buying a Rolls Royce compared to a BMW? The answer lies in how they communicated with their prospects up to that point
The way Rolls Royce markets and treats prospects guides them to expect to overpay for the product and prevents that objection from coming up in the first place. This doesn’t mean your marketing for your dental practice should scream high price, but it’s a strategy you can use to further align the patients you want to attract, how you want them to behave, and how you provide service to your community.
When you’re facing adversity around your marketing or growing your dental practice, the first way you should look toward overcoming that problem is preventing it from happening again. An example would be low appointment attendance rates. If your patients aren’t showing up on time, there’s likely not much you can do about it after it happens. There’s going to be at least a six month gap until the next time that patient sees you and it’s unlikely they will remember anything on their next visit.
The solution in this case would be to either change the messages you’re sending in your marketing and/or scheduling training with your front desk staff. Changing the way you’re communicating with your patients by removing anything with the impression that being late or no showing is acceptable and adding communication that stresses that importance of showing up a few minutes early is the most effective way to solve this problem.
The way you communicate with your patients has an immeasurable impact on their perception before they first call your practice. The messages on most of the marketing I see on a daily basis commoditizes me into a number which in turn into an invite for me to commoditize that business. Is that the best way to invite someone to your dental practice? Probably not… actually it’s positively not even close to the best way to market your dental practice.
The marketing philosophy you should have for your practice should treat people like people and should be consistent across every platform you use. You should invite people in a way you would invite a neighbor or someone you hold in high regard rather than reflecting car dealership commercials. The reason this is important is because of the direction dentistry is heading. Competition could increase or decrease drastically and you need to be the dominating dental practice in your area to live the dental dream.
Dental marketing best blog posts.
Is your dental marketing company committed to great results? Or do they try to control which medium you use to advertise?
I recently had a very successful and highly regarded dentist contact me about SEO. He has a PPC/Adwords guy controlling and managing his campaign. He’s very happy with the results, and boasts a very high ROI from such efforts. He tells me that even his billboards, radio ads, TV spots etc. didn’t compare to his PPC campaign. He just wants to know if SEO is the right fit for him, to gain new patients. In our conversation, I mention we should review some data within his Adwords account to see just how many people are searching in his target area. After all, if the search volume isn’t high enough, SEO wouldn’t be the right fit for his practice. He asks to think about it.
Later, I find out that the Adwords manager opposed the idea of this dentist doing SEO. He was personally offended that the dentist felt his PPC management wasn’t enough for this dentist. He derided SEO as an ineffective way to gain new patients. This dentist didn’t want to offend his PPC manager any further, so he quickly disposed of the idea that SEO might be worth exploring. This dentist is suffering from being controlled, rather than committed to optimal results.
Too often, I find marketing companies who specialize in alphabet soup dental marketing (PPC, SEO, SEM, elemenopee, etc) have lost sight of what really matters: finding the best fit for the dentist’s marketing goals.
First, you have the direct mail company, who fails to speak at all with the SEO strategist. The photographer and videographer never meet. The SEO strategist never speaks with the front desk, who is in charge of “blogging.” Then, you have the pay per click manager, who is resentful if you try some other form of digital marketing. The guy selling billboard space doesn’t ever ask what your TV and radio message is. The public relations firm is tucked neatly away from the social media strategist. And the web designer you hired seems to have no problem at all asking for “content,” to fill the blank spaces in that new website they created.
The dentist has to translate technical jargon from one department to another. It’s a telephone game. He needs to know how to speak clinician, geek, layman, and marketer speak.
To some, there is no problem here. But if you think on a strategic level, there is a grave problem.
Who’s calling the shots, here? No one is on the same page, and worse yet – each company or department is averse to each other. I find that this is often a result of each marketing specialist taking pride in a platform, tactic, or medium, rather than taking pride in the overall message. It’s time for dentists to take charge of their marketing message, and demand their marketing companies commit to results.
No dental patient ever said “I didn’t care so much about what the dentist said or who he was, I’m glad he bought Adwords!”
It’s time for dentists and marketing professionals to do something brave:
Be willing to admit when your marketing medium isn’t the right fit for a particular practice, and commit to contribute ideas on how to create remarkable content.
Dr. Christopher Phelps runs a company dedicated to helping dentists track real ROI. His service promotes a revolutionary idea in dental marketing: just do what works. He doesn’t try to control which particular medium you choose. He’s in favor of commitment to results, rather than controlling you.
But most marketers don’t think this way. In fact, the only place you’ll find most marketers truly committed is in an insane asylum. (credit: Robert Rose of Content Marketing Institute)
We’re on the brink of 2017. It’s time for more marketing specialists to think like Dr. Phelps.
Dr. Anissa Holmes promotes a message that her audience believes in. Even though she specializes in helping dentists with Facebook Ads, she allows different types of marketers to join in on the discussion of what’s best for any particular dental practice. Just like Dr. Phelps, she’s committed.
Being willing to engage in an organization-wide discussion about what kind of differentiating message you can deliver is the first place to start. Tracking ROI gives you the ability to look in the rear view mirror and learn from past success and failures, but only a comprehensive content marketing strategy, where every member of your team has a say in what rules should govern the message, is the only way to ensure that your team is committed to results, rather than control.
1 QUICK TIP:
Use a project management board, like Trello. Get everyone in your dental office involved in a discussion on what kind of content will resonate with your ideal patient types. Create content rules that govern what kind of differentiated message you can deliver that no other dental office can. You can still use email if you’d like, but with Trello, you can showcase everyone’s feedback and ideas in one organized place.
So how about your marketing service provider? Are they controlling you? Or are they committed to your success? In my next article, I’ll show you the top red flags to look for so that you can know the difference.
How Important Are Reviews?
Author, Ahmed Reza
There’s a lot of talk on how reviews are very important.
This blog post is about how important Google and Yelp reviews actually are. With the ever-increasing growth in the use of mobile devices, finding out if a place of business is worth your time and money is easier and faster than ever. I mean look at how easy Google makes it to find almost all the information you’d ever need about a business – it’s super easy. You need directions to a place of business and BAM!, there are reviews, website link, hours of operation, and even a phone number to call ahead. Recent reviews are the first thing many people will notice.
Recent Reviews
One of the things that Google takes into consideration for a business is how relevant you are — do you post on your social media a lot, do you have a 5-star review, how often do you get reviews, etc. From our experience, any review after 30 days becomes less relevant. Why, you ask? Well, an old review is better than no review; however, a few things come to mind if you haven’t gotten a review within 30 days. Now this next part is mostly subjective, but you will find it true yourself as a reader. When looking at reviews and you haven’t seen a new review in a month or more, I personally wonder is this place that busy? Do people think it’s worth their time and money? Or perhaps the service wasn’t good enough to want to write about it? Now, again, maybe you don’t think about this and yes, relevancy is purely subjective. However, there are a lot of people who think this way and for this, it matters that you request for reviews regularly. Ask for reviews especially in Google since they are the most commonly used search engine and they rate you off of relevance and your reviews.
Negative Reviews Hurt
There is no sure-fire way to avoid all negative reviews, unfortunately, and they hurt especially if you are someone who gets very few reviews. So rather than dreading a negative review or spend a lot of unnecessary time and money on trying to get it removed (since there are legal ways of making this happen), just accept that it happens (since you can’t please everyone) and then bury it with more good reviews. I know this sounds easy, but unless you have a team who is open to asking for reviews, this can be a challenging task. The staff is key to making this process easier.
So after you are done reading this blog, do two things:
Do you have a story about earning reviews? I read every comment left. Tell us your story!
Learn from the best dental marketing blog.
Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy and today we’re talking about how marketing has changed over the years.
This video is designed to help dentist like you get a head start and finding actionable dental marketing ideas which will allow you to grow yourself the dream practice that you’ve always wanted. Number two, use video, remember when the internet was dial up? Those days are long behind us. Today video is faster, cheaper, and more expected than ever. If they’re anything like the majority of the dental marketplace your perspective dental patients spend vast amounts of time on YouTube. Promoting your practice and your team on video, you’re helping prospective patients get to know you. They’ll come to like you even before they’ve met you, they learn to trust you just as if they had met you face to face. In this digital age you literally can be in all places at all times through educational videos.
Meeting your patients in their living room, coffee shop, or anywhere else they may be, videos on their desktop or mobile device or tablet. this is the future, the best part of all is 99% of dentists will read this article or watch this video only to take zero action of those that do take action more than half of them will not hire a professional videographer and among those who do hire a professional video production company few of them will hire someone who specializes in dental video production. Think about it this way, when a prospective patient goes to Google they enter dentists in their name. What do they see? They see a website followed by another website followed by another website, one dental website after another, boring. What if in the middle of all that they come to your website and on your website is a beautifully crafted professional video of you and your team in your office displaying your company culture? You would be a categorically different dentist just because you have a categorically different dental website. By hiring someone who specializes in dental video choreography you can be categorically different from your peers.
Learn more about how to get new patients with SEO from the top ranked search engine optimizer in dentistry.
Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy and today we have, this is one of the biggest names I’ve had on this show outside of the field of Dentistry and you’re going to want to hear what Robert Rose has to say because even though he’s not been deeply in the dental industry he’s got some ideas that can really, really help you grow your practice in the way that you wanted to grow. we’re talking about content marketing and it’s a new term and it’s something that’s been going on for decades, centuries in fact and it’s really what many people believe is the future of marketing where you actually create and distribute content that your ideal patient actually craves. Instead of doing a sales pitch, instead of doing shooting out mailers for coupons for Invisalign and talking about your dental services it’s a revolutionary idea where you actually give content, you give back to your patients in a way that holds their attention, entertains, and educates them. You end up with better patients, you end up with more educated patients and let me just tell you a little bit about Robert. Robert is the chief strategist for the content advisory board with Content Marketing Institute and if you’ve never heard of content marketing institute let me tell you it’s a huge organization that’s grown through grassroots, grown through content marketing just putting out great information and it hasn’t really penetrated the dental market and so that’s why I really want you to pay attention to this episode because these are new ideas and dentistry, you know, marketing in dentistry is a new thing and I think a lot of dental offices haven’t caught on quite yet and if you’re watching this episode you’re on the cutting edge. You want to hear what Robert Rose has to say. He’s also the senior contributing consultant for Digital Clarity Group and Robert helps develop content and customers experience strategies for large enterprises. I mean, Oracle, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Allstate Insurance, Microsoft, Capital One, AT&T, Petco, UPS, you name it. he’s worked with these huge Fortune 500 companies and he’s also the author of Experiences, the Seventh Era of Marketing and, man, let me tell you it is a huge honor to introduce you, Robert, how are you?
Robert: I’m doing great, thank you. Thank you for that introduction and thank you for having me on the show, I really appreciate it.
Justin: Absolutely, you know, it’s a 100% well deserved. I know I listen to your podcast, this old marketing, you know, I was hoping you could kind of tell me, just kind of jumping into this unscripted. Tell us why is the podcast with you and Joe Pulizzi, the CEO of Content Marketing Institute, why is it called this old marketing?
Robert: Well it’s really about the idea that content marketing at its core is something that’s been around you, I mean, you mentioned it in your introduction- content marketing has been around for hundreds of years, you know, if we even go back to, you know, the eighteen hundreds. we can see companies like John Deere creating magazines and their magazine was called The Furrow and it was really not about tractors or plows or anything like that, it was about teaching farmers how to be better farmers, how to ostensibly be better at their job and if you look all the way through history, through airline magazines, through travel and leisure magazines, through all the different kinds of custom publishing that has gone on from brands from literally hundreds of years ago through, even today, you can see companies creating content to create extra value for customers. now the difference between then and today have been really this idea that content marketing at its core was really a loyalty play, right, until digital really became an important part of our lives. as digital became more prevalent we started to see businesses, small businesses, including dental practices including here, having the ability to create their own media, create their own website, create their own blogs, create their own social media strategy and because they could create their own content strategies that meant that they no longer had to purely rely on renting an audience from an advertisement publisher, right, so the history of advertising is we go out and we rent space on a publisher’s website or a publisher’s magazine or a billboard or a television or a radio station and we rent that audience for 30 seconds or a minute or a minute and a half. because of digital we can now create our own media platform and build our own audience and that’s really the power of content marketing at the top of that sales cycle, before we’ve even met our customers to attract them, to retain them, to make them more interested in what we do and you said it really well which is this idea of creating extra value through content for customers in order to move some sort of business goal. Whether that’s new customers in your practice or whether that’s retained customers, it’s using content as a means of generating value for that customer. So it’s been around forever, it’s just a new application of something that’s been around forever and that’s why we ended up calling the podcast This Old Marketing because we’re really taking old examples and putting them into this new light.
Justin: Absolutely and, you know, one of the things that I noticed on your podcast was one of the episodes mentioned Star Wars and I keep hammering on this in the forums and I don’t know if it’s getting through. Could you tell us a little bit about, you know, the merchandise sales for Star Wars versus the ticket sales and how Star Wars may in fact be the biggest example of content marketing ever.
Robert: Sure, well, you look at any media company really and what you need to understand is that media companies have understood this for a long time, right. nobody ever looks at a media company, like Disney now the way it has Star Wars and says we’re going to create a media property and we’re going to attract an audience and then what we’re going to do is we’re going to build products in order to monetize that. That’s classic 101 media strategy how a film company makes money, how a television show makes money, how any real popular, you know, content makes its money. It creates demand for a product whether that be t-shirts are dolls or cars or stickers or whatever it happens to be. It uses the ability to attract and retain an audience as a means of understanding what products we can use to sell to them and that’s something media companies have understood forever. now when we switch that around we start looking at brands, companies, dental practices, law practices, product companies, these are companies that have historically have products or services for sale and the only media they’re creating is advertising, you know. whether it’s literally a brochure or a television commercial, radio commercials etc. and the lesson we can learn from, you know, Star Wars and Leggo and all these companies, these media companies that have monetized an audience and been able to sell the products to them is that we can do the exact reverse today. We have products and services we want to sell to our consumers, we can now create media that’s valuable to them so that they gather for what they want to consume that they subscribe to it and they become the base of customers that we can sell our products and services to. So it’s just exactly the reverse of being a media company.
Justin: That’s excellent, you know, and I may have erred and saying Star Wars is the biggest example. I just think of movies in terms of, I mean nobody’s going out there buying lightsabers without the Star Wars movie so it’s really the stories that kind of create demand and, you know, my background in SEO and, you know, that has a lot to do with reacting to demand, you know, and so what you guys did over a Content Marketing Institute is you actually created the term content marketing. you actually, it may have existed previously on a small scale but you guys popularized it and it used to be called like custom publishing and brand of, you know, the various different names but, you know, it was the idea that hey we could take out an ad in this magazine- Vogue or Men’s Fitness or whatever or we could create our own magazine that isn’t salesy and doesn’t really run ads in the same way but just delivers value in a niche specific way. so it really focuses on your ideal patient and what I really like about that is that it’s very, very valuable compared to mass media where if you have mass media, the shows they get picked up, they get dropped off and picked up, they get dropped off because no one really knows how to appeal to everyone because when you try and appeal to everyone you sometimes appeal to no one or at least not enough people
Robert: It’s a great point, I mean, the, you know, one of the, so here’s, I mean here is a direct example, right, there was a dental practice here in Los Angeles. I didn’t work with them as a client but I certainly knew them as a success story and this, you know, a relatively small dental practice there were a few dentists in this sort of, you know, in this one office and they created a blog where they talked about all of the wonderful proactive ways and means of managing your health care by managing your teeth and it was both SEO focused so it was really focused on putting content out that would rank high especially in local search engines, obvious for the obvious reason they want to rank high locally but, two, it was really about engaging moms and dads, parents, so that they could show their kids how important a dental health was and so it was written in such a way that it was really friendly, really easy to understand, how top’s and the reason not just to keep your teeth clean, not to just keep your breath crash but also how have you know pertain to heart disease and high blood pressure and on all of these things that you really need to do to keep your, you know, really good dental health and it basically help them drive a lot of awareness for their practice in the local market because they got a lot of attention. Local news with some time turned to them for being an expert, they were often brought in to speak to, you know, whether it was at a university crowd or a civics group or something like that. they were thought of as thought leaders within the local, you know, within the local facility and they would be turned to as experts and thought leaders as well as quite frankly kind of entertaining and the content was what really drove that. So they were using content as a means of sort of saying “Hey we’re out here and we’re experts and we care about your, you know, your dental health and that’s why we’re here” and it really drove a lot of success for them.
Justin: Yeah and I can tell you as someone who knows about dental marketing the disconnect from patients, people who don’t have a dentist or even people who do have dentist, the disconnect between going to the dentist and your overall health, there’s a big disconnect there and dentists know about this and they educate chairside but they haven’t, by and large, sort of doing this online in a scalable, repeatable, efficient way of using digital media or even print media but, you know, we don’t have to get into the media but what we can talk about, you know, maybe, you know what I skipped a step here. Could I ask, you know, you’re such a legend in this industry. Could you just tell us, for most of the dentist haven’t heard of you, could you tell us your history of, you know, how you got into content marketing and maybe just tell us a little bit about yourself.
Robert: Sure, happy to do that. So I’ve been in marketing for 25 years and that, you know, that shows a little bit of my age plus my gray hair as you can see and I’ve been, you know, I started in the entertainment business side. I live here in Los Angeles and work for a number of years for a television networks and also the entertainment business in the marketing side of things and then as the dot-com era got going and in the early 2000 I ended up running marketing on the ad agency side, working with lots of different clients on their marketing strategies, mostly in the interactive gaming and entertainment business but then I got into technology. I got into the technology business and I was a CMO- chief marketing officer of a software company here in LA for a good number of years until about 2008 and without even really realizing that what I did was during the eight years I was a CMO of that software company I ended up building a content marketing organization because we were competing with lots and lots and lots of big companies, you know, the Oracles and Microsoft’s and IBM’s of the world and I needed for us to be able to rank in the search as well as for us to really be able to compete with them because we’re a really small company and so I knew we would never be able to compete with their ad budget or there, you know, the way that they would approach marketing so what I did was I hired journalists and I hired designers and writers and I turned this into a little media company because I figured if our clients would go and look at our company website and they would see how deep it was even though we weren’t as big as IBM or Hewlett-Packard or any of those big competitors would be competing with. They would at least see that our thought our depth of knowledge was as or deeper than any of those competitors and that worked turning us into a little media company really worked. we start getting better leads, we started closing deals faster, we started to really succeed and when I was out on the speaking circuit sort of telling my story I met this guy, Joe Pulizzi, who is forming this group called the Content Marketing Institute, he said “Hey you and I are basically giving the same speech, we we’re talking the same language.” and I was talking about it from the marketing practitioner side and he was talking about it from the publisher side which is his background, Dolan Publishing, and so we said let’s work together. so we ended up writing the book together, Managing Content Marketing and then I quit the company I was working for and joined up with them as their chief strategy officer and have been there for the last seven and a half year so it’s been a great ride and so really my job now is to run around the planet and talk to companies of all sizes including small dental practices and law firms and all kinds of businesses talking to them about how the power of content and creating a smart focused owned media strategy. when I say owned media I mean your blog, in your website or your resource center or whatever it is you’re creating and how that can make all of the marketing things you’re doing better. Whether it’s better advertising, better SEO, better PR, better, you know, just better marketing in general and it’s a really fun job.
Justin: Excellent. Yeah, thanks for sharing that, you know, it’s really interesting because most dental offices they start with tactics. they say “Okay, let’s try mailers, let’s try AdWords, let’s try SEO, let’s try building a website that’s a pretty standard one nowadays but maybe less standard is let’s try photography or even less common is let’s try professional cinematography.” And, man, it’s great to try different mediums, it’s great to try different tactics but it’s, at the end of the day, what you really helped a lot of businesses with, Robert, is you help them with the strategy, you help them put together a plan so that they’re not just throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks. they’re actually putting together a mission statement, putting together, you know, this is who we are, this is who were targeting, this is why we’re doing it, this is how, and then finally then we get to “How are we going to do this? How we’re going to implement this?”
Robert Yeah, yeah. And that’s, you just described my average day but it’s one of those things where, you know, when I’m working with a, you know, typically a smaller business, right. So dental practice is really fit into this where it’s a smaller locally focused business. the real key here is that yeah you’re trying lots of different things, you’re trying mailers, you’re trying I’m direct mail, email maybe, you’re trying some kind of advertising, you’re trying local events or you’re trying, you know, you’re trying various things trying to stand out in the marketplace and either build your business or quite frankly keep it, you know, where it is in other words keep the number of patients that you have on a regular basis the way it is and so either of those goals can be supported with content marketing. The real key is that, one, marketing isn’t what you do for a living, right. marketing is a very small piece of what it is you do is they either a sole proprietor or the owner and a business or practice and it needs to be integrated into all the other things you do and then content marketing needs to be integrated into that, you know, one of the biggest challenges I hear all the time is yeah great I get it blogging is important, creating an email newsletter would be really effective, doing something educational would be really interesting but I don’t have time I don’t have time for any of that and so the key is, is that looking to what we can stop doing in other words what is that we can look at from sending mail, sending direct mails figuring out where our budgets are and start to just integrate slightly even if it’s just one a week or two a week or something like that where we can start to take a small piece of our marketing time to really focus on creating high-quality content. It will, if you continue to do it over time, if you continue consistently over time to do it and really be focused around it. It can pay a lot of dividends in terms of exactly what you just said, not just throwing more spaghetti against the wall but understanding what’s working better. Is advertising working better? Is PR working better? Is SEO working better? Is direct email working better because content can integrate into all of those things and really help you understand how each of those things can be made more effective.
Justin: You know what actually got me into content marketing, if I could be egotistical for a minute and talk about myself, my favorite topic.
Robert: Enough about you, what do you think about me.
Justin: You know I sat down and I said okay I’m doing SEO how would I beat Justin? How do I beat the dental marketing guy at SEO and almost immediately I knew I said I would use content marketing to build an audience, build rating fans for dental office and the googles artificial intelligence and everything they would just figure it out. we continue to do traditional SEO, we continue to find back linking opportunities, we continue to make sure the coatings done correctly, we continue to do all these things, create buzz off of the website but on the website which is the hub of any dental practices campaign is we would absolutely create content that people actually crave that spoke to the specific patient that the dental office wants. so I instantly knew and then that’s when I started looking into content marketing and I said “You know what this is a real thing.” so all that, the point of that is SEO is inextricably linked to content marketing and what I tell all my clients is “Look what we’re doing, yes, I understand you’re ranked number one. I understand we got you on page 1 and X amount of weeks. I know its working, we know we’re comfortable there and you’re happy with it however, five to ten years from now the tactics that were using, and they may not work.” Now I never put my clients at risk with any kind of black hat SEO, you know, it’s not a good thing to do that and a lot of SEO companies do that sort of thing but it doesn’t mean that it’s black hat. it just means that right now we’re giving google enough to like what we’re doing but ten years down the road it may not work so what I wanted to emphasize is that SEO and content marketing are the future of SEO and marketing in general. so if your dentist watching the show and you’re saying like look I’m already ranked, I’m already happy with where I’m at.” the bottom line is that’s not a guarantee, that is not your property, google. you don’t own Google, they can do whatever they want, they can mix you in an instant and they have every right to do that so what I try and say is, and this is a, I know we’re coming to close on our time but, you know, one of the best phrases I love which you and Joe Pulizzi uses is don’t build your house on rented land and that includes Google and that includes Facebook and that includes everywhere where the distribution of the content is outside your control.
Robert: Right.
Justin: Could you talk to that a little bit and maybe tell dentists what you mean by don’t build your house on rented land.
Robert: Sure. so really the, you know, and this is probably evident for your audience members who have either started a Facebook page or started working in social media and have really found a frustration in terms of the how the organic reaches declined over the last, you know, 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, you know, the promise from Facebook especially was spend money, build a page, build your community on this Facebook page because everybody’s on Facebook and you’ll be able to talk with them and communicate with them and all of that and especially for businesses like dental practices that are focused on a community and that was a very enticing offer, right. to build your Google+ page and to build your Facebook page and to build your twitter following, to build a LinkedIn profile and all of that and the challenges, of course, is that all of those platforms need to monetize themselves and all of them have and so when we look at something like Facebook as an example of this we can see them slowly and slowly and slowly deprecating down, organically, the reach that you have as a brand, as a company page on Facebook to the point where, you know, it used to be maybe you’d, when you put a post-up you see 50%, you know, of your audience would see your post and then it was 30% and then it was 10 and then it was 6 and then it was 4 and now you’re lucky if you get 1 or 2% of your, basically the people that you spent time and effort to get to, to actually see the post that you’re making and of course that’s a horrible thing if you’re really relying on that is your main means of communicating with your constituents. these patients that you want to bring in more frequently or if you want to bring in new ones from your community and so the real key here is and what you’re speaking to very eloquently there is this idea that you can either build your own property, your own website, your own blog, your own email newsletter, whatever it is, you’re owned media and really have the right to be able to reach those people, as few as they may be, there may be 100, there may be a 50, there maybe 3,000, depending on your practice size and you get to communicate with them frequently whenever you like and you know you’re at least reaching them, you know, maybe you have to be good for them not to delete it and you have to be good for them to read it but it’s a fair playing field. You own that audience and therefore you get to speak with them and it’s up to you to actually engage them. Challenge with spending so much time and money on a Facebook or Google or LinkedIn or Twitter or basically what you’re calling rented land which is a great word for it is that you’re only able to communicate as they allow you to communicate and they can change the rules any time they like and they will. any rented land, whether new ones like medium or snapchat or anything like that, that promise you anything that has to do with sort of building a community organically online don’t believe it because in order to, basically in order to for them to fund the continued existence of that social channel they have to monetize it and they monetize it by making it harder for you as a brand, as a company to reach those people so that ultimately you pay money through advertising to be able to reach them and that’s the whole context of not building your house on rented land. Use those channels to Facebook’s, to LinkedIn, to Twitter what they’re good for, their advertising networks. So, yeah, pay for an ad for targeting, pay for something that gets, you know, in front of people and then bring them back into your website, bring them back into your blog, bring them into your e-mail newsletter so that you actually own that audience.
Justin: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think a lot of dentists are going to hear email and think oh my goodness spam, spam, spam but the bottom line is everyone has those one or two emails that they always open because they know who it’s from and what they want and the person that, the person that it’s from is always delivering value and if you can be that person, if you, the dental office can be the one who delivers that value then, man, you’re in, you’re in.
Robert: And, you know, here’s the thing with, as a dental office you have a very unique opportunity to be able to create that relationship, you know, going to the dentist is and I’m sure I don’t know this industry very well but I have to imagine because it is for me, it’s a very intimate thing, right. it’s a very deep and emotional thing for most people to go to the dentist and have a relationship with the dentist that they have and thus if you have that you immediately have that relationship with patients and so the likelihood that they’re going to be at least willing to try a message from you whether it be an email or subscribe to a blog is pretty high and then it’s just up to you to create content that’s good enough to make them want to stick around and keep subscribed to it.
Justin: Absolutely. Well, you know, for those dentists don’t want to take the DIY route well where could they find you?
Robert: Well I’m easy to find, my website is robertrose.net, of course, Content Marketing Institute is contentmarketinginstitute.com and you can get to either one of us through those websites and all the social channels that sort of feed off of that so either of those two places will be the place to either find. My book, our events, the webinars and all the blog post that we put out on a daily basis.
Justin: Excellent, yeah. There’s an immense amount of value there. Well, hey, I’d love to put an offer out there for our viewers. let’s take this interview, let’s go a little bit more in depth on this on some of the ideas that Robert shared and if you want to enter your email, if you find this on the Dental Marketing Guy blog we will put the video, we’ll put the audio as well for you dentist who are driving to and from work every day and you’re looking for ideas on well how exactly can I create content to just, you know, this all sounds really great but I don’t know how to put together the strategy. Well we’ve got a strategy for you and you can download the dental marketing of the content marketing launch program for dental offices and I would love to have you do that. all you got to do is check this out on the blog and we will be able to get your email in there and you will get this strategy and let me tell you by the time you’re halfway through it you’re going to see this is real and this is the future and if you ignore this you do it at your own peril. So thank you very much, Robert Rose, it’s been a huge honor.
Robert: Thank you very, very much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Justin: Absolutely. So, hey, guys if you have any questions for Robert feel free to reach out in the comments below. If you find this on Dental Town, social media wherever you find it, feel free to reach out and, man, just a huge amount of value from this guy. I’ve learned so much from your podcast and so guy’s thanks for watching The Dental Marketing Guy Show.
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Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy and today we’re talking about how marketing has changed over the years. If you’re a dentist who lands on this page, you understand something about the future. You understand that the dental market that our fathers toiled in is nothing like the dental market of today. Today’s dental market is saturated with advertisements, you might want to find out “how can I stand out? how can my dental office differentiate itself? what are some quick ideas to improve new patient flow?” this video is designed to help dentists, like you, get a head start in finding actionable dental marketing ideas which will allow you to grow yourself the dream practice that you’ve always wanted. While this list is not one hundred percent comprehensive I allow you to get a taste of the kinds of dental marketing ideas I offer from my subscribers at dentalmarketingguy.co. number one, keep up with technology, there is a segment of your market which will actually judge your clinical skills as well as your level of interest in providing a high standard of care based on your technology. Some of those patients are known to leave dentists who do not keep up with the latest technology, don’t be left behind. You can prove to your patients that their convenience, comfort, and costs are on your mind and you can do it just by having a new toy. how much fun is that?
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Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy and today I have a legendary guest. She really requires no introduction but if you have been on the Dental Town forums, you’ve probably heard of Sandy Pardue. if you’ve ever asked for advice about how to run your practice, we’re talking about practice management, we’re talking about creating systems that work in your practice, we’re talking about all the ins and outs from the insurance issues to how to get more money out of hygiene and how to really just run a practice that leaves you stress free and happy and based on your goals. You know I probably couldn’t even attempt to talk about all your credentials, Mrs. Pardue, so let me just, let me just ask you, how are you?
Sandy: I’m doing great today, I’ve been in meetings all day so I was really looking forward to this time to relax and talk about dental practices.
Justin: That’s excellent, yeah, and I know you’re a busy woman because very, very high demand for your services and what I’d like to do is, you know, I just kind of like to take it back a step and see, you know, how did you get into the dental industry? What’s your background? And what do you do to help dentists?
Sandy: Okay, well it started a long time ago actually about 32 years ago. I never thought I would be working really as an adult, I would tell (inaudible 1:35) and then my goal was to get married and have kids and be a housewife and so I did that. I got married and I had a daughter and I hated being at home and I’d always heard about this dentist in (inaudible 1:51) you back then I’ll tell you it’s 1985, that was doing 1.2 million a year, people were traveling from all over the world to see this dentist. Of course this was pre-computer, he didn’t get computers & till 1988 which was still very early by the way. So they were like 17, 18 staff members and we, I’ll just tell you they had a great reputation, I thought if I could work there, I think I’d like to go back to work. So I applied and I got the job and I was his office manager for eight years and it was so much fun. I knew I needed to expand and become a consultant because people were already, like I said, traveling around the world just to see this practice that was so efficient highly productive and very organized but I loved that job and I eventually, in 1993, I left the building, I went down about three doors down into our own office where we started classic practice resources and I’ll tell you, the rest is history. People have traveled literally from around the world, we just had a group here and we had people from Canada and Alaska and we’ve had people come from japan and Hawaii and Australia as well so it’s been a lot of fun.
Justin: That’s excellent and you know, I love hearing that story because I know a lot of dentists hop on dental town and they asked questions about their practice and you’re on there and you give a lot of good advice. So that’s interesting to hear, kind of the back story of how you got into it, I like that. could you maybe tell us a couple stories about, you know, just one or two stories of how you’ve helped dentists and, you know, what that process was like.
Sandy: Okay, well first off you have to know that people do not contact us just because they have a floundering practice. people contact us for many reasons, they could be stressed out and some could be doing two million a year, solo, making all the money that they could ever want but maybe they just feel like there’s too many bumps and they dread going to work and they know they could be more organized and things could be more Predictable and then we’ve also had a lot of new dentist. They get out of school and they want to be organized and they want to save time, they don’t want to take five years to ramp up their practice, they understand a consultant can get them going very quickly and so we have worked with all of these types of practices. All the way from 400,000 a year to $6 million dollars a year practices. So, you know, like I said they’re different areas that they need help in but I will tell you there’s, I’ve never seen a perfect practice. no matter what the production level is or how wonderful the doctor is, their leadership abilities are fantastic and their technical skills are great, there’s always something that needs to be done and typically the thing that we see the most is that the back door is wide open in practices. so when I say that I mean that patients find the practice, maybe they saw an advertisement, maybe a friend told him over the backyard fence and they called the practice they came in and then the systems were so broken down within the practice that the patient’s never returned and this is very common. The average patient retention and practices was running 40 to 50%. so after a consulting program and its staff are trained, especially on the front end with the telephones and recall systems and verbal skills, then we can see that retention increased to 80- 85%.
Justin: Wow. Alright, alright. you know, and it’s, I like that you’re taking the approach of, you know, it’s not just about money and I always talk in my videos and my blog, the Dental Marketing Guy blog. I’m like, you know, you know a lot of people think that people become dentists to make money and when you have certain systems, I’ve been critical and I don’t think that, there’s a different approach for every practice but I’ve been critical of a lot of coupon mailers and of, you know, the gift cards “Hey, send someone to us, anyone and we’ll give you $25 gift card.” I’ve been somewhat critical of those programs but I know there’s custom solutions for every practice, you know, and I think that ultimately what every dentist is looking for in their practice it differs from one dentist to another. Sure you’ve got a really holistic approach towards that sort of thing so maybe what’s one example of, let’s do not money related. let’s talk about, you know, maybe a doctor who’s have had too much stress, he feels like he doesn’t have control of his staff and his patients like you said the back doors wide open and he just wants to solve some of these non-money issues.
Sandy: Well if I were to ask 10 doctors whether their stress, where is the stress come from, what keeps you up at night. 8 of those 10 doctors are going to tell me staff. That’s going to be their answer so whether they’re doing 2 million a year solo and everything is going great, are they are floundering staff is always going to be an issue. So this is where we get into good hiring protocols and then, my goodness, the most important thing is the training protocols. Its like how can you expect someone just to come into the practice and know exactly how you want to run your business and that happens a lot. Dentists hire staff that worked in a dental practice and they walk into their office as a new employee and then they bring all the bad habits from where they used to work so there are no exact protocols to follow, there’s no real recipe, no practice management recipe and that’s a huge problem. We see that consistently so we go in and we know what needs to take place in a practice. we have 42 systems and then we work on each one of those and that doesn’t mean that when we go into a practice every one of those systems needs to be redone, no, practices are doing a lot of really good things right now, all the time and we see it but we go in and tweak it and find out where the missed opportunities are and get them staff trained so they can support the doctor and the doctor can stay in the treatment room and that’s huge so, I mean right now, patient retention that we just talked about and now staff, hiring the right staff and staff training is very key.
Justin: Excellent, excellent. and you know I think the examples of you helping dentists it’s just, there’s hundreds, I don’t even know there might be thousands it’s very, very amazing. Your reputation, I know Howard Farran is a huge fan you, he says nothing but great things. I mean your reputation is incredible on those forums and you’re not sales, you’re not like “Hey, buy my systems, buy my systems.” you’re actually on their offering great advice and I’ve seen it time and time again where just a quick question doctor comes in, you just answer it. you don’t plug your service in, you’re not like hire me, hire me, people are coming to you because you’re a thought leader in your industry and, yeah, what I’m hoping to do is, you know, before we go I’d like to get into some like quick tips or maybe some, a quick strategy that you could put forth for some of our listeners, some of our viewers to say “Oh, okay, yeah. That’s something I could do.”
Sandy: Okay, absolutely. So what every listener should do, right away, is go to their computer software and if they don’t know how to do this they need to contact their software company and they need to get this figured out, it’s easy. The first thing they should do is find out how many people need to come in right now that haven’t been in, in six months or longer. So they’ll go back and they’re looking for last visit dates. So, for example, let’s just say they would pull a report for every patient whose last visit fall between January of 2012 and January 1 of 2016. so I’d say go back that far and they’re going to be shocked, there’s gonna be thousands of people, ok, well maybe hundreds but I guarantee your practices been, that’s been in practice for maybe five or more years are going to have 1,000 people that are due, right now, to come in and if they have been in practice for 15-20 years they’re going to have about 2,000 patients that need to get it immediately. Of course you can’t get a man all at one time and that’s where a lot of practices look and say my goodness we’ve got all these patients that need to come in, we
Can’t communicate with them, what we will do to handle it. No, they need to start communicating with all of them, right away. Now the next thing they do, because you see this a lot on Dental Town, doctors will come on and say “I have no one on my schedule, what am I going to do? I’m just sitting here on Dental Town.” Okay, go to your software, pull a report of incomplete treatment. Go back 12-months, all the patients that you have diagnosed needing treatment over the last 12 months. You are going to be shocked we see this at 500,000, we see this at $1 million of treatment that was presented and not accepted and by the way keep those, keep your computer, the treatment plans in the computer updated, all the time. So if you offer two different options to patients and they take one, take the other one out so that you’re reporting is going (inaudible 12:23-12:25). So you’ve got patients that haven’t been in and you’ve got in complete treatment and that is huge, so many missed opportunities.
Justin: What’s the action they can take? So that’s obviously really good data, they can take so they get that data, now what do with it?
Sandy: Well, great question. so what they’re going to do is with the first one whenever they find out “Oh my goodness we’ve got 1,500 people that need to come in.” they’re going to start communicating, see most practices inactivate patients after 12 months and my message here is never (inaudible 13:04-13:05) if they have blood flowing through their veins and they didn’t call and say I’m never coming back or I moved out of town, guess what, there our patients in that practice so that message has to be spread around to the dental industry and all staff. Stop inactivating patients just because they didn’t come in, you need to start communicating to these people. If they have been in 18 months, if they haven’t been in two years, guess who needs the work? Not the easy patient that was there six months ago, it’s the patients that haven’t been in a long time. Those are the people so you can send cards, you can send emails, we’ve done a lot of studies and even though I believe, firmly believe, that every practice should be communicating via email. I also believe they need to incorporate in their system postcards, postcards are much more effective than email because only 28% of emails are opened and that’s the statistic. Now, so that’s, so you’re going to communicate with them, you’re going to do reactivation with them and let them know they’re welcome back in your practice, you see, that’s what has, because people you gotta really look at it the whole aspect of this is like patients their become embarrassed that they haven’t made back so they end up going somewhere else. have you ever thought like these new patients this month “Oh, we got 50 new patients” but we’ll have you ever thought like where do those 50 new patients go like three years ago? Well I’ll tell you they were in another dental practice and something caused them to not stay, you see. so that’s what you want to change, you want to change that, you want to keep them in your practice so maybe they went and tried another office and now you’re going to communicate with them, be a postcard and welcome them back to the practice and you’re going to get back a lot of them. A lot of them are going to come, I’m going to say 10% are going to come back if you followed our reactivation project that’s available on our website you’re going to get 9 to 19% of those patients back without a phone call. Now, then you’ve got the people with incomplete treatment, now here’s these people a lot of times practices are overwhelming patients. I’ve never seen a practice with people lined up outside the door waiting to come into the chair I have never seen it and if you know one, call me, I want to go and take pictures. it’s not the case when you look at the statistics at right now that like 48% of patients even go to the dentist, we have a lot of work to do, we have a full heart of work to do in dentistry in educating their patients. the American Dental Association is doing nothing to do it so patients get diagnosed, they don’t understand that their condition will only get worse, it’s not going to get better, it’s only gonna cost more. so we have to educate and tell them what will happen if they don’t get the work and we’ve done a lot of phone recording for many years on this topic and it’s really important so what I suggest, if you just have your staff call and call and call on the phone it’s going to be a turn-off. So what you have to do, in this case, is communicate via incomplete treatment letter, a short letter, not something really long. You want to communicate with a short letter just letting them know that you would like to see them back in the office. They have incomplete treatment, yes.
Justin: Excellent, you know, that’s so great because, you know, I actually implemented a similar thing in my business where I just tell people “Hey, yeah” I just get them permission to contact me in the future cause sometimes if it’s not the right time for you a lot of dentists contact me about SEO, about content marketing, web design and stuff like that but whatever reason it’s not the right time for them and that’s okay and giving them permission “Hey listen, I’m happy to answer any questions you ever have” you know, just, I think a lot of people just assume this goes for dental patients and dentists and everyone is just assume that if you reject someone services at that time that they’re going to help their feeling hurt and that, you know, you might want to avoid them in order to circumvent any kind of conflict or awkwardness or whatever and so I think that’s really key is what you’re saying is just giving, letting people know “Hey, there are no hard feelings I understand that wasn’t the right time for you, you know, the ADA says you need your teeth clean but you didn’t think you did and that’s okay.” Right. So, you know, and then major, major work, obviously, that’s even more, that applies even more than cleaning because if someone is looking for an all on four and I’m sure you know this, you know they’re going to shop around, they’re going to want a lot of education and content, right, to make that educated decision. So yeah I think, you know, just giving people permission to contact you that’s really huge, I like that.
Sandy: Well here’s the thing, a lot of them have actually gone to another dentist and tried it and you see. So you kind of just making it okay to come back and that’s what happens.
Justin: Yeah, yeah. Definitely, well hey this has been really, really a great interview. I know that the listeners, they, many of them think very highly of you already but I’m happy to hear that story of how you got into dentistry. If I can even talk and yeah I’d love to put the viewers in touch with you, where can they find you?
Sandy: classicpractice.com or they can email me at sandy@classicpractice.com.
Justin: Excellent, that’s great, you know, it’s an Internet age and I’m always harping on the, you got to have your website out there, people gotta know it, that’s the hub of your online marketing.
Sandy: Absolutely.
Justin: Yeah, so it’s been so educational. let’s talk soon, sandy, I am definitely interested in, some of my clients are, they’ve been asking me who can I trust, Justin, who can I trust for practice solutions, for practice management solutions and, man, it’s such an honor to interview you. Thank you, Sandy.
Sandy: I’m very happy to do it.
Justin: Excellent and guys if you have any questions feel free to reach out to Sandy. Wherever you find this, on the Dental Marketing blog, the Dental Marketing Guy blog. Go ahead and reach out in the comments below on Dental Town, social media, wherever you find this I’m sure in 18, 19 minutes we weren’t able to cover all your questions but please reach out if you have any. I know Sandy is more than happy to answer those.
Sandy: Absolutely.
Justin: Excellent and thank you for watching the Dental Marketing Guy show.
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Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy and today it is an honor and a privilege to interview a very important business founder in your practice. You’re gonna wanna hear what Keith English has to say because we’re talking about a software that helps you book new patients online. Has gonna learned all about the nuts and bolts of it. I’m just going to let him explain that to you, but first of all, how are you, Keith?
Keith: I’m doing well. Just trying to keep the train moving forward.
Justin: There you go, there you go. Well, right on. Maybe you can tell us a little bit of your history and how you got into dentistry and how that gave birth to localmed.com.
Keith: So prior to this business I had absolutely no experience with the dentist other than as a patient. I had no background in it. I knew very little about it and with this particular project we had, the kind of, the three or four of us just sat around, originally not to discuss what we want to do operationally. We kind of kicked around a bunch of different things from the standpoint of addressing the court need of the ability to have greater access to scheduling for kind of a very broad medical spectrum. As we began to spend more time talking about it, I realized that there were some pretty significant challenges associated with addressing the market across all the different specialties at one time. So we really began to focus down on what we could handle first and we did a lot of research and came across the fact that for the number of appointments booked on a yearly (inaudible 1:59) dental was one that touched the largest number of individuals and the reason we kind of focused on scheduling to start with was it just seems logical that with the way technology has progressed over the past few years that it just didn’t make sense to have to call the offices anymore. That just seemed very arcane based on all the things that we could do online, and we want to spend our time and that’s kind of how we came to the realization that this is something that wasn’t being addressed very well and we thought that with this kind of our skill set amongst the folks we have involved. It was something that we can really dive into and make an impact on. We were unaware, however, to start with, of all the ins and outs and everything else. So we had a pretty steep learning curve related to actually office related activities and scheduling and so we sat in the office, there’s a local office here and they gave us, kind of, good access to bug them to death in understanding how things worked and why they work the way that they did and then we spent about 18 months, kind of in the dark if you will, writing before we actually released it out to any clients to kind of test it out.
Justin: Excellent, excellent. So tell me a little bit about how our listeners are able to take advantage of local med. Does it go into the practice management software? How does, I’m sure there’s a thousand questions dentists are wondering how do I, actually, what’s the first step and how does it work as I integrate local med into my website?
Keith: Sure, so at its core what we’re doing is effectively sitting side by side with the practice management system, then changes in the schedule so that we can accurately depict the openings with the same level of accuracy and filtering that is available by speaking with somebody at the local office. So, you know, one of the things that we deal with a lot and one of the fears of the local offices about utilizing online scheduling is that they have this concept of complexity surrounding their schedule and what the fear that patients are just scheduling kind of willy-nilly into their appointment book. But that’s why I also took this 18 months to write and while we’re constantly updating everything is that we actually use all of the same rules that are inherent in the actual practice management system. So they were accurately depicted what that schedule looks like. As an example, if you only see new patients in your hygiene chairs from eight to four on Tuesdays and Fridays that’s all we’re going to show as well if there’s an opening there. We’re not just allowing patients to pick what they want when they want it and schedule root canals for 7 minutes on Friday at 4:30 in the afternoon. It really uses all of those inherent rules in the logic that you use to schedule otherwise that’s all part of the setup process and how we generate that. So they were actually detecting what is available there. So what it takes to make that happen is a very high volume of information from the office so that we can have all of that in a real time fashion. And to do that, we spent a lot of time understanding how to interact with those systems in such a way that we don’t put a resource constraint on those systems. I’m sure that anybody that’s dealt with some of these systems that are very large, withdrawing large bar, pieces of information has seen resources rain that can happen at the local level of people are withdrawing a lot of information so we’re very cognizant of that and that’s what we spent all this time really working on.
Justin: Ok, so the dentist is in full control? The practice management software, they tell you the parameters like “Okay, we see new patients in the morning at 9am-10am. We see new patients from 1pm to 2pm and don’t schedule anyone who’s an existing patient during that time slot” and obviously don’t double book and all that. Is that, kind of, how it works?
Keith: So there are, there is a set of rules that is inside each PMS. So it tells us how long an appointment is supposed to last, which appointment types go into which chairs, and we read all of that stuff out that is available inside the systems. But there’s also a second level of information which we call native knowledge which is what the scheduling coordinator is holding either he’s (inaudible 7:16) in front their heads or are the things that make them have the ability to do the job that they are supposed to do and that’s what you just described a moment ago and we take all of those in as part of our setup process so that we are only showing the times that are specific for new patients or returning patients or hygiene or product appointments or those things that are necessary so that we’re not screwing up the schedule of the dentist. To us that’s kind of the worst case scenario, when you look side by side at your appointment book and what’s available online. Those should mirror each other, should not see something online and is not the same appointment you would tell the person on the telephone is available or whatever type of appointment that they’re coming in for. And that ultimately what our definition for us of success is, is the ability to display and schedule those things in an accurate fashion. We realized that nobody would utilize our service and it really wouldn’t be any good if we were showing openings at 4 o’clock that weren’t actually there. That would be bad for the office, it would also be bad for the patient because we’re giving them something at that point then that is not accurate and that, for us, is failure. And so what you just described is exactly right, it’s our job to take all of those scheduling rules that the dentist in the office is already set up, translate those into our system so that we’re showing is the exact thing that the dentist wants to show. Another important part of that is, in our system an office or a dentist does not have to show appointment types online if they don’t want scheduled online. So as an example, let’s say that a dentist doesn’t want crowns to be available online. They just simply don’t offer that as an opinion online, and if that person needs to schedule the crown they need to call the office to do that. So that kind of flexibility that’s built into the system keeps the dentist and the office in full control of their schedules so that we’re not doing anything that they are not wanting to be done online.
Justin: Right, okay so basically how does that work? If I’m a patient on a dental website and I want to schedule a crown, you, the dentist told you no crown schedule online. Does something pop up or how does it, does it say please call to schedule a crown. How does that work?
Keith: So it just isn’t an option online so they’re forced to call the office at that point. So we, literally, just beyond the drop down box of what are you trying to schedule today? It just simply isn’t an option and then the number is there for the patient to call if they don’t see the option that they want. In some cases, what they will have is we put the drop down in there, but “no availabilities” so that it shows that the person must call. I mean all of that stuff is flexible within our system to make sure that the office can customize it to the way that they see fit.
Justin: Right, right. Okay and then, of course, there isn’t, what was that?
Keith: I said it’s very important, what you brought up is the office is in full control of all of this. We gotta put in all of this instability so, because we realized that office A doesn’t operate like office B and sometimes within the same organization, different offices operate in different ways, they may have different scheduling philosophies and we want to make sure that each office has the opportunity to schedule in the way that they see fit.
Justin: Excellent, excellent. Ok, so let’s talk about the investment to get this started. First, let’s talk about time. How much time, dentists listen to this, I’m wondering Suzie Que is at the front desk, I’m busy at the chair. How much time are we gonna have to dedicate to get this local med set up?
Keith: So if it’s a single provider in a single office, you’re about 20 minutes, 25 minutes. For each additional provider you need to add about 10 minutes and the vast majority of that is what we just discussed a moment ago, is getting those scheduling rules of we don’t want new patients after 1 o’clock on Friday or whatever those may be. The actual software takes about a minute and a half, the rest of it is simply getting those filters and then the last step of that process is the training and you can schedule that separate, from the install or at the same time and the training is basically more about how to make adjustments within the system if needed. How to look at the reporting so that you can see a full reporting from where things are coming from within the system and then also to obviously answer any questions, things of that nature. With the last step in that is looking at the schedule side by side and making sure that what you want exposed and what you want to see online is exactly what you do see online.
Justin: Excellent, excellent so you know for the next generation of, you know, we have a lot of guests. We talk about Yellow Pages and, you know, Yellow Pages is still relevant to a certain market, I mean, maybe in Florida, you’re over 80, you’re looking for all in 4. That could still work, what kind of generation, I’m throwing all these questions at you, totally unscripted here, 100%. What kind of generation or what kind of demographic tends to respond most favorably to local med?
Keith: So, one of the fields we have is the birth date that we ask for. But I can tell you it’s spans the gamut, we have, I mean the only thing that really skews rely heavily on our side is that we have quite a few more women that schedule than men. And that’s because you have, and that not just dental, that is medical in general. If you look at those stats, it’s traditionally the woman of the household that is more active and scheduling for families and things of that nature. Again, that’s not dental, that’s across the medical spectrum and hold true on our platform as well as we have a lot of families booking for children. Pediatricians are very active, our pediatric dentists are very active on our platform. But we have, we do require that somebody has to be 18 so even though you’re allowed to schedule for somebody that’s under 18, it does require somebody that’s 18 to actually affect that schedule. But you know I don’t know the oldest at the top of my head but I can tell you that it spreads from 18 to 80 and everything in between. We have, I can run specific numbers and see that, but I would, I don’t know that it’s very heavily weighted in one way or another. Obviously it start to peter off as you get over about 65. Below that we see a wide, wide range.
Justin: Okay, yeah, and you know what that makes sense because everyone is moving online, everyone is, you know, people still use the phone. They use the phone especially in dental but I think what’s happening is everyone, like you said, is moving online and they’re moving towards this “I don’t have to meet with you face to face.”, “I don’t have to call you, I just schedules something online” and you know you’re seeing that in all industries. I mean like the way we use amazon.com, you know, you’re buying something, you don’t have to talk to a cashier, you don’t have to hand cash it- it’s just boom “I want this product” boom and then it gets to you the only one you might see is the mailman. So yeah, I mean I think this is the way the world is moving is, you know, yeah people do want that personal touch, they you want a dentist that they can trust and a front desk who’s polite and all these things. But as far as scheduling, I mean that’s just kind of a task that people have, right. So when you make it efficient, when you make it, you know, flow real easy that makes sense, so I definitely, I’m always preaching so dentists. I always say don’t project on the marketplace, don’t say “Well, I would use live chat”, “I wouldn’t use local med” and “I wouldn’t schedule your dental appointment online.” Well what would your patients do and sometimes you gotta test that, right? And so what’s the response been as far as, you know, I don’t know if you can provide any status as far as a dental website. The average number of appointments booked per month or just the percentage of traffic, I mean, I’m just wondering if there’s any kind of barometer we could give the listeners as far as how many, what percentage of people are actually scheduling appointments online?
Keith: Sure, well one other piece that’s very important to what you just mentioned, not inclusive of all the things you mentioned about people moving online. The other big piece of that is 38% of the appointments that are scheduled on our platform are done outside of normal business hour for dental offices.
Justin: That’s huge.
Keith: It is.
Justin: It’s because no one’s answering the phone during those hours.
Keith: Exactly, right. I mean there’s a lot of offices that we deal with that one of their key concerns is answering the phone during business hours much less after business hours and then you got weekends and you’ve got things that nature, I mean, if you think about it particularly those with young families or those working a 9 to 5 job or whatever else the most convenient times for them to deal with these things are when the office is closed. I’ll take my son as an example, he goes down 8 o’clock. That’s the first time myself and my wife get an opportunity to consider things like that, you know. It ended the rest of it, just kind of gets lost in today so this really gives an opportunity to do that. The other thing that s important there is the fact that the, by displaying all of the openings, patients are able to find the things that best fit within their schedule, you know. It’s one of the analogies I used in, I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember this or not but it used to be when I was growing up, if I wanted to go to the movie theater, I had to call and listen to the list of movies at that movie theater and the times that things are being shown and then if the movie wasn’t there and I called somewhere else in and it was just, or if the movie was sold out (inaudible 18:05) bad time had to start all over again and it’s effectively what’s happening right now when you call the dental office, is you get a list of things and then you “What was that on Tuesday and Thursday at 3, I don’t have that” and it turns into more of a negotiation and, you know, the ability to show all openings at one time lets the patient then say “Okay, the best time that fits my schedule is Tuesday at 2 o’clock.” I can do that and it lets them make that decision which leads to higher rates of show up and things of that nature. So some other stats and a really interesting one that you mentioned about not projecting on others about utilizing things that you personally would use as opposed to what your populace would use. We surveyed the folks that utilize our platform and one of the things that we asked this, over the past 2 months is we asked very clear and plain question of would you have scheduled at this office if online scheduling was not available. Just a point-blank, yes or no, nothing else. I really, you know, obviously for us the higher the number the better. But I didn’t know what to expect and I was a little bit of, the new patient would’ve made more sense to me. So it was an almost 31% of new patients and they would not have scheduled at that office had online schedule not been available. That one I didn’t know what to expect, but that was within range of what I thought it might be. The really shocking one, to me, was almost 19% of the returning patients said they would not have scheduled at that office if online scheduling was not available.
Justin: Wow.
Keith: That one kind of caught me off guard. I figured they would, you know, there’d be a number, I didn’t know what it would be but 19, call it around 20% of your patients would not have rescheduled with your office, that’s a significant chunk of patients that are looking for the ability to do things in an easier fashion. That’s not just new patients, that’s the existing patient numbers. So to us, that’s even more encouraging than we thought because that means that not only are we giving new patients access to this and existing patients easier. We’re actually this is encouraging people to go see the dentist. This is, by making it easier for them to do this it’s actually contributing to them going to the dentist more often.
Justin: Right, you know, that’s what I love about these services. Everything that we do, the guests I have on the show, you know, Fred Joyal was on the show and he was talking about, you know, 1800Dentist causes people to go to their dentist more than calling 1800Dentist. If you know those commercials, seriously its time and be more like “Oh yeah it is time and I already have a dentist so I’m not gonna call you but it is so I’m going to call my dentist.” But this is really huge, you know, that’s very interesting and, you know, people avoid the dentist and I think that there’s kind of this, you know, one of the most popular phobias is the of fear of the dentist and I think that’s very real. But I think that there’s a lot of innovation left in dentistry and I think that a lot of dentists are saying “Well, it’s the phobia, it’s the phobia that’s why people don’t come to us.” That’s why whatever percentage I think it’s a very large force. I think it’s over 30% of people don’t have to go to the dentist regularly and they just love the chalk it up to some external factor but wouldn’t it be nice if our viewers could take personal responsibility and say “Look if car dealerships are doing it. If amazon is doing it, having these innovation companies are making it easy to schedule, why aren’t we doing it?” There’s probably a variety of answers to that question but that’s not really huge.
Keith: It’s, you know, I understand some of the fear because (inaudible 22:19) itself just hearing online schedule, it sounds scary than it turns out to be. Once you spend 5 minutes learning about it, you know, and it’s one of the things, we have a very good rate of getting folks onto our service. Once they give us a few minutes to understand that’s it’s not just a wide open, put yourself where you want to go and we’re gonna book other people on top of other things and there’s no intelligence wrapped around it and once they grasp that “Ok, I get to set the rules exactly the way that I wanted to be” they’re not gonna double booked. The patients not putting in our appointment a 10 minutes slot, you know, it’s only an accurate aspect. Once that’s grasp, then we really have a very good and very loyal base of customers once they get to that point. You know, it just takes some time to get folks to recognize that it’s not scaring. They just need to understand, just like everything else. I’m sure the first person that saw a car thought that was the most complicated thing on the face of the planet and then they got in and pressed one button and pressed one pedal and steer a little and it went where they wanted it to go. It’s kind of the same thing, once all those things, once you kinda remove that initial fear and learn a little bit about it then it doesn’t become nearly as scary. But, you know, those just some of the hurdle and, you know, we’re working through those since we, excuse me, our providers and we work through those things, it’s just part of the process.
Justin: Yeah, okay, so I know a lot of dentists. My job is to try and put myself in their shoes and say, you know, what kind of sales objectives or what kind of questions they have in their mind. I’m thinking I’m a dentist, I’ve been a dentist for 20 years, I’m thinking you know what I’m not sure these people show up. What is, compared to the thought, what, you know, on the phone even with things like, you know, solution, reaching Lighthouse, and all these recall systems- YAPI. You know even with those things people sometimes don’t show up. What’s the rate of people actually showing up because it does feel a little bit easy, almost not quite anonymous but kinda easy, kinda efficient to go in there and click click okay bam I have an appointment. So what do you do to ensure they show up and what kind of rates do they actually show up?
Keith: So in the scheduling process we require the patient to verify one form of communication with them so when they schedule they have to give us their email address and their mobile phone number. We send them a verification email that they have to click on or respond to a verification text before we will actually schedule that appointment back into the practice management system. So there’s nobody that can put Mickey Mouse in and onetwothree@AOL and they’ve got an appointment. They’ve got to verify that we have an accurate way of contacting them. So that’s the first step of those kind of weeding out the job. Now interestingly about 98 and a half percent verify. And one and a half percent month-over-month do not verify and those are never scheduled with the practice. Okay, so that’s the first way we kind of (inaudible 25:57). The second is it pretty much mirrors what the practice itself has an overall rate of show up. So if you’re an active practice and you send out welcome packets to new patients and you know, you have one of the systems you mentioned like a Lighthouse or a Yappy or whatever. It’s doing those reminders because it’s not a service that we do right now, if you’ve got those things it will effectively mirror what you see there, if you’re very passive and you don’t have a reminder system and you don’t send out new packets and you don’t try and contact them then you’re going to have, your rates are going to be last and somebody that is more active in doing those things in a normal flow. One important thing in this is once a patient schedules online they’re simply just a patient like any other. There not separated, they’re not segmented from everything else, they are treated exactly as if they scheduled in any other way, shape, or form. So they go into the same system that you’ve got in place otherwise. One other thing on that, via failed to mention earlier that leads into this though is over 60% of the appointments booked on our platform are within the next 72 hours.
Justin: Oh okay.
Keith: So these are actively looking right then and there. Whether it be an emergency appointment which is a percentage or it’s somebody that’s just decided “I need to go to the dentist, I need a new dentist” they’ve moved, whatever else it is but of those patients with 60% being in the next 72 hours, these people have decided they’re going. This isn’t something that’s scheduled six months in advance in most cases. So it’s the customer profile tends to be those that have already resigned themselves to going and therefore these show-up rates are generally like I said they’re going to mirror whatever you see otherwise.
Justin: That’s excellent, that’s excellent. So I’m sure it’s in real time, right. So, now here’s a question, you know, Suzie Que, she’s at the front desk, she’s booking someone, she’s putting someone in the PMS and then someone else is concurrently on LocalMed trying to book an appointment. What happens then if it’s like, I mean, one in a million chances but what happens if it’s at the same time?
Keith: So if the person at the office schedules first and they fill that slot with Susie Smith or whoever is scheduling at that. Our person would get a message that says “We apologize, that appointment is no longer available. Here are some other options” and push them back into the scheduling flow again, it’s not going to double book, it’s not gonna put it in a different column, it’s not going to do any of that. It’s simply informing the patient “Hey, sorry, somebody got to that first, you know, here’s some other options for Dr. X and push them back through that so that they can select another time. That happens right, last month I was just looking at those stats the other day, last month that happened about .8% of the time so it does happen but we have built the entire workflow to make sure that the patient has options. That we’re not putting things in the wrong place in the schedule and that we then reappoint that patient to get them back onto the books in another time that’s not full.
Justin: Ok, yeah, that makes sense. So how about, how fast does the front desk know that a slot has been filled on local net?
Keith: So within 30 seconds it has come out of our system into the PMS.
Justin: Ok.
Keith: And conversely if something is booked at the local level we’ll know within about 30 seconds as well so that we can update on our side to display it properly to those that are looking at the schedule online.
Justin: Okay, okay and you’ve got a good problem if you have people scheduling every 20 seconds.
Keith: I’m sorry you cut out there real quick.
Justin: oh I was saying if you’re a dentist you’ve got a really good problem on your hands if people are scheduling every 20 seconds.
Keith: Oh absolutely, absolutely and you know we look at them, when we see the logs of all the movement, you know, that takes into account people moving appointments from one place to the other and takes into account cancellations from another day that didn’t get moved into another day. I mean it doesn’t have to be something new to schedule. It’s just anything that covers that up, the other thing that happens on our side is it, let’s say as an example, an appointment’s supposed to be for 60 minutes. Let’s say it’s a new patient appointment, in that office has 4 units if they take for that, a lot of times it’s not the entire 60 minutes is taken but only may be the first or last 10 minutes as it bleed over from something else and it will effectively shut that space out for us. But it disappears because we now can’t fit a 60 minute appointment into a 50 minute slot. And again, we’re taking those things all into account in a big part of what we had to spend a lot of time doing was figuring out how to do that without putting an unnecessary resource constraint meant on the system. If you take, if you pull that system constantly to pull all of that information, you’ll shut it down and make it unusable at the office level or slow it down so much that they can’t do it so we really had to work very hard to design our system in such a way to get all of that information out but to do it in such a way that we’re not affecting their system performance at the local level.
Justin: Gotcha, okay now, I mean this must be an easy sell to the front desk, I mean, let’s talk about how much easier the front desk job is as a result of using LocalMed.
Keith: In some cases, yes and other they, some scheduling coordinators don’t believe that we do what we say we can do. You know, they’ll be convinced that we’re gonna do something that, you know, we say we’re not going to do or whatever else and then generally how we handle that is we simply, we give them one of our life clients and say “knock Yousef out, book your own appointment and this other office, call that office and see if your appointments in their schedule book exactly where you want, see if there’s a problem with it at that office. Call one of your peers at one of these other offices that you’ve scheduled with and see” you know our clients are our best representatives and then we simply just ask him to cancel the appointment so that it’s not within the other offices PMS but generally when we can get to that part, when you start asking questions and they want to see how it works, then you’re right, we do have a very good success rate in getting those folks to learn more about the system and believe in what we’re doing.
Justin: Excellent, excellent. You know we didn’t talk about any kind of like special offer, anything like that so I’m not going to put you on the spot but let’s talk about the cost of implementation and is it an ongoing thing or how much does it cost?
Keith: Sure, so as with most things it’s the known, depending on the number of providers. We are provider-based so you know some of the smaller offices don’t get zapped for the same amount that some of the Law Offices do which I know is something that happens in a lot of these. Our service starts at $79 a month for a single provider and then we have a one-time installation fee of $99 to get that started. So it’s, you know, if you’re looking at it effectively less than a good dinner to be able to provide this to your folks on a monthly basis and, you know, I know that it gets pitched around a lot but, you know, we are, our services is built such that we can each a large number of providers and patients are not, I didn’t build this company to make a ton of money off of just a few folks or any of that sort of stuff. We want a large ecosystem of users that makes it more robust. That means we have more people feeding us really good ideas about the next things that we can do. And that’s our goal is to really get a lot of folks on the system, a lot more patients obviously using on a daily basis, and that’s where we really start to see the excitement inside of our office is when we bring on and we have new records that we, you know, we set new records every single one for the last 8 months for the number of providers on the system, the number of patients utilizing the system. So those are the types of things that we’re really aiming for and why we’ve priced it at, you know, a very low number so that we can attract the largest number as possible.
Justin: Excellent. Alright well it sounds good, you said, what was it? 19% of current patients answer that they would not have rescheduled without online scheduling?
Keith: That’s the number that we have from our, we’ve been doing it for about 65 days on the polling. We’ve got about 1,100 responds, I think, I’ll have to go back and look at the exact number response but it’s somewhere in that so it’s not, you know, it’s not an insignificant number that has indicated that “Hey, I wouldn’t have even scheduled at all.”
Justin: That’s amazing, well hey 19% of recall, that’s worth a lot more than $79 per month. So wow, that’s excellent.
Keith: Absolutely.
Justin: Yeah, thank you for coming on, Keith. This is great information, maybe you can just tell the users where to find your website and any other way they can contact you.
Keith: Sure, so we can be reached at www.localmed.com or anybody that’s looking for further information can shoot us a message at sales@localmed.com or give us a call at 800-90-3054 and thank you for having me on here today and looking forward to answering other questions anyone has.
Justin: Excellent, excellent. Can you say that number one more time? I think it cut out there.
Keith: I’m sorry, cut out on me?
Justin: Yeah. I think it cut out when you were saying the number.
Keith: Oh, it’s 800-590-3054.
Justin: Cool and that localmed.com, so guys check this out if, you know, it sounds like it’s a lot of, I know a lot of our viewers probably don’t want to be early adopters but it sounds like you’re already working with a lot of dental offices who are really happy. So it sounds like there’s a pretty low attrition rate for this. Yeah, thanks, thanks so much, Keith. And guys if you have any questions, feel free to reach out in the comments below wherever you see this, on YouTube, Dental Town, The Dental Marketing Guy Blog, and The Dental Marketing Guy Show. Just let us know what you think and I may not have covered all the questions, but I’m sure there got some FAQs and they know what you’re pain points are. It sounds like 18 months of research and development and then, of course, ongoing, always fixing the kinks. So thanks again, Keith.
Keith: Absolutely, thank you.
Justin: Alright and thank you for watching the Dental Marketing Guy Show.
Brought to you by this dental marketing agency.
Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy, and today we’re talking about how you can get confident. If you talk with any clinician on the lecture circuit they’ll tell you to master your craft. If you talk to any marketer they’ll tell you to do whatever it is they’re selling. To a medical device sales rep they may want you to buy the next gizmo. I like to take a different approach, do that which makes you proud. If you’re proud of the work you do you’ll naturally treat your patients better. They’ll feel your confidence before, during, and after that implant procedure or same-day crown placement. A confident dentist has an aura about them that puts your patients at ease, patients who are comfortable with you and confident in your skills will refer more often, compliment your services with more credibility in online reviews and promote your practice in ways you might not even think of. Nothing has as high in ROI as a dentist with confidence. If you’re a dentist with confidence in your clinical skills consider this closing message I have for you. Compared to other dentists do you take care of your patients? If the answer is yes consider putting yourself at the top of search engine results. Don’t those unaware of your practice deserve to find you?
Learn more at my dental marketing blog.
Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy, and today I have a really renowned guest. But let me tell you, it’s not even as impressive as what he’s done but where he’s going, you heard it here first on the Dental Marketing Guy Show. This guy is a rising star. I spoke at the townie meeting. Met him there. Got some really good marketing ideas. Can you believe that? The dental marketing guy learned some dental marketing ideas from this guy. Really, really excellent stuff coming from Dr. John Nosti. I can’t say enough about what you’re doing, John, to help dentists improve their profitability, improve their positioning, improve the ability that they have to focus on what they really want out of dentistry. You know what, we’ll delve into are all kinds ideas but first of all, how are you doing?
Nosti: I’m doing great, Justin, I really appreciate you having me on like a, you know, it’s an honor and a pleasure to be here and now just like you said just to share the good word with all the dentist out there and just try to make, you know, the dental community just a better place. A lot more fun.
Justin: We definitely doing that, man. Tell me a little bit about the history of Dr. John Nosti before he was Dr. John Nosti, why you got into dentistry, when you decided that you wanted to be a dentist and kind of how that all evolved into now you doing CE up the yin-yang. Tell me the story of how it all started.
Nosti: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we all think back to high school and they were like a bad time nd all the stupid projects that we had to do and teachers, you know, made you take on. When I was a sophomore in high school I did a career report and like, you know, you walk through the library and you pick out, you know, different books on different careers and they highlight different areas and give you like, you know, maybe four or five page synopsis of what each career does and I happened to pick one up and it was on an oral surgeon and it seemed to me like it was the coolest thing, you know. Here was this guy like he wasn’t really on the osteo, he wasn’t talking about taking out wisdom teeth and, you know, at the time of, you know, when I was in high school this year is back in like 19 probably 87, maybe 88 when this happens so even though implants might have been, you know, being placed back then it really wasn’t a huge thing like it is now. So the guy wasn’t talking about taking out wisdom teeth, he wasn’t talking about placing implants, really he was talking about, you know, being treating patients who are involved in car accidents and fixing facial fractures and putting people’s lives back together and to me it just sounded really cool that, you know, here you are and like what do we know about the dentist, you know, up until like we’re a sophomore. I mean, I didn’t get braces so I didn’t really know about an orthodontist and I kind of did because my sister was experiencing that but it really didn’t really resonate with me, you know, you know about the pediatric dentist but, you know, because I went to one as a kid but to me that was just that was an office full of screaming kids and who really want to be involved in that, you know. So, you know, here you are like, you know, you look at teeth but you’re like you’re saving lives. So to me that was just really cool, as a real young guy like, you know, going back to grade school I was always really fascinated in the sciences and in health but, you know, I guess kind of being like a soft hearted guy as much as I love medicine and the thought of, you know, being a doctor doesn’t really intrigued me because even though you get to help people, you also have to deal with some losses as well and, you know, to diagnose someone with a debilitating disease or, you know, a former cancer or something like that, that just, that would be horrible for me so, you know, here was this thing on oral surgery and it just – it just hit home and, you know, from there I kind of made a path, like I’m going to be an oral surgeon and I kind of set goals that that’s what I wanted to do up until the point I was probably a senior in college and when you do your senior thesis… I went out and I spent time in a dental office really, you know, several months watching and overseeing as to, you know, what this doctor did in his office and I told him I wanted to be an oral surgeon and he was like “Are you out of your mind? Why would you want to do that?” and I said “Well I don’t know, it’s just, you know, this idea facial fractures is really, you know, kinda intrigues me”. And, you know, he just basically told me as it is. He was like you “If I were you, I’d become a general dentist. It has the best aspects of anything you want to do in dentistry. If you want to do a lot of surgery you can use like – you’re not good with people’s faces together but he was like “You know you get those calls at two three o’clock in the morning and you got to leave your family and missing that.” And he kind of just sold me on being a general dentist so from there on a general dentistry it was for me.
Justin: Excellent, excellent, like you said you know general dentists –you can take on a lot of skills. I mean implants, cosmetic –you know I was talking with Jason O’Litsky over at the townie meeting. Man, that guy’s got a lot of passion for what he does, man. It’s really interesting to talk to guys like you, we had Eric Jones on the show. Dr. Jones, man, that guy, you know, he’s got some stuff nailed down. He attributed a lot of what he’s learned to guys like you and Jason O’Litsky –, you guys are all associated with clinical mastery, right?
Nosti: Correct
Justin: And that is – Can you kind of explain to the viewers what that’s all about?
Nosti: Absolutely, you know the bottom line is there’s continued education out there and there’s a lot of great groups to go to but, you know, as a young doctor coming up, you know, I went out and I took a ton of CE, you know, and I was just about to say that I was fortunate enough. But I made it a point that if I was going to take a CE course, I was going to get something out of it and I was going to implement it in my office. And sometimes you go out and take a weekend seminar and you blow two or three thousand dollars, you spend time away from your practice and your family and sometimes you get great knowledge and sometimes you don’t. And, you know, one of the things that I didn’t like in CE is I hated taking time away from my practice and then going to a course and having someone sell me on another course like “Yeah ,you know what? This is all we’re gonna give you now, but come to our next course because I’m going to give you a lot more.” And you know it’s kind of like a bait switch and I hated that about continued education because that does exist, you know, going out and taking these – all these vertical courses and then even after you take a ton of courses not knowing really how to treat a case – I can’t – it’s criminal, you know, as to what happens. So, you know, we got together as a group of guys who, and gals, who are really love to help other people and we love to, you know, see ourselves in a younger version of ourselves and, you know, we got together and said “You know what? This is really what’s missing in continued education, it’s, you know, being able to talk to a group of doctors who take insurance. Who have the questions on one patient say – what’s my insurance going to cover, how can I do this and still be profitable, how do I do that, and, you know?” They want to take courses from people who are wet finger dentists, not from retired dentist and – not that there’s anything wrong with that but there still is, there still is a different language that we talked to with patients than someone who’s retired has to deal with. So now, we put together a group of courses that teach everything from basics of occlusion all the way up to full mouth reconstruction and on implants, dentures, you know, the whole gama –It’s really, It’s a restorative platform for you to take your practice to the next level.
Justin: So, okay who – I don’t know – you mentioned guys and gal, who, who are all the people at clinical master because I don’t think I know all of them. And our listeners probably don’t know who’s involved in this. It’s a pretty big deal, I think. So who are those names?
Nosti: So, um, that the directors of clinical mastery are myself, Dr. Mike Smith, who practices in Phoenix, Arizona. Dr. Jason O’Litski, who you mentioned, who practices in Ponte Verde, Florida. And Dr. Lee Anne Brady, who also practices in Phoenix, Arizona. We are basically the fearsome foursome of continuing education, and then from there on we have a group of doctors who, you know, we asked to join us based upon their knowledge of dentistry and also based upon the fact that we know what they’re doing in their practice. So, we basically know, not only can they talk the talk but they can walk the walk. So – And that group of doctors are guys like Dr. Chris Catalano who practices in California, you know. Dr. Eric Farmer, Dr. Erik Jones, you mentioned, you know, we have a – just a great, great group of supporting doctors who really helped us out. Dr. Erich Mendelsohn – we seem like we have the doctor E’s, got a lot of Eric’s who are joining us and our faculty. Chaddy and Chesky, who practices in Green Bay, you know. Just guys who were just, you know, passionate about what they do and are really doing it. Dr. Josh Stelzer can practice that in PA. That’s basically our supporting mentors for clinical mastery.
Justin: Excellent, excellent, man. That’s, you know, and something I learned from (inaudible 10:35) that never named drop and apparently Dr. John Nosti, he missed that lesson.
Nosti: Yeah, I didn’t learn that, you know, I got to give props to my, you know, to the my team, you know, it’s not just me, you know, who’s waving the flag. It’s a great group of docs who I’m fortunate to be partnered up with so I definitely want to give them some props.
Justin: Absolutely and so let me try and pin you guys. I don’t mean to pigeon hole you but you each focus on a certain area, right, and so when I think of Jason O’Litski I think of the photography thing. I know he’s a cosmetic dentist but I think of photography when I think, John Nosti at least lately I’ve been seeing the word occlusion attached to it so it could you tell me like of a few of the people, a few of the more key influencers, clinical mastery. What’s kind of the brand, what’s the focus for each of you guys?
Nosti: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, it is kind of funny even though we all, you know, treat patients in our practice, you know, Jason is just someone, he excels at photography and he excels at, you know, digital smile design and, you know, he is accredited by the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, one of the youngest dentist, if not the youngest dentist ever to achieve that honor, so, you know, he’s just, I mean you said it, he’s passionate about marketing and photography and that drives his cosmetic practice and that’s really Jason’s niche. You know, he’s used that in his practice, I’ll speak from Mike and me, Mike Smith, you know, I think that we built a strong cosmetic practice but based upon function. So for years I said that I was a functionally driven cosmetic dentist where I kind of tat where there’s no reason to market even though I do market, you don’t have to market when you’re doing functionally driven smile designs. there’s patients who come to every dental office and you know those patients, those are models that are sitting on your desk that you’re like “What the heck do I do with this person?” and as someone who’s destroyed their teeth due to either attrition, due to erosion, you know, they might have gerd, sleep apnea, whatever it is and you’re talking about to these people about how do they, you know, basically saved their teeth and get back to where they were years ago and we just use cosmetic dentistry to drive that look to satisfy the functional aspects. So Mike and I deal a lot with, you know, reconstruction type dentistry and temperamental joint disorders as does Dr. Lee Ann Brady. so we kind of, the three of us kind of have that mix of TMD, function, occlusion, basic where, you know, Jason will say that his primary focus is strictly on cosmetics and even though he does reconstructions and even though he knows a lot about occlusion, you know, he’ll tell you that, you know, the primary reason patients are coming to see him is for cosmetics.
Justin: That’s excellent. Okay, okay that’s really cool and, you know, like you said you all have general knowledge of dentistry, obviously, but to kind of help the viewers define each of you, I really appreciate you doing that. So as far as clinical mastery, so how often, when’s the next seminar? How often do you guys do this? And what are the topics? I know I’ve seen you on Dental Town, there, I don’t know if it’s ads or just people raving about you, about understanding occlusion. When is the next, what are some upcoming seminars and how often do they happen?
Nosti: Absolutely, so we run the occlusion one course about five or six times a year, every year it’s getting more and more due to the demand. We just had one in Boston that was actually sold out, it was phenomenal, great group of docs that we posted pictures on Facebook, you know, shout out to all the docks who were there, so much fun. The next time we’re doing is in September for occlusion one and that’s going to be in Nashville Tennessee. so we try to have some pretty school, pretty cool spots around the country that people want to go to or they’re close to, you know, their location is close to it so we do like the occlusion one between five and seven times a year. Our next level beyond that is our occlusion two course and occlusion one is mastering functional Dentistry, which kind of talked about before about being a functionally driven cosmetic dentist. That’s where doctors really kinda learn how they can start doing that in their practice. occlusion two is mastering complex cases and the next time we’re doing that is an August and that’s in Seattle, it’s gonna be a tremendous amount of fun and then our occlusion three course, and we offer once a year, and each year that course is offered at the end of the year and it’s in Las Vegas. So that’s in November our occlusion two course, we offer twice, three times a year. Occlusion three is one time a year. and then aside from that we have some other courses where, you know, I think it’s really cool that doctors can kind of take the stress out of their lives and really go not only learn but like see a lot of really cool things happen. So, you know, for me take our occlusion one course, you know, you learn about, you know, everything from how to take a CR by, how to do a face bow, how to, what do you do with the mounted study models, how do you analyze them to come up with treatment plans and then we talk about materials and segmentation and porcelain. We talked about how to do a veneer case, how to temporize a veneer case, how to cement it and how to exclusionary finish it. So at the end of that course start to finish you know really how to start doing any complete exam on someone, how to start doing a complete set of Records, what to do with those records as far as Jim plan, and if you’re going to do veneers we teach you how to execute that. But maybe you’re someone who just doesn’t want to see in lecture, you want to actually see it live. so from there you can see Dr. Jason O’Litsky do a in the op course where in one weekend you get to see him prep and temporize one patient and then see veneers on another patient, all in one weekend. so like really after that, after those two courses you can go home and hit it out of the park and start just annihilating veneer cases in your practice then form or occlusion two course where’s mastering complex cases, you know, there we do teach you how to open vertical dimension and how to start the prep and see process on a full mouth reconstruction on how we start that process and we go into splints and a little bit more about TMD, you know, a little bit more complex of collaborations. so it just takes it takes it to the next level and then, you know, maybe after that, we even go over a treatment planning section and talk to you about how to talk to your patients about treatment planning and case acceptance. Well from there you might say to yourself again that’s really cool you, know, John Mike and Lee just told me how to do a full mouth reconstruction but I want to see it live and then you can come watch me over the course of two weekends. I treat the same patient where I lecture one day and then you see me perform a mouth reconstruction and then we come back three weeks later and then I lecture again and then you see me sit a full mouth reconstruction. so you see that whole process happen and I can tell you that we’ve been doing that for five or six years and what you will see is that, like you know, in lecture we teach you “Hey this is ideal and this is how everything should work.” and then when you come see me and you see real life and you see, you know, what happens when a patient doesn’t get numb? How do you handle that? What happens when a patient has a hard time keeping their mouths open and you’re planning on prepping 20 units, how do you handle that? You know, how do you handle the bite sequencing? You know, it’s like a lot of things– how do you manage your patient through such a long procedure? So, you know, you basically get to see all the fun live stuff happen, you know, that basically happens to you back in your practice.
Justin: Yeah, it’s interesting because, you know, when we were talking at the townie meeting, you know, you coached, I think you said you coach like the best JD wrestling team in the country or the state or something like that?
Justin: Yes. so basically when I was in college I was an assistant varsity wrestling coach to Pineland Regional High School and I was the head JD coach and that year Jackson High School was rated the number one wrestling team in the nation and there are New Jersey and my JV team beat their JV team twice in tournaments. Basically out placed them, like, we doubled our points over them so, you know, the head coach yes basically touted saying that my JD coach was the best JD teaming the nation so it’s a lot of fun, love wrestling. So much comes from wrestling, doesn’t it?
Justin: Yeah, you know, and the reason why I mentioned it so people don’t think I’m completely out of my mind is it’s actually linear because when you talk about lecture it’s kind of like in wrestling, like you can drill the moves, right, but then you start going live and the moves don’t work the same. the first one you try doesn’t work and then the second one you try doesn’t work and then the third one make some maybe it might work but then the fourth works, right, because you do that chain wrestling, right, you link the moves together and that’s kind of how it is in marketing, right, and that’s kind of how I assume how it is in clinical dentistry where your first thing doesn’t work, your second thing doesn’t work, your third thing doesn’t work and you learn them all in lecture. They were all supposed to work perfectly and now you’re discouraged. so for people who want to actually get into, you know, going live, doing a real match so to speak where your place in that implant or you’re doing whatever it is in clinical dentistry and it’s not going perfectly. So if you would you say that’s where kinda live, the getting in there and seeing it happen in the real world where things don’t go perfectly. Is that kind of the idea behind what you’re doing?
Nosti: Oh you could not explain it better because, you know, that’s exactly it. I mean, you know, kind of what you learn in lectures practice, it’s an ideal situation, you know, and we’re going to put our, we’re going to use our ideal cases from our practice, you know, where a patient can open wide and they photograph really well so we can show you, the participants, the example of what happens. but then we all know, we get back in the real world and you’re like “What is going on here?” you know, and just like you said in wrestling practice, you know, first of all you working out with a partner that you’ve probably wrestled with for a couple years or not and, you know, you know their moves, you know, they know your moves and then you get on the mat with an opponent and it’s totally different, you know, that’s like prepping a full mouth reconstruction. most of these patients, at least the ones in my practice, their people, I might have done a filling or two on them before I’m prepping them but a lot of patients are new patients who come in and, you know, they’ve had single tooth dentistry, piecemeal dentistry down and the first time I’m doing anything significant on them is the time that I’m prepping 20 units and, you know, they might be someone who needs to take a bathroom break every five minutes. They meet someone who needs to close their mouth every 30 seconds, you know. There’s just a lot of things that go along with it that it’s basically, its practice first game time and you get to see it unfold game time.
Justin: You know, I thought of something as you were saying that about, you know, person has to go to the bathroom every five minutes, has to close your mouth every 30 seconds. those might be extreme examples but I would say a lot of people, just based on my own personal experience as a dental patient, I can say I think the dentists are in to what they’re doing so much, almost like an engineer or an artist or something like that. like it really doesn’t matter what’s going on around an engineer, to draw a parallel, it doesn’t matter what’s going on around an artist, he’s painting that, he’s designing this and they don’t really care what’s going on in the background because their focus. as a dental patient I can tell you there’s little things that you can do that kind of show empathy for the patient, which really goes a long, long way because it might not be clinically smart to offer chap stick in the middle of some procedure, it might not be clinically smart to say “Hey would you like to rest your jaw? would you like to move it around?” and I don’t know massaging or whatever is available but from the patient experience standpoint, are there other anything like that you’ve implemented where you find that “you know what this has nothing to do with the occlusion but it’s what the patient wants.” and it shows them that I care and now they’re going to go because they don’t know if you understand occlusion or even what the word even means but they’re trusting you and the patient experiences what they take away from that, you know, I don’t think the word occlusion has ever been mentioned in a Yelp review ever.
Nosti: No, that’s true. For me you hit the nail on the head, it’s, you know what and it’s funny. that’s just, that’s not an aspect that I ever thought to even thought about talking about like to someone like yourself who was interviewing me about a course but a hundred percent when you’re in that course that’s a huge part of what I’m going to talk about is, you know what, just like you said you have a goal in mind, you want to prep these units in x amount of time you, have a time schedule that you want to meet because you have a profit that you want to have done or, you know, you’re trying to race the anesthetic. Whatever it is and having that mindset doesn’t set the stage for that patient having an awesome experience. Cause I can tell you that it’s super uber important, I had to use that word, is so important for your patient, who’s investing those kind of dollars in your practice, to leave saying “Wow that was great” you know “Geez, that really wasn’t that bad that was so much easier than what I expect.” you know, and knowing had at least provide that or even knowing how to talk patients through when it is taking longer and, you know what, maybe you do things differently in order to make sure that that patient has and awesome experience and just like you said, you know, there’s a lot of times we take breaks. there’s a lot of times that you know you offer them bottled water and, you know, have the right bibs and the right towels and, you know, straws and, you know, something that they can eat even during the procedure if you’re going to take a really long period of time and, you know, those are all goodie bags that they leave the office with in order to make sure that they feel great. Those are all things that that, you know, that you get to see live. It’s just, you know what it is? you get to see me for a whole day do it unlike a lecture there, you know, just like you said there’s so many things that the ins and outs and little things that, you know, not to say that we purposely missing a course. It’s just that you can’t cover, you can’t cover everything in a seminar, you know, that happens live with the patient, you know, the conversations that just become organic, you know. You can’t make that up, you know, you can’t force it to happen in a course even though we try to role play, it just doesn’t work out the way it does in a seminar. You know, like it doesn’t have a live patient treatment course. So, you know, absolutely all those things that in order to make sure that the patient has a great experience is so important.
Justin: And when you say, in the beginning you mentioned not really doing much marketing although you do that as well but really the patients that you treat are walking, talking billboard, right? so when you say you’re not really doing a lot of marketing but that you do get, obviously you’re busy, is that, are you referencing like word of mouth marketing? Are you referencing referrals?
Nosti: Both, you know, I don’t want, I definitely do not want to come off like I don’t market because we market, you know, basically what I don’t want people to always think is that, you know what, I need to, all seven if you’re not doing veneers in your office you don’t necessarily need to then, once you learn how to do it. I wouldn’t necessarily say drive up your marketing to focus on veneers. I might just say drive up your marketing to focus on getting more patients because you probably have plenty of patients in your practice who you need to market to them and you need to then enroll those patients and that’s what I did early on in my career. You know, once you’ve been through the patients in your practice and you’ve talked with the people who need it and maybe they are accepted it and have done it or they’re in a waiting period. well now you need to know, now you need to go bring in and replenish new patients and, you know what, you absolutely need to market and, you know, that’s even something that, you know, for years, my partner and I, we had a website and, you know, that did well but I can tell you that once we took it the next step and did some external marketing to drive people to the website, you know. I mean, I just got off the phone with one of my friends telling him how successful our marketing has been, you know, not bragging. I’m just giving props to marketing guys like yourself and what you do for offices. I mean I’m up, you know, almost fifty percent this year compared to last year. I mean, and last year I didn’t, it wasn’t like I had a down year from the year before and we had a recovery, you know. It’s literally, it’s a realized fifty percent increase in the first, you know, at the end of five months for the beginning of the year. So that’s tremendous and I have to say that, you know, I owe it to marketing so marketing is key to any dental practice.
Justin: Yeah. So we’re getting new patients and then using those new patients to educate them about what it is that you’re good at. you’ve already earned their trust enough to get them in the chair and then you introduce the fact that “I offer this, I offer this, I offer this” you know, I hear so many dentists tell this story and I don’t know how common it is to be perfectly forthcoming but I do know that it happens is the general dentist, he’s doing drill film bill and they go, they get some veneers because they saw an ad on the newspaper for veneers and they didn’t know that their general dentist did veneers. How important is it to educate your patients about the services that you actually offer?
Nosti: Justin, I can’t tell you how many times that happens in my practice. Fortunately, not that people are leaving getting treatment somewhere else, but I can’t tell you how many consults I do in a year where people come in and, you know, they say “I’m here to talk with you about x” and I say “Have you talked with your dentist about doing this? And, you know, there are times when people say yes and that dentists that I wasn’t a candidate which, you know, I will tell you is a lot of dentists out there telling people they’re not candidates for procedures, that they are one hundred percent candidates for. So, you know, definitely we want to go out and educate yourselves as to what we can do for people. that’s so important and then the other side of it is people say “You know what, I didn’t feel comfortable asking my dentist because the office didn’t come off like that was their thing.” So, you know, if you are doing veneers, if you are doing anything– six month smiles, Envisaging– whatever it is that you’re doing. The greatest explanation I can give with this is given by my buddy Jason O’Litski. Would you ever in your right mind go to a car dealership and you walk into a car dealership and imagine if, on their walls, was pictures of fountains and waterfalls and there’s no pictures of cars and then, you know, you pick up a book and you say like “Oh this is a cool book. I really like this car, you know, can I have this car here?” and then the car says like “Well we don’t have that car but I can get you a car like that car.” it’s like how would you really feel about, you know, that car salesmen? And not to compare dentistry to car salesman but, no, it’s just an example that we can all resonate with where, you know what, you do have to have examples of your work in your practice for your patience to see. if you don’t have smiles on the wall, you need to have smiles on books and if you don’t have any documentation of what you’re doing, I don’t care how many times you’ve done it, your patients don’t know you’re doing it because if you have stock photography on your website that is from every other website designer that your patient start looking around and what’s worse is they see those same photographs on other people’s websites, don’t think because you give them an example of what veneers would look, like that they’re going to trust you in order to do it. You really, you got to get trained, you got a document, document, and document and then you have to show what you can do. that’s, and if you’re not doing it, unfortunately, people are finding guys like myself or female dentist, girls out there, they’re finding girls who are putting it out there and who are doing it and, you know, it’s a shame, you know, I don’t wanna get patients like that.
Justin: Yeah, you know, it’s really interesting what you said because when someone is passionate about something they tend to be better at it and when someone is passionate about it, they talk about it, that’s what they talked about, you know. I mean, we’re talking about dentistry, we’re talking about wrestling, you know, you’re in it and it can’t be faked. I mean it could be faked, I guess, you know, we got politicians and stuff like that in this world but, you know. I mean, the bottom line is when passion is genuine it tends to be sustainable, it tends to become a brand. So, I think, the inference that patients draw is if he’s not talking about this, if he doesn’t sing about this at the top of mountain tops it’s not his thing and sometimes that means how little confidence to ask for the support of your happy patients. I know we’re coming to a close on our time because we were both busy up but, you know, I wanted to hope, I was hoping this is coming at you totally unscripted here, you know, I’m hoping to – for our listeners who want to get those before and after photos, this goes for everything, that goes for online reviews, it goes video testimonials, it goes for before and after pictures but they’ve got to get those legal releases, I don’t get into the legal stuff. We just got Jason P. Wood on the show the other day, he could talk, call him about this, about the disclaimers but, you know, the bottom line is I think a lot of doctors tell me like “Justin, I’d love to get Google reviews but I just can’t ask. I love to get these before-and-after’s but I just can’t ask my patients for this stuff.” what are some of the trip, tricks or tips or, you know, I’m sure it gets easier as you do it. Some advice that you can provide the listeners about, you know, to get that first before and after, to get that first google review. How do you that?
Nosti: I love it. So, you know what, I’ll just tell you what I did when I was younger. So when I took my first veneer course with David Horbrook back in 2002. you know when I came out jazzed up from that, I had already done some veneers but I’ll be honest with you, it wasn’t at the level that then I knew what I could do. So, you know, first and foremost the people you go to first are the people who trust you the most and are probably asking you to do it for them. So you go to friends, family members, you know, anyone in your inner circle who wants a great smile and needs a great smile. you know what, do it for your lab bill and you know what, in return, you’re gonna tell that person that you’re doing it for cost for is that what I want in return is you’re going to see your face everywhere, you can see it on my website, you’re going to see it and publications blah, blah, blah, you know, and have them sign the release form. you know, start there and, you know what, make sure you do the AAC required photographs which are like 16 photographs because when you have those 16 shots, that becomes 16 before and after’s and literally you can kind of sit there and point out a couple different before and after’s and kind of change them around. It could be the same case and a patient it won’t even know. So you can at least show them four or five “Look at this, look at great this looks” and it’s like one patient, you know, and that’s what I did at first and then it builds from there. So you have those people. then when you have someone who comes in and let’s say there are an ideal candidate and you almost want to do their veneers more so than they wanted to do it because mainly maybe they have a financial issue and they say “How can I get a discount?” in the beginning you say “You know what a\the discount I can offer you is? you’re gonna sign my photo release form.” so a lot of times you can cover your costs even make some money, might you be making your UCR fee maybe not but you know what, in return that patient, the discount you’re giving them will pay back dividends on the photographs that you’re going to take on them and then how you’re going to use them in your marketing and then from there I’ll be honest with you. Nowadays there’s people who come in and, I mean, if I throw a number out there, if I do 50 smiles a year, maybe 10 people want to be in my smile book anymore. When I was younger I think almost everybody for some reason wanted to. Nowadays it’s really gone downhill but still I have maybe 10 people who want to do it and, you know what, that’s not even a conversation that I have. I start by taking all the photographs, I do the documentation, some people will start out right away and they’re going to say to you “Am I going to be in your smile book?” and I’m gonna give you a title of a book that I think you should read it will change your life it’s called Change your Questions, Change your Life by Marilee Adams. So when a patient says to me “Am I gonna be in your smile book?” I don’t say yes or no, I say “Do you want to be in my smile book?” and, you know what, some people will say “Heck no. I don’t want any of my photographs anywhere out there.” I was like “No problem, these photographs are just for documentation and for me to communicate with our lab. You won’t see these anywhere.” and when people say “Yeah, you know what, I might.” then that’s someone who, at the end of treatment, will show their before and after’s, then they might say “Go ahead and use them.” and if someone says, even better yet, they say “Oh yeah, you know what, I wouldn’t mind being a star. I would like to be in your photo album.” then at the front desk when they come in for their post op photos, you know, my front office or my office manager, you know, before they go out the door they’d be like “Hey listen here’s a release form. if you would like we would love to use your photographs and there’s like basically line items on that release form that basically says I can use your photos and everything or if you want you can cross out the things that you do and don’t want me to use.” so there’s some patients who say “I don’t want to see my face on any of his marketing materials to other people but I’ll let Dr. Nosti use my photographs in his lectures and in publications for other dentists.” So, and, they can sit there and kind of my cross off what they do you want and what they don’t want. Have your office manager do it, have a girl, and I say girls and guys, but have a team member who talks the best to people, who resonates the best with your patients. Have that person present that form to your people.
Justin: Excellent. Well that’s, man. A lot of value here, a lot of value. Excellent, you know, we got to run. I know both of us, your phone’s ringing off the hook.
Nosti: Sorry.
Justin: It’s all good, it’s all good. I’m surprised we were able to last this long, John Nosti with clinical mastery. If you guys have any questions reach out to him in the comments below, YouTube, Dental Town, Dental Marketing Guy blog, wherever you see this on social media. Feel free to reach out, I mean, I’m sure there’s a lot more where this came from and I thanks once again John for appearing on the show.
Nosti: Thanks for having me, you know, anybody wants to follow up, hit me up on Dental Town and I can even send you a copy of that release form that I use for my patients.
Justin: Excellent, excellent. That’s great, okay cool. So you got that release form from John, hit him up.
I’m sure it’s only a million dollars.
Nosti: No, free.
Justin: All right well, thanks guys, thanks for watching the Dental Marketing Guy Show.
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Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy show. I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy and today we have a very special guest. You know most businesses struggle with the challenges of building their business, you know, and a lot of times it has to do with managing conflicts and having a conversation with your team and staff. You know, what my guest today, Lorraine, she specializes in implementing customized systems that help teams work better together organizational success. She doesn’t change the way you and your team communicate, her processes will change the way you think and I love it when we have guests on who can help our listeners and our viewers think in a different way because I’ll tell you, dentists, you know, they’re a smart bunch and they catch on really quickly. I’m really interested to talk to Lorraine because she’s a speaker and a consultant. I know I’ve seen her on the Howard Farran’s podcast and some different places and, man, let me tell you I couldn’t even do it justice. All the level of experience, I’m just gonna come right in and give you the floor, Lorraine, how are you?
Lorraine: Good, how are you today?
Justin: I’m great, I’m great. Tell us a little bit about your background in dentistry and how you help dentists.
Lorraine: So I started in dentistry, well, I’m agents and so it’s been more than 30 years, we’ll just say that and I started when I was 17 as a dental assistant and back then I was, I don’t know some of your viewers might remember the days of flip tanks with x-rays and, you know, cleaning the plaster trap and all those fun things that we don’t dentistry with them with it ever since. So I move fairly quickly into the administrative side and I was always very good at the management side of nature and the presenting treatment, you know, getting people to come in over the phone, those kinds of things and really then worked on building my skills in that over the years and that’s what I teach in many practices now.
Justin: Yeah, well, you know. It’s always great to have a guest who has a big, big background in dentistry. I know a lot of our viewers are dentists, there’s probably a few dental assistants out there too, but you know, even though the viewers are dentists I gotta say, you know, I was talking with Coach Heidi Mount the other day and she was telling me when you have a dental assistant background, you have a different background. You come at it from a different angle than you have a dentist background and that’s really important because, you know, I always say on the show the front desk is a really, really tough job. Maybe, could you go into some of the main points of how you helped dentists improve their practice?
Lorraine: One of the ways is in the administrative area, right now I think the way we function is really changed. So I looked back, you know, 20 some odd years ago, it was pretty easy to schedule people when they call to get people to consider you to come in the door and manage those calls. Right now we’re looking at, for example, if you’re a free-for-service practice you know you always have people calling to ask if you participate, you have all kinds of different issue that people consider. So we also have to be a lot better at really reactivating patients doing things to build the business. Do you think 20 years ago, 30 years ago, the administrative side was more about handling the administrative tasks and functioning in a kind of effective way with our patients. Now it’s different I think the administrative area is about building your business. It’s the sales and marketing department so we need to be very, very good at promoting the business that filling the schedule at, you know, getting somebody on the phone over a piece of plastic to fall in love with us even if we don’t participate, which is a big deal, you know, that a learned skill. We need to be very good at talking about insurance and financial issues, we need to be very good at following up with people that haven’t been in. You know it’s interesting, I, one of the things that I do is sometimes I speak at a small business expo then it’s full of people that are not dentists and I find it really interesting, this focus is so strong, and how do I get work clients, how do I retain more customers, you know, that’s everything they do they think very much about that and they’re no stranger to marketing, right. So, you know, if you look at the U.S., I remember when I opened my business and went to the bank and said, and one of the things they told me when I took out a $60,000 loan is that half the business in the U.S go bankrupt in the first 5 years, they go out of business and they wanted to let me know that if I didn’t manage my business well, they will take my house. It’s pretty interesting, so you know, this is when you come from a small side business out of dentistry, you know, there’s such a strong, dry to look at- what do we do in marketing what do we look at in our client engagement to get more clients to retain more clients. And so I think the administrative side of dentistry is really changed in that way, you can’t just be good at processing insurance anymore. You have to be good at client retention so that’s one of the things I work on a lot is what is verbal skills, how do we do that, how do we manage and service protocol and process. So on the administrative side that’s a big focus.
Justin: Excellent, could you provide maybe some quick tips because I know a lot of our listeners are probably thinking like “Okay, that’s also really good, but maybe we can get some actionable items.” Maybe give us some magic tips.
Lorraine: Absolutely, I’ll give you a couple. I’m gonna give you my phone own for the new patient call. I’m also gonna give you a couple engagement tips for the treatment discussions financial discussion. So for the new patient call we’ve got to have a great phone voice, right, and so I teach them to really think about that and sometimes when we answer the phone we take that tagline, that reading we make it one long sentence, you know, it’s like “thank you for calling Dr. Fantastic office this is Lorraine how may I help you please.” And so it really sends the wrong impression and we get focused on answering the phone. What I teach doesn’t answer the phone anymore here. We talked to people, we communicate, we build value, we happen to do the piece of plastic. So we really want to answer the phone with the tagline I give is “thank you for calling Dr. Fantastic office this is Lorraine May I help you please.” So we have to have pacing and inflection. When a new patient calls one of the big questions that we get these days is do you accept AETNA or whatever the plan is and it’s often times people don’t even identify themselves, they’ll just say do you except blue cross, blue shield, and one of the things I teach is we don’t do business until we exchange names, we’re in a relationship, is this right.
Justin: Sure.
Lorraine: so recall and say, and I answer the phone thank you for calling the Dr. Fantastic office this is Lorraine, may I help you please.” And you are to say do you accept AETNA, I would say “My name is Lorraine, I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name.” because I want you to tell me your name before I do business with you.
Justin: Sure.
Lorraine: And then at one point what would say to the patient.
Justin: Well, you have to be kinda rude not to tell your name. I’d say I’m Justin.
Lorraine: Right and so then I would say “Well, Justin, judging by your question I’m gonna guess you’ve never been here before, have you” and you would say.
Justin: No, I haven’t.
Lorraine: But first, welcome to our practice. Thank you for calling, thank you for choosing us. Justin were great with insurance here, we help everyone with insurance. Do you mind if I lean a little bit more about what you’re looking for, what you need and if you decide that you like the idea of coming to our practice, I’ll be happy to talk to you about how we process the claims. And so now at that point, stop the role playing. What would you be thinking about this practice now, if you were the client?
Justin: Well, you know, I think there’s 2 different sets. I think with the kind of patient that you want which is, you know, someone who is actually looking for comprehensive care, looking for a dentist they can trust. I think I’m willing to engage in that discussion for someone who’s strictly looking for someone, the first dentist pick up the phone who takes the insurance, they might not care much too much but when you can call it and still. So I don’t know, I mean, you tell me. How does that usually go? If you’ve got one of those penny pinchers of shoppers versus the kind of patients that most of our listeners actually want.
Lorraine: so it’s interesting that we call them penny pinchers and shoppers and I think we have consumers and I think that’s one thing we have to understand about. They’re not our patients, their consumers and so we have these assumptions that when people start off with that question, that’s all they care about and sometimes when they start that way, that might be true, but if you disarm them a little bit, often they’ll comply if you get someone that says “Look I just want to know if you participate with my insurance.” My question would be “Is there a reason why” because if I don’t participate I’m I dead, right. If that’s all you’re looking for, you’re gonna hang up anyway. So if we don’t participate I’d say why and it was interesting because I had a gentleman once, I figured this out cause I was trying to figure out what to do and I had a gentleman once instead because if I go to someone that doesn’t participate I’ll have no benefits at all, and then I was able to say “Well, I have good news for you, that’s not always true.” So you can often pick a provider of your choice, someone that you really like and helps you the way you want. Are you open to that discussion, the worst thing that they’re going to do is hang up on me and when you look at the fact that it costs money to make that phone ring, I’m willing to take that risk. It’s interesting, one of my coaches and mentors said to me once “Your only risking a yes, if they’re going to hang up you’re only risking a yes. You already have a no.” So I think that’s the approach we need to take, and so then I think we ask really good care questions and then at the end of the call if we don’t participate languaging for that and how we talked about. I want them to get a chance to fall in love with me for just a few minutes before I tell them what’s wrong with me, right. The analogy I give is this a, if you’re going on a date the first time and you really wanted someone t like you, you wouldn’t sit down at the date and say “Well, you know, before we start I just wanna let you know that I snore, I have cellulite, you know, I have a mood fluctuation once a month that are pretty intolerable, but I’d really like to see you again.” Right, you know, we don’t want to come out of the gate where we’re not at the highest expectation, does that make sense?
Justin: Sure, sure. And you know if someone calls and asks “Do you take the insurance.” I mean basically if you say no, click. So what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to avoid just bait because your relationship right now is predicated on whether or not you take their insurance. So if the answer is no the relationship is over, if you delve in deeper and find out what they really want, then maybe you can get a dialogue going, is that kind of the idea there?
Lorraine: Well, yeah. There’s a way I teach a turnaround at the end so and I think we make assumptions because people ask that when they call, that that’s all they care about and that’s not true. So it’s interesting, I had a pediatrician, I was picking out for my children years ago and I did these great referrals all over in the community and my question when I call them was “Do you take blue cross, blue shield.” But I didn’t care, I wasn’t looking for a participating provider. I just, you know, as shoppers, as consumers when we don’t know what to ask we often ask price driven questions first, right. If you don’t know what are casts it’s how much is it and that’s our patient way of saying how much is it. So if you think there are assumptions we have, so there I think there are all kinds of great things you can do with that call to maximize the marketing, marketing costs money.
Justin: Yeah and you know that’s a really important point because if you’re not getting all kinds of calls, say you do a direct mail campaign and everyone’s calling, asking about insurance and you just keep saying “No, we don’t take them. No, we don’t take them.” It’s like hold on a minute, you spent 5 grand on those mailers that was a waste. All you did was waste your time and take up your front desks time and now the patients aren’t being taken care of the way they would have cause you can’t hire an additional dental assistant cause you’re not making any additional money so now all the patients are bearing the cost of that, ultimately. So I really like that, that’s really important is making sure that you answer the phone, when you do answer the phone that you’re being productive and your building those bridges with people. So that’s really interesting, I mean, you have any other tips as far as like not to do with the phone, but maybe some other tips that our listeners would appreciate.
Lorraine: Yes and it is interesting, so one of them that I teach is what, you know, we have these financial discussions, retreatment discussions and people often ask questions or respond to us and we tend to want to give information back, right. And so what I teach is think from the why. So as an example, I was in a financial arrangement discussion with the patient once and it’s been a great experience all the way through, the gentleman sat down and we started to talk about things and he said “Lorraine, I only want to do what the insurance covers at 100.” But the insurance covers a 100%, I only want to do what the insurance covers. So he had an extensive treatment plan, that wasn’t gonna work. So again, I wasn’t sure what to do because if I would’ve given information about what the insurance covers that would’ve told you where this was gonna go, right. Try just add, I looked at him and I said is there a reason why. And one of the things that was really interesting in that moment he said “Yeah, it’s because my boss is trying to screw me.” And I said “what” you know, like really “what, why” and my answer was “Okay, how does that relate to the insurance.” And he said “Look, my employer has cut back every single way and they’re getting every dime out of us and so I know I have $1,000 a year. I only want to make a $1,000 a year because I want to get every penny I can from my boss.” Which is interesting, so his paradigm of how the insurance work was very, very different.
Justin: So I’m just gonna say, you would’ve never known about that had you not asked.
Lorraine: Just ask why, right, and we don’t always say why but whenever someone says something, part of what m trying to figure out is why did they say that, why did they ask that question. Before you get information think from the why. So why would you say I only wanted what the insurance covers 100%. I only want to go to my max, you know, we have assumptions behind that. Our assumptions is it means people don’t want to spend any money, that’s not necessarily true. We don’t know what the perceptions are. So in that case I was able to say to him, you know, “Mr. Jones, you know I can understand if I understood the insurance that what you did, I might feel that way too but there’s more involved here. Can we talk about that?” and so then the first thing I said is “Can I share with you” when he opened up “Can I share with you about how insurance works.” And so then I just simply said “You know, your insurance is a premium your employer pace. So how you manage your dental care has no impact at all on your employer.” So that’s the first thing to remember and they pay percentages of things and what the insurance companies trying to do is minimize what they spend every year and they don’t really care if your condition gets worse. So if we do what you’re asking, now we’re going to leave untreated conditions that are going to get more expensive and more complicated. Your insurance won’t really it anyway cause they’re not gonna cover more later and you won’t hurt your boss. Does that change how you want to proceed and guess what his answer was?
Justin: Absolutely. I was out to get him, but I’m gonna have to do it in a different way.
Lorraine: Right and so I think it’s just a simple example, you know, there’s so many things that people say to us and we are so quick to want to educate and respond and, I think, you know, when we’re having these dialogues with people I like to say think from the why. Sometimes ask them why or how or sometimes I’ll say “Well is there a specific reason or is there something specific about timing that affects your decision.” So we need to be asking more questions, so that’s one tip and I’ll give you another tip. I have a formula I call it SSSPorQ and it stands for short, simple statements, paus or questions, alright, and then I’m gonna ask you a question before I define what that means a little bit and so are you married or have you ever been in a relationship.
Justin: Have I ever been in a relationship, yes.
Lorraine: Okay, do you ever have those days, you come home and you’re tired and you don’t feel like listening to anybody and your significant other is talking an talking and talking about something you don’t really care about but you’re smart enough not to ignore them, right.
Justin: Yeah.
Lorraine: All the time, all the time. So how many sentences do you really listen before you put the fake smiley face on like you’re really listening.
Justin: After, everything after the fire I stopped listening.
Lorraine: Right.
Justin: I’m not sure, the first sentence, the second sentence. I’m not sure.
Lorraine: That’s what I mean, around the country, that’s what I hear, right, is most of them were tired. Listening is hard, it’s an intensive exercise and so you know we’re tired and we don’t want to hear something or we hear something controversial we have a brain limit on how many sentences we’re willing to listen to. But we’re all trying to be polite, aren’t we, you know. I mean have you ever listened to somebody and then faking it
Justin: Me personally? Well, I think all our listeners might be able to relate to that, maybe. Yeah, absolutely.
Lorraine: Right, we all do it so the formula, in the formula is when we communicate with people we want to acknowledge the most people only listen well to 3 to 5 sentences in a row. If they’re tired, if they are hear things they’re uncomfortable with. So the formula is short, simple statements, pause or questions. If you are engaging in financial discussion or intensive treatment discussion, 3 to 5 sentences, pause or questions.
Justin: so we don’t just ramble about amalgam vs composite.
Lorraine: Right, right. So it’s interesting, you know, I have a check mark that goes off in my head, you know when I’m working, when I was working with a patient or even sometimes in negotiations that if I hear myself going into too many sentences sometimes I’ll just find a place just to end, just to stop and when I stopped guess what happens?
Justin: Then I jump in and I’m like “That’s great. Excellent.”
Lorraine: Right, so your tips of the day I’d give you is really, you know, think about how we answer that phone, and that the 2 formulas are, you know, think of the why, short simple statement, pause or question. Make people engage with you so when you’re, if you’re in treatment presentation I want that patient talking at least 50% of the time. Does that help?
Justin: That makes sense, you know, and that’s very, very useful. Let me tell you cause people like to talk. People like to hear themselves stuff not everyone, some people more than others, you know, I probably need to stop talking right now but the point is patients love to talk about themselves. Your their service provider, you’re someone that their, I mean, not just service, right. That sounds so generic, it’s a healthcare trusted professional, right, and how do you build trust if you don’t know anything about me. How do I know, how do I trust you, you don’t know who I am, you don’t understand who I am. You might understand my mouth but the way patients think is do you understand me, do you know what I want and why, like you said, ask why. Why this, why that, if a dentist is not listening to his patients he can have the clinical, or she, have the clinical side down the path and, you know, understand the teeth and the gums and all that really well, but no one really can gauge that. Nobody really knows “Oh ,this dentist knows my teeth really well” and I think a lot of patients say basically “Oh, all dentists know dentistry.” That’s a commodity, but what we value is that relationship being understood and being heard and feeling appreciated. So that I think you’re really onto something here. Could you tell us a little bit about the programs that you teach?
Lorraine: Absolutely, so I perform. I speak professionally, obviously, on the platform so any meeting planner or specialist that bring me as a gift to their referring doctors and we work with various issues such as how to give the effective feedback to your team and we work with, how to learn how to do behavioral interviews, how to handle difficult situations and as well as new patient call up treatment presentation, I teach. One of the things I teach doctors is how to have performance related conversations with their team without creating a lot of negative backlash. So those are some of my speaking protocols in the office. I have some people, like I perform what I call quick skills training, right. So it’s not really intensive consulting but you go in one time, you really work on a specific skill. I also have clients that, you know, I work with for an intensive program for 6 months or a year and we really work on redefining and fleshing out their systems, their leadership structures, you know, how do we organize the team how do we all get things done together. I have a lot of clients on recall, so you’re familiar with what a dental recall is dental checkup, right.
Justin: Yeah, absolutely. You’re talking about like Solution Reach and YAPI and things like that.
Lorraine: No, as a patient, right. So I do recall, too, right. So dentists does a recall and this is one thing I, you know, I’d like to drive home as we’re coming to wrap up. It’s interesting that I’m speaking to the dentist out there in the world and the team. It’s interesting that we worked so hard to get our patients in good health, to convince them to get it going to good health, right, and then we asked them to do this really crazy thing. We ask them to come in every 3 to 6 months, take time and spend money, give us money to look around when there’s no problem, to find problems or make sure there aren’t any and we call that a dental checkup appropriate exam, right.
Justin: Right.
Lorraine: isn’t that interesting. And we know we do that, the reason we encourage that is because it’s better for our patients. We know that if we could take care of things before they become significant or prevent them from happening, our patients spend less and goes to use less. So that’s what we want to practice. We need to run a business that way so I got to have people like we go in and we really revamp the system, revamp out the office, do a lot of work. They call me to recall so they’ll call me sometimes, once a year, once every 2 years when there’s nothing obviously wrong just like we do with the recall patient. And it’s great that you keep momentum, you keep things moving and you come in for a short first, you’re redefining system to get things in order, you know, it’s just like that patient. We’re just like our patients, right. You start to let some things go on our business a little bit, but we don’t need to wait till it hurts to get help.
Justin: Sure.
Lorraine: and so that’s one of the things that I worked on as well.
Justin: They, you know, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Lorraine: That’s right. That’s right. You know it’s interesting because when you’re working in a preventative capacity, you’re implementing, still implementing system, but it’s interesting for the time and energy in the work the return is exponential, you know, you probably work on your business, don’t you.
Justin: Yeah, once in a while.
Lorraine: Yeah. Yeah, you know, it’s interesting when you work on your business and your work on improvements when there aren’t a lot of tremendous problems. The return on your investment is exponential. I mean it’s much more significant than when you’re in crisis. So like, I’ll say that I have 2 coaches I’m working with right now and so for my business and it’s because I understand that prevention so that’s, I think one point I just really want to drive home to your viewers our there is whether they work with me or someone else. Periodically it’s absolutely a great business structure to have somebody come in and put eyes on what you’re doing in and have you see what you can do to improve.
Justin: Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, you know, and this ties into what I tell dentists. I just got off the phone with the dentist and I was saying look, content marketing is something I’m really huge on because I do SEO for dentist and, you know, content marketing is really huge in a lot of dentists, they’re told by other SEO companies who will remain nameless, I’ll just start blogging but that’s kind of like the what your analogy on “Oh I’m listening but I’m not really listening.” It’s like blogging but I’m not really speaking, I’m not really educating or entertaining my patients or my ideal prospective patients and so what I’m always talking about is lets create content that people actually crave, where they give you your email, their real email, they actually open that email and they crave the next one because they know that content is so valuable to them, it’s entertaining and educational and what you’re doing is, and a lot of times that’s spoke about as top of funnel and kind of reaching out for people through SEO. But what you’re doing is you’re parlaying that whole process of relationship building being personable and showing who you are and showing that you care through content and whether that content is online, in a blog, video, photography, or copy writing, or even audio. The point, or in person, in person as well. So absolutely that whole concept of let’s not be a commodity, let’s not be another doc in the box. That’s huge.
Lorraine: It’s interesting that we are hit with so much information so I agree with you. When you’re sent, you want to send things out that are patient-centric, you want them to want to look at what you have. You know there’s a phrase I often use in communication that I think ties exactly to what you’re talking about and that is “It’s not what you tell people that counts, it’s what they decide to hear and consider relevant their decision-making that matters.” And hearing is a decision and taking the information that you hear and deciding to use it implement it is a decision. So it’s a paradigm, the way you communicate, so what you’re, when you talk about just throwing information out there and blogging, that’s about what you want to tell people that’s what that’s about. And so I love what you’re saying because what you’re saying to the client is let’s think about what your client wants to hear, let’s think about what resonates with them and make this about something you’re giving them instead of something you’re doing to them.
Justin: Right. Right. Instead of me, me, me this is us, this is what we do, this is why we’re so great, you know. What if your blog was something that patients actually read?
Lorraine: Yes. That they want to read it. Again, there’s so much stimulus. in fact, you know, there are businesses that I get marketing, email marketing from New York so, I just shut down right away and there are some that I look forward to what they’re gonna have, you know, and it doesn’t always resonate but it feels very focused to what I that consumer would want or need or care about/ it doesn’t feel so self-serving, you know, the meaning feels really self-serving. I want you to pay attention to me, feels more like my children, right. Pay attention to me.
Justin: I was really young. I hope yeah.
Lorraine: Yeah. Well, they’re teenagers so that young, right.
Justin: It’s young to me, I’m getting up there. No, I’m just kidding. Okay, so yeah, this is really good stuff because this is all about the content funnels. This is all about building those relationships, letting you know that it’s about you. It’s about what you want and, you know, it’s just like what I try to do on the show, you know. Dentists, I want your feedback, let me know do you have any questions for Lorraine, do you have questions for me. Wherever you see this, on the Dental Town blog, on, sorry, Dental Marketing Guy blog, YouTube. Wherever you find this let me know in the comments below. If this isn’t hitting on points, let me know. Is there a guest you want to see, are there questions what you have for Lorraine. Yeah, Lorraine, where can they find you?
Lorraine: They can find me, my website is www.guthdentalconsulting.com. My email is lorraine@guthdentalconsulting.com. My business line is 636-273-9500 and my cell is 314-304-3176. Also, invite them if they go to my website they can sign up for what I call a virtual cup of coffee. I won’t sell anything, I don’t sell on the phone so anybody can call or set-up the time. We’ll talk about whatever you have interest in or you’re concerned about and help you through the issues. I’ll share with you that people I’ve never worked with before. Call my cell phone at 9:00 at night because they found something very challenging in their office and they need help and they don’t have anybody to call. And so that, you know, I can help you through certain issues and move forward so it’s relatively ways to contact me and I do everything I can to return your call or respond to you promptly and so look forward to it.
Justin: You know I gotta say before we close. I had Howard Farran on the show and he’s such a great guy. In his book on Complicating Business he had a really, really interesting take on being accessible and his philosophy, and this is kind of funny because I don’t know if this is always true with all executives, but it’s definitely true of Howard, is he believes that by being accessible that’s a true sign of success. It shows that you have margin and I really like that so obviously you’re doing that so I thank you very much for coming on the show and I hope that, you know, the dentists found it useful and of course if they have any questions for you I will plug them into you, for sure.
Lorraine: Thank you. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thank you very much.
Justin: Absolutely and thank you for watching the Dental Marketing Guy Show.
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Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy and today it is a distinct privilege to interview a very important guest. You’re going to want to hear what Sharik has to say, he is from a company called, he’s got a product called the Rezzimax tuner. Now this is really, really a cool episode because Sharik has agreed to give away a free Rezzimax, a tuner. You’re gonna learn all about why this matters to you and your practice, why this is important for your patience and let me just tell you I met Sharik over at the CDA, the California Dental Association and he and his brother, an orthodontist, Sheldon Peck. They were actually showing everyone what this product can do and really, really interesting, you know, in a market where, you know, a CEREC and cone beam and all these things are all really, really big decisions. This might be the kind of product with a much lower price point that you can kind of get into and actually offer a really, really good patient experience if you follow the Dental Marketing Guy Show, you know we’re all about patient experience, we’re all about word of mouth marketing, we’re all about creating a remarkable experience and, you know, technology is where things are going so if you find that you’re looking for technological improvements, man, this might be worth checking out so at the end we’re going to give that special offer away to one of the viewers, one of the dentists and man, let me just tell you a little history here. The little bit I know about Rezzimax and then Sharik will be able to take this on and explain a lot better than I can. So Sharik Peck is a physical therapist and his brother, who is an orthodontist, Sheldon Peck. They were on a mission to develop a system of non-narcotic pain relief for those suffering from TMD, neck pain, and migraine headaches with over 35 years of combined experience and a passion to help patients take home a solution for chronic pain and they developed a system that works for immediate and lasting pain relief. You know, first of all Sharik, how are you?
Sharik: I’m doing great, thank you, happy to be here.
Justin: Excellent. It’s great to have you and I can’t wait to learn more about the features of your product and how it applies to dental offices and really makes a great patient experience up but could you please start by telling us story about, you know, kind of the history of Rezzimax and the story behind l that.
Sharik: Well for many, many years I’ve been trying to figure out how to help my wife with chronic neck pain and later we realized that she had some serious problems with her temporomandibular joints and she couldn’t open her mouth very big. She didn’t have a lot of pain but she always had tension in there and one day we realized as I was trying to help her with her neck pain that that temporal mandibular joint issue was a significant part of it. I spent a long time trying to figure out how we could help her with both the neck pain and getting the jaws to loosen up and that led me to experiment with different forms of therapies that use electrical stimulation. I used just everything in my tool bag, I guess, to help her and one night I woke up in the middle of the night and said vibration, vibration will do it. I better figure out how and I’ve spent the last six years trying to understand how to be able to use essentially resonance to be able to get the nerves to calm down, to get the muscles to calm down and take the pressure points out of there.
Justin: Excellent. Excellent. You know I think that’s really interesting, you know they say necessity is the mother of invention, you know, I love talking about, you know, new emerging technology. I had Fred Joyal, founder of 1800Dentist, on the show just the other day and then we were talking about how technology and patient experience go hand in hand. So I just really love the fact that, you know, you’ve got a product that has proven effective for you and for your wife. can you, how basically, how, tell me a little bit about how this applies to dentists and let’s kind of get into, you know, some of the dentist might wonder like “can I carry a Rezzimax Tuner for my patients?” and how do they get involved in that.
Sharik: well once we figured out, essentially, how to down regulate or turn off the pain response in the nervous system and we do that through the trigeminal nerve, same one we inject to deaden it. There’s several branches there that we can utilize to be able to calm down the nervous system. Once we figured that out it was a simple recipe. We developed a device we patented it and we just introduced this device into the market back in February, it’s really easy for a dentist to be able to carry this, for them to be able to perform it on their patients. I’ve got videos on my website showing all the common techniques for headaches, for TMJ, for neck pain and essentially what we figured out how to do is just calm the nervous system down and the pain just melts away when we do that and yes it’s very easy for them to carry that and to resell it. We have a great plan in place to sell it to our dental friends and have them resell it to their patients. I’d love it for them to send it home with their patients that has a wonderful experience right there in the dental chair.
Justin: That’s great. that’s great, and so this is, you know, the dental office, a lot of Times, dentists don’t want to be thought of as a retail office but this is really where, you know, when you trust someone when you know, like, and trust someone you tend to be more open to the opportunities to buy from them and I think, you know, maybe dentists don’t always take advantage of that, you know, it’s very, very important whether it’s a Sonicare toothbrush or a product like the Rezzimax Tuner. you know, people are willing, if you’re willing to spend ten thousand dollars on dental work over the course of their life you can bet, you can bet they’re willing to spend a couple hundred bucks on something to remove pain and, you know, if there’s, you know, as much as people like to talk about how expensive dentistry is the bottom line is people rarely have buyer’s remorse. people don’t say “oh gosh I really wish I had an extra thousand dollars in my bank account so that my job could be throbbing and I wouldn’t have had to do that root canal, I wish I was still in pain.” So, you know, it’s kinda the same thing though, right. I mean, maybe if you tell us some stories of like people who have used this in the dental field. Your brother’s an orthodontist, maybe you can tell us a little bit about that, some experiences that they have.
Sharik: You bet. my brother and his practice, it doesn’t prescribe any narcotics anymore or a pain relief for headaches and he’s greatly reduced his need to develop splint therapies because once you teach those muscles to down-regulate on their own, it takes away a lot of the chronic tension that builds up in there and so headaches go away. One person in particular that I think of had been off work for six months due to chronic migraines. this gentleman, you know, was the leader in his company he was a was a plant manager but he had had to be off of work for six months straight because he could not function with the serious migraine headaches. He used a precursor of our current version and started to teach his migraines to stop going into that pattern and it becomes a pattern of the nervous system. Once you break that pattern, this gentleman was back to work in three weeks and it took him about two months to be able to completely break the migraine patterns and stop having those headaches and we see this all the time. I have people that, you know, two or three or four migraine headaches a month after they’ve used this tool to tune their nervous system and it only takes daily, three to five minutes a day over the course of about a month, they can train their nervous system to stop going into those stress patterns and it just changes their life.
Justin: So there’s actually a long-term benefit, it’s not just “oh I need pain relief right now.” as you use the product it actually starts to build some momentum within your nervous system to relieve pain.
Sharik: Exactly. You might think of it as bio feedback on steroids. We essentially teach the nervous system through a very simple technique. I ask people with the device and, you know, this is the device. We put it against pressure points that are bilateral so that were getting both sides of the brain at the same time. We ask them to hum to the vibration with their tongue in between their teeth. this sets up a nervous system response that engages the vagus nerve via the recurrent laryngeal branch and an inhibition response in the brain that says “don’t bite down on your tongue.” that inhibitory response for the jaw muscles and that tuning effect, because of the vagus nerve being involved, teaches the brain how to stop going into its tension patterns and it’s very quick. It just it learns, it gets better as it goes.
Justin: That’s incredible. That’s really interesting, you know, (inaudible 10:40-10:49). I’ve got some feedback going on here. Okay. We’re restarting ok, and you know that’s really incredible, you know, I went, I was at the CDA, I tried using this and, you know, how dental conventions are, man and you just up on your feet, moving all day and it was really interesting, you know, and I don’t have any big symptoms so I wasn’t able to experience that huge transformation that a lot of people who do have migraines, a lot of people do have these types of dental conditions but I I can tell you, you know, it felt good, you know, there is a little bit of tension and relaxation and, you know. So for those that really do suffer though, that’s your target market, right?
Sharik: Yes. Our target market, if you were to look at our exact group that we’re looking at, it’s a probably 18 to 55 year old female. They’re the ones that deal with a lot more TMJ, TMD problems. males have problems but they don’t have the pain associated with it that are treated in the dental profession but they suffer much more to a much higher degree with migraine headaches and a lot of those chronic conditions that this is perfect for. Their brain also works a lot faster than the male brain so it helps their nervous system to tune itself, to learn how to calm itself down and sleep better. In fact sleeping better is probably one of the first things that they notice after using this tuner.
Justin: Well I’m sure all the female dentist watching the show are huge fans of you right about now saying their brains work faster. So they actually, they may respond quicker to these, to the stimulation is that what you mean?
Sharik: yes they do and actually it’s a truth that the female brain has nine and a half times more white matter which is the connectivity inside the brain and so yes they’re very much, they’re sped up much faster than the male nervous system in responding to thoughts and suggestions inside of the brain.
Justin: Excellent, excellent. And so, now obviously your brother, you got a good connection with him. He’s an orthodontist, any other dentists that you can think of stories that they’ve told you as far as patients who have just had a total turn around.
Sharik: Yeah. I’ve got a number of, one of the dentist that just loves this tool says that the most remarkable thing for him is to see a person after a long procedure and have their pain level at an 8 or a 9 out of 10 and within three minutes that pain level, by the time they’re ready to leave the office, is down to a 1 or a 2. That he says has transformed how they work on people and it changes their whole experience in the dental office to be able to walk out of there and not have such a significant amount of pain. We have a number of dentists that tell me that their staff, because they’ve got a whole team of people that all have TMJ issues or chronic headaches or sinus congestion. That their staff will use this tool on an almost daily basis as much as they use it on their patients just to keep them in top-notch form. It’s been a lot of fun, this is a new product out. we’ve only got probably 450 of these out into the, out into the marketplace so far since the 1st of February but it is gaining popularity very quickly. It’s, I believe it’s going to be one of the greatest new inventions out there to take away pain without medication.
Justin: That’s great, that’s great and you know so many people avoid the dentist because what people associated with the Dennis?
Sharik: “That’s gonna hurt, it’s gonna hurt.”
Justin: Yeah, yeah. Pain, pain is where it’s at, you know, there were actually, a client of mine was telling me a story of one of the organizations, I don’t know if it’s the ADA or the government or who, but someone said you can use the word painless in dentistry as a marketing term, you can’t coin that term because there’s no such thing as painless dentistry. so this is dentist actually changed his last name to painless, they call him the painless dentist and they’re like “well okay I guess you can do it now.” but yeah, I mean, it’s pretty much illegal to call dentistry painless but when you think of pain relief you don’t think of a dentist but so this is really an interesting scenario where you can actually associate pain relief from going to the dentist and dentist do this every day. this is the thing, is dentists get a really bad route, you know you’re, if you’re doing root canals, if you’re putting people out of paying, you’re prescribing the current narcotics and whatnot you’re getting people out of pain, you’re aligning their teeth, you’re getting everything done just right and yet the reputation is the opposite. Your reputation is “Ouch, that’s what I think when I go to the dentist.” so this is such a great opportunity to allow, you know, the dentist who are watching the show. Look, you know, you’re able to actually be associated with at least trying to eliminate pain, right. so if, even if the product didn’t work it shows that you care like if you just buy a few, put them in your office, it shows that you actually care enough to do that sort of big, right?
Sharik: Oh yeah. we love seeing this device used with children and it’s probably easier to help children with their pain than it is adults but a lot of the fear and the tension is developed even before you stick a needle in and if you can use a device such as this local resonant or vibration device and put it near an area where you’re going to work on, it just interrupts the signals to the brain saying that something painful has happened and it helps the child, helps the adults be able to engage their brain, focus it on something else rather than the pain that is created and you’ll see a person start breathing better, you’ll see him relax their fingers that have the death grip on the handles, you’ll just change their experience dramatically by just interrupting that pain signal.
Justin: Wow, so you would recommend using it before giving a shot.
Sharik: Oh we have dentist use is it while giving a shot because it distracts the brain to the point where you don’t feel it.
Justin: Wow that’s incredible. Okay, where can dentists find you, where can they find you?
Sharik: At our website is www.rezzimaxareeasy.com. they can email me, it’s sharik@rezzimax.com or find us on our Facebook page, where we post videos occasionally of how we treat people but they can go there and see the videos right now at our rezzimax.com website of how to turn off a migraine headache in minutes. They follow the steps it almost always will turn off.
Justin: Excellent, excellent, you know, I do SEO for dentists and online marketing and web design and all that for dentists and let me tell you, man, they’re, when you’ve got a differentiating factor there’s no better differentiating factor perhaps in all of dental marketing than showing that you care and showing that you have empathy and that you actually want to put people out of pain. so by carrying a product like this, this might be a way for someone to show “Hey, you’re a dentist and you have this product sitting on your shelf and you told me about it and educated me about it and you use that when I do the shot.” maybe they don’t buy it, maybe they don’t have migraines, maybe there all these conditions but think of the message that you’re sending, the marketing messages that you care enough to do this sort of thing so it’s not a CEREC, it’s not a cone beam, it’s not a huge decision. You don’t have to run it by all the board members of the group. You can just pick this up and see if it works, you know, just give it a try. So excellent, we can find your rezzimax.com, you know, we got to come to a close on our time. I know we’re both busy and our viewers are too but let me tell you, Sharik, thank you very much for coming on and educating us on this.
Sharik: You are welcome. Thank you for your good work.
Justin: Thank you. Alright guys if you have any questions feel free to reach out, comments below. You can reach out, you got Sharik’s contact information, you got the website, you can watch those videos, and you can hear about what it’s doing and just feel free to reach on any time. If you’ve got a guest that you want to see on the show, I’d love to see if it’s a good fit to have them answer some questions for you. Once again thank you, Sharik and thank you to all of you watching the Dental Marketing Guy show.
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Justin: welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show, I’m Justin the dental marketing guy, and today I have a very important guest, you’re going to want to hear what he has to say, because he has helped practices like yours, dealing with embezzlement, you may have an issue, and not even know it. There could be a thief in your dental practice. David Harris has been interviewed on the subject of embezzlement by every leading dental publication; he is also a prolific writer, an author of a dozen or more articles annually that appear in major publications. David has lectured at several US and Canadian universities, in matters having to do with business, law and dentistry, and man, it is such a huge honor to introduce you, David, how are you?
David: I’m great Justin, and you?
Justin: I’m doing great, I’m really wanting to delve into this, I know you’ve got some great information, but I was hoping you could, maybe before we get into some actionable tips, I was hoping you could maybe tell me the story of how you became – is it dental embezzelment.com?
David: yeah, that’s the website, dentalembezzlement.com
Justin: yeah, maybe you could tell our viewers, just a story of how you came to come into that sphere of things, and how you help dentists?
David: I guess I’d like to say that I had a master plan that I saw an opportunity and I went for it, but the truth a little bit different. I got into investigating dental embezzlement completely by accident. Before I got into this field, I was in the Army; I taught at some university, I worked at a bank. I’d left my job at the bank; I was sitting at home and thinking about what I was going to do next. When I picked the phone up from a friend who happened to be a dentist, and he said to me ‘I think my font desk person is stealing from me, and I really don’t know who to call’, so I wasn’t doing anything that week, so I said ‘no problem, I’ll come to your office after work and well get to the bottom of it’. So I went over to his office, this was 1989, so back in the days before most dentist were computerized, it was the out pegboard system that was in use, and I went to his office, we saw what she was doing, which was kind of rudimentary by the standards of embezzlement today, and fired, and I went back to watching TV and I didn’t think anything more of it. Until 2 weeks later, and 2 weeks later I was going to my own dentist’s office for an appointment, and I was about to go through the front door and I looked through the glass and sitting there at the reception, was the same woman that we fired at the other office 2 weeks before.
Justin: wow.
David: Talk about coincidence. So, I turned around, I sprinted to the nearest pay phone, because in 1989 were pretty big, I called the office, I got put through to the doctor on a pretext, and I told him about what was going on at his front desk, and he asked me in this very panicked voice ‘what the heck do I do now?’ and about halfway through his second sentence, he’d hired me. And by the time I finished his work, 2 other dentist had called me. That’s how I got started, so I didn’t choose dentistry at all, it chose me.
Justin: excellent. So since that time, you’ve done some amazing things for practices, I don’t even know if you know the dollar figure that you’ve saved ostensibly, lots of money for dentists like those viewing this show. Maybe you could tell us some really quick tips as far as – here’s 3 quick tips or 2 or 3 quick tips, as to how you can avoid embezzlement, how can you resolve a situation, what to do if you suspect it, I’ll let you have the floor on those quick tips.
David: not going to be as quick as you hope. we all want to analyze other crime, when you put a burglar alarm system in your house, it’s very effective at protecting your house, but it does that not because it stops burglary, but because it redirects it to see other victim, and what we want to assume, Justin, is that the same thinking to embezzlement and it won’t, the difference between embezzlement and burglary, in breaking into houses, you can chose your victim, in embezzlement you can’t, in embezzlement is pre-ordained. So if you’re a dentist and I work for you, and my plan is to steal, and I come up with an approach and you have blocked it, I don’t then move on to some other victim, I move on to some other approach. So the idea that we can prevent embezzlement, that we can lock practices down so that they don’t get stolen from, is vexatious, and in terms of tips, that’s the first tip; when embezzlers, and most embezzlers have worked in practice for a long time. You know we have this culture that you make a hiring mistake, and the next week they start stealing, and sometimes that happens, but the majority of embezzlers are long term employees, and they probably had no intention of embezzling when they were hired, and then they come in one day and start stealing. So they’re doing that with knowledge of what the dentist looks at, and how she or he thinks, and I – sometimes,, it’s a crime of navigation, it’s finding your way around your bosses scrutiny, so that you can steal. So I think prevention is impossible, does that mean that dentists are powerless to embezzlement? Of course not, there are lots of things we can do. The first thing we can do is we can force embezzlers into high risk kinds of ways of stealing, and for the most part that involves some basic checking. I know a lot of dentists, who for example, don’t look at their day end report at the end of the day, or they think that monthly stats are the things that they should be looking at the end of the month.
Justin: sorry, could you repeat that again, a little bit louder and slower, for some reason the Wi-Fi is a little bit shaky, I just want to make sure this is really good value, I want to make sure that the listeners can pick up on all of what you said.
David: okay. What I said was that, were I think dentists should focus is on not the concept that we can’t prevent this, but that if it’s happening, we need to know about it. So we start with some really basic checking. Look at the day sheet at the end of every day. Most dentists thinks the month end is something that the staff do, and they don’t have any involvement in it, whereas I think there are some specific thinks that every dentist should be looking at every month e and, to see if things are at a miss. Now none of this will stop embezzlement, but it will shut down the easiest ways to steal, and force people into things that take a little more creativity and carry a lot more risk.
Justin: excellent. And so, for basically – prevention is a difficult issue because those who are hired, they don’t – your saying most people, when their hired to a dental office, they don’t have embezzlement on their mind, it’s sort of a crime or opportunity, is that what you’re saying?
David: no, it is absolutely not a crime of opportunity; embezzlement is a very premeditated crime. It is conceived by someone who knows their boss really well, knows how they think, and exploits that knowledge to commit a crime that they consider to be undetectable. It is not an impulsive crime, it is a well-planned one. Sorry, I answered half your question and forgot what the other half was.
Justin: well I guess my question better phrased would be; prevention is kind of a difficult thing, as your explained, how about, if I am a dentist -kind of put myself in the shoes of our listeners, if I am a dentist and I suspect that maybe some numbers are a little fuzzy in the office, or I’m a little bit underwhelmed by the dollars in the bank account, versus maybe production. And so I’m starting to suspect that maybe something is amiss, I don’t want to believe that Suzie at the front desk who’s been there for 20 years is any cause of it, but that’s always a possibility. What would you say, what is a good first step for dentist in this frame of mind, to kind of go forward? Are there steps that they can take themselves to kind of figure things out? Should they contact you? What’s a good first step?
David: I’ll tell you the wrong step, that is to do something that lets Suzie know that you suspect her, if I’m a thief and I think I’m about to get caught, and I think that getting caught is going to have serious consequences, then the normal rules that apply to civilized behavior probably don’t apply to me at that moment.
I had a call about 7 years ago from a dentist; he suspected embezzlement, we chatted for about 15 minutes, and he decided he could save some money if he done his own investigation. What he ended up doing as a consequence, is tipping of the suspect to the fact that she was about to get caught. And her response was very simple; she came back that night with a can of gasoline and burned down the office.
Justin: oh wow.
David: making very sure that every single backup medium was right next to the computer when she lit the match. And the dentist said to me afterwards, with some ruefulness in his voice ‘well that was a bit of a false economy’ The danger that I have, and I’d like to encourage your audience to become instant private investigators and to be able to – you know, and to tell them some things that they can do, but it’s a very dangerous course. And there really aren’t any particular limits as to what embezzlers will do. And I’ll illustrate this as follows. In 2012, a woman in Baltimore, Maryland, pled guilty to murdering the dentist from whom she’d been embezzling. Her name is Shanty Joiner Hickman, she worked for a dentist named Dr Albert Row, she was embezzling from him, and she thought she was going to get caught. So she came back one night when she knew Dr Row was going to be in the office, she brang her cousin for some muscle, and the 2 of them dragged Dr Row into the washroom and beat him to death. The worst part, Justin, is that the amount she had embezzled was $17 000. So a huge caution o your viewers, so if you suspect, you probably need help. There are ways to gather information, but they take a fair amount of skill, and there are options that people have, their CPA may be able to assist them, they may be able to get help from the company that makes there practice management software, or they can go to a specialized investigation firm, like ours. But the do it yourself approach is a huge minefield, and I’d encourage some caution.
One thing that we offer is that we have an embezzlement risk assessment questionnaire and it’s a way for somebody to get a little bit of validation as to what their seeing is actually embezzlement, or it might be something else. So this questionnaire is 37 questions, there yes or no questions, it would take a dentist typically 10 to 15 minutes to complete, and at the end of that process they get a score, and the score is a pretty good indicator as to whether they have an embezzlement problem or not. So if somebody has suspicion and they want to do a low level investigation that would be the first step. And I can send you, is this something we normally charge for, but I’m happy to make the questionnaire available to your audience for some time and I can send you a link with a promo code after if you like.
Justin: excellent, that sounds great, I really appreciate you doing that Davis, that is – it pretty serious, I think a lot of our viewers may think ‘oh well things like embezzlement, and murder are very unlikely to happen’ but what would you say – how many dentist, and I don’t even know if this stat can even be reliably put out by you or anyone, but just kind of curious. What percentage of dental office do you think are being embezzled and the dentist doesn’t even suspect it?
David: you’re right that is a difficult one. What we do know is that about 60% of dentist will eventually be embezzled, so it safe dates that probably somewhere between 10 and 12000 offices will be embezzled this year. In terms of embezzlement that happens that is not detected, there is no way of knowing. The typically embezzlement goes on for about 2 and a half to 3 years before getting caught. If you wanted to take the 10 – 12 000 per year and string that out, assume that each one last about 2 years, you’ve got somewhere in the 20 000 offices range, where embezzlements going to take place for some period of time, before embezzlement is detached.
Justin: And as far as, your story, we’re going to come to a close here in just a minute, but your story is really alarming because, you know, you went to your dentist and here’s this lady that just got fired for embezzlement, I’m assuming there was no conviction on record that the doctor could have checked before he hired her. Nowhere days, what would you say – how can dentist screen employees, is it just a simple background check? How can dentist prevent hiring someone who actually has a history, say there’s not even conviction, and because it can be tough to convict people for these types of crimes sometimes, your help definitely helps with that? But I was wondering – how can I- I’m a dentist, I’m watching this show, what can I do to screen potential employees?
David: first, these 2 events happen 2 weeks apart. Meaning she was fired at the first office, and 2 weeks later I was in the second office for my appointment. Sometimes people don’t appreciate how long the criminal process takes, and the typical interval between when someone is fired in an office for embezzlement and when they get convicted of a crime, could be 3-4 years. In that period of time, a criminal background check won’t yield any results. And I’ve asked thousands of dentists in presentations ‘can I please see a show of hands as to how many of you enjoy hiring people’ nobody every puts up there hand. Dentists absolutely despise that process, and when they find somebody who looks perfect, every ounce of skepticism leaves there brain and they hire them.
So the first thing I’d say is, statistically 1 in 4 adults in the United Sates has a criminal record, and every dentist hiring should bare that in mind. It astounds me, Justin that I can get a minimal job at UPS or Fed-ex, only if I pass a drug test, but yet I will venture that virtually every employee, of every dentist that’s tuned into this podcast, does not drug test employees when they hire them.
Another thing that’s really important is to speak with former employers, and I’ll give a tip here for your audience. A lot of resume’s, list former employers and they also put the phone numbers, don’t even call those phone numbers. If I say that I worked for Dr Smith in Peoria, don’t call the number I give you, because it might be one of those disposable cellphones that one of my relatives is answering and will give me a good reference. Go to your favorite search engine, find the number for Dr Smith in Peoria, and call that number. We’ve seen a lot of people hide a checkered past that way. The other thing that you run into is somebody whose applying for a job and they say ‘please don’t contact my current employer because they don’t know that I’m leaving’ and there are 2 possibilities; one is that it’s true, the other is that they were actually fired by their previous employer 2 weeks ago and their just using this as smoke screen because they don’t want you to call that employer because they know they won’t get the job. So the way that we deal with that one is simple, you say to that employee ‘I understand that completely, and what we will do is, we’ll complete the rest of the screening process, and at that point, if we’re ready to hire you, we’ll make you a written job offer, and the written offer will lay out all the terms, but with one condition, and the condition is that we speak with your current employer’ this is a great way of treating, because if that person has already been fired, they’re not going to jump through the other hoops to get hired, knowing that they’re going to hit a brick wall at the end, on the other hand, if it’s a legitimate thing, and they have not yet told their current employer that their leaving to take a job with you, then they’ll keep going. But that will typically stop the liar’s right there. So in terms of hiring, that’s what you can be doing. But you need to approach hiring with skepticism, you need to know that 60% of resumes have false information on them, 25% of adults have criminal records. There is a further group of adults who have committed a crime but just haven’t been convicted yet.
Justin: did you say 25%, so 1 in 4 people have a criminal record?
David: 1 in 4 US adults has a criminal record. About 60 million adults in the US have a criminal record. Now some of these criminal records do not make people unemployable. I mean if you live in Colorado and you were convicted of marijuana possession 25 years ago, I’m not sure that’s a barrier to hiring you today. So, the mere fact that somebody has a criminal record doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be hired, it means that further investigation is needed and the doctor needs to understand what really happened.
Justin: but does that include like traffic, or? That seems like a lot 1 in 4, is that like misdemeanors and above or?
David: that would be offenses under s state Penal code, so in terms of driving, speeding wouldn’t do it, but DWI would.
Justin: okay, wow, well that’s really interesting. And then, a lot – like you said – a lot of times the process, the legal process and the criminal justice systems, you know, there’s so many safeguards protecting individuals from having their constitutional rights infringed, that it takes a lot of time to sort through that process, and that’s. Man, I mean I have heard some numbers from you that I am a little surprised by; you are the expert on this. Detnalembezzlemeknt.com here’s what we’re going to do for this listeners is, we’re going to put a link below in the YouTube description, and on the dental marketing guy blog and you’re going to be able to go for that form for free for a limited time only, so if you hear this episode, please take action on that now, if you think you might – you know, here we have 60% of dental offices will at some point, experience some sort of embezzlement, so that’s 10-12 000 offices this year, you could be one of those offices. So let’s take action on this, it sounds like it only takes 10-15 minutes and it could be the best 10 or 15 minutes you ever spend in your life in terms of saving what you’ve earned!
Man, David Harris from dentalembezzlement.com, thank you so much for joining me.
David: great to be here, thank you Justin.
Justin: cool, yeah, so to all our listeners, we’re going to put that link below. Thank you for listening to the dental marketing guy show.
Want to learn more about dental marketing? Contact my marketing agency specifically for dentists.
Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Show. I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy and today we’ve got a really, really great guest. I’m excited to introduce this guy because, let me tell you, I told him about almost nobody in dentistry is as entertaining and lively and as enthusiastic about growing your practice. This is a really big deal guys, we’re going to talk about behavioral economics, which you know, if you’re a dentist, you know, you’re already really smart when it comes to a lot of things. I hope we can educate you on behavioral economics throughout this series and what that means for your practice. A lot of times you’ve got everything down, you’ve got the Krebs Cycle, you’ve got the chemistry, you’ve got all this different stuff down, but when it comes to psychology of your patients, we want to make sure you’re empowered to do all the right things in your marketing so Chris Moriarty.
Christ: No problem, it’s Moriarty, yep.
Justin: Alright, excellent. Chris Moriarty and, man it is such an honor to introduce you to the viewers. Would you tell us a little bit of your history? How you got into Productive Dentist Academy and all that jazz.
Chris: Absolutely, and again thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure to see a townie and again my hats off to Howard and the whole gang for giving me the invite to speak at all. My history is a little bit abnormal for the dental profession. Actually I started working with attorneys and then after working with attorneys I started working with MD’s and surgeons on everything from the adoptions of technologies, preservation of relationship. But most importantly, what I found myself, being more and more surround by, was just folks who want to help people change and so in the successes that I had, I got a call from pharmaceutical in Oregon who was trying to help dentists change and help them bring technologies into their practices, help them communicate to patients, why they needed to change and before then I hadn’t really thought that much about it and that was eight years ago and I just fell in love with the industry. So in helping these practices grow I started to, the company itself started sponsoring PDA events and so all of the sudden love for science and business and economics kind of all came together. So I ended up joining them about 5 years ago and have been growing practices ever since.
Justin: And you know Productive Business Academy, you know, quite the reputation in the dental community. Could you tell us a little bit of history for those with the viewers who haven’t really heard of it though?
Chris: Yeah, absolutely, so the PDA was originally started by Dr. Bruce Baird about 12 years ago, now. He kind of hit the scene because he was producing an incredible amount of dentistry, almost in spite of where he was. He practices in a small town in Texas called Grand berry. Literally 4,000 people in the whole town but for the last 15 years he’s been working 2 days a week producing between 2 and $3,000 an hour in dentistry doing primarily bread and butter dentistry. Now to make that even more interesting the county has 45,000 people in it and his average new patient drives between 75 and a hundred miles to come and see him. So folks started, what they wanted to know was how do you do that. And so Bruce kind of took a page out of a John Kois’ playbook and if you follow John Kois clinically, his approach to treatment planning was so wonderful because he put everything on the backbone of these risk factors. Just follow the risk factors and the clinical outcome will be better for it. So Bruce did the same thing effectively with communication because every single dentists I’ve ever worked with is incredibly intelligent but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re very eloquent. They didn’t want to be sales, we didn’t want them to be salesy, we only will order them to be who they were but they didn’t know how to effectively communicate with that patient. So putting everything on the back of these risk factors made communication seamless cause we always tell folks, you know, do the patients need to work or not? Would they be in a better position, having a healthier mouth? The answer’s always yes. So how do we bring them down that road for a more comprehensive treatment? And that’s what he started teaching. Now to make a long story longer, we started with dentists because we believe that most of the change in the office was going to be driven by the leader, by the owner and that was true but who are all those people around them making that possible? It’s the team. So a couple years into it ,he wound up partnering with Vicki McManus, who now owns 6 dental practices of her own and that’s where the team put component came into play. Teaching them how to do a proper delegation training handoffs, all that kind of thing because in the PDA way, day in and day out, basically I need the doctor doing 2 things, one spending as much time as they need developing relationships with their patients and number 2, doing A+ clinical dentistry, end of list. That’s the only thing they have the mental space for everything else to be properly delegated. So between Vicki and Patty, our director of coaching, that’s what we do day in and day out. Its just help these offices run seamless because one of the things that you said earlier, very few of these offices have capacity for lack of components. They have great teams, they have the clinical skill, they have all the parts, it’s just how do you make some subtle changes to make things more effective and that’s what behavioral economics does and that’s my passion, it’s how can we make small twist and small tweaks to make sure that when patients are deciding “Do I go to this office or your office?”, “Am I willing to drive 50miles, I never thought I’d ever drive 100miles to see a dentist.” And now they will. How do you influence that behavior to make sure patients are getting the level of care that they deserve?
Justin: You know, actually it’s funny, on Dental Town, just the other day there was a thread and a dentist was, I don’t know if he was lamenting or just remarking on it but he said that there was a tattoo artist in his, It’s funny I didn’t think most dentists get tattoos, but he was saying there’s a tattoo artist and he was on some TV series and he’s got a line around the block for 4 months but then 100miles away there’s a tattoo artist and that’s the one that he goes to. I don’t know most dentists get tattoos so I don’t know how relatable that is.
Chris: More than we probably think.
Justin: You just can’t see them, right. They’re not on the neck.
Chris: Yes, yet.
Justin: How about the full, that. But, yeah, it’s very interesting because, you know, we’re talking about behavioral economics and maybe you could kind of talk about like what the definition of that is.
Chris: Yeah.
Justin: Talk about the psychology of consumer behavior and how that affects our viewers.
Chris: Yeah, sure, and I always tell the same story, you know, kind of what, how I found my way into behavioral economics. So it all started when I was in grad school and I was in a bar like many, many students tend to be and this gentleman started chatting, just chatting at a young lady, and just trying to have a conversation. And I’ll never forget it because he says to her like a lot of people did, he goes “don’t I know you from somewhere?” and without missing a beat, she doesn’t even look up, she goes “Yeah, and that’s why I don’t go there anymore” and it was, the whole place, just the air got sucked out of it, dropped like 10 degrees. It was icy cold, but, you know, those things happen but about 5, 10 minutes later a gentleman of almost identical description comes up, he starts up a conversation and all was well. So what was the difference? Why the second guy not the first guy? And of course the moral of the story is I became very interested in this because I was that first guy. So I wanted to know what that second guy did differently than I did to get that outcome, right.
Justin: Right.
Chris: So, that opened the door, but then all of the sudden you started seeing it just in almost every conversation you had your entire life. People have these and these impulses, they have these opinions, they have these thoughts and they don’t necessarily know where they came from. Like why will somebody pay 20% more for Nike shoes and they wouldn’t even consider Adidas, you know. Why do they love BMW but not Mercedes, you know, how do we start to factor some of these different things in. You know one component that really kind of links back to dentistry is there is a facet of behavioral economics called cultivation theory and again that’s just the study of where these thoughts, feeling, and pinions come from. And what we find is primarily a lot of the opinion that we have, the core, the root of them is actually based on fiction. A primary example that always talk about is I was a child of the 80’s. So in every movie I ever saw the bad guys were always the Russians, the Soviets. We were always against the communists and if you say the word Russia to me at any point in time, when I picture it, it’s always winter, always. Like I never picture there being summer there and that’s just where I’ve been conditioned over time- that’s Russia to me in my mind. And so when it comes to dentistry and especially even though there have been so many advances we’re still up against a lifetime of this cultivation effect. People thinking that a dental experience is going to be X especially when it comes to things like endo or some serious restorative work. They have absolutely no idea what can happen anymore. They think they know a person that something bad has happened to. We’ve all heard the story of the doctor putting his knee into a patient’s chest to do the extraction. I would love Snopes or somebody to run that story down because I can almost guarantee it never happened or happened in the 1800. But everyone seems to know someone who that happened to.
Justin: It wasn’t a dentist, it was a barber.
Chris: Oh, well, there you go. So this is all of those things where we want to start running that back down. So when imp talking to an office about marketing usually what they’re trying to do or I should say a bad habit is they instantly start to try to replicate something that they’ve seen someone else do. They look for who’s successful in dentistry, what does their marketing look like, well then I should do that. So they try to be, it becomes the sort of regurgitated copy of a copy of a copy that ultimately becomes anonymous and so in some of the things that I’ve learned, we run doctors through a variety of different exercises to kind of pull back those peel, the layers of the onion if you will, and figure out- number one, what are they really trying to do? Who do they really communicate well with? Because every dentist I ever spoke to will tell you, they’ve sat across from patients and it just clicked. They hit that rhythm, they’re laughing at the same jokes, the patient understands what their needs are and they’re able to say yes to the treatment and they’ve also had the opposite. Where that person sits down there and it is rough, it’s difficult for them to come to conclusion no matter how many times they explain it. So then what do they do? They start to backpedal now, pulling out the articular, you know, they’re pulling all these models, they’re going back to the camera and they just can’t seem to get on the same page. So some of the things we do is try to figure out what type of messaging can you put out to where we have a better shot at attracting the people who communicate like you do, who value the same things that you do and it’s pretty subtle, it’s incredibly effective when it’s done well.
Justin: That’s really interesting. And so, you know, always when you’re dealing with psychology you’re talking about something that can’t necessarily be explained in 2 seconds. So were gonna talk in bird’s eye view here but maybe there’s, could you provide like 2 or 3 quick tips, as far as like for, I’m a dentist and I’m watching the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m hearing what you’re saying Chris, sounds great, maybe I contact PDA in the future but right now what I’m wondering is what can I do this week or this month or today to really, kind of jump start this product, this thought process and kind of get me started on that road of, you know. Why do people choose BMW but not Mercedes, and things like that?
Chris: Yeah, so there’s a couple of different kind of ad hoc assessments that people can do anytime. One, is have them write down, literally, so anybody listening to this you can do this right now. I want you to write down the animals’ cow, tiger, sheep, horse, and pig. You can write them down in any order that you want but when you do, after you have that list I want you to rank them from one to five, one being the animal that just jumped out most whether it be your favorite, whichever one you most drawn to. And this is an assessment that I’ve been doing for a long time to kind of figure out what’s really one of those subconscious emotional drivers of this doctor and what you’ll find on this list, and again you’re playing along at home. I’ll try to go through some of these, you can kind of see how this works, you can do it with your team, you can do it with all kinds of stuff but most of the time in dentistry tiger is number 1. And of course in grad school and all the literature we put all those electrodes on people’s brains. You say certain words, it lights up different areas. That’s how we make these connections, but the folks who pick tiger are most, they know the part of their psyche that’s most prevalent for them is this element of pride. Now pride seemingly is a good thing to have, it’s what makes sure that they’re doing top quality work, they agonize over those details and when it goes well they feel incredibly rewarded. Now what winds up happening though is in dentistry is what we call the assumption of aptitude, meaning that patients haven’t even, in no way, the ability to truly appreciate any level of clinical artistry. The only thing that can really appreciate is that they’re in pain, out of pain or if it’s just an obvious aesthetic fix or something like that. So with these doctors who spent their entire life figuring out how to do these thing and do this things well. Tobia, the dentist, and dentist these guys are amazing. When a patient says no to their treatment plan or asks the wrong question to a treatment plan. It dings him hard ad that pride, now that’s something that is fairly, of the course that’s going to happen and of course it is. I’m not seeing the reactions bad where this becomes problematic is when they go into the next operatory, they tend to carry that with them to the rest of the day and ask your team if you or somebody who was, who is a tiger, they’ll reinforce the same thing and what we can’t do is have that happen. You got to shut that door in the DA, we call it a one-act play. Meaning as you go to that next operatory it’s a reset, cause that patient deserves you but100% you gotta remind yourself this is your tiger coming through. Now I’ll jump to the to one more. I always ask how many folks put down pig, and pig of course is the one that’s most closely associated with money and its always the smallest percentage of the room which is fascinating because what’s the name of our company? The Productive Dentists Academy, right. Production, money, increasing money and all those things, and what people find out at the end of the day that it’s actually one of the things that’s the least important to them. They want to be successful, l but feeling successful and feeling wealthier, completely two different things, in fact they’re hardly related at all. Like they want to feel appreciated, they want their patients to understand what it went through to do this work and take care of them at such a high level. The money is us a byproduct of that. One of things that Bruce will always say is that if you take amazing care of people the money will take care of yourself and for the most part that exactly what we find. So as this relates to marketing, what do we see? We see a lot of guys who are so proud of their accomplishments that when I go to their websites, what do I see? I see that long, just the acronyms, I see the whole, big alphabet behind their names because they’re so proud. I tell you to go out ask 100 patients what any of those mean.
Justin: They don’t have a clue. I mean that can be really confusing.
Chris: Yeah, I mean they don’t have, they’ve never been put in a position to be able to appreciate what that means. So then they go one step further, they put all their associations up there and whether it be the ACD or the HDD, and there’s, it just goes on and on. So here’s what we tell people to do if you are a tiger and you have those accomplishments, we absolutely want you to be proud but how do you turn that into a consumer experience that they can participate in because you can’t raise the flag and run around town saying that you’re the best. You can’t say, can you? But what we can do is teach the patients the question to ask. So I’m envisioning a blog post now or pay-per-click addresses considering implants, the questions I would ask before I did so and these questions of course are designed with intention to say I would make sure I would want the person placing the implants to have attended these courses to have done these things and all that stuff and what were dong is of course leading them down the road to where the answer is that the providing doctor or the one who’s most apt. so but it’s difficult for them to come to those conclusions but you see it being done all over the place and that’s where I really push on dentistry will be hard. You got to get out of your profession, your dentistry is about this big and we haven’t been marketing for that long. She gotta look at the guys who have been doing this forever, in fact, one good example of thing you don’t necessarily know what’s happening is we want intelligence, we want predictability. You’ve all seen like the Geico commercial or whatnot where they’ll run a quote for you and say “Hey, sometimes were the best deal in town and sometimes were not.” but what they’re really doing is checking to see who you are as a driver because the insurance company makes more money when they’re not paying claims. So when they run a driver’s profile and their higher risk, they’re going to show you a cheaper option that’s not them. They’re pushing bad clients away, you don’t think so here, to the world what their message? Oh my gosh, were benevolent, we care so much about your bottom line, but hey, we might not be the best option and that is not what’s happening to everybody. That masterful marketing because even if you’re turned away, you’re like “Hey, you know what. I went to Geico, they actually found that it was cheaper for me to go with progressive. They’re amazing.” No, they’re not, they’re not amazing one bit. They figured out that you don’t get to play on their team because you’re a bad drive so they jacked their prices up to push you out of preserve the profit margin. This is all the kind of stuff that’s happening, it’s super clever, but the average Joe on the street would never know. So those are the some of the types of thing that we’re trying to begin. We’re not trying to be subversive, you know, more than likely, but we’re just trying to do is lend to that predictability, that makes sense.
Justin: Yeah, totally, you know, that’s really incredible. I thought in a sense, I thought progressive or Geico or whoever it is that’s doing that. I thought they were just saying “Look we are benevolent and we’re so honest.” Therefore the consumer says “Oh m well they must pay claims more easily because they’re so honest on the sales process, when you become a customer it’s got to be that much better.”
Chris: Exactly, how wonderful are they and that’s great because it’s interesting when you find other people that do what I do. It all comes down to numbers and how do you tell a different story with those numbers. Another great example is if you go to your local supermarket and yours, they give you a little discount card and you swipe it every time and you get, its rather than swiping coupons, you just kind of get them and everyone loves it but what’s really happening there is they’re gathering consumer data. Then there’s guys like me who are so good at what they do that just with basic demographic information they can predict within 90% accuracy every single thing within your refrigerator, they’re that good. But with dentistry we rarely see an office that takes those steps that looks at their patient pool and number one they don’t have the time to do this 90% of the time, they’re not bad business owners that just never really thought and ask these questions. So if you’re using a, whether it’s Solution Reach or Smile Reindeer or a company like that. A lot of them have these mapping functions where they can show you exactly where every single one of your patients’ lives. They put the little pin on the map, it’s great. So they need to look at they, they need to figure out why nothing is by chance. What are you doing to attract people from that area now the knee-jerk reaction that most people do and this is wrong, well let’s just say your town is in quadrants into the Northwest, you just own it? 90% of your patients are coming from the Northwest so what they try to do is go everywhere they’re not, thinking they’re going to increase their market share. And that’s not what you do, you create a singularity. You pour where you are most successful and you dominate that thing, it’ll spill over to the other regions but you gotta know who those people are, what they’re doing, why they’re coming to you, what services they’re offering and what’s the lifestyle value with the patient. So numbers, numbers are crazy thing. You know, I love, again, looking at other industries and how we come to certain conclusions and folks listening, we’re old enough to remember when Ralph Nader wrote his book back in the 60’s about consumer protection, it’s what led to seat belts being mandated in every car. Seemed like a good idea, right. Cars are dangerous, seat belts save lives, people should have to have seat belts. That was the common reaction that your common economist, right. Now a behavioral economist got a hold of this information and he said “I predict that, yes, there will be fewer driver fatalities but there will be more accidents and there’ll be more pedestrian fatalities.” This is what he predicted and as you can imagine they tracked all this data and he was absolutely right because what did that seatbelt do, it gave them a false sense of security and made them think “I am safer now so I can take more risks.” Right, so the driver was safer but they hit more people, there were more crashes. Now what made this really interesting and I loved it is this guy’s presenting his findings and he said “I can bring automotive fatalities, accidents, and pedestrian accidents down to almost zero within one month if congress would let me.” And all of a sudden we’re like “This sounds fantastic.” And do you remember what recommendation was?
Justin: I think it was some sort of spear pointing out of.
Chris: Exactly, it was a metal spike that came out from the steering wheel and ended about 2 inches from the driver’s throat. Likes to where all of a sudden you can inherently increase the risk and make people safer and it’s just that’s one of the ways that we try to break people out of the commonality of their thinking, you know. If I’ve got this everything’s going to be okay, well maybe not what. What do the numbers say? Now we gotta run back the numbers, every time.
Justin: That’s really incredible because I’m always preaching this. I do SEO for dentists and I’m always preaching this that SEO is not the Hail Mary you think it is. But maybe it is for some practices, you’re going to get 150 new patients per month and they’re all doing all on point, you know. For other practices you’re not getting 1 patient per year and there’s a lot of variables there so, yeah, that’s really incredible, you know is that analogy I would’ve never thought that would relate to dental but that’s an incredible analogy and it all has to do with , you know, the amount of responsibility one person takes. So the dentist takes responsibility for following up on those calls the SEO brought them. Yeah, he’s going to get more patients, but if he doesn’t do that, if it’s kind of like the seat belt in a way, well I’m doing SEO so.
Chris: ..So I guess it’s ok, and yes, that’s exactly what we find is this lack of culpability in this lack of pass through when it comes to the tracking. And I made this mistake myself, this actually was maybe 2 years ago, we had a client call up and just going to walk into some numbers, what’re they doing that we don’t know about, that kind of thing. And they were spending, I want to say it was somewhere around $1200 a month on Yellow Pages, okay. Yellow Pages has done some great things for people but I’m looking at it and I’m like “According to my numbers here you’ve got 10 patents from this all year.” and I reacted, I said “Dump it, get it out of there, should’ve caught this earlier.” I even apologized to them while were going to figure out what other avenue they should go on and then actually one of the co-worker said “Woah, whoa, whoa. Who were those 10 patients?” and lesson learned, we checked it out about held of them were folks who did some considerable amount of chemistry and that’s the whole thing where were so emotionally driven and that’s what a big part, of course, behavioral economics is we got to get ourselves out of this behavior patterns of reacting to those different things. Accept and develop proper plans that get us out of our own way and get more predictability. One example that I talked about in my lectures, somebody who knows their industry inside and out, believe it or not is the airlines. You know, we talked about the author talks about the failures, everyone talks about the failures and of course pull that back from the clinical sense and I want to know when we get at bats in case presentations where we are falling short in every which way. And so one of the things we talked about earlier was this delegation. You know, the team, well I don’t care if its international communication, external communication, internal marketing or external marketing, you gotta have something backing that up. If you look at the airlines again, if they even had a 1% failure rate it would mean 1, excuse me, it would mean 2 crashes at every major airport every single day at 1%. How do they prevent that? Redundancy, they got back ups on backups on backups and that’s been one of the biggest problems with marketing, whether it be SEO or web or direct mail or whatever. Everyone just kind of goes, they throw that dart against the wall, they put their seat belt on and say “I’m doing marketing” and then they take off. There’s nothing backing that up, there’s nothing leading the how and why. Where are the layers, where is that redundancy because if you have one marketing initiative, you’re going to be 100% successful or 100% that it’s gonna fail. So I mean it’s one of those deals where you got to look at it and kind of get these influences from mother avenues, from mother industries.
Justin: Yeah, and that’s incredible you now. We had Dr. Christopher Phelps on the show, he talked about diversification. We were talking about tracking and diversifying and how, you know, really when you leave no stone unturned. You’re going to find the opportunity, but if you do leave one stone unturned that could be the one thing and I talk to dentists about this. Yeah, I mean, I talk to dentists about this, about SEO, they’re like “Well, what does it take, what’s it gonna take, how long is it gonna take.” Well, it could be the very first thing we do, we can edit that title tag and in 3 seconds you’re ranked number 1 and you’re getting your patients or we might have to go down the list 300 different things. It just depends, you know, so, but for those dentists who are like, you know, “Hey you know how long is this going to take?” You know, we’re 2 months in and we projected 9 months and they’re like “You know we’re not going to see, like well we’ve still got 7 months worth of things to try.” and then the next month, boom, ranked up high. You know, because it was just, it happened to be one thing, who knows what that one thing.
Chris: Well and keep in mind this is something that I always remind them is there, usually in any town at the dental office or a dentist themselves or one of the more successful people around. So you kind of get some clout, you get a little bit of extra leverage in certain arenas. What I have to remind them all the time, love or hate Google, you can’t buy your way to the top, at least not effectively. What I gotta remind them all the time is that it’s in their best interest. We have an office up in Alaska who they were paying $14,000 a month to some company to get the number one on Google, okay and as you can tell since I’m telling the story they weren’t there so they called us and they said “Hey, what’s the deal? We’re paying all this money and we’re not number 1.” I mean like yourself if there was a magic bullet for that there was a solution, believe me we all have it. So we looked at it though and what we found was sometimes it just comes down to hustle. They were getting out reviewed about 19 to 1, they had very little social media presence, things were just linked, they weren’t active. They weren’t putting up original content, all those things that Google tells us that they want. So we said, we told them as a matter of fact, like, I can appreciate the tactics that they’re trying but believe it or not it’s a good thing. It’s a good thing that you can’t buy your way to the top otherwise the larger entities and I don’t think they’re good or bad or otherwise. There just a different style but the heartland of the world of Pacific’s, the Midwest, you know, all those guys would simply just buy out the top slots and Google has luckily came to the conclusion that that’s not in the world’s best interest, you know. Originality should rise to the top, authenticity should rise to the top, and hopefully they never change that.
Justin: Yeah and that’s what they need to do in order to make Google successful is providing the best search results as possible. I always ask dentists, I say “Well, why do you deserve to be on the top of Google?” Like well.
Chris: I like that.
Justin: There like “Well, cause we’re paying, Justin, that’s why.”
Chris: And its true, and all these things help, you know, and it’s one of those, we also get gentleman who might be a little bit later in their career where marketing really wasn’t part of the game and they’re very, very frustrated about full parking lots in their town and because we’ve gotten this misconception that the marketing chief instincts and I always tell people poor marketing or poor advertising, cheapest things. What they’re fearful of is participating in this race to the bottom, everything is going to be cheaper, faster. Who can just give away whitening fast enough or whatever and I go and I’m, generally like us we tell people that often what marketing is doing is just letting people know about the level of quality and level of service that you provide to your community. We had a gentleman down in a smaller town in Missouri who did not want to market, not want a website, did not want anything, is going to grow his practice kind of within his philosophies we’ll say. Well, he has a very, very high tech office and of course he found out actually through church that a member of his congregation had driven almost 100 miles to have a procedure done that they could have done, probably had a better quality in their town and he was telling the story was very frustrated on behalf of the patient they had to do that. He felt bad that they had to do that and I said “Well, doctor how could they possibly have known, you know that’s what marketing is. I go otherwise you’re leaving it 100% to chance that this person just happened to have been talking about their dental health to somebody who happened to be one of your patients, who even happened to know what that machine was. That’s too much chance right there, I mean, that’s part of what this is. This is a service to your community, gotta let people know what they’re doing so part of what I do, I fly down to Cerritos, California, part of the LANAP trainings from time to time with the millennium, it’s the same thing. If you’ve seen somebody have conventional gum surgery, it’s a tough surgery and it’s a tough recovery. LANAP is exponentially easier on the patient, the results are undoubtedly better, but I always ask these guys, you know, what’s your plan to you know, market yourself so that can spread the word (inaudible 31:54) and $10,000 laser. I’ve come up with a better plan and of course that’s where guys like you and me can come in and help but it’s not just about body count.
Justin: Oh yeah, yeah. And you know I always tell dentists, I say “Look being good at dentistry is doing the same make rounds, it’s getting the CEREC, its learning those skills but good marketing is actually a really revolutionary concept. It’s telling people that you do it.
Chris: Well, yeah, I mean to say the least it’s interesting. Another example that people can run at home is sometimes we’ll say if your practice was a car, what type of care would it be. And of course they knew a lot for a little bit and some people are, their faster, there speedy, their Porsches. Other people will see “No we’re more outdoorsy, we’re like a jeep with the roof off and we have fun” and what we’re really looking for in these questions if of course tonality. You know people who always want big, like SUVs and carriers, those are people who tend to really enjoy the community aspect so their story, their narrative might really be that generation of patients, that type of story. But every now and again more than you would probably guess, somebody says our practice would be a Rolls Royce and they’re dead serious and I appreciate what you’re trying to say, what they’re trying to say is nobody takes care of patients on the level that we do but what I really stressed them is number one, that’s not authentic because if I come to your office I better be greeted by a guy in white gloves and you better have solid gold toilets or you are not a Rolls Royce but the reality is you don’t have to be Rolls Royce. We run a lot of these exercises and I use the example of a BMW and Kia and Walmart, Nordstrom’s and I always end things with “I don’t care if your Nordstrom, I don’t care if you’re Walmart because both of those companies make billions with a beep. What matters is that you’re you and only you and only trying to be you and trying to attract people that you get along with and just people who want to meet you and want that type of care. You know its again, I get people, I push people to get outside their industry and one of the things I’ll do in the seminars is I’ll wave my magic wand and I’ll say “Okay for the next 10 minutes nobody here is involved in dentistry anymore and in fact you are all on car dealerships, nice ones. BMW car dealerships.” I tell them and everybody nods “Yeah, I like that, I like that.” I said “business is good to boot, you’re doing great. Now one day you wake up and across the street they’re building a Kia dealership. How do you feel about that?” Now most people get where I’m going so they’ll say “I’m not really worried about it.” And I said “Well why are you not worried about the Kia dealership?” and the answer is pretty obvious because most people on their way to buy a BMW or more than likely not going to take a hard right onto the Kia lot and steal that business but maybe, just maybe some other way to get a Kia might do a little window shopping or BMW might pick up some business but they’re not really worried. So then I have them raise their hands and I say “Now how many people in this room, I’m curious, have owned both a BMW and a KIA? Preferably at the same time.” and of course the answers are almost nobody, in fact I can’t think of anybody who has so I said “Well explain this to me then. How is it that I could give anybody in this room a piece of paper and you can easily write down 10 differences between BMW and Kia? However, nobody here has ever owned both? How is that possible?” and that answer of course is marketing. The answer of course is that both of those companies have spent millions upon millions of dollars to make sure that everyone knows the difference. But again the moral of the story is I don’t care if your BMW, I don’t care if you’re Kia because they both make billions. Now the idea is to figure out who you are, what’s the community that you serve and just serve the hell out to be the best at that, you know, and that’s the real trick. So, I mean, you can tell that Kia is trying to have some nicer automobiles, but they’re not trying to be BMW, they’re really not and I go “that’s why they’re playing in their successes that’s why they’re still one of the fastest growing car companies in the country.” So that’s some of the modeling that I do, get out forget its dentistry because every time a new office pops up in somebody’s community, there’s this reaction, there’s this visceral, emotional reaction. “Oh there’s always competition, like oh, corporate dentistry is driving us out.” and its all the sky is falling sort of attitude. Now reminder, well, are you the BMW dealership or the Kia dealership? And I don’t care but who are they in this scenario, walk through that, just come up with a plan to make sure people know the difference.
Justin: Absolutely, absolutely and you know some of the most bait, and this is really, really good stuff. This is why I wanted to have you on the show. Your delving deep into the psychology and I know this is just the surface level but your delving deep into the psychology of, you know, just what people think and the why marketing actually affects people’s perceptions of things and you know a lot of times I speak with dentists and it’s not even that deep of level. It’s, they have a CEREC and none of their patients know it. So they go down, they go to doctor down the street and he advertises same day crowns. So here we are, you know.
Chris: I love it and this, the CEREC’s a super fun tool, you know, it’s one of the things that depending on where people are, it’s interesting who they’re actually competing with. Soon, I’ll say offices and maybe more affluent areas, they’re competing with plastic surgery, all the discretionary spending on aesthetics is going to go into some of the other avenues that might be competing against a facelift or liposuction or whatever this may be. So we actually ran a campaign for a gentleman in Aspen. We had a CEREC, it’s a cool piece of technology and it was a billboard and the billboard said doctor so and so come in and ask me about my time machine, nothing will make you look 20 years younger, faster. Now that’s an interesting use of technology because nobody knows what the CEREC machine looks like by and large all they know, and you’ve seen this as you’ve seen people doing, you know, I don’t care if its, you know, 5 units, 6 units, 8 units, whatever it is but there waling out of that the same day smile situation and they easily look 20 years younger. So that was an innovative us of technology, that spoke more toward what people in that area were looking to spend those discretionary dollars on so it’s interesting to think about some of those things is just a different way and who’s really your competition. Not other dentists necessarily.
Justin: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I think it’s great because, you know, if someone, dentistry is depending on who you are. It has a different level of value, you know. A Hollywood actress is going to have a different level of aesthetics that she wants versus someone who’s working a blue collar job a then not just in demographics but the psychographics of the person, you know. You talk about the psychology, 1 person might have a career reason for wanting a nice smile but then another person might have a career reason but the still not care.
Chris: Let me tell you, and it’s interesting, you know, we’re all victims of doing this and one way or another in our lives is kinda of doing that wallet biopsy assuming what that value is for the patients. When it comes to the marketing you’re using the right, if you’re using the right bait to attract the right fish, all those fish might look very different and I can tell you from experience with Dr. Baird’s office. We’ve been staffed by more people driving a crystal blue Mercedes than we have the folks working in the pecan orchards. It’s like you would just never, you never know but we know the message we’re putting out and the message we’re putting out is that it’s a plus clinical dentistry. Of course in your area that you can afford, whatever it may be, you know, but it’s one of those things like they came to us because we put this message out. Once we come in through that door we can only assume that they’re there because they fit a profile that we design so it’s one of those things we’re all guilty of. Its, we’re all guilty of those reactions and that’s what behavioral economics is all about, you know. How do you get off that, fall back to the numbers and trust the plan.
Justin: Excellent, well this is great stuff, you know, great introduction to PDA, Productive Dentist Academy. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on here. Man, is there like a first step? I’m a dentist watching this show. Is there like a low commitment way, like some sort of like self-assessment on the website?
Chris: Yeah, we try to go a little bit further meaning that without looking under the hood, it’s hard for us to give just real guidance. More than anything we want to be a trusted advisor. So what folks will do, and in fact how I spend most of my day is just doing what are called assessments. Where somebody will call us to set up a time, usually takes between 20, maybe 30 minutes and I can build you a big beautiful financial dashboard. Pull that information out seamlessly from your server if you want us to. But more importantly, I really want to get down to what you’re trying to do. What’re you trying to build, what have you tried and what are some strategies with or without us that you could put in place today to kind of help them move that dial and take better care of the people in your community. That’s what I always recommend and of course as a thank you to the folks who are listening and if you ever want to come to our productivity workshop which is our flagship workshop, the next ones in September, give us a call. We’re going to do a 30% discount for anybody who listened to us, we’d love to have you.
Justin: Excellent, thank you, Chris. That’s great and man I’m definitely going to have some of my clients check this out. I think this is an incredible resource, you know, and you’ve got Dr. Bruce Baird who has a proven model. I know you’re on the lecture circuit, where can everyone find your, let’s just get the website.
Chris: Yeah, of course. It’s just going to be productivedentistacademy.com. Of course it’s got all of our events, it’s got some different resources and most importantly it’s the fastest way to get a hold of me but whether you’re a scratch start, mid-career looking to just do things differently, ramp up to sell, whatever it is. Typically my first goal is to show people how we can slow the offices down while increasing production, that’s one of the things that breaks my heart about dentistry is they believe that the answer is always more, more, more, More hours, more patients, more technology, more over and it’s just not true but what we really want to design a practice that they can live in and grow until the day they turn the keys over so give me a call, I’d love to show you guys how we might do it.
Justin: Excellent. Man, I think this goes rally well with what I’m always trying to do and the purpose of this show is to help dentists and I just tell dentists “Look I’m not everything to every dentist, you know, I’m feeling search engine optimization where we’ll build on those websites, we’re shooting these videos, doing the photography but that is only one piece of the puzzle. What you guys are doing is huge, this is really huge so thank you so much for appearing on the show.
Chris: Absolutely, thank you for having me and again we really appreciate it and we look forward to hopefully doing it again sometime.
Justin: Excellent, excellent. And tell Bruce, tell Dr. Baird, he’s allowed on the show.
Chris: Oh, he’d love it, he’d love it. Between him and Vicki like we’ll be here every week if you want.
Justin: We’ll give it some time. Let’s see how many people get to sign up to the seminar, maybe you’ll be incentivized but yeah, guys if you have any questions you know where to reach Chris. You know where to reach me, if you see this on Dental Town, Dental Marketing Guy blog, wherever you see this on social media check this out on YouTube. This is really good information and, you know, if you know someone who might be interested in learning a little bit of these tips, these ideas, these concepts, really good narratives here. Really like it Chris so feel free to reach out and ask any questions you have. Thanks for watching the Dental Marketing Guy Show.’
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Article by: Dr. Gina Dorfman of YAPI
The best new patients are those who come from personal referrals because they are more inclined to trust us. Statistically, patients who were referred by other patients have 37% higher retention rate compared to others (Deloitte).
Ideally, patient referrals are your leading source of new patients. If this is not the case, you need to evaluate the experience that patients have in your office. Patients who are merely satisfied do not go out of their way to promote your practice. They might mention your name if asked for a good dentist but will rarely become brand enthusiasts who refer tons of others.
So how do you get more personal referrals? Below are five ways to bring in the kind of new patients you want.
#1: Create Remarkable Experiences
Seth Godin, a marketing guru and the best-selling author, explains that to be remarkable means to be remark-worthy. If you want people to talk about you, give them something worth talking about!
The first step in getting a lot of personal referrals from your existing patients is to improve your patient experience. Look at your practice through their eyes. What can you do to improve their experience? How can you make every visit meaningful?
The old adage, “People don’t care about how much you know, until they know how much you care” comes to mind. What can you do to let your patients know you care about them?
The littlest things can produce huge results when it conveys to your patients that you care about them as human beings. For example, offer fleece blankets to keep warm or neck pillows to make them comfortable. Other ideas include applying lip balm during treatment to prevent chapped lips or offering dark glasses to protect their eyes from light and debris.
A phone call to check on a patient following a difficult procedure or emergency appointment is another way to let them know that you truly care. These small gestures can go a long way in earning their loyalty. Take pride in creating experiences worth remarking about.
Of course, patients will also appreciate minimal wait time and getting in and out for an appointment as efficiently as possible. Other ways to impress your patients are by using the latest in technology, speaking in patient-friendly language and maintaining an immaculate office that smells great (and not like a dentist office). Above all, provide friendly service and gentle care. You don’t know much about their dental visits at other offices but aim to be the best. Not every patient has previously received great dental care. You know you’ve done a great job when your patient says: “Nobody has done this for me before.”
Related: Leave the Paperwork Out of the Waiting Room for an Amazing Patient Experience
#2: Build Relationships
In dentistry, we are in the business of forming long-term relationships with our patients. Every encounter is an opportunity to build on this relationship. Patients will be touched when you remember that their birthday is July 5 or that the name of their Yorkie is Finn. Take the time to connect with patients on a personal level. Hire team members who genuinely like people and love to connect with and delight others.
Related: The 5 Things to do Today to Wow Your Patients
#3: Find Common Ground
According to Dr. Robert Cialdini’s Liking principle, we like people who are similar to us. We tend to gravitate toward those who share similar interests, opinions or background. And we are more likely to comply with the requests made by people we like. Patients that relate to you and feel as though you understand them will think of you as a friend. Those are the ones who will be likely to refer others to your practice.
#4: Show your Gratitude
Another one of Dr. Cialdini’s principles of influence is the Consistency principle. It explains that once we make a choice, we tend to honor that commitment. Once your patients position themselves as brand enthusiasts for your practice by referring others, they are likely to continue to refer others. They may even share positive comments about you online, especially if you ask.
Help nurture their commitment by expressing gratitude for their referrals. A small token of your appreciation can produce even more referrals and positive testimonials. Try a personal thank you at their next visit, a handwritten thank you card or even a small thank you gift. If your patients give you positive testimonials, display them proudly and prominently on your website or on a brag-board in your office.
#5: Ask!
Asking for referrals can be uncomfortable. Many people don’t like to ask because it feels like a selfish act. The reality is, it’s not selfish at all! You are essentially helping someone else find a great dentist. You should ask for referrals with confidence and know your goal to share your great service is altruistic.
What is the best phrasing to sound confident? After some practice, you will feel confident when you ask. Let’s say you are speaking with a patient and they express how happy they are to have found you. This is the perfect moment to add: “Thank you for sharing this, I am so glad you are happy! I know how hard it can be to find a dentist you are comfortable with. I’ve certainly heard my share of horror stories. “ Your patient might chime in with their own horror story or relate an experience of someone they know. You should listen, emphasize and then say: “If you know anyone who is looking for a great dentist, please pass on our information to them.”
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Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy and today were discussing local SEO. How the way you build citations definitely mattes for your new patient flow. Today were talking about one of the most commonly understood yet misunderstood ways you can help your dental websites search engine ranking. This is a video based on an article I examined on searchenginejournal.com. The editor who put out this article is named Aki Libo-on. Yeah, my apologies Miss L, I can’t possible have that right, forgive me. Here are some of the key takeaways from the local citations survey, 90% of local experts say accurate citations are critical or at least very important to search engine rankings. 86% of local SEO experts say quality of citations is more important than the quantity of citations. Industry relevance is the most important factor to consider when choosing which citation sites to use. 33% of local SEO experts say nice or industry directories offer the greatest authority to your dental website.
Correct address formatting on citation is important but not critical, say 21 local search experts. 62% of local search experts say rich citations, in other words the way that you build the citations are essential or very important. The way you build citations is more important that the amount you build. That’s why certain citation building services may be a good idea but not necessarily an optimal one for areas which have a high level of SEO competition such as a big metropolis are like Charlotte, North Carolina. What’s the real takeaways here for you? If you’re in it low competition area feel free to use cheap citation building services. If you’re in a more competitive area make sure you’re working with an SEO expert who knows how to move quickly in a fast-paced foot race. If you want to compete in a competitive are where search is very important to you gaining new patients be sure to contact an SEO expert. Don’t accept cookie cutter solutions, a true SEO expert can tell you how competitive your area is for search engines.
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Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin the dental marketing guy and today we’re talking about a newly mentioned factor as to how you can get your dental website on the google map. As a new patient enthusiast, I love SEO as a lead generation source for most dental practices. Currently, google released a new factor in local SEO, particularly the three pack or as an SE-Old timer, I call the google map. Here is the mention of the new factor straight from google themselves- prominence, prominence refers to how well-known a business is. Some places are more prominent in the offline world ad search result try to reflect this in local ranking. For example, famous museums, landmark hotels or well-known store brands that are familiar to many people are also likely to be prominent in local search results. Prominence is also based on information that Google has about a business from across the web like links, articles, and directories. Google review count and score are factored into local rankings. More reviews and positive ratings will probably improve a business’ local ranking. Your position and web results is a factor so SEO best practices also apply to local search optimization. There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google. We do our best to keep the details of the search algorithm confidential to make the ranking system as fair as possible for everyone.
What does this mean for your dental practice? First, you need to figure out how many people are searching for your services in your target area. Then you can implement this idea as part of an overall dental SEO strategy. If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me in the comments below. If you found this video entertaining, I recommend Scrabble. It’s way more fun than watching my videos all day.
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Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin the dental marketing guy and today it is a huge honor to interview a real HIPAA expert. We have Jill Obrochta and she is a 20 year plus veteran of the Clinical Dental Hygiene Arena who specialized inpatient motivation and chairside verbal skills. And now she’s considered one of the country’s top dental OSHA and HIPAA compliance experts. You’re going to want to hear what Jill has to say because the implications for your practice are huge. If you’ve ever known or heard about someone who’s been bitten by to hit the monster. Man, we’re talking about ten million dollar finds. We’re talking really, really big deal here, we’re going to talk about how to protect yourself, and in fact Jill has a special offer at the end of the interview for those of you who are interested in learning more about how to protect yourself from HIPAA and OSHA and how to be compliant. Really, really huge value we’re going to get into. Let me tell you a little more about Jill, she’s a compliance researcher, she’s a product developer and OSHA GHS and HIPAA training specialist. She’s an internationally published writer and educator for several top industry manufacturers including Pro Dentec Capital One, Waterpik Technologies, 3M ESPE, PGNE, and she is the founder of dentalenhancements.com. That’s the website, her own nationwide web based Education Company specializing in OSHA and HIPAA training, and she makes it easy. So she’s here to talk to us about her enthusiasm, about how you can protect yourself, protect your practice. The last thing we want is to have you build your dream practice and then have it crumbling down because of government intervention and penalties. So I’ve said a lot about this, but you know what I can’t talk nearly as well about the technical as you, Jill. How are you?
Jill: I’m doing awesome, Justin. It’s really nice to be here. I’m so excited to talk to your audience and it was great when I heard from you when you reached out, you know, my favorite topic is compliance and HIPAA is really the new OSHA. So there’s so many things that doctors need to be aware of. Not only the doctor, but also their team as well with regards to OSHA and HIPAA.
Justin: Excellent and you know I’ve done a little vetting of, you know. I’ve seen you on dental town. I’ve heard good things about you and I’d love to just dive into this. You know, where do we start? Let’s talk about, you know, what is HIPAA? What kind of history and evolution and meaning of HIPAA?
Jill: HIPAA, so HIPAA started in the 90’s and it really stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. So right around that time when people were moving, you got transferred or you were moving. Insurance companies were making insurance policies skyrocketing price. So originally the president puts a cap on any insurance company being able to price gouge. Later it sort of morphed itself by the year 2000 to have a right to privacy. Many executives were going to interview for jobs and they were getting discriminated against if the big bosses were checking into their health history. Do they have any communicable disease and they were discriminated so, then the government intervened that, somewhere around 2003, all healthcare facilities including dental offices have to have patients sign a HIPAA Patient Acknowledgement form and really what this was, was a pledge from the doctor not to give away, sell their mark, their health information for marketing purposes like name, address, phone number. We were just getting into email, that sort of thing and today HIPPA protects any individuals- past, present, or future protected health information- PHI. There is a ton of acronyms in the HIPPA world. So PHI is what a doctor and his team really need to be aware of, they need to know what is HIPAA? What does that mean for the dental office? That’s a little bit of the history and the evolution of HIPAA but now it has changed and it accelerates so quickly. These days, you know when we think about 2003 we started with HIPAA signing simple forms, we’re going to keep everything private. Then in 2013 there was a huge change in the HIPAA law. These laws are called HIPAA Omnibus Rules, the Omnibus Rules deal with much stricter privacy and security. When we started to work from on the internet in the workplace. This is when things went a bit crazy at the same time we’re enjoying the pleasures of the internet, you know, being able to email patient document, contact insurance companies, contact labs and other dental offices. There’s also identity thieves, especially where I live, here in Florida and in California. California just put out a great report, in fact, if anyone wants the report, they can email me at jill@dentalenhancements.com or just Google the California HIPAA report. Just came out of the beginning of 2016, and it says what identity thieves are doing. I’ll share that with your audience today- how to protect your dental office from identity theft. So on one way we’re being able to have this extraordinary share information flow. Right, with other dental professionals, labs, insurance companies. On the other hand identity thieves are poking into the dental office or the health care facility to either get their emails link to emails that have ransom ware, rel=”nofollow”have the computers shut down, they have payment they’re requesting in bit coin. Crazy things like that and even breaking into dental offices. You know, in Florida and California they’re targeting health care and dental offices to steal servers that are unprotected, to steal the tape along with backup drives. Really should do away with those and go to a purely automatic and oxide encrypted type backup for your daily data backup. Even laptops that are protected, even your cellphones, you’re using cellphones for texting. You see there’s this big web. So the information is great, for information technology is great for information sharing, but then on the counter side, we really have to protect on the patient information from getting encounters with identity thieves. That’s really the main gist of these new HIPAA Omnibus rules, the big changes in 2013.
Justin: Ok, so you mentioned something about having backup drives and so what, can you recommend like is there a specific company or can you say like what, for the viewers can they do to take action on that aspect of it if they were to do so unilaterally?
Jill: This is a huge change for dentists because since 2003 the dentist has been doing his due diligence, he has his backup, he takes it home, he protects it, it’s his baby. That’s your pride and joy, that’s all of your patient information but nowadays you have a HIPAA breach, something that can hurt your patient, financially, their reputation. Certainly their identity, right? So if you have peridot these three magic identifiers- social security number paired with their name and their birthday. Now those are the magic for an identity thief, that’s what they’re after. So on a server or on a backup drive, what do you have? A thousand, two thousand of your patient information that has social security, name, and birthday. So if you’re taking along that sacred backup drive its best to get educated and choose a reliable oxide encrypted cloud type backup. Do away with those backup drives, I see it all the time. If you have one of those lost installed, here’s the scenario, more than 500 patient files have been compromised. Here’s the first thing you have to do, you have to contact all the patients either verbally and in writing. How do you gonna do that? A thousand to two thousand of your patient, that takes man power. So straight away you have to have a dedicated person to contact everyone about the loss or the theft of the taped hard drive. Next, you have to contact all media in your area- TV, radio, and newspaper. By this time the community starts to know “Wow, this dental office isn’t so great to go to” typically you’ll see about a 50% reduction and retention. You also have to report the loss or the stolen backup drive to the Department of Health and Human Services. Now you have an 18 month HIPAA audit, not fun. I just a trainer, I train offices to the standard of HIPAA Omnibus rules, give them updated forms, new manuals. So we put all the protocols in place, but at this point it’s out of my expertise. So if there’s that stolen backup drive we have to retain a HIPAA lawyer, retainer’s $50,000. By the end of it all I’ve been through three of these adventures, the fine at the end for an innocent doctor trying to do the right thing take the backup drive home with them as they’ve always done. Now they’re in a $150,000 fine, it destroys the integrity of the practice so please look into choosing a very reliable off-site encrypted could type encryption. I know a lot of people are worried about the clouds, but the backup drive that you take home are even more vulnerable for you. So the law, now under these omnibus rules, your daily data backup should be oxidized and encrypted. The government even want to do reports either annually, biannually to say “How is my IT company or my IT tech protecting our daily data backup?” So that does have to go within the standard of HIPAA auditors, look at your protocols, look at your paperwork and they want to make sure everyone on your team is educated about HIPAA, the omnibus rules, and especially about how to handle patient PHI- protected health information.
Justin: Well sweet, yeah. That answers my next question. I was going to say who needs to be more aware of the HIPAA laws. So it’s really, I mean, obviously the front desk, right?
Jill: Oh my, yeah for sure. You know everyone as to be trained to this new HPAA Omnibus rules standards. So you have to have a proof of training sheet that everyone has been trained. So if you have new employees within 30 days you want to make sure that they have training module that they can get up to par with the rest of the team. Everyone has to be trained, let’s face it, in a hygienist. I take a patient back to my chair, they didn’t get to finish their paperwork. I need to be familiar with the patient forms and the HIPAA protocols because sometimes in going to be, even in a clinical setting, be asked or called upon to explain HIPAA. Your receptionist and your office managers, so many times I get calls, office managers thinking they’re doing the right thing. They’re loyal, there really dedicated to their dental practice, they may withhold patient information. You know the patient always has a balance, I’m not giving up those x-rays even though they requested them I’m not giving it up. Nowadays, under these new HIPAA omnibus rules since 2013, you must give the patient upon written request their x-rays and their records. So that’s the law, I think some of these lawmakers may not have been able to obtain their medical records when they wanted to. So the new law is your x-rays and your records belong to you, the patient. Don’t obscure justice, please make sure that you’re giving any patient who request their records and x-rays. Give those to the patient so I think office managers and receptionists are on the front line. They must be educated to these laws, they must know what guardians can have access to records. Another thing, Justin, has divorced parents. Think about it, parents are divorcing all the time, you have a HIPAA sign-in sheet. Whenever you know that “Wow, couple has kids.” you don’t know what their status is or relationship. Make sure if they are divorced, they need to put ex-grandparents that may take a child to a dental appointment. New boyfriends and girlfriends, and get this, if they’re dating and they’re dating full changes, have them sign another HIPAA Acknowledgement form. You don’t want mothers, I get this all the time, moms are in the reception room and the girlfriend of the parent is bringing the kids to a cleaning and there’s World War 3. The dental office doesn’t want to end up in family court over forms that weren’t signed and unfortunately, you know, the kids sometimes have to suffer by not being able to keep the dental appointment. But if your receptionist and office managers have been trained to have new HIPAA Omnibus rules forms within your office. Namely a patient acknowledgement form make sure that all those guardians are signed, sealed, and delivered. You can have good flow and function with your appointment. So those are two situations that I see all the time, you want to make sure divorcing parents, that you have stabidinson-dmg
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tgW8WoW#aVqQyUbqqRefoLG3lity there and that your receptionist and office managers know what information they can share and should share quickly and what information they shouldn’t. As a coach, our team, we answer our phones 24/7 because you never know when someone is going to call and go “Wow, we have a patient here, a situation like this or this happened yesterday and its really bothering me and now it’s a Saturday morning or Sunday morning” and the doctors really nervous so it’s my pleasure to always helping. Your audience can also give us a call or contact us anytime, I really want to be there as a resource for your listeners so that we can make sure you can acclimate getting enlightened and then get yourself on the right track with implementing your employee training, having the right paperwork updated and then getting these protocols for HIPAA in place.
Justin: Excellent, I heard you mention about HIPAA land mines. Can you explain? I know you just mentioned about, you know, some of these forms, some of the different family situations. I assume this is kind of what you’re talking about is you just don’t know what you don’t know, right? So what are HIPAA landmines?
Jill: Exactly, you know, it’s a term that I coined and actually I’ve just recorded a new anytime webinar. Its HIPAA horror stories, its kinds of things where we get calls every day unsuspecting dental office personnel who are really committed, they walk into a landmine. One that I mentioned was not giving up the x-rays for the records, you think you’re doing the right thing and protecting your doctor especially if the patient owes a large balance. We’ll, we give up the x-ray after you pay the balance, please don’t do that. In most states you have 30 days to deliver requested records and when the patient writes you, they can e-mail you, that’s a written request, right? So please give those up except Texas. Texas, everything’s bigger and bolder in Texas. They have a state required HIPAA HP300 laws, every two years in Texas you must study these laws and you must give the records in 15 days. So that’s one land mine, please don’t hold on to x-rays or records, gives those up in all other states 30 days, in Texas you only have 15 days to deliver those documents. Check the parents when children are coming in, please make sure you have guardians signed and make sure that the guardians have consented to bring children, to get the receipt for dental treatment to schedule the next appointment. Another landmine would be not having your vendors, your business vendors, now have to sign an official HIPAA document called a HIPAA business associate agreement. I think a better name for that document would be a vendor confidentiality agreement. So if a business has any access to patient information- the name, address, phone number, social security number, credit card number. You must have those vendors that share your patient identity information sign these business associate agreements. So many times I get calls from a dentist or a great resource to see what’s going on in the dental community. Check out HIPAA journal, these are a group of HIPAA techs, HIPAA technologists and they list all the current finds. So you’ll see a lot of times the current finds in a health care facility or private dental offices is that you have not had a proper vendor sign off that they can share your patient information. You see, it’s far-reaching where you can start stepping around and just walking down a road business in your life. Wow, I’m in a landmine, what do I do? Again, if you’re in a shaky situation and you don’t quite know what to do with the HIPAA situation you can always call us and we’ll try to guide you down the right road and certainly make sure that you have your training and people working for protocols, that’s always the best bet.
Justin: Why do they call it HIPAA laws or omnibus rules? Where does that come from?
Jill: The Omnibus Law, I know it’s a crazy name isn’t it? By definition an omnibus is a volume containing previously published in parts. Funny enough comic books are written in omnibus format so you have a Superman omnibus or Batman omnibus. But this isn’t very funny, so before 2013 or 500 pages of HIPAA, then in March of 2012 they added 80 more pages so the government, they wrote these laws very obtuse because they knew the internet was changing and the world of technology was really going to change. Also, they know that there’s a lot of internet bandits out there, right? So identity thieves, they wrote things pretty obtuse so that the world can change before they have to do another update. So you have to be really careful because these new omnibus rules, 500 original pages plus the 80 new pages, compile the omnibus rules. They are very vague, dental enhancement. I, one summer, I didn’t have a great summer just in the summer of 2012. I took the 580 pages with our legal team and we rewrote them, recondensed them down into a 50 pages workbook, a 15 minute video and then we created 17 new forms for health care. So we took all of those and said “What does a dental office really need? We need a training module, they need the new forms written, you know some of our competitors make forms. They say “Here’s a kit, study the law and then make your own forms.” It takes 800 hours to do that, so we have, for sure, 5 forms that you want to use in the dental office. We have your video, the workbook, an updated HIPAA manual written to the omnibus standard. Please make sure when you go back into your dental offices, check the edition of your HIPAA manual. It should be written after September of 2013 and say that it’s written about the omnibus rules. We include the manual and then we always include 30 to 60 minutes of guided help with one of our HIPA coaches. Don’t you hate getting a compliance update module and it comes to your office like a manual and a video and you’re like “Oh my God” life happens, dentistry happens, you put it off to the side. The next thing you know you have an OSHA or HIPAA inspector coming in and you’re blowing off the dust “sorry we didn’t fill up the manual, it’s not filled in.” We never want that to happen so we take all the components and parts and bits and pieces and paper and checklist and then we’ll spend 30 to 60 minutes with you. Fill in the blanks in the manuals, make sure you start printing and using these new forms that are specifically designed for the dental office and then we give you you’re guided help. So we get everything in place, that’s your training, the paperwork and the facility protocols. By the way, you can use that training video over and over with new hire so I think that the name of our products are HIPAA made easy because we want to give you everything and we want to give you support, we’re pretty passionate of success with this and omnibus rule are complicated. So that’s it, an omnibus is 500 pages of HIPAA law plus 80 more pages. Please make sure when you implement these protocols that you have something that’s comprehensive and you keep the protocols, the paperwork, training for all employees and make sure you have a nice resource so that you don’t get lost as things update because they do. Every week update and things seem to change, get more complex and convoluted.
Justin: Okay, but do they really, I mean, do they really go after like a solo practitioner or small time dentist? Do they, aren’t they looking for the big fish?
Jill: you know, there’s both things going on, there’s institutional and there’s big business, bigger healthcare facilities. It’s like a conglomerate, that’s true, but if you look at the HIPAA journal. I love the hipaajournal.com because these texts put up real life experiences of smaller offices. So, for instance, an office might think, you know, nothing’s going on with a great experience with this patient. Here is one land mine, you want another land mine? Here it is, the patient has a great experience, then at the checkout patients are standing in the back of each other. You always should have your patients not standing in the back of each other within hearing distance of one another. Please have any additional patients, if you don’t want to redesign and reconfigure your dental office make them sit in the reception room. For instance, the patient has a great experience, she’s going to leave the office. The credit card bounces or the receptionist might start talking too loud about her implants for denture, the cost for her dental treatment. That patient’s embarrassed, all of a sudden you take a beautiful experience with a beautiful dental outcome, patient upset, she goes into her car, she has her little cellphone and google everything. You google search, you can put up a bad report on Yelp or give a really bad review to the dental office. Ouch, that hurts, worst yet, these technically savvy patients will also go on to the office of civil rights for the Department of Health and Human Rights, report you for a HIPAA breach. That means that the dental office, then gets contacted and in an 18 month long HIPAA inspection is the result. It’s insidious, they can call your office or come in every week, every month. We have to then jump through the hoops of delivering the paperwork that they want and implementing those protocols. So please don’t let that happen to you. Typically it’s as the result HIPAA reports are, as a result of disgruntled patient. And you never know if someone just walks out and they had a bad experience. The next thing you know, I had last week a call, patient came in for a second opinion. They wanted to use their x-rays from their former dental office. He got them over within the 30 days, no problem. They were cone cut and you couldn’t read any of them, they were horrible. So the new dentist that able to take another FMX, they did a digital set of x-rays but they charge the guy $136, he didn’t like that. They should’ve just comped the x-rays because guess what? He reported them, there’s an 18 month long inspection and the poor receptionist is like “Oh my gosh, I wish we would have just comped him the x-rays, now we know.” So you never know what people want and what they’re capable of. Better to get educated, have everything in place, have of all of your team members aware of what’s going on and what are your protocols. If this happens then we do this, right, get on the phone and be able to call us as a resource, right. Important stuff under these new HIPAA omnibus rules, they’re insidious. So it’s good to get enlightened, educated and just implement everything as soon as possible.
Justin: I don’t know if we want to say their insidious too loud. I think we.
Jill: For sure, right? You’ll never know. Big brother is watching. Right, Justin
Justin: What we meant was they’re inspiring.
Jill: They’reinspiring. Well, you know they were inspiring once you have things in place, in your office, you feel so much better. You really do feel enlightened, you feel engaged and on top of the loss and you feel like you’re protecting patients as well, you know, so they’re confusing because they’re so vague. That’s where an office doesn’t know what direction to turn, you don’t even know what you might be doing wrong. You’re trying to do the right thing and the next thing you know you’re in trouble and you didn’t even mean to get yourself in trouble with HIPAA officers, you know.
Justin: Yes, so speaking they’re staying out of trouble, I mean, what do they look for? What are the auditors, the HIPAA auditors even look for?
Jill: You know an editor is going to most likely come in because of a report so straight away they’re going to look at the incident. They’re going to look closely at that incident, was it because of paperwork that wasn’t being held out correctly? Is it because of the flow and functionality of the dental office? They’re gonna look at 3 things, they’re gonna look to make sure that you have physical aspects, technical aspects, and administrative aspects of HIPAA in place. This means computers, software, proper daily data backup, make sure that everyone is emailing correctly, protecting that patient information, texting correctly, all of the forms have to be updated, an updated HIPAA manual, and the inspector will question individuals- your hygienist, your dental assistant, even your part time help that might come in, you know, after work to process instruments. So there is a far reach, first the auditors are gonna look at the incident but he is also going to look at those physical, technical, and administrative practices of the office. So you have to be sure everyone’s trained with a signed agreement, that you have all the paperwork, forms, and a manual up-to-date to the HIPAA omnibus standard. We also provide a checklist, 25 different things. The focus and the functions within the dental practice so the protocols have to be updated as well.
Justin: That’s all really interesting. I like how you tied it into patient experience. I actually did not know that reporting someone is the reason why these investigations are kicked off. I thought it was kind of like an IRS thing where they just come through, you know, maybe half a percent per year for people and make sure they’re paying their taxes.
Jill: Yeah, it can be, it can be. It can be just a spot audit, but if you take a look, again, I’m going to back to the great IT guys, my friends the IT nerds at the HIPAA journal. You’ll see a lot of times it’s something totally innocent and it’s somebody who’s disgruntle, a patient who’s disgruntle. Now I will say that OSHA inspections are usually a result of a disgruntled employee or a disgruntled patient. HIPAA, most of the time, these techno-savvy patients get on their phones and they just go to the office of civil rights or the Department of Health and Human Services. It’s so quick and easy to report a breach for a patient, you Google that term, report a HIPAA breach for dental offices, boom it comes right up and they can take 5 minutes and report that breach. The dental office, on the other hand, is going to be in an 18 month long drawn-out inspection and audit.
Justin: And why is it 18 months? Is it always 18 months? Is it sometimes longer? Is it sometimes shorter?
Jill: Sometimes its shorter but they have the right to work with your office and ask for protocols and people are over 18 month target. That’s just how they wrote the omnibus rules because they figured, you know, as an inspection our investigation is going on. Sometimes the technology changes even within that time frame. Think of how we used to use email, phones, texts, Facebook, right. Things like that, so things can change and so they want to make sure that they have enough time to make sure that when they are correcting any kind of wrongdoing that they’re doing it to the best of their ability so that the doctor can have success in number and be able to practice up to these standards. So they are helpful to a degree, but it is a lot of work and they’re trying to sort or course you down the road of compliance. It’s better to get educated and enlightened, just like a root canal, right. Isn’t it better before that root canal is infected, you force to have that emergency treatment. It’s better to treatment, for you to be proactive. So I think while the inspector is trying to help you, you are already down a bad situation so there’s not a lot of proactivity. You’re sort of forced into that compliance at that point.
Justin: Yeah, if a dentist is a procrastinator. I don’t know if he has the right to be upset at his patients for procrastinating on their dental health.
Jill: This is true and you know you can get an entire HIPAA omnibus module, you can get the manual, all the forms, the training video and the support for under $400. So why procrastinate when the fines start at $10,000 to 1.5 million. So it’s really kind of smart business to just get enlightened, look for a resource that’s going to help you and for under $400, you’re golden.
Justin: And in fact you’re offering a special offer to the listeners. Can you tell us about that?
Jill: I am. Especially for you, Justin, the dental marketing guy and your listeners. So if a doctor wants to get enlightened, please give us a call. You can call us, email us and my coaches and I will, if you mention the dental marketing guy. They’re going to get 15% off their first order, that means if you want our HIPAA module you may need International OSHA Global Harmonization System or Federal Osha. So any first order, you’ll get 15%, which is great. So that even more savings and we’re really happy to do that, we’re so passionate about our services and what we can bring to your office and all the products we deliver and the support. It just makes it so much easier, especially for the office managers and receptionists, also a doctor to understand this. So we’re very dedicated to your success and we’re willing to make that offer and we hope that your listeners will take advantage of that first time, 15% off. Just mention that when you give us a call, just mention the dental marketing guy because we really love the stuff you talk about, Justin. Thank you so much for making sure that in the dental profession, we have a resource like you to come in and you do such a great, compelling interviews like this. I just really think that it’s a great resource. So that’s our offer, 15% off for your listeners.
Justin: Excellent, excellent. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that, I’m sure the listeners will take action on that. Where can they find you again? It’s dentalenhancements.com
Jill: Yeah, dentalenhancements.com. Anyone can email me, jill@dentalenhancements.com and our phone number, if you just want to give us a call, it’s of course on the website. 941-587-2864, so just give us a call 941-587-2864. Forward any email to me, jill@dentalenhancements.com. We’ll be sure to first talk about your needs, talk about your situation, make sure that you have the right solutions chosen for your office. 15% off to the dental marketing guys.
Justin: Excellent, excellent. Now before we come to a close on our time I do want to say, you know, I do online marketing. I do SEO for dentists and you know that includes building websites for dentists. I want to know some things about what are the requirements, as far as HIPAA is concerned and I know some of my colleagues are going to want to know this too. What are some of the HIPAA requirements coming out the gate? I know you spend your summer poring over these prolix legalese, you know. Tell me about the HIPAA requirements as far as dental websites are concerned.
Jill: Wow, and it doesn’t end, you know 2013 was the start of it. but things change and update all the time. So my team and I, with our legal team, really keep progressing with the changes. Two things for your website, please make sure, it’s required to have the new notice of privacy practices. It’s a document, it’s the law, the doctrine of these new omnibus rules. So a notice of privacy practices, you must have that posted on your website. Most IT tax will take the notice of privacy practices, they make a little button that says an OPP or notice this privacy practice and when you click that any patient or any visitors to the site, it will pop up. So if you are a healthcare professional with a website that includes dental offices. You must have the notice of privacy practices attached, embedded, and then able to pop up for your patients. Second thins, if you’re sharing patient forms, right. So you’re attracting new patients and you’re going “Oh, let’s make them a new patient.” It is okay to share the form, I would not have them coming backwards because you have to have certain encryption that can get expensive, you have to have certain code, an encryption code. So ether talk to your IT professional or your webmaster about that. But I say it’s okay to give the new forms out, please make the patient print those. Do it the old fashioned way, have them bring in paper if you can. If you are going to do a backwards sharing of that information, remember there’s a tricky line between “are they considered a new patient or are they considered just a web server?” But once somebody has intention to start becoming a patient you have to make sure that’s patient PHI. You don’t want to have social security number, name, birthday for sure. But if you’re having addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, that’s a tricky one. So please, if you’re sharing those forms, outward bound is okay. But have that patient bring that sensitive health information with them to their appointment. Those are the two tips I have for the website.
Justin: Excellent, excellent. So if our listeners remember nothing besides 15% off of course for that course. What are 3 quick tips we can provide the listeners? Just super, super short and punchy as far as how to protect yourself from HIPAA. I guess you can say HIPAA interference, government interference.
Jill: Number one, get your team trained. Make sure everyone is trained to these new HIPAA omnibus rules. I think the best way is to have a resource. Go through either a live webinar, have a backup video. Make sure that it’s always up to date. So each year you might want to have an update support program. Number two, training is key. Paperwork, you must have a HIPAA manual written to the new omnibus rule standard. Check your manual, make sure it’s published after September 2013 and have at least 5 different forms- a patient form, an employee confidentiality form, that notice of privacy practices, a data backup report, at least annually, and you also want to make sure you have a business associate agreement. 5 forms for sure and the third thing, facility protocols. Anything from the patient checking in and out, making sure that’s private, at least not for conversation over here to how you’re going to text, email, software updates and make sure that computer and software are always to the new standard. So those things- employee training, paperwork, and facility protocols. Those are the hot tips to make sure that you’re building a comprehensive program to be protected to the new HIPAA omnibus rules standards.
Justin: Excellent, well, it’s been very educational. You’ve got a lot of passion for this. I can tell our listeners got a great amount of value. Listen, if you have any question, feel free to reach out to Jill, you can reach out to me. Let me know what you think in the comments below, if you see this on YouTube, Dental Town, the Dental Marketing Guy blog. Wherever you see this, just give it a thumbs up or leave us a comment, let us know what you’re thinking. If you have any questions for Jill, you know, feel free to reach out. That’s dentalenhancements.com and thank you very much one last time for the guest of honor, Jill.
Jill: Thank you so much, Justin. We love what you’re doing out there. The dental marketing guy rocks and we just really appreciate this opportunity. And truly your listeners can reach out to us anytime, day or night. We’re really happy to get them down the right rope when it comes to compliance, OSHA or HIPAA. Thanks a lot for having us, Justin. I was so excited to be your guest, thanks again.
Justin: Well it’s been great, it’s been great. It’s been educational and eye opening and, you know, that hipaajournal.com that sounds really interesting. So you might want to read some of those stories or just reach out to Jill directly. Thank you for watching the Dental Marketing Guy Show.
Looking for information on my dental marketing firm? Visit my dental SEO page to learn more about what makes The Dental Marketing Guy your #1 ranked dental marketing consultant on Google.
Justin: And welcome to The Dental Marketing Guy Show, I’m Justin the dental marketing guy and today we have a guest who is gonna teach us all about how to use technology to track your marketing results. If you’re investing in Marketing, let me tell you, tracking is so important. If you don’t know what’s working, why continue doing it? If you don’t know what’s not working, you could be spending money, putting it down the drain. What we wanna do is we wanna make sure your marketing is an investment not an expense and my guest today can help us do that. I have Ahmed Reza from, I think I said that right, right?
Ahmed: Yup. Hi. This is Ahmed Reza from Call Sumo.
Justin: Excellent, excellent. Yeah! And you know so you’re a tech start up guy and you’ve been a tech geek for a while now. You started actually at NASA where you wrote the Image Processing Pipeline for the Spitzer Space Telescope. I don’t know what that means but it sounds really impressive. And then you worked on Artificial Intelligence for Unmanned Arial Vehicles for the Department of Defense future combats systems program and then you wanna work on some start-ups and man, I’m just so honored to have you on the show. How you doing?
Ahmed: Doing great, great to be here, man. Thank you for taking the time out to do this.
Justin: Absolutely. You know I think we’re gonna dealt in some really important things on, you know the other day I had, one of my friendly competitors on the show Wondrous Agencies and they were telling us about how important it is to track your marketing results but you know before we get into the nitty gritty of it, could you tell us maybe a short story of your back ground in dentistry and what caused you to choose this industry as your focus.
Ahmed: It’s really interesting actually because a lot of people ask me “how did you as a tech geek end up getting into dentistry?” For me it’s simple because my best friend, he’s a dentist. Best friend since college so at one of my friends practices here, not one of my friends practices- one practice and I’m trying to figure out “Hey what do I wanna do?” so prior to this day I’ve been working on a couple of start-ups, I worked on kinetics which was bought by NCR and just loved the start-up life. Wanted to do one of my own and i was thinking “Hey I’m gonna write some really cool practice managements software or something”. So I might practice looking at the practice management software, looking at the technology that they have there and in asking “How much are you paying for this?” and he said “Oh its 10,000 dollars but it comes with the computer itself”. So I was looking and yeah 10,000 dollars is kind of expensive but then I dug more into it, it was really complicated piece of software as most practice management software is. And then as I was looking at another opportunity there suddenly I noticed an almost 3,000 dollars check on his desk and i go “dude, 3,000 dollars a year for yellow pages? And you’re complaining about 10,000 dollars for those really awesome software? “He goes “No it’s not 3,000 dollars a year its 3,000 dollars a month”. You know and-
Justin: For yellow pages
Ahmed: For yellow pages, right? And I’m going “I’m solving the wrong problem, I’m solving the problem that’s interesting for me. What I really should solve was my friends problem here cause after telling me he’s spending that much he goes “Actually I spend more on marketing” I have no idea what words but I think this brings me new patients and that’s really important for me and as a one off I decided, okay let me see what I can do to help out. So helped him build up a website and did some tracking. Actually did a lot of tracking because i had no clue what i was doing as far as marketing is concern. Never done it before, right? So for my sanity’s sake i wanted to make sure that if something was not working and if I could measure it, right? Would the advent of ad words, right? Things are measurable. One of the things that I noticed was it was hard to measure as soon as someone picked up the phone call and that’s sorta where the Call Sumo journey started really early on. So I started measuring phone the calls by making sure when somebody calls in then that call gets recorded and that were able to tie the phone number to the specific search charm, the specific search channels. After 3 months we kinda compared what Yellow Pages was doing for him and what the other stuff that I was doing. Most of it was, you know, trial and error and just wanted to see, we’ve gotten them 1,000 phone call and Yellow Pages had gotten them 56. Our calls were all recorded, I listened to every single one of them. Basically classified every call by hand and it was painful to listen to a thousand phone calls and we continued doing that for a while cause that was the only way I knew for sure that this ad words thing is working or this order thing is not working, right? It’s giving you the wrong kind of issues.
Justin: So did you, I’m just gonna jump in. So when you say 56 calls from yellow pages and 1,000 phone calls from you were you running ad words, were you doing SEO, what direct mail?
Ahmed: We were doing primarily online, right? No direct mail or anything but we’re doing we’re trying out various things online, paid and unpaid, organic and things like ad words. Facebook ads didn’t really exist back then so no Facebook ads. But organic, ad words through Google and we did some Bing ads as well, or Yahoo ads back then. The thousand calls though is misleading because this is where, you know, the tech geek side of me really comes out. A thousand calls but only 100 of those were new patients, right? And that’s the benefit of having listened to the calls. I realized a whole bunch of existing patients were calling. Tons of marketers were calling, right?
Justin: I wish you guys wouldn’t hang up on me like that. I keep sending you emails, my assistant in India keeps sending you emails. I wish you’d stop cooking spam, please.
Ahmed: So, yeah. The 56 phone calls from Yellow Pages, it wasn’t recorded so if it was anything similar to the rest of the data, right? It wasn’t 56 new patients, you can bet that much. And then there were others who called to check on the price but didn’t come in, right? So there was a lot of data there and more importantly now there was a path to improving it every month and month over month his marketing improved. The funny thing is i still didn’t think i really had a solution, you know i was looking for more technically challenging problems to solve which I eventually found in this. There are two other dentist at the Thanksgiving dinner going “Hey you know this Yellow Pages thing isn’t working for us. So and so said that you were helping them out, could you do that for us too?” So as I started doing more and more of these I started getting dentists across the country who wanted help and I actually sought out dentists across the country primarily so I could get data points from different locals and different geography’s and then I could start classifying those calls and I used the word classified because that’s a machine learning term. To me this seemed like a problem that could be solved through AI, through machine learning. Predictive analytic specifically, you know? And we tried out Algorithms to try to automate a lot of the marketing and to give recommendations on what to do. It took about a year and a half before we saw the results. It burned through a lot of money before that but about a year and a half later this one dentist was getting 70 new patients a month through mostly algorithmic stuff and you know the dentist called me up. I thought he was just gonna call and yell at me because I hadn’t looked at his account and a little while he called me up and he said “Whatever you’re doing its amazing” I’m not doing any of the marketing side.
Justine: What, sorry, when you say Algorithmicly, just for the listeners who are a little less tech savvy. Are you talking about SEO Algorithm? Or are you talking about, explain to us what you mean by Algorithmic.
Ahmed: Algorithmicly meaning, so if you have a whole bunch of calls coming in and from something like ad words were we know which key words got you the calls as a matter of fact in our early days even through organic search we could tell which key words got you the calls, alright. Which something like ad words or most paid ads online you can immediately go back and say “Hey i like these calls, I want more of these so I’m gonna bid higher for these key words.” So the Algorithm does, you have to identify initially that which calls you think are good because not calls are created equal. Once you identify that, basically our system can send signals to google ad words letting them know I’m willing to bid more for these key words so as they all start coming in more and more kinda starts to accelerate that.
Justin: So you guys actually, you’re developing software to automate the process of bidding on ad words, is that correct?
Ahmed: Well, actually sorry. I went off into a tangent there. That’s one of the things our software does.
Justin: Yeah.
Ahmed: Our software, Call Sumo is actually the call tracking system itself. The call tracking system that can tell that this is a new patient, this is an existing patient that was our big break. So remember before we had to sit there and listen to every phone call and try to figure out what it was so the Algorithmic marketing is great except, you know, if you’re sitting there listening to every single call, you know. You’re not going to do anything else. So what we ended doing is we ended up integrating what practice management systems like Dentrix, Eaglesoft, and what have you. Integrate it with most of the practice management systems out there and we started getting data out, about for the existing patients so when a call comes in we can do a look up and we can say “Hey is this an existing patient or is this a lead?”
Justin: Right. Now practice management software’s open demo?
Ahmad: Yes, Absolutely.
Justin: Okay, Cool. Right on. Yeah, that’s really interesting. Okay, so if we could maybe just go over a checklist really quick of all the different things that Call Sumo does.
Ahmad: So Call Sumo is call tracking, essentially it will tell how many calls you’re getting, it records the phone calls, what’s different about it from other traditional call tracking system is that it can identify whether the person who’s calling is an existing patient or a new patient. That sounds like a really simple thing but it’s actually pretty difficult to do. It can then, on top of that, it can give you recommendations, it can stir you towards marketing that’s working, you know. Tell you what to do and another big feature of Call Sumo- what our customers are really excited about is the caller ID feature. So before your phone even rings, if you’re using Call Sumo, right? And a new customer calls you even before the phone even rings. There’s a dialog box that pops up on your computer and it lets you know that there is a new patient on the line and it lets you know what they’re calling about.
Justin: Wow
Ahmed: So before you pick up the phone you know you got a dental implant patient on the line.
Justin: That’s excellent. Now, how do you do that? Is that through tracking the key words? So like if you’re entering Implant Dentist San Francisco, California and they click on that. That keyword now goes to the office and it shows what keyword they clicked or how does that work?
Ahmed: Right, so one of them is keywords the other thing is as soon as you go to any of our websites we start tracking you. We use cookies to track you as a visitor and the phone number that you’d see we have tracking script that switches the phone numbers around. So the phone number that you see is based on where you’re coming from.
Justin: Right.
Ahmed: So, I’m sorry, so when somebody clicks on that ad word we know that they clicked on those key words. However, somebody comes in from organic we can tell what they were hanging out on your dental implants page or that they were hanging out on your contacts page or they were checking out the doctor. There’s a lot of data that we have available and we use that data to infer what they were likely looking at but the big thing is before you pick up the phone you know you have a new patient on the line and more importantly, let’s say you’re on the phone already with the lab and you have an existing patient on the line, you’re really busy and you’re thinking about not answering that phone call. Those new patients aren’t call you back again, right? And for marketers it drives marketers crazy like okay I’m getting you these leads and you’re not even answering the calls. This almost eliminates that because it pops up the dialog in front of the front desk and goes “You should take this call, right?” And then the front desk is able to identify that call to us as well after the call is done they can say “Hey this was a really great lead, send me more of these” or they can say “No it wasn’t a really good lead because it’s an existing patient” or as a marketer that’s calling and those take different paths. So the system is intelligent, it’s always learning. Learning about call behavior, you know? What marketing’s working for you, what channels more existing patients call from?
Justin: Excellent. Now that’s really cool, I mean we’ve got so many dentists who pay for SEO and they do it and as someone that does SEO for dentists I pull my hair out like you said, you know “Why aren’t you answering the phone?” But the thing is a lot of dentists think, kinda going off on a tangent here, a lot of dentists think SEO is something you have to do. It’s not something you have to do and it’s not for every dental practice. I mean if you did, if every dental practice is doing SEO and they all have a website that was great. There would be no way to stand out. It would be half those dental practices are completely wasting their money. So, you know, selecting the right medium be it Google, Facebook, direct mail. Whatever medium you’re using, ad words, you gotta find the right fit for your practice and by tracing the results you’re able to test this different mediums and see which one works for your practice. So i really like the data driven. I like this, I think that AI and machine learning and all this, I think this is the way of the future. I think the way that search engines are going, it’s gonna become more sentient as time goes on. It’s gonna be more human like, it’s gonna be the real brands. It’s not gonna be the companies that are just like “Hey here’s five grand a month, get me ranked for this keyword.” It’s not gonna work that way as easily in the future and I think that what you’re doing, Ahmed, is really important for dental practices to test different mediums and see, okay whats really working because sometimes you just don’t know until you test and you know it’s funny. Even if one of your competitors is, say another local dentist is using direct mail effectively, that doesn’t mean its gonna work effectively for you because there are so many variables so you could test it and then say it doesn’t work because you tested it and you tracked it and you realized “You know what, direct mail isn’t for us” it works for Dr. down-the-street but it doesn’t work for us and the fact that, you know, you tell this story about the dentist writing a 3,000 dollar check for Yellow Pages. Could you tell our guests what year was this. Was this 1862 or what year was that?
Ahmed: Yeah, so. This was about four year ago when this happened.
Justin: Wow, it wasn’t even the phone book with like written with the quill and the payers
Ahmed: No it was definitely pretty recently. I was surprised that yellow pages works. Now not to rag on Yellow Pages because being in the whole quantitative marketing space what we started seeing is Yellow Pages does actually work in Florida and in certain places. A lot of retired communities here, right? That will use the Yellow Pages and like you said the whole quantitative approach to marketing is crucial and what we’re trying to do is make that easier. When we first started doing it, right? Me being a geek I had to put in like 100% of my time to figure this thing out but that’s no longer the case, right? With our software you’re able to figure out whether someone is a new patient or an existing patient within, you know, minutes before it used to take me hours to listen to calls, classify the calls, figure out the reports, figure out what to do. But quantitative marketing has been there, the big companies are using it. Amazon uses it, all the time. Algorithmic marketing and something that the companies were using but a lot of these technologies really haven’t trickled down to the guys that really needed the most like dentists, like small business sellers, right? On the other plus side of it one of the segments we’re really excited about is marketing agencies have taken very very positively to this because most of the marketing agencies work really hard and this really helps them prove to their customers what they’re doing and the fact that their marketing efforts are bringing in actual patients. You know, just like you said it might be tearing your hair out- why aren’t we answering the phone and also sometimes it out of sight out of mind, right? The caller ID being there makes it much more front and center but hey, you know, my dumb marketing guy is working.
Justin: Yeah, yeah. It’s so important and I really like it. I’d invite the account ability because I have in the past had clients in the past who believed that SEO wasn’t working for them and it’s because they weren’t answering the phone and you know one of my biggest qualms with SEO, I believed that SEO was a really really good way for many practices to build their business the way they want. But one of the qualms I had with SEO is it’s tough to track compared to ad words, compared to direct mail, compared to slapping a tracking number on it. It’s very difficult to track it geometrically but what you’re talking about is really interesting to me because if you’re able to see based on the data- this person spent 2 min and 33 seconds on the dental implant page and that affects, you know, what’s shown to the front desk. You know I would say, here’s the thing, Dental Marketing is an easy sell to dentist but is a really tough sell to front desks that don’t have any incentive, who are already working their hands to the bone. They’re not gonna see they’re not gonna share the profits with the dentists. You know, just coming at you unscripted here, totally unscripted, a question for you, and let me know what you think cause this is really interesting. For the front desk who’s watching this show- Why should he or she care about your software?
Ahmed: So we have actually had a, I don’t want to say the most enthusiasm but one of the top most enthusiastic users of our software are the front desk because it makes their life so much easier, right. Yeah, because I think about it, right? How hard is it at every single time the phone rings you pick up the phone and you answer in a very artificial voice, right? And you try to keep a checklist of a million things in your head to say it like this, right? Versus if I knew that just was calling me, right? Just like a caller ID on your phone, you pick up the phone and go “Hey Justin, how’s it going?” There are systems like we were able to identify existing patients but you know their system like we have that you specifically go after good customer service. So before you pick up the phone you know that it’s an existing patient calling. So the benefit that they have is when should they really bring all of their training to bear, right? When should they really bring their A game when that dialog pops up and says lead, you bring your A game, alright?
Justin: Great, yeah and so by A game you mean it’s not an existing patient who’s calling to cancel.
Ahmed: Right.
Justin: It’s that you paid to generate as a lead.
Ahmed: Right, and even though some practices do profit-sharing, other don’t but regardless I think once when someone works at a certain place they have that pride of working there and making sure that business as a whole team does not well. So as soon as we get this thing set up we see the conversion numbers go up because now they’re incentivized by knowing that “Hey this is somebody that the doctor paid money to call. I better pick up the call, answer it well, and make sure they come in, become a patient, right? And you know because if you don’t get new patients your business isn’t going to be around for long, right?
Justin: Right, and that’s something I think there’s a disconnect in some dental offices and this is something that you know, a coach who understand internal marketing and team building of things like that. We’ve had some people on the show who do that sort of thing but you know I think that’s something that can be worked on with the dentist, between the dentist and their team. But definitely like you said. I mean when it comes to that cost of raised living, you now that the cost of living raise and things like that, you know? It’s like at that time that you go to the dentist and you say you know, look I deserve a raise. Look, here’s why, because here’s all this data every time someone calls and it’s a new patient. I pick up the phone. That is hugely powerful. I mean that is something that every dentist should respond to. If your front desk and you’re watching this, this is something really important to say look of most dental offices. We had Fred Joyal on the show the other day and was telling me “You know a lot of dental offices, they pick up the phone three out of four times” What that fourth call? A lot of times it’s a new patient.
Ahmed: If you’re running a business you really got to be better about it and that’s exactly what we’re bringing to the table for small business, for dentists is that extra bit of technology that helps you become more professional, more accountable, and you know in the end it help you make lots more money.
Justin: Right. Well excellent man. Well, hey I’ll give you a last word here. I’d love to have the viewer’s find out where they can find you and what you can offer them.
Ahmed: So they can find us on callsumo.com, online. And you know we have intercom set up meeting, we have live chat. Somebody has any questions we’re happy to answer. We’ve been having quite a few people singing up ever since we got featured on dental town and we’re lucky to be getting a lot of referrals so bear with us for being a little bit slow in responding but yeah, you can find us on callsumo.com, please send me a contact request or just chat with us online. As far as the specials I wanted to offer an exclusive dental marketing guy special.
Justin: Yes.
Ahmed: 50% off on out setup cost and I’m going to send you the code for it so dental marketing guy special fifty percent off the setup costs.
Justin: Excellent, thank you thank you. Man, that’s so great and I’m sure the viewers appreciate that. Guys this might be worth checking out because tracking your results. I keep hammering this, this is so important. Yeah, huge honor to have you. It was really educational. I love the story about the 3,000 dollar Yellow Pages. Man that’s some funny stuff right there. I mean not funny, it’s actually kind of serious but I thank you very much and you know, to you who might have questions, you know if you’re not ready to call sumo. Maybe you should just put some questions below. If there’s anything that we didn’t touch on that you’re wondering about. I don’t care if you’re a dentist, front desk, dental hygienist, dental assistant. Let us know what you’re thinking and let us know if Ahmad or myself can help you in anyway. If you find this on the dental marketing guy blog, if you find it on social media, dental town. Wherever you find it please feel free to reach out. There’s nothing wrong with asking a question and we’d love to hear from you. So once again thank you, Ahmed.
Ahmed: Thank you, Justin .
Justin: And thank you for watching the dental marketing guy show.
The best dental marketing blogs
Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin the dental marketing guy and today we’re gonna talk about how you can build great content.
Talk about what you’re passionate about, that’s it. That’s the show, go do it? Seriously, you can blog, you can start a podcast, you can say, do silly cat videos at your office. Actually, don’t do that, just do whatever you want. But seriously just do it.
This is getting a little weird. Should we cut now? Why is the background black anyways? Am I supposed to look like some SEO wizard or something? Okay let’s close by saying something like keep it up! Did that look good?
Learn more tips and tricks at the best dental marketing blog.
I’m the dental marketing guy, today a very controversial topic. We’re talking about whether or not an SEO company can guarantee results and more importantly what it means for your practice.
What if I told you that no one knew how to rank your dental website on search engines? So you might as well just quit before you even start. Sounds pretty bleak, right? Well on that front many dentists feel that one horror story after another about dentists who hire one shady company who failed to deliver results to other accounts of how enigmatic SEO is to the dentist who ranks highly but doesn’t generate any new patients from things can look pretty bleak all right. That’s why I decided that the best way to help dentists like you gain faith in using SEO as a viable predictable dental marketing tool. I should be able to assess the risk on your behalf. How do I do this? By conducting a comprehensive, deliberate analysis of your unique SEO. By forming an SEO strategy before we commit to a long term SEO effort. We’re giving you a fighting chance to select the best search marketing solution for your practice which, by the way maybe doing nothing for SEO. We may be able to rank you effortlessly by simply launching a new website or making a few coding tweaks. We may need to provide a consistent, aggressive effort towards SEO that transcends what most dentist do. It all depends on the many variables in your unique market, your unique practice, the people who you work with and what other dentist in your are willing to invest to rank highly on search engines. Don’t allow the big franchises who wish to defeat you with doc in the box style practices which only seek to devalue the noble profession of dentistry. Take a stand for your place as a valuable doctor of repute and find out what it will take for you to rank. The first step is to provide some basic information on dental marketing and allow me to personally return your email or call with valuable information that will surely shape the way you approach dental marketing forever.
Learn more tips and tricks at my dental marketing blog!
Is live chat right for your dental website? That’s the question before us today on the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin, let’s delve into this.
There has been much discussion on the general town forums about whether or not live chat works to gain new patients. Whether or not its HIPPA complaint and whether or not it’s worth your time to train your staff. To answer live chat enquiries from prospective new patients. While I believe, based on other dentist experiences that live chat is a viable idea worth pursuing. We should approach this marketing issue the same way we would approach search engine optimization, web design, direct mail, or any other medium.
First of all the fact that a certain medium is successful for one dentist is not a reason to believe the same results will be replicated for your practice. If you’re taking a comprehensive dental marketing approach, you don’t have to worry about every shiny object is being the Hail Mary for your practice. You should approach each valuable idea with caution. But also with the confidence that if you don’t play, you can’t win. Live chat may be a great solution for your general website but it all depends on your target market which services you offer and what your overarching online marketing goals are with you website. Whether or not live chat is right for can only be, definitely answered one way- testing. Why not give it a try for your practice today? If you’d like help setting this up I’d be happy to point you in the right direction. Lots of companies offer this service but only some appear to lay claim to being HIPPA compliant. Among those who do claim to be HIPPA compliant, I’m not going outside my scope to directly recommend a specific company as far as HIPPA is concerned.
That’s outside my field of expertise in online marketing. However, there are experts and those kinds of experts can be found in our Dental Marketing Guy show interview series. Feel free to subscribe to the Dental Marketing Guy Show on YouTube to learn more from the experts in every field of dentistry, from Howard Farran to Tuan Pham to Christopher Phelps. Everyone who has value to add your practice is delivering their knowledge to helping you succeed in you dental practice. Subscribe today to learn more and feel free to reach out if there’s a question you want answered.
Check out for more info at https://dentalmarketing.blog/
18 SEO FAQs
Welcome to the dental marketing guy show this is a special episode for those of you who are interested in learning more about what SEO is, how it works, how do you choose a company. There’s been a lot of discussion on dentaltown.com in the marketing section of the forums and I would really like to encourage those of you who are confused or perhaps frozen and analysis to consider this episode an answer to some of the more basic frequently asked questions regarding search engine optimization or as we call it SEO.
Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show, I’m the dental marketing guy your SEO expert on dental website. In response to much debate and much confusion going on dentaltown.com in the forums and really the entire dental industry at large. I’m offering 18 answers to your 18 most frequently asked questions about dental SEO let’s delve into this.
Number one most frequently asked question by dentists about their SEO- What is SEO? SEO is an acronym for search engine optimization and search engine optimization is the process of making you more visible on search engines.
Number two, what’s the difference between paid search results and organic search results? Organic search results are those which you are ranked due to the merits of what your website is about. They are not pay per click paid results require you to pay money to Google being in Yahoo in order to appear in search results.
Number three, what are Meta descriptions and do they still matter? Meta descriptions are the descriptions which appear in this screenshot which show you below the title that is clickable on your website a short description which users can read when they are searching for your dental services. Do they still matter? of course they matter because this affects what people expect to see when they click on your website however for search engine ranking purposes stuffing keywords into the made a description doesn’t work as well as a used you and you should avoid that.
Number four, should I optimize my domain name by having keywords in it? It depends, keywords in your domain name do make an impact on your search engine rankings the catch is it depends on your campaign. The way you craft your SEO campaign depends on whether you should have keywords in your domain name. for example, having a keyword of your city or dental or dentist in your domain name may initially help you rank to a certain extent however this should not be confused with comprehensive SEO services there is a limit to how much the keyword in the domain name can help you and in fact some of the best ranked websites have no keywords in them at all and that’s because they taken a comprehensive branding and SEO approach what you don’t want to do is buy an exact match domain name. for instance dentist your city.com or.net or .anything else this is because the exact match domain may artificially rank your website for a temporary period of time however it can have ramifications for how your campaign performs in the future and be sure to contact an SEO professional who you trust before making the decision on which domain name you should buy.
Number five, how do I know if I’m using the right amount of keywords on my website? This is a difficult question to answer because it depends on your unique case. The general rule of thumb is don’t stuff keywords into your text artificially. Make sure the content is natural, that it flows that if you are having coffee with someone reading from your website script, that it would sound normal. There’s no specific magical keyword density for every dental practice instead of looking for some arbitrary number of keywords in your dental website, think about what the user feels and how they are interpreting what you’re saying on your website. The number one thing we want to keep in mind is case acceptance and conversion from browsers to buyers. That’s what matters don’t worry about SEO, if you’re working with an SEO professional who you trust you’ll get the keywords just right.
Number six, what’s the difference between inbound links and internal links? internal links are those which are on your website they link from your blog post from internal pages, your services pages, they go to the homepage and away from the homepage to other pages. By linking from your home page to, for instance, an Invisalign page you’re pulling authority from the homepage to the invisalign page. This helps the invisalign page rank highly for those types of keywords. Inbound links are very important, every time someone links to your website your search engine rankings can be impacted, usually significantly.
Number seven, how many internal links should I have? Just like keyword stuffing should be avoided also linking too much should also be avoided. Just focus on the user and have your web designer use their discretion on how best to link the inner pages of your website. It would also behoove you during the web development process to have someone who understands SEO to help guide the web designer on the best decision to make with respect to interlinking of your dental website.
Number eight, where is the pipe symbol on my keyboard? here in this screenshot you can see the Apple and PC versions of the pipe key as noted in our YouTube videos this helps you separate sentences or certain keywords so that users can more easily read the title tag. Making it more click-worthy getting you more website traffic.
Number nine, do I need to know code myself to do my own SEO? You don’t need to know coding to do every aspect of SEO but certain on page elements do require some coding knowledge. Be sure to work with an SEO professional who understands both the coding on page SEO side and the off page factors which help you rank highly.
Number ten, what is robots.txt? Robots.txt is a page on your website which should be created to help search engine bots understand which pages to crawl which pages to not crawl this help search engine bots become efficient in knowing exactly the content that you want indexed on search engines so that your patients can find you for the keywords that they are entering.
Number eleven, what is the site maps.XML file? This is a file on your website which help search engine bots easily navigate your website.
Number twelve, what’s the difference between being indexed and being crawled by search engine bots? Being crawled by search engine bots means that your website has been visited by Google, Bing, or Yahoos so called spiders. They crawl on your website to see what it’s about. From that crawling they make a decision on whether or not those pages should be indexed. Indexation is when your website is able to be found on search engines.
Number thirteen, how can I see which pages on my website or indexed? It as easy as typing in sight S ITE: www.yourdomain.com, whatever it may be to find the pages on your site that are indexed by search engines.
Number fourteen, why do my images need alt text? Alt text is what you label your images. This is very important because search engine bots can easily read what your images are about. By using alt text you are telling search engine bots what your photos are all about.
Number fifteen, how long does it take to see SEO results? This depends and you should have an SEO professional assess your unique situation. some of the factors which impact your rankings and how fast you can see SEO results depend on these things- how much content you create, the quality of that content meaning how much users engage with that content, and if you’re a big or a small site with lots of domain authority or very little. The age of your domain name also impact your SEO. bigger websites with more pages tend to outrank smaller websites with less pages.
Number sixteen, very important question. Should I hire someone to do my SEO for me? Hiring someone to do your SEO is a very big decision and it can be extremely beneficial in gaining you new patients. However, there are some dangers, if your SEO company doesn’t know the modern rules of dental SEO, beware. make sure that your SEO company understands the modern rules of SEO for more information on what the modern rules of dental SEO are check out my blog post of the top 100 factors on dental SEO.
Number seventeen, what’s a good goal to set for my SEO campaign? Typically if a site is very low ranked on search engines, meaning it’s under page 3 this would best be measured by increased rankings. You’re not going to get new patients immediately from going from page 10 to page 2. But we will be able to measure the progress through those rankings. Once you do reach page 1 the goals can change a bit, the number of organic visitors meaning those who come through Google, Bing, and Yahoos unpaid search results is a good figure to look at. ultimately the only figure that really matters is how many new patients are you getting from your SEO campaign and even beyond that, what’s the case acceptance rate these are the figures that really matter the most your, bottom line.
Number eighteen, what has changed about SEO in the last few years? A lot has changed and many of the people who were doing SEO four or five years ago are no longer doing SEO. This is because SEO has become a real dental marketing strategy not something that is easily done in isolation from your dental practice. Be sure to work with an SEO company who understands dental marketing, this will help you increase case acceptance and ultimately help your new patient flow.
I hope these answers have helped you in your dental marketing campaign as always for more information please visit my dental marketing agency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnPeRvEFBq8
Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show, I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy, and today I am joined by a guest who is very well known in the dental field as a CPA, today we have Jonathan Vanhorn CPA specializing in dentist. So your practice, he knows the numbers, he knows if you introduce yourself to him, he’s already going to know things about the dental industry, that no other CPA that you’ve ever worked with in the past, is going to know. Jonathan, how’re you?
Jonathan: I’m doing fantastic, how’re you Justin?
Justin: I’m doing great, I’m happy to have you on, it’s a huge honor. You actually have your own podcast too, Dentist Metrics, is that it?
Jonathan: yeah, the podcast is called ‘start your dental practice’; the name of our company is Dentist Metrics.
Justin: Got you, cool. Well, and our listeners can check that out too, I know you’ve done some interviews with some pretty big names out there, so glad to have you.
You know I was hoping to go over what your company does for dentists, and how you can help out our listeners.
Jonathan: sure, absolutely. So, dentist metrics core focus is helping dental practice owners understand their numbers. We find that, if you don’t understand your numbers, you don’t understand your business. So, we spent a lot and time and energy trying to train our Doc’s to understand their numbers, how that relates to business – so that they can make better business decisions, which ultimately leads them to making more money.
Justin: pretty straight forward.
Jonathan: yeah, and we also do the tax stuff because I have a CPA, I’ve had a lot of experiences as a tax professional, so we do the accounting functions for our general practices, so basically, if you think about business as a big system of functions, then we also try to make sure that our clients don’t have to worry about the accounting function, so we help with all of that. And then, we also help with taxes and making sure people pay the minimal amount possible.
Justin: excellent, and that’s, you know, taxes, nobody likes to pay them, but you actually, you have kind of an interesting philosophy on paying taxes; could you tell our listeners about that?
Jonathan: yeah, absolutely. Well, I said it in the kind of pre-interview is that, there’s an old saying that ‘if anybody ever wants to have me pay their taxes for them, if you just give me all of your income’ so if you want to make that trade, I’ll make that trade all day long. So, I personally, don’t like paying taxes as much as the next guy, however, paying taxes is a good thing, because it means you made a bunch of money – yes you can use some little tips and tricks to try and minimize that, but you got to look at it as a whole of, you know ‘is right now the time I need to be sending taxes, or do I need to defer these right off into the future years where I don’t have to pay as many taxes in that year?’ and then there’s retirement plan that comes into it, and things like that, it’s a whole strategy that we try and make sure our Doc’s understand. And at Dentist Metrics, we focus mainly on new practice owners, it’s the reason for ‘start your own dental practice’ – the podcast, we’ve got something like 30-35 episodes out there now of different interviews with people that are doctors who have bought a practice in the past, we talk about what challenges they face, how they get past it, how they run their practice, what’s working for them. And then we also have consultants and things like that on there as well, to help them educate our listeners on what’s going on in the industry right now.
Justin: nice, yeah, I mean, maybe you can – we just got done with taxes at the time of this episode airing, so you know, maybe this is a really good timing for the episode, if you think about it, because next year, believe it or not, you’re going to have to pay taxes then to, so maybe do you have like 1 or 2 quick tips on like, how dentists can alleviate themselves from paying unnecessary taxes, or maybe how some dentists tend to pay too much?
Jonathan: sure, so the best prepare for not paying taxes is being prepared, it’s being ready; it’s having a strategy and having a game plan for what we’re going to do, is our strategy this year tax minimization? Is our strategy tax deferral? Is it retirement? Is it preserving our cash, so that whenever we pay that inevitable tax bill, we have tax available? is it too, you know, make sure that our cash is – do we want to go ahead and pay in the minimal amount to make sure we’re penalty proof? It’s really just being prepared and having maybe a strategy with your tax professional, and your tax professional needs to have an understanding of what is going on in your business, so that they can have that whole holistic approach, where they know the entire picture, not just one segment of the picture, which is tax.
Justin: that’s excellent. You know, I always find it really interesting, a lot of dental practices will tell me that there accountant gives them advice on what kind of money to spend on marketing, or whether or not their marketing is working; do you ever touch on that topic?
Jonathan: so we definitely teach our clients to look at the marketing, to say ‘is this campaign being fruitful, are we spending our money, are we putting our dollars to work, and then bring our dollars back with them a bunch of their friends? Is that working are we getting an ROI, return on investment?’ so, we teach our guys to look at that. I don’t look at, some mindset out there that advertising is something that, you know, it can only be equal to, or less then, 3 and a half percent of total gross revenue, and if you go over that, then you’ve broken your budget, and you’re going to crash and burn and fail miserably. I don’t look at it that way, I look at advertising as a true investment, it’s something that, while it goes into our total profit and loss, we actually have that in its own separate line item to say ‘look, this is advertising, it’s separate’ and whenever I’m discussing those numbers with clients, I always tell people, if that number’s high, I say ‘good for you, let’s just make sure that its working’. If you want to spend 20% of total revenue on advertising, as long as that’s bring, your spending those dollars to get you more dollars, then you can do that all day long, it’s an investment. So, from the internal revenue standards, advertising is a normal, necessary, ordinary business expense where you get a deduction for it, and it’s an expense, but in my mind it’s more of an investment, its more about using that money smartly, then using that money just to fill in a hole on a profit and loss.
Justin: right, excellent. Well I tell you what, I might separate myself from a lot of people in this industry, because I do SEO for dentists, you know, I might separate myself because, a lot of times I will say ‘look, we got to track the results, you got to hold me accountable, I have to get you a good ROI, the numbers have to line up’ and a lot of people who do SEO, or do online marketing for dentist, their attitude is ‘look, this is something you have to do, you just have to do it’ and I’m always asking dentists to think about ‘well let’s talk about ROI, let’s talk about maybe this isn’t the right fit for you, maybe direct mail, or maybe nothing, maybe word of mouth, maybe internal marketing is what’s right for your practice’ So, I might be a little bit different in that way. Do you ever kind of butt heads with maybe not directly, but with the marketing at all, they say ‘you have to do this, you have to invest in marketing’, do you ever look at the numbers and you’re like ‘look doctor, it’s been 5 years you’ve been doing SEO, it’s not bringing you an ROI, maybe it’s time to try something else’ Do you ever give that kind of advice? How does that work?
Jonathan: well most of the time it’s really looking at the strategy of the practice saying ‘if we are doing SEO, number 1 – is it working?’ but I guess that’s actually number 2, number 1 is; why are we doing SEO? Is it because there are certain types of patients were trying to find – were using the internet resource – you know, the google search engine result position; is it strategy? And are we using that for the right reasons? Are we doing it to get new patients in? Or are we doing it just so that people can find us if they type in our name into google? It’s really more looking at the reason we’re doing that, and then looking at the results. But no, I don’t, I haven’t butted heads with many marketers because I try to educate my clients enough to where they know what they need and they can, as long as the person is getting results, then we’re fine.
Justin: excellent, well hey, any parting words? I know this is a shorter interview; we both have valuable time, as do our listeners. But yeah, what I’m trying to do on this show is just give more value per minute than any other dental marketing show out there, if you have any parting words of wisdom, I’m sure our listeners would love to hear from you on that.
Jonathan: sure. So, you asked for a couple of tax tips, number 1 is definitely being prepared, its definitely understanding what your strategy is for taxes for the year, and having a good relationship with your CPA or your accounting firm, or whomever, to have an understanding of what we’re doing and why. Understand your strategy. In business, `strategy is imperative to be used to guide you alone with were you’re going in your practice.
Another tip is to make sure that your keeping your books in order, make sure that your keeping things in line, your keeping your accounting records in a good shape, because if you don’t keep them in good shape, and you’re having to go back in time to remember where it is that you spent money on, then there’s a good chance that you’re not going to remember, or there’s a good chance that you’re not going to be able to find them for next year, there’s a good chance that your CPA is not going to know where it is, and that’s when mistakes happen, mistakes happen when time gets away from us and we haven’t been keeping up with things. You wouldn’t believe the amount of tax returns I’ve reviewed in the past that we’re just not created correctly because of a miscommunication with the client. So, all of our clients are – from Dentist Metrics – are monthly clients, we don’t have any clients that we only do once a year, everybody is a -you know, where a part of the team, we try to make sure that they understand their numbers and that they can use them and pull hints out of the their business to be able to do better and make more money. So that’s the second tip is; keeping your records in good order, because there is nothing that’s going to make you spend more in taxes, then a mistake, in your accounting just making a mistake in how you’ve classified something, whether that be, you put money in personally inject to the bank account, and that got axed, there’s only recorded it as income, which you really don’t want to pay taxes on money you put into the company, because that’s just out 1 pocket and paying uncle Sam for no reason.
And then really the next tips are just having that conversation with your accountant. Now, do you have to have a dental CPA in order to do your taxes? No, absolutely not. I personally believe that a great tax prepare will have you paying the same amount in taxes as any dental CPA out there, and I feel like, the way that the CPA is going to earn the money that you’re paying them, because you typically pay dental CPA’s a little bit more than an average CPA, is that they’ll understand your business, they’ll understand the cash flows of your business, and they’ll understand where you are, and where you’re coming from, because they’ve had that experience across multiple other clients. So, I would definitely say that you can use a CPA for those purposes, but don’t go into it just thinking ‘hey, I’m going to go to this guy because I want to save all this money in taxes’, the difference between a fantastic CPA that’s a dental CPA, and a pretty good normal everyday CPA, is not that far of a difference from a dollars out stand point, the difference is that you’re paying then dental CPA more, so that they should be giving you more value, which is understanding your business, and then also, potentially giving you more of his time because he can communicate with you more efficiently. So he knows how to ask specific questions to your industry, because most average CPA’s, what you’re paying for is there time, they spend time on your work and you give them money in return for that time, so they do that with a thousand other industries, so they have to go through very quickly, down the list to get through people, so they learn to ask the same questions over and over and over again – to multiple industries, so they don’t get confused, and so that some of those little nuances might of got missed, if they are an average CPA, if they’re a really good CPA, that’s a general CPA, they might be able to ask you ‘hey, I know that you just purchased this practice just 3 years ago, we penalty proofed you last year, you have better income last year, but you bought a CAD/CAM this year, so we know that we can use some 179 depreciation, but your cash flow is going to be lower, let’s look at your game plan ETC ETC ETC’.
So those are really the 3 tips: number 1 – be prepared, number 2 – make sure your accounting records are in order, and number 3 – is really understand why your aligning with the CPA, and if it is a dental CPA, make sure they’ve got the whole game plan set up for you, because that’s really what you’re paying for.
Justin: yeah, you know, one of the things that kind of annoys me, I got to admit, one of the things that annoys me about CPA’s is, a lot of times they act like, if you’re not spending money on marketing – that’s no big deal, but if you are – it’s like a cost, they view it that way. But it sounds like you understand the dental industry well enough to know, based on your experience, what that CAD/CAM will mean to their practice in terms of ROI and stuff like that. And that’s a really good point, that’s actually what I was thinking is, you know, the efficiency, you’re paying per hour, typically for a CPA, you’re paying for their time in one way or another, and yeah, so you actually, you’ve really cut to the core of why it’s good to hire a specialist. You know I have an episode about the difference between a dental SEO specialist, and a general Specialist, and how the way you earn back links and the efficiency of how SEO is done, based on the relationships that you have in dental, can completely change the results, and how fast you get results in SEO. So, I definitely relate to that, I think that’s huge, is, you know, a lot of people would say, because I – my background is in SEO for any business, and then I became the dental marketing guy because I recognized how important it is to specialize, that efficiency that you’re talking about, it’s huge.
So, yeah, really quickly, where can the viewers find you, yeah, so you got your website, you got your podcast; maybe we just plug those real quick?
Jonathan: sure, so the website is; DentistMetrics.com, it’s one of those whenever you could come up with a name, your like ‘eh that makes perfect sense’, because I help dentists understand their numbers, but then as I’ve gone through, I’ve realized that people have different spellings for the word ‘metrics’, so it’s dentist; DENTIST – metrics; METRICS .com. that’s my normal website, the podcast is; StartYourDentalPractice.com so start your – YOUR dental practise.com, it helps a lot of people understand more about getting into the entrepreneurial world of being a dentist, we have a lot a people that come on that help people understand how to purchase a practice, or maybe start a practice, or partnership, or however it is, we try and make sure people are well educated in that regard. And then, you know, also I have the email; Jonathan@DentistMetrics.com, and I am obsessively glued to that, I’m learning a little bit better to turn the phone off after 5, you know, where I am, but if you have clients in about 15 states, I’m in Little Rock, Arkansas, so I’m usually in this office, we meet with all of our clients virtually to be able to better serve, so that we’re not spending time travelling, we’re spending time helping people. So we don’t have to worry about actually going back and forth, we use skype and things like that to be able to have face to face interviews, or face to face discussions, very consistently, and you don’t have any out of pocket travel costs and you don’t have to pay hourly for me traveling across the country to come in and say ‘Hi’, and then talk to you about exactly the same thing we would have talked about over skype.
Justin: there you go, well cool. Hey, so thanks for coming on man, this is really huge value, and we’ll link, don’t worry about the spelling, to our viewers, we’ll link to the website, as you know, that’s good for SEO, and we’ll do that for you.
Yeah, if you have any questions for Jonathan, for myself, feel free to reach out, if you see this on dental town, YouTube, social media, where ever you find it, the dental marketing guy blog, just feel free to reach out with questions and I’ll make sure they get to Jonathan, or if they’re for me, I’ll answer those gladly.
Thanks again Jonathan.
Jonathan: just real quick also, I’ve got a, if your listeners are interests, if not I guess you can edit this out, I do have a guide called the 15 numbers that will make or break your dental practice, and it’s a guide its about 10 or 15 pages, it’s got 15 of the most important metrics for dental practices, what you should be looking for, what you should do if you aren’t meeting those metrics as well, some helpful tips of how to do better in your dental practice with those. So, its guide I have that normally we charge for, but if you’d like for your listeners to be able to have that, I’d be happy to give them a copy.
Justin: excellent, well let’s do that, you know, if you guys want a free copy of this valuable report, feel free to reach out, and Jonathan, or myself I’ll refer you to him, we’ll get you set up, just say you heard about it on the dental marketing guy show.
So, thanks very much to our listeners, and to you Jonathan. Thanks for listening to the dental marketing guy show.
How To Rank Your Videos
Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show! I’m Justin Morgan, here to talk to you about how to get your video content more easily recognized by search engines.
Transcribing your videos can help with SEO, because as of right now, videos and audio are not as easily read by search engine bots as text is. Search engine bots are also called “spiders,” which crawl the internet that which is indexed by Google, Bing and Yahoo. They determine who’s relevant to what, but right now they have a tough time discerning what your audio and video content is all about.
You can help search engine bots identify what your video and audio content is about by having it transcribed. Links to resources, such as dragon speak software, will be provided for your convenience in the YouTube description.
By transcribing your videos and podcasts, you’re much more equipped to be recognized by Google, Bing, and Yahoo for the great video and audio content you provide your audience. This will help you rank highly in search engines – not only for the video itself, but the pages which show your video or podcast. And your ENTIRE website hosting this content.
In fact, this is something which is done on dentaltown.com for Howard Farran’s Dentistry Uncensored. And it contributes to the visibility of such videos and podcasts. You too can do this, and the greatest part about it is that it can be much easier to produce long blog posts, which naturally have keywords mentioned. Allowing you to rank for those keywords which you are naturally discussing with your target audience.
I hope this tips allows those of you who are contributing to the dental community and your patients gear up for higher search engine rankings! Please subscribe to my YouTube channel if you’d like to learn more about how you can attract more patients through dental SEO!
Read more on the dental marketing blog.
Dental web sites created by a true dental marketing expert will exude your competency for what you do and how you do it. They will show what makes you different and why the prospective dental patient should see you over the dentist down the street. Here are some ideas to keep in mind when designing a dental web site:
a. Stay true to yourself
If you try to imitate other dental web sites, you’ll end up doing the exact opposite of what every dental marketing professional and dental office should strive for: to be authentic and showcase who you are.
b. Use photography
Use a photographer who specializes in dental offices. Or at least a photographer who has experience in working with small business owners of a similar type as dental offices, and a good understanding of marketing.
c. Showcase your dental company culture
Your dental practice has a unique company culture. Be sure to highlight what makes you –well — YOU!
Want more dental marketing ideas? Check out dentistry’s marketing blog!
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If you’re a dentist who lands on this page, you understand something about the future.
You understand that the dental market that our fathers toiled in is nothing like the dental market of today. Today’s dental market is saturated with advertisements. You might want to find out:
This article is designed to help dentists like you get a head-start in finding actionable dental marketing ideas which will allow you to grow yourself the dream practice that you’ve always wanted! While this list is not 100% comprehensive, I allow you to get a taste of the kinds of dental marketing ideas I offer my subscribers at my dental marketing company:
1. Keep up with technology.
There is a segment of your market which will actually judge your clinical skills, as well as your level of interest in providing a high standard of care, based on your technology. Some of those patients are known to leave dentists who do not keep up with the latest technology. Don’t be left behind!
You can prove to your patients that their convenience, comfort, and costs are on your mind. And you can do it, just by buying a new toy! How much fun is that!?
2. Use video.
Remember when the Internet was dial-up?
Those days are long behind us. Today, video is faster, cheaper, and more expected than ever. If there anything like the majority of the dental marketplace, your prospective dental patients spend vast amounts of time on YouTube. Promoting your practice and your team on video, you’re helping your prospective patients get to know you. They’ll come to like you, even before they’ve even that you over time, the learn to trust you just as if they had met you face-to-face.
In this digital age, you literally can be in all places at all times through dental videos.
Meeting your patients in their living room, coffee shop, or anywhere else they may be, videos on their desktop or mobile device or tablet. This is the future! The best part of all, is 99% of dentists will read this dental marketing idea, only to take zero action on the round. Of those that do take action, more than half of them will not hire a professional videographer. And among those who do hire a professional video production company, few of them will hire someone who specializes in dental video production.
Think about it this way, when a prospective patient goes to Google, they enter dentists and their city name. What do they see? They see a website, followed by another website, followed by another website. One dental website after another. Boring! What if, in the middle of all that, they come to your website? And on your website is a beautifully crafted professional video you and your team, in your office, displaying your company culture. You would be a categorically different dentist, just because you have a categorically different dental website.
By hiring someone whom specializes in dental video choreography, you can be categorically different from your peers!
3. Clean dental website design.
Do you have a website that is easy to navigate? As a dental marketing enthusiast, I can tell you that one of the most important aspects of dental marketing in today’s competitive landscape, is having a website which is easy to follow.
Through careful empirical research, the legal profession has found that juries have consistently judge the credibility of an expert witness based not on the air accolades for educational accomplishments. Not even on their experience or track record. Juries have been known to consistently measure the veracity of the statements of an expert witness based on one factor alone clarity. By being clear and easy to follow, expert witnesses are able to earn the confidence of juries.
What does this have to do with your dental marketing campaign? Like juries, your audience the prospective dental patients is made up of an audience that just wants a simple clear message. The home page of your website is often times the lobby by which people enter your practice. It’s where you have a chance to give them a once-in-a-lifetime first impression. It’s your time to shine!
So how do you shine?
It’s not by talking about your clinical skills. It’s not by talking about how you’re better than other dentists. In fact, contrary to what some people might believe, it’s not even by highlighting all of your differentiating factors. Some dentist with think it’s to highlight all your services. Even that is wrong. The way you stand out and build credibility is by having a clean website.
What do I mean by clean dental web design?
A clean dental website is one which is offering your prospective patients as few of choices as possible. You know what’s relevant to the audience, and you deliver it. Succinctly. You don’t waste time with endless features and hundreds of buttons to choose from. You promote one single strong message, maybe two or three at the most. You differentiate yourself, not by differentiating yourself at all! You make yourself look different by being cogent.
This all starts with a simple, clear unique value proposition on the home page of your website. To check out examples of websites which are clean please check out this dental website design page.
Segmentation of different messages is important. For instance, if you’re running Google Adwords for dental implants, you should serve up that ad with “dental implants” in the ad copy itself. The searcher shouldn’t be taken to your home page, unless your home page is completely dental implant centered. If you’re a general dentist who places dental implants or works with an oral surgeon who specializes in dental implants, you should have a page dedicated to the topics that dental implant patients care about. Often times, you can reduce your advertising budgets by simply providing relevant, useful content that is specific to the needs of that dental implant patient. You would do the same for all other dental services. Segmentation of your message would ideally get very specific to the patient.
For instance, a dental implant patient over 55 years old may have different concerns than a dental implant prospect who is under 18 years old, who needs a dental implant procedure as a result of a tragic collision. By promoting a message which is tailor made for your specific audience, you can accomplish the goal of being top of mind to that specific dental patient.
In this dental marketing idea video, we discuss the 3 questions your website needs to answer, whether it’s a dental implant page or your home page:
4. Boost referrals with remarkable patient experiences.
Few things are more important to your ideal prospect patients than their experience when they go into your office. Always remember that internal marketing, that is the ability of your patients to refer to your practice, is always going to be your highest return on investment for all types of marketing and dental advertising.
So how do you attract patients through word-of-mouth marketing?
Let’s look at the hallmarks of what a truly remarkable practice is and what you need to prioritize in order deliver an amazing patient experience:
5. Boost referrals by rewarding your best patients.
If you have patients who regularly refer to you, or if they refer one or two highly profitable restorative or cosmetic cases, this is not the time to pitch the purse strings. Be sure to offer a gift that is personal and unexpected.
Here are just a few ideas for how you can reward those patients you are most appreciative of: Marriage anniversary whitening is totally unexpected! It cost you very little to implement and won’t ever be forgotten. Sports fan memorabilia, unique to the likes of the patient. You can write a hand written note, and that may be even better to some of your patients.
6. Build relationships with your patients.
Most dentist reading this would say” oh my patients love me!” They probably do.
However, is the relationship you have with your patients strong enough that a free examination, whitening, and x-rays from the next direct mail piece no longer a temptation?
If you build a relationship with your ideal patient, that cannot be stolen or revoked any kind of dental advertising.
Speaking to your patients, and treating your patients, the way they want to be treated. This is at the keystone of what a truly great patient experience is all about. It’s not about whether you feel they need Invisalign. It’s about whether they want Invisalign. Through treatment planning, through the greeting your patients receive when they walked through your practice stores, through everything you do and don’t do. It’s all about building that relationship with your ideal patient.
How do you identify the best way to build a relationship with your ideal patient?
First of all, you need to identify who your ideal patient really is. Once you have the person in mind, meaning who they are and what kind of services they want, and what their likes and dislikes are, this is when you can head in the right direction. Be sure to identify who your target audience, first. From there it becomes very easy for with dental marketing. And building relationships with your ideal patient, that’s what dental marketing is all about.
This can be applied in any aspect of dental marketing, including dental implant marketing.
From the what you write on your dental website, to how you treat people in your practice, to what your logo even looks like! It’s all geared toward that ideal patient. Think of it this way, before you sit down to write an email, what’s the first thing you do? The first thing you do is address the person by name. This is because who your writing to is more important than what you’re writing. Who your writing to is the keystone of an email. And it’s also the keystone of any dental marketing campaign know who you’re talking to, first. Then, know why you’re writing to them. This means also understanding why it matters to that person. Why does your email actually matter to this prospective reader? If you can identify what values this person has, and what you can provide this person, that’s when your email will be directed towards the right person in the right way.
From there, what you write is a secondary concern.
That’s how it works with email, that’s how it works in everyday conversations, that’s how it works with patients who you have in the chair. It’s how everything works in life. First you have to know who you’re talking to, then why you’re talking to them what you talk about is the third and last thing in the equation. In fact many people tell me that when they apply this principle to their dental marketing campaign, they have no trouble coming up with what to say. They have no trouble figuring out how to treat patients. Treatment planning is so much smoother. Case acceptance rises patients refer to you more you become the dentist who cannot be a commodity. Corporate dentistry has no stronghold over them if you can identify who you’re talking to and why it matters to them.
I’m willing to bet dimes to donuts that you’ll be able to come up with the best message possible.
7. Build relationships with your competitors.
You may think this sounds crazy, but I actually love my competitors.
I love my competitors because they sharpen me. Iron sharpens iron. Your competitors force you to adapt. They force you to innovate. They force you to segment your target market. They force you to bundle services. They force you to promote a better, healthier, more life-enhancing dental practice. If not for them, every dental office would be run like a government bureaucracy.
Building relationships with your competitors has its advantages.
You can cover another dentist’s shift. You can speak well of another dentist who has a focus different from yours. You can refer to some of your competitors, when it’s the right fit. For instance, a tough dental implant procedure might be best referred to an oral surgeon.
When it comes to SEO, having friends in your neighborhood makes a lot of sense.
For instance gaining links from your competitors websites can be hugely beneficial. You can do this by collaborating with your competitors to do a joint offer, or some sort of co-promotion where you play off to each other’s strengths, in order to give the dental patient the best solution possible. You see this all the time with specialists and general practitioners. General dentists refer to specialists, and specialists always have the right to refer to a general dentist, if it makes sense. But it’s not just limited between general dentists and dental specialists. You can earn links from all sorts of places, and you can sometimes do that more effectively by teaming up with one of your competitors. For instance, what if you cope promoted a charity event, which both of you then reached out to your separate networks of friends. One of you earns a link from the local Chamber of Commerce, while another one of you promotes on Facebook to their many dental patients.
The combinations are endless!
This may seem unlikely to some, but you can check out other articles on my dental marketing blog to see specific tips on how you can actually links by teaming up with your competitors.
Keep in mind also, that your competitors are always local. Imagine earning a link from someone who does dental implants in Florida. But you’re a general dentist in San Luis Obispo California. If you position yourself correctly, you absolutely can earn links, what Google officially considers an endorsement or referral, from all sorts of authoritative sources. One example of an authoritative source in the dental field, is dental town.com. Another is dental economics. For dental entrepreneur. These are places where you can earn links from by providing value to and in the case of these three different organizations, none of them are really your competitor. So in every case, if you can earn links from your competitors, the rest of the links you earn are typically much easier when working with non-competitors.
8. Use photography.
Photography cannot be undermined. It’s much easier to execute, that’s on your I feel patients. In this interview on the dental marketing guy show that I did with Dr. Chip Payet, I explained that no dentist would ever place an image of another person on his face when dealing with the patient in your own practice. It’s just silly to not show your face, but instead the face of a smiling family from who-knows-where. We want your ideal patient to know, like, and trust you. This means using custom, professional photography to showcase you, your team, and your office.
Why not give your prospective patients a tour of your office, before they even walk through the front door? They’ll feel a sense of familiarity of your practice from the very first visit. They’ll be more likely to show up, more likely to trust your expert recommendations, and more likely to accept treatment, as a result.
9. Hire a professional to help you with phone training.
Your front desk position is the most important position in your dental practice. Your phone is the most important piece of equipment in your dental practice. It is the aorta of your office. Inbound new patient calls are the lifeblood of your business. Respect that position!
You can gain all sorts of new patients through things like search engine optimization, social media advertising, direct mail, and of course good old-fashioned word of mouth marketing. But none of that really matters clamp off those leads simply by not answering the phone one out of four times. In this episode of the dental marketing guy show, one 800 dentist founder and chief spokesman Fred Joyal joins us and tells us that many of the dental offices he speaks with are missing one out of four calls. What a travesty to lose 25% of the returns on your marketing investment!
By hiring a professional to do your phone training for your staff, you can remove reasons to doubt the training’s effectiveness. Go with someone with a track record of success. For examples of dental marketing consultants, or dental coaches who specialize in improving your phone training, check out some of the guests on the dental marketing guy show
not all coaches are the same!
Be sure to work with someone that has a system which actually works for your style, your personality, what your staff prefers, and what you wish to build in your practice. It has to mesh with your goals, your budget, and your company culture. There are many different ways to approach this. You can use a video training series. You can use a virtual coach. You can use an in office consultant. You can use someone who has a strict but proven system. Whatever it is you hope to achieve in your dental practice, the recommendation I would make is that you should assess more than one option.
Be sure to check on the style of the dental marketing consultant, just as much as their reputation.
References from dental practices which are completely different from yours, have limited value. By assessing some of the guests on the dental marketing guy show your able to gauge the personalities and styles, and philosophies towards marketing. All of these different dental coaches and marketing professionals, all the different people in the dental industry who are there to make sure you find success, they show you who they are on the show they talk about what makes them different which brings us to our final point in how you can stand out from the crowd.
10. Be different.
For most practices, the way that you become different is by being yourself.
Your personality, as it is displayed in the content on your website and social media platforms, that’s how you stand out. However, there are additional ways to stand out. While no one can fake being you, many dentists and larger dental groups, and even corporate dentistry, can use economies of scale to out hustle you in ways that are not on personality alone.
There are three basic ways to stand out, which have nothing to do with video or photography or talking via copywriting about who you are as a person, as a dentist, as a dental office, and as a member of your community all three ways are objective. All three ways, have to do with what actually makes you different other than you yourself.
1. Market Segmentation.
You can focus on a specific part of your market. Do you want to focus your marketing exclusively on dental implants, for instance? This would be an effective way to capture the attention of a certain demographic who might have dental needs. For more information on how to do this, check out this interview I did with Dr. Eric Jones of JonesSmiles.com. Doctor Jones used his knowledge of both dental implants and where mature audiences congregate to deliver the right message to the right segment of the market.
2. Innovation.
Just as we mentioned in the beginning of this article, technology is a form of innovation. You can increase convenience for your patients, you can decrease costs, you better through the use of technology however technology isn’t everything. Innovation also takes the form of being a continuing education junkie, as Dr. John Nosti would explain in this interview. However, even if you do an extraordinary amount of continuing education, keeping it to yourself as you. Be sure to tell through the content on your website and other places online. If people don’t know about your level of continuing education, I can tell you I know a lot of people personally who have no idea that dentists legally required a certain minimum amount doing education. They would be even more surprised should they learn that you actually exceed by a dramatic amount continuing education at your required to have by law.
This is the sort of innovation that can really impress upon your ideal patient is your dedicated clinical mastery.
You may have the right to remain silent, when it comes to your continuing education, but should you read that right you will quickly find that there is a new patients or just wait to find slight those dental avoiders, those dental procrastinators, those people may just need to hear that you’re willing to go above and beyond what other dentists are willing to do. And that may be all that it takes! Education goes hand-in-hand with innovation. Just make sure people know about. And of course this goes for offering new services, such as adding dental implants your list of services. If you don’t tell your patients about your dedication to CE, they just won’t know about it.
3. Bundling.
Much like continuing education, there are ways you can bundle services and products with what you already offer. This can be particularly helpful for dental practices in towns and big cities where there so how do you stand out among the crowd where there is a dental office the way you can do this is by offering things that they are not. You bundle services. You bundle products. You have things that go beyond an amalgam filling.
Bundling is about under-promising and over-delivering.
For instance, while every dentist on your street is offering an amalgam filling, how many of them are offering a quick break during the procedure? How many of them are offering Chapstick for patient? How many of them are bundling arm and neck massages? Sure, the amalgam filling is the same everywhere they go but you’re the only one bundling these things that add value.
Subscribe to the free video course on how to gain new patients within 6 months for more dental marketing ideas submitted to your email inbox every day!
You have to find the right ideas fit your practice this article is simply an overview of some general ideas.
I hope you found this helpful in your search to find dental marketing ideas this list is by no means comprehensive, and if you’d like to find out more, please check out some interviews on the dental marketing guy show find a time of actionable dental marketing ideas on the show if you are a dentist serious about finding more actionable dental marketing ideas, feel free to contact me for more information at my dental marketing agency.
Welcome to the dental marketing guy show! I’m Justin Morgan, the dental marketing guy. Let’s delve into this! Today we’re talking about AMP, amp. Also known as accelerated mobile search. This is something we can implement so the mobile version of your website can load…almost instantly!
Currently, at the time of airing, Google isn’t using this as an official ranking factor. But as an expert in the field of SEO, I can assure you that this is the best time to take advantage of this feature. In fact, the blog posts shared by Google themselves recently that perhaps around February 2016, this may become an official ranking factor. Even if this never becomes an official ranking factor, it will help with converting mobile browsers into paying patients for your dental practice.
How do you implement AMP?
By installing a certain plugin to your website, but the coding of your website has to be SEO friendly, to begin with. In the YouTube description, I will provide a link to the recommended plugin. https://wordpress.org/plugins/amp/ This comes with but one caveat:
First, make sure that this will work for YOUR website. Please contact me if you’d like to assess whether or not we can instantly increase your mobile search engine rankings with this tactic!
Thanks for watching the dental marketing guy show! If you’d like more information on how to attract more of the patients you want most through dental SEO, please contact me at DentalMarketingGuy.com
Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin the dental marketing guy and today we have this huge gust. I’m hugely honored to introduce Fred Joyal. He is, as you probably know, the founder of 1-800-DENTIST. He has been a huge key influence in the dental marketing industry. Since very early in the days when dentist even started considering marketing. Fred’s basically a historian on everything that’s gone on in the changes in the industry, the technological changes. Everything from taking 1-800-DENTIST into its future as 1800 numbers become less relevant and our digital age is taking over. He’s going to tell us all about the history of marketing in dentistry, what he thinks the future is, what’s going on right now, who are the movers and shakers What you need to be doing in your practice in order to stand out from everyone else and man it’s just such a huge honor to be talking to you. How are you, Fred?
Fred: Really good, Justin. I’m happy to be on your show. It should be a lot of fun, there’re tons to talk about obviously, in the marketing world of dentistry and my company’s celebrating its 30th year. I can’t even believe it myself, that it was back in 86 that we started advertising.
Justin: That’s excellent, that’s excellent. Time does fly, doesn’t it? I mean, well.
Fred: Yeah, that’s it. It’s a big chunk and it’s, you know, half my life. I’ve been doing this and that with more to come.
Justin: Well, yeah ad I’d love to talk to you about, you know, what’s more to come. That’s going to be really exciting to me. But for the viewers who haven’t really, aren’t too familiar with what you’ve done in the world of dentistry and marketing. Could you tell us a little bit about the history of how you got into 1-800-DENTIST, why you got into 1-800-DENTIST, and what’s changed as time went on, you know.
Fred: Well, back in 86 dentist had really just started advertising a little bit more than Yellow Pages and so we came in and we started doing radio advertising, in the television, advertising, creating a referral service for a dentist and there’s a ton of resistance to it. There were people going “You’re really denigrating the profession and, you know, you’re harming our image in the consumer’s mind. We’re professionals, we don’t do this sort of stuff.” And then eventually it’s come full circle because I had dentists who used to come up to me and say exactly that, at the trade show. And I had a dentist come up to me about a month ago and he said “I just want to tell you” because I talked about that in electron, he was in it and he said “I want to tell you, I was one of those guys” and he said “I’m here to apologize and tell you that I was wrong. You’ve done more for this profession in terms of promoting that any society’s ever done.” We spent the half a million dollars promoting dentistry with 1-800-DENTIST at this point where nobody has spent that much and what happens is more people go to their own dentist because of me. Then call me, looking for a dentist. So I believe we’ve had a tremendous, positive impact and we certainly helped thousands of our members over the years to grow their practices. But the evolution of things is gone from what, we did, we were on television for 20 years is our mains day of advertising and now it’s probably a third of what we do, you know. We’re deep in social media, we’re deep in online search at this point. So, the landscape is completely changed and of course the dentist all feel the need to do advertising at this point to do some sort of promotional marketing. Whether it’s through advertising, like print, television, radio, buying clicks. Things like that, but they feel the need and they’re not wrong to promote themselves.
Justin: Yeah, yeah. And what do you think caused that change? Were you just seeing things before they happen or do you think 1-800-DENTIST actually hanged the game?
Fred: I think we were not completely responsible for changing the game. But we were really powerful influence in the fact that the consumer was needed to be reminded to take care of their teeth and that there were options available. And so I think that a lot of dentists believed “Oh, we will just do what they ask us to do or they’ll show up when they show up and we’ll try to remind them to come.” And it’s been an opportunity to really expand the industry and of course with the advent of implants and cosmetics and single visit dentistry. All of these things have really changed how people are perceiving dentistry and you know cosmetics is a big thing that’s certain, appearance whitening has had a huge influence on the dentistry that people are suddenly much more concerned about having white teeth. And that was kind of, the extreme makeover was a big influence or on that. What I laugh at is when you look at old TV shows like you look at an old star trek episode and you look at the actors’ teeth and they’re just horrible. They couldn’t even get a job today with those teeth. The whole aesthetic of teeth has gone very hard and in the direction of straight and white. And that’s a big deal, that’s a big change.
Justin: What do you think has changed culturally? I mean you’re just, you don’t take care of yourself. You have a bad set of teeth, the impression is you don’t take care of yourself and if you don’t take care of yourself why are you going to take care of my company? So why should I hire you? When do you think that change started happening?
Fred: I think it’s just been really, really gradual. I don’t think there was a tipping point moment where people just started to care. I, maybe its high-definition television, who knows where all we started to notice what these actors really looked like. But I think it just happened gradually over time just like, you know, grooming, in general became more and more important. But, yeah, you’re absolutely right that now it’s you put a ceiling on your career arc. If you don’t have a good looking teeth because it is an indicator and a lot of times it’s unconsciously with people that their response to your appearances, they may not vocalize it or even be aware of it. But they’re looking at it and they’re having a judgement about how you take care of yourself and that’s certainly in the job market in the relationship world. Those two things are two places people are spending all their lives. So it just became much more important.
Justin: You know. I think I heard some stats somewhere. So I’m not the expert on this, but somewhere I heard that psychologists believe that we actually make like half of our judgements of a person based on the first three seconds of looking at them.
Fred: Yeah, I’ve seen studies on that too. Yeah, and we’re not always right, but we are making a serious judgement about people in that time frame. It’s, I think it’s very primal that we’ve always had to asses almost on a tribal level somebody right away. Are they a threat? Are they a friend or foe? Essentially so we’re doing that stuff, you know we’ve hardwired it in our communion brains to do that, you know.
Justin: And when you talk about psychology, remind me. I think this is 1-800-DENTIST or maybe Futuredontics, the parent company. You guys actually do some sort of personality test or some sort of screening process before you hire someone. Was that accurate?
Fred: I mean, because what we’re looking for, when somebody’s answering the phone in our call centers. We want somebody who can be helpful and compassionate and we teach them to be non-judgmental about people because we want them to be listening on the phone. If somebody’s called us it means they need help with their teeth. So we’re doing our best to help them to find a dentist. They’re going to want to go to on a regular basis because we believe that that’s important. That that’s important for your health, as well as your appearance which means it’s going to affect your whole life. So if you don’t have a dentist, you need one and their job is to really help somebody do that. And they really are empathetic and so we have learned, you know, we have taken our 20 bests operators and profile them to tell us what personality types can do this all day long and be really helpful to talk to these people about, you know. What is a very personal issue, but they have a lot of apprehension about. They have apprehension about finding a dentist not just going. We get studies that showed us that consumer have an equal level of apprehension of just about picking a dentist, because it’s the great unknown. They have no idea what that experience is going to be like till they sit down on the chair and lean back. And it’s, they’re pretty darn anxious about it.
Justin: Yeah, not only does it require a high level of trust, but I think people really know deep down if they’re honest with themselves that you don’t really know, you can’t gauge the clinical skills of the dentist. So all you have to go off of is that halo effect, you know. There’s the dentist himself and nice teeth as a staff has nice teeth. You know, are they, like you said empathetic, you know. That’s a big one because if someone’s not empathetic on the phone, so this is the front desk, it’s not even the dentist but that halo effect, you know. If the front desk answers the phone. She cares about you, you know you’re in pain and all that are for the opposite, she doesn’t. The inference from any reasonable person is the dentist is the same way, if the dentist puts up with this behavior at the front desk then that’s how he is.
Fred: Well, that’s one of the least trade positions in the practice. I want to go into what you said, but it just reminded me of this amazing story that somebody just told me. That he called the dental practice because he wanted to see how the reception is behaving. So we said “Hi, I found the practice name on my list of dentist with my delta plain. So I found your name and I need to get some dental work done. Do you have a website that I can go see?” And she said “No, we don’t have a website” and hung up.
Justin: Oh, okay.
Fred: That was it, she was like, and she was helping him right then. Like I don’t have a website, click. We wish we had a website but can I send you some information to tell me more about your problem anyway. But that’s a 180 degrees from where the experience you need to start giving. And that’s why I’ve have written a couple books on marketing based on everything that I’ve learned about what consumers are asking us for and what, I’ve seen amazing dentists do the first book called Everything is Marketing which is because everything that you do in the practice either increases or decreases case acceptance. So it’s all about how to create that in step by step, how to create a mindset in the practice and then create the team that does it. Second book really talks to what your reference before which is it’s called Becoming Remarkable: How to Create a Dental Practice everyone Talks About. Because now when somebody talks about you they talk online, they talk with their thumbs and it’s permanent. It’s searchable, it’s likeable, it’s shareable, and you can delete it. So you have to create a remarkable experience from start to finish. And it’s not about, like you said, it’s not about the clinical skills. That’s 20% of the experience, maybe, it’s everything else. All the other dimensions of that experience that they’re judging your dentistry and what’s going to create loyalty and trust with that patient.
Justin: Yeah, that’s really powerful. You know, things like Google reviews. It’s, you know just amazing like you’re telling me. I’m, you know, I had a lot of dentists contact me. I do SEO for dentists and a lot of dentists contact me and they’re like “You know, I don’t know I don’t feel comfortable asking for a google review.” It’s like how many referrals did you get this month?
Fred: Yeah, it’s like I don’t feel comfortable with a lot of stuff you know. When I started my business I was going door to door to dental practices. I wasn’t particularly comfortable with it, but that’s how you build a business and now this is where they’re going to find out about you. You have to find a way to get comfortable or to get systematic. That’s what I’m telling people, there has to be a systematic way of generating reviews. Whether you’re asking yourself or your emailing them or your team’s asking. That’s the way of the world, I mean people read on. Once they start reading online reviews as a behavior, they want it for everything and we have to be there in the dental field.
Justin: Yeah, I mean I don’t know how dealerships do it. You know these restaurants do it, it’s kind of stilly that the dental industry wouldn’t do it. I mean, come on.
Fred: They don’t want to do it, nobody likes to change their own behavior. They love change, they love the modern world. They just don’t want to change themselves and dentists get very much locked into the patterns of what’s worked for them, what made them move through their day very efficiently. They’re much more engineer, artist personalities, then, you know that aggressive business person’s personality and which makes them great dentists, but it makes it much more difficult for them to survive in the small business world that you see them in, every day and that you’re helping them. I mean they need help with all of that stuff.
Justin: Do you think that’s partly why the rise of corporate dentistry and, you know, a lot of older dentists who are solo practitioners are saying like all these young kids, they got out of dental school, they go into corporate dentistry. Do you think that’s part of it? I hear a lot of dental students about to graduate saying “I just want security, I got these two loans. I just want to paycheck. I want a solid paycheck. Do you think that’s partly, do you think that the comfort, the not wanting to get out as an entrepreneur just I’m a dentist. I want to be a dentist. You think that’s what’s causing the rise in corporate dentistry or at least one of the things?
Fred: Well, it’s that and it’s the consumer demand for convenience and it’s the huge consumer demand now for a dentist to accept their insurance coverage. I mean 10 years ago, dentists were dropping their plans. The goal was to be a fee for service practice. Now 86% percent of practices except at least one plant and corporate accepts plenty of plans and that’s every income level. That’s what we found people want, the insurance to pay for as much as possible and so corporate is taking advantage of that and their systematizing the business aspects of the business and helping people who, you know. Like you said, they got student loans they come out, they can’t buy a practice any more than 3, 4 hundred G’s in debt. Where’s the money? Who’s going to lend him the money to buy a practice? And now they’ve got, you know. Some of these people are serving 6, 7, 8 thousand dollars a month in debt. They need a paycheck, so yeah. So corporate’s attracting them, giving them a place to work and to make money and then sometimes make very good money that their career arc is perceived very differently that it was 20 years ago certainly. I get older dentists at the end of my lecture I say “What did you pay for dental school?” So these guys paid 5,000 dollars a year to go to dental school. It’s a hundred a year now, that’s, I mean, that’s some inflation right there.
Justin: Yeah, alright. So let’s talk about, you know. There’re all these changes going on. Let’s talk about how Fred Joyal is changed. How has 1-800-DENTIST changed, you got future Futuredontics is the parent company, right?
Fred: Yes, yeah, and we’re actually, now we’re part of Dentsply Sirona because they saw that what the consumer needed to know about was at this point single visit dentistry cad/cam technology that makes it possible to never have to get a temporary. Most people don’t know that this exists and what we’ve seen because I believe this. I started to see Sirona has come along 10 years ago really was when I really started to notice it, is that when people hear about this, these people have been put off dentistry for years who have the money, who have the need, who just don’t. I know it’s 2 or 3 visits, I just can’t do it right now. They’re too busy and they find out that it’s possible to get it done more quickly and they come right in and they’ll start a big case right away. And so this, I think is the next big wave and it’s what Sirona saw was the consumer needs to become aware of this and so we’re part of our advertising now is to tell people of this, about a quarter of our members have the cad / cam technology. Now, people have all sorts of different needs and we try to match them up with whatever level they’re at. But technology is really changing dentistry too, and we want people to know about it so this is how we’ve changed. We’re starting to chance our messaging along with the media that we use. We’re moving it in every way that we can, inform people we’re using and Facebook is a huge medium for us at this point which 3 years ago even wasn’t true. That’s how fast the world changes and dentists are having trouble keeping up with that for sure.
Justin: The way things are moving so fast, it seems like dentists are, you know, there in the trenches. They’re doing the work, they got the hand piece, and it seems like every 2 minutes, there’s some new software, there’s some new gizmo or gadget coming out. I mean what you would say, for the dentists. I talked to a couple dentists in dentaltown, they were asking about your partnership with Sirona. How big it is and all that, I didn’t actually get any specific questions of that thread, but kind of the general tone was, man, it just seems like there’s always something new. There’s always something big going on. What really is the next big thing and I know you’re big on technology. You’re big on CEREC and that single day dentistry is, so you think that the next big wave?
Fred: I think that you know this as a marketer. Convenience is a huge marketing advantage and I’m one visit vs to undeniably be a marketing advantage but it’s an experience advantage. There isn’t a patient out there that says “Let’s drag this out over as many days as possible.” The idea of getting it done in one day is huge and just that the quality of the resort has grown and grown and grown to the point where it’s basically the equivalent of a lab now. There may be some labs that the dentists use for his cosmetic cases, the interiors that are better than he’s going to get from CEREC technology. Maybe, but not everybody wants perfection and a lot more people want convenience and I think that’s technology that brings convenience and also says “This is modern dentistry.” I mean, that’s a lot of the response we’re getting is they’re going “Oh, dentistry is finally changing.” Digital radiography, being another it’s, you know, from a consumer standpoint they get to see a full-sized image of what’s going on in their mouth and it’s a lot easier for a dentist to explain that. So, to me, it’s digital radiography is baseline cad/cams critical and becoming more so from a convenience standpoint and then there’s this see the 3D image. That basically makes implants much easier, but that information is much more powerful, clinically and it’s a, you know. You show a person a 3D image of their head that blows their mind. They’ve never seen anything like that in any doctor’s office. Never mind their dentist and so all of those things are powerful marketing tools and their powerful clinical tools.
Justin: So what cities have your partnership and focusing on? I think you guys are releasing in some bigger metropolis is throughout the country. You and Serena?
Fred: Yeah, well you know we’re national in how the whole business works, but we made a push for a single visit dentistry in San Diego and Chicago in particular. Also, did in Phoenix, in Portland and Boston and San Antonio as well. So we did a test market in those cities just to see what if it had an effect on people and that’s what I was telling you is what we started to see is this. It wasn’t a flood of people going “I want single visit dentistry” it’s not people walking around going “I need a crown today and I don’t want a temporary” but there are people who put off their dentistry who suddenly hear this message that dentists, there’s a new age of dentistry out there and it brings up this need to a higher level. And, you know, that’s how the dentist builds value in his practice. That’s how he creates a remarkable experience, is with this technology and making it more convenient to get better results, you know. We live in a world of everything is faster, better, and cheaper. And so everyone’s waiting for that to happen in dentistry. It will be faster and better, I don’t know how quickly we’ll be cheaper, but we can be more affordable when we’re more efficient.
Justin: Right, right. So speaking of efficiency. Okay, obviously CEREC has some advantages there. I know in your first book, everything is marketing which, by the way, really changed my whole career. I tell you a little history about me. I was doing SEO for all businesses, I kind of became known for it. Getting really good SEO results for my area in San Luis Obispo, California and I really wanted to target the niche. I wanted to say, you know, I wanted my own identity. I wanted to become the real go to expert and dental was always towards the top that list. Your book actually changed my mind about, I was considering personal injury lawyers, I was considering moving companies, I was considering different things and I have my own reasons for each one based on my past. And let me tell you, when I read your book I was like hands down. I had no idea there’s so much in this industry. Sorry, I had no idea the psychology that goes into this and it was really incredible. And I know one of the things you mentioned in your book were how CEREC and other technology, not just CEREC, but all technologies can be used as a marketing tool where, when you show them this thing that looks like it’s from outer space and it just shows that you care because you want to stay on top of things. So, you know, that’s comforting, you know, it’s like all this dentist actually cares about my world health because he went out and bought a bell scope even though he’s not going to make a lot of money doing Val scope oral cancer examinations. He might not make any money off of that, but it shows that he cares and with that, and so have you. It’s kind of hard to quantify that right? It’s one of those serendipitous things. It’s just one of those things that you should do, but I was curious if you know of any studies or just based on your personal experience. What it is that you’ve seen in terms of using technology as a marketing tool?
Fred: Well, certainly when you bring your patients in and you do a restoration in one visit and you say “I have this technology” they’re going to go out and tell people about it. I mean it’s just like anything that’s different when you suddenly go into a business and it’s suddenly way more convenient in one way or another or another or way more comfortable or just more exciting. It’s been on this reason why there’s a line outside the Apple store every time they release something new is people love this stuff and they talk about it and that’s, you know. To me, any sort of technology that gives a better experience has a certain wow element to it. You’re generating word of mouth, which is which of the best patients. I was told if your number one source of patience isn’t word of mouth you’re not giving a great experience. That’s the biggest indicator you need to stop any advertising, change the experience of the practice because people are talking about you for a reason, or worse, they’re just not recommending you for a reason. So technology can always do that a Velscope another great example of, you know, like we are the doctors of the mouth here and we wanted to detect any sort of cancer very early when it’s treatable. Let me know, you know when you’ve got comfortable, you’ve got convenience and you are showing them that you care. That’s a huge part of creating the value of the dentistry in the trust and loyalty that that patient is going to have for the practice. That’s what you want, it’s about always about a long-term relationship with the dental patients. It’s not about one visitor to, it’s how do you take care of them for 10, 20, 30 years. That trust is everything for that and the result is there.
Justin: Absolutely and so with technology that’s one way to show it, but you know I would also say the opposite is true as well where if your dental practice with a budget- a marketing budget. You know, it kind of blows my mind, honestly Fred. You know those still spend a 100 k plus on a toy, but then the front desk answers the phone with rudeness.
Fred: Yeah, right. Well, it’s easier to buy the toy then the change and they know, you know, it’s either it’s not a nice person or not if they’re so busy they only pick up the phone three out of four times and that’s like, there’s no small business that could survive that except dentistry. That’s how profitable dentistry is. We get to the phone three out of four times when we’re open and still stay open and not have a nice person answering the phone. Yeah, it’s remarkable how that is the norm and because, but the dentist is a clinician. He’s a surgeon essentially so he needs those skills and develop those skills and he’s the person who has the personality who had those skills. So when it’s the fuzzy stuff like marketing it’s like no, you need really nice people, you need a great culture, you integrate the experience. The lighting needs to change in here, okay, though. But you need to redo this reception area like that’s got nothing to do with my dentistry. Like now, just in the patient’s mind when they walk through the front door. Creating an impression about you just like we’re talking about that three second person makes a judgement about you based on your appearance. They’re doing the same thing when they get on the phone with a dental practice or walk in a dental office that we are unconsciously registering all of this stuff in our environment from people and from whatever sight and sound and smell that we encounter. It’s just who we are and you can ignore it and believe it since they say it’s not important, but it is important and it’s having an effect. It will have a greater and greater effect on your business as dentistry gets more competitive. Cutting corporate dentistry is making dentistry more competitive. You have to step up your game or join corporate. There’s no third avenue anymore, not long term. So that’s why I’m encouraging, create a remarkable experience and you’ll have an invincible practice.
Justin: Yeah, I really like that, you know, you touched on that a little bit in your first book too. It is one of the tips that gave dentists and some of them I find have already done this, but I’m willing to bet dimes the donuts most dentists do not do this is your advice on using Chap Stick. It’s so cheap, like how much is that chap stick vs the CEREC, right? Like getting your ducks in a row first, but not to say anything bad because it’s so hard to run a dental office. I mean it’s so hard sometimes, you just got to have someone from the outside who’s outside the controlled chaos come in and say “Let’s give people chap sticks halfway through their procedure”
Fred: Well, that’s really true- is a lot of times that’s why most, the dentists I know who are successful they have somebody coaching him. They use outside resources, they use software, they use an SEO expert like you, they use a practice consultant that says, you know “This has to change this system has to be in place, you have to start collecting your money ahead of time, you need to fire that person, you need to be systematic about these three or four things.” And you know, anybody was really good as coaches and that’s sort of why I went to the school I should know how to do is like “No, you shouldn’t.” Don’t feel like you should, you know how to do the dentistry and you have to keep training yourself to get better at that. Get help, those people out there do this stuff all day long. You know SEO is an amazing example, right, because my joke is if you bought a book on SEO you’re doomed because the idea of a book on SEO means it’s outdated. The fact that it was printed and you have a hardcover means the information’s too old to actually use, it’s just, it moves too fast.
Justin: Right, right. Yeah, tactically it does, yeah. And I think I do a pretty good job on my YouTube videos. I just kind of break it down like look, you know it comes down to it, it’s more like a broad marketing idea because SEO is just one form of marketing, but it’s almost, SEO is becoming the result of good marketing and so, you know. There’re some technical elements to it too but I truly believe that, you know, it’s based on relationship building and driving really good content. But you, it’s ultimately coming down to are you willing to get other dentists are not willing to do? And you know the simple things like we had a doctor, Sunny Pahouja on the show and he told us about how little amount of seconds it takes for them to take a thank you greeting card and for the entire office to sign up. Not just the dentist, not just the four of us, but the entire office. They all signed it, they all wrote something nice, that’s applicable because they listened to the patient. I forget how many seconds it takes, maybe like three seconds per person, you know.
Fred: it’s got 5 min, right. Chairside time, it’s just but it’s really just a choice to do that. To say we want to be expressive about how much we appreciate, I mean, and that’s a rule of business anyway. When you express appreciation, whether it’s to your customer or to your employee or to your spouse. That, almost nothing gets mileage to that level because everybody wants to be appreciated and many times I’m probably guilty of it as an employer just as much as anybody else is. But I’m making the effort, at least I know how valuable and important it is to take the extra 5 seconds, 10 seconds to express appreciation. The dentist has got to know what in creating that experience in his practice when he does it to his team they do it to the patients. So it’s a chain reaction from the top.
Justin: Absolutely, would you say, I mean, that’s probably something corporate dentistry is not doing so you know that the handwritten cards, you know signing by every member of the team. So, you know if you’re just keeping up with corporate dentistry.
Fred: They’re going to outstrip you on the systems that they can do because they’re doing human resources collectively they are doing billing all centrally. They’re doing after hours call handling and appointing and building websites where you can make a change on your appointments online. They can invest in that stuff and they can manage that stuff more cost effectively. So you’re going to beat them on the experience, people are going to go “I don’t like the feeling of corporate.” Not everybody, some people, don’t care but if you want to be successful practice there will be people who say “No, I want the personal experience of the dentist that I know that care about me and has a whole team that when I walk in there I’m happy to see them and they’re happy to see me.” That’s how you’re going to survive and thrive, you certainly want to survive but you want a nice, you know, a place to work every day for the next 20 or 30 years. That means making it profitable, happy employees and loyal patients.
Justin: That’s right, let’s say it as we’re coming to close on our time. What would you say in your book becoming remarkable? What are your top three tips you can give to the debt to our listeners to take away from this interview If you remember nothing else from this interview. It is these top three tips that can be found in your new book.
Fred: Okay, so I like to be really practical in that sort of advice. Number one thing, have somebody great answering that phone at the front desk like we talked about right at the beginning, it starts right there, that person is mission critical. She is the aorta of the practice and many practices have that aorta clamped off with a really average or negative person and make sure you’re always answering that phone so put two people there, if you have to. And don’t worry about if you pay two people 30,000 dollars and you get one better case a year because of that one big case. She’s paid for herself and I guarantee you more of, that’s going to happen. Second thing that’s incredibly powerful, practical, patient testimonial videos. They are the most utilizable marketing tool that you have and there, nothing is more credible than a patient sitting right there that you recorded on a smart phone who says “I love this dentist, I love what she’s don’t for me, I wouldn’t go to anybody else. She’s fantastic, she’s changed my life.” You put those and you can use them on your website, on Facebook, everywhere. They can just go everywhere, they’re extremely powerful and the third thing would be, see I had it and I jumped off to something else but it’s probably what we talked about too, is getting help. Don’t think, don’t try to do it all yourself. There are people out there that know how to do this stuff. Certainly I recommend reading my books, but, and I recommend having your team read my books, but you know, get somebody to coach you on SEO, get somebody in your office to refine the system in your practice, go visit other dentists and see what they do to get, participate in the community. Certainly technology is going to be part of it. Find dentist’s that use technology, they can show you how it works in their practice but get help. You don’t have to do it alone.
Justin: Yeah, you shouldn’t. I mean we had a Dr. Dan Marut from Quality Dental Plan QTP on the show and you know he said “Do what you do best and delegate the rest” I thought that was great, that was real catchy. Yeah, well that’s awesome, those tips really hugely important. I totally agree with you on the video testimonials that is huge because people, your patients can actually gauge the veracity of what’s being said, there is nothing more ridiculous than a piece of text on your website saying the person’s first name and initial, no picture. I mean that has got to be so 1992
Fred: that’s like a movie review that says you know what they’ve taken five words from the reviewer. It’s got that little credibility at this point, but all the way at the other end is a patient just talking right to camera talking so that people can identify with that person they know it’s not a big production value or anything like that it’s just a genuine, totally credible testimonial. It’s a big deal
Justin: And you know I think people, a lot of people do better appearing natural when it’s just off the cuff. Ike if you just put up your iPhone, like that might cause a tiny bit of apprehension for some people, but it’s way different when you got the lights in the thousand million cameras.
Fred: What I tell people is that the dentist, as I say, just say if you don’t like it we won’t use it. Don’t worry about it but just tell us what it’s like to be a patient of ours and they will in 30 seconds, they’ll say amazing things and it doesn’t, I said it. The dentist, it doesn’t matter if they stutter or they repeat themselves or pause. That’s all adds to the credibility if you ask them to do it again. They won’t be as good as the first time. They’ll say I want to do it again. They won’t nail it like they did the first time because it comes straight from the heart for the first time and that’s what’s so powerful. It’s not the words, it’s everything else
Justin: That’s excellent, well, it’s been a huge honor having you on, Fred Joyal. You know I saw you at the CDA Anaheim and I told you, you know, Howard Farran and Fred Joyal. Those were the two guests I want in my show more than anyone else and I finally got both of you on the show. Really excited to see what happens with this Sirona deal. I think you’re onto something. You’ve always been cutting edge back when winning a hundred numbers were totally unheard of. You jumped on that and you’ve been parlaying that ever since. I really like it, but, yeah. I think you know if you’re considering getting a CEREC, if you’re considering using technology as a marketing item, definitely consider that. And also consider, you know, the low-hanging fruit. The thing like the chap stick and the greeting cards, consider those things first because those are easy buying decisions. It’s just a matter of taking action.
Fred: It’s the small details that people remember.
Justin: Right, right. Absolutely. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Joyal. It’s been a huge honor, you’ve given us some immense value. Thank you very much for coming on the show.
Fred: thank you, Justin. It was a pleasure.
Justin: Excellent and for our listeners, if you have any questions, let us know in the comments below. Wherever you see this, you see this on a dental marketing guy blog in dentaltown or wherever you see it, on YouTube. I’d love to hear from you. If you’ve got questions for Fred, I’ll forward this to him. Thank you for listening to the Dental Marketing Guy Show.
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Online Reviews And Your Dental SEO
Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show I’m Justin Morgan the dental marketing guy. In this recent episode of the dental marketing guy show, which you can view, clicking here. I interviewed Maui Bob of the famous five stars reviews system. We discussed how online reviews impact your search engine rankings.
Here’s a brief synopsis of what we discussed.
1. The velocity, or rate, at which you require online reviews does impact your search engine rankings.
2. The number of stars your average score how does it impact your search engine rankings.
3. The click through rate, or the percentage of people who see your listing on search engine, is drastically affected by your average star rating.
4. The total number of reviews you have, does impact your search engine rankings.
5. The overall impression of your brand your reputation and the success of your dental practice, all rely heavily with this new era of online reviews.
Word of mouth may be the best way to gain new patients and this is consistent with the studies I reviewed with Maui Bob. However, much of the word of mouth is now taking place online. And online reviews or something which your happy patients is more than willing to help you out with. You do great dentistry, allow your ideal patients to help you do great dental marketing.
How can you earn more referrals for your dental-centric business? 14 dental professionals tell us what they do differently to earn referrals:
“We employ one of the most difficult strategies out there to earn referrals…we ask! I know, it sounds simple. But we do what we ask our clients to do when they are seeking new patients! We focus on delivering great service, providing great results, which makes it easy to ask happy clients to refer to friends and colleagues.” – Laura Maly, www.wonderistagency.com
“Have amazing customer service, be unique and offer an in-office dental savings plan, like QDP (Quality Dental Plan). Someone my forget what you say to them but they will never forget how you made them feel. Having superior customer service is essential. In any business, you can compete on Quality, Cost, and Service. Patients usually do not know what quality dentistry is. They trust us to provide the best and we should. Most patients think dentistry is expensive no matter what you charge. Where you can have the most noticeable impact on how someone feels is with the service you provide. Cost is the number one reason why people don’t go to the dentist. Many times this comes down to not having insurance. Why not offer them an option that makes more sense than traditional insurance. With about 50% of the population not having dental benefits, QDP allows your team to obtain referrals because so many people know others without dental benefits. It’s quite a powerful message to share, ‘No Insurance? No Problem!’ call my dentist, they can help” – Dan Marut, DMD www.QDPDentist.com
“Our referral based systems all have roots in Dr. Robert Cialdini’s Principles of Persuasion.
1. We use a software from Social Dental where we have an ipad mini, we take photos of our patients with neat little signs they’ve created for us and then we text them that photo through the software and email it to them. In the email it asks them to “share” with their friends or anyone who is looking for a good dentist and it has a link for them to find our office and call. This taps into the Principles of Liking and Reciprocity and encourages patients to share the photo we took together and asks them for the referral.
2. I’ve developed a referral program that uses 5 of the 6 Principles of Persuasion and have also made it a bonus system for my team as well to motivate them to ask for more referrals. One of the key components of the system is Reciprocity. The idea that if you give someone a gift of value, they feel the need to reciprocate or give back. The best gift I could come up with that the masses would value is a gift card for free food, drink, services such as massages, nail salon services, etc. I’ve partnered with area business to allow me to give my patients a $5, $10, sometimes up to $75 gift card to my patients that they can use with these businesses. I pay to print the gift cards, about 24 cents each and the businesses agree that if my patients show up and use the card, they honor the “gift” amount and take it off their bill. This is a win-win-win. It’s a win for my patients b/c I only use businesses that I would refer people to anyway. Places I feel they need to know about and frequent so the patient would appreciate now knowing about this business. It’s a win for the business b/c I’m promoting them to my patient base on their behalf and it’s the best marketing money they could spend b/c it only cost them when the new client shows up. If they do they part, the customer will return and do more business with them. It’s a win for my office b/c I leverage the power of Reciprocity in that moment the gift is given. When the patient thanks us for the gift, that is the time we then ask if they know of someone they could refer us to. We then complete a series of steps using more of the principles to help set the stage for more referrals to show up. For myself and others who have adapted the full system, they’ve seen their referral numbers double or triple. Make it a bonus for your team and watch the numbers go higher.” – Dr. Christopher Phelps, http://calltrackerroi.com/
“I believe in social proof, meaning when someone visits YouTube and searches for a video to watch, there are usually many videos under the same search. so which one do you pick? usually the ones with the highest views?
Same thing applies to dentistry — get more reviews and when people search you, high reviewed practices will cause patients to consciously or unconsciously pick you. The larger the difference, the more powerful the effect e.g. if you can get 100 reviews and other surrounding offices have 5-6, then the decision for the patient is likely made before they even call your office to schedule.” – Dr. Tuan Pham, www.DentalMaverick.com
“We ask patients some of the following questions:
‘we love seeing you here and we would love to see your family and friends here. Please give them this card. You and the person you refer will get a $25 gift certificate to our practice.’
‘I know I have seen ya a few times but I don’t I have met your husband/wife yet. Does he/she have a dentist?’
‘We see a lot of patients from XXXXX employer and we would love to see your co-workers if they don’t have a dentist. Please give them this referral card and both of you will get a $25 gift certificate to our practice’
‘Thank you for being an amazing patient. If you think your family and friends need a checkup, please give them my card’
It’s best to customize a little bit and keep it fresh.” – Dr. Sunny Pahouja, http://www.lifetimesmilescincinnati.com/
“I spoil my clients and deliver on what I promise and then some. I put my heart into helping their business grow as if it were my own and become their biggest support system.
When my clients learn my fail proof techniques and gain new patients, as well as, see their team energized the final results shows more revenue within their practice. This is when my clients are thrilled to send over a simple video testimonial and refer other dentists to me.” – Coach Heidi Mount, http://www.coachingdentist.com/
“Probably the most important thing we do is having a very relationship based practice. We get to know people and their needs and desires for their dental health well, and NEVER try to “sell” anyone anything. I view practice as a marathon, and I want to keep patients long term.” – Dr. Matt Bickel http://www.dayspringlaserdentistry.com/
” I have to say that since acquiring my solo GP practice in 1997 I have done NO external marketing outside of the occasional youth sports team sponsorship when my children were actively involved in soccer and football. I am in a “bedroom community” of approximately 25-45k population with the largest 3 employers being California State Workers (prison,state hospital and teachers) followed by county workers( i.e. there is no significant private industrial base). Internal patient referrals had quadrupled my active pt pool by the first 5-7 years.
I would say any distinguishing practice characteristics would center around fundamental efforts to develop personal connections with our patients
1) I spend 45mins -1 hr with initial exams and try to listen closely to the Patients needs and wants.. The patient and I take a visual ( IO camera) tour of the pt’s presenting oral condition. We use the Velscope and record TMJ and occlusal status.
2) We try to have fun and don’t necessarily present the most solemn environment….My staff have great personalities and we enjoy keeping the atmosphere light. I enjoy connecting with my patients and want them happy!
3) when there is an after hours need from an established pt they call my cell phone.
4) I am compassionate and gentle with the anesthetic (slow delivery, use soft tissue manipulation and pressure as a distraction).
5) I frequently call patients the evening after invasive work to check on their status, comfort and to answer any new questions or concerns they may have.
Times are changing and generational patient characteristics change with them. I think we need a web presence to diversify our patient pool and reach younger generations. I hope this will lead to new vehicles through which we can offer personalized service. I intend to translate our longstanding quest for patient engagement and care into whatever new methods become available to ‘earn’ referrals and meet their changing wants and needs.” – Dr. Kevin Farr, www.ckfarr.com
“We’re the only dental website & marketing company that does custom work on top of an easy-to-use dental website software platform practices can edit themselves.” – Jeff Gladnick, www.greatdentalwebsites.com
“For us it is having clear points of difference. Lip balm is highly competitive, especially in the dental arena. We pride ourselves on our unique formula.
We have developed a lip balm the is neither waxy nor greasy. We use only the best natural and organic ingredients. Having a point of difference – something you clearly do better than anyone else – helps to separate your business from the competition. We view every lip balm recipient as an advertising medium.
If you impress your customer (patient) with something out of the ordinary, they will surely want to share.” – Jeffrey Young http://logolipbalm.net/
“We’ve found that often the best way to get referrals is to give them.
I know – that by itself isn’t a revolutionary idea. But what we do that is a little out of the norm is make some referrals to companies that are technically our competitors.
While SEO is our main offering, we also design dental websites and manage PPC campaigns. But in many cases we will send people to other firms that specialize in just building dental websites, rather than offering to build it ourselves. As a result we’ve received a number of referrals back from those same businesses. And a lead that comes in from someone that the client already trusts – like their website designer – is much stronger than one that comes from someone that finds us in a cold Google search.
Directing a lead that isn’t a perfect match for our company to someone else will often turn into one or more referrals that are a better fit.” – Steve Brown, https://www.ddsrank.com/
“We treat each patient as a guest rather than a customer. By treating people the way we would like to be cared for, we create an environment that is energetic, fun and demonstrated the best service possible for our patients.” – Dr. Tyler Williams, https://www.pinecrestdds.com/
“We ‘wow’ patients.
That means something different for every patient, but that is our goal for all of our patients. Walking elderly patient to the bus stop and waiting with them, completely painless injection, sweeping back new patient emergencies and having their them patched up in 20 minutes, and remembering where in the movie they were for their next patient are just some of the ways in which patients tell us they are blown away. So if your team’s goal is to “wow” your patients, you’ll find a way.” – Andrew Turchin, DMD, http://www.andrewturchin.com/
” For most practices, patient referrals are the #1 way to grow the business. However, there are 2 challenges with referrals.
First, it can be awkward for the front-desk staff to “ask” for referrals.
Second, even if patients are asked, they may not know which one of their friends requires care.
With Connect the Doc, we solve these 2 problems. The staff can ask for referrals by email or text message and the patients are able to do a “social referral” where they are effectively sharing a trackable referral link on social media.
The link is connected to the practice’s profile page on Connect the Doc which has appointments that can be booked or requested. Everything is tracked. ” – Nadeem Kassam, http://connectthedoc.com/
Learn more at the best dental marketing blog.
Top 5 SEO Myths
Hey guys welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show I’m Justin Morgan the dental marketing guy. Today we’re talking about the top 5 myths in SEO.
SEO is a scam You know, this one becomes less popular as time goes on and more and more information proliferates the internet with geometric proof that SEO is part of an overall online dental marketing strategy.
The way I explain the overall “birds eye view” of SEO is like this: Every search engine aims to offer the best results possible.
In order to do this, they can’t just offer random, arbitrary results. They can’t even offer a rotating set of results they hand pick as most relevant and credible. Search engines must use algorithms which index as many pages of content as possible and list them in the order which is calculated to be the best experience for the user. Basically in a nutshell, as long as Google tries to be best, there will be criteria you can adhere to in order to be the best result. Until these market forces are revoked from our world, SEO is a mainstay.
It may take one form or another, but one result will always be better than another result. Sadly, some dental offices have been approached by very cheap SEO Companies promising #1 rankings for $49 per month or some outrageous number.
If anyone offers you SEO for a rate which is not commensurate with the competitive landscape, it might be too good to be true. The only way to find out how difficult it is for you to rank is to assess the competitive landscape, which an SEO consultant can perform. If someone promises to rank you without doing a bit of research first, this is not a good sign. Even a tiny bit of keyword research for a few minutes can reveal a plethora of otherwise hidden gems of knowledge.
Google will figure it out Figure what out? That you got higher grades than the dentist down the street?
Google can only go off so many factors. They’re not going to have a conversation with every dentist in town to see which they trust the most. They have to go off a certain set of criteria which you must meet in order to be their preferred dentist in search results. If you’re not taking the time to figure out which criteria are being used by Google, what makes you think they’re going to pay you any favors? SEO is rational and reasonable.
Let other dentists play roulette with their practices, their retirement funds, their inability to find new patients. You will be all the wiser for taking this boon of new patients seriously.
Link building is black hat SEO Links are a reality of a great website. If you don’t have them, you’re probably not that great. Just sayin’.
This myth may have been due to a misinterpretation of Google’s head of web spam, John Mueller. He wrote an article on Search Engine Land about how manipulative back link building can be if you use automated back link building tactics with software. Yes, there are manipulative tactics available but there is a right way to earn inbound links.
Proper education, such as the kind available by the Dental Marketing Guy Show on YouTube, can help you discover the difference between malicious back link building and the great earning of inbound links.
Rankings don’t matter because patients just Google our name Let’s talk about new patients. The kind that you’ll never get the opportunity to treat. Because you weren’t willing to rank for keywords such as “dentist (my city)” and now they go to Dr. Downthestreet because he earned their trust through an email drip campaign in which he educated prospective patients about who he is, who his staff is, and what his office is like. He might have even taken these warm leads and made them piping hot for invisalign or implants or even a profitable restorative case. All because he was highly visible on search engines. Then, he nurtured the relationship, automatically. It all started with a high search engine ranking.
SEO is all hacker tricks SEO is not about hacker tricks, SEO is about creating a better user experience for your perspective dental patients and creating shareable linkable content for your perspective dental patients to find on search engines.
Learn more about the best dental marketing blog! Click Here
Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin the Dental Marketing Guy and today it is a huge honor to interview you, Laura Hatch, who is the founder and CEO of Front Office Rocks. You may have heard of this, frontofficerocks.com, the leader in web based front office training for dental practices. Front Office Rocks founded when Laura recognized the desire to share her success with her fellow dental practices. Laura earned her master in Organizational development, that’s interesting, from John Hopkins University and has worked with her husband, Dr. Anthony Hatch to start and grow two extremely successful dental practices. One outside of Baltimore and their current office in San Diego, California. That’s pretty close to me, that’s good.
Laura: Yeah, right. California West Coast.
Justin: Yeah, it looks like these have been really really successful and you know some of the training that you offer I’m sure you’ve been able to, you know, always love to talk to people that have worked in dental offices and whether their dentist or their front desks or they’re hygienists because they actually know what’s going on. They’re actually in the trenches. So I really love hearing for people that have started dental practices and run them successfully. You know you’ve authored articles for leading dental magazines, web based dental communities and I’ve seen you on dental town in the forums. Laura is a fellow of the American association of dental office managers. A national and international speaker for a leading authority on dental practice management. As well as state and local dental societies, study clubs and she’s an adviser to several companies in the dental community. So, wow, this is quite the introduction you, I’m just going to let you take the floor, Laura. How are you?
Laura: Well good, nice to talk with you. Thanks for having me on today, I appreciate it. I actually love everything that you do. You and I kind of started in the same area, the reason I started from Office rocks was because I think that so many dentists don’t think marketing works and I fully believe marketing works. I’ve had to, you know, fee for service offices. We average between 50 and 85 new patients a month but i think you’re not gonna get great return on investment if your staff’s not handling the phone as well so I love what you do and then I kind of balance that out on the front end because once, you know, you’ve got a postcard out or somebody seen some of your marketing, the next thing you do is you’re going to call your office and the people answering your phones need to be well trained to handling that. So I’m glad we’re talking about this, you know. Subject in the training that I offer.
Justin: So they want mediocre front desk training they shouldn’t contact you but if they want their front desk to rock.
Laura: Yes
Justin: Tell me a little bit about what you do to help the front office rock.
Laura: Yeah, so just like you said my husband’s a dentist so i kind of got thrown into office manager by default because my husband said “Hey you know once you run the back or the front and I’ll be in the back so when I got into dentistry in 2002. I mean just like now there’s not a lot of schools that you can go to, to learn how to be a front office manager. There’s not, you know, a lot of resources out there for us so I had to figure it out on my own and I know that a lot of dentists aren’t trained on the front office part of things so I started from Front Office Rocks with the hope to help the, you know, new employees. The ones coming into a dental office going “Okay how do I do this?” you know “How do I fill a schedule? How do I handle the phone calls? How do I do my daily job” You know. Dental offices aren’t like anything else. I mean they are their customer service and more in the serve industry but we really gotta learn the dental part of it so my goal is to help dentist and teams get their “How to’s” down to the front office, you know everything from that very first phone call to ask him for a referral and ask him to go online and do a review. Everything along the way is really what I focus in Front Office Rocks.
Justin: And maybe we can give the viewers maybe two or three quick tips as far as you know, just a short punchy version if there’s anything that our viewers can do to take action based on your training. What would two or three tips be for “I’m a dentist, I am watching the Dental marketing Guy Show and man, and it sounds great it sounds like you help dentists out? What do I do? What should I do with the first step?
Laura: All right well the first thing I would suggest is to make sure, especially if you’re spending money on marketing, to make sure that the people answering your phone are trained so many times in the dental office the place we try out the new employee is answering the phones and if that new employee doesn’t know how to handle that phone call. If they don’t know about insurance and if you’re in and out of network and how to handle a shop or a phone call or whatever. That’s gonna be a waste of your marketing money. So the last thing I would do is put a brand new employee on the phones until they’re trained and proven before you’re going to let them answer your phones because that’s just going to be a waste of money that you’re spending in any regards to answer, you know, to the marketing that you’re doing and my second thing would be making sure that your team and this is what I trained on, this kind of how the start of Foreign Office Rocks started it is they know how to handle the questions when patients call I because they’re gonna get the marketing from your website or from your office and they’re still going to call no matter what the marketing says, they’re still going to call your office and typically ask, you know “Do you take my insurance?”, Do you have weekend hours?”, “How much is a crown?” Like these are the typical questions and if your employees answer that question and if your employees answer the question at all with a no like “No we’re not network for your insurance” or “No we’re not open on weekends”. All that patients going to want to do or prospective new patient is hang up. You know they’re just gonna be like “Okay well” because they think they need to call somebody who’s in network, or that has weekend hours, So the number one tip I teach anybody on the phones is to try not to even answer their questions with something negative because once you’ve answered it was something negative like “No we don’t have weekend hours”. That person is just trying to get off the phone. What we need to do is we need to answer with a positive response and then take control of the phone calls. So yes we work with your insurance, yes in certain circumstances we’re open on the weekends. Let me ask you a few questions because if we don’t take control of that phone call to find out who’s calling, why are they calling, what intrigued them about the marketing that they got about our office, what if they heard about us, what can we help them with. We’re never going to get to know the person on the other end of the phone. So it’s my recommendation that every question anybody calls in we’re going to answer with something positive so we can start to find out about the person on the other end of the phone instead of just talking to them about their insurance because yes we have to do with insurance. But at the end of the day that’s not over here for. We’re here to really care about our patients. So for me training the front office team, making sure they’re very well-versed in how to handle new patient calls. So important for every dentists and you know around the world let alone, you know, the United States.
Justin: You know it drives me crazy, you know I do SEO for dentists and you know it doesn’t matter what kind of marketing you’re doing, the perspective patients are going to call when they’re gonna call.
Laura: Right.
Justin: It drives me crazy that you’ve got some dental offices spending 5, 10 grand a month of marketing and those could be 90% emergency cases. But they don’t see emergency cases if they’re not a patient of record. You know like it just seems that there should be some system in place where instead of pissing away 5 grand a month for marketing and then, you know, saying no to 40 grand a month, 50 grand a month in production. What, did you actually found a way to deal with that, you know?
Laura: Right.
Justin: So do you go into that sort of thing?
Laura: Completely, yeah. One of my, I hear a lot of doctors tell me that, you know, new patients don’t show up for appointment so they have a lot of cancellations or no shows. Well one of the things behind it is we need to get the patient to come in when they’re motivated so we need to get them in as soon as possible. You should be seeing emergencies, you should be seeing new patients. My policy is in the next one to three days. Get them in like I had a good, for example. I had a patient that called in and he’s been getting postcards to his house for my dental office for four years and he’s finally calling into my office now to make an appointment. You know he’s gotten 25, 30 postcards from my office and he’s motivated now to pick up the phone. I need to get him right away, you know? We’re not going to be able to diagnose the patient over the phone. We got to get them in, so you got to make your doors open and available and get patients and if you want to see your new patient, you know, your new patient numbers increase. So I’m all about that one of the things I teach is in the huddle in the morning. Everybody should be having a huddle to talk about, well where do we stick new patients and what’s a real emergency, and how do we fit them in so that the team can work together to bring in new patients to make the marketing work. Because you’re gonna get your best return on investment if you’re actually keeping your doors open and making it easy to become a new patient in your practice.
Justin: Yeah, you know both Howard Farran and Fred Joyal, the founder of 1-800-DENTIST were on this show and one of the things that they always talk about is 8% of emergency rooms visits are dental related. So the emergency rooms meaning not dental offices but hospitals and imagine the cost to society especially because a lot of these people presumably can’t pay or the government’s footing the bill or the hospital is footing the bill. This is a cost being passed onto everyone. What if dental offices actually did emergency care and emergency rooms? What if people actually knew that other dentists was willing to do that but I don’t know, that’s outside your wheelhouse or you actually read about too.
Laura: Well I think, for me because I, you know we see emergencies. We see new patients, we’re you know, we’re all about that. I think the biggest thing for me is having the right people answering the phones. Having them trained well and having them think about calling in two different medical offices and that, just mean that mean lady who answers the phone or she’s really short, you know. That’s the first impression people have on our dental offices. So we want to make sure that we’re friendly. We’re handling the call well, we’re getting them in as soon as possible, that we have the right attitude because anything that you’re doing- SEO or otherwise, you know, you get paid to get that phone call, you know. I say I like to say my husband argues with me because he would say its CEREC but I say the biggest piece of technology in our entire dental office, the most important one is the phones because the phones, there are connections to the outside. They’re our lifeline and if we don’t have phones or we’re not handling them well, we’re not gonna have a lot of patience to work on so I just think that missed so much with handling calls and handling new patients and emergencies or whatever the case may be.
Justin: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So could you tell us a few things that may be dentists can, you know, well how does your process work? Tell me how it works.
Laura: So the reason why started Front Office Rocks is because I didn’t find that there was a resource out there for dental team. So the doctor says “Hey fill my schedule tomorrow” or, you know “Lower our number of cancellation” or “Whatever, get your collection. Collect the money we need” and then they go in the office and they cross their fingers and hope that the front office teams knows what to do. So what I’ve designed as a resource for dental offices that’s a one price to train as many people as you want and its price so that any dentist, new, big, small can afford it and they’re short video based training. So basically there’s a hundred eighty videos and I add new videos every month because I’m in the dental office so I see things going on all the time and the videos are anywhere from 5 to 12-13 minutes long. So they’re easy to watch, you can take a break during the day. Watch a video, there’s quizzes at the end. Make sure that the employees are getting it that and the doctors can see that the quizzes are being taken. And the idea is to give the front office team the training they need when they need it on the subjects that they need without having to send him to some CE in another state and have them be off, you know, out of work. It’s there for significant or training that’s going to help every employee whether they’re new or maybe they can you know, use a little enhancement on handling an issue or two. So the concept is just really to give the staff the resources they need to be better in their own jobs. Which in turn is going to help the office, the doctor in the office grow.
Justin: Excellent, excellent, so you got a program and can I ask how much is it?
Laura: Yeah, its 149 a month and it’s month to month, mean it’s, you know, you just cancel so there’s no long-term contracts. And like I said it’s priced so anybody can really afford and I mean it’s 149 dollars a month, in fact I had an office, a doctor told me they signed up within the first two days their front office receptionist had answered, you know, watched a couple of videos. She answered the next phone call and that phone call with somebody who asked how much the crown was. She typically would have given the crown field over the phone but because she watched the videos she didn’t give the fee over the phone, she converted the person to a consult and they ended up closing that patient on a crown. So it paid for itself for the whole year. So the idea is so that you can train. I mean I have some offices that have 25, 30, 40 employees and some that have 1 and it’s all one price, easy to use, easy in the office. Some offices use it as a team training and their huddles, some use it one on one training. It really, it’s adaptable to any office really and in looking to help them, you know, grow and fix their front office.
Justin: That’s excellent. I really like that so, you know, there’s a lot of companies out there that are talking about front desk training. You know you got a couple of big names and then I know there’s a lot of smaller people. What would you say, I mean the 149, that’s an incredible price point and do you update those today?
Laura: Well I update the videos and I add new documents so basically I have hundreds of clients across the country and they are, I felt I could help more offices doing it the way then try to go in office to do training or consulting so what happens is the clients reach out to me. They might have a question about how do you handle this, how do you handle that. I’ll address it. I’ll add it to the website for the rest of the clients, I’ll do a video about it. If I don’t have a video in there I’ll write a document like I just wrote a document on how to get out of network, the different steps that you should consider. So my concept behind Foreign Office Rocks is to be a resource for dental teams across the country and add, like I said, at a price that they can afford where they can use the knowledge. I have to be able to help them implement, you know, different things they want to work on in the office.
Justin: that’s really cool. I mean this is different from many things that I have heard of just by the way that you’re describing it. The medium that you’re using, I can, you know, its scalable. That’s why it’s inexpensive because it’s not, the knowledge is just as valuable as having a consultant come in but it’s 100 times cheaper, that’s really interesting.
Laura: Well one of the things that I think sets Foreign Office Rocks apart from, I mean I think consultants are great, trainers are great, speakers I was just talking to a couple speakers today, all amazing. The thing is with me, as I’m an office manager, I mean that’s what I am. You know, I’m not a consultant, I’m not coming in office. There are needs and necessities for consultants for sure. My focus is on the day-to-day duties, the leave behind for the employees of hoe do I do this, how do I do that because training, as you heard my master’s degree in organizational development with which basically means change management and one of the biggest issues that happened in businesses like all different kinds of that. A lot of the issues start from the very first day, the very first week that the employees aren’t trained correctly. They don’t know what they’re doing, they’re just kind of thrown into the wolves and especially in a dental office, you know, you go in and one employee shows you how to do something in another place shows you how to do it but differently and you kind of just learn as you go and with Front Office Rocks it’s now structured training for every employee to hear the same message without having to take other employees off their jobs and it’s all done by an office manager. You know, I show real life examples of how to handle the patient that doesn’t want to pay, or how to handle an angry patient that comes in or how to run a huddle. It’s all kinds of videos that can be absorbed easily and have real life examples and then of what happens every single day and dental offices.
Justin: That’s excellent, so you’re right there in the trenches. You’re, you know going on. So the reason why it’s month the month a month I’m guessing is because you do the updates and so you’ve tapped into all these ever dental offices. They come to you with questions, you answer them. If it seems like that’s kind of a frequently question or something really important that they need to know, you update the videos you update the content.
Laura: Yup, I just had a lot of it is people, my clients just want to know like how do you do in your office, you know. I’ve had an office on the East Coast we’ve had an office on the West Coast. I mean my husband and I have, we have eight operatories, a staff of 15, we got 50 to 80 new patients a month, we have 4 doctors. So I have a lot of different scenarios that I can pull from and I just want to be a resource for as many offices as I can because I get the same questions over and over again from the doctors and dental offices and I thought “Why not have a resource that they can go to, to be able to get information they need when they need it.
Justin: That’s great and you know I love that one of the things I think our listeners like about these interviews is there are sometimes unscripted. You know I’m just kind of throwing questions at you here. You know I’m wondering like how many, this is kind of an esoteric question. So let me know if I’m even phrasing it right. But like how many front desk employees do you actually need. I mean in terms of like exact guidelines like her dollar amount of production. How many, her number of patients and stuff like that, is that a, does that question make sense? How many front desk per dollar production per patient is there?
Laura: Well you know I’m gonna be honest with you. I’m not, I don’t know off the top of my head. I know when my husband and I added and what worked and what didn’t and I’m sure there’s some, there’s like I said there’s much smarter people out there in the dental consultant world that probably have formulas of when to hire, when they’re not, I will tell you that I find that doctors tend to be somewhat frugal on the front desk and having enough employees. One of the things I say is if, you know there’s two sides to it. That the doctor can be frugal so that in the front office person is overwhelmed, I mean they just can’t get everything done in the day and or are the office for office teams, are they working as efficiently as they could be? So you have to kind of weigh what’s going on the front office. But for me if things aren’t happening, for example, I was just talking to a doctor last week where they’re so busy at the front they haven’t made overdue re-care calls in 6 or 8 months. So those are patients that are not on schedule, that are just out in the world and they haven’t called them to say “Hey we need to get you back in, you’re due for your cleaning”. They have huge outstanding treatment plan list but they haven’t called on, they have outstanding claims that are over 90 days old. So all of this, is areas that the doctor is losing money because their front office team is overwhelmed and he’s reading until they get to a certain level before you hire somebody. Well if they wait until we’re so desperate that’s when we just hire whoever, stick them on the front phones and say “Hey, start answering the phones” you know. We really want to make sure that we’re planning and looking and saying “Are we doing everything we should at the front desk?” Because if you’re not the practices aren’t going to grow, you know. So I don’t know if there’s a specific number and i’m sure I could look it up and find out but I’m not going to guess at this point. It’s more of just kind of going “Is everything happening in your front desk?”, “Are you making calls?” I mean, you know, oh patients disappeared, get out the schedule and if we’re not calling to follow up with them too make sure that they know they need to get scheduled. Who’s reminding them, you know, who’s reaching out to them to say “Hey you need to get back in” so it’s things like that I kind of help asses and help train on, to make sure that you know, you’re not being short-sighted because doctors tend to focus on production. You know what we’re producing and producing well. We also have to look at what are the things that aren’t happening or are happening in our front desk to help our practice ground.
Justin: Yeah, you know one of our past guests, Spencer Peller from yestrack.com. Its after-hours call answering service. We were talking about how voicemail is basically a thief in your office. I mean, you know I had Dave Harris on the show too. We talked about embezzlement and you know, it’s like that. I’m not sure, I think it comes to marketing, dentist will invest in marketing but then when it comes to actually bridging the gap of making sure that marketing converts into dollars there’s a lot of steps there and I think, just wanted to do dentistry but this is really important is to have experts like you come on and say “Look you know we’ve got it, we’ve got to follow up on these dollars that you’re spending otherwise” I always tell dentists, I say just stop investing in marketing stuff, stop investing. If you aren’t making money, if you don’t have am ROI and a lot of times the dentist don’t know so it’s like, for instance if you’re doing SEO, you might not be able to geometrically track the leads as easily as if you’re doing like ad words, pay-per-click ads where you can use it to track with. Direct mail, radio, billboards, everything, TV, you can use tracking numbers, you can’t do that for SEO. It’s the one thing I really don’t like about SEO’s but you do have a lot data and when you can see “Oh there’s new patients coming from the website and its concurrent” you see there’s all this new traffic on the website but for whatever reason you’re not increasing revenues. Now it’s not the SEO fall, you’re ranked number on in Google, you’re getting lots of traffic but you gotta follow up on that stuff so I really like that.
Laura: I think you and I may have been posted on a similar thing and then we’ll talk about that because I feel like you’re going to get better ROI on any marketing that you do when you have a well-trained staff. When you’re answering your phone 5 days a week, when you’re like it’s so frustrating to me when I call into dental offices and I get their voicemail and the voicemail says if you’ve reached during business hours we must be helping another patients. For me I’m like “Well what is that telling this potential new patient that’s calling your office?” the other person is more important than them, right? When we let is go to voicemail over lunch. Well or somebody who works a 40 hour week job and they’re handling their personal issues, when do you typically handle things like making their dental appointment?
Justin: With their lunch and the evenings, yeah.
Laura: Yeah, right. And so in most offices are closed on Fridays and they don’t answer their phone on Fridays and I’m like you spent this money to get your phones to ring and now nobody’s answering your phone. Like it just doesn’t make any sense to me. I think a dental office phone should be answered minimally for Friday. I think it’s great if there’s an after hour service like you know, you were talking about. But for sure between 8 and 5 Monday through Friday it should not go to voicemail because we’re not corporate America, you know. Don’t push one for billing and two for making an appointment they want to talk to a human, you know. And then people are spending more to come to our office. No, insurance isn’t paying more, our fees are going up, people are spending money they want to see a value in that and that starts with that very first phone call once making sure that your phones are answered. So we’re definitely preaching to the choir here you and I.
Justin: I hope the listeners take action on it because I gotta tell you, I’m so tired of dentists giving me a million dollars month for SEO. No, I’m just kidding.
Laura: Yeah, right? I need to get your business
Justin: so here’s another question. I’m wondering is, do you recommend hiring a front desk with dental experience and if so how much? Because a lot of good, just like you said, they’re very cost-conscious. They might skip on investment in the front desk, meanwhile they’ll spend 20 grand on their website but I think on that, but you know the point is you know what the difference between a fixed or removable bridge. You know these people in banking and waitresses and people that you just pick up on the street. They don’t know the difference between this stuff and you gotta teach him so anyways bring it back to my question. Do you recommend hiring a front desk with dental experience and if so how much?
Laura: That’s funny that you bring that up because this is one of my mantras that I talk about. I actually, I’m not saying you shouldn’t but you don’t have to have somebody with frank desk experience we can teach, like when I started I mean, dental experience. When I started I didn’t know that teeth had numbers, I didn’t know they had surfaces, I didn’t know, I remember seeing the dental codes. Thinking I need to do all those ATA codes like somebody surfaces. You can teach what a removable or a fixed bridge is but you can’t teach them how to be friendly. You can’t or we don’t have time to do that, we don’t have time to teach some great customer service and for example I had an employee who, she just never smiled and she could have been the best employee in the world but you need to smile and be nice to people. You need to, you know, we work with our dental family more than with our regular family. Our patients are paying money to be here and this is just something that is couldn’t teach her to do. So for me, I feel like dentists do feel like have to hire somebody with experience. I feel like dentists feel like you have to have somebody with 2 years Eagles Software experience or 2 years Dentrix experience. And I do believe you don’t. I believe with resources like what I’ve come up with Front Office Rocks. My video start with ok here are dental codes and what they mean, here are what services of teeth are, here are procedures and we can take somebody who understands how to take care of patients, how to get more clients in the door, how to be friendly, how to work hard. We can teach them the dental vs sometimes we try to hire somebody that has the Eagle soft or the Dentrix experience but what’s happening is first of all you’re paying more for that employee and second of all you’re bringing the other dental offices experiences into your office which isn’t always what you want. I would rather take somebody from you know, banking or a hostess or Nordstrom’s and bring them into the dental office and teach them that dental because they’ve got the customer services down. They’ve got the business part of it down and that part is more important to me than knowing removable vs fixed bridge or whatever the case may be.
Justin: Excellent, excellent. Do you feel the back office should discuss financing or cost with patients and if so or if not, why?
Laura: I don’t know back office vs front office, it kind of just depends on how your office runs. I feel I think it’s more important to make sure the right person is talking about finances. Meaning I don’t want to put anybody in a consultation with one of my patients who may have issues with money. For example, maybe the treatment plan is 5,000 dollars and I’ve got a young dental assistant who barely makes that in a certain period of time and so when she like “5,000 dollars, that’s a lot of money”. You know, I want to make sure whoever is talking about money with our patient sees the value in the dentistry that the patients are getting, understands the patient needs to get this dentist redone because it’s necessary for their dental health, and has no problem talking about money. So it can be an assistant, it could be a hygienist, could be a front office employee. For me, that doesn’t matter. I do feel that you have to make sure there’s good system in your office, meaning not to talk about the patient to the patient about money while they’re standing at the front desk with their tennis shoes on 12 feet away from the front door because all they’re trying to do is get out of your office when we’re talking about money. So I would prefer that the conversation happens in a consult room or chair side. Somewhere where we can really get into full communication with the patient and handle all their questions and do everything in our power to help them understand what they need to get him to schedule vs what happens a lot in dental offices right now, is the doctor tells the patient what information they need, we welcome to the front desk, the patient gets handed that treatment plan and all they see is the dollar amount on the bottom and they’re like “Whoa, wait a minute, I didn’t expect this” and they’re trying to get out. So for me it’s more important to make sure that you have systems and I’ve, I don’t know- 15, 20 videos specifically on the system in the office and how to talk to patients about money and you know, the patient says “Well in only doing what the insurance covers or cant it wait?” How do we handle those kinds of things? That’s more important to me than whether it’s a demo assistant or if you’re not, you know, for an office employee.
Justin: Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah that makes a lot of sense. You know I had a client who told me that their front desk gets off the phone with someone like you know, oh yeah it’s gonna be 10 grand or whatever procedure and then they hang up the phone and they go “”It’s a dental assistant, probably making 12 dollars an hour and she gets off the phone. She’s like “I would never pay 10 grand for a mystery, that is way too much and it’s like okay, hold on doctor that is not the right attitude. How are you supposed to sell dentistry which sales is kind of a dirty work? This is kind of an on-going theme of the show is talking about how sale is a four letter word in the dental world. But you know and how it shouldn’t be. Whether you call it case acceptance or patient experience or what are you know me, yeah. I mean the bottom line is if you have the best clinical skills in the world you have a responsibility to sell dentistry.
Laura: Well think about it, what do we sell, right? We sell dental health like what we sell helps out patients live longer, live a better life. We sell dental health, but in our patients minds what do we sell, we sell drills and needles in their mouths they are going to pay thousands of dollars for something nobody’s going to see and half the time it didn’t hurt before you touched them. Well if you had your choice I want to spend a thousand dollars on a big screen TV or a thousand dollars on a root canal. What do you think the patients are going to want to pick, right? So we don’t sell things that people want but we have to get over that, because they ultimately need it. You know we are their health care provider and we need to make sure everybody on your team including the doctor has that same philosophy and understands the importance of selling. The other word I use, you know. Instead of sell I use help and that’s what we’re doing, we’re helping our patients, you know, live longer and live a better life. So and on that note I have a quick story. When we first moved into San Diego i called a bunch of different dental offices,, just trying to find out what their fees were in my area and how much they were charging and I had one that’s near my office who I said “you know how much is your crown?” and she told me the price, whatever it was. 1200 dollars or whatever and I said “Wow that’s expensive”, she goes “I know right, if you get insurance it will definitely help with that”. Like this is somebody answering this doctors phones who’s agreeing with me that 1200 dollars is expensive for a crown and I’m sure that doctor probably call someone like you and says my marketing does not work. You know I haven’t gotten more new patients and it’s like, that’s because the person you have answering the phone has a real issue with money and she’s giving out these fees over the phone. It’s not your marketing that the problem, your staff’s not trained well. So we’re definitely on the same page with that.
Justin: Imagine if a dentist. I mean it’s almost like a joke if the dentist shoots out a mailer that says isn’t 1200 dollars for a crown too much? But it’s telling them.
Laura: Yeah, completely. Yeah and so that’s why I get so frustrated when doctors, you know. I had one office that asked me to call into their office to see how their demo assistant was doing answering the phones because they weren’t busy enough to keep her busy on the back so they put her out the phone because they needed help up front. Well she want trained at all, so when I called and talked to her, you could tell she was nervous, she didn’t know any of the questions or the answers to my questions. She didn’t know what insurances they took. We hung up and I thought you know I could’ve been a potential new patient and you know they were busy enough in the back so I put it on the phones, that’s the worst thing you could do. At least train them before they start answering phones, anybody.
Justin: Right, right. Well you know many patients don’t want to pay until you actually do the work, especially the elderly, sometimes so I’ve heard some experts tell me that. Do you believe patients should be pre-pay for the treatment before the scheduled or just bring in their portion on the day of service?
Laura: You know it’s, I think that everyone, we should figure out the finances with patients before we put them in the schedule for sharp. If we are at all concerned that the person is 100% sold we should have them pay something because that is, I would rather find out in the consultation if somebody is not sold on getting the dentist redone they’re not going to pay you a dime. They’re not gonna pay you anything and hat we do is we put them in the schedule. We cross our fingers and we go well, hopefully they’ll show up but why do we do that to ourselves. Like would you rather find out when you go to appoint them if they’re sold or not. So for me anybody who you’re not 100 % sure on at least have them put a deposit down for the appointment. Now if you don’t want to offer prepayment discount, great I’m up for that but minimally don’t put them in the schedule and then just hope they’re gonna show up. Now if you’ve got great patients that show up, the pay their bills, they never cancel appointments, they’re always there. Well you’re not going to wanna, you know, change the policy for them. This is more for, you know, people who keep failing and cancelling. I mean I hear doctors is the number one issues is cancellations and no shows. Well this will fix it, ask a patient to pay then you’re going to find out are they really on boards and are they gonna shop up and if I’ve got two patient in the schedule and this one is paid and this has not even paid a dime I’m gonna bet that this one’s going to show up without any problem because we all get those phone calls in the morning where it’s at “I’m sick” right? Well they’re here like “No I just saw you at target last night. You’re not sick”. But basically they’re waking up going “Mehh”. I have a root canal scheduled today and I really don’t want to do that and I have to pay 500 dollars, you know. So it’s just better to handle it up front if you’re at all concerned about that person, you know, coming to the appointment.
Justin: Excellent, excellent. Well we’re coming to a close on our time but man this has been some amazing value. I really appreciate you answering and some of these unscripted questions. Sounds like you really known what you’re talking about. Where can I go? Where can they find you?
Laura: It’s just frontofficerocks.com. I have other videos are all broken into categories- receptionists, scheduler, treatment coordinator, office manager. there’s free videos on the top where you can watch a couple sample videos to get an video of what the training is about and there’s an ask Laura in there and you can reach out to me and you can sign up for the monthly or you can sign up for annual and you get a discount if you do that. And if they mention that they heard this podcast. I’ll give 50 dollars off the first month so all they have to do is mention that they listened to us and leaned some stuff. I wanted to give it a shot and we’ll make sure they get a discount because I want to definitely try to help as many of your listeners as we can.
Justin: Excellent. What kind of discount are we talking? I love this.
Laura: 50 dollars off the first month, so it’s not even 149 now. Now it’s what? 79 or 99 so this gives them the opportunity to get in there and try it out at any point you know, just when you’re done training you can cancel. There’s no long term contracts because I really believe in that training, that its’s something that you use every month and it grows with your practice.
Justin: Excellent, excellent. Well that’s great. Well thank you very much, Laura for appearing and man I hope if anyone has any questions feel free to reach out. Let me know if you have questions for Laura. You’ve got her information, do you have an email they can reach out to?
Laura: Yeah it’s just laura@frontofficerocks.com. You can go to the website, there’s also an ask Laura in there and that comes directly to me. So if you’ve got any questions about the training, the website, and my philosophies- anything, feel free to reach out to me. I’m here to help as many offices I can.
Justin: Cool, well hey, you know what like I’m always saying, you gotta answer that phone you gotta answer it with courtesy, gotta know what you’re talking about, you gotta be able to feel these objections about insurance and whatnot. Well here’s someone who might be able to help you with that so for all doctors who are, you know hitting it up the dental marketing guy for SEO and web design and whatnot. Let me tell you this is the kind of thing that you need to really take the marketing investment that you’ve made and turn it into a growing practice, a practice where you get the patients that you want most. Thank you, Laura and thank you to all of you watching the Dental Marketing Guy Show.
Read more at the best dental marketing blog!
3 Proven Ways to Increase Patient Referrals
Hey guys welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin the dental marketing guy. Today we’re talking about three proven ways to increase patient referrals and what it means for your SEO.
What are 3 things you can start doing this week to make your practice more referral worthy?
1. Thanking Patients who refer to your dental practice. Have a system in place to thank those who refer to your dental practice. I’m talking about every single patient, not just the ones you know personally. Have a budget to reward referring dental patients. It could be a bottle of wine with a handwritten note, or anything you believe the patient would most value. If someone sends you a restorative or cosmetic dental patient, you don’t want to pinch pennies, here. Given the lifetime value of a new patient, you want to create a lasting memory in the referring patient’s mind.
DON’T create expectations beforehand by promising them a gift card or cash award for any future patients they might refer. This creates a high expectation, and makes it hard to under-promise and over-deliver. The whole point is to exceed expectations. Promise your patients nothing ahead of time for referrals other than the best patient experience and optimal care for their friends and family. Both the referring patient and the referral patient will respect you more for it, in the end.
The other problem with offering cash for referral cases is that it creates the perception that it’s all about money for you, not patient care. Don’t be that dentist. Be someone that stands out from the crowd by showing your patients that this is about their well-being, not your pocketbook. Many patients feel dentists become dentists simply to make money. Nothing reinforces this belief quite like the promise of a multi-level-marketing scheme, which is a close model to what’s being offered with cash-for-cases.
2. Take Notes on Patient Values. Intake forms allow you the opportunity to learn a bit more than the average dentist about your new patient. In my experience, patients actually like to talk about themselves and what they like or dislike on these forms. Better yet, if they happen to mention in passing that they’re a Lakers fan, or follow a certain sport, make a note of it in the patient’s file. This will allow you to pull up the information when the patient is referring to you, and they’ll think you have an amazing memory!
Better yet, they’ll feel that you truly care enough about them to take the time to address such things. The more personal the gift, the better. Do they like a particular brand of wine? Sports fan memorabilia is particularly memorable. Get creative. This is your time to separate yourself from the pack.
3. Free Marriage Anniversary Whitening. Talk about unexpected! If they have a 10th, 20th, or other milestone marriage anniversary coming up, they’re probably thinking about hiring a photographer or at least snapping a selfie while out to dinner. Think of how meaningful it is to have perfectly white teeth for these photos!
It costs you a whitening kit less than $100, and if you schedule it during an open time in your assistant’s schedule, that’s all your out of pocket cost is.
Make a note of which patients refer to your practice and offer them all this deal. While other dentists cheapen their appearance by shooting out mailers for free whitening to every Joe Schmo, you’re only rewarding those patients whom have the highest lifetime value. Think of the conversations their white teeth will start! Remember, this was a referral source before you gifted them. Think of the evangelical reviews you’ll get when you offer this. Even if the couple doesn’t take you up on the offer, they’ll never forget the dentist who did!
Read more on the best dental marketing blog.
Why Hire a Dental SEO Specialist?
Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show! Today we’re talking about the difference between a generalist SEO Company and a Dental SEO Company. I’m Justin Morgan, let’s delve into this!
If you’ve followed the Dental Marketing Guy Show episodes which highlight the importance of SEO, you’re probably familiar with the basic tenants of content creation and earning relevant, authoritative inbound links. While some blogging material can be delegated to just about anyone who has great writing skills, certain pages on your website deserve someone who best understands the psychology of the would-be dental patient. Someone who empathizes with the hidden fears which go into making important dental decisions. This is one situation where the photography, video production, and copy writing presented by a dental website is optimally prepared by a dental marketing expert. Higher conversions, due to a deeper understanding of your industry and the way dental consumers react to it, and also higher rankings on search engines from a more experienced and polished way of discovering more lucrative keywords.
Simply put, a Simply put, a dental marketing specialist can help you identify common opportunities and risks associated with the unique marketing demands in dentistry.
Now you may be thinking “Ok Justin that’s great. You’re creating content that is superior to that of the person who doesn’t specialize in dental arts. What about the other parts of SEO? Well let’s think about this. How EXACTLY is someone who doesn’t work in, have relationships with, and possess influence in the dental industry supposed to earn inbound links? From yesterday’s pool of back links, that’s where. From places that don’t have anything to do with the dental field. From places that God knows where – that’s where! With a dental SEO expert, you have someone who already possesses a rolodex with a quick wit in locating the absolute best web properties who should link to any specific page on your dental website. Simply put, you’re in the best hands to gain efficient SEO results when your SEO professional has already built an infrastructure designed specifically for the dental industry.
At the end of the day, search engine optimization can be a trial-and-error endeavor. For that reason, some people will say that results cannot be guaranteed. For the rest of us, we understand the value of specialization.
I’m Justin Morgan, the Dental Marketing Guy and you’ve been watching the Dental Marketing Guy Show! If you’d like to learn more about how to attract the kind of patients you want most, please subscribe to learn more free information!
Read more on the dental marketing blog.
Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy and today we have a very special guest. If you hang out in dental town, marketing forum sections, if you ever looked for a dentist who is also a top notch web developer, you’ve probably heard of Dr. David Wank. He is from shorthillsdesign.com and today we are talking about how you can increase your presence online and how you can get new patients through the internet, through your website, through SEO, content creation, and kind of go through David’s opinions and some ideas and some actionable tips for you on how you can create some new patient flow. So first of all, David, how are you?
Dr. David Wank: I am well and thank you. Thank you for having me and thank you for the invite, it’s great to be here.
Justin: Excellent, I know you have a ton of technical knowledge—not just clinical, but with online content creation, web development and all that. Can you tell us a little about your history as a dentist and then also Short Hills Design?
Dr. David Wank: Sure. Well I went to dental school like the rest of us did. I was always into business and marketing and small business. I started out doing consulting to make some extra money on the side. Eventually I started building websites for anybody who would buy one—didn’t have to be a dentist just whatever it happened to be. Then I realized I could put the two together so a few years ago I basically just had the company focus on just dentist and physicians. The majority of our clients are dentist. We have some physicians and some attorneys. They are not attorneys who sue dentists thankfully. That’s where this began. In the beginning it was just me and as I got bigger and got more clients and more responsibilities I built a team. I work with my team and it’s fantastic because the team kind of enacts my vision. Everyone has a specific way they do things—whether I’m doing a website, doing SEO, whether you’re doing a root canal or crown—at the end of the day we want the same success. Our route to get there is a little bit different. So my team kind of knows the same way—I don’t have to be in the room watching my dental assistant taking an x-ray because she knows what I expect to see and she’s not going to show me a film until it’s the right film. The same way that my team knows my philosophy and knows the way I think about things. And that’s great and I’m happy to have that in place. My team has definitely taught me a lot as well. So that’s where we are.
Justin: As far as dental school is concerned—you kind of glazed over this—which school did you graduate from?
Dr. David Wank: Harvard.
Justin: So not just any dental school.
Dr. David Wank: Well, I talked my way in.
Justin: You’ve done other podcast as well with Howard Farran, what was your undergrad, where was it, and what was it in?
Dr. David Wank: So I have a degree in English from Tufts with a focus in British literature so I can certainly write. Again, my dental background is from Harvard and I’ve always liked running a business so I still see patients five days a week which I really enjoy doing. It keeps me fresh. I don’t like going to a lecture or conference where someone who hasn’t seen a patient in 20 years is telling me how to work with patients. Now certainly that’s valuable because they have more experience than I, but I feel like I want to be in the trenches as it were. And that’s part of what I do because I can speak patient and I speak dentist so it bridges the gap. So I feel like my background, especially with the team I’ve put together, we offer a unique approach. I don’t think there’s any other team that I know of that does it like we do it. And I think it’s great.
Justin: One of the things that probably separates you with your background in English and your background in dental and as well as web development, this is kind of singular. There’s not that many people with that kind of knowledge. When it comes to dentists who are watching this that are wanting to attract new patients, would you say content creation/writing is really important in getting ranked on search engines and speaking to patients and how do you go about that at Short Hills Design?
Dr. David Wank: I think the bottom line is that you have to have a website to be competitive. Unfortunately it’s a no-brainer—it’s no longer optional. The website has to go to Google standards. It’s not a secret. If you want to do it, Google will tell you what needs to be done to make your website up to their standards. You can also look to see what needs to be done for a root canal to be up to standards on Google as well and it’s a question of “what’s my expertise?” I haven’t had a root canal fail in 10 years because I haven’t done one in 10 years. Now I could certainly pick up the book tomorrow in the office and figure it out and it would take me all day. My endodontist does a heck of a lot better job—she does it every day. Certainly I’m sending that to her.
So it’s not a secret but if you want to do your own website then have a great day—it’s fun but not when it’s your business on the line. You’re certainly not going to write your own buy/sell agreements when you buy and sell a practice. You can Google that as well but it’s a question of what you want to do on your own. Once that’s there, content certainly is key but content has to be your voice. Obviously as you know Justin, the days where you build a website and the content comes with it, that is no longer a good deal. In the past, you picked the color you wanted and the crown content and the canal content. And that was great. The problem is, Google has said, “That’s not good because it doesn’t provide a unique user experience”. If you want to take your kids to the apple farm, you Google the apple farm and it will say that every apple farm has the same page and the same about page. It’s going to say, “Well what’s going on with these apple farms? I can’t tell them apart. Google stinks. I’ll go look on a different search engine.” Google is about experience. The motivation behind that is content for another day.
The bottom line is we want a good user experience and they have defined that as go ahead and provide custom content. So we’ve actually had all of our clients write custom content. We certainly will write content for a fee but I’d much rather the client write their own content. I will certainly come to your office and pour your models and polish them—heck, fly me out there and pay me, I’ll clean your floors. It’s fine with me, for my fee it’s no trouble. But if you’re going to spend your money on me, I’d rather have you write your content. For our clients we tell them what to write, how to write it, we proofread it for them and guide them through it. But you can’t change the voice. I don’t call it periosurgery, we call it gum work. And my staff knows Dr. Wank doesn’t send you to the periodontist for gum surgery. We’re going to send you because your tooth needs this and this. Let the periodontist explain how you’re going to get filleted. It’s not what I do and it’s not how I control the message.
So like any marketing, your website is controlling the message. And if you have someone else write the content for you—look we’re a great team…Dr. Jen and I do a hell of a job with content and I’d say we’re one of the best teams in the country because we’re both dentist, we both write, and know what we’re doing. But even as good as we are, we cannot replicate your voice. We’re a good second best but only a second best to you as the dentist that runs the practice. So that being said, there’s certain nuances. We all have patients that call it an implant when it’s really a post. It’s all a question of what language do you use in your office? What tone of voice do you use in your office? Are you comical? Are you laughing all the time? Are you cracking jokes? I am. My patients know that I’m funny and we have a good time but when it’s serious the explanations that I give are serious.
The website has to match who you are or at least you want to try that. That’s difficult to do when someone else is writing your content for you, but when it’s you…the point is, it doesn’t have to be super polished but certainly no typos and no glaring grammatical errors. But it has to be you. If it’s not you, there’s a disconnect. That’s why just from a user interface perspective content is huge and from a search perspective. But from just getting your clients there—you’re telling your patient, “Hey you know we talked about a bridge today, we talked about an implant today. Go home, jump on the website, sit down with your spouse and look at it together. Basically what I said today in the chair is what you’re going to find on the website”. If they go to the website and it says, “Fix partial denture” they are going to go “Fix partial denture?” As a dentist we know that’s a bridge. No patient is going to know if you said implant or bridge if Mr. Smith and Mrs. Smith see ‘fix partial denture’ they are going to go, “What denture?” Now there’s a disconnect. So that’s why content is key for selling things and selling to your patients. And again as far as Google is concerned if you don’t have custom content you’re at a significant disadvantage.
Justin: Right. So that’s a really good point. So you’re talking about writing for your audience. You know at Short Hills Design how to talk to dentist but then you don’t apply that same vernacular to your client’s websites or you don’t encourage them to do the same, right?
Dr. David Wank: Well no, I think it’s up to the dentist. I have certain clients who want to tell you, “Here is step-by-step how to do a root canal”. Like today, we’re working with a patient with a denture. And I said a denture has five steps. Today we did the bite and picked the teeth. Next we’ll try it in with the teeth and then it’s yours to take home. That’s how I would say it. Another dentist might say, “Today we completed your closure records and set up your closure scheme and we made sure that your bite was accurate. And we took a mold to make sure we could replicate your bite for the laboratory. Next time I see you we’re going to try it in. It’ll be a mostly functional piece that will be in wax with the teeth in it so you can evaluate how it looks and I can evaluate if you’re going to be biting ok. And once we approve of that together, the time after that you’ll be able to wear them home with post op instructions.”
So, I just said the same thing so it depends. If I’m telling you what I said first, my website should parallel that—here are the five steps for a denture. But if I’m the type of dentist that wants to explain the wax melts in x degree Celsius and this is what it is—some of us like to do that. Some of us don’t—it’s your style. But you got to remember on the web that we skim. We kind of want to put out a ton of content. There’s a video that I made about how to write an article for SEO purposes. All it does is we took a three paragraph article. It’s not even in English, it’s in gibberish. You can’t read it. It’s kind of like what we show you on mock up with Latin words in it because we want you focusing on the big picture. But if you have a three paragraph article, it’s kind of boring. If you add a title it’s much better.
If you add subtitles it’s now
a.) easier for the eyes to skim and read
b.) you got more content for Google to pick up and that’s what you want. You want users to skim. If you got an article about veneers you might say, “These are veneers”.
Paragraph one is ‘veneers are an excellent in-between between composites and crowns. The next one is ‘veneers are durable and strong’. Third paragraph you can talk about the cost of veneers. Veneers are aesthetically beautiful. Now when you got someone looking at that page, if they’re concerned about the aesthetics, they can skim down to aesthetics. About cost—find the headline for cost. When you’re reading an article on Wikipedia most of the time you’re not going to read it start to finish, you probably jump around to the topic you want. Users want that. And by providing a better interface for your users and making it readable, you’re actually making it readable for Google as well. Remember Google doesn’t care what the page looks like. Google doesn’t see webpages like we see them. Google sees them as a block of text. So the aesthetics of websites are done for us as people. Kind of like a car. You can take a car that has no paint—it’s just an engine and a chassis—and you could probably just drive that around. But certainly we put doors and paint and things to make it more aesthetically pleasing. That’s kind of the concept.
Justin: You know the usage metrics are really important. I know you’re big on analytics. I know that it’s important for you to constantly look for ways to improve a website. If a big orange button doesn’t work with this website, try something else. So that’s all part of being aesthetically pleasing indirectly. So you coach your clients with advice on how to write their own content in their personality and their way of talking—and that makes perfect sense because like you said, if I’m sitting in a chair and it’s ‘occlusion, occlusion’ and I go the dental website and it’s ‘bite, bite’ then it’s like, “Wait a second, I’m confused. These aren’t the words he was using.”
Dr. David Wank: Exactly, that’s with anything. If you go to a financial planner, and they’re talking words to you and then you go to their website and they’re talking ‘ETF’s versus whatever loads on mutual funds’ then you’re like wait, nobody told me anything about loads on mutual funds. It’s about a continuous experience so you’re absolutely right. It’s about putting it together so the patients have the same experience while online—the warm fuzzy feeling. But for the same reason, why do we bother putting pictures of the staff online? Why? Because you want to know if you visit the dentist first, and you want to visit the website first, that you look at these people and when you go to the office you recognize them. Now that’s subtle. It’s not necessary but it’s nice if you see Jim as the front desk person and you go and Jim is there, it’s kind of like taking that anxiety down because you’ve seen them. All of this marketing is based on convention. As humans what we see as convention so if you pull out of your driveway tomorrow morning and go to the stop sign, and it’s the same shape but green, you’re going to stop. If you pull up to a traffic light and instead of being red/yellow/green, it’s now green/yellow/red and now all of a sudden the bottom is red do you stop or do you go?
Justin: That’s confusing.
Dr. David Wank: Right. When it comes to traffic lights, they don’t want to make you think. There’s a famous web book called “Don’t Make Me Think”. It’s about interface design. But the point is that we go by convention. I was once heckled at a lecture. I was giving a lecture about social media and someone asked, “How many dentist have a Facebook page? Does it matter? It’s ridiculous.” And I said, “It does matter because it’s one of the little things that puts it together with trust.” People cannot come into my office and evaluate my bite wings. Even if I show them my bite wings, they can’t read them. Do they have to use some other method to evaluate me?
Same with your attorney, your accountant, your divorce lawyer, your real estate broker, whatever it happens to be. You’re not going to know until after you get a $3,000 bill from the IRS that your accountant wasn’t good. You have to do other things to establish trust. You do it in your office. How come you wear a white coat? People trust that. If you wore bright orange coats tomorrow, people are going to stop. You’re going to say that you got the bright orange coats because when you’re in the laboratory the lights do this to the wavelength and reflection and lets us do better dentistry, it’s so much better. And the patients are going to be like “Whoa” because they don’t expect it.
So they’ve been trained—good or bad—that in order to be a good dentist you must have a Facebook page. Now, that’s absurd. Clearly there’s no correlation, but since they can’t look at your x-rays, they don’t know if you over prepare teeth, if your lab loves or hates you—a Facebook page, a Google Plus page, you’re smiling, everyone is happy, the website is clean—therefore you must be a good dentist. For those of you who are expecting children—how do you evaluate your obstetrician? Are you going to go in the OR with them and watch them deliver babies? You’re going to go by what their office looks like, how do they talk to you, how do they answer your questions, do they listen to you, do you have to wait an hour every time you see them because their office is packed—is that bad because their office is packed or a good thing.
So you got to take advantage when you market indirectly by enforcing trust. If you go to a restaurant and you get to the table and the silverware is dirty—you know they might have the best steak in the country but if the silverware is dirty, you’re not going to trust their steak. You’re using secondary things because you can’t evaluate the steak you haven’t eaten yet. That’s why we have to do these things. It’s not because we want to. It’s a pain in the neck. One of my lectures is social media. Why do dentists hate social media? I get that all the time. There’s just certain things you have to do as a dentist. Unfortunately, you got to be an HR manager, you got to be a purchasing manager, you got to be accounts receivable manager, and now you got to be a marketer. So the same way you’re going to have an accountant I hope to help you with your dental finances unless you have a background in accounting, and ADP or whoever is going to do your payroll unless you do it yourself—unfortunately we’re in a time now where marketing is another hat you have to wear. It’s another distraction from what we do all day and enjoying the relaxing business of dentistry. You’re in trouble when doing the dentistry becomes relaxing. You’re doing all these things you have to do for the office. So dentistry is a fifth of what you do now. You’re managing everything else. So you’re wearing the marketing hat.
Justin: We had Dr. Dan Marut on the show from QDP and he has this slogan that I’ve been using ever since I heard him say it, “Do what you do best and delegate the rest”. Why in the world as a dentist would you do web development unless it’s like you that you enjoy it, have your own company, have an infrastructure set up for it—why in the world as a dentist would you learn web development? The content makes sense, I see your philosophy on that because that makes sense. That’s a personality thing. You’re going to delegate the task of photographer but you’re not going to take photographs of someone else. So it makes perfect sense—just do what you need to do which is dentistry and talking in front of the camera for a video but even then you can delegate that out. For instance, patient testimonials on an iPhone. I’m always saying, “That’s great social proof.” Examine the veracity of the statements being made and as a patient that’s all you have. You know, here’s Billy Bob and he likes the doctor.
Dr. David Wank: Yeah. There’s a certain level of understanding. It’s funny you brought it up because I wrote a book on this. The example I give is—a few years ago we had to redo our driveway. At the time all we cared about was that when they redid it that they didn’t damage the rocks on the side and that the water didn’t pool. It didn’t matter to me what kind of cement they used or the size of the particle was. My kids wanted to know what kind of gasoline went into the cement thing and the steamroller. But as someone that wanted an end product, all I wanted to know is what does a good driveway look like? What are the characteristics of a good driveway? How the company gets there—I don’t care. What are the characteristics of a bowl of soup? I don’t care how they make the soup in the back as long as it’s delicious.
So the book I wrote was to say, “Listen, nobody ever taught us about web design, and SEO, and social media and conversion optimization.” So the book “The Web Design Workbook for Dentist” (it’s now online), was designed to say, “Look, here’s our view from 10,000 feet, what you need to know of questions you need to ask of people who are soliciting you”. You go to any of the shows it’s, “Doc, do you have a website? Doc do you need this?” You can’t answer those questions. I mean, I didn’t know what questions to ask about our driveway. I had to look it up to see what should a driveway look like when it’s done. I didn’t know what to ask him. Same thing—we had our house painted a while back. I didn’t know what you’re supposed to look for. You know the shutters shouldn’t stick together. Ok, but that’s obvious.
What the book does is speak in English. The dentist can read it or the staff can read it. It’s kind of in dental/staff language. When we build a website, we have something like 172-point checklist when we build a website. Look, we build websites like we do composites. You know I don’t do composites at home. I time my binding agents; I follow my instructions because that’s what you need to get success when you’re working with materials. Where on a website, it’s not just build a site and put it up there. For me the best clients kind of understand they don’t have to buy my book. Certainly having the book or buying the book will give you that background so you know what to ask. So you’re not saying, “should I get a work press website or should I get Drupal? Should I pay for hosting or not pay for hosting?” In one paragraph can help me make that choice. That’s why you need an adviser at some point.
The book kind of serves as an adviser. And its company agnostic. So whether you go with me or whoever you go with…it’s kind of like taking a car to Costco for tires. Costco is model agnostic. They don’t care what you come in with as long as they carry a tire that works for you—you know the bolts and the u’s are going to work on any car so to speak and is designed to work on any car. So you have the information you need to go to them.
What’s cool about the book now is that you can do it as a yearly subscription. So as new things come out, I update the book so you always have the most updated information. As new things come out and I write more, you’ve got the update. It’s designed for your iPhone, your iPad, whatever. You can read it online and it’s great. If you head over there webdesignworkbook.com, the introduction is free so you can see how it’s laid out. I don’t want you to have to understand PHP or how to represent variables or things like that when you code. If you want to do it and you enjoy it, God bless. I’d rather listen to history; that’s what I listen to in the car. Certainly do it if you like it. But I’m not doing my own driveway, I’m not waxing my own RPD’s either. I know how to evaluate an RPD so the framework sits and what it’s supposed to look like. I honestly don’t remember the exact percentage of the metal in the RPD’s are. But I have the sticker it gives me. And I don’t remember the temperatures and this and that. But that’s not relevant for what I’m doing clinically every day. That’s kind of the point.
Justin: No, this is good information. Because ultimately, it comes down to trust. Once you know who you can trust—a lot of things in life are not rocket science, but knowing who to believe is what makes it rocket science. A book like this, webdesignworkbook.com right?
Dr. David Wank: “The Web Design Workbook for Dentist” at www.webdesignworkbook.com. It would have been too long of a domain name. Which is chapter one of the book—about domain names. That’s an issue too because think about if you’re going to have a domain name like forkidz. I say don’t do that because people are not going to expect it to end in a ‘Z’. They are going to want an ‘S’. Don’t make it a .us or .biz because even if you tell them they’re going to type .com anyway. There’s little subtle things like that the book will show you.
Justin: You’re a dentist, you know how to write, you’ve been in the trenches, you are in the trenches every day. Five days a week, right?
Dr. David Wank: Yeah, five days a week.
Justin: Do you sleep?
Dr. David Wank: Sometimes. After this.
Justin: He’s exhausted folks. He’s been up for six days. I think this is really good information. There’s not enough people out there who have dental skills, writing skills, web design skills who is doing this for dentists. I think this is really a great resource for our listeners. So check that out. It’s www.webdesignworkbook.com. If there’s maybe three quick tips, if we take anything away from this interview…you’ve given us a wealth of knowledge and a lot to think about, some action to take with webdesignworkbook.com, but if there’s three quick tips our listeners could take then what are those?
Dr. David Wank: Number one would be make sure you have a separate page for everything you do. It’s critical. You can’t have a page that says, “I’m Dr. Wank and we do veneers/crowns/dentures/root canals/implants.” You can’t have that. You’ve got to have an implant page, a dentures page, and a veneers page.
Number two: verify your Google Plus profile. I don’t want to get into why, but at the end of the day, you’ve got a Google maps listing for your office that hopefully you’ve verified in Google my business and they’re going to give you a profile and you want to fill that out 100%. 94% does not equal 100%. It’s not one of those “it’s close enough”. You got to fill it out 100% because that may or may not affect rankings. In a case when there’s no competition it might not make a difference. But when there’s competition it could make a difference. It’s free and your competitors are doing it so I hate to say, “Google said so”, but you got to do that.
Number three: write your own content or pay someone to write it for you that knows what they’re doing. I’d rather you have a 10-page website that’s your own content than a 50-page website that’s duplicate content. Duplicate content has been known to be penalized. When I lecture, I show a picture of MetLife Stadium and I say, “Is the content written for you or for you and 70,000 of your closest friends?” Those would be the three tips.
Justin: Excellent. So you got to verify that Google listing folks.
Dr. David Wank: Don’t just verify the listing but fill out the profile 100%.
Justin: Absolutely. It’s really easy. It shows you your progress.
Dr. David Wank: It’s like giving topical. You just have to do it. You can certainly get them numb without topical but I think it’s bad for business but certainly it’s another little thing that makes everything better. Does that make your crown come out better or not? Not really. But giving topical is an adjunct that can only make things help. Verifying that Google Plus is the same thing. You might get a super plus if you do it but you could certainly lose a little if you don’t. That’s the idea.
Justin: So you got to have that and unique pages. Whatever it may be, whatever you offer. And I think it goes back to the idea of satisfying user intent. I’m going to go off on a short little rant here. A lot of dentist stuff the key words in the title tag—that’s where you see when you click on Google in your website—and they go dentist/city name/implant/Invisalign/blah blah. The title tag is umpteen degrees too long and here you are thinking, “Really? Is that what you want to see—a stock photo of that same family?” because you’re just looking for Invisalign. Here’s the point—you go your domain name.com and your website has to be coded by an expert like David, and you got to have someone who knows dental SEO as an expert and then you do the forward slash and give them the page that actually satisfies that intent. What do people want see? They want to see a video of someone talking about Invisalign or at least see pictures of before and after. They want to see copy that’s easy to read and scan, you know bullet point. It makes perfect sense. But here’s what everyone does, they try to get their homepage right for every keyword known to man and they wonder why it doesn’t work. It’s not designed for that.
Dr. David Wank: It’s like the supermarket. You can’t stuff everything into one aisle. Every aisle cannot be about produce. You could have a supermarket with one aisle and everything stuffed into it, but it makes a lot more sense and a lot easier to get to when the food has different groups.
Justin: That’s perfect. I like your analogies. You do dental, you do auto, you do groceries. It makes perfect sense not only to dentist who are really smart but maybe there’s just so much…
Dr. David Wank: Any of the decisions that I made today whether about how far to cut a tooth or to save a tooth or take a tooth out, those are far more complicated decisions than any decision you’ll make regarding your website. The problem is that we’re trained to make those decisions. We’ve made those decisions a thousand times and I’ve had extensive training as how to determine if a tooth is good or not. We do it all the time. Certainly I think that’s much more difficult than building a website but you just don’t do it. It’s also like if there’s a problem with my car. It’s easy for the person that knows how to do it. I could look it up in the book too but I don’t know what I’m doing so I have someone else that knows what they’re doing do it. I’d rather spend time with my kids than learn how to do everything around my house that has to get done.
Justin: Absolutely. So you go into all this on www.webdesignworkbook.com. Guys check that out and at least give it a look and see if it looks like a good fit for you. Thank you so much David. Dr. Wank, you are doing great things for dentists. I like your style, David because not only do you attack the market from a technical standpoint with the web development and the proper coding, but the understanding that you got to have a website that’s up to snuff. You got to have it up to the Google guidelines. That’s basic stuff but then you take it a step further. You understand the psychology of the patient. Guys, your prospective patients want to see you on home page/about us page/photographs/video. Maybe you don’t want to do those things but here’s what is working and your competitors are doing it and if they’re not this is an opportunity for you to get ahead.
Dr. David Wank: Either get ahead or stay competitive. You don’t have to do x-rays anymore. You don’t have wet films your competitors have digital. I like reading wet films better but if everyone has digital, I hate to say you have to have it too, but it’s becoming what everyone expects.
Justin: Really quickly, we got www.webdesignworkbook.com but where else can our viewers find you?
Dr. David Wank: Short Hills Design is our website. All our social sites are on there. I’m all over Dental Town. So ask away.
Justin: Is your user name shorthillsdesign?
Dr. David Wank: Yeah, hit on any of the marketing tabs and you’ll find me easily.
Justin: Alright, thank you Dr. Wank
Dr. David Wank: Thank you so much for having me.
Justin: Guys, if you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. Feel free to reach out to David. Feel free to reach out to me. If you’ve got any questions that we didn’t address, it sounds like www.webdesignworkbook.com might answer all those questions.
Dr. David Wank: They can post it on the comments for this hangout. We can take a look at that together and answer any of those questions that people might have.
Justin: Yeah. It’s great to see a dentist helping other dentist. That’s why I love having dentist on the show because you understand what it’s like and you’re in the trenches. It’s great. Thank you it’s been a real honor David.
Dr. David Wank: Thank you. I really appreciate it.
Justin: Absolutely. And thank you for watching The Dental Marketing Guy Show.
Read more on the best dentistry marketing blog!
When SEO Gets Tough
Hey guys thanks for joining me. Today, a very serious subject and that is when your SEO just isn’t flowing at the same rate as you had originally anticipated at the outset of the campaign.
When this happens, there are basically 3 ways to deal with the issue.
First, you may need to recalibrate how quickly rankings or traffic should increase. It’s especially important to understand that rankings take time, and page one rankings precede new patients. So being sure to understand that until you’re in the top 3 organically, you’re not expected to get nearly as many phone calls as the top 3. And probably no phone calls if you’re at the top of page 2, unless you have an extraordinarily high level of search volume for those keywords. So that’s important to realize.
The second thing you can looks at is whether or not you’re able to do more. By that I mean, sometimes if the SEO company you’re working with is saying that they could do more with a larger budget, consider the competition level of your area – and you should know this before entering into an SEO contract by the way – consider whether or not the competition level you’re in might justify a lift in that budget.
Third, consider whether the dental SEO company has an explanation or strategy moving forward on how to deal with the unexpected resistance. Psychologists have said that the urge to quit is greatest right before a breakthrough.
Hopefully this situation doesn’t ever plague you, but if it does you should know that it’s not uncommon and you should look for expert advice on how to deal with it. I’d be happy to help you identify any dangerous of ineffective tactics when performing a comprehensive SEO analysis for your website. Please subscribe for more updates on Dental SEO issues that affect how searchable your website is.
Read more on the best dental marketing blog!
Hey guys welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show, today the number one Dental SEO factors. We have a great episode today!
Today we’re discussing the #1 factor in Dental SEO!
I’ll cut straight to the chase. The #1 factor in getting your website to outrank other dental websites comes down to one little word: COMPETITION! As anything you’d to expect where rankings are involved, SEO is a comparative contest. If you’re in a dental practice which is one of 2 in your town, SEO is not required. SEO is the LAST thing on your mind, in fact. But if you’re a cosmetic dentist in New York, you’re in for a footrace. So we can talk about back links and title tags and blogging and blah blah blah until we’re blue in the face. But at the end of the day the only thing that matters in SEO is whether or not it’s making your phone ring. All the technical jargon is nice to hear in order to make sure your SEO professional knows what he’s talking about, but here’s the harsh reality every dentist needs to face right here and now… if you’re unwilling to do what other dentists are willing to do… that’s it. You’re done. That goes for SEO, that goes for how you answer the phone, that goes for how the office smells, that goes for the way you give a shot, I mean forget about SEO for a minute and let’s talk about the realities of dental marketing. Everything you do and DON’T to is marketing. SEO is just one of those things which you have to decide: is this something which I’m willing to outperform other dentists on?
Anyone who knows my dental marketing philosophy understands that I don’t believe you’re actually competing against other dentists. What you’re competing with is Las Vegas, Mercedes, superfluous spending. But when it comes down to SEO, yes you’re absolutely competing with other dentists and in everything you do you have to remember that if another dentist is willing to do it, you need to either outperform that dentist on the same playing field, or you need to outperform them in another way.
The key to developing a comprehensive SEO strategy is to FIRST develop an idea of how hard your fellow dentists are willing to fight for that top few spots on Google. If you contact me for a comprehensive analysis of what you’re up against, that’s a great first step. Contact me if you’d like to find out more about your unique search situation.
As always, please subscribe to my YouTube channel for more updates on how you can take your search engine rankings to the next level!
Read more on the best dental marketing blog.
Web Designers Can’t Rank Your Dental Website
Hey I’m the Dental Marketing Guy! Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. Today we’re talking about web designers and why they can’t rank your dental website.
Today we’re going to talk about something truly controversial. I’m probably going to ruffle some feathers by saying these things, but i think it’s important for you to know. I’m going to cite some important facts before giving you my opinion, because I think that’s important for you to be able to form your own hypotheses.
The first thing we have to look at is how websites get ranked on search engines. Ranking involves producing quality content. Whenever I say quality content, I’m talking about content which is original and helpful. It’s relevant to the audience and teaches them something.
The way search engines measure the helpfulness of content is through a hodgepodge of many factors, the most notable is inbound links. Inbound links help you get ranked higher, and they do the same for web design company websites. Here’s the one thing web design companies who want your business will NEVER tell you… The way that most web design companies earn their inbound links is by placing a link saying “Website Designed by ABC web design,” which that link point to the web designer’s website. This might seem fine and dandy, even though it’s actually against Google’s terms of service, but we can get into why that is in another episode, the reason this matter to your dental practice’s SEO success is simple. If this is the only way a web designer knows how to get inbound links…how EXACTLY are they going to get you the same inbound links? Dental offices don’t design websites, and therefore they don’t have a seemingly unending amount of back links to place on other websites.
So the question becomes: If they use strictly site wide footer back links to build their own SEO, what kind of link earning campaign will they devise for you? If they can’t seem to answer this question very easily, you’ve found yourself exactly what you originally thought you did. A web designer. Not a dental SEO expert.
If you’re looking for someone to devise a plan for you on how to build your practice by building inbound links, hit me up at dentalmarketingguy.co. If you’d like to learn more, please subscribe to my YouTube channel.
SEO vs PPC
Hey guys welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show I’m a dental marketing guy thanks for joining me. Today we’re looking at the comparative value of SEO vs Pay Per click advertising.
First, as you probably already know watching the Dental Marketing Guy Show, SEO is the way we gain higher organic or unpaid rankings on popular search engines. Pay Per Click Advertising is essentially the same thing, but the difference is that you instantly rank instead of waiting weeks or months for higher rankings. Just as it sounds, pay per click advertising involves paying per click or call, or other engagement. You’re essentially getting a fast pass – not sure how many of you go to amusement parks where you can get that pass to skip the line – it’s kind of like that. You pay dearly for it in many cases, more so than SEO, and you also have the issue of needing to optimize the campaign in order to prevent wasteful spending.
I usually recommend most dental practices implement at least a small monthly budget for a couple months of pay per click ads, mostly because of the data available from pay per click advertising being much, much more comprehensive and accurate than the data we can find for free during research of SEO. It seems when you’re paying for Google Adwords or Bing Ads, they give you the good stuff. Another benefit of pay per click, or “PPC” advertising is that it allows you access to Google or Bing directly with their customer support. You can contact them, as I have many times i the past, and ask technical questions. They typically don’t offer much in the way of strategic help, and it’s certainly not dental marketing centric, but it’s helpful when you need to solve a technical glitch.
Being the Dental SEO Show, we’d be remiss if we didn’t highlight how superior SEO can be by virtue of the higher amounts of traffic you receive form organic listings, versus the paid listings. Many searchers have learned to simply not click the ads. Organic results can seem less “salesy” and they can be most helpful to a searcher who is early and less committed in their search for a dentist. Overall, you get more traffic. One more opportunity to be in front of your target audience, more often.
This review of SEO vs PPC is by no means comprehensive. So please tell me your experiences in the comments below! If you want to learn more, please subscribe to my YouTube channel!
Why Dental SEO Alone Doesn’t Cut It
welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show on the dental marketing guy today we’re talking about why SEO alone doesn’t cut it. It’s been said that people don’t care what you know until they know that you care. That’s why talking about your clinical skills won’t do you a bit of good, even if you are ranked #1 on search engines. Today we’re going over why SEO shouldn’t be considered a hail Mary for your marketing campaign.
SEO is often considered the most basic tenant in a dental marketing campaign. But it becomes an issue when we try to set SEO up too late. SEO is something which takes time, and is a long term effort. To rush into SEO as a way to fix a struggling dental practice is typically a bad idea. SEO often does help a struggling practice increase it’s new patient flow significantly, but often there are many issues which caused the practice to struggle in the first place which should be addressed. If you’re a dentist who has other forms of dental marketing efforts in full swing, only to address SEO as an afterthought, this can be dangerous. This is because once you realize that it’s time to start SEO, often times it’s too late. SEO should ideally start during the web development phase. The person who develops your web designs should be very familiar with SEO and it doesn’t hurt if the web developer and SEO professional are the same person. At the very least it’s a good idea to have the same company who built your website also doing your ongoing SEO. Every SEO professional and web developer does things differently, so the synergy between the web developer and SEO professional is helpful. Not absolutely necessary, but still helpful.
If there is one piece of advice I could offer dentists it would be to take your time in choosing an SEO company. It’s not a decision to be rushed into. At the same time, be sure to address the issue of being searchable early on in your dental marketing campaign. If you’re a dentist in practice for 10+ years with no website, I don’t mean to imply that it’s too late for you to start, but what I am saying is that taking the first step of performing a comprehensive analysis of your competition in search is always better done early. If you’re considering taking the next step in your dental marketing, consider contacting me for a comprehensive analysis of what I can do to help you reach your goals!
If any of these Dental SEO shows helps you, please subscribe to our YouTube channel for more updates on how to become more easily found online.
Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy and today we have a very well renowned web designer for dentists and marketing specialist. If you’re looking for a mediocre dental website, this guy is not your guy but if you’re looking for a dental website owner, here is the owner and founder of greatdentalwebsites.com. Of course, if you’re looking for a great dental website, he’s your man serving over 300 townies. He’s got an immaculate reputation. It’s such a huge honor to interview Jeff Gladnick. How are you?
Jeff: Hey. Thank you Justin.
Justin: Tell me a little bit the story behind why you started greatdentalwebsites.com
Jeff: So, it’s just mining through old emails. I think it was about 2007, that I started. My dad wanted a new website. I was working in Silicon Valley for a startup. I didn’t have any time to go and find, you know, a company to give him. I told him I’d review the proposals and try to help him find something and the proposals were all really bad and really expensive and I decided to make time to help him. And I decided to just build a new website and then my uncles. There are seven dentists in my family, and they got wind of this deal. My dad is getting a free dental website and they wanted in. So I decided to make a software platform for making dental websites. I thought it would take last time, it would be more efficient that way so I was like “Alright, you guys are going to get more or less the same thing. You can change the text but we’re going to agree on a structure and then we’ll customize that later.” Everybody did and before I found the initial email, the first email I ever sent from the company earlier today and it was to host like hosting company and I was like “Yeah, I think the project will take one month.” I have this like nine years ago. So that was wrong but my dad and my uncle started referring to their friends and colleagues and it grew and grew and grew. And I think it was five and a half years ago, I quit my job and started doing this full-time. I’ve been doing it ever since and I think we have 400 or little over 400 customers now. Almost all of those have been townies. We love the downtown community. About 35-36 staff we’re up to now. So it’s been a great ride.
Justin: That’s excellent man. What do you think drives your success? I mean, your dad obviously was a dentist, a lot of your uncles and so you got a start there but it seems like everyone would, anytime, there’s a thread downtown about the rate of their own websites. Man there’s just people coming out of the woodwork, “Hey, Jeff’s great. I’m a dentist, he did my website.” Would you say you’re just delivering exactly what you promised or maybe even over delivering is how exactly you grow your business?
Jeff: Yeah, I mean, we’ve treated our customers very well when there’s been… We don’t have any contract so when they’re or if anytime there’s problems or you know, issues, we just kind of talk to dentists like people and just try to figure out what the cause of the problem was and just try to come to a conclusion that please everybody. So we’ve done people right, I guess, for over eight years. We’re doing this for a long time in nine years now. Join us for a long time, almost all of our clients have come from, you know, the forums where people are asking about us, so they’re kind of talking to the right audience who have already used us and love us. It’s amazing how successful you can be in business if you’re just not a jerk in your ethical. There’s a lot of people who especially… I see this a lot in dental town all the time and in other places, it’s just a new company that creates a shell and there they think that, they’re just to target dentists and they’ll be able to slice them for a bunch of money and then fly away and dentists see through it pretty quick. Dentists are smarter people than I think those guys give them credit for. I went to college, they went to grad school for equipment you know, 4 years of graduate school afterwards and they’re not idiots. So those kinds of strategies don’t work very well and we’ve just been at it for a while, people trust us. We don’t lie, we don’t screw people over. So that’s probably, I guess, what we have a lot of and then for the most part, we’ve been rather successful with our clients. So, I mean, there’s a couple of clients that I really specially think that I’m very proud of because they literally built their business on top of the marketing we did. They did not have a business when they came to us and they showed us the leads in their new patient services and we’re like 80-90% of it that makes me very proud.
Justin: Yeah, that’s a great feeling when you can actually deliver good health to people and change people’s lives even though you know, you and I are not dentists ourselves but bringing people into the full where it’s really not a battle between dentists. It’s a battle between dentists and Mercedes-Benz, Las Vegas, you know, even Starbucks. I mean, people are spending their money to the people who are marketing to them. And wouldn’t it be great if people like you and I could get the public to see the value of dentistry… It’s really important what you’re doing.
Jeff: Well, I mean, I guess, I have mixed feelings about that to a certain extent. We are competing with other dentists but you’re right, it’s not a zero-sum game because this is disposable. I mean, there’s some dental procedure that are absolutely urgent but a lot of the cosmetic cases are, you know, come out of a disposable income. It comes down to, do you want the trip to Vegas? Or the new car? Or whatever? And I mean, I don’t really feel like it’s my responsibility to tell people what they should want. It’s really up to them. We can help the dental practices explain the benefits to a patients a little more clearly. But yeah, some people are just not going to value a beautiful smile, other people will highly value. So we try our best to help our clients be properly positioned to get those patients but also, at the end of the day, people have priorities for their discretionary income.
Justin: Yeah and we’re going to get into some tips and some ideas on how your company actually makes things. Some of the data that you have that drives marketing decisions but you know, there is this kind of a controversial topic that you mentioned earlier about no contracts. There’s been some discussion on dental town, I mean, you are obviously delivering on your promises. What would you say? What’s the philosophy behind not having written contracts?
Jeff: Well, I mean, I can understand why some companies will do a contract so I don’t necessarily think contracts are evil. Although one of the reasons we consciously did not use contracts was to because a lot of our clients thought contracts for even dentists would just inherently back off as soon as they heard the word contracts and we never had contracts but I saw that behavior and talking to our, even our very early client, it is clear that contracts were bad. In the eyes of many many dentists especially in Delta, I mean, the dental town communities really influenced a lot of the decisions and business practices this company’s done because they have been customer-based. So a lot of the things that sound community wanted were the policies that we adopted and it was because there was such a strong sentiment by counties but it makes sense to have a contract if you’re basically financing a project for a client and, you know, let’s pretend the upfront cost for the company for ten thousand dollars and you’re going to spend, you know, a thousand dollars over the next 12 months so you have twenty two thousand dollars. Let’s just make it 12 so we can divide easier. So if twenty four thousand dollars expense a year, so you just sign a contract for two thousand dollars a month, there you go. Then you have a lower upfront cost for the client and everybody get paid and everybody’s happy. I guess the downside comes with and why a lot of dentists are hesitant to do that is there are so many companies that, you know, advertised the same services that we do that don’t really deliver as well. I’m not knocking on anybody in particular but I know what happens. And so the contracts become the huge risk where you committed to twenty four thousand dollars and it becomes obvious that after the first or second month that you’re never going to get that and this is all a lie. So I guess, I’ve always thought it was a little more fair to just charge, well, we have upfront costs so the client would pay up front and then when we deliver the website then. And they they just pay a little bit as we go. For me, as we incur costs that seems like the most fair model for everybody. The only downside to that is you can’t finance it although we’ve done that anyways for some clients in the past so you still can do it. I know that for companies, it’s more attractive to have contracts that helps with evaluations if you’re trying to sell the company which we don’t really care about. And I think that’s really the reasons those evaluations. I don’t really care.
Justin: You know, I just wish you wouldn’t drop so many names and just really put people on blast like that.
Jeff: I don’t like to do that, I mean, you can go to dental town and just type in scam in the marketing company or rip off and you’ll find them on your own from customers, from dentists who have actually experienced this scam. I’ve only heard about these things secondhand from our clients as they come to us, you know, from those companies or had a buddy that went to the company so, you know, i don’t feel comfortable making statements off here and say it anyway.
Justin: Right. Yeah and okay, so, you know, it’s been great talking with you about, you know, kind of the history and what makes you different. Let’s give our viewers a little bit, like, so you’ve got a lot of data, you’ve got tons of websites and so you’re able to roll out challenges, you know, there was recently a thread, I pointed you to it and I was like Jeff, what do you think about live chat and so just ideas like that when you have the scale amongst like 400 customers. What kind of data could you provide, some quick tips maybe, like two or three quick tips as to like what makes a dental? What’s a good dental website? What’s a great dental website? And by enlarge.
Jeff: I think, I have really well done that a website will have custom design or at least look custom. I think, you can get away with having a template design. If you can at least add some pictures but it should look like it was… It should look like you and your practice. When we do it, we have a custom design with pictures of the practice, something unique. We want to have custom copyrighting, we want the SEO to be a mixture of programmatic and manual search engine optimization so there’s a bunch of the things that are a software platform will do, like generating schema.org data which is this format that Google, Yahoo and Bing all agreed to classify local businesses and it’s real pain in the neck to go and coat it but we can do a lot of that programmatically but there’s a lot of manual labor with us, you know, somebody has to go in and update meta tags and descriptions and tweak the text a bit for every single page and to constantly refine that month over month. So those are the, I mean, those are the main topics or the main points that we look for. And it, of course, that should work on mobile devices and tablets.
Justin: Right. Right. A responsive website and you know it’s funny, I don’t even know anyone who’s not offering responsive websites.
Jeff: Yeah. I mean, for a longtime ago, when we switch our platform over to that. We had like a separate charge for it because all of our competitors offered separate mobile website and it’s just the easiest way to explain in but I think only one person didn’t take that in like, you know, three years that that was the thing. So we just dropped it. It’s just standard now.
Justin: Yeah. Yeah. You know I’m huge on video. I think video is huge. I know talked a lot about it in general town and there’s a lot of discussion about what kind of videos are best. As far as mobile, just pick your brain here for a minute, you know, as far as mobile’s concerned, do you think a video is just as effective on mobile? More effective than desktop? Less effective? What’s your opinion on that?
Jeff: I don’t know. If I really thought about it, I guess, I don’t have an informed opinion about mobile versus desktop although if personally, If I’m at my desktop and I understand, I’m not the target customer for most dentists and so I’m not a young mom but I tend to spend a little bit more time researching things when I’m on a desktop computer so I would think that I have more time to really watch a video on a desktop and my personal video viewing habits are mostly on like a desktop computer. Often to my desk and watch you know, documentary in home for an hour. Never done that on a mobile phone ever and I don’t commute on a train and all that. Just got a train in Denver that goes past my house so I may start doing that but I gave me most of the time when I’m on a mobile phone, walking somewhere at a stoplight, you know, randomly checking it in a meeting, it’s more, it’s much quicker interactions than what I’m doing on a desktop computer doing my work so I would guess that it would be more useful on desktop but I don’t know.
Justin: Yeah. Yeah. Enjoying…
Jeff? What do you think?
Justin: Well, you know, here’s a video that I just shot yesterday. It’s going to be released in probably two or three weeks. I’m going to talk about new ad platform, you may have heard of this. Youtube is going to do six second ads, they’re called bumper ads at the beginning or the end and they’re not skippable so right now, you can skip ads on Youtube after five second for most of them.
Jeff: Yeah.
Justin: Yeah. And so they’re going to do six second ads that you can’t skip and the target audience google claims the reason why they’re doing this is because mobile…young mobile users and how they view Youtube videos. And if you have this 6-second ad at the beginning you can get your message in real quick and there’s actually some companies that are experimenting with it. It’s supposed to come out in like May or something like that.
Jeff: I mean, having that kind of fits what I had in mind, you know, the people are watching clips and shorter stuff on video so you need shorter ads. I know, that like, you know, if I’m trying to cook dinner or something and you know my son needs attention and I’d be a little, I’m going to be a lazy parent, I’ll put, you know, garbage trucks. He loves garbage trucks on like my phone and there’s a couple of those videos that have like a 30 second ad, no thank you, I’m not waiting for that, go to the next one that has a skip ahead. So yeah, 6 second and that make sense.
Justin: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. So okay. And then when we talk about mobile versions of websites as you know, Google recently came out. I don’t know if it was a few months ago saying mobile searches are exceeding desktop searches…
Jeff: I think they said that a little two or three times now. I’m a little confused at this point because I thought they said that like a year ago and then like six months ago and now you tell me three months ago. I know I heard it. I could’ve sworn I heard it at least twice from Google and so I don’t really get its significance. It’s good enough for me but I don’t really know what was going on over there.
Justin: Yeah you know, it’s really hard to tell, I mean, they’re the ones giving us the data right? And so each client that you have is going to help, you know, their own, analytics, their own way of measuring who’s coming from and where and what they’re doing but yeah, speaking of mobile searches, I mean, so if you got, I’ve heard the figure with the greatest all heard, I’ve heard the figure, 65% of dental related searches or medical related searches are mobile so that may or may not be true. But let’s say 65% searches are because it seems like if you have a medical condition, at least emergencies, will be done from the phone at least, that’s how I would do it. And so basically, having the website that you have which is already great for desktop, how important do you think it is to have just as good a user experience on a mobile device?
Jeff: It’s mostly just as important. I don’t think it’s we’re seeing 65% of traffic, it really varies market to market. Think the highest client we have like, 82% mobile but the lowest clients are like 11. So there’s a wide range. I think the average is like 40-45 somewhere in there. But yeah, I mean 40% of your clients, that’s still pretty significant so you have to have a great experience on mobile. I mean, it’s a little bit different but the key things are you know, you want it. You should be responsive. It should be the same site, that’s what Google wants. It makes maintenance way easier. You don’t want to maintain a separate mobile site. You want to have a click the call button everywhere, we have button for directions so someone’s driving around their car, they can quickly, you know, call you or hit the directions button at the top so they’re not going to crash into a tree and then the more dental work and you know there’s little bit of different testing you have to do for, you know, for how the information is presented on mobile. The easiest way to your dentist is to bring up your phone and get your phone out and bring up the website on your phone and see how it looks like and try to solve a couple problems and just think through the last couple of new patients that came in and when they come in for a visit. Well, if you landed here, how would you find in this line of information and figure out if they’re going to schedule an appointment and just kind of pretend that you’re the patient and go through that exercise.
Justin: Excellent. Well, let’s wrap it up. Let’s talk about maybe three quick tips if you learned anything, if you found this entertaining. Hopefully, we’re able to educate you but at the end of the day, if we remember only three quick tips, tell us what those are Jeff.
Jeff: I think you absolutely need to have a unique content on your site. So don’t, you know, don’t buy canned content for any other reason than stop gap. And that should be as short as possible, so you should be writing. I mean, you wouldn’t believe how many comments we get from customers who tell us that patients came in and they were surprised that they said, “I read every word on your website where I read every word you had to say about whatever.” They actually do read this so either take time to write the content yourself or to work with a copy writer who’s going to interview you and learn what you’re trying to say and express, so you do sound a little bit different. And then same thing with the media on you site so pictures you want before and after cases of your work. Large high quality before and after cases not those tiny little thumbnails that you know were given here for free by the marketing company that people can’t really appreciate or understand what the heck happened or get no context of the procedure and those should have a kind of a personal story so that this young woman who was embarrassed about the gap in her teeth and you know someone made a comment and she decided she’s finally going to do something about it and we settled on veneers and this was the result after one visit. You should try to tell story and same thing with video. I think video can be done for a lot cheaper than people think. I’m fine with having a professional video for like one professional video for the intro to meet the doctor. A video, I think that’s actually a rather good idea for other video, especially patient testimonial videos. I’ rather have the clients go cheap and record them on a cellphone, especially the testimonials you want those, the purpose of that is authenticity and you want to reinforce that you know you’re trustworthy. And you’re going to do that you say, look at all these other people, that’s why you have testimonials who can back up what I’m saying. So, what you don’t know, in my opinion but you don’t want is this studio quality Barbara Walters filter on these people where there’s no mistakes. Everything is flawless, they had like four or five takes on this, they’re looking off camera somewhere, I want to see the person like, they just got out of dead, their hairs disheveled, their necklaces asked, you know, they mispronounced a word you know. They look very real and then meet the dentist and have the dentist record about each service. And I think event hose can be done on an iPhone these days if you can do it quietly and you have good lighting. I mean you can position the camera right, I think you can get away with that, at least many clients can get those things. You could ensure to look professional but in the beginning just start small. I don’t want to, you know, frighten dentists with these giant budgets and I’d rather have them fill in the gaps and then prove it rather than put it off for two years so they can get the video perfect for you know 10? 20? Or 30 thousand dollars. You can get great video shot for a premium price but do that later, just get the video out of the way and you learn things along the say so those three thing I tried to pick three of the top of my head what we love clients to do.
Justin: So you get a unique copy, custom copy, custom photos and custom video or let’s what was that… what you did?
Jeff: you know, if I wanted, since this is the last two were to combined, the third one I’ll say is make sure you have a system where you can update your site, you can easily update your site and your team members can contribute to that, so a lot of dentists re overwhelmed. They’re hearing what I’m saying like I have no time to do or have that. Great, have your hygienist a before and after cases. Have your front desk shoot the video testimonials and all that leaves you to do is some videos of you in front of a chair talking about each service you could bang that out in an hour if you wanted to be really quick about it and be one. But you can, i mean we have clients to give out Starbucks gift cards to their assistants in their front desk every time they remember to do these little tasks then they call us and we help the hygienist get into the website. Dentist is in his own hands free so involve your staff and make sure you have a system where they can contribute to the success of the website online.
Justin: Excellent. Excellent. You know, I couldn’t agree more as someone who does SEO for dentists. The unique copy is huge. As far conversions go, you know, unique copy may not be as important but search engines are looking at you and they’re saying you know, is this the person just plagiarizing? I mean that’s the real word. That’s a fancy, fifty-dollar word for duplicate copy.
Jeff: Yeah. Quickly counted.
Justin: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Jeff: It’s usually not plagiarism. It’s like very rarely that the dentist plagiarize. It’s almost always you know, the company told them they’re going to custom content and they lied or the dentist did never asked and just got that. That’s what it is. Very rarely, as the actual plagiarism.
Justin: Right. I was actually going to say that you know, the intent of plagiarism may not be there but the search engine marketing completely…
Jeff: Yeah. Great.
Justin: Yeah. Yeah. So Google looks t it and they’re like well you know, these people are not thought leaders. They’re not contributing anything original and then that you know, I think that’s going for stock photos too. I mean, wow, people are really really unimpressed with stock photos. I got to tell you. By and large, I’m sure your data shows this too, stock photos are not anything impressive and then the same thing with stock videos. I mean those can be good for educating patients I think. I’m you know sphere education has some, some videos and all that but I’m sure you’d agree that you know, a dental, a great dental website is not about dentistry. It’s about the dentist. It’s about the team, it’s about the office and it’s about what makes you different and what makes you different oftentimes is who you are or your personality.
Jeff: Yeah. I think the unique value proposition that we like to put it is you know, what’s the dentist philosophy, what kind of technology they have, what kind of materials they use and what kind of training do they have. So I mean, we have a couple like holistic dentist that will recommend you get those mercury amalgam pulled out, get the fluoride out of your water, get the people on the other side of the spectrum who played opposite feelings and but those are appealing to different parts of the marketplace, different kinds of patients and you know that you just have to decide what kind of patients you want to attract and to market yourself accordingly. And that’s what we want the dentist to do but they do have to think about it if you have to and we can work with them to do that and any good marketer do the rest what you do too. But they do have to kind of think about how they’re going to stand out and differ in what they’re going to say then you got to get all that video and text pictures’.
Justin: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well you heard it here first in the dental marketing guy show. Jeff Gladnick with your top three tips. You got to have a unique copy. You got to have a unique photos and videos and if you’re doing that. And then also have been ably to update that website. That’s huge for SEO. Are you up to date? Are you able to keep up with Google’s looking t that and when they say, you know, who’s the best dentist? They don’t really know. What they know when they look at your website if you’re up to date, of you’re original, if you’re a thought leader, if you’re contributing to your community. That’s what they know, so, yeah, absolutely, it’s been a real honor to have you on Jeff and thank you.
Jeff: Thank you.
Justin: Yeah. I’m sure, I’ll see you on dental town and to those of you who might have questions in the comments below wherever you see this on Youtube, you know, on general town, wherever you might see that you’re on for us…what was that?
Jeff: Google+ right?
Justin: Yeah.
Jeff: You got an automatic in there.
Justin: We’ve got some viewers right now. I think this is the first episode, I’ve noticed some live viewers, you know, sometimes, we edit it before it goes to Youtube and we propagate it. But anyways, I guess, if we end up keeping having viewers then this might be the only live general marketing show.
Jeff: How could you see your viewers?
Justin: It’s in the bottom corner.
Jeff: Okay. This is always hidden from me.
Justin: Okay. Okay. You’ll have to trust me, you’re our live guest ever.
Jeff: How many viewers did we get?
Justin: Just one viewer.
Jeff: Is that my mom?
Justin: It will get hundreds and hundreds of views after the release version so don’t worry.
Jeff: Hi mom.
Justin: Alright. So if you have any questions reach out at greatdentalwebsites.com. That’s where you can find Jeff or he’s on dental town helping you out with all your questions keeping you up to date on what’s going on in the world of online marketing. I’m Justin the dental marketing guy. Thanks for watching the dental marketing guy show.
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Who needs Dental SEO?
Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show. I’m Justin Morgan the dental marketing guy. Let’s delve into this!
SEO is probably the most enigmatic practice in dental marketing today. Why is that? I think it comes down to the fact that dentists just have better uses for their time than to learn dental SEO. For instance, if you could invest 100 hours into learning SEO, how many CE courses are you missing out on during that time? Your clinical skills as a dentist are actually at stake by trying to conquer SEO. Now, if you enjoy “geeking out” doing SEO, then by all means this is not only a fun thing for you to do with your spare time, but also a very profitable one. But for most dentists, doing SEO isn’t practical because you could be adding new clinical skills to your repertoire. You could be doing more of what you enjoy in life. And you can change lives in a way that no SEO professional ever could.
With that said, I think boiling down dental SEO into it’s most basic tenants is what is most profitable for your practice. And that’s what I’m here to do for you.
Dental SEO is for any practice that has determined through careful assessment of your practice’s marketing goals and budget, which searchers are looking for you in high enough volume that it behooves you to ensure that you’re ranked high enough to make your practice easily accessible by the patients you want most. We perform this expert analysis by looking at data provided by search engines such as Google. Once we’ve determined how competitive the search engine landscape is for your services in your geographic area, we’re able to project how to best proceed.
It’s absolutely critical that you determine what the returns are on your SEO investment, before you make that investment. Skipping this critical first step is sacrilegious in the dental marketing industry, and anyone who offers cookie cutter pricing models without performing this comprehensive research first is failing to help you assess risk properly.
The Dental SEO show is propelled by your free subscriptions. If you want to learn more about how to grow your practice through search, please subscribe or consider joining our SEO Mastermind Group at dentalmarketingguy.co
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What is “White Hat” SEO?
Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show, I’m the dental marketing guy. Let’s delve into this!
Today we’re discussing what white hat SEO is. And keep in mind that some of these terms are subjective when we’re talking about white hat, black hat, grey hat SEO.
White hat SEO is a term used to describe any kind of search engine optimization campaign which is in compliance with Google’s webmaster guidelines.
My opinion is that white hat SEO is the kind of SEO you should be doing because it is low risk and tends to withstand the algorithmic changes throughout the upcoming years and decades. At the end of the day it’s all about attracting more new patients who are better for your business. Year after year, decade after decade.
If you’d like to bring in more ideal patients through search, feel free to subscribe to this channel for updates on what’s going on in the world of dental SEO.
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2 Major Factors in SEO | Content and Links
Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show! I’m Justin Morgan, aka the dental marketing guy. Today we’re talking about the 2 major factors in SEO content and links.
The first factor for SEO is content. The way search engines decide how to promote a certain piece of content is by crawling it with search engine bots, sometimes called spiders. These search engine bots crawl as much of the internet as they can. When they crawl your content, they pick up on the overall genre of that content. The more content you have one a specific topic, the more opportunity the search engine but has to pick your website up as a relevant authority on that topic.
The second factor for your SEO is links. They can be links from other websites, or links within your website. They can be links of any kind, but the links which will prove most useful are those who are existing authorities in your industry. So how do you know from whom you want to seek links from? Here is the example I give dentists:
Suppose Charles has a hurt tooth. He is waiting in the line at the DMV and he complains to the lady next to him. This lady, who he doesn’t know tells him in mandarin that he should see Dr. dinson. Well Charles doesn’t speak mandarin, so a lot of good that referral did both Charles and Dr. Farr.
Then Charles gets to the front of the line and the receptionist there at the DMV notices he’s in pain. She asks him what’s the matter and he tells her about his aching tooth. Well this nice DMV lady tells Charles about Dr. Farr. So what’s Charles’ reaction? Well that’s nice, maybe I’ll see Dr. Farr Charles says. But he’s not really serious about seeing Dr. Farr at all, at this point.
Then Charles goes through the DMV taking care of his business and as he’s waiting a nice man strikes up a conversation with Charles and eventually the conversation turns to Charles’ aching tooth. Charles then receives another recommendation to see Dr. Farr from this gentleman. We notice a pattern emerging.
Later, Charles is at his auto mechanic, and they’re talking about his hurting tooth and Charles’ auto mechanic recommends Dr. Farr. Now Charles trusts his auto mechanic with auto issues, and overall trusts his authenticity, but what do these 3 people that recommend Dr. Farr really know about dentistry?
These references of Dr. Farr in the real world are like inbound referring links to your website. It’s the way Google determines who’s being cited, or recommended by others. And in our narrative Charles should most certainly, under normal circumstances, go see Dr. Farr. Here’s where our story takes an unexpected turn:
Charles goes to see Dr. Farr and, upon examining, Dr. Farr says oh no this is far too dangerous – you need to go see the oral surgeon Dr. Alltucker immediately!
Guess how likely Dr. Alltucker is to get Charles in his office the next day? Very likely.
The same is true when it comes to the valuation of back links to your dental website. The more authoritative the source of the referral, the most powerful that link is. When the Mandarin speaking lady recommended Charles go see Dr. Farr, it meant nothing. When the next 2 people did it, it was of moderate compelling nature. The compelling nature of the referrals was compounded with each new person, however it wasn’t until Dr. Farr, who was highly touted within his community among the general public, along with having the clinical skills as well, recommended Dr. Alltucker. Now Charles has confidence that Dr. Alltucker is at the top of his list.
In search engine optimization, Dr. Alltucker is ranked #1. By being strategic about who we earn backlinks from, and where those links are directed, we’re able to promote your dental website with powerful backlinks which shoot you to the top, just like Dr. Alltucker.
Please subscribe if you’d like to learn more about how to rank your websites on popular search engines.
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2 SEO Principles | SEO and Referrals are the SAME THING
Welcome to the Dental SEO Show! I’m Justin Morgan, aka “the dental marketing guy,” and I’m here to tell you that you already know SEO. That’s right. In fact, you’ve already done some form of SEO throughout your life and you might not even realize it. Now if you’re still with me, you’re in for a treat. Especially if you’re a dentist who knows little about SEO.
Search engine optimization is essentially a 2 step process.
First, there is the strategic side. It’s a theory, or philosophy, if you will. It’s about understanding how search engines work. And we do that by understanding WHY search engines work. So this is the first step, and I’m going to tell you the single most important thing you could ever hear about SEO in your entire life, right now. If you’re like most dentists, who are trying to be the best dentist possible, and would rather forget about SEO, this is the single principle you need to grasp, and you can let everything else about SEO go entirely. Here it is:
What Google aims to be, is a human referral simulator. It aims to replace word of mouth referrals.
Second step in the process is determining what criteria Google is looking for in determining who’s really the best for each and every searcher.
You see, every time you “create content” which is maybe saying that you’re a dentist at a chamber of commerce meeting, or wearing your logo on a shirt, or writing your bio for your website, or helping someone who’s in pain, or giving a speech about dentistry or donating your services to charity…whatever it is that you do… regardless of the intent of your heart, the consequence is you become more authoritative to those in your community on dental issues. This is real world marketing. And SEO is just a technical version of this very thing, online. See dentists already intuitively understand SEO, at least in concept. Because that’s really all it is, and all it ever will be. Algorithms will change. Searcher intent will change. And the way SEO is done will inevitably change with it. But SEO is just the online version of being a human referral simulator. And if you currently get referrals, but don’t currently have high search engines rankings, I’d love to help you find out why that is.
Thanks and I hope this episode of the Dental SEO Show helps you, feel free to subscribe to my channel if you’d like to learn more about turning your website into a new patient generator.
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Dental Websites Don’t Need Ongoing SEO
I’m Justin the dental marketing guy! Today we’re talking about how you may be paying for SEO which you don’t need.
This largely depends on how competitive your space is in the search engines. If you’re going for keywords such as New York cosmetic dentist, you’re in for a marathon, not a sprint. However, Invisalign Paso Robles, CA is a much less competitive keyword. This may mean that with a proper SEO foundation, you may be able to secure a #1 ranking on search engines without any ongoing effort. I hope this episode can help you save thousands annually on unneeded SEO efforts. However, this video shouldn’t be construed as comprehensive advice for your unique case. If you’d like, let’s get you a comprehensive SEO analysis to determine where you reside in search engines, roughly how many new patients you’ll gain should you rank, and what kinds of keywords would benefit you most.
I hope this episode of the Dental SEO Show helps you, please subscribe to hear more about how dental SEO can grow your practice! And if you’d like to join our exclusive SEO Mastermind group, message me at dentalmarketingguy.co
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Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show, I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy, and today we have a very important guest, you’re going to want to hear what Dr Dan Marut has to say. Dr Dan is – you may have already heard of Quality Dental plan, this is a huge resource, I want to tell you a little bit about Dr Dan, and kind of give him the floor on how he can help you grow your practice, we’re talking case acceptance, we’re talking marketing, we’re talking everything that – I mean this plan, quality dental plans, has got to be one of the most comprehensive aspects, and I would probably say the most neglected aspects, as far as marketing is concerned, as far as internal marketing is concerned.
Dr Dan Marut DMD established quality dental plan in October 2009 after 3 years of rigorous testing and development. His vision for QDP is to connect dentists looking to make a difference in their communities with new patients, while giving people without dental insurance a compelling reason to go to the dentist. Dr Marut is committed to helping dentist, like yourself, achieve a sense of financial well being, and independence from insurance companies, and provides the program structure and marketing materials to support you in this endeavor, through QDP.
But you know I could talk about QDP for a few minutes, but I probably couldn’t do well as job as you, Dr Dan, how are you?
Dr Dan: I’m doing great, thanks for having me on, you hit a couple of great points on there and it’s just fantastic to be on this podcast with you, leveraging technology, and using the mediums that people are using these days to communicate these days. So thanks for having me on, and definitely appreciate it. Looking forward to our discussion.
Justin: yeah, and you know, I’ve got to say, I always love having a dentist on my show, because there’s a lot of marketing people out there, like myself, and we’re not dentists. So when I have a dentist, who has founded a company for dentists, it’s always a good thing. I mean, I don’t need to explain that to you, because you experienced some issues in your practice that gave birth to QDP, I was hoping maybe you could tell us a little bit of a story about your background as an dentist and what kind of challenges you faced, that caused you to say ‘you know what, let’s start QDP’
Dr Dan: Sure. You know, Justin I was a normal wet fingered dentist in the trenches, just like everybody else out there, going through the day to day challenges of keeping up with managing a team, managing a practice trying to grow a practice and budgeting my time with family and my hobbies and trying to live a lifestyle that I wanted to, that’s one of the reasons why I got into dentistry.
One of the challenges that we always undertook in our practice, or that we saw, let’s say, were of course, patients who didn’t have insurance, and the mentality of insurance. And I’d get questions from patients all the time like ‘oh, do you have an insurance plan that you’d recommend for me?’ and ‘oh, if I had insurance I would come in earlier, and this wouldn’t be an emergency’, or the one that a lot of us hear is ‘oh, I ran out of my insurance benefits this year, I can’t get any more work done, I have to wait till next year until they go ahead and renew’ and so, I took the road of wolf, I educate them on insurance, what it is, and its actually, there’s difference options out there for you.
Well, it really didn’t, people out there, they wanted a plan, they believed they needed a plan, they heard about it all the time, so no matter what I told them, it really didn’t make a hill of beans when it came to that aspect of their care, which was the cost objection. The number reason why people don’t go to the dentist, I that, the cost objection. So when hearing all these people weren’t going to the dentist getting the work done, because they didn’t have a plan, we said ‘well lets create a plan that actually makes sense for the dentist and the patient, lets eliminate the 3rd party hassles that are associated with the traditional insurance’ so that’s how the whole idea came up in the first place. We wanted to really preserve the doctor patient relationship and remove any 3rd party layers hassles, for our patient and our practice. So, with that being said, we journeyed down the road of implementing QDP in our practice and figuring out all the kinks and are continually working on making it the best it can be, and that was -gosh, we launched it officially in 2009, but we were working on it for a few years prior.
Justin: you know, one of the things I think our viewers like about these episodes is – I’ve got a few questions to ask you, but just kind of off the cuff, I’m wondering like – would you say, because I know a lot of prospective dental patients feel this way that, they have this impression, and it’s not true, for those of our listeners, I’m not representing this, but this is what is said out in the market place is, they believe dentist become dentists, to make money, and would you say something like QDP kind of puts you in the same, like on the same team as the patient, is that a fair assessment?
Dr Dan: yeah, I hear where you’re going with it, and absolutely. If people got into dentistry to make money, there’s a lot better ways, in my opinion, to make money, then being a dentist, you have to have the willingness to serve the community that you’re in and take care of people. And so, there’s different ways you can make money, without dong those types of things, and doing the work that us dentists do, which is grueling at times, working in the environments that we do, it’s tough. But as far as being on the same team as the patient, absolutely! you know, when you start to look at a program that your designing specifically for your practice and your community, that’s a win-win, that’s a definition of that right there, so yeah, you become on the same team, you’re a partner with that patient, rather than having some other 3rd other party managing a plan that gets in between that relationship, and can make actually you, out to look like a bad guy. I mean, lots of times, if insurance doesn’t cover something they say ‘well why you did that work then? Why did this happen? I have to pay more now’ this is going on when it’s really not our fault, but it’s a part of those hassles that you deal with when dealing with 3rd parties.
Justin: Yeah, you know, you hear about – there are some dental SEO companies out there which will remain nameless, on this show, who will encourage you to schedule someone without qualifying them, as far as insurance and ability to pay and things like that – just get them through the door. And I’ve heard from clients of mine, when you rush them through the door, and then they find out, after the bill is due that you don’t take their insurance, that’s tricky, so I can definitely – I mean, this sounds like, you might, I’m sure your thought of these things when your founded QDP. Let’s delve into my 1st question, let’s talk about; for the uninitiated, or those who somehow haven’t heard of what you guys are doing to help private practice dentistry, what is Quality Dental Plan, or QDP? I know we’ve kind of touched on it a little bit, but maybe you can give the short and punchy version of what it is?
Dr Dan: lie the elevator pitch right? Sure. It’s essentially, I mean, QDP is a low cost alternative to high dollar dental insurance, that allows patients to save on dental treatment and give dentists full control of all fees and claim benefits, that’s what it is in its most basic form. It eliminates 3rd party hassles, allows the dental office full control, and keeps that relationship between doctor and patient the way it should be. We all know cost is the number one reason why people don’t go to the dentist, so what QDP does is really break down that barrier, and by breaking down that barrier, we’re increasing access to care to so many people in our community who put off dentistry because they don’t have a plan. So our goal at QDP is to preserve that dentist patient relationship, and also increase access to care, so we’re really fulfilling our mission as a dentist and as a dental office.
Justin: excellent. So, we’ve got a lot of Do it yourself listeners who are going to say ‘why does’ – and you know what, I’ve seen you on dental town, and I’ve seen some of the threads about QDP, a lot of good discussion there, and I’ve seen this kind of thing come up before, they say ‘tell me why does a dentist need a company like QDP, why not just come up with my own in house savings plan on my own?’
Dr Dan: sure, and you know, I’m a huge believer of human intuitive, whatever you put your mind to, you can go ahead and accomplish, I mean there some many examples of that, just getting through is a huge accomplishment for us dentists. So, you know, what it really comes down to though, as a dentist and as a business person, it comes down to time and money, right? on the surface level, there’s so many things look easy enough, but once you start to peel back the layers, and getting into it, you start to see the complications, and getting it right from day one, can be extremely difficult if you don’t have expertise in that area, things like; setting up the benefits, pricing, how do you price it? What type of savings do you offer that make sense for your standard of care? Right? And your business philosophy, what do you include as part of the benefits? More importantly, what do you not include and why? Part of it also is, knowing what to actually call the program and what not to call the program. There are many places where you can’t even call it a membership, and people are calling it a membership, those are actually things that can raise red flags when it comes to different states insurance commissions and things like that. So there’s a lot of minutia that goes into setting up these plans, even like accounting, simple accounting, how do you account for when your signing people up and working with them. How do you account for that in your practice management systems and such? So really when you’re looking at designing something like this, sure you look at websites ‘oh that seems easy enough’ but always there’s a saying out there; the devil is in the details. So, once you start to peel back those layers, you start to understand the intricacies of what needs to be accomplished. From the stand point of making it successful, kind of like a patient if their watching us do dentistry and they say ‘wow, your only in there for 45 minutes and that cost me $1 000, wow, you made it look easy’ well you do, when you know what you’re doing, it’s successful from day one.
So I have a saying that I like to use, Justin, in business, and it’s called’ do what you do best and delegate the rest’ right? I mean where do you want to spend your time? Do you want to spend your time treating patients? Do you want to take time with your family? Do you want to go out and enjoy your hobbies? I mean if you really enjoy figuring out a new system, consulting experts, talking with attorneys, creating forms, training your team, designing marketing pieces, figuring out all the accounting and all the minutia that goes into running a successful plan, then really go for it, because you’ll have satisfaction doing that, but if you’d rather use your time wisely; hire experts! that’s were we come in, that’s where QDP comes in, I mean the time saved using QDP will pay your dividend, I mean as a dentist you can produce $200 $300 over $500 an hour! Why would you ever use that time to do something other then what you’re an expert at, right?
And so when you look at it from that aspect, do what you do best, and delegate the rest. QDP allows you to be successful from day one.
Justin: You mean to tell me, Dr Dan, that you don’t cast your own dyes and make all the impressions and run the front desk?
Dr Dan: right? I learnt that long ago, use my skills to the best of my ability and hire people who do other things better than me, and that’s a successful business model that a lot of people use.
Justin: and not just necessarily better I mean there are experts of course, but it’s not that a dentist couldn’t do a dental assistants job.
Dr Dan: sure.
Justin: right? So I mean everyone knows how to cook a steak, but you still go to I don’t want to name a brand because I might get roasted, no pun intended. But, okay, so here are – you know we’ve got this idea of QDP, some people might be interested in doing it themselves, but I would ask you, are all dental savings plans, all these companies – I mean I haven’t even heard of them all, but I’m sure they exist – are they equal to QDP in terms of experience, offerings, cost? How do you compare in your market place?
Dr Dan: it’s really interesting – at QDP we’ve been assisting with dentist and team members and support of successful in office programs longer than anybody else out there. We’ve seen a lot of operations come and go, a lot of operations go through different changes and things that are out there, and you know, we work with hundreds and hundreds of practices out there; we know what works and we know what doesn’t, and it’s all based on our unique experiences. So dentists need to be aware of really who their working with, some of these companies out there are run by insurance companies, I mean do you really want to have another relationship with another insurance company? I mean I don’t. Some in the business are in the business of selling dental products packaged in with their dental plans and such, so you have to be aware of these people. Some are funded by venture capitalists and are just looking at dentistry as a great market and are saying ‘hey, these people are making a lot of money’ or ‘hey there’s a lot of money in dentistry, let’s go ahead and get involved with dentistry and suck some more revenue out of that’ I took the road of – I’m a dentist, these are my colleagues, these are my peers, lets create a company that we can be in partnership with the profession and strive to offer something better then what was done before.
So anytime you’re looking at who you’re going to be working with, whether it’s QDP or whether it’s in the same realm, or any company out there, understand what’s behind the company, what they are looking to do or accomplish, and understand some of the things like customization. Our plan at QDP we have a much customized approach that allows practices to create a program that’s really based on their standard of care and their business philosophy – it’s not a cookie cutter approach. Just one quick example of why, at QDP when I first started, what we did was, we went ahead and gave the patients the ability to pay for one of our programs for the entire year. So patients went ahead and paid for an entire year for the QDP program; and then what we found later on was, some people needed to go ahead and make monthly payments instead, and so we said ‘okay, let’s go ahead and start offering monthly payments’. Well why not collect up front if you can, but also are able to offer monthly payments if you can? With our plan at QDP, which makes us unique, you can do either or; you collect in full, or you can take a monthly payment. I mean as a dentist and as someone who is providing services, why don’t have the ability to collect upfront and get paid in full for your services?
So that’s just part of the uniqueness of what we do, and the customization of what we do, and that really has a standing on top of pretty much the marketplace and what we do, because again we are in partnership with dentists, we want to find what they do in practices and build a plan around their approach.
Justin: that’s really interesting. While you said that, I actually thought of- you triggered this memory in my mind of my dentist. I went to the dentist, and the first time I went to check in, the front desk asked me if I have dental insurance, and what’s interesting about it, is, for dentist, not having dental insurance, but having the money to pay for comprehensive care, I was all those things, I’m private pay, fee for service, cash – literally cash up front. So I’m like the ideal target market, but there was something about that question ‘do you have dental insurance?’ and then I said ‘no’ and I felt like I was missing out.
Dr Dan: yeah.
Justin: and its nothing bad to say about the reaction, but this front desk, she’s an all-star at billing insurance and remains relevant that way, but I didn’t have it, so there’s was a lot this – anyway, just from a patient perspective, I’m sure you and the listeners might be able to kind of get in my psychology of that, because for the rest of the time, I’m thinking like ‘how does one get dental insurance when their entrepreneur and they don’t have a state employer or something?’ you know?
Dr Dan: sure, Justin, your prime example, I mean your someone who doesn’t have insurance, and asked if you have insurance and feel like you’re missing out and all of a sudden you think you need a plan. well ‘how do I get one of these plans?’ that’s really what it comes down to, the marketplace, it’s 50% of the marketplace out there, if you’re looking at who has insurance and who doesn’t not, there are a lot of people who don’t have dental insurance out there, and a lot of people who simply don’t go to the dentist because they don’t have a plan, so why not offer that market segment a plan that actually makes sense? So your story, just hits home, it’s something that dentists hear every day.
Justin: yeah, so, you know one of the things that I think some of our listeners are wondering is, you say don’t take a cookie cutter approach, but can dentists actually set their own fee schedule with QDP?
Dr Dan: sure. There actually isn’t any fee schedule for QDP; dentist can charge whatever they want for their services. They can charge whatever they want for the QDP program, what we actually do for the QDP program, what fee would be charged, we actually have a formula, or an equation where dentist can actually plug in some of their numbers to come up with a recommended fee for the program based on what their including in the program. But at the end of the day, Justin, the dentist is always in full control, so if he says ‘you know what, I think this fee is a little too high, let me go ahead and decrease it by $50″ they can do that! If a dentist says ‘you know what, I feel like I should be charging more’ and raises it by $25, they can do that.
So again, we’re here to make our recommendations, use our expertise to help the dentists, but I am not a 3rd party, we do not want to be a 3rd party and dictate what needs to be done. I believe dentists know their business model better than anybody else out there at their specific location, what they do; who better to go ahead and set their fees appropriately? We of course make recommendations and help them out with that.
Justin: so for the patients – bringing it back to the patients, because patients are people that have to sign on, they have to be on board with this, how often do the patients pay, monthly, annually?
Dr Dan: and you know that’s a great question, because patients are really the reason why all of us are in business to begin with – to serve them and the communities we’re in. So with patients, when we look at patients coming to the dental office, we always want, in my opinion, we should always try and decrease the barriers of enter into the office. It’s a business term, barrier of enter. Well if cost is a reason why people aren’t coming to the dental office, cost was mostly handled, and that objection was handled by having insurance or by having like a 3rd party finance company to help out with payments. Well cost is also perceived as what a patient is going to be paying, and let’s face it – to patients dentistry doesn’t make sense, the costs of it don’t make sense. When someone is spending $1500 for a crown, the cost of $1500 really doesn’t make sense to a patient. I always have this saying I like to say; ‘savings make sense, fees do not’ let me just expand on that just really quick. And I’m going to use a real world example. So I went to Costco to by a Keurig coffee machine, I’m sure most of your listeners and everybody out there know what a Keurig coffee machine is – you put a pod in there, you press a button and out comes coffee. Well, I didn’t know how much one of these should cost, so I went to Costco and I saw a stack of cards and they said that the Keurig coffee machine on the sign is going to cost $140! I said ‘$140 for a coffee maker? I mean I can go over to target and get Mr coffee for like $25, why is it $140?’ well on the same sign, it told me I was going to save $30 because I’m a Costco member, Its only going to be $110. Guess what I did, I bought it! But here’s the kicker, I bought it, not because $110 made anymore sense then $130, but because I was saving $30 – savings make sense, fees do not.
So when we look at decreasing barrier of enter, offering savings to patients is a great way to bridge the communication gap of what somethings costing and what the value of that is. And so, when we look at ‘how does patients pay for something like a program like QDP’ – always we like to get paid up front, but we also want to have options available for people to make monthly payments if they need to. So we incentivize payment upfront for the entire year, and then we have the ability to offer monthly payments. The software that’s used to power our program is completely customizable as well, so you can have the ability to collect fully up front and have the ability to offer monthly payments as well for each situation, and that comes to your office so whatever patients need, you’re really going to be able to tend to their needs.
Justin: that’s excellent. You know, as you were talking I thought of another example. Dr Christopher Phelps came on this show and he talked about walking down the price stairs, and how when you percent the $8000 case and then the $6000 and then the $4000 and then the $2000, you tend to kind of help people – by coming down the stairs, you tend to help people feel like you’re on their side, your there to give them their options, you want the best option for them, which maybe the most expensive, so you start with that. But a lot of dentist go ‘well there’s the $2 000 the $4 000, the $6 000 and then the $8 00’ it’s like walking up the stairs, you know. This is an interesting thing because, you know, if I walk into a dental practice, and I’m like ‘you know, I got $120 000 right here, and here’s the suitcase’ you might not bring up QDP, but if someone brings up these objections ‘hey, the cost is a little bit much, I just had this happen, and that’ -usually people will tell a story about, you know the car broke down, and stuff like that, and then you say ‘okay, you know what, we have QDB’ and anyways, I was just thinking about that, is it’s almost like QDP is like, if you go $8 000 $6 000 $4 000 QDP, that’s like eventually, they’ve told you no, no, no, they must not really be serious about getting dentistry if you’re willing to save them that kind of money. Maybe that’s a little bit harsh. but I mean, yeah, would you say, I mean you offer training for dentist on how to present QDP, no doubt, is that kind of the technique, are those some of the ideas? Would you present QDP first? Would you present it later? How would you recommend that?
Dr Dan: that’s an awesome question. And it really comes back to understand patients, right? so if you say – and I always ask this dentist questions, or I give this scenario to dentists, right, if you charge $1500 for a crown, $1200 for a crown, $1 000 for a crown or $800 for a crown and very one of scenarios a patients going to pick that it’s expensive, always. They might go through with treatment, they might not, but they think it’s expensive, because they have no idea what it takes to deliver quality care, to them it’s expensive. But when you start to offer savings, like let’s just say you’re offering 15% savings on a $1000 crown, that’s $150. So $150 actually makes sense, a $1000 crown doesn’t make sense, $850 crown, doesn’t make sense, $150 I’m saving, that makes sense. I mean who knows what they could do with that extra $150?
So that’s where that bridging of communication gap really comes in. No as far as offer QDP when I first started me though about ‘let’s just offer it to people who we think need it’, and then we saw some interesting things happen. People who were part of QDP were accepting over 20% more treatment -not just general restorative, were talking higher hour treatment as well, like implant placement, orthodontist, cosmetic dentistry, advanced pario, okay? They were accepting treatment because now they have a plan that allows them to save. Some of these people where long term patients who I recommended implants on for years, recommended cosmetic dentistry on for years, but they didn’t have insurance, well now they had a plan to help them save – their ready to move forward with treatment.
The other thing we saw, after year of doing it, we started to delve into our numbers, we saw that QDP patients where over 70% more likely to refer someone else to our office. They were so happy about having a plan, they were happy to spread the word about our practice. So when we first started QDP, we had about a 70% insurance based practice 30% fee for service, within 2 years we’d almost flipped it on its head. We went from 70% insurance based practice to a 35% insurance based practice and a 65% fee for service based practice, trending in those directions. That’s huge! its huge because we were getting ore treatment plan acceptance, we’re getting more referrals, we’re decreasing all the administrative headache that came around with accepting insurances as well, so my team was ecstatic.
You know, we know referral patients are the best patients to come to the office, 1becaue referred patients come to you with a built in level of trust a friend or a family member sent them to you, do they believe in what you’re doing. They usually show up on time, pay on time, and accept more treatment. So it was a great little cycle that we were creating by getting people signed up on QDP, so right now, I’m of the mindset, offer it to everybody you can.
Justin: okay, that makes sense. But here’s the most important thing to our listeners, how often – I mean how and when does the dentist get paid by QDP?
Dr Dan: you know, Justin, again, being a dentist, understanding all this, we’ve designed it so you get paid immediately, right there and then by the patient,, it’s a transaction – the relationship is always between the patient and the dental office, okay? That’s what we want to preserve. You get paid directly, there is no ‘us collecting money, and then waiting 30 days to pay you’ like some companies do, and some insurances do for sure. No, you get paid immediately, and that’s one of the bonuses, is that, the collection cost, cost to collect money, whether its following up on a claim, filling a claim, waiting for payment, that type of thing, the longer you wait to get paid the more money you lose. So from my stand point we designed it so you would get paid that day.
Justin: that’s great. That’s a huge plus right there. Interesting, okay. Well what kind of initial set up and training – were talking about time and money and investment, how much would a dentist expect to have to invest, time and money wise, in QDP in establishing it?
Dr Dan: sure, as far as time goes, you know time is – I’m going to tell you think, on average, most practices get everything set up and ready to go in 2 weeks, some offices have done it in 3 days, we had one office do it in 1 day. So it just depends on how much time you want to put into training. the training aspect of what we do is extremely comprehensive, I believe that’s part of where we shine, because we offer not only a written manual with easy to follow checklists that you can always reference and go though, we also have online training that’s customized to the individual job descriptions in the office. So the business team leaders are learning the fine details of presenting, accounting, setting-up how to work it within the practice management software, how to use the software – with the clinical team, maybe they don’t need to know those details, they’re learning about hoe to present it, how to go ahead and talk with patients about it, and how to overcome any objections that go ahead with it as well. So from that stand point, its team training, everybody’s time is respected and it is narrowed down to their job description. So, we also offer phone training as well, were we’ll help offices customize programs based on their needs, because some offices, let’s say a small group practice, single location, has multiple doctors, maybe doctors are reimbursed different levels – well how do you figure all that out, whose getting reimbursed and for what and where? We help offices figure that out, okay? Some offices have different payment structures for the hygiene team, and so we help to figure out all these unique structures. Again, that’s part of the customization of what we do.
Justin: excellent, man that’s a really answer for 2 hours.
Dr Dan: right?
Justin: alright, so speaking of time, how long does it take for dentists to start seeing a positive impact from QDP in their practice?
Dr Dan: you know, the moment they start offering it, we just had an office sign up, implemented it last week, first week signed up 15 patients. Literally right there. One patient had – I want to say it was maybe $12 500 treatment plan, I’m not really sure of the exact number – but they went ahead, they didn’t have a plan, they signed up for QDP,, scheduled treatment that day. Okay, so I mean it literally is, as soon as you get it implemented and start offering it, it just makes sense to patients, people want a plan, and you’re offering them a plan, giving them a plan, its simple business 101.
Justin: excellent and there’s something about in house financing, if it’s not an organization, just from my perspective, and correct me if I’m not the norm, but when I see in house financing – when I was 17 years old, I financed a matter use, I went out and got my own place, I graduated high school early, I went out and got my own place, I thought I was an all-star for buying my own matter use, they gave me in house finance and I could have totally walked away from it, I paid the guy, it was great, but I could have totally walked away from the guy and not paid him, and I always have that in the back of my head. Is that something that – I mean QDP – I like the logo by the way, you know its like, does it kind of add a little bit of legitimacy to the image and also in ten of that question, is there – as far as collections are concerned – totally unscripted, coming at you – how does collections work, as far as how do you help the dentist collect on this/
Dr Dan: you know, very simply. So, what we’re looking, to answer the first part of the question if I was understanding it correctly, as far QDP and the image and the brand and everything – sure, we have a couple of options, of what we offer for our service options. We have our branded QDP option that everybody sees; we also have the non-branded option, what we call a member owned option. Again, it’s about customization and flexibility for the practices we work with, some practices want to go ahead and market, kind of go ahead blow the doors off of this, and tell lots of people. Other practices just want something to go and offer their patients in house without marketing any of it. And that’s their decision, so we a member done option, where they don’t have to pay for the brand but they still get all of the know-how, the support and the training and everything that goes along with it. So yeah, the branding and the non-branding option really satisfy all of the dentists that are out there and are looking to do this.
As far as collections and payment goes, offices are collecting how they normally would – at time of service, right over the counter for anybody that they would work with – let’s say a fee for service patient, that’s how you would treat a QDP patient. Same thing. Fee for service patient. So you’re not waiting for the payments. Now if your accepting payments over time if your actually becoming a finance company, you know a 3rd party financer, we’re not a 3rd party financer, it’s not what we do, there’s a lot of great companies out there who do, do that part of it, but if your going do something like that, there’s always risk involved, right? There’s always risk involved that someone is not going to pay, and the risk of someone not paying, goes up with the amount of money that someone is paying towards it. So as far as a default rate, like you said with your mattress, you could have totally walked away, from that deal -but you didn’t because probably the payment was pretty low. So in our case, if someone is going to offer a monthly payment for a yearly program or a yearly plan, let’s say, you have to go ahead and be sure that you understand what you’re getting yourself in for. The software that we have, automates payments, it notifies patients, that sort of thing. So it really automates that process if you’re going to go down that road.
Justin: okay, so I paid for the mattress because it was cheap. Let me tell you it had nothing to do with my honesty at all. I’m just messing with you.
Okay, so that interesting. Because when the payments get higher, those patients may, I think this is why care credit an like you said, all those 3rd party financiers are so effect, for private fee for service, is, dentists don’t want to deal with the headache of collections, right? You don’t want to be a debt collector, that’s not the idea. That’s really cool. So I really like this. So where can the viewers find you?
Dr Dan: really easy, you know, for any dentist, or dental team members out there, QDPDentist.com. Real simple, just go there, that’s out professional website. QualityDentalPlan.com is more of a generic, public website, but QDPDentist.com is where you would do if you were would go ahead and find the details that you need if you were a dentist or dental office.
Justin: is QualityDentalPlan.com for consumers, and patients to look at?
Dr Dan: yeah, that’s more of a generic website, so if someone wanted to go ahead and see what – the very basic information, because once again, everything is customized for each dental office. Because each dental office has their own plan or their own version of QDP so there’s no specifics on there because of the customization aspect of what we do. But, you can go on there, there’s listings of some dentists we work with, there’s some PR, press that’s on there, it really is just a generic website, I guess to give us a platform in the public space.
Justin: Well you heard it here first. I swear you heard it here first, you haven’t heard it anywhere else. No, QDP is everywhere so, lets sign it off, and maybe just like 2 of 3 quick tips for dentist who are thinking about QDP, thinking about it in house, thinking about doing it themselves. What would you say – what are 3 quick take away tips, if we could kind of re-cap?
Dr Dan: sure. I could give you 3 really quick words, just do it! Nike, just do it, this is something that helps practices, helps patients, strengthens the relationship, it’s something where you’re actually able to increase access to care for people in your community, and it’s a great thing. As a dentist, one of the great things that I saw, Justin, as a dentist, was that patient who came in and said ‘you know what, I haven’t been to the dentist in 10 years, I lost my dental insurance long ago when I changed my jobs and I just never went back’ I mean this person had money to go to the dentist, they have money to spend on dental care, they just didn’t have a plan, now here he was, coming into my practice receiving dental care because we offered him a plan that made sense. So yeah, he had a large treatment plan at that point because he neglected dental care for a while, but at least he was getting it done and it didn’t turn into something else like an emergency – which does happen. So really it’s about accomplishing what you want to accomplish as a dentist, as a dental business, taking care of your community, but doing it in a way that makes sense for your office, preserving that patient dentist relationship, without getting a 3rd party involved.
Justin: right, well that’s great. I think this is a great thing to check out, and for our listeners, you know you might have some questions for Dr Dan, you might haven some questions for me, you might be wondering a few things, reach out to Dr Dan, I know your big on dental town, you’ve been there -haven’t you been there since the beginning?
Dr Dan: oh man Justin, I’ve been there when they first started. Get this, when I was in dental school, I had to do a research paper that was actually published along with a few other people in collaboration, that was published in JADA on dental portals, way back in the day, I think it was maybe 2000 or something. And I was charged with investigating dental town, its crazy how it works, and how everything comes full circle. Howard and I met more than a few times, had dinner with his family and such with I was visiting Arizona, when I just got out of dental school, and it’s been great, its dentists helping dentists, it’s all the personalities, its people on there, it’s always a lot of fun, there’s a serious aspect to it all and everything like that, but the early days of being a townie and a dentist, I mean the information and the networking that I made on there was invaluable, and I wouldn’t be where I am today without the help of the great people on dental town and in this profession.
Justin: and you’re paying it forward, you’re on their giving great advice, so QDPDentist.com that’s where you can find more information on that, and man, it’s been great having you on Dr Dan, we got some real good actionable tips. I love the energy, I love the logo, this is really good stuff, so you know, if you have questions feel free to reach out, if you like this video, thumbs up on YouTube, because that’s the only reason I do this show, for your thumbs up. So thanks for signing on and hopefully this will help grow your practice, if not, you got some really valuable information either way, maybe you can do this yourself, wither way thank you to my guest of honor, Dr Dan.
Dr Dan: thanks Justin, appreciate you having me on today.
Justin: and thank you for watching the dental marketing guy show
Learn from dental industry experts at my dental marketing blog.
Dr. Anissa Holms: Welcome to the delivering Wow dental podcast, episode 29. Ready to scale up your Facebook marketing? Head on over to DelieveringWowCourse.com
Hi guys, and welcome to another episode of the delivering wow dental podcast, I’m your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes. Today I actually have a really good friend on the show and was going to be talking all about SEO. Today I’m interviewing Justin Morgan, and some of you guys may already know him, he is known as the dental marketing guy and his dental marketing enthusiasts, specializing in getting your dental website to rank highly on search engines.
Justin is different from many SEO experts because he believes in performing a comprehensive analysis to determine if SEO is the right solution for your practice. Justin believes that when you take a deliberate approach towards marketing, the tactics you choose will be more effective, then if you rush into it. He is also the host of the dental marketing guy show on YouTube.
So, Justin, welcome to the show, what is going on?
Justin: It’s going great, it’s a wonderful day, and I’m so honored to be on your podcasts, thank you very much for having me.
Dr. Anissa Holms: Well I’m so happy to have you; I know I was fortunate enough to be on your YouTube show, last month I believe. It’s awesome to have you on the delivering wow podcast.
Justin: thank you.
Dr. Anissa Holms: so before we get started, I’d like for you to tell us a little bit about the journey that’s lead you to where you are today.
Justin: yeah, you know – my background is in search engine optimization and I did that for local businesses, basically when I was in law school, at the time, years back, I was looking for a way to kind of pay for tuition, and you know I just kind of started getting into building cheap websites , started learning like ‘hey, these websites aren’t really doing a whole lot of good, how can I help these friends of mine build their business?’ and SEO just made sense, I mean here you are building a website, that doesn’t really do a lot of good, set sitting out on the interwebs.
So I started learning about SEO, I was surprised how, in some markets how easy it was, and then I started to get into more competitive markets as I started to learn more. As that progressed I eventually decided – I had some life changes, and I decided that law school wasn’t right for me, and I started doing this full tie, and basically focused on my neighborhood in San Louis Obispo, in California. And it was great, I got a lot of good results for clients in every industry, and sort of became known locally as the guy to go to for SEO, and then I started working with a lot of web designers, so they’d do the design side, I’d do a little bit more the SEO side, and eventually just started reading books, and you know ‘how can I help more?’ because I felt like SEO was only one part of real world marketing, and you know, I wanted to make sure that I could really increase the Return on investment for my clients and eventually I decided – you know, I was trying to find a niche’, I was trying to find what’s an industry that I could really help people with my skills, and dental was always towards the top of that list. I made a list of probably about 20 different industry’s that interested me, that I thought were really good for society, and dental was towards the top of that list, and what I did was, I said ‘you know what, I’m going to go for it’ and I told a lot of the local web designers, ‘hey look, if you have a dentist, I want to specialize in this, this seems like a really good fit for me’ and then just kind of – actually it’s kind of funny because one of the web designers was like ‘yeah, I actually got a lead from a dentist today’ like the same day that I told him this, I was like ‘wow, shoot me his information, let me contact him’.
So I ended up meeting with this doctor about 15 minutes north from me, and we just hit it off, I just told him ‘look, I really want to specialize in dental, so I’m going to do anything I can to help you grow your practice, the way you want it to grow, just let me know what your goals are, I’m 100% invested’ and it’s going great, we’re still going strong, and just started getting more and more dentists and yeah, got some great results.
So it’s been very rewarding to specialize in this industry, and I’m glad I did it, and here we are.
Dr Anissa Holms: so can you tell me a little bit more about how you help dentists achieve there goals?
Justin: absolutely, you know – here’s the thing is, there’s a lot of discussion on online- as I’m sure you’ve seen, that people talk about SEO, and there’s a lot of preconceived ideas about what it is, and one of the things I like to do is, I like to take kind of a holistic approach and see if SEO really is the right solution for your practice. And one of the ways that we do that is, we just don’t assume that it’s something that you have to do, what we do is, we say ‘look, let’s see how many people are searching in your area, let’s see what the lifetime value is for different keywords’ – for instance; Invisalign is going to have a different lifetime value then someone looking for a delta dental insurance carrier, and so what I do is, I like to take that holistic approach and basically just research my way out of a job if I can, you know, just say ‘look, SEO is not the right fit for you, what you need to do is, contact Anissa Holmes, you need to do Facebook ads’.
What I try to do is that, or we say ‘look, SEO is a must for you’ or somewhere in-between on that spectrum. So, for instance, if we sit down and we say ‘look, here’s the things that I want to put on the table, of course SEO, maybe a website redesign, maybe video production, maybe photography’ all these different things; direct mail, Facebook ad’s, social media marketing – put them all on the table and lets really assess what’s best for you, for your personality, your team, your company culture, what you want to do, what you want to achieve, and then of course, your budget. So I think that’s really, kind of what separates me from a lot of SEO providers, is; when someone knows SEO, they tend to recommend SEO in every case, but I’ve found that SEO is sometimes not the hail Mary that many dentists think it is, and then in other cases, it’s really undervalued, so what I try to do is, I try to help dentists see, like – what is the real value to you, why SEO or why not SEO? And we do that through research. So I know that’s kind of a long winded answer.
Dr Anissa Holms: no it’s good. It’s really good. So can you tell me a little bit more about the analysis that you perform, in terms of SEO?
Justin: yeah, so like I said, we have to look at the keywords, a lot of them are intuitive, I mean, everybody knows ‘dentist, your city’ everybody knows ‘you city, dentist’, everybody knows those are going to be the highest volume keywords that people are going to search, but what does that really mean?
Assessing your competitors – anyone who knows my marketing philosophy, knows that I don’t actually believe that your competing against other dentists, I think that your competing with the discretionary spending that goes to Las Vegas, Mercedes Benz, you know even star Bucks, and you’re really competing with those budgets, but when it comes to SEO your competing with other dentists, because that’s all there is in those google search results for your keywords. So what we have to do is, we have to see what you competition is doing, what is your competition doing? and we can do that by looking at what kind of backlinks do they have, what kind of content have they produced, how consistent have they been in the past, how long have they been doing SEO? and I would say, in most cases, we can see about 90% of the activity based on this research that I perform, I do this all the time, and basically look at the website, look at what other websites they may have, what social media they have going on, and really kind of extrapolate, based in that data; ‘here’s what I think it’s really going to take to rank you, if I do this for you, and then here’s what I think, if you do this XYZ, it’s going to make things easier, it’s going to make things move faster’ so for instance, maybe doing blog posts, maybe taking pictures and videos for social media, putting that up on the blog, things like that.
We can really reduce a lot of costs, and increase the pace with which we compete with, if the dentists is willing to take a little action there selves, but if there not able to do that, then you know – you’ve got to pay to play, you’ve got to have someone, you’ve got to have a good writer who understands the psychology of the people searching for your services, and ultimately, the bottom line is, why does your website deserve to be on the top of google, Bing and yahoo’s search results, and if you can answer that question; that’s when you’re going to rank. When you answer that question, you identify what are other dental offices to rank, because you know it’s not random, it’s all algorithm calculated. So when you know – when you bring in an SEO expert who you trust to represent you well, what happens is, you guys find the solutions – we find the solutions, we know what other dental offices are doing to rank. So that’s the first key is; knowing the competitive landscape.
So if you’re a dentist in Charlotte, North Carolina, you’re going to have a totally different competitive landscape then being in Timbuctoo where there are only 2 dental offices in town. And then you’re going to see a difference in return on investment, and that’s the last part of the analysis, is; what does it mean to you – what does ranking actually mean? and sometimes it’s a little bit – there’s something left up to some inference, where you don’t know exactly – I mean, we can’t geometrically predict, like you’re going to have 34.2 new patients per month, but what we can do is we can kind of look at the numbers, and we can kind of get an idea – like you know, you’re looking at 15-20 new patients a month, most months.
And that’s really where the real magic happens, is; knowing what you can expect, so I think setting expectations is really key with any kind of marketing, but especially SEO, because many SEO companies are kind of enigmatic, there just like ‘hey, it’s $2 000 a month, and well get you there, we’ll get you ranked’ But it’s a little – it’s not the approach that I like to take, and I think that dentist are really smart when it comes to assessing – looking ahead and saying ‘what does this really mean?’.
So that’s what I try and bring to the table for my clients.
Dr Anissa Holms: I really love that, Justin, and I can relate it to Facebook, you know, that’s really my area, where I can really add a lot of value, and it’s the same kind of thing, some people are paying a lot of money just to have ad’s but they don’t have engaging content. And what really allows – for example – Facebook, to show your posts, is having that engagement, and the more engagement you have, the more users will really want to engage with you, the more they will want to have your posts seen, or in your case; have our website rank. So what you said in terms of having the blog post, having all of the videos – which really add to the content, and also I would imagine, not updating your website, or updating you content for extended periods of time. I know some dentist have pictures on their website from years ago and it hasn’t been updated. And I really like what you said, because a lot of people don’t realize the importance of having that great content.
Justin: yeah, it’s true, I mean I usually – I mean I’ve got a whole video course on YouTube where I talk about SEO all day every day; and it’s about 2 things. I mean, we can talk about SEO for hours, but ultimately, if you want the boiled down version of SEO, it’s comes down to 2 things; content, and links. So, the value of that content it’s – it’s measured through a number of different things, like usage metrics – you know, like how people engage with the content, but ultimately, the – right now – and SEO is always changing, but right now, whose linking to your content, is pretty much the biggest factor, and if you can produce content that’s link worthy, that share worthy, on social media – that’s really where you get the most mileage out of your content, and that’s when search engines start to take notice, because you can have someone at google reviewing every dental website, right?
Dr Anissa Holms: absolutely.
Justin: so, you know, it’s one of those things where you have to understand that they have to use algorithms’ and the way they measure the quality of your content, the authority of your brand, is ‘whose linking to your content?’ I mean a lot of the dentists who blog about things, there doing it for the content, but they don’t – they don’t have the quality of content to deserve those links. So yeah, I mean, that’s a very important part of it, so I would say if there is one thing that anyone can take away from my philosophy of SEO – it’s been very successful, is; you’ve got to have quality content, and you’ve got to earn links.
Dr Anissa Holms: right, I really love that and you know, for me, marketing is about having a strategy to grow your business, and it has to be something that gives a return on your investment, otherwise it really doesn’t make sense, and to me, having visibility on the web, makes a lot of sense, and that’s how you’re going to get new patients. And to me it’s really a marketing cycle – it’s a plan, because if you don’t have great SEO, people are not going to find you website, people are not going to see you in social media. You know, your social media links back to your website, your website links back to your social media -it’s really a cycle, and I tell dentist all the time, you know, if every time you gave me $5, I gave you $10 back, how many times would you give me $5? and to me, this stuff just really makes sense, once you’re really able to have that content that’s great, once you’re able to have those shareable content – to me it’s just really a no brainer.
Justin: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s great, and you know, I would say a lot of what you’re doing in Facebook, is really useful data as well, I mean, I would be interested to see, if a dentist contacted me, and they were having the kind of Facebook activity that you have, or even a fraction of that – I want to take a look at that, because that’s going to play a role in how search engines perceive you. So it’s all interconnected, it is – you know SEO 5-6 years ago was completely different, it was totally rudimentary, you took some software, you shot out a million links, and you ranked, and then you put your keywords, this city, dentist this city, over and over, and you just ranked.
Nowhere a day’s that’s not the case, in fact you can actually get what is called a ‘google penalty’ where, you’re not even going to be able to ever rank without petitioning google to manually review your site, and asking for forgiveness for using what we in the industry call ‘black hat SEO’ which is basically a rudimentary, none helpful way of trying to rank. So I think that’s really where it’s at. It’s in the real brands, it’s in your creating a brand that matters to people, that helps people, and then from there, if you’ve got that down pat, and you’re not ranking – like if people refer to you – I said in one of my YouTube videos, I said ‘if people refer to you, but you’re not earning links, that’s a problem because deserve it, you deserve links’ so you just need to bring in someone like an SEO expert who can say ‘look, here’s the strategy. Here’s how we’re going to earn you inbound links, because you deserve them, because if people are referring to your practice then obviously there willing to link to you, if you only knew how to help them to do that’
So there’s a number of strategies that I use with my clients to try and help them earn links, to try and help them create buzz as I call it.
Dr Anissa Holms: I really love that. So what mistakes do you see dentist making when it comes to SEO, or their website?
Justin: I think probably the most common mistake is having a number set in their mind – a budget, that is based on – I mean, you could have a budget based on your real world finances, and that’s obviously important, but to have a budget set based on some sort of predetermined criteria of what SEO means to your practice – that’s not a good way to approach it. I think the best way to approach it is, find someone who you believe will go to bat for you in the research phase, find out how many people are searching for your services and start making a decision based on that data. And one of the biggest things I see is a lot of dentists come to me and they say, ‘look, I was paying $400 a month for SEO, and I’m shocked at your prices’ and obviously it didn’t work for them, because they wouldn’t have contacted me.
But that’s one of the biggest things is, if you paid for cheap SEO in the past, a lot of times that kind of calibrates what SEO ought to be worth. So obviously is $400 a month didn’t work before, maybe $900 is the right – sweet spot.
But that’s sort of an arbitrary form of logic, it’s not really concurrent on common sense, so what I would encourage dentists to do, is; makes sure you know what you’re getting into, make sure this is the things that you want to do. SEO is not for every dental practice, obviously if every dental practice in America did SEO, and they all did it full gung-ho – I mean it would be a total waste of money for half of them.
Dr Anissa Holms: right.
Justin: so, yeah.
Dr Anissa Holms: I think that’s really interesting, and like I said before, it’s really all about testing and measuring and ROI, and I can tell you when I first started with Facebook marketing, and of course I can speak about that, that’s what I know. I started with $50 a month because I really didn’t understand strategy at the time, and what I started to see however, is ‘okay, I got 3 new patients this month’ and I started to test and understand and at that time there was no one to really teach strategy, so I sort of figured it out myself, but what I relied is that every time I was putting money in, I was getting money out, so eventually what happened was I actually pulled my budget for my yellow pages ad and I stopped doing newspaper advertising and all of these things because I saw the tremendous ROI. So now I’m spending $500 a month, and we’ve grown and we’re getting that benefit, and it think this really the same sort of thing with SEO, I mean, this is really the new media, and so, if dentists, in my opinion, are not embracing it, there missing out on a huge opportunity to really grow their practice, because it’s just really amazing. As I said before, it’s one area that I don’t feel like you should really skimp on, because this is marketing, and to me marketing is not an expense, it’s an investment.
Justin: absolutely. Yeah, if it’s viewed as an expense – I know there’s some – I’ve talked to people who sell radio ads, newspaper ads, all sorts of stuff, and it’s seems like a lot of times, they come up to me, they want to know if I’m working with a dentist who runs a full page newspaper ad, because they believe that, there is a budget, there’s as set budget for marketing, and that if they can just steal some of that budget – they feel like ‘oh, well, instead of doing those mailers’ and they don’t know anything about the effectiveness of mailers, but there pushing their medium, and their like ‘well listener, if you just drop the mailers, or just drop the radio ad, or drop the newspaper ad, and you just come to us – you should give it a try, you know’ – but that kind of logic is that exact opposite of the holistic approach that I try to help dentists with. So what I do it is, I look at that attitude and I say ‘well the problem is, their viewing marketing as an expense, that there’s a set budget, in every dental office, and that they just throw money at marketing or advertising’ – not indiscriminately, but they’re going to spend a certain amount.
Well for some dental practice, I would recommend you not spend anything on advertising. You know, they could go to you Facebook course, and they could learnt he kind of content they need to produce, that goes viral, that gets shared, and they don’t need to spend a penny on newspaper ads or radio ads or whatever – or even SEO, because the point is, every dental practice is different, and every location has a different dynamic, and when you can kind of grasp that idea that, you know, it really comes down to ROI, it’s really comes down to testing, like you said, it comes down to ‘what’s right for your practice’, so that means, not having a set budget, and not having a number in your mind, and saying ‘this is our budget’. I think it should be somewhere between zero and a number that you probably think is too much, but it should be commeasuring with that ROI, for sure.
Dr Anissa Holms: so what about online reviews, do they play a role with SEO?
Justin: they do, and you know, it’s not a huge role – like there’s some threads on dental town, people are talking about how google came out and said something I’ve been saying all along, that you should respond to reviews, and they came out with this new policy, and everyone’s going crazy about it, they’re like ‘oh my god, google says you have to respond to reviews, so oh my goodness, I have to respond to all of my reviews’ and that’s the thing is, this is a very small drop in the SEO bucket. So if you don’t want to respond to your reviews, that’s not going to kill your SEO too much, if you don’t want to get reviews, that’s not going to kill your SEO too much; but here’s the catch; if you don’t have the attitude that you need to do whatever it is that you can to relate to your patients, to have them sing your praises, to get that buzz around your brand online, then that – it’s time for a prairie shift, because when you get online reviews, even though that doesn’t significantly help your SEO, what it does help with it – the way SEO works is, you’ve got hundreds of factors, so let’s say about 100 or 200 major factors and reviews are part of those, so if you’re doing everything right, but the reviews, you might still not rank, and if you doing the reviews right, and nothing else, then you probably still won’t rank.
So it’s a very – what I like to say is ‘be smart about how you invest yourself, and leverage your happy patients’, I mean they’re more than happy to leave you a raving review, I mean they become evangelical when you under promise and over deliver, so in terms of SEO, online reviews do play a role, it’s somewhat minor, but here’s where online reviews really start kicking butt is; once you do get ranked, and you’ve got those tons of reviews, like – there’s a lot of studies that SEO companies have done, and the click through rate, meaning the number of people who search, who click on your ad, over the other ads, is significantly higher when you have a lot of 5 star reviews, and for that reason, you almost are better off ranking number 3 – according to a lot of studies – you’re better off ranking number 3 with a ton of 5 star reviews, then ranking number 1 with not reviews. So in that sense – maybe not with ranking but with actually traffic, you’re going to actually get more traffic by having those online reviews, then you will, just doing SEO.
Dr Anissa Holms: good stuff, so in addition to the reviews, what other ways can dentists organically increase their SEO?
Justin: I would say, you know I’ve got a blog post that talks about the top 100 dental SEO factors, and that can give a good cursory overview, I would say the number one thing you want to do, that you can do yourself, is create quality content, that’s the tough part, that’s the heavy lifting in SEO. Once you have quality content, if you have a blog, if you have you social media stuff, and like a lot of the stuff that you would create for Facebook, there’s no reason why that should not be – that should be syndicated to your blog – you should have some text, you should have something that googles search engine bots, as they crawl the entire internet, looking for signs of your relevancy, you’ve got to give them something, you’ve got to feed that search engine. And so that would be the number one thing.
Once you have quality content, you can bring in an SEO expert and you don’t have to necessary pay a monthly fee. Like for your website, Dr Holms, you rank number one for pretty much everything that you can think of, because you’ve created a real brand, and when your listeners can do that it’s sometimes, all it takes is a few tweaks, maybe some coding changes, maybe some sort of strategic shift, where your now getting those inbound links, your now creating that buzz that search engines are looking for, all because you started with high quality content, that’s the tough part and that’s the part that most dentist – I believe that most dentists should be creating their own content, it’s not that hard, if they follow the advice in your Facebook group, and they apply that to, not just there Facebook, but there blog, there website in general, if you apply those principles, search engines are going to take notice, you may rank, depending on how competitive your landscape is, in your specific area, you may rank just from creating quality content.
But even if you don’t, having that quality content, and then bringing in an SEO expert, and then he can be like ‘well okay, you deserve links form Dental Town, you deserve links from this ‘delieveringWow’ Facebook group’ and then search engines start looking at that and there like ‘well we know this is quality content, we know there helping patients, we know their providing value, we know there thought leaders, because of all this activity and because people are linking to them’. So.
Dr Anissa Holms: that’s really cool, and again, going back to the cycle, you know, I’m big in Facebook, but I’m also big in websites and SEO, and we often actually use blog posts, or things from our website and we create clicks to website campaigns through Facebook, so where definitely repurposing – you know through Facebook were sending them to the blog post, and then from there 1we have the Facebook pixels so we can retarget them with specific ads about things that are in that blog post, again, it just goes back around and around in a circle, and it helps with SEO, it helps people find your website, it’s really great, so I really love that.
Justin: yeah. I mean, re-targeting is huge, you know, I actually just invested in infusion software myself, I know a lot of dentists have found success in email marketing, re-targeting of all kinds because I’m a huge component of retargeting, because, man, you just don’t know, I mean, how many times have you left a website, for a reason other than being disinterested.
Dr Anissa Holms: right, your kid called you and you have to click off and go do homework, or something like that.
Justin: right, and now it’s completely out of your mind – no one’s thinking – they go to your website, they love it, they go to your Facebook, they love it, and something happened, the phone rang or something, and now it’s completely out of there mind. So I love retargeting, I think that’s great, it pairs well with SEO.
Dr Anissa Holms: good stuff. So let’s talk a little bit about google ad words and how dentist can grow their exposure using google ads.
Justin: yeah, google ad words is really key – I’ll tell you a little tip for your listeners is – this isn’t really super well known, is; Bing ads, they actually run for both the Bing search engine, and the yahoo search engine, and those ads are a lot cheaper then google ad words.
Any time you’ve heard something, by the time a marketing media becomes mainstream, it’s saturated and it’s expensive, so google AdWords is super critical, but it’s also almost like playing catch up. So, Bing ads right now, I think Bing ads and yahoo ads are a good play, if you’re looking for cheaper clicks that presumably of the similar value, and depending on your target market, if your advertising all in 4 for instances, or implants of any variety, or reconstructive surgery, maybe for more mature individuals, I know a lot of them use yahoo, a lot of them use Bing. AWAL is powered by google, so that would actually be google, but some of them are actually using Bing and yahoo, and let me tell you, Bing and yahoo are – there – Bing at least is starting to gain some ground, as far as market share, but there still super cheap when it comes to clicks, compared to google ad words.
Now it may be different from one area to another obviously if all your listeners jump on Bing ads, those rates may go up. But bringing it back to google ads specifically, it’s really good, because not only can you get new patients from google ad words, but you want also track the data, way better then SEO, and here’s the one thing that I don’t like about SEO, it’s; some of the data is not geometrically proven. so by that I mean, the number of searches you’re getting, the number of clicks you’re getting to your website, you can get some data from google analytics, google webmaster tools, a number of different software’s that I use, but there’s still some serendipity in it.
You can’t necessarily track every call, I mean if you’ve got an existing website for an existing practice with an existing number, and I get it ranked for you – there is no call tracking involved in that, because we can’t – but with AdWords, what we can do is we can actually set up a call tracking number dynamically that appears on that website for that user that clicked on that ad. And so, you can track things way better, and so, when you can track things – you know they say ‘that which is measured is improved’, when you can track things, it’s so much better, like it’s so much more rewarding, so what I always encourage dentists to do is, if your considering SEO, consider AdWords first, because you can get the exact number of searches. A lot of data – I mean, I’ll use a number of different software’s, but the data as far as search volume, the number of people searching for your dental services, those can be inaccurate, and I don’t really trust the data. For instance, google keyword tool, totally inaccurate – I’ve talked to a lot of google reps in the past, they openly admit it, they’re like ‘yeah, this thing is bonkers’ they don’t have any incentive to fix it, because it’s only SEO people like myself using it.
But yeah, google AdWords, they give you the real data, they give you the truth, they give you the accurate information that you need to make a fulling informed decision about what it means for you to rank. And so that’s part of my research process for most dentists, is ‘let’s run some AdWords’ let’s see if it’s even worth it for you to pursue SEO. So in that sense, ad words is a really smart play, and I know a lot of dentist who contact me for SEO, they’re already running AdWords and there already getting new patients, and so they’re able to see the potential – like if you ranked for the AdWords, but you’re not ranked on page one, or especially in the top 3, for the organic listings, then, you know, you can start to see, ‘oh man, if I got 5 new patients this month from ad words’ – which by the way, I want you listeners to know, and take this with a grain of salt, because every office is different, every geographic area is different, but typically you see about 3% click through rate, on ad words.
A really good ad words ad, out of 100 searches for that keyword, will get clicked on 3 times. On the organic listings, for the number one listing, you’re looking at about 40% click through rate. So out of 100 searches, you’re going to get about 40 clicks. So if you can apply that to what you’re doing and say – and you know, adjust the numbers because very geographic area is different, and of course different keywords are going to be different, different click through rate. But that’s the general rule of thumb, is you’ve got 3% for your top, top notch ad words, you’ve got 40% for your number 1 organic, number 2 organic, it’s 20% click through rate, number 3 gets 10 % and you bring it all the way to the bottom, and now the 10th organic result and you’re looking at 3% click through rate. So literally getting at the bottom of page 1, tends to get the same number of website traffic, as running an AdWords.
So anyways, that’s an important piece of data for your listeners to understand, is; were able to use that data, were able to see ‘okay, if you got 5 new patients this month from ad words, imagine, take that number and times it by almost ten and that’s what you’re going to get if you rank number one organically’
Dr Anissa Holms: good stuff. So what is the biggest win that you had working with a client?
Justin: you know, there’s so many – there’s so many different types of wins, for me, sometimes the biggest wins are the ones where we help the dentist understand that SEO is not really going to build you the practice that you want, and I’m able to help save them the cost – say they were considering a company and you know – there’s companies out there that are really legit at SEO, and they charge anywhere from $5 000-$10 000 per month, and being able to show them, and prove to them – look, and that’s the high end, but I would say the average SEO company, helping a dentist, is probably around $1 00 to $1500 per month – to save them that money, and to prove to them that you don’t really need SEO, it’s a really good feeling. Because you can apply that now to say Facebook ads, and that will get you a better ROI, and we do that through the research. So in many ways – it’s not a big win for me, but it’s a really big win for the dental office, so that’s probably the best one, in far of me not being braggadocios.
But I would say, a recent example, and you can look this up on google, your listeners can look this up, I promised this dental office, in a contract, I said ‘you going to get new patients in about 9 months, this is a super competitive areas, and one of the keywords was Charlotte dentistry’ – and that has a search volume of around 3 000 searches per month, which is a lot – as you can imagine, that’s a lot of new patients, and in 5 weeks, we had them ranked number 3 on page 1 and they were getting lots of new patients. that was probably a recent example, I didn’t expect that, I always try to damper expectations ‘I’m like, you know, this may bounce around, this might bounce down 1 day and come back up, but this is all about the long term, after 6 months, this is going to stabilize’ it actually never did bounce around, it actually just stayed there. Sometimes you get lucky, you sometimes, you just do, and I would say that’s probably an example of good luck. But I would say as fair as good results, I would say – the thing that dentist really like about me is, I’m constant, I’m reliable, I consistently get websites to the top of page 1 of google and, you know – sometimes it takes time, but that consistency and that reliability, where you can feel comfortable knowing that I’m not trying to sell you on SEO and it’s not the right fit for your practice I’m just trying to deliver as good a results as I can – sometimes I even deliver ‘wow’.
Dr Anissa Holms: good stuff. You know I love that right.
So Justin, how a listeners contact you?
Justin: yeah, you know, you can find me at DentalMarketingGuy.com, and so that’s a pretty easy domain name to remember, because I’m the dental marketing guy. I’m on YouTube, I’ve got the dental marketing guy show, you’re on there, and I do interviews with industry experts like yourself. And then it’s a 2 part series, so there’s 1 part where, if you see me standing in a suit, that’s me talking about SEO usually, and so for that, I try to be educational, and then for the interviews, man, I just step aside and let experts like you talk about what you do, everything – pretty much everything other than SEO, although I’ve had some people who do SEO on the show as well.
Dr Anissa Holms: well I can tell you that I have had an awesome chat with you today, and I know that our listeners have got a ton of value from this show, so thank you so much for joining us on today’s podcast.
Justin: thank you very much for having me, it was a huge honor, and I can’t wait to delve into this Facebook course, I really want to learn this, I’ve been so busy doing SEO, that I haven’t had a chance to jump into it yet, but I’m really looking forward to that.
Dr Anissa Holms: well that pretty much wraps up another episode of the Delivering Wow Dental Podcast, now if you want to have direct access to Justin; you want to make sure that you’re inside of the Delivering wow hangout at theDelieveringWowHangout.com.
That’s it for now guys, take care, and keep delivering Wow.
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Can SEO Hurt My Dental Practice?
That’s my question today. I’m the Justin Morgan, the dental marketing guy. Here to talk to you about some of the dangers involved in doing SEO for your dental practice.
First, it’s important to recognize that SEO can be broken down into two major factors. “ Content and links. “ I’m not actually a big fan of the maximum “content is king”. Does this mean that if you just blog once per day for 3 years, you’ll automatically rank? Probably not by that effort alone. But what I would rather say is that really useful, engaging content tends to rank.
There are certain dangers in hiring a non-dental SEO company to create your content, however. Some cheap SEO companies might use duplicate content they found somewhere on the internet. Cheap SEO companies might also use what’s called “spun” content, which is duplicate content that is run through some software called a “spinner.” A little history: these “content spinners” as they’re called developed as a result of Google Bing and Yahoo’s dislike of duplicate content. Websites would rank because of someone else’s valuable content and the algorithms squashed this tactic, and so spun content began. It’s basically horrible re-writing, usually in broken English and still in many ways a form of plagiarism. These cheap SEO practices are actually something which can get your website a Google penalty. So avoid them at all costs. A less severe reaction might be that your dental SEO Company is writing decent content, but they don’t know the psychology of the prospective dental patient well enough to understand searcher intent and how to increase case acceptance with the content on your website. The real danger for you in this case is that the unrealized new patients and unrealized big case acceptance rates you that dropped as a results of not understanding the psychology of your target audience.
Links are especially tricky because they can be irrelevant and actually very harmful to your website. Some cheap SEO companies can actually rank your website with links that create a temporary lift of your website’s search engine rankings, but can create serious irreversible Google penalties in the long run. Be sure to work with someone you trust as an expert in long term rankings for clients. And it may behoove you to ask for references of clients they’ve worked for in the dental industry for years.
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How to Earn Inbound Links for Dental SEO
I’m the Dental Marketing Guy. Let’s delve into this! Probably the best form of off page SEO is the earning of inbound links. That is, to find opportunities from authorities within the dental field who might find value and meaning in linking to your website. The way of earning inbound links – or “backlinks” as they’re called in SEO, can sometimes be enigmatic with many SEO companies. Exclusive to those dentists watching this video, we’re going to lift the veil of what kind of process can be used to gain backlinks.
There are 3 ways to earn backlinks. You may gain them through serendipity and great branding. You may gain them through building relationships with those within the dental industry who already have authoritative online properties. Or you may build such properties yourself.
In the first instance, you’re a real player in the dental industry, and you’re just going to gain backlinks through the power of being a big brand. My website has a link to dentaltown.com, and I received nothing in exchange for this link. In fact, I was never approached by anyone associated with dentaltown.com for the backlink. I did it because I recognized dentaltown.com as a good website to reference.
In the second example, and this is similar to being an authority as a dentist, is to leverage the relationships you have with those within the dental field to find a compelling reason, perhaps with a bit of sales, that your website should be linked to as a reference. If we return to my previous example of dentalmarketingguy.co linking to dentaltown.com, the example would change to someone like Howard Farran or one of his employees contacting me and showing me reasons why I should link to his website. Often, this kind of solicitation is done among those that you know professionally. And it usually involves some piece of content that is valuable to them, such as a blog post which quotes them as an expert. Another example might be to have contacts in the media we are happy accept valuable content for their readers in exchange for We can do an entire SEO Hour episode on the many ways to approach this backlink building strategy. If you’re interested in learning more about this, we’ll discuss it in our SEO Mastermind Group.
In the third example, you already own many websites which are dedicated to pumping out valuable content relevant to the dental industry. These websites should have a strong history of being linked to, themselves. It can be tricky to manage all of these properties, so an SEO company which uses this sort of back linking strategy can sometimes be preferred for those dentists who prefer to practice dentistry more than be computer nerds.
Thanks for watching this episode of the Dentist SEO show! If you feel you’ve learn something please subscribe!
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What is SEO?
Today on the Dental Marketing Guy Show, we’re discussing what SEO is, and more importantly what it means to your practice.
Search Engine Optimization is the process of making your website or other property representing your practice more visible on popular search engines. Most dentists think of ranking their already existing websites, and some would think of building a new one that can rank. It’s worth mentioning that you can rank your YouTube videos, your practice’s fb page, your LinkedIn page and any other online profile you’d like prospective dental patients to find when assessing a dentist. When I work with dentists on their SEO campaigns, we break down the process in this way:
First, we perform a comprehensive analysis of what it will take to rank you. We see what the competition looks like for your keywords. We assess how many people are searching for you’re a dentist in your area. Often this comprehensive analysis involves a week or two of collaboration with you to discuss what kind of services you offer and who your target audience is. This is of paramount importance.
If you’re the kind of dentist who values being found by those actively searching for your dental services, feel free to contact me for a no obligation assessment of what it will take for you to rank highly on search engines, and also what kind of returns you can reasonably expect from such an endeavor.
Thank you for watching this episode of the Dental Marketing Guy Show, if you’d like to get more free information about how to grow your practice through dental SEO, please subscribe to this channel. If you’re interested in joining our Dental SEO Mastermind Group, please contact me at DentalMarketingGuy.com.
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Google Leaks
Hey guys it’s the Dental Marketing Guy Show. Today we’re talking about a hundred and sixty pages of newly released Google leaks. What is it mean for your practice.
Hey guys welcome to the dental marketing guy show, episode 2 thanks for joining me. We’re talking about Google leaks today we’re talking about a hundred and sixty pages. If you’re on dentaltown.com if you’re in the marketing section the forum there, you know I started a thread about this very topic this new information.
Now here’s the thing is this Google leaks there definitely new to the public and an abridged version has been released in certain places throughout history however this is the first time I’ve actually talked in depth about the findings of their studies. All the findings all one hundred and sixty pages can be broken down very simply and everything is consistent with common sense, everything is consistent with everything if you’ve been following dental marketing guy blog, the dental marketing guy show, any of the posts on Dentaltown that I make. You’ll know that these all consistent with everything that we know. I want to break it down just some very basic principles because these hundred and sixty pages basically boils down to you mostly on page SEO factors so for those of you that don’t know on-page SEO is the website itself. It’s the website that you have and you know basically all the factors that go into what your website is whether it’s friendly to search engines whether prospective dental patients are getting what they want from it that’s huge and so these new principles outlined in this hundred sixty-page Leaks. Basically go over these types of things, when someone lands on your website we have three questions, there’s three questions that every website has just a few moments maybe a few seconds to help the personal basically ordinary intelligence level of ordinary pursuit needs to be able to figure this out really easily.
The first question is what is this website about it?
It might seem like your website is about dentistry but sometimes it’s not so clear what some of these things that we see some of the things that we see are our stock photos you know you see like smiling people, they’re not custom photos there’s some generic taxed maybe duplicate content copied from somewhere else on the Internet. This kind of stuff is not really high quality in fact a lot of the dentist who see the show. What I’d like you to do is take a look at your homepage and take a look at your “about us” or “ meet the team “ page and I guarantee you nine times out of 10. If you haven’t had your website design by someone who knows general marketing really well a lot of times the homepage is inferior to the “ about us page to the meet the team page “ because that’s really what people are looking for in fact I know there’s another dental marketing company who’s doing YouTube videos really successfully talking about in one of the episodes, hey you know the about us, to meet the team, meet the doctor those are the links that are clicked first but someone lands on the home page and it makes sense because what is the website really about? as a dentist’s it’s about you so if you’ve got stock photos right there above the fold if you have you know kind of generic tax all over the place. This isn’t really helping anyone this isn’t what they came there to see, so your About Us page is probably superior to your homepage so that’s something to keep in mind because sometimes what the website is about you’re like well of course it’s about dentistry, it is! It’s about the dentistry but it’s not really about dentistry because they can go to the ADA website they can go anywhere they go to Wikipedia why did they come to your website to get to know you so that’s something to keep in mind, what is this website about its about the dentist it’s not about dentistry.
Now the second question is what action can I take? What can I do here?
If the website is cluttered with links if it just has links all over the place is a bunch of things pop and all over the place. It’s kinda like I used the analogy a cat a barnyard cat, can go into the barnyard and if there’s thirty forty hundred mice, guess how many mice that cat catches 0 , he’s so inundated with catching all the mice that he end up catching none. When you have too many actions, too many calls to action, everyone talks but you gotta have a call to action, gotta have a call to action but too many calls to action caused people that frees up they won’t take any action so what can I do your needs to be very very narrow you need to have one or two options that really silo user into exactly where they want to go to most so at that is usually effective with clean web design by clean I mean something that doesn’t have too many distractions or too much going on too many leaks. You can put him in the footer if you’ve got blog posts a hundred different services whatever it is that you’re offering, you put those things in the footer nothing wrong with those links but up at the top of the full people gotta know where they’re going to go so that’s something very important to think about is narrowing down my choices so they know what the websites about the dentist. They know what they’re gonna do, they’re going to click to click the video if you have a video. Almost always click that video they’re gonna watch that video, if you don’t have a video they’re going to click to watch the photography, if you don’t have the photography they’re going to click to to read headlines and going to scan. Most people are not going to read the entire coffee thoroughly so that’s another thing about before you invest too much in copywriting is definitely video photography much more powerful for the average perspectives dental patient.
The last question that your website needs to answer is why should I do it? Why should I take this action?
Now that I know what the websites about and I know what I should be doing, why should I? and if you don’t have a compelling reason for that then your website going to fail. They gonna go back to Google they they’re going to click on your competitor, they’re gonna get the answer that they want and then they’re gonna going to convert on that website and when that happens SEO becomes very difficult. It doesn’t matter how many off pH factors you have, this whole Google leaks study 260 pages is all about mostly on-page factors so usage metrics. How people behave when they go on your website if someone goes your website and they go back to the clicker competitor and then they convert it looks very poorly on your website and eventually even if you are doing SEO it’s your rankings are gonna probably slipped depending on competition level.
The three questions what is this website about what can I do here and why should I do it, so this is essentially that’s everything will down 160 pages that’s it! in a capsule some of the details artificial intelligence Google’s forming algorithms based on real people assessing real websites and they are taking information and they’re formed into an algorithm there’s a new algorithm and a new name but it’s probably an old algorithm but a new name is rank brain and so what they’re doing is they’re trying to form artificial intelligence to figure out what’s a good website with a bad website and they do they’re doing that through human testing so that’s something to look out for is when Google gets a hold of an algorithm that can effectively judge whether a web sites, algorithmically judge whether a website is good or bad that’s gonna be huge. Another detail your money or your life this is this is where websites are held to a higher standard than say you know an informational website like Wikipedia you’re gonna be held to a higher standard when you’re dealing with people’s money in people’s lives dentistry you deal with people’s lives basically you know attorneys doctors investment firms financial management and you’re asking for someone’s trusts you handle their money or big decisions in their life real estate things like that is obviously applies in dentistry because you’re affecting their life in a very big way. You’re gonna be held to a higher standard but also competition level if all the dentists around you are making all the same mistakes then it’s going to be really easy to ranked number one. This is something that gets discussed a lot on dentaltown is OSU easy OSU hard. There is a spectrum just like in any sport it is a comparative model if you are in an easy league you know if you think about you know if you compete in sports in high school or whatever, if you’re if you’re an easy lead you can hit win the league and then you get to the to the next level and depending on what level that’s out there might be easy I might be easier when we might be easier when state in one state compared to another but eventually what happened but i think is gonna happen is Dennis are gonna catch on to being really good at following these rules these hundred and sixty pages but I’m boiling down for you. Competition level definitely matters. Can you do you can you just launched a website and have it ranked number one in a certain area where dentists are not following these rules. Absolutely and you don’t need to do SEO but if you’re in an area where it’s competitive New York cosmetic dentists you’re not gonna just threw out the website even if its nice without doing any SEO the right number one because there’s a lot of competition there so you at least have your website in order and that’s what this is about.
The last detail I thought was worth mentioning is freshness. Freshness is becoming more and more important so blogging updating your website making shirts well maintained. This was emphasized throughout these Google leaks and this is basically it, you know you’re welcome to check out the link below this video on dentaltown there’s a thread on it. Basically we’re looking at these three questions need to be answered really well and then you’re off on it start you know I just I wish you the best of luck with that and you know if you have any questions, just let me know among dental town in the comments below this video dentalmarketingguy.co we’ve got a blog there I have actually 100 factors for dental SEO actually working on that blog post right now today and we read about I think 80 right now and we’re working on all the most meaningful ones by no means comprehensive because there’s hundreds of factors but that I mean I think I’m the only one who’s putting together this list, so that’s another important when you check out but you know this is basically we can answer these three questions when you land on your website that’s what the dental prospect. The prospective patient needs to answer, not you what is this website about “ What can I do here “ and “ why I should do it “ and if you answer those three questions very quickly you’re on your way to rate is really high!
Hey thanks for watching I hope this helps you if you have any questions just let me know.
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Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show, I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy, and today we have a guest who – it’s a huge honor to interview; Joshua Scott, the founder of 8e8 dental marketing (8e8 Studio or Studio 8e8). And, really interesting, I got to ask you where that name came from, but yeah, maybe you could tell us the story behind why you started 8e8? We’ve got some huge actionable tips for our viewers on how you can improve your dental marketing from a pro, seasoned pro. This guy’s been in the game a long time, he’s going to tell us all about it. But first of all, how’re you, Joshua?
Joshua: good man, good. I’m glad we could connect, thanks for having me on the show too, you know, we’ve talked a lot in the last year or two, and been a fan, especially your, the little SEO videos you’re doing, those are a great ideas for sure.
Justin: thanks, thanks. Yeah, well, its humbling to have you follow me, you’ve obviously been in the game for a long time. Tell us a little bit about your background in the dental industry, and what happened that gave birth to 8e8?
Joshua: yeah, you know, I’ve been in Dentistry – this is going on 15 years now, which seems crazy, but I spent about 11 or 12 of that with a national consulting practice management firm that worked in dentistry, there based here in Columbus, Ohio, and yeah, just kind of cut my teeth in dentistry with them and it was a really great experience, but what happened was, kind of towards the end of that – the owner there began to think about, or wanted to experiment with a marketing division within the company, and I was like ‘yeah, let’s do that!’. So kind of started going down that road, and eventually he just felt like it was going to be too distracting for him, he wanted to expand the company to a more national level, I actually completely agreed with it, but our conversation at the end of the day was ‘man, I love this, so where does that leave us?’ – and we worked together for a little while longer, but in the end things started growing and it was just too hard to do 2 things at once. So, here we are.
Justin: excellent, so you were working in the dental industry, wasn’t it for a software company of some kind?
Joshua: no, it was a practice management firm; they did consulting, and a lot of continuing education, things like that.
Justin: okay, yeah. For some reason I though a software company, because you have a huge emphasis at 8e8 on being searchable, on being internet friendly, it’s a digital age, you know, we’ve talked a lot about direct mail in the past. What’s, I mean, basically, could you kind of run us through your philosophy at 8e8, obviously your ROI oriented, your branding oriented, but kind of what makes you a little bit different from the next dental marketing company?
Joshua: yeah, I mean those are good question. I think, you know, I was just on a call here earlier this afternoon, and probably one of the things I tell people is; if your calling me to get a price on what our websites cost, we’re not the right company for you. We don’t do on off websites, and so our approach to marketing is a little bit different; I want to sit down and create a marketing plan, a marketing strategies for that practice, for that doctor, typically it’s for like a year, so it’s like A to next year, here’s what I would do, here’s what I think you need to spend. So it’s more comprehensive, its customer, because you just don’t know, I mean this practice I’m talking to – is actually buying from a 62 year old doctor who has never had a website, so is a website in the strategy? Yeah of course! But you know some practice, maybe they just built a website, so I’m going to come in and customize a strategy and go ‘okay, we just spent money and invested on a website, so what’s next? What do we need to do to optimize that? What are some ways we can take advantage of it?’ So, were definitely a more comprehensive company, and our goal is to work with our clients long term as more of a trusted advisor to the practice.
Justin: excellent. Let’s talk about a little bit, and we can get a little more in depth about what your marketing philosophy is, I think you’ve got 7 good strategy points that you could share with us. But what are some quick tips? now I know you’re not about the quick fixes, because your about that holistic comprehensive approach, but what are some quick tips as far as you know; maybe how to take that first step? I think a lot of dentists watching this show would be like ‘okay that sounds great, I’d love to have a comprehensive marketing strategy, but that sounds like eating an elephant’ so how do we get them to take that first step?
Joshua: first step into marketing or first step into working with a company like us, what are you getting at specifically?
Justin: the first step as far as, ‘okay I’m a dentist, I know I need a marketing strategy, what I even do? What is the first step to even, should I just google something, should I contact you, what should I be thinking about?’ what are some quick tips as far as calibrating my mind to getting on the right trajectory?
Joshua: yeah, you know what, that’s a really great question; think it probably depends on where you’re at in your practice and what stage, because I mean, the one thing that’s really great about dentistry is; a lot of people have boot strapped there practices, right? I mean startups, when they buy it, it’s like a startup or a new practice and so there’s a lot of kind of, I call it the DIY movement, in dentistry. So that might be the right approach for you and your marketing to begin with, but eventually what will happen is, you know the typical marketing budget is probably going to be 3-4-5%, I mean that’s roughly. So, if its a million dollar practice and you’re spending 30-50 dollars, you do that a few years in a row, man, you ought to get some advice on where that money is going; I mean it’s a big chunk. So bringing somebody like me in, working with a professional, they can advise you so at least you’re not wasting your money, and optimizing that investment.
And then probably the 3rd step – so you go from DIY, to getting some professional advice on it, to probably the 3rd step is just working with a company working with a company that you can trust to handle the whole entire strategy and the pieces because now at this point, your moving – you need a trusted company advisor in that role that’s just handling the entire thing. And so, you know what I find with a lot of practices is that they’ve got 3-4-5-6 different marketing companies involved, like your direct mail company, your website company, sometimes even different companies are doing the SEO, or saying there doing the SEO and at the end of the day, your trying to manage 4 different companies, and I’m just like ‘who wants to do that?’. So, for me, those are probably the progressions, you just have to know where you’re at; do you need to do it yourself because your bootstrapping and on a budget? Or is this time to get a professional involved because you’re spending a decent amount of money?
Justin: yeah definitely, you know, it’s funny, some dental offices I’ve talked to, they have multiple people doing the dentist’s SEO – it’s like ‘oh my goodness there’s too many cooks in the kitchen here’
Joshua: yeah.
Justin: but when you’re dealing with these budgets, like your sayin, if you’re dealing with these budgets – 30-40-50 000 dollars a year for marketing, a lot of people just want to get a piece of the pie, you know? I feel like a lot of people are just kind of targeting dentists, because it’s like ‘oh there’s some money’, that’s definitely not the approach that you take, its sees like you’re really passionate about the dental industry, you’ve been in it for a long time. What would you say, you’ve got a show on YouTube as well, it’s the 8e8 dental marketing show; and what you do there is, you actually answer questions. What are some of the most frequently asked questions? I’m sure, maybe with your clients; they might be a little bit more advanced after you’ve consulted with them, but just one off questions coming off the internet, what are some of the most frequently asked questions?
Joshua: you know that’s a great question. I think we get a lot that are on social media and Facebook, at just what the play is there, I think what’s interesting, Justin, you probably know this, and you’ve probably seen this, but; 2 years ago, I think in dentistry, there were still a lot of practices trying to figure out the ROI on Facebook, like what are we really supposed to be doing here, and I think 2 years ago a lot of practices were like ‘we do Facebook, but we don’t really get new patients from it’, and that’s completely changed within the last 6 months to a year. Whereas I’m sitting here saying to you now, a practice, if you’re not getting new patients on Facebook, you’re not using it right. That’s probably the easiest source of new patients that I’m seeing right now. And that’s just been in the last 2 years, and so social media, you think about this, where it’s come, it went from like, all the kids are doing it, to you should have a page, a business page, to well what’s even the ROI here, to now it’s probably the best marketing strategy out there. So I still get a lot of questions on social media, and still try and get a handle on it.
Justin: so that’s probably the first thing, because a lot of people, for instance, on dental town, on the forums their talking about Facebook; you’ve got a few threads there where it’s like ‘hey, do Facebook ad’s work?’, and you’ve got one dentist whose just crushing it on Facebook, he’s like ‘ I just let all my clients from Facebook’. We had Dr Anissa Holms, from Jamaica, she’s got a pretty big Facebook following, she was on the program to talk about Facebook ads specifically, and I think she said 40+ patients – new patients, per month for her practice, and that was geometrically tracked to Facebook. So, there’s, I think your right about that, that’s where the crowd is, that’s where the psychology of the people on Facebook is their open to the idea of finding a dentist on Facebook, even though there not specifically searched, like ad-words, but their looking for a dentist. But, would you say that the approach for Facebook, what’s the approach that you take? I mean, when Anissa Holms was on, she was talking about just videos that show your humanity, don’t talk about clinical stuff. What’s the approach that you’ve seen success with on Facebook?
Joshua: it’s interesting, you know, Anissa Holms I think she’s just, I mean gosh, I think there up to 50 000 followers, but I feel like every time I say it, it grows, so it could be like 63 now or something. Which is insane, but what that goes to show you is; so they focused on growing an audience, and there’s part of that now that’s just math, I mean if you have 60 000 seeing your Facebook page, you can post content, or just post content, boost it, because the audience is so big, she probably has to, I think she said something like $500 behind those boosted posts, but then your just, by math, your just getting a percentage of those that are coming into the practice. And so, that speaks to the audience and the value there, that she’s built, I think what we’re doing with a lot of practices is, dropping ads into the local market, `and so I think your right in that its difference, google ad-words is people searching – Facebook is placement, so it’s a little bit of a different approach, and I like google AdWords when people are searching, especially for services like dental implants, orthodontics, pediatric dentistry, that type of stuff, I think it works really well, Facebook your kind of just dropping into people’s feeds. So they see an ad and they go – especially if its compelling photography and imagery – they go ‘wow, what is this, this look like a great dental practice’ So, that’s typically been our approach to it.
Justin: yeah, and you just bought an up a really good point. So, if we could take away something from this interview, if nothing else; you’ve got Facebook as a platform, and then you’ve got custom photography, maybe custom video – because know videos becoming more popular on, not only the internet at large, but on Facebook specifically, and I’m sure you’ve keep your finger to the pulse on how video is growing in Facebook. So, would you say, if our listeners where like, trying to do the do-it-yourself route, maybe there not quite ready to get that professional advise just yet, or they don’t feel like they should do that, so you say Facebook, if you do it right, which means custom photography, which means professional photography that puts you in a good light, would you say that’s a pretty good start as far as ‘don’t go with the clinical side, go with the human side’ go with the custom photography, and then Facebook as a good platform, would you say that’s a pretty good starting point? Or is this sort of one off tactic not the way you’d prefer to give advice?
Joshua: no, no, I think it is, and I don’t, gosh I never kind giving advice, I think that’s a great strategy; and what we’ve seen is, because what Facebook is changing the game which is, you’ve literally have data, so we can run 6 different ad’s for the same practice and use stock photography for a few, use pictures of the building or the waiting room for a few, and then use pictures of the team, and you can run all those at once, so there all live; you’ll start to see data, and you’ll see what people click on, you can tell which one’s win the game. So the ones that always score the best are like the picture of the team with the doctor, like get them out in front of the building, get them with a wide angle lenses, beautiful sunny day, take that picture – man, that wins on Facebook, and so yeah, I think custom photography is huge, I don’t think saying it won’t work without it is true, but what would be interesting would be; run some stock photography, see how those score, and then switch out with custom photography, see how that scores, and I think you’ll see a big difference.
Justin: I was talking to a social media consultant for medical the other day, and they were showing me ‘okay, here’s an example of a Facebook ad we ran, and it was a dud’ and it was stock photography, and then they were like ‘here’s an example that worked’ and it was just the most random stuff, like ‘oh, this patient is pregnant’ and ‘oh this dental assistant just got engaged’ and the sharing and the liking and the comments, it’s like insane, it’s like wow!
What do you think, because dentists are really scientific, right and what would you say – I think dentists want to know, why? Why is it that it works? You know I’m kind of throwing this question at you without – nothings scripted here, but, what would you say, what is the psychology of the prospective dental patient on Facebook, why does that message resonate with them, this random stuff about engagements and babies and all that kind of stuff?
Joshua: man, you know right now, I think it’s just, marketing, I think if were keeping it really simple at the end of the day, it’s that marketing about attention, and so it think you’ve just to know where attention is at, and to ignore the fact that people are – attention is right here now, is – I think your just missing the entire game. I think people just get caught up in that, I don’t understand Facebook – why is that working, why would that drive new patients? and I’m like that’s not even really the question to be asking, it’s all right here, like go to tomorrow, I’ll be at my sons baseball game and I’ll be in the bleachers with a dozen other parents and families and I will guarantee you, I’ll look around and 90% of eyes are going to be on the phone, especially between innings when there warming up, it’s like everybody’s on the phone. I mean stop at a traffic light, look at the other cars, everybody’s looking down, there taking a minute to text or something, it’s just where attention is. You know, 20-30 years ago people were sitting in front of the TV, and that’s were there attention was, and so you could literally interrupt them with ads, but this is where it’s at now, so whether or not you understand that, it think that’s just where it is, and respecting it.
Justin: yeah. So basically who really cares why, its ROI focused, what you’re doing, your looking at; whereas the audience, and your going to them ‘we don’t really need to ask why, what we need to know is what actually working?’ You know, I like your channel, I’ve seen pretty much every episode, I think your approach to this is a little bit different to a lot of dental marketing companies out there, I think it’s, you know, you put yourself out there, you put your personality out there, and I think people feel like they know you, and when you do that, this is a good lesson for our viewer, for dentist, you know, you might not run your own YouTube show, you might not have your own podcast, but when you put yourself out there on your website, with custom photography, maybe even with video – I think this is a good lesson of how, the way that dentists buy, it’s the same way. We’re all human beings, so half the battle is getting people to know you like you and trust you; and so I think you provide a really good example of that, and so I’m sure your clients are doing the same.
Joshua: yeah man, thanks. I think at the end of the day it becomes about the story of the practice and what the message is there. I don’t know if you – you may have read Simon Sinek’s book ‘start with why’, it’s very popular TED talk, it’s kind of the buzz and the hype and the – just continuing education world for sure, but really great message and its one that my team and I, we walked through about a year ago. And that’s our approach with dentistry too is; we get a call or an email and ‘hey I need help with marketing’, and our first question is why, why market? Why are you doing this? What’s the message, because somebody probably has 6 or 8 different choices on that street of dentist, so it’s like you know, what makes you unique and capturing that story is going to become a very important thing as we move forward. I think a story sort of cuts through the clutter, cuts through the noise – of everything else that’s out there, and so, yeah, that’s been our approach.
Justin: excellent. Well where can the viewers find you if they want to learn more?
Joshua: oh man, well they can start at JoshuaScott.com, that’s always a great spot, just a little overview of myself and our approach. You’ve mentioned a few times, we do the podcasts; it’s not quite every week, we’re trying to get to that – but usually about every other week that that’s 8e8 dental marketing show. If you just got to YouTube and type in 8e8, you should get it to come up, but that’s a fun little thin, I love answering questions and that’s been a ton of fun to do that for sure.
Justin: excellent, well it’s been a huge honor to have you. I think the take away is; Facebook, custom photography -try that out. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out, JoshuaScott.com. If you find this on YouTube, fi you find this on dental town, the dental marketing guy blog, where ever you find this, feel free to reach out with questions.
If you enjoyed this interview, thumbs up, and share it with someone that you think will benefit. And thank you so much, Joshua.
Joshua: oh man, Justin, my pleasure, thanks for having me on, especially on your Friday afternoon there.
Justin: yeah, cool. Well it’s been nice having you, and it just hope that the viewers feel like they got some benefit out of it, I think that we to a little bit of actionable items, and really good discussion about, you know, maybe chasing every flashy object – isn’t what it’s all about, maybe just that slow and steady pace – is really what dental marketing is really what it’s all about. So, I appreciate you bringing that angle.
So, thanks for listening to the dental marketing guy show.
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Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show, I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy, and today I have a guest who you’ve probably already heard of, but just in case, it’s DR Gina Dorfman, she is the founder of YAPI, and it stands for -I think – yet another practice management software, or something like that.
Anyway, Dr Gina Dorfman has software that’s based on improving efficiency in your practice, going paperless, and getting online reviews. You know it’s got to be the most comprehensive software I’ve seen, outside of your patient management software – anywhere that I’ve seen. What’s really interesting is, Dr Gina Dorfman, I’m sure she’ll tell you her story here in a minute – how, in her office she’s created systems that have improved the profitability of her practice and how you can do the same.
So, first of all, Dr Dorfman, how are you?
Dr Dorfman: I’m doing great; it’s great to be here, on this show, thank you for having me. It’s a nice rainy day in California, so we could use a few more of those.
Justin: you’re down there in Orange County, right? Somewhere in the LA region?
Dr Dorfman: I’m in studio city area, which is the Los Angles County, but we also have an office in Orange County, that’s where the development team is.
Justin: okay, got you. So you’ve got your dental practice, and then you’ve got YAPI, and that’s great. It’s a huge honor to have you. What I’m hoping to do is to kind of introduce you to the viewers, you know you’ve been in a lot of podcasts, I met you at the townie meeting, and you’ve been in the industry for a long time. But just to kind of help our viewers who maybe haven’t heard of YAPI, or if they’ve been living under a rock, haven’t heard of Dr Gina Dorfman, maybe you can tell us your story, how long you’ve been in dentistry, and how you make practice run more efficiently.
Dr Dorfman: Well thank you. I graduated from USC in 2000 and after a couple of years of associating, I starting my first practice, my baby, and I kind of had an idea, a vision of what I wanted that practice to be and one of the first things I wanted to make sure we do in a practice is I wanted to be paperless, that was the big dream. And so, just after we started the practice, we did digital X-rays, we bought a very powerful practice management software, and that’s where the battle towards paperless started, we’ve implemented everything that we could, and it was still difficult because we realize, the first thing you go paperless, the practice management software company will tell you ‘well now you need to print routing slip, because that replaces your charts, you need to have a physical piece of paper that you can move with the patient around the office’ and of course, then you have to shred them, and so being paperless, we ran a paper costing plan, we were printing patient forms, and entering data into the computer and shredding them, and scanning them before shredding them, and of course the same thing with routing slips, and it was just not working. So we started to play with the routing slips, we started to play with different systems, and one day I came in and I said ‘you know what, we’re not going to do the routing slips, were going cold turkey, we’re going to use our practice management software the way it was intended’ and my team – whenever I come up with something new, and I always come up with new things -they always say ‘okay, we’ll try it your way’, so I walk in the first day, Monday, I’m ready to be paperless, and my assistant says, your patients, in OP 1, I said ‘great, what’s his name’ and he was like ‘oh, it was, I opened the chart in the operatory’ So I had to walk into the operatory awkwardly, with my little signature pad and then they’d say ‘we don’t even know what we’re signing’ so your asking patient to sign a consent form, you give them a laminated form and you say ‘your signing this form’ and then they sign on that little tiny signature pad, and so that completely gets away with it. There’s no more printing, there’s no more printing, no more scanning, the data from the forms is populated into the practice management software quite seamlessly, just literally – you look at what the patient filled out, say ‘ok’, and it goes into the software, and that saves a lot of time.
Now on top of it, we also started doing appointment reminders and recall, and what we’ve been able to do is integrate those features into our paperless entire dashboard. So when a new patient schedules a new appointment, not only do they get a welcome email or ‘save the date’ email, they will also get a link to the online forms that they can fill out. And a great thing happens, when new patients are actually the highest appointment failure rate in any dental practice they make appointments, and then something comes up and they don’t come in, but if they fill out the form online, they’ve given you all the information already, that commits them to the appointment, and they’re a lot more likely to show up. And getting that information in advanced, to check insurance, and to get ready for those patients – that’s priceless. So we’re really able to streamline the checking process, and the next thing we wanted to get rid of was the sign in sheet. I still don’t see a purpose for this, we have now those HIPAA compliance sign in sheets, so a patient walks in, they sign their name, they sign the provider name of the person their seeing, appointment time, arrival time – what’s the point of that? And then the front office peels off the sticker and puts it on something, because you can’t shred a sticker, and then she shreds it -what’s the point? you know their appointment time if you know their name, you know what provider their seeing – that information is in the practice management software; so, what we’ve done, we said ‘okay, let’s have – you know iPad are a great device’ A patient can fill out forms, you can snap their picture, now you have a picture on file, you can greet them when they walk in, you greet them by name,, you go ‘Justin, Hi how have you been, have a seat, we’ll be with you in a minute’ what an amazing experience? Instead of having someone coming in and filling out there name on a sticker and their appointment time. And of course we tracked their arrival time, and their appointment time, so now you have data that you can improve your practice on. You know whether you’re scheduling correctly, you know if you’re running behind. When a patient is not seated on time, the avatar for this patient will actually start flashing, so the practice knows ‘okay, it’s time to see this patient’ And another great thing that happens, when we’ve got rid of the routing slips, we also got rid of this old habit that many offices had, they would print routing slips and then they would take a highlighter, and with a highlighter they would highlight all the important stuff about the patient ‘this patient has balance, and this patient is coming in for a filling, but their due for a cleaning, or there family members are due for a cleaning, maybe they have a birthday coming up’ so they would highlight all those important things so that they can take care of the patient when they come in, and of course it a huge time waster, the importation is in practice management system, you just need to see it when the patient comes in. So, with YAPI, all of these things kind of pop up on the screen, so if it’s your birthday there will be a little birthday cake popping up on the screen, if you have a balance, there will be a dollar sign, if you don’t have an email on fill, you’re not going to be able to send an appointment reminder. So YAPI will remind the front office go ahead and collect balance, collect email, and wish Justin a happy birthday. And talk of these things are tied together, if a patient had given us a previous feedback, maybe they wrote back to us ‘you know, the rooms are too cold here, I love the office, everything is great, but I’m not giving you 5 stars because it’s just too cold’ so the next time they come in, that message will display on the screen, so the dental assistant or hygienist can grab a blanket and say ‘I know you usually get cold, here’s a blanket for you’ again, what an amazing customer experience – patient experience, and that’s what we built YAPI around.
Justin: you know that’s really incredible because, you know, Facebook came up with this idea a long time ago where they remind you of your friends birthday – there supposed to be your friend, you should know your birthday, but now days, people are so busy, we don’t even remember peoples cellphones, because it’s just recorded,. How much more sense does that make to have that for your patients, because now that gives you the opportunity to under promise, and over deliver. Maybe if there a patient whose referred to you a couple of restorative cases over the years, maybe you might want to send them a birthday present?
Yeah so that’s a great idea. So basically my impression of YAPI, and that I would like to have you clarify for the viewers is; my impression of YAPI is, it’s got a lot of different pieces of different software that people use, all in one place. So what would you say, other than that, what would you say – what are some of the pros and cons of having a different software’s for everything from reviews to recalls, and all of this different stuff – what are some of the pros of having YAPI as a one-stop shop for all those solutions that you mentioned?
Dr Dorfman: well I think the main things is, that everything is really tied in together, because if your appointment reminders are coming through your fax, or you have to log into a website to text you patient, and then your reviews are coming from the other website, and sometimes some of those systems are not fully integrated so you have to type patients phone numbers and names, in order to send them a text message – the utilization tends to drop off because you know, in a typical dental office, it doesn’t matter how small or big, there is just so many things happening at once, especially in the front office. The front office is like an octopus, patients walking in, patients walking out, the phone rings, the hygienist bring the next patient to her so that she can schedule the next appointment – it’s just that by the time that someone takes care of all those pieces, it’s really difficult to be on multiple platforms, and we already know that using multiple platforms, multiple devices, a lot of time, creates a lot of distractions. So having this in one piece and having all of those pieces integrate with one another, I think is a huge advantage, and of course, in terms of pricing, we don’t come up with new features to charge more, the fee is the same. We come up with features as we find that they fit into that platform, that they make sense for our customers, so rather than paying $2.99 here, and $3.99 there, and $69.00 over here, you get all those features at one place at one price. Huge advantage.
Justin: yeah. So it’s organized.
Dr Dorfman: absolutely, I like organized, I thrive on organized.
Justin: I think most dentists do, right? It’s important to have all your ducks in a row in that office where it can kind of be like controlled chaos, but the control part is really important.
Dr Dorfman: absolutely. I have taken a lot of time in my own dental practice that can be scaled or replicated, and whenever we bring in a new employee, we have a system whereby we bring this new employee into our team, and systems that we teach them ‘this is how we do this, and this is how we do that’ and even though we are busy, we’re not dropping the ball.
Justin: yeah, okay, so I want to focus a little bit on this review thing, because a number of my clients who are interested in getting online reviews, one of the objections for getting reviews is – and these are dentists with immaculate reputations, but online you wouldn’t know it, because they only have 0-5 reviews – what would you say, because one of the objections is ‘well we don’t know if were really comfortable having our patients online, they sing our praises, they refer to us, but were a little nervous about asking for reviews, because its going to go straight to google, it’s going to go to yelp, and what if it’s a 3 star review? What if it’s a 4 star review? So one of the features of YAPI -correct me if I’m wrong, your actually asking them through the software, and if its 5 stars does it go straight to google or yelp, or if it’s under 5 stars you can address the feedback issue? Is that right?
Dr Dorfman: absolutely, so we have – part of the app is that patients are sent a link, it’s a text message with a link, when they press the link, it asks them ‘did you have a 5 star experience?’ and if they say yes, then they can go to one of the apps on their phone, whether its google or yelp and leave the feedback directly there. If they say no, it will go into YAPI’s dashboard, again this all goes back to the same dashboard, they don’t have to look for that feedback elsewhere, and then they can deal with it. Not a lot of bad feedback comes back to my office, but when it does, the sooner we will chat to the patient, the less likely that patient is to fall apart, the less likely we’re likely to lose that patient, and the less likely we have that patient to go and vent online. And so, that part of the capturing feedback is just as important as getting reviews, and then there is the second component to that systems, that if they didn’t give us the feedback then they receive an email with a survey where there are more opportunities to receive feedback, and then if they give us excellent feedback then they can post that on either google or yelp.
So it’s a multi-step process, and it’s completely automated, and one of the objections, there’s actually 2 objections that I hear from dentists, the first on is; ‘it’s just so difficult for patients to do it, we need to explain to them to do it, they need to log in, so we don’t even want to ask them, because this a lot’, and the other is ‘we don’t want ask old patients because we don’t know what kind of feedback they are going to give us’ even sometimes happy patients can go back and give you a 3 or 4 star review because – actually 4 stars is not bad, the customer is satisfied, but that’s not the reviews we want, we want 5 star reviews. And the third reason, and probably the most common reason is that. Doctors just don’t feel comfortable asking, and there team members don’t feel comfortable asking, and they don’t have the verbal skills to confidently ask, there almost embarrassed to ask. So that’s probably the main reason, why doctors with excellent reputations, doctors who have a ton of reviews, but don’t get them.
So, with YAPI, there are a couple of ways that we address it, the first one is, we actually give you a little card, we give you the verbal skills, we tell you have we want you to ask for those reviews. There is a way that, it’s a one button click where you can send the review right in front of the patient, in the operatory, or in the front office, where ever you want to send it, you don’t have to enter any information, any phone numbers or anything like that, because it’s all built in together. So, you ask them for a review, and then you tell them ‘I’m going to send you a link, so you can do it when it’s convent for you’, you send the link, they get it right away, they can do it now, they can do it later, but somehow, the fact that you asked, and then you send the link right away – that increases the conversion.
The second feature is; for those doctors who are, you know, still not comfortable to do that you can do it on autopilot, so every patient will get a request, same link, same request, and that’s when the software is going to filter them.
Justin: excellent. So, online reviews, I guess you touched on a point that I didn’t even think of, that wasn’t just that fact that; feedback can be delivered this way, and maybe it might lead to a low star rating if you’ve overlooked something, but also, one of the biggest objections in all of the dental marketing, has to do with the fact that the front desk isn’t necessary getting paid more for more work.
Dr Dorfman: it’s true. That is very true.
Justin: so I come in, and it’s weird because – one of my clients, the front desk, actually – I was just kind of curious, I was like ‘hey, can I check out you guy’s tooth brushes? Like the branded ones, with the brand name?’ – because we just made them a new logo and I was thinking about getting them some toothbrushes with the new logo, and the front desk was kind of like ‘well I know you’re in marketing, you know, we’re probably going to stick with our brand’, I was thinking ‘wow, wait a second, you have the wrong impression of me!’ but I think it’s because, the dentists brought me in, and then her job is to stop me, and then if the dentist says ‘no, no let him through’, and then her job is to let me through, but the whole time she’s got in the back of her head, or he, that ‘look, this guy is going to create more work for me, if new patient means new work, new tasks – where’s the pay raise?’ right?
So your software, it’s talking away the task of earning these online reviews, much of the work. I would say – would you say one of the key benefits of YAPI is that is actually makes the front desks job easier?
Dr Dorfman: absolutely. That’s our goal. Think about this, automation is to time what a compounded interest is, to money. If you put $100 in a bank account with 8% interest and you don’t touch it for 30 years, in 30 year, you’ve have a little over $1 000 by just putting that $100 away. With time, the same thing happens. If you spend 100 minutes creating some kind of a process, or automating and learning how to use this automation, that can save you 1 minutes a day, every day, over the next 10 years, you would save 416 hours over the next 10 years. Imagine what can be done in that time. So our goal is to automate low hanging, easy things, like entering information, or looking for information, or transferring information, and leaving those very busy front office ladies, as well as back office ladies – or gentlemen, to concentrate on what matters – the patients, doing the work that a software cannot do, like building a relationship. You know we have relationship management software, and people are doing data entry, it’s backwards! People should be doing relationships, and the software should be doing the repetitive meaningless tasks. So whether we’re doing reviews or we’re doing appointment reminders or whether were doing paperless – our job is to create more time for these very hard working people, so that they can do things that matter. And the reason why things have changed, is because they are so busy as it already is, and they don’t always see that there is a better way, because they kind of tell themselves that story that ‘we’re too busy to implement something new’ so when the dentist brings you in, his job, partly, is to explained how someone will benefit, how will this front office benefit from this software, marketing campaign, SEO, whatever we’re bring in – who will the team benefit, or how will the patients benefit? Because team members, a lot of times, most of the times, what the patients to benefit, so how will the patient benefit from this?
So I don’t want to have someone in the front desk that needs to remember, to type in a review request from every single patient, if I can get everyone in the office to ask for reviews, and let the software automatically send the reminders – I would love that! That would be ideal.
Justin: and you would know as a dentist, as a practice owner, you would know these things. That’s why I really love when dentists create software – because we know that – you’re making it, I guess in a way, you made it for yourself first, but of course you’re thinking of other practices too. But yeah, that’s what’s really good about that! you know – I want to say, before we sign off, the picture idea is really good, you know Fred Joyal, the founder of 1800Dentist, in his book, wrote about a story of a guy who walked into a dental office, and the front desk looks up and she goes ‘are you a patient here?’, ‘no, I just randomly walk into dental offices in the middle of the business day’ – like come-on! of course he’s a patient, take a stab at it, he’s basically like ‘you know Mr Jones is scheduled for 3pm’ – well maybe they don’t know, maybe its disorganized, maybe they don’t have YAPI, maybe there just not, you know, with the paperless thing. And so, the picture thing makes a lot of sense, because, you know even need to know the person’s name, you see the persons face, and then the names next to it right?
Dr Dorfman: yeah. This is so – you know, we talk so much about creating great experiences for our patients, and we wonder ‘what can we do to make it a better experience’ and then we give them a sign in sheet, and then we give them, you know, that ugly paper that you’ve copied, god knows how many times, to fill out, where they – I always wonder who makes those forms, because they makes this little box, and then you have to write something really long in there – like your address, and then they give you a big space for , you know, ‘city’, even though Los Angles doesn’t take that much to write, and pretty much anyone who walks into your practice or my practice – lives in LA – So, you know, patients tell us thing’s and we don’t record them anywhere, or they get buried somewhere, and the pop-up notice inside of the software, that people tend to ignore because there are way too many of them, they pop up all the time, regardless of where its important or not. And your right, I created YAPI for myself, I created a picture of what I wanted to have, and we’ve implemented it in my practice, and then, as other dentists looked at it, they said ‘how can I put this into my practice now?’ And that’s how we ended up as a software company. This was honestly not a long term goal.
Justin: excellent. Well, were coming to a close on our time, but man it’s been a real pleasure having you on. Dr Gina Dorfman, from YAPI, maybe just some quick tips on how this can help dentists in there practice with efficiency. Maybe you could give us 2 or 3 quick tips on how your software actually helps them, and helps the front desk save time?
Dr Dorfman: I want to tell you about one feature that I particularly love – I mean I love all the features, but there’s one feature that I particularly love, and that is the recall manager. Our recall manager is a system where you can set up a cascading system of automated messages, where its text messages, email messages, or postcodes, and it all goes – it generates automatically, and its great because this is where the front office does not need to think about it, the problem is; not every single patient schedules an appointment from those messages, and think about it, every new patient that we see in our practices is coming form a new practice where they used to be a patient, and they left, why? Something happened. So, if we put our recall on autopilot, then we never know why they left, we never get to capture them back, or invite them back. And this is one of the things that Sandy Pardue talks about all the time, you’ve got to have her on your show, she’s absolutely fantastic, and so, she actually created a system for reactivating those lost patients, but none of the automation software supports this kind of system, so what we’ve done with YAPI is that, you could do lots of messages, send them out automatically, and then there is now a portal where you can see all the patients that haven scheduled, and what you can then do with that is, you can call those patients, and the great thing is with YAPI, it gets recorded, what automated messages they received, so you know they got a text message, an email, but they still haven’t scheduled. So you get them on the phone, you say ‘hey Justin, we were just – you know Dr Dorfman was just looking at your records, and she’s noticed that it’s been a year, we’ve sent you a couple of messages, so I’m calling to see if I can get an appointment for you today’ and then they’d be like ‘well…’ and this is where you have to deal with whatever objections they have. And so, with our system it’s very easy, because you can filter those unscheduled patients by the time that they received there message, and that’s great, because a lot of times you get a message, and you think ‘oh, I’ve got to call and schedule my dentist appointment’, but then you get busy and you don’t call. So when we call you and we say ‘Justin, let’s get you scheduled’ and you say ‘oh, I’m so glad you called, I was just meaning to call you, I got your message a couple of days ago’ you are hot at this time, so it’s easy to schedule. Or you could filter people by, they received all the messages in the system, and they still haven’t scheduled, there’s a problem, there’s an objection, we’ve got to call them right now. And by combining this personal touch, this atomization, we get the best results, because if you ask front office team members, why is it that they don’t call past due patients, the response you get is ‘I don’t have the time’ so if we can save them time, and then they can use that time to reach out to patients who don’t respond to automation, then we give you the best of both worlds. And that’s my favorite feature.
Justin: well that’s excellent. I like that one center hub, I think a lot of dentist like to stay organized – all of them do, all of our listeners do, that’s going to be a really good thing, a really good feature.
So if you want to get organized, if your front desk and you’re watching this – this is going to make your job easier, not harder. So thank you very much Dr Dorfman. Thank you so much, it’s been a huge honor to have you. And thank you for watching then dental marketing guy show.
Read more on the dental marketing guy blog!
Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show, I’m the dental marketing guy, and today I’m joined by Dr Eric Jones, who you may already recognize from the lecture circuit. Dr Jones, met him at the townie meeting here, at the cosmopolitan this year, in Las Vegas, and let me tell you, huge amount of value your about to get for your practice. If you’ve very thought about implants, certain elective procedures, and how these high margin procedures can actually – meaning high profit margin – procedures, can actually help your practice grow, Dr Jones has a story of how he helped his practice and we’re going to talk about some of the techniques he’s used in marketing.
First of all, how’re you, Dr Jones?
Dr Jones: I’m good man, thanks for having me.
Justin: absolutely, it’s a huge honor. Let’s talk a little bit about your history as a dentist and maybe some of what you’ve done in your practice to help spur on the cases that you like to treat.
Dr Jones: So, sure. I’ll tell you, I started a practice in 2011, so that it’d be like a new practice, it was kind of like figure out the marketing side of it, or have really skinny kids. So, we went full tilt all in, coming up with a plan and all of that, but, you know, it’s not so much that – it was almost out of necessity, and then ever since, just watching that through our growth has been something that we’re definitely passionate about, because that’s what fuels, you know, the cases that we want to do, and seeking what we’re actually good at, is the whole marketing side.
Justin: excellent, and you know, I’m always encouraging dentists to sort of reassess ‘what is it that you really want out of dentistry, what kind of case do you want?’ and really get down to why you enjoy that kind of work. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about why you enjoy doing certain types of procedures?
Dr Jones: yeah. You know, I think, there’s more to the point, because you think about, and I’m trying to remember where I read this or heard this, but you think about sales is really just transferred passion, and I know when someone comes in, and we talk about what their options are, I feel confident that, it’s not sales, it’s not anything like that, it’s just that when they see what we do, and what were pretty good at, I know that they can then decide if it’s a fit for them or not. But I think now that it’s especially hard with just, you know, everyone you see out there is like family dentistry, we’re treating you like family, and you’re trying to be everything for everyone. So I think, looking at the scheme of it, if you can pick out what it is you think your good at, what you enjoy doing, what your passionate about, that transfers over to the patient, especially even from a case acceptance stand point, from a looking different, and not being the 1 of 10 000 flyers that you get in the mail, offering a cheap a cheap cleaning, or a free exam, or a $100 tooth extraction, you know? So I think that was huge for us, in saying you know, being a little bit different, I’m almost like a purple cow, with gut instinct, but it’s like standing out there and being congruent with that. it’s not like saying ‘oh we do all these things’ and the patient gets in there and your practicing out of a book, you know what I mean? Yeah, doing everything right, from the phone, to how the office looks, and how you handle, you know the new patient experience, and that all starts with marketing, you know getting the phone to ring.
Justin: would you say the internal marketing from being a specialist, from positioning yourself as someone, of course in dentistry, if you use the word specialist, it might mean something. But, in the marketing field, I guess we could say focus, by being focused on a certain type of procedure, or set of types of procedures, would you say your internal marketing is spurred on from that?
Dr Jones: no, I think it absolutely because that is what you’re used to talking about, you know what I mean? All marketing is, is getting the phone to ring. And it’s very good at it, but then from there, you’re on your own. You can have the best marketing in the world but if you’re blowing 7 out of 10 phone calls, it’s not going to do you much good. But I think absolutely, you know, most of its internal, but it’s just a continuation of the congruency of the message.
Justin: yeah, and so, your part of a group called ‘clinical mastery series’, did I say that right?
Dr Jones: you did.
Justin: excellent. So, you know, having an easy to remember name, that’s important. So, I was talking to John Nosti over at the townie meeting and then I met you and Jason, and we were talking about, well his speech I remember, one of the parts that really stood out to me, is how, you can walk into his office and the hallways are lined with pictures, and there all his cases. You’ve done something similar to this?
Dr Jones: right, so, yeah as I said, I can’t take any credit for it because I stole the idea from him and definitely Jason, it’s good. But it’s just having, think about it, what is it we do? Do you walk in and see like a 1989 zoo poster up? Is that really about what you do? we took headshots, we took before and after’s, we had them printed on like a little stand out from the wall and then titled the wall with those, so I think, you want the patient to feel like there in the right spot. And the last thing you want to advertise is ‘oh, I’m the implant guy, I’m the implant guy’, and then they get in there and you don’t have a single photo of an implant case to show, all you have is the old skull model from dental school that your breaking out, you know, to show them about implants instead of saying ‘this is so and so, this is there story’ and that can either come in from a patient testimonial, or either video where they talk about their experience, or any of those things. Absolutely.
Justin: yeah, and so, internal marketing, I’m always talking about how huge that is, and we’ve had some guests on the show who’ve talked a little bit about that. So there’s the pictures, what would you say as far as external marketing, reaching out, you know, we talked to Dr Christopher Phelps, and he talked about some of his ideas on how to reach out to certain demographics in an effective way, that’s not salesy, and you were telling me earlier about some of the things you’ve done that are sort of similar to that, could you share that?
Dr Jones: yeah, so I think we talked about it, even the idea of being kind of simultaneous, having multiple avenues of marketing going and not think about it, it’s like ‘we do this, then we do this, then we do this’ for instance I think, looking at, your whole marketing plan as a whole, it’s something that needs to be community outreach, some of that is events, I’ll talk a little bit about that. Certainly there’s a direct mail component, like in our office, there’s a huge web component, you know SEO and SEM component. And, really just tackling all these things, because I think if you pigeon hole yourself into one medium, next thing you know your like, all the companies that are gone now that dominated, you know what I mean, even like Polaroid, who would of thought, you know that’s what we called film forever, and Kodak, and since then that division is gone, times change.
So I think even if it’s, I know you asked me about events, but even if that is getting out and talking to people about implants or something that you’re passionate about. Implants, just like Dr Phelps, is something that we started doing education seminars on, and first one we had, I’m thinking ‘no way someone comes to this’, and we go in and it was in a retirement community and there was like 80 people in there, and I was like ‘holy cow, who wants to hear about implants’ I was thinking like 3 people. And that I was going to be embarrassed talking about it in front of 1 person, and instead it was a packed room.
So, I think coming up with a comprehensive plan and working on multiple fronts and not out thinking the room. I know sometimes, even that first thing, thinking about an event, we’re worried about what kind of – do we get a deli tray, do we get a cheese try, what do we get, all the stuff, and then by the time we did our 3rd one, we were just like ‘let’s just bring some bottled water and we’ll pick up doe fruit on the way there’, and just getting out there and meeting people. And then even when they see us talking about implants, whatever it is, they can tell that that’s something that we have experience in, a little bit of expertise in, and that’s something we’re passionate about.
Justin: yeah, and so, you get in front of these audiences, I mean obviously, being a retirement community, there in the market, they’ve decided to join this seminar, which for those who might of not here, that was 80 not 18 people showed up 80, and that’s incredible. So, these are all people who have decided that they want to learn more about implants. And of course these communities, they don’t want you to come in and pitch them, so you’re not going there with the intent of being like ‘okay, so it’s $19.99 for-‘
Dr Jones: right, and you know as I was saying, the first even 2 we did, really threw me, we’d do, we’d tell who we were and all that. But then at first I was afraid they’d be saying that the community would be upset if we bought in any kind of material, so we didn’t bring anything in. We just told them who we were, the girls had some business cards on them, that went with me, but that was it. It was funny, it took a little bit of time, and I thought, all this didn’t work, and about 2 weeks later we got a call from a new patient, and they wanted implants, they already, they’ve been thinking about them for years, and then finally the time was right. That kept happening and kept happening to the point where, we’d get calls 9 months later.
A lot of times we’d do it on implants, and then that works a treat and then other times, it maybe simpler, or it may be more complex, but, it’s the patients who would come in, they’re like ‘oh, we already met Dr Jones’ and another dentist I worked with, and they’re so fine, and so insist able on seeing me, you know, like I was the expert on them. We believe in our passion on implants, we do a good mini, but just they are, them coming in wanting to see me, like I’m the guy was kind of fun and unique to see.
Justin: yeah, and so you don’t even need to call yourself the implant guy, your just-
Dr Jones: no, so we didn’t at all. and then you know, once they’re there, they feel like they already know you, and it’s like there’s no tension, you know, and even in our seminar, 1 thing we talk about is ballpark national cost, so it’s like, we already had someone coming in, thinking they know what they need, knowing about what it costs, knowing a little bit about the process, because they were there and then, it’s like, there educated informed ready to go, versus, feeling like your starting from scratch.
Justin: you know in dentistry, the word ‘sales’ is kind of a dirty word.
Dr Jones: yeah.
Justin: but, you hit the nail on the head when you said “sales is the transfer of that passion or enthusiasm”, so that’s really really clear, once a person knows, likes and trusts you as a dentist, and your passionate about it, if your enthusiastic about getting them an implant, that’s the winning combination, so that’s sales right there if you really break it down in an effective way, would you say that’s pretty much your sales process? Is just being enthusiastic, being honest and just having the consumer being informed and knowing the expectations?
Dr Jones: yeah, and I’d say that’s entirely it is; just meeting that person where they are, eye to eye, hearing there story, I have a team member that does just that, and does a lot of that process for me, but really finding out a little bit more about them, and from that it’s just giving them there options, and not picking it for them, and kind of laying it all out there and letting them decide what it is they want, and I think off the top of my head, photos on the walls, we do bigger cases, and functional cases, and aesthetic cases, even like what we teach in clinical mastery, but it’s just that, I think of all the ones we’ve done, I can’t think of anyone that’s like ;nope, I wish I didn’t do it, I want my money back’, you know, most are response are ‘you know what, I wish I did this years ago.’ And then knowing that and being about to look a patient in the eye and tell them the truth is an awesome thing. In fact I just got a text, we seated a case yesterday, and this was the text I got a bit ago, it said “wow, loving my new smile, wish I’d done this years ago, thank you!”, with all the emoticons, you know, so it’s like, that’s awesome, to know that and feel that and to know that we’ll give that value to the patient, is really, it’s not about sales, it’s about just telling them about what we can do, and letting them decide, there’s no pressure, whatever they choose.
Justin: When you get that momentum, how much word of mouth is, how many referrals do you get specifically for implants, from previous implant patients?
Dr Jones: I think it’s, you know what, that’s a good question, the exact, with implants, and I’m not sure. I mean I think, we get them, and then there are patients who are referral, they come in per-sold, and those are the patients that’ll wait 3 weeks to see you. When you know you could hit 10 dentist offices opposite of the 9 hour, from your office, and they could see them tomorrow, and those are the ones that come in, knowing they want to see you and they want to talk to you. I think a good bit, but I think also just the confidence it brings, and with that confidence, knowing that your competent and that you have this new patient that you’ve never met before, and they found out about you from the web, or from google reviews or something like that, and they feel that, and I think that that’s also huge.
Justin: yeah, and you know, google reviews are pretty huge. It seems like hats were word of mouth is going.
Dr Jones: yeah, it’s like digital.
Justin: we had Maui Bob on the program, he talked about 5 star reviews, and it was a lot of fun. We talked about how word of mouth is still really big, people do refer people, but I think a lot of the generation of 18-34, what’s happening is, they do have word of mouth, they do still asked friends and family about ‘whose your dentist?’, but then they go to google and yelp and they base their decision on that as well.
Dr Jones: yeah, and I think, you just touched on a good point, I think that’s knowing your audience, I think about for implants, most of that’s for older people that have lost teeth and now have the ability to afford treatment or the need with missing teeth. You know, I think trying to go fully google-yelp strategy on the 65+ crowd is tough, that’s why we’re totally into the seminar, and getting out in front of them, you know what I mean, kind of meeting them where, how they want to be met. Whereas the younger crowd, I’m sure if you’re looking at say Ortho or Invisalign, and your target demo is females or maybe some guys from 22-32, that’s a huge online presence to worry about, and its google, its yelp it’s all those things its getting people to check in where you are, like you on Facebook and all that stuff.
So I think it’s also having all of those things going but knowing where to find who you is looking for.
Justin: exactly, yeah that’s definitely the case. Well tell us, before you go, tell us a little bit about Clinical mastery series, and how – I think it’s you and John and Jason, right?
Dr Jones: and then Mike Smith, and then I have a few other guys that help out as well, Chad Yenchesky, Eric Farmer, Josh Stelzer, and so, originally, I started out as a student with those guys, and then just seeing that kind of dentistry on dental town, I wanted to do more of that but I didn’t even know where to start. So, it kind of began as a student there, and then even that transferred, is getting excited about it, seeing what it did for our practice, and then now, wanting to be a part of that because I know how it completely changed everything we did, you know, the elective side of our practice is probably 50-75%. And I mean, it’s needs based, but you know, a partial works just like an implant does, replacing missing teeth, but it’s allowing people to choose, and I think that was just huge in my development, and what it did for my practice and I kind of wanted to be a part of giving back and helping our dentists see that as well.
Justin: yeah. And so, we talked about focusing on the procedures that you want, so that you can get the patients that you want, not trying to be everything to all people, knowing your audience; would you say 2 quick tips, if there’s nothing else from this interview that anyone remembers, what are too quick tips that are good take away for our viewers?
Dr J ones: I think, just like you said, knowing what it is that you want to do, and being clear about that and then positioning yourself to get the training, you know, if that means going to courses, if you think you want to do aesthetics, that’s great but being able to deliver what you say you can do, is huge. Because all we really have at the end of the day, is our reputation or word for what we say we’re going to do, and I think following up on that, you know, if that’s saying we’re going to follow up in the office with your calling your patient, or bring you patient to bring them back in, or calling to check on them more, if it’s saying ‘you know what, I can make your smile look great, your teeth look great or give you this function’ any of those things, and being able to do it.
So, I think knowing what you want to do, and then preparing yourself for that, as far as what you need to do clinically and get training, to really create an environment where you can bring that patient in and deliver what you say you can do, and then finding those patients too. It doesn’t make no good to know how to do everything in the world, and then not have the – too many patients in a month – and then never get a chance to do those things.
Justin: well you heard it here first, from the dental marketing guy show. Dr Eric Jones, thank you very much.
Dr Jones: thanks Justin.
Justin: it’s been great having you, I’m sure the viewers have some really good actionable data, that’s what were all about here at the dental marketing guy show, is how to get you to grow your practice the way you want it to grow. So, if you have any questions for Eric, for myself, feel free to reach out, if this is in the YouTube comments below, on dental town, the dental marketing guy blog, where ever you see this on social media, feel free to reach out. Once again, thanks for listening, I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy, from dentalmarketingguy.co, and thanks again to Eric Jones, Dr Jones.
Dr Jones: thanks Justin, it was fun.
Justin: excellent, I’m glad you could join us. Until next time, thanks for listening.
Read more on the dental marketing blog!
Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show, I’m Justin the dental marketing guy, and today we have a couple of all-stars, in the area of Dental Marketing online. From Wonderist agency, we’ve got Laura Maly, and Michael Anderson.
Did I say that right?
Laura: Maly, yeah, well close enough. I don’t correct people
Michael: you got my name perfect though
Laura: yeah, yours is the hard one.
Justin: excellent. And it’s a huge honor to interview you, because we’re talking about something so important, and that has to do with tracking ROI in marketing, and let me tell you, there’s a lot of marketing companies out there, that are fly-by-night, and they don’t like this stuff. I was talking with Dr Christopher Phelps about it, and he was like “I make a lot of people nervous with my call tracker ROI” and so, you guys are about it though, you guys have your methods and are sure a holistic approach as well, and so, you invite that kind of tracker. For those of you dentists listener, this may be the most important aspect of marketing, because at the end of the day, what you do, may work for your practice it may work for another practice, and it may not, and the testing is what’s really important.
So tracking ROI that’s what we’re all about here. So first of all, how are you two?
Laura: good, ready to have a glass of wine, because it’s Friday, 3:45, so we’re getting there.
Justin: California Jamin’, am with ya!
Laura: yeah, you know all about the wine, you’re up north.
Justin: yeah, you know it’s like a wanna’ be Napa Valley here in San Luis Obispo, California.
Laura: I love, well for another conversation. But I love San Luis Obispo.
Justin: well Oprah called it the happiest place on earth
Laura: there you go, for adults, over 21.
Michael: it’s good enough for Oprah, its good enough for me.
Justin: alright so, let’s talk about, could you give me just a really quick background for those who haven’t heard of Wonderist agency; kind of like: what the idea is behind it? Why you started it? What you’re all about? What makes you different?
Laura: sure, we started 5 years ago, and we are a full service marketing agency for dentists. The agency was really born out of an insight on – had a friend graduate from dental school and he purchased a very large marketing package from a very well-known dental marketing agency, and he kind of looked at me and he said “I don’t know what to do know”, and I was in a unique position, having been doing local marketing for the 10 years prior to that for fortune 500 companies, to really take a very good look at it, and decide ‘here’s what you should do or not do’. So really I shepherded the duration of that contract through and when it ended, I ended up taking it on. And from there on out the idea was sort of born and then just in the last semi-recent past, we’ve moved into a full service model. So I’ll kind of let Michael tell that part.
Michael: Yeah, so I think really the key insight from sort of the first experience that Laura had, is that there’s a lot of frustration that dentists have when it comes to marketing. Often times they’ll have lots of different kinds of relationships, they have someone that’s doing their website, someone else that’s doing their SEO, some else that’s doing social media, someone that’s managing their grocery cart ad’s in the super store down the street, and they end up getting into this place we’re they’re like ‘I did not get into dentistry to have a second full time job managing my marketing’, and so often – and this is part of what we’re going to talk about today with tracking it – often times what happens is, it’s really tough to see where the marketing dollars are going and track the return, so there is a lot of frustration that we sort of discovered, both in that first relationship and since then. So I think as Laura said, sort of initially, she had the opportunity to work with a couple of clients initially, almost as a consultant, and then when we really came together, we turned Wonderist agency into a full service marketing agency, and the idea is that we’re able to, very efficiently bring everything in under one roof, and make sure that our practices’ marketing is working for them in a way that is consistent and track-able. So that’s really been our main goal.
So just to build that out a bit more, we do everything from, you know, print, anything with ink on it; mailers, newspapers, billboards, all the way to building beautiful custom WordPress websites, `we do SEO as well, we do google Ad-words, we do social media content management and advertising, we even do video and photo productions. So, kind of Soup to nuts – we do it.
Laura: you think of it, we can do it.
Justin: excellent. And you know, there’s a lot of discussion on dental town about – I think there’s a market for this, because there are threads that are started and there like ‘who can I go to for everything dental related?’ and you know, there’s discussion about whether that’s always the best fit for every practice, but I do agree that a lot of people want a one-stop shop, someone that they can trust to kind of handle everything. And so, I’m sure that’s partly why you guys take this approach.
Why dentistry? Why Dentists?
Laura: Just kind of got into it with my friend who asked me to kind of dig deeper into his stuff, and I was interested in it, and I thought I was fun and cool, and so it just sort of became a passion of mine with marketing.
Michael: Yeah, I think sort of the initial client that Wonderist agency was founded around was a friend and someone that we really had the opportunity to learn from, very passionate guy about dentistry and someone that really allowed us to grow with him. I think the other thing that has really inspired us, just to be candid, is if you look at the industry, we saw a huge opportunity; it really – in many ways- feels under served to us. I think there were a lot of companies that grew out of the mailers, and they have sort of stuck with the more traditional approach to design, and more traditional approach to marketing, and I think that there is a lot of frustration, certainly with clients that we work with today, that feel like they didn’t have a marketing team that was a good fit for them, they weren’t seeing websites that necessary represented the brand that they wanted, and there was sort of a higher level of expectation out there that wasn’t being met. And so that’s been something that we’ve really looked forward to coming in and disrupting and providing a different product.
Justin: yeah, you know I visited your website the other day, I really liked it. It’s a nice style, because it kind of reminded me of – you know it’s funny Laura, you say that you come from fortune 500 companies – it kind of reminded me of how, bigger companies – like super bowl ad’s – there not even really about the product, it’s more of like an idea, a culture, a concept, you know, like ‘what does all this have to do with apple? This commercial’ it has nothing to do with apple and why it’s a superior product or not! So I got that impression from your website, it was some pretty cool features, that didn’t really have anything specifically to do with clinical dentistry or marketing, but it’s just kind of showcasing your personality and what you guys like to do, and I thought that was pretty cool. So I’m not surprised when you say you came from that fortune 500 background, because everyone knows, their doing the best marketing there is. And when you talk about dentist’s not having the support for their marketing efforts, you know there being exploited in market, that’s definitely true, man I’ll tell you in my local market, it’s pretty bad. Some of the TV ads for dentists – its like ‘oh man, just don’t run that ad’
Laura: you know I think all of these other industries; be it retail or E-commerce, or whatever it is – get to take advantage of sexy technology, sexy websites, sexy design and we really want to bring beautiful things to dentistry, because we love dentistry.
Michael: and ultimately things that convert new patients, and I think that, you know you just bought up TV, unfortunately we’ve worked with a lot of dentists that – especially practices that have been doing marketing for a while – that have been doing the same thing for a long time, and they’ve seen their return on investment drop, but they don’t always know where to go next, and so it’s important to make sure that we’re tracking the return so we know where the money is best spent. And that’s why for us, and I guess kind of what we’re talking about today – if, as marketers, we’re not in the practice’s numbers, we don’t tie ourselves to how many new patients are coming in each month and where they’re coming from – how are we able to do our jobs well and ultimately know where the practices money is best spent?
Justin: that’s so true. And so, let’s delve into this. So tracking ROI, are you talking about getting into the practice management software – I hate to call it practice management software, because it’s not all-encompassing, it’s more like patient managing software, So far there doesn’t really exist a real comprehensive practice management software in my opinion, but I digress on that – so you guys are actually delving into Dentrix and Eaglesoft and all these?
Laura: yes. So our practices, every month at the end of the month, pull for us, the months previous numbers for that practice and that includes: production, collections, total patients seen, new patients seen, days open – and then there’s another sheet that they do and that is; all new patients and their referral sources as well as the production` attached to those patients in the first 30 days.
Michael: so to build that out – the last ones really the most important, and for all of the doctors listener, it’s amazing how many times we’ll get on a phone call, and these are kind of the first things that we start with, because we want to understand what the practice looks like, and it’s really important just to have that quick understanding of ‘okay, on average about 60% of my new patients come from other patient referrals, of the remaining 40% I’m seeing 10% come from insurance and you know, the remainder I think, is coming from online, that’s what we’re seeing internally from tracking’ and then also be able to sort of, look at a least a 30 day production, to see; what’s the quality here? I always like to pick on group on here, because I think a lot of dentists have had some experience with this, where they’ll say ‘okay great, look at new patients spiked, we saw double the new patients’ and then you look at the 30 day production, and then certainly extrapolate beyond that and you can say ‘wow, those are not the patients we want in this practice’ and so I think for our dentists to feel like their close to that number is really important, even more so for ourselves as marketers.
Justin: yeah. You know kind of going off on a tangent here for a second – I had Eric Jones, Dr Eric Jones on the show, and we were talking about how important it is to be – you know in dentistry we can’t say ‘specialist’ because there’s 9 specialties, but have a focus. So, I’m helping clients with things like that, you can be the dental implant guy in San Luis Obispo County, because nobody is doing that.
so, do you – just as a marketing philosophy – do you guys – what kind of dentist’s do you work with, and do you subscribe to that theory of – you know it’s really good to know who you are, be focused, now what you do, and stay in your own lane?
Michael: yeah, I think it kind of goes back to what we were talking about a minute ago where, you know – again, I appreciate the compliment on the website, when I think about the message we’re trying to communicate, we can sit here and go point by point over all the different marketing things we do, and that could be the way we introduce ourselves, but at the end of the day, it’s very often about the personalities and about the trust in the team that you work with, and that’s what we put forward on our website, we take the exact same approach with our doctors, and we say ‘tell a story, what makes you different? Are you sort of the small family practice with old fashion sense of service and a model commitment to digital dentistry? Are you a practice that is just crowns in a day, c-rec technology, just really investing in the best dentistry has to offer?’ like you said, ‘do you brand around dental implants?’ you need to have a story to tell at the end of the day to differentiate yourself. So I think yes, I 100% agree with what you’re suggesting and advocating – find a way to stand out and tell a story.
Justin: absolutely. And you know I had Joshua Scott on the other day; we haven’t aired that episode yet, but he’s all about storytelling, and I love his YouTube channel because he talks about – he’s got a certain way about him. It’s always fun to do interviews with people like yourself because you get to see different personalities, and that’s really what I want to do for our listeners, our viewers are; kind of showcase, like ‘here’s whose good at what they do, here’s what they do, and do you like their personality? Do you think you could get along with this person? do you think you could work with this person?’ because there’s a lot of choices out there and a lot of them are kind of anonymous, and it’s like until you call them, you don’t even have a clue who they are, so it’s always cool to do interviews like this.
But yeah, let’s talk a little bit about the tracking ROI. So that’s interesting, that’s a differentiating factor for you guys, I don’t know a lot of marketing guys who are well versed in Dentrix and Eaglesoft and other patient management software, then of course tracking numbers, that all plays a role. Can you walk us through, kind of like a quick check list of ways that you measure ROI for your clients?
Michael: yeah. If I can, I just want to take a step back for a second and explain why it’s so important. I think a lot of times, as marketers, we get caught up in proving what a good job we’re doing; we want to show how many more clicks we’re driving to a website, or how rank is improving somewhere, and I think we’re afraid of failure a lot, understandably so, and I think for us, one of the things that is really been helpful, because we do take a full service approach; we don’t have a horse in the race – we’re not here to say ‘listen, all you need to do is come to us for copywriter’ or ‘all you need to do is come to us for google Adwords’, what we do is, we say ‘we’re going to take a holistic approach, we’re going to find some areas that we think fit your practice, and we’re going to track them and really feel like we know what happens’ and the cool thing about this is, we’re not going to go home-run every time – I’m not going to tell you that, it’s just not how marketing works – But we fail fast, and that’s really something that a lot of people don’t want to talk about, as opposed to having a campaign that limps along for months, let’s look at the campaign and say ‘hey, let’s put the money somewhere else’ and that just as valuable, if not more valuable then always pointing at success.
So that’s really the foundation that underlines this, to get to your questions; the first thing that we’ve really spent a lot of time doing is, we really try to create an experience for our client that pulls all of the important data they need, into one spot. So we have a proprietary portal that we use for our clients, that pulls in there analytics data, that’s pulls in their Ad-words data, their search engine optimization ranking, it pulls in Facebook Ads, social content, all under one spot, so when we’re going over this with them. It’s really easy for them to see everything, and it’s something they can access at all times. It’s certainly something that makes it easy for us, because we’re not bouncing between portals, I’m sure you run into this all the time, you know, you’ve got analytics, you’ve got webmaster tools, in SEO sometimes it makes sense to go into Ad-words and go into the keyword planner – there’s a hundred other tools that we’re going to use in a day, and it’s nice to have everything in one spot, both for us as a team, also for our clients as well.
Laura: and I think the other thing that is an awesome differentiator between us is, it’s not just like ‘here’s your portal, here you go’ – we get on the phone with our clients every month and we talk through things – we gauge progress, we talk about the sticky points, we talk about the things we want to do better, we talk about our successes. And I think having that dialogue open on a regular basis, having these contact with our clients on a regular basis, helps build trust, helps build the marketing strategy – frankly, and helps move our clients forward in the best direction that we possibly can, because we are always in communication and working and moving things around so we can optimize them for the best possible campaign.
Michael: Right, so to dig in a little deeper, I think for the dentists that are watching; the number one thing that I would ask them to do, is to, if your spending any serious money on your marketing – you have to be doing call tracking, call tracking is at the core of what we do, and it’s at the core of what any good marketing does, so whether that online, or offline, you know, you have some idea of the traffic that your generating. So I think that’s kind of the first thing that we point too, we use a product that we like called ‘Call Rail’ there’s a bunch of other ones out there, CallTrackingMetrics, and what they do a really good job of, is letting you generate numbers that you can place both on print, you can place them on your website, and it really is a helpful way to sort of generate a good idea of where your calls are coming from.
Justin: absolutely. Okay, so help me bridge this gap, no pun intended – as far as going from direct mail, to Dentrix – tell me a little bit about that.
Michael: right. So, what we’re going to do, like Laura said, once a month we get on the phone with our clients and we kind of walk through the numbers and say ‘how are we doing, do we feel that the things that we were investing in are working?’ and so, we start with the practice numbers, and we’ll say ‘okay, let’s look at last month, last moth we say 15 new patients walk in the door, is that up or down over our year on year average, and do we feel like that’s an upward or downward trend for the year?’ the next thing we do is we go and we look at the segmentation and say ‘we’re did those new patients, self-identifiers, come from?’ and so we can say maybe 30% came from patient referrals, if we did a mail drop earlier, we expect to see a percentage come from direct mail, and then based on the other campaigns we have running – google adwords, Search Engine Optimization campaigns ETC – we’re going to see a segmentation. Now, this is one of the frustrations with the new patients numbers, right, someone’s going to write something that’s like ‘website’ – what does that mean? Did they click on an Ad? Or did they – is that because organic has really been growing lately? and this is a really hard one to tease out, and that’s where call tracking and having a really strong connection to these other statistics, starts to give us a reasonable idea of where these patients are coming from. So if we go to Call Rail, and we look in the reporting portal, or we look at a reporting portal, like what we provide for our clients, we can see all the calls that happened that month, and we can actually see them segmented by whether or not they came from organic traffic, or whether they came from paid traffic, or Facebook ETC, or direct mail. And so we can start to make some really educated assumptions about where phone calls and new patients are coming from, also looking at certain data like; how long are the phone calls? – we’ve found that, by and large – if a phone call is less than 2 minutes minimum, it’s probably not going to convert to a new patient call. So being able to look at what is the average length of calls is also a really strong indicator, for us, of what is generating new patients and what’s not.
Justin: so do you actually go from the call tracking number and hook it up with Dentrix, or is there some extrapolation here?
Michael: yeah, so just to be clear is, what we’re doing is we’re requesting this data from the doctor, and really from the front desk, so there sending this to us each month, we’re not plugging into Dentrix directly, we’re not in there manipulating it ourselves; we’re asking them to use the tool, as they should be already. Although in many cases, they are not, and giving us that data. So really at a base level, just walking through that data on a monthly basis is often its own value, just to say ‘hey, now we know how many new patients are coming in the door, and more importantly, where they’re coming from and what the average production is’.
And then the second thing is, as you just suggested, taking that and sort of waiving through some of the more confusing data, like; we saw 20 new patients coming from the website, what do we think that means? Well if you don’t have any adwords campaign running, it’s reasonable to say that that came through organic, right? So we can start to make some extrapolations back and forth to determine where our money is best spent.
Justin: I can tell you, as someone who does SEO for dentists, one of the most frustrating things is, that an existing website, with an existing phone number, in an existing practice, we get it ranked, the phone rings more, they get new patients, but there’s no geometric proof – there no proof beyond a reasonable doubt that it came from SEO specifically. So, I do the same thing you do, with running AdWords, and then you can track AdWords geometrically, and then you can kind of infer, based on that activity – you know because everyone clicks the organic results and the 3-pack on google, the google map as I call it, everyone’s clicking that but not as many people click on the ads – so if you can get new patients through the ads, your definitely going to get a lot of new patients through SEO would you agree with that?
Michael: I would, and I think the thing that I would add, is that, for us, being able to have those practice numbers gives us a really strong place to go back and talk to the doctor, and say – you know, if there is some anxiety and someone says ‘I’m not sure that the SEO efforts that your putting in, have been making a difference’, we can go back and say ‘well when our relationship started, we saw on average 5 maybe 6-7 new patients coming in saying that they we’re coming from the website, today we’re seeing 30+ come in, that’s a strong indicator to me that things have changed for you’. And so I think often times, they’ll go back and spend the time to look at those numbers and they’ll say ‘ah, yeah, that’s helpful, thank you’ and it is – you know, there is not a perfect loop, I think that’s kind of a holy grail out there, and maybe someday we’ll get to this scary world in which every movement and blink that we make is tracked -I kind of hope not, but from a marketing stand point, there are moments we wished that that was the case, and we’re not there, but I think we can get closer to that by connecting practice numbers with some of the more traditional ROI tracking numbers, that we look at, as digital marketers.
Justin: that’s a good point, and it kind of reminds me of this thread on dental town the other day, there was someone that was really big on video, like high production – just ridiculous, expensive video – not that expensive video isn’t a good idea, it can be, if it’s the right fit for your practice that a good thing. But someone mentioned ‘you can slap a tracking number on anything, everything is geometrically measure’, and I sort of came out, I was like ‘we’ll I don’t know, how do you measure the effectiveness of video’, he said ” you watch it till the end, that’s effective”, but that may not necessarily be the right way, because the best video, in my opinion, is the one that makes me pick up the phone in 2 seconds.
Michael: right.
Justin: And then, if a video does get watched till the end, maybe you just didn’t answer their question in time, and so. Yeah, there is some serendipity in marketing, I mean; you definitely can’t prove everything –
Michael: this is the problem with bounce rate, right? I mean the bounce rate is one of the things that we look at as digital marketers, and traditionally I would say – and tell me if you see it differently- a high bounce rate is something that we try to reduce, however, to your point, if someone comes to your website, and that initially landing, everything about the fold that they see, is so positive, that they say ‘done’ and pick up the phone; that’s going to register as a bounce. So, it absolutely is a tough link to connect.
Justin: I used to be obsessed with bounce rate, until I paid a coach who’s a best selling author for conversion rate optimization, real guru when it comes to CRO, conversion rate optimization. And when I hired him, you know, he was like ‘well why is bounce a bad thing? If they go to the page and they convert?’ and I’m like ‘well that’s a good point’, but SEO says ‘no bouncing’. So okay, and you know what, I think as google progresses with their algorithms, they get that, it’s getting more sentient, more of a kind of dynamic, human-like, type of algorithm.
So that’s really cool. So tracking ROI, so let me ask you guys really quickly, yes or no, you’re trusting the data that the office is giving you?
Michael: I think we’re respecting it, its data that we can use, and we can tell a story with it. I think the whole point of not just stopping with that data and saying ‘there is more that needs to be done, let’s use call tracking, lets measure -even though it’s a softer stat – volume to the website, lets watch engagement’ all those things that I think we do as digital marketers; it’s to make sure that the stories are converging in a way that makes sense, and often that’s where we can trouble shoot problems, so if we have someone that, maybe the data is incomplete, its coming from the office, and they are struggling to generate new patients – bringing the data from; new website, from call tracking – into the picture, from the search ranking, helps us tell a full story that gives us an idea of what we need to do to fix the problem – or to continue to grow.
Justin: okay, yeah. I think the better way to phrase my question would be; are you actually delving into Dentrix itself, or are they relaying the data to you?
Laura: they relay the data to us, based on it. So, we pretty much know how to pull – like I’m not someone who’s sitting in the back on Eaglesoft, or Dentrix or anything like that -but I know how to pull the necessary reports to get somebody to do that. So basically when we on board a new client, we say ‘please pull these historically reports, and then moving forward from this point on, please use this path in Dentrix, to pull the reports that we need and populate these sheets’. So it is self-reported, but its self-reported coming from their system.
Justin: excellent. So here’s what I want, let’s do this, let’s leave our viewers with some quick tips – one of the hottest topics, I know you spoke on this before, but some of my viewers, really want to know; how do you deal with negative reviews – if we could just close the interview on 3 quick tips, regarding, when you get that negative review, let’s assume that it’s a real patient, let’s talk about how do you deal with that?
Laura: well we have a killer blog on our site, that talks about it in more detail, that you can reference, but my 3 things are: step away from the keyboard – think before you write. That’s the first one. The second one is: step out of defensiveness and into a neutral place, and understand, that there may be an opportunity for you, as a practice owner, as a dentist, as a leader in your environment, to make a change. Someone clearly had a negative experience – identify why, ask the key people involved in perhaps the incident or whatever happened, and realize where your opportunity is to make a change in your practice. And number 3 is: if you have their contact information, I highly recommend reaching out, via phone call, to make it right, and what making it right means; varies case to case, sometimes it means issuing a refund, sometimes it means offering a heart-felt apology, sometimes it means neither of those things, and that’s fine too. But figuring out why that person is feeling that way, listening to what they are going through, acknowledging it -not admitting to something – but acknowledging their experience is very very helpful and cathartic for patients, and moving forward in a way that moves your business forward.
Michael: yeah. I agree, if I could just jump in with maybe 2 thoughts too, I think what Laura closed with, is the most important. There’s constantly a knee-jerk reaction to explain, because it often does feel unfair, but I think leading through acknowledgement is the right way to approach those reviews, and I think, maybe something we didn’t say, or express is; respond. You should respond, and you should not respond with an explanation, or excuse, you should respond by acknowledging it – again, not an admission- but it’s important that other people that are either coming to Yelp, or other review sites, see that you are active, and that you do care. And so I think that’s the first thing. The other thing that I want to mention, that can get overlooked is; if a patient maybe is, you know, specifically talking about a case, and they bring in personal details – do not engage with those details! it’s a HIPAA violation, you have to be really conscious of the fact that if their talking about a root canal procedure, where the sinus cavity was infected, perforated – you can’t come back and say ‘well actually, this is what happened’ – that’s a HIPAA violation, it’s something that exposes you to a lot more risk and that’s something that, I think, in the moment, when your feeling frustration, can get overlooked. So just keep it general.
Justin: Excellent. So, take the time to think, breathe and don’t let the HIPAA monster bite you. And let’s sign off here, thank you very much, Michael Anderson, and Laura Maly – Maly, right?
Laura: yes, got it!
Justin: Cool. And man, it’s been such a great honor to have you, I think you bring in a really unique perspective; you definitely got the artistic approach down, really well. Full service agency, so if any of you listening are looking for that one stop shop – there’s a lot of specialist’s out there, but if you’re looking for someone that can kind of handle this, and get into the patient management software, if sounds like Wonderist agency might be worth checking out! Can you tell us where the viewers can find you?
Laura: yeah, you can find us at WonderistAgency.com, or if you want to email me directly, you can email me at Laura.Maly@wonderistagency.com, or we have a chat icon on our website, and I am always there, always on, it’s not bot; it’s really me, so leave the cuss words out.
Justin: I don’t believe it, because every live chat I’ve ever used, it’s not live chat. We can talk about that next time. No I’m just kidding.
Laura: I get some funny stuff in there; I’ve got to tell you. Smile for Social media Justin.
Justin: there you go, technology man, you just took a picture of a screen, within another screen, within another dream. That was nuts. Alright cool, if you have any questions for me, let me know, if you have any questions for any of the guests, feel free to reach out Justin@dentalmarketing.blog If you have anyone that you want on the show, if you have any questions that you’d like them asked, a lot of these how’s, there pretty much 90% unscripted, so throw them on here! Let’s put them in the hot seat, and let’s see how they deal with a little cross examination.
Thank you Laura, and thank you very much Michael. Let’s sign off, thank you for watching the dental marketing guy show.
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Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show, I’m Justin the dental marketing guy, and today we’re going over the top 5 myths when hiring a dental consultant. I have with me today, our guest of honor, Laci Phillips, from practice dynamics, and Laci began her road to coaching as a chair side assistant while going to college to pursue a dream of one day, having her own talk show. And you know, while working her way through the business side of dentistry, she was fortune enough to learn from some of the top industry professionals, and what practice dynamics, by Laci Phillips does, is, they specialize in coaching teams to reach their goals, through balance driven success using systems, teams, and technology. Laci, how’re you?
Laci: I’m great Justin, thank you for having me.
Justin: it’s a huge honor to have you, I’m sure your about to help us out with a huge amount of value. Ah, you’ve devised basically a template for this interview, about 5 myths; and I’m really excited to hear about this. What’s myth number one that dental practices can know when hiring a dental consultant?
Laci: well I have no idea, what did I send to you? No, ask me the question, I’ll be happy to answer it for you.
Justin: excellent, excellent. Myth number one – our team is fine and we think as a consultant, you will come in and fire people.
Laci: absolutely, we get that a lot, and I think probably anybody who says the word consultant, or consulting, it’s kind of the teams view on it, and I understand that completely because, I was a team member, I worked in the dental practice for years and years and years, before I became a consultant and speaker, and we have consultants come in, and unfortunately ‘consultant’ is almost a four letter word in dentistry. And so, it’s not what we do, we’re not coming in looking to get rid of anybody, we really truly, we want to make you more effective, and more efficient with what you currently have. What we find is a lot of offices don’t have systems; they call it an office manual, an office policy, whatever, but it breaks down into a system. So, our goal when we walk in, when we talk to people, is not say ‘oh, you have way too many, let’s start getting rid of them’, our goal is ‘how do we make them more effective, how do we make them more efficient?’, so that they really truly enjoy their jobs. And you’re successful and productive right?
Justin: excellent. And you know, here’s myth number two; coming from – my job is to come at this from our listeners perspective, as a dentist – I say, myth two – ‘I’ve purchased books and binders form other consulting firms, we just need to follow the box guidelines and things should be fine, right?’
Laci: I hear all the time, I just talked to a townie 2 weeks ago who said “I don’t want generic, I don’t want cookie cutter”, and again, I understand that completely. We’re not going to walk in with a 3 ring binder and hand it to you and say ‘here you go, follow this and you’ll be fine’, because fact of the matter, that’s not how real life works. It has to be, what is currently working for you? What are you currently doing, and is there anything we see, we hear, we know, that you could tweak a little bit and change everything.
So, it’s not about, I mean obviously we all read books all the time; if you want to be more successful, if you want to be more educated, you’ve got to read the books, but that’s not what consulting or coaching should be about – and as a matter of fact, we don’t even have a 3 ring binder that we walk in with. Our concept is, first of all, we’re all into technology, everything we do is electronic, but hopefully by the end of our visits, whether you have 2 or 8 visits from us, the idea is then you have enough materials from us, you have enough tools in your toolbox – if you will, to then fill up your own 3 ring binder to then refer back to it. But we’re not going to give you one.
Justin: excellent, okay. So, it’s kind of a comprehensive, holistic approach?
Laci: absolutely, it’s building a treatment plan.
Justin: customize. What’s that?
Laci: it’s building a treatment plan.
Justin: excellent. And I mean that’s really, that’s what dentists do, right? I mean, you don’t go to a dentist and be like ‘where’s your 3 ring binder?’
Laci: right, I mean we hope not, right, you hope that you don’t turn around and see him or her leafing through a 3 ring binder on how to figure out how to do your dentistry. It’s the exact same thing with running a business, I mean, what you really need are tools, you need enhancements, you need things that just make you that much better.
Justin: right, excellent. So number; ‘I’ve been making money each year, we don’t need help with that’
Laci: one of the things I love, I have a dentist, a young dentist in Arizona tell me “you know, me CPA gives me reports and I have a call with him, and he tells me I’m doing really good”, and I said “that’s amazing, so what is it that you’re doing that is so good” and she sat there for a minute and she goes “you know, honestly, I don’t have any idea”, and she goes ” I guess that’s part of the problem, I don’t know what I’m doing that’s working so well, so that if it ever stops, I don’t know how to get it going again, or why did it stop”. So, I think it’s, we all want success, and we want success for you, but if you don’t know why you’re successful, that’s a problem, that’s a problem, because it won’t always be that way. So find out why you’re successful, what’s working well? And then let’s make sure you’re not ever unsuccessful.
Justin: that’s a good point, you know, I see that, I do SEO for dentists, and I see that sometimes where it’s like ‘oh, we’re ranked number 1’, well, okay, lets figure out why ‘oh it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter why’, and then 6 months later they’re totally re-indexed by the search engine, that’s because you never asked –
Laci: right, and they have no idea, ‘how did that happen? We were just ranked number one!’ well again, if you don’t know why you’re successful, you’re not going to know why you’re not successful.
Justin: exactly. That’s a good point, that’s a good point.
Laci: it’s like retention, it’s like we teach doctors in retention, right? Everybody talks about new patients, everybody talks about new patients, ‘we’ve got to get new patients in the door, I love my new patients” that’s all great, but are they coming back again, are they entering the door the second time. I would think it’s the same way with your marketing; one click is awesome, but how many clicks do you get?
Justin: right, you know I was just talking about that last night. I was talking to Vlad, and he’s on Dental Town, and he was saying, you know ‘every bodies always talking about new patients’, he was sharing with me about a dentist in Texas who got over 200 new patients that month, but he had lost 225.
Laci: well then that’s not; you’re not evening yourself out here. Thank goodness you have new people walking in the door because guess what? They’re not coming back again.
Justin: right, and so, you know, naturally I told them, “Well I talked to a dentist yesterday whose got 347 new patients” no, I’m just kidding.
Laci: oh yeah, ‘well I talked to a doctor -‘
Justin: yeah, and but, in all seriousness, you know, it’s like ‘hey uhm, I don’t know out of those 347, I have no idea, I don’t even know if the dentist does, about how many, how much attrition – there was, so that, that’s a big deal though.
Laci: let me give you an example, Justin, so here’s one of the things we do, every month we log into our clients software system, and we grab numbers that we feel are key performance indicators, we have our very own spreadsheet or worksheet that we drop those numbers into, and we track that from month to month. One of the things we look at is a comprehensive oral eval – D0150, right? That’s the, everybody says that’s a new patient. I think there are 2 types of new patient’s right. so the first one is somebody who came in and received a comprehensive oral eval, I want to know how many of those you did, let’s just say, from march 1st to march 31st, the next thing I want to do is, I want to run a report that tells me, out of all those patients that had a comprehensive oral eval, how many of them are scheduled to come back for doctor, for restorative, or with hygiene for re-care. How many people actually track that? And the second new patient option is an emergency patient. So I count how many emergency patients or D0140 did come in from march 1st to march 31st, so how many of those did we have, and then lets track how many of those are coming back for their comprehensive oral eval, or for hygiene for re-care. That’s – those are numbers that you should be tracking.
Justin: yeah, and I don’t think I know any dentist who know those answers off the top their head.
Laci: I would be willing to bet your right.
Justin: you know, okay, so number four, that’s really good stuff, that’s really good stuff. So, ‘I been making money each year, we don’t need help with that’. How about number 4; ‘my team does not think help from an outside source will work in your office, especially when you only come meet us once or twice’ what do you say to that?
Laci: right. Well, I completely understand, I was that team member, I was there, we had several great consultants come in, and they came in once, that’s all. And I’ve seen it myself, I’ve gone into offices and we were trying to you know, we were trying to bond, we’re trying to make it happen, and then as soon as we leave the team says “that’ll never work in our office”. So, team buy in is, a key to success, if your team has not bought into this, you will not be successful with anything that your attempting to do. Uhm, I do have a business partner, love her, she’s my soul sister, uh Bonnie Pugh over in Baltimore, Maryland, we own a company. And we were both team members, so I understand where they’re coming from, and a big part of what we do is try to bond with the team to say ‘look, number one, we didn’t come in here to fire you, number two, I’m not going to come in here and tell you everything that you need to do, or everything that you need to say, I’m going to listen to what you are saying now, I’m going to look at your systems, what are you doing now, and if I have any keys, any tools that I can offer you, to help you become more successful, will you work with me on that?’.
So, you’ve got to have that ‘I’m not coming in to change everything that you’re doing, I’m coming in to see if there’s anything I can tweak for you’. I really think of myself as a coach. I don’t like the word ‘consultant’, I think for whatever reason we have a negative connotation in this industry; I really think of myself as a coach, I’m here to enhance your performance.
Justin: there was one of those cartoon newspaper ad’s one time, not an ad but the funnies in the newspaper, and it shows 2 detectives standing over a dead body and you may have heard this, the one police officer says to the other one ‘ based on the stab wounds, the multiple stab wounds I would have to say that this person was a consultant’.
Laci: that’s awesome, that’s really good, Justin. That’s really true. Yeah I think everybody has felt that way some time or another.
Justin: yeah, you know. So what do you say like if the front office is like, does anyone ever say to you like ‘hey, psst, listen uh, listen, what do you think about this, the doctor has this problem, this problem, this problem, we can’t tell him, and I can’t handle any more work, but you really need to help him’, how do you handle that kind of situation, or I guess more specifically, if I was to get, the better question is; what do you do to incentivize the team to take action?
Laci: ohm good question. What do we do to incentivize? Every doctor I’ve known or talked to wants a team with ownership mentality, and that’s tough. That is really tough and it seems that no matter what a doctor calls us for, or what the office manager calls us for, or if a team, if I see a team when I’m speaking, whether they say ‘our insurance is messed up, this is messed up’ it all comes back to the team and the doctor, it really truly doe, so how do we incentivize them; first and for most, uh, I mean this sounds a little cheesy but its true, I’m passionate about what we do, I am passionate about waking up every single morning and wanting to be passionate all day long, and that’s, I want everybody else around me to feel like that as well. If you wake up every single morning and you’re like ‘I hate my job, I hate people, I hate patients, I can’t do this anymore’, I’m not going to be able to get to you. There’s nothing I can do to make you feel better or to get you to buy in. If you have that inkling of ‘I wanna be successful, I wanna be great at what I do, I’m gonna go in here, I want to change lives’, because in dentistry, we have that opportunity, we get to literally change people’s lives, if you have that little spark in there, we can work together, because let’s build on that lets build that spark, I want you to have that spark all day long. If you wake up grumpy and you’re not going to like anybody who comes through the door, much less me, I can’t do anything with that. It’s always, always, hire for attitude, and train for skill. I don’t, that’s a very uh, fluffy answer to a very serious question, but the fact of the matter is, I don’t know that there is one right answer for that. And I’ll tell you, we walk into an office and we have the women, or the team members who are immediately like ‘I’m not the problem, the doctor is’, well guess what, your part of the problem to and the hardest part is when the doctor hired us and the doctor is the problem. That’s a tough conversation.
Justin: sure, sure, yeah, you’ve got to kind of bit the hand that feeds you.
Laci: a little bit, but you bite it gently.
Justin: yeah, so okay, that’s interesting. Okay, so number 5 myth, because this is really good stuff here. ‘All consultants have a long contract and a big fee’
Laci: yeah, I mean I see it all the time, I see it. Somebody may, there are consultants out there who do, you know, 12 months and this is the lump fee and you pay it now and this is what you get, some consultants do just workshop. Quite frankly, we’re not into contracts, I mean we have a monthly agreement, but everything we do is one a month to month basis, whether we all agree you need 3 months, 6 months, 18 months, but it’s all on a month to month, all billing is on a month to month. So, don’t always think, if you’re out there thinking that ‘I need help’, whether its practice dynamics, or another company, don’t feel like you have to be locked into a contract, don’t feel like you have to pay large fee upfront, and really interview multiple companies, you know it never ever hurts my feelings when I talk to a doctor or a team member and they say “Laci, we’re talking to several consulting companies”, I’m like “good for you, you should!”, we’re not the perfect fit for every single dental office that’s out there, that being said, not every dental office is a good fit for us. So interview them, ask them how things work, don’t feel like you have to do it this one way.
Justin: for those dentists watching, can you kind of line up, somewhat scenically, what is the kind of dental office that you work with, or maybe what kind of dental office would you not work with?
Laci: we’ll just stay positive; I’ll talk to you about who we love working with. We love working with people who get it, or people who want to get it. We love working with a dentist who says “I want to grow”, but maybe growth is not necessarily money, maybe growth is not new patients, maybe growth is leadership, maybe growth is being an amazing entrepreneur, you know. I mean there so many different ways, it’s the buy in from the doctor and then the team saying ” yeah, we totally get that vision, we get the mission statement, we’re on board, we all want to move forward in the same direction, or can you help us get on board”, so somebody who wants the help, somebody who has that open mind, whose wants to do better for themselves, who wants to, again, change lives. And the thing is, Bonnie and I said, when we started this company, the one thing we said to each other is ‘as long as we can affect change, we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing, and we’ll keep working with clients’. When we get to a point with a client that says ‘okay, we’ve done as much as we can do, and we can no longer affect change’, we’re done, we’re out. I’m not going to sit here and bang my head against the wall, nor do I want you to.
Justin: excellent, that’s great; you know that’s really good. I think staying positive is huge, huge thing in doing what you do, so obviously you’ve displayed that here.
Where can the viewers find you?
Laci: uh, just about anywhere. No, you can, the first thing of course is our website, it’s ‘practicedynamics.net’, we of course have Facebook, ‘PracticeDynamicsGroup’, we’re on twitter, we’re blogging, we’re doing the whole social media thing, I’ll give you our ‘1800’ number, which is ‘888 425 3235’, and yeah, just google us, search for us, go to the website, we’re happy to just even have phone calls, return emails.
Justin: excellent. Well you heard it first on the dental marketing guy show, Laci, thank you very much, it’s been a huge honor to interview you, you’ve got a great reputation, you came highly regarded by a big in the dental industry, who referred you to this show, and yeah, I appreciate you coming on.
Laci: thank you, Justin, I appreciate it so much and hopefully we’ll talk again.
Justin: excellent, alright. Thank you for watching the dental marketing guy show, you know where to find Laci, if you want to leave comments below in the YouTube comments, on dental town, wherever you see this episode, on social media, just feel free to hit us up with questions. I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy, from DentalMarketingGuy.com, thanks for joining us.
Read more about dental seo on the dental marketing blog!
Justin: welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show, I’m Justin the dental marketing guy, and today we have a very important guest, you’re going to want to hear what Dr Ling has to say, he is starting this year, he has practice on fire, he’s started this in the past. If you haven’t heard of practice on fire yet, it’s very very useful, but don’t let me talk about it, let’s hear from Dr Ling, how’re you?
Dr Ling: great Justin, how’re you today?
Justin: I’m doing great, I’m doing great. It’s an honor to have you one and I’d love to hear more about practice on fire, I’ve heard nothing but great things about it. I’ve heard there’s a really all start speaker line-up. But before we get into the details, I was hoping you could kind of tell me about the history of how practice on fire came to be, and why you started it.
Dr Ling: Well practice on fire was actually started by Dr Graham Dersley, and it originally started as a mastermind group, and he’s thinking was that it would be great to get together a group of like-minded dentists, and he chose to bring members in who are entrepreneurial type dentist’s, and the idea was to get together online and have a free and safe area to talk about stuff that we are comfortable talking about with our peers that we know, and it’s not completely anonymous. And it turned out really great, we’ve shared a lot of amazing things, we’ve really helped each other and it really just shows the power of surrounding yourself with people who have similar mindsets as you, or surrounding yourself with people who maybe have accomplished the things that you’re trying to accomplish. And out of that grew the live events where Graham and I thought that this is so much fun to do virtually, or online, how much fun would it be to do in person? And that’s how the live events took place. The first one was last year at San Antonio – that was amazing, we had great feedback from everybody that was there, even though we had a lineup of pretty much rookie speakers; people that have never done this before, but people that shared a lot of passion for what they were doing. I think they did very very well, so we’re going for round 2 in May this year.
Justin: wow, I mean I would have never guessed, I hear so much buzz surrounding this, I would have never guessed this was just kind of amateur speakers, because what I heard was, the value that was offered at practice on fire last year, was un-paralleled.
Dr Ling: yeah, well, we hope to bring speakers that are really passionate about what they’re talking about, and have a lot of experience and success from what they’re talking about, and I think that even if you’re an amateur rookie speaker; if you’re talking about something that you know a lot about, and that you really love talking about, that makes it a lot easier, and I think that authenticity really comes out in our speakers.
Justin: well let’s see. Just off the cuff, I’m thinking you’ve got, at least last year, you had Andrew Turchin, I think this year you’ve got Stephan Kuzmak, Gina Dorfman, Dr Christopher Phelps, who am I missing?
Dr Ling: you know, most of the guys are names that you probably wouldn’t recognize, they’re guys that are regular dentists, they’re not superstars in their world, but they’ve found little areas of success, they’ve found some little secret that’s working really well for them, and that’s what they’re going to share.
The names that you would recognize are the ones that you mentioned, guys like; Cory Glenn – he’s going to be there, he’s our native Tennessee host that’s going to be showing us around Nashville, and showing us a good time as well, bet he is, at least to me, one of my mentors, a real hero in the clinical world for the things that he’s doing, and right now, I don’t think people realize the things that he’s working on. He’s going to change the world and how we approach guided implant surgery for implants, and he’s really lower the barrier for enter to doctors to do, he’s going to make it so much more accessible. Right now, and we as dentists understand the value in guided surgery but there’s so many barriers to getting in the game and Cory’s just destroying those barriers, he’s going to make it so easy to get in the game and really provide amazing service for patients.
So he’s a big name.
Chris Phelps is another one that is definitely underrated, he’s not super well known, mostly because he’s quite a modest guy, he doesn’t like to brag or talk about himself, he likes, I guess other people to promote him, but he’s another guy that’s changing the game and is talking about things that are just mind blowing, so simple, but so effective in terms of how we communicate with patients and how we market to patients. So he’s another guy that in a few years, he’s going to be a massive name in the dental world.
Justin: I believe it, I believe it. You know, he was on the show and we had a nice conversation about walking down the price stairs and some of the persuasion techniques that he’s used throughout case presentation, and what really happens in the mind of a dental patient, which I think a lot of dentists don’t really think about when they’re presenting a case; they think about ‘clinically this is what you need to do’ and would you say practice on fire, so you’ve got a nice combination of, you know, clinical stuff, and then maybe more the business or marketing side, would you say it’s more oriented towards marketing business, or would you say it’s more orientated towards clinical?
Dr Ling: before I get to that, Justin, I just wanted to respond to the stuff about Chris Phelps, and I know that one of the hot topics on dental town these days is the ethics of using things like persuasion and influence in the medical profession, and I think the people that are responding in the negative, just haven’t heard Chris speak, once you hear him speak, he’s the most stand-up guy, I mean, I’d let him work on my teeth any day of the week. I’d send my kids to his office any day of the week, he’s very ethical, and he teaches not just how to influence patients, but also the why behind it, and when it’s ethical to do it, and when it’s not ethical to do it. So, I mean for anybody that’s maybe a little bit turned off by phrases like; influence or persuasion, or consider them salesy – you’ve really just got to give them a shot, maybe listen to one of the lectures, maybe the clips that we videotaped of him, and you’ll see that it’s just like anything, you use your powers for good or you use them for evil, and there’s definitely ways we can use them to better our patients.
Now to get to your question ‘is it clinical or is it non-clinical?’ – I don’t really see it as clinical versus non clinical, I see it as having a single goal, which is practice growth, and were going to talk about practice growth from stuff you do chair-side, for example, talking about doing digital implants with Cory Glenn, and that’s something that is technically clinical, but really the purpose behind it is to be able to help our patients better and to help grow our practices. And then there’s the obvious practice growth aspects like; how do you market? How do you present cases? how do we lead our teams as well, so it’s a good mix of chair-side stuff, non-chair-side stuff, all of it really focused though on how to grow your practice.
Justin: yeah, you know, it’s funny you mentioned that there’s some negative about the whole influence thing, I mean, here’s the way I see it, I wasn’t even aware of any negative side of things, maybe I’m just not paying attention, but you know, I just told Dr Phelps, I said “listen, you can be the best clinician in the world, but if you can’t convince anyone to accept treatment, it doesn’t matter, your skills mean nothing”, so I mean, he’s really, I think he’s changing dentists lives if people would just open their minds up, like you said, just go on the practice on fire website, you can see him talking about walking down the price stairs, it makes perfect sense! Because you present the $8 000 case, and then you bring it down to the $2 000 case, the persons budget doesn’t change, but the person feels like your understand where they’re coming from, when you present it a certain way. So I’m actually, I’m really on board with that, that’s a really, I mean, I’ll endorse it, I think its great what Dr Phelps I doing. So – Yeah, go ahead
Dr Ling:I was just going to say, Justin, that, you know, you may listen to Dr Phelps for 2 hours and maybe some of the stuff you find is super helpful for you, some of the stuff you find is maybe, you’re not comfortable with, but that’s the great thing, is that there is no one way to do it. And we’re not saying that you should do it all this way, or you should do it all that way, this is what Dr Phelps has found to be successful, this is what other people find to be successful, maybe it could help you too, and even if you don’t follow to the letter, everything he says, I guarantee you’ll learn something from him and from the whole conference.
Justin: excellent, excellent, well it’s not just about Christopher Phelps, let’s talk about, I mean, who else maybe that I didn’t mention is talking, and maybe we could talk a little bit about Graham because, apparently he gave some massive, massive value, could you tell me the topic that he spoke on?
Dr Ling: well last time Graham talked about implants, he’s a prosthodontist by education; he talked about implants from the point of view of, not ‘this is how you place implants’ but ‘this is how you get more implant patients into your practice’. This time he’s going to be talking about lean principles, and these are just things that he’s learned from other industries, things like; Toyota principles in terms of manufacturing, and how can we apply these manufacturing principles to dentistry, and it’s not about becoming an assembly line, or a factoring impersonal, it’s about finding inefficiency’s, and finding repeated steps, finding rate limiting steps and trying to do things as comfortably and as efficiently as possible in our office. So I’m really excited to hear that, that’s something that not a lot of guys are talking about, and it’s another one of those things where, you know, you hear Toyota and you think ‘oh, I don’t want to be like a car manufacturer’, but really what we’re doing is so similar to car manufacturing. There are a certain number of steps involved, they almost always go in the same order, they’re very predictable, so why can’t we look at these steps and see if we can re-order them, or make each one just a little bit more efficient to make the whole process more efficient?
Justin: right, right. And, you know, for those dentists out there, if your spending money on marketing, you know, there’s a lot of dentist that are spending 2-3 thousand a month or more, on marketing, what I found is, I do SEO for dentists, and what I’ve found is, you know, that’s really only one piece of the puzzle. So, we could get your ranked, we could get you slammed with traffic, we could even, if you have a good website we could even get your phone ringing. But man, I mean, if the way you answer the phone, and the way, all the way down to the last steps clinically isn’t all, like you said, it’s why wouldn’t you want to learn from top, top corporations, because, look corporate dentistry, they’ve got it down, right? I mean, they’ve got systems in place, that’s how the corporate machine comes in and defeats the little guys, is the little guys just aren’t willing to adapt, they aren’t willing to learn, right? Would you say that’s true?
Dr Ling: it’s not about becoming an assembly line, it’s about learning bits and pieces and stealing ideas that have worked for this organization, and how can we apply them to our organization, while maintaining our own values and our own values and our own culture.
The other person I’m really excited about that is not a big name and is not well known is Dr Nathan Jeal, from Manitoba. And he’s a multiple practice owner, and what he’s working on now, is studying the follow up process. And we all know that when we talk to patients about treatment, we rarely get a yes on day one, in fact most of the treatment that I do, is from patients that have been talked to about this treatment, their last re-call visit, or even several years ago, and now they’re ready. So, he’s studying this follow-up process, and what’s the most effective way to talk to patients, after they have left the office, and they haven’t said yes and given you the credit card on day one. And how do we follow up with them? What do we say? What’s the best interval for that? And are there ways to use software and automation to make it even more effective and efficient, to do that as well. So he’s got some really innovative things he’s working on, I think that’s another game changer, where, right now it’s very manual follow-up; somebody comes in for a consult, they leave, we might call them, send them a letter, we just hope they call and say ‘yes, can I please have my root canal now?’, and it just doesn’t happen very often.
Justin: yeah, that’s for sure. People aren’t that – people’s minds are not on dentistry. you know, and like I said in an earlier episode with Anissa Holmes, prospective dental patients don’t think of themselves as prospective dental patients; they’re human beings, you know, and we all want to be treated as certain way, you know, we want the – the way that people accept treatment is, doing thing like you’re talking about, like what Dr Phelps is talking about.
Man, this just sounds like a really, really great opportunity for dentist’s to, kind of – the matches are there, if you want to light your practice on fire, where do we go? And time and website and all that, how do we find out more, Dr Ling?
Dr Ling: you go to PracticeOnFireLive.com; that’s the website with all the information, the full speaker line up, everything is one there, you can register on there.
Justin: excellent, man, this is a huge even guy, and well, what is the capacity? I get the impression that it’s, I mean, there’s just a huge amount of value, but I don’t know, how many dentists do you expect to be in attendance?
Dr Ling: we’re trying to keep it relatively small, we’re certainly not going for, you know 500 000 attendees, I know what we learned from our last event, and a lot of the feedback was that, some of the bet experiences happened between lectures, or on breaks, or in the evenings where we could just get together very casually in small groups, and just chat informally about stuff, and doing a lot of networking, making some great friends. So we want to keep that environment where it’s a tight-knit group of guys who are super excited to be there, people that are like minded and encourage that social aspect of the break time networking. We’ve built in some features this year, including a Friday night social, who ever’s interested can buy a ticket, we’ll all go out for dinner and drinks and just chat about our practices, chat about our families, our lives, and a great opportunity to network and meet people with similar mind sets.
Justin: that’s excellent, no, that’s awesome. Alright, so, practiceonfirelive.com, that’s where you go to find out more information, I’ve seen the video, you’ve got to see this testimonial video, and then make a decision, if you’re like ‘ohh, I’m not sure’ watch this video, then make a decision.
Dr Ling thanks for joining me, it’s been a huge honor and I hope you find great success with practice on fire.
Dr Ling: alright, thanks for that Justin.
Justin: excellent, thanks guys. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out, if you see this on YouTube, dental town, social media, wherever you see this, feel free to reach out with questions for Dr Ling, or for myself. I’m the dental marketing guy, thanks for watching the dental marketing guy show.
Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show, I’m Justin the dental marketing guy, and today we have a very special guest, he is Dr Bickel. And he and his wife have been, you may recognize him from Dentistry uncensored with Howard Farran, he has been a dentist and his wife has been a dentist and they graduated in 1993. He and his wife have practiced together since 1998, and you know, Dr Bickel, what spurred this interview is, Dr Bickel shared a thread on dental town about his live chat and how that has changed the conversion rates on his website, but you know, one of the most interesting things about Dr Bickel, is that he actually won a free course with DentalMaverick.com, a lot of people, a lot of them you would know, Tuan Pham, he’s been on the show, and man, I’m just totally interested to hear about your background, Dr Bickel, and some of the actionable items that we can share with dentists, so that they can actually improve their practices the same way you have recently.
How’re you?
Dr Bickel: I’m doing great, how’re you?
Justin: I’m doing great; it’s been really fun following the thread on the live chat. All the, there’s a lot of discussion on that thread –
Dr Bickel: that’s surprised me.
Justin: yeah, and we don’t have to talk about HIPAA, we don’t, whatever you feel comfortable with, but you know, basically, I’m interested in sharing with dentists, what have you done to find success recently, in your practice?
Dr Bickel: well, we, as you said, my wife and I bought a practice in 1998, and at that point we had, what I would call, a fairly successful practice for about ten years, and we weren’t killing it, but we were living a nice comfortable life – 4 day work week, just really enjoying things, and then the recession hit and I kind of panicked when our new patient count went down, and we decided that we needed to join up in a bunch of PPO’s, and we had been only in network with a couple of insurances, that the previous owner Doc had been involved with, and so we branched out to all these different PPO’s, and what happened was, we saw our production and new patients go up, but our collections just continued to go down and down and down. And when I look back at those first couple of years, I don’t even know how we survived with the collections that we were showing then. o, we tried some different things, we bought a hygienist on board, because we hadn’t had a hygienist before – my wife and I just enjoyed the 2 of us, you know, doing everything, and getting to know the patients, and we though ‘well we need to bring a hygienists in and get rid of some of the lower production procedures, and have her do it’, and that helped a little bit, but still we were seeing production and new patients going up and the collections just, and our income especially, just continued to go down. And it was very discouraging, it was almost 7 years that it was going on like that, we were seeing some gradual improvements, but nothing that was really going back to how we were before, and we finally just decided ‘hey, we’re going to drop those PPO’s that we added, go back to the same participation rate that we had before and see what happens’, and it helped. We started to see collections going up, but still not what we wanted. And about a year ago, I had met Tuan on dental town, about a year and a half ago, and he told me about this video course that he was putting together, and I never really did anything with it, and then about a year ago he puts on a thread that he’s giving away a free course, and to explain why it should be you, and I told them my story, and also sweetened the deal with a couple of promised fly-fishing trips, so I won the course, and dove into dental maverick as hard as I could. And we started to see some real changes. The main area that it really helped us with was communication. Communication with patients, because once you go out of network with patients, then life changes and you’ve got to really give peoples reason to come to your office as opposed to the person whole in network. And we found that, with the things that we learnt on dental maverick, we were able to convince people to stay with us, and convince people to come to us out of network. And also, it really increased my treatment acceptance rate;I would say at this point, I am virtually at 100% treatment plan acceptance rate – which is amazing.
Justin: wow. Wow.
Dr Bickel: just due to better communication and explaining things to patients and use of intra-oral cameras, they just get it, and really the only time somebody doesn’t complete treatment is because they can’t afford it right now.
So, we had communication, we had treatment plan acceptance, and also what it did for communication with our staff, that has been amazing, just how our staff – we’ve always had a good staff, but they really responded well to just the things that dental maverick explains how to deal with staff and how to explain things to them, and their attitudes just turned around, and I would say that everybody on our staff is a 5 star employee now, and it’s just amazing. We get reviews that come in, that specifically mention staff members by name, as to how they were helpful to the patient.
Justin: wow, that’s great, that’s excellent. And, so, dental maverick was really instrumental, and so what would you say, in terms of some of the more online things; we talked about live chat, we talked about some of the ongoing like SEO efforts and stuff like that, how has that helped your practice?
Dr Bickel: when we started with an SEO company about a year and a half ago, I would say it was January of ’15, and at that point when we started, I think we were, if you googled dentist’s, we’re in Turnersville, New Jersey, if you googled ‘dentist, Turnersville, New Jersey’, I believe we came up on page 6 when we started with them, and we are now on page 1 for a multitude of different search parameters; emergency dentists’, dental implants, orthodontics – because my wife does ortho. So, that radically changed how often we get people requesting appointments through our website, and then the live chat has really surprised me, it just amazes me, how many people are seriously looking for something on the website at 11PM or 5AM, you know, before work, after work, you know, I don’t know how many times it happens to you where you think, you know ‘I got to call this person, or contact this person’ and you don’t remember until your brushing your teeth and it’s time to go to bed. And I guess with the live chat you can go ‘oh I meant to call the dentist today’ and then you can go on the website and ‘oh look at that, they’ve got a live chat’, and then you can communicate with them at that point.
Justin: yeah, and it really is a whole new world; the whole yelp and google reviews, search engines in general. I mean, everything is changed and what we’re seeing is, those dentists who get in early, those dentists who don’t wait till the last minute to create a website and do SEO, and things like that – they tend to get momentum.
Dr Bickel: yes.
Justin: would you say – how important, you know, you had momentum going the wrong way with the recession, then what would you say, how important has momentum been to your development, your practice and your wife’s practice?
Dr Bickel: wow that’s – momentum has been absolutely incredible because, like you said we were on this downward trajectory, and we changed the insurances that we were involved in, got involved with dental maverick, and we started going up instead of down, and I was 6 months into dental maverick, and we were, at that point, 15% over 2014 in collections, and at that point, you know, we were really happy about the trend and my practice is, oh about 7 minutes from my house, and about 1 minute from my house, one Sunday morning in October, we were on our way to church and past an orthodontists office, a half mile from my house, and there was a for sale sign out front, and we have always wanted – right now we’re stuck in a small, 3 operatory medical condo complex, and there’s no exterior signage aloud, we just have a little plaque next to the door with our name on it, so our online stuff is our only visibility, that and our referrals from existing patients. So, we drove by this for sale sign and said “that’s something that we’ve always wanted to do, we wanted to get our own building, but we haven’t found anything in the area that was acceptable” this place was perfect, we went to look at it, I think the for sale sign went up on Saturday, we went to look at it on Tuesday, and that started the ball rolling with the purchase, so we closed on that a couple of weeks ago, and there in the construction phase right now, I think they have the walls down to the studs, and they’re starting to do the demolition. But without the momentum that we got form getting rid of the bad insurances, getting our SEO inline, improving ourselves through dental maverick – I would have driven past that sign and said ‘if only we could do something like that’, and this time I went by the sign and said “that’s something that we need to do”, and I even, Tuan is great, there’s a, when you’re a dental maverick member you can contact him at any point, he and I talk on Facebook all the time, and I sent him a message about it and he said “dude, buy that building before some other Doc does” and we dove right into it. And here we are, you know, going from a downward trajectory to now where about to open a 6 operatory practice with fantastic visibility right across the street from the township high school.
Justin: that’s excellent.
Dr Bickel: without that upward trajectory, none of that would have happened.
Justin: right, yeah, I mean that’s a really cool story, I mean, I can see why Tuan’s showing you his Facebook, you know, people are looking at, for sure. Yeah, that’s really cool.
Okay, so, you did the dental maverick thing, you made some online improvements, and here you are, I think it’s just a great story, it’s not like your -you’re not selling anything, you know a lot of the guests have some things they’re promoting. I just think it’s great for dentists to see a story, once in a while, you know, this kind of content that we’re putting out, it’s not, there’s not, there doesn’t need to be a call to action, we’re not like ‘hey, do this, or do this’, but I think it’s just kind of cool because you’ve given some nuggets about, like you know, the live chat thing, I texted a bunch of dentists, I was like “what do you think about this?” and everyone’s like “let’s try it” because I pointed them to the thread on dental town. And yeah, I mean, everyone’s making a fuss about the HIPAA, and all of that, and so there are, I’m sure there are solutions out there, and there are answers to all those questions.
And there have been some really good posts on that.
Dr Bickel: the thing that, I guess confused me, would be the right word, about the HIPAA thing is that, HIPAA is supposed to protect people from unauthorized information about their medical or dental care. Common sense to me says that, if I’m on a dentists website, and see a live chat and I by my own free will, go on that live chat and start giving that person information about my dental needs, I don’t see that as being any different from somebody calling the phone number that’s on there and giving my front desk information about their dental needs. I just don’t see the HIPAA issue there, because it’s not somebody divulging something without your knowledge, your freely giving that to the website. So, I’m not a HIPAA expert, but that just seems logically to me.
Justin: yeah, and I couldn’t possibly even say, what’s what – it’s just not my area, and I think that’s important, you know, a lot of times on dental town, I think people like to chime in on things and be like ‘oh well, I’m not an expert, but blah blah blah’, and I don’t know if people really listen after you say that, you know. So I try not to do posts like that, because it’s like ‘well hey, I know nothing about what I’m talking about, but listen to me’. SoI try to avoid it altogether, but I do want to give you the opportunity to kind of have the floor on that and say your piece on that. It sounds like there are some pretty knowledgeable people that have their say. So, yeah. I mean, I just, I appreciate you coming on, and I like the tone of this interview, because we’re not necessarily saying ‘hey dentists, here’s a product, here’s a service, this is something good for you’, we’re just saying ‘look, you know, once in a while you just need a shot in the arm, once in a while you need to hear a story about a dentist whose done it’ and that’s what this episode is about, so I appreciate you coming on to do that.
Dr Bickel: oh, no problem, it’s my pleasure.
Justin: excellent. Well, let’s talk about, normally there’s a call of action, you know like ‘where can they find you?’ but, you know what? We can find you one dental town, and you don’t have anything to sell, so, all the better. Cool, so yeah, if you do have any questions though, guys come in and talk in the comments, whether it’s a dental town thread, if you find this on the dental town blog, the dental marketing guy blog, just on YouTube, where ever you find this on social media, feel free to chime in with questions for Dr Bickel, I’ll make sure they get to him, or if you have questions for me, and thanks for watching the dental marketing guy show.
Dr Bickel: thanks.
Read more on the dental marketing blog!
Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show, I’m the Dental Marketing Guy. Today we have a guest who really needs no introduction, it is an amazing honor to interview Howard Farran, the founder of DentalTown.com, you’ve already heard of him, but let me tell you, this guy is changing dentists’ lives’, it is an amazing resource, DentalTown.com, the Dental Town magazine. What we’re going to talk about today is kind of the history of DentalTown.com, how it helps your practice, and what it means to your future. Ah Howard Farran, how are you?
Howard: I’m doing good Justin, how are you doing?
Justin: I’m doing great; it’s such a huge honor to have you. I’ve interview some good guest, some pretty big names in the dental industry, but I’ve got to tell you, I’m almost nervous to interview you man, you’re such a big deal!
Howard: oh how could you be nervous, I’m seeing your wrestling cauliflower ears, you’d kick my butt, this is like going back in time to high school, ah I was on the high school varsity wrestling team, to be with some girl, and ah that was when cauliflower ears were what you wanted, I mustn’t have been a good enough varsity wrestler, because I never got them.
Justin: maybe you did the smart thing and wore your head gear.
Howard: actually you’d think it was head gear, I always though the guys that got it where the ones that used their head as an instrument or a spear. I always thought when you do a double-leg, you use your head as a weapon more, you got the cauliflower ears, instead of hurting’ your shoulder. Do you agree with that?
Justin: yeah, you know what, that might be true, kind of as a front headlock, I think that’s digging the head in, I think that, that’s probably where I got it, from the head lock, but ah.
Howard: From the head lock, digging your head in huh?
Justin: yeah, yeah, in the armpit there.
Howard: right on!
Justin: yeah, yeah, so basically just wanted to ask you to, kind of tell us the story, a lot of people know Dental Town, I mean obviously you’ve got a ton of dentist’s on Dental Town, it’s a huge resource. , could you tell us the sort of history of how Dental Town came to be, and why you started Dental Town?
Howard: well basically, I have 4 boys, ah your friends with one of them, ah Ryan uh, I have 4 boys Eric, Greg, Ryan and Zac, their 27, 25, 23, 21 and my oldest boy was born in ’89, and when he was 9 years old, I saw him on, uh in 1998, I saw him on the internet talking to other people about skateboard wheels and I thought ‘oh my god, forget skateboard wheels, we should be talking about root canals, feelings and crowns’, and what I use to have a big problem with is, I’d come home from work, and I’d try to disengage from work, and engage my four boys, but you always have in the bad of your mind ‘oh my god what happened to that lady, should I have put her on antibiotics, should I have you know, pulled the tooth, should I have not done the root canal in one appointment’, and I just desperately wanted to talk to other dentists and everyone that loved me, you know if I asked my dad, you know, or I told my dad what I thought before he say ‘say a pray’, or my mum would say, you know ‘what do you mean?’, and I just wanted to talk to a dentist and, so I saw that, and I put all my time and effort into building that website, and got it up in ’98. I literally thought, in all honesty, that maybe I could get maybe 20-25 guys or once or twice a month we could have a meeting or a study club and talk about this stuff, and the first month a thousand dentists joined and we never had less than a thousand dentists join in any month, and now we’re over 210 000, and it’s Dental Town, not Dentist Town, because we need guys like you in there. I always said that, if you took away about 500 dental companies, we’d be sitting outside on the sidewalk, on a road with a bunch of flyers we bought from home depot, and we wouldn’t be the magicians that we are, and so if all the dentists are talking about your product and its red and they’re all saying ‘god, I wish it was blue instead’, I though the dental manufacturers need to see that and say ‘wow, our customers, they don’t want them red, they want them blue’. So, I had had Dentist Town, but I called it Dental Town because, you know this takes a lot of different players, you know, insurance, business consultants, marketing gurus like you, it takes a lot of, you know we have to wear a lot of hats, it’s not just about teeth.
Justin: yeah, excellent, you know I think that’s why it’s such a powerful resource. You’ve developed synergy in the entire dental community, you know, you’ve got hygiene town, and then I think you’ve got a couple of other websites; could you tell them about, tell us about that?
Howard: yeah, we have ah, HygieneTown because a lot of the hygienists’ wanted to discuss without their employer reading, and after 9 specialties, the orthodontists’ were the only ones that wanted their own gig, the orthodontists, you know endodontist and oral, all the specialist have no problem sharing all of their information, but the orthodontists, don’t feel that way, they feel very strongly that if there is any orthodontists needs for there patients, they should be the ones that do it from A-Z; so we started OrthoTown, so there’s a 10 000 orthodontist and I’d say half of them are on OrthoTown, but uh, lately you know, the big month meet is on DentalTown.
Justin: excellent what would you say, what are the top 3 benefits, that dentist enjoy as a result of your work with DentalTown?
Howard: I would say that the number one, would be the social comradely of being able to cry on someone’s shoulder, I mean that’s what you do, when you’re a dentist and you call your brother and he’s a engineer or a pharmacist or a physician, I mean, they, no one truly gets what it’s like to practice in dentistry. If your world is dentistry, I doubt your mom or your sister or your brother or your dad gets it, I think that just going that. I think number two; clinical, the, its very country intuitive to go share, everybody, I mean, you go on Facebook everybody, they share the picture of their perfect crown or their perfect root canal, and that’s just like having a deer head over your mantel or fire place, it just shows that you shoot a deer, it doesn’t show how you did it, all the details and what I think is the most beautiful thing about Dental Town, is when people are so proud and so real, no one needs help on their perfect root canal, they need help, or they dropped the ball, they fumbled they lost the game, and to post a case on DentalTown and ask your peers, you know, ‘what went wrong?’, and let everybody critic it and talk about it and share, and so, you know, everybody in clinical dentistry, the cases, you know there’s hundreds of cases, posted everyday there, it’s truly mind-blowing.
And then third is where you come in; we were trained 8 years in math, physics, chemistry, biology, I mean, just all science and then we graduate, and a week later we’ve got to figure out, you know how to make it, and how to make payroll, and pay our rent, or mortgage, and were supposed to, you know, know our numbers and file our taxes and we’re supposed to do marketing, so you know, the funniest letter I’ve ever got on my, I came out with all these dang tapes called the ’30 day dental MBA’, and there on YouTube and iTunes, and ah catholic priest wrote me a letter when they came out, he sent me a letter he said ‘man, I feel just like a dentist’ he goes, ‘I went to 8 years of seminary school, all we did was read the bible for 8 years, and then I graduate and they put me in charge of a church, and elementary school, and I show up there and the elementary school is a million dollar in debt, all the teachers want a raise, everybody’s upset, and I just sit there and I thought, you know where was I trained in the seminary to run a catholic elementary school, and my sisters and I said ‘you know, I don’t know if this applies to a school’, but my brother played these tapes and said ‘here, listen to the tapes, maybe you might learn something” and he said ‘oh my gosh, the entire 30 day dental MBA, if you just take out the dental, and put in catholic church elementary school, and nothing changed, it teaches the business of hiring teaches and doing job performance and talking to the accountant and why we’re losing money, and what percent of collection should be revenue should be teachers’ salaries and electric bills’ you know, he said it was the best thing that ever happened and those tapes have been handed around to half the priests in his area.
Justin: that’s amazing.
Howard: and that’s when I, and that’s why thoughts and feedback like that, is why my last book, you know my first book was on business in dentistry and then it was the consumers road map, the patients side of the dental equation, but my third book is just uncomplicate business, you know, manage people, time and money. I took out all dental references, I didn’t even put on the title that I’m a dentist, because; business is business, and it really doesn’t matter if you’re running a casino, a restaurant a swimming pool, a catholic church, it really doesn’t matter, you know, you can’t manage people, your time, your money, I mean every business does the same thing, they just makes something, sell something, what’s the number? So I uh, I wrote that book its doing fantastic on amazon, its number one on the category of dental, and they just bumped it to the international best seller book list.
Justin: its, that’s, yeah, I mean it’s, it’s amazing because, when you wrote that book, like you said, it’s not even referencing dental, but its, I mean, your such a big name, you’ve given the industry so much help, you’ve been such a huge value, ah , and the way you’ve collaborated with dentists’, on Dental Town, that’s been parlayed exponentially. So, that makes sense that your books a best seller. You know I saw Tuan Pham at the Townie meeting, and he was bragging to me that his book for a minute there, his was the number one best seller, I said ‘oh yeah, but Howard’s is coming back, we’ll see, we’ll see’. So you guys are battling.
Howard: he’s an amazing man, I mean, when you think about dental leaders, leaders in dentistry, I mean he’s the kingpin, he’s the number one, and that’s something where, you know, if kids are at a school, and there trying to do the perfect crown, and the perfect bite, and at the perfect new price, and then the next day, some of them take years before they realize they have to be a leader for their team, I mean they never thought when they signed up for dental school that they were going to be the head coach and have 5-10-50 people working for them, and he just uh, and he had that exact problem, what’s interesting with Tuan is that, he actually had that problem too, so he dove into it, and by the time he figured it out, he said ‘I can really transfer all the years of pain and suffering and knowledge that I gathered, and concepts, I can teach it demographically’, and he’s been doing very well with his program, there’s just, yeah there’s just so many hats that you have to wear in dentistry, and dental school cant prepare you for that, only life can.
Justin: yeah, you know, speaking of the Townie meeting, talk about some amazing speakers, you know I went out there, I saw John Nosti, he’s incredible, you know he’s a wrestler too, you know. He gave a reference to, you know he had some quotes from some wrestlers, it was pretty amazing, his presence on stage. You know, so the next Townie meeting, so that was pretty cool at the cosmopolitan this year, we just had it, uh, the next Townie meeting, when is the next townie meeting?
Howard: uh, it’s next year, same time, in Caesar’s palace, so it will be next April in Caesar’s palace. You know what, speak about wrestling, it’s an uh, it’s an individual sport, but a team sport. So, you know there’s 12 weights you know that win, but you win one at a time, sort of like a football game, where you hike the ball and all 12 people are playing, I mean it is, you know, when you’re out there on the mat, you’re the only guy from your team, it’s a very individual sport, but it has that team comradely, and that’s kind of a lot of lie dentistry, I mean you’re in a dental office, your alone, you are the dentist, you are the one working on that tooth, but if you see that mat, there’s 12 people in that weight class, you need your assistants, and your hygienists’ your anesthetists, and you know all your suppliers and all, you know, I think it was very good. I started all my boys into it when they were 5, and they all did it for over a decade, and I think it’s very good for personal growth development.
Justin: what, what would you say drives you Howard? I mean you do so much for the dental industry, I know when you had the Townie meeting it was podcast after podcast after podcast, you know I’m just wondering, I think a lot of people are looking at the value you’ve bought the dental industry, and their like ‘man, what drives Howard Farran?’
Howard: you know, I think, I just love it, I mean, I decided I wanted to be a dentist when I was 12 years old, and now I’m 53, so 41 years I’ve just been; living, breathing, dying, dentistry, and I think what really motivates me the most is, inside the united states is; how do you transfer the knowledge? you know, so you’ve got a guy like me whose been working on patients in the same office for 30 years, and he makes it, and then you see a kid walk right out of school, and their like ‘you don’t want this kid to have stick his tongue into every light socket, trip on every obstacle in the way’, and you sit there, and it motivates you to think ‘wow, how can, how can I, you know, double this guy’s knowledge, faster, easier, highly quality, lower cost’, and then when I go around the world, I went to 50 countries, there’s only, there’s 220 countries I think, there’s about 20 countries that are, you know, are like the united states, you know, very much like us, like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, you know western Europe, japan, Singapore, but there’s like 200 countries that are not like that at all, and you know, there’s 50 countries on the bottom where dentistry it’s got a long way to go, and what’s got me most excited is, when I first was on the internet in 1998, and then we had you know online CE in 2004, and then that internet jumped onto the cellphone in 2008, with the little guy named Steve Jobs, and now you go to Tanzania, and I have that DentalTown App, and those courses are on the phone, and you meet the little beautiful Tanzanian dentist, and she’s Muslim, Islamic, and she’s all in her garb, and she’s sitting there holding her phone and she’s listening to the latest online CE courses and you see the sparkle in her eye and she’s all excited, and there no way she could afford a Tanzanian, into Libya, into Namibia to jump on an air plane and fly to the Townie meeting, but me being in that CE online that she seen for four days, at one time in her life, she’s going to practice for four decades. So I’m just so excited about the internet, getting it into the cellphones, YouTube, Wikipedia, and this is going to be a game changing century, I think 2008 was pretty much the dawn of civilization, because when that, you know the main frame for the rich fortune 500 companies, the personal computer, was really only rolled out to basically the rich 20 countries, and now every kid on earth, either has a smart phone, or someone in there hut, has a smartphone, and this is, you know, in 1880, 80% of the planet couldn’t read or write, and were illiterate, and now we, you know when I was, I was born in ’62, we got our first encyclopedia’s when I was 10, so that was ’72, they were published in ’52, so my first internet was these 320 encyclopedia’s, from A-Z, 20 or more, that were 2 decades old, and now that little kid in Tanzanian, when he gets a smartphone, he goes to his encyclopedia, Wikipedia, and its 51 million pages long, and its completely up to date, edited, the instant he logs on, so this going to be the genius century, I think the last century was you know, world wars, and the depression, and the Spanish influenza, you know it was a tough century. I mean, imagine the next century, when everybody’s literate, when everybody has access to information, when everybody can read or write, when anybody who can hear something from their buddy and say ‘are you sure that’s right?’, and they can go to google, and then find out on Wikipedia that it was only half right, there’s more to the story, I mean. So this is going to be the most existing century that we’ve ever had, since the caveman.
Justin: yeah, I think your right, I meant this is like, they call the information age, and it’s amazing.
Howard: all knowledge is going to zero costs and affordable for everyone. I mean, I don’t even understand, I mean I don’t even get the college value promises anymore, you go pay some university $30 000 a year for 4 years to sit in some brick and mortar building to listen to some geek talk for an hour, and write a test on paper, in all the time of that would have been far well better spent, just surfing YouTube on any subject you’re interested in!
Justin: yeah, you know, and I think it’s changed the way we consume entertainment, and it’s changed the way we educate ourselves, you’re definitely right about that.
Howard: when I was little, mom, I mean everybody called the television the ‘idiot box’, and I mean for the most part, it was the idiot box, and now these kids, now television, for kids under 25, the view ship has dropped off most to the poor, but the only people watching TV are over 50, I think the average age of someone watching CNN, or Fox News, is now over 60. And you see these kids, and there watching YouTube, and documentaries on all of their subjects, and there just so, I mean, I got a son, Greg, gets into the history, I mean holy moly does that kid know history, and it’s all from just sitting in a chair, you know listening to YouTube documentaries.
Justin: yeah, definitely, and you know the internet has caused dentistry – the average solo practitioner, or private practice, is able to put out that information way more efficiently. I mean if you’ve got a YouTube video, your ahead of the curb, if you’ve got a professionally crafted YouTube video, that’s basically, just like this podcast, just like, ah, when you do your podcasts, your putting yourself out there, its automated, its automated; people know you Howard, and you’ve never met them, but they know you, so they can go to your practice, and they feel like they know you, ‘oh, yeah, I recognize you!’, you know people coming up to me at the Townie, they’re like ‘oh you’re the dental marketing guy’, you know like, I’ve never met this person. But that’s the thing is, you know, in dentistry if people know, like and trust you, their more likely to accept treatment, so in this internet age, to put yourself out there in video, or even just photography, and it’s just amazing how much patients will trust you when, it’s all automated; you don’t have to be there. Nowadays, you don’t have to be face to face, so, I, yeah, it’s really cool, and I’m sure you’ve seen that in your practice and you know plenty of dentists who experience that too.
Howard: yeah, and these Dental Marketing videos, some dentists are treating the poor Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare, and some people are medium practice, other people are higher end, but it seems like that the people that are just crashing it, are the ones who, ah, do something; maybe its cosmetics, maybe its implants, maybe its gum surgery, whatever; but their website is filled with these documented cases, and these people, these consumers, their on their smartphone too, there not on the old simple yellow pages, and they’re going to these websites, and they’re seeing, here’s the dentist websites, and here is the dentists website, and hers the dentists name and picture, and a picture of him standing there with his wife and you know the dog and a cat, and then they go to another site, and there is just like 20 cases of before and after, of some, you know, amazing dentistry, and people are literally blind to their city, because they want that. So, you know it certainly is engaging, compared to when I got out of school, when you put your name and phone number in the white pages, and then the yellow page you get a little square and then maybe the ad was maybe a little more attention grabbing, but it certainly wasn’t very much transferred information, kind of like when I was a kid and mom would take us to, where grandma and grandpa were buried and all you saw was 2 dates and a dash, that whole dash was their life, and now we hear that there’s over 30 million dead people on Facebook, and a 100 years from now, or 200 years ago, you’re wondering ‘oh, I wondering what my great-great-grandfather was like’, you go to his Facebook page, you scroll through his whole life, that’s a lot more amazing then just a dash on a tombstone. Or a number in the white pages that says, you know, ‘Howard Farran, dentist, he’s the phone number’, now you can go to the website where it all comes alive.
Justin: right, right. And you do have, you still prac-, you know I get the Dental Town magazine in my mail box for people that want that medium, but probably the internet is where things are going with dental town, is what I’m guessing, maybe you can tell me; what’s next for DentalTown?
Howard: well, you know Dental Town, well, we so, we started the print in ’94, and everybody says print, everybody that says print is dead is crazy, what changed on print is – people aren’t going to pay for newspaper, they can just go to google news for free, so this comes at a price. But what you’ll notice in a magazine, their still a market, they still pick a magazine, sit in there big rocking chair and like to read it. But, we came out with it, we put in online in ’98, we did online CE in 2004, what’s really robust is the classified sections, the blogs, the podcast, so now that’s all jumped into the App. The app is up and running, we added online CE to app this year, ah, last year. I think this year we’re going to add the classified ads and the blogs, and ah, the podcasts are on the ah app too. The classifieds are amazing, because just like you wouldn’t want to buy a brand new car, if you know you can get rid of your old for half the price. It’s amazing what you can buy, the dental town app, there’s like 6 000 classified ads and it’s just amazing, the value you come by on stuff and so on. So, I would just say, we’ll just keep on truckin’
Justin: excellent, excellent. Well, you know it, we’ve come to a close on our time, and I know your time is super valuable. Our listeners really appreciate you coming on and they can find you at DentalTown.com, and you’ve got the podcast, Dentistry Uncensored, its Dentistry Uncensored right?
Howard: Dentistry Uncensored
Justin: excellent, excellent. And you book, what’s the tittle of that one more time?
Howard: Uncomplicate Business, it’s on amazon, it’s in book, kindle, print, audio; I think the audio is about 5 and a half hours long, the book, if you want to read, is about 275 pages. The secret to writing is re-writing; I wrote that thing, I re-wrote it, I wrote it again, and it’s just the most clearly simple way to transfer what I learned in a half a century and an MBA in Business in 5 hours; so that was my goal.
Justin: Excellent, cool. Well hey, thanks for coming on the show Howard, I uh, to our listeners, if you have an questions, I’m sure you will, if you see this on YouTube, dental town, whatever, the dental marketing guy blog, wherever you see this on social media, feel free to reach out, ask some questions, if you have questions for me, if you have questions for Howard, just get connected, get on DentalTown.com, ah, get that magazine subscription, get on there, you go the book; uncomplicate business, the podcast; dentistry uncensored. Just amazing value, if you’re a solo practitioner, if you’re in a private practice, if you’re thinking about one day maybe 20 years from now, starting your own practice, even if you’re working as a dentist for someone else, the clinical side of it, everything is covered on this website. So, if you haven’t heard of it yet, uh get out from under a rock and get on DentalTown.com, uh, once again, I’m Justin, the Dental Marketing Guy, from DentalMarketingGuy.com, thanks Howard, thank you very much.
Howard: Justin, it’s been awesome seeing you at Townie and Ryan and I sure had a lot of fun with you, that was a great meeting, thanks a lot. Have good day.
Justin: okay, till next time.
Howard: till next time.
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Justin: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy show, I’m the dental marketing guy, and today we have an amazing amount of value to offer, right now Spencer Peller, he is the founder of YesTrak.com, an amazing company that’s doing amazing things for your practice. If you haven’t heard of this yet, get on board, because there is a thief in your dental practice and it’s called voice mail. How’re you doing Mr Peller?
Spencer: Doing fantastic thanks Justin, that was a great way to put it, a thief, I love that. Very well said.
Justin: it really is! maybe you can tell us a little bit about the history of Yes Track, and kind of the biggest problems that dentist practices face in answering inbound calls, and how that breed YesTrack.com?
Spencer: yeah, so that’s an interesting story. We started a company called ‘MyDoctorCalls.com’, in 2011, and really that was a call tracking – call recording company, where we would provide numbers, a you know in marketing, and people would use those numbers in different ad-vehicles and record the calls to see how the staff sounded, that kind of thing. So it was a training tool and an ad-tracking tool, and as we launched the business, it was so interesting to have these doctors call us and say “wow, I’m listening to these phone calls and every time the voice mail comes on, people are hanging up the phone, what do I do about this voice mail situation?” right, so at the time, super focused on ‘My Doctor Calls’, I said ‘you know what being the smart business man that I am, or that I am not, I’m gonna go and find an answering service to go partner with and I’m gonna go refer business to an answering service, right?, so I can offer this solution to our clients’ And so as I went out there, I was amazed at how antiquated these answering services where, they get started in the 70’s when doctors needed to be paged at 3AM when they needed to go to the hospital, and they haven’t evolved much since. So, I really had a hard time referring business to anyone. So, that was kind of the genesis of saying ‘hey, you know, I better launch something, because this is the real opportunity of being able to go out and actually answer he phone for people’, because the biggest complaints I got from doctor’s offices were; number one – they were losing business because of voicemail, number two – their staffs were super swamped, right as you know, you go to a doctor’s office, the staff member is checking people out and is managing a schedule and turning people away and then turning around and answering a phone and on the line is a call from a $5000 patient, and they’re put on hold or, you know they just don’t have the time to focus on the call. So, voice mail and staff that were super swamped kind of said ‘hey, they’d love a good outsource solution’, so Yes Track became the solution that we could offer those practices, to kind of help them with, as you said, this ‘thief’ that’s stealing their revenue’s from them.
Justin: yeah, maybe you can tell our listeners, why is voicemail a thief, why is it so bad for dental practices?
Spencer: Well, the simple fact is that 80% of people hang up on voicemail, and that’s been tracked by big companies, Forbes actually was the one that came out with the stat. And in our research in recording calls, we’ve found that stat to be completely accurate. So if you think about it, you’ve got a call comes in, you’ve missed five phone calls, right, that means you’ve lost four of those opportunities. If a dental patient equals $5000, that’s $20 000 lost, on 5 phone calls you missed because of voicemail. The reality is, people just don’t leave messages anymore, in fact, Coca-Cola, JP Morgan, have all gotten rid of voice mail in their offices.
Now when it’s you and me calling each other and you don’t answer my phone call and I get your voicemail, well I’ve got your cell phone number, I’m gonna turn around and send you a text message, say ‘hey, trying to get in touch with you, give me a shout back’ right, when you’re calling a local business, and you’ve spent the time to research the top three dentists in your town and you’re ready to do business, and calling through and you get that voicemail, you’re not texting that doctor, you don’t have his cell phone number, and you don’t have the time. You’re going to call the second person on your list and the third person on your list. In fact, ‘Inside Sales’ came out and said “35-50% of people will choose the business that responds first”, right, so it’s like voice mail is causing them to hang up, and you’re not only loosing that person for a moment, you’re losing them forever, because they’re going to call the next doctor, whoever answers the phone is going to get the business 35-50%of the time.
Justin: that’s excellent, and you know in your book, I have your book here, it’s ‘Own the Phone’
Spencer: who’s that guy?
Justin: yeah, it’s a pretty catchy tittle, but don’t judge a book by the cover.
Spencer: I was in better shape back then on that cover actually, so I got to start working out again.
Justin: You’re not even as big as the phone though man, come on!
Spencer: exactly!
Justin: you’ve got to lift some more weights!
Spencer: exactly! People always ask me that, they’re like ‘where did you get a phone that big?’ I’m like ‘wow, its call digital technology’
Justin: let’s get up with the times here, I think that’s the first introduction is; if you don’t know that this was done via Photoshop, you probably still going with old answering machine.
Spencer: there you go.
Justin: they might not even have an answering machine. Yeah, I mean you talk about empathy, which is huge in dental marketing, because, it’s been said ‘if people don’t care what you know, until they know that you care’, and I think that’s really important in dental marketing, is, how does the dentist show that they care? And one of the ways that you can do that is through a service like you’re own. I mean, this doesn’t really take a lot of work on the dentist’s part. Tell us a little bit about how it works? So, a phone call comes in and then you send them an email or a text message, how does that work?
Spencer: yeah, so great question and great point by the way. Yeah, you show them you care number one; by actually answering the phone, right, so that’s step number one. Step number two is; what makes us really unique is we give you choices of what you want us to say, in fact you have to choose a different script right in our system and you can edit what we say on the fly so that it meets your brand and your verbiage that you like to use, and it’s all real time from you’re smart phone. So, imagine you want to change your script tonight, on your way out the door, you go to your smartphone, you type in what want us to say, and we’ll say in on that next call for you. And then you’re getting text messages and emails, so that you never miss opportunities, because the call is coming , you know it’s being captured, it’s going right to your cell phone, in a text or an email, and you can literally turn and be like ‘wow, I’ve got to call this perspective patient, or my existing patient, right now this is urgent’, or you could say ‘you know what, I’m eating dinner, I could call that person back tomorrow’, so it gives you the opportunity to prioritize, but what’s most important is, it gets your caller into a revenue flow, meaning; you’ve answered the phone, they’ve given their name and number, they know someone is going to call them back, they can check the box that says, ‘okay, I’ve chosen my dentist, I’m going to get a call back, I don’t have to call somebody else, I know I’m in the revenue flow here’, and that’s really what’s most important.
But, the difference between us, and say; traditional answering services, is if, anyone that’s watching this has ever used one, you know it’s like you get a choice of script, it sounds like a robot, there’s really no technology between you and the answering group, you don’t get text messages, they’ll send you a fax or an email, it’ very antiquated, again 1975, we’ve really stepped up the technology and the flexibility of how you can control what our agents say, and give you the customers that you’re looking for. so, yeah it’s been a fun ride, we’re two years old, we’re growing every day, we just keep adding new stuff to it, we are a technology company so we’re super proud about it. And it’s been a lot of fun for sure.
Justin: yeah, that’s great. So, for those dentists listening that have poured you know, a lot of money into SEO, a lot of money into direct mail, radio, TV; whatever it might be. If you’re spending say, pulling a number out of the air here, say $2000-$3000 a month to market your practice, but you’re not picking up the phone when those perspective patents are calling, your studies show, that, like you mentioned before the Forbes and all of that, that 80% of people are hanging up on voice mail, so that’s kind of like, saying 80% of your money is going down the drain.
Spencer: yeah, right. Well even more then that because you figure if you’re dropping $2000, your hoping that you get $10000 back, and right? or you’re hoping you’re getting $20000 back if it’s really popping, we’re talking lifetime value right, we’re talking the lifetime of the patient, and then you’ve got referrals and all of those other things that happen, right? So if you’re spending $2000 you want that to again, generate into $10000, $20000, whatever that number is, to spend that money, and then not spend $200, which is our average spend on our service, to make sure the phones’ getting answered, like 10% of that to cover this thing that says ‘hey, I’m not going to lose the 80% of this’ right, so the math is really, it’s very straight forward, and I hate to say this , that it’s a ‘no-brainer’ because people say ‘well you’re biased’, yeah I’m biased, I am biased for sure, but people who use our service tell us that ‘gosh I had no idea how much business I was looking at 5:30 at night, or on a Saturday morning, or at lunch hour, when I was turning people over to that voicemail box’, so again, to add another $200 on top of your marketing to make sure that $200 turns into $10000 or $20000, again the ROI gets pretty massive.
Justin: yeah, and so you can do, according to the number, if the phone lines are busy, after hours, you know, it’s not just during a set number of hours, it can also be set up with the company, so that like if after 3 rings it can go to your after hours, so if your front office is doing something, this can be, wow, I just realized, this is probably the easiest sales pitch to a front desk office, and the front office, the job of the front office, is to shield the dentist from sales pitches half the time.
Spencer: that’s right, it’s so funny, our biggest proponents are front desk workers who are just tired of like, trying to figure out how to scramble to do all these things and make sure the calls are answered and say the right thing, and then have that smile, and then know the next morning and have to deal with whatever happened the night before or during lunch right, it’s like knowing that there’s, and we have over 500 different agents that take calls, knowing that there is a team of 500 people behind you, not to take your job, just to pick up the slack where you can’t get it, whether it’s after hours, or during lunch, or as you said, you can route the phone so that if it rings 3 times, to the front desk, they don’t answer, it goes over to us. It’s just nice and I always say, we’re any department you want us to be with our scripts we’re you emergency department, we’re you’re billing department, we’re your customer service department, we’re you knew patient intake department, with our system, you can create as many different scripts as you want, we can play whatever role you want us to play, also makes your organization look a lot bigger and allows that kind of first class customer service that today’s caller is really expecting from you.
Justin: that’s excellent, I mean. So, to our listeners, this is a hardball questions, not scripted, I’m throwin’ it at you, right here.
Spencer: fast ball coming at me, what is it? I hope I’m ready, I’m ready!
Justin: this is the warning for our listeners, this is as much notifications you’ve been given, Spencer. This is obviously amazing for new patients, now what about for existing patients who call, what do you say to that?
Spencer: I’d say it’s depending on your budget, right? because some practices are super successful and they just want a live voice and they don’t mind paying, you know you’re paying between $1-$1.50 a minute depending on how many minutes you do, you’re paying for us to talk to your callers, right? For new patients it’s a no-brainer, right? Because you don’t want to lose them, right? For your existing patients, well, it depends on your budget. If some people are really scrambling trying to make ends meet and they’re saying ‘well you know what, I don’t know if I want to deliver the first class experience at that price, for my existing patients, maybe I just focus on the new patients for a while’, great, but for other practices, and we have a lot of clients say ‘I want you to take every call live, I don’t want any of my patients getting voicemail’, and for those types of clients it certainly makes sense.
Justin: that’s excellent. And so when you say the average is $200 a month, that’s about 150-200 minutes per month?
Spencer: exactly, and if you do the math on it, it generally comes out, then again it’s nights and weekends, you know, you’re talking 60-70 calls a month, so there’s nights and weekends, so typically, our clients use us nights and weekends, and lunch hour, we do have clients that spend well, you know $500 or more on our service, but again those guys are doing a lot more marketing and they’re sending a lot more calls our way. So you know, I’d say $200 is our average, but some clients spend $60, we take 5 or 10 calls a months for them, so where just kind of you know, an emergency service when they need it.
But on the average it’s $200, if you’re a busy practice, I’d say maybe it’d get into the $300-$400-$500 range, but, again, if you’re a busy practice and you’re doing that much marketing, you’re probably spending $2000-$4000 maybe even $5000 a month on advertising, it becomes 10% of that and well worth the cost to make sure you’re capitalizing on that marketing.
Justin: excellent, great. And so, where can we find you, and just tell our listeners basically, I mean I’m sold on it, I’m trying it with a couple of clients of mine here pretty soon and yeah, just tell us where we can find you and lets go from there.
Spencer: yeah, I mean, listen just go to our site, it’s ‘YesTrack.com’, go there and you can sign up an account, it takes two minutes to get started with, you’re up and running quickly with us, or call us ‘1800 620 5877’, for you radio advertisers, you know you got to say it a couple of times. Anyway, so those are the phone numbers, we also got $50 fee free, just tell us Justin sent you and you saw us on the hangout here, on the video, and we’ll through $50 fee free at you, and there’s no contract, in fact, I’m so proud about this, I tell every client, if you don’t like our service we’ve created a little button in the billing area, you click a button and your account is disconnected. I get so frustrated with services that are like ‘oh, no contract $50 free’ and then you go to call them and it’s 30 minutes on hold and you’ve got to be transferred 5 times and then they try to re-pitch you a hundred times. You don’t like us, you click a button, in fact, we’ll even save your scripts in the system, because some of this is even seasonal, we might answer your phones for a month, while you got some staff members out right, so we’ll literally save your scripts so you can come back to us, so it’s super easy to use our service.
Justin: that’s amazing, so yeah, if a front office goes on maternity leave, I had this happen with a client, where if their numbers are down, they’re like ‘our numbers are down’, well the front office was on maternity leave, we’ll that makes sense because you’re probably getting calls and not answering them, so this might help with that.
Spencer: 100%. A lot of our clients are people that, their changing over some staff members, they’re short staffed for a little bit, again, that’s why I said earlier, we are 500 people sitting by a phone, waiting to do whatever you want us to do at the click of a button, you know. It’s phone answering on demand, which , you know and I know in today’s technology world, it’s all about being able to set something up quick and tear it down quick and have the flexibility from your smartphone and that’s what this is, exactly what this is.
Justin: excellent, well to our listeners, I hope you’ve learned something. Obviously, you didn’t learn anything new about how important it is to get new patients, but hopefully you learned something about getting those new patients.
A couple of episodes ago, we talked with Dr Christopher Phelps, a ‘Practice on Fire’ speaker, voted best speaker at that event last year, he’s speaking again this year. We talked all about call tracker ROI, and his service about, he said ‘many dentists’, if you watch that episode, he tells us how many dentist feel like ‘well, I don’t feel like I’m missing any calls’ and he talks the Pepsi challenge with them, and he says ‘look, don’t pay me upfront’ and however he works it, and he says ‘this is a challenge I’m willing to take with you, I’m willing to lay down my services’ and what happens, every time, is, they find out there is a lot of calls that they are missing and, you know, I think a service like this goes really well with that, that service.
Spencer: I agree, and you know, you and I have had this talk before, and that’s what I love about you, is that you get that, once you start your marketing, the first thing you’ve got to do is, kind of look internally and see what your processes are, because laying all those dollars on a process that’s broke is like building a house on a bad foundation, right. So, we’ve got to get the foundation is right, so what is your staff saying when the phone rings, whose answering the phone when your staff doesn’t answering, and what are you doing with your follow up sequences to get people in the door and the reminders and all that kind of stuff, because layering on lots marketing when the house isn’t built on a solid foundation is going to deliver a lot of cracks, right. However, when the foundation is super solid, the flow of the inpatient, is working the way you want it to; then you can start stacking up the marketing, you can really see it get exponential with Dental Marketing Guy, because you know you can handle it when the flow happens and you know you’re not going to miss stuff, right. You really keep peace and I’m glad that you brought that up with the tracker, because again, most people don’t realise the foundations not on solid ground until the cracks start happening, unfortunately, right?
Justin: right, right, yeah. So for those of you dentists that come to me, hit me up about SEO, you know, this is something that I recommend, because we need to know, if all your calls from SEO, are from, say, emergency calls at 2 AM or whatever, you might not want to take those calls, and if you don’t get those calls yourself, this is the kind of service that can help you, and so, even if there not coming at 2 AM, if they’re coming at the lunch hour, if they’re coming at 5:02 PM, you just never can control when these people who are googling your services are going to call you, so yeah. I’m defiantly on board with this; I think it’s going to help with ROI, specifically with SEO, especially because it can be a little bit trickier to rack SEO, compare to like, ad-words and direct mail, and things like that where you can use a tracking number. So I really really like this.
So thank you very much, the guest of honor, Spencer Peller, his book ‘own the phone’
Spencer: my pleasure, and the big phone
Justin: and the phone is not that big!
Spencer: you cannot own that big phone by the way, you can own a smaller phone, is what you can. But, Justin, it was great, thanks for having me on your show. Always love chatting with you. If the audience members want to get in touch, call me at the Yes tracker number, or go to the Yes Track site, happy to talk phones with anyone who wants to talk phones.
Justin: cool. Alright, thanks to our listeners, and if you have any questions, hit us up on the comments below on YouTube, on Dental Town, wherever you find this, and I’m the Dental Marketing Guy, thanks for watching the Dental Marketing Guy show.
Spencer: take care.
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Justin: welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy show, I’m the Dental marketing Guy, and today I have a very special guest, which for many of you, she needs no introduction. She was voted one of the top 25 woman in dentistry, but a dental products report, Dr Anissa Holmes has effectively mastered the skills and the use of social media, with a Facebook following of nearly 48,000 fans. As a practicing dentist, author, pod caster and speaker, Dr Holmes shows dentists exactly how to create a profitable, thriving dental practice, which has motivated, inspired team members, and patients who are raving fans. She also teaches dentists how to get best ROI on social media. Dr Holmes is one of the top iTunes podcasts’, with the ‘Delivering Wow’ Dental podcast, and is also the author of the book ‘Delivery Wow: ho dentists build a fascinating brand, and achieve more while working less’.
Welcome Dr Holmes, how are you?
Dr Holmes: I doing great Justin, thank you so much for having me, I’m really happy to be here.
Justin: excellent, excellent, well it’s a huge honor because, I know you interview a lot of movers and shakers on your show, so I love having experts like yourself on the show.
Dr Holmes: good stuff.
Justin: so, your here because, what you do is you teach dentists basically how to build, what we call here on the Dental Marketing Guy show, ‘the dental dream’ or the ‘dream dental practice’, and that looks different for every dentist. And we did and interview just the other day with Dr Tuan Pham, and we were talking about how, you know, everybody has a different vision for their life, but you know ultimately a lot of the dentists face, I find, can be solved, many of them can be solved, by just getting new patients.
Social media is one of those things that you’re really good at and you’re really good at teaching, can you tell us how dentists’ can gain new patients through say Facebook advertising?
Dr Holmes: absolutely. So, to me, Facebook or social media is huge, because Facebook allows you to be able to share the story of your practice and it’s really quite amazing. So of course in the past, when somebody wanted to go to the dentist, they would grab what? Yellow pages right? And they would flip through the yellow pages and they would say “okay, I see this ad or this ad or this ad is better than this ad”. And they would choose their dentist, but things have really changed. And I really ask dentists, or ask people, ‘when was the last time you actually looked through one of those books?’, so things have really evolved and changed. But the amazing thing about social media, is that, you are constantly able to share your story. When people are not thinking about a dentist, and to me that’s HUGE. And so, what I always tell dentists’ is, just what you spoke about, what is your vision? What story do you want to share about your practice? And that is the story that you want to create in your social space, that’s how you develop your brand, and your brand, I know that you know this as well, is what people say about you, when you’re not around, and building an amazing social media presence, is a great way to really grow your brand.
And so, you question was really, how can you get new patients through social media?
Well I can tell you some examples of what we are actually achieving in my practice.
So, I started my Facebook journey, in 2010, and I started it with one patient, like you need, or one person you need at a time. And I started to share the story of our practice, I shared pictures of us out in the community, I shared pictures of my team, us having fun, and you know, there were some posts about dentistry, but it was really about the culture. And through that, people became interested, they became very engaged. And because we were consistent in that, they continued to follow us. And because we were able to provide value first, they really, like I said they became interested, engaged, and then we started to see the conversions. And so, now what happens is we have about, typically, 40 new patients every single month, coming just from Facebook, and that is huge. I mean, most dentist want to have you know 40 new patients in several months, and we’re getting it every single month, and the patients that are coming in, they know us already! They’ve been to our website, they know the team, they know that we are offering some amazing you know, experiences, like you know eye packs that take away the sound, and complimentary hand and arm massages, because you know that’s out culture, and we’re sharing it. And so, because they know us, they come in their connected, they’re ready to actually come in. So, that’s how we’re using Facebook to really connect an engage, and again, maybe they’re not even, you know, close to my practice, maybe they’re an hour away or something, but if one of their friends needs a dentist, we’re gonna be at the top of their mind.
Justin: excellent, yeah. And, you know, you talk about telling the stories, that’s the kind of content that prospective dental patients want, because prospective dental patients don’t think of themselves as prospective dental patients, they think of themselves as human beings, and human beings love stories, so I like how you say, you know, we ultimately, it’s to get new patients, ultimately it’s to build report with existing patients, but I like how you, you basically said in a roundabout way, ‘look, were not just trying to shove dentistry down these people’s throats, we’re telling them about who we are, and what we’re about’, and I’m sure you’ve found that, that, basically to juxtapose, or compare it to a lot of other dentists’ who don’t really understand social media marketing, they might say ‘oh, well we buy google ad-words, we do SEO’ and stuff like that. But if you don’t have the culture side of it, the human side of it. What have you found as far as, I mean 40 patients a month from Facebook advertising is amazing, but maybe you could go a little more in depths about what you’ve found the difference is, just by kind of being out there, and by being out there in a way that people can really relate to, with those stories.
Dr Holmes: Right and it really does come down to the engagement and the connections, you know. And so, finding out what it is, or perspective dental patients want, and you know, we really ask our patients, we ask people on Facebook, ‘what is it that you want? what’s your resistance, what’s keeping you from coming to the dentist?’, and what we’ve found is that patients you know, they want to be seen on time, they don’t want to wait forever, they want to have amazing, beautiful dentistry, and they want to have an amazing experience. And because those are things that people are looking for, that’s the post that we actually create, those sort of engaging posts, you know. So, when you come to our office, you won’t have to wait forever, we will see you on time, if not your next exam is free, or we’re showing pictures `of our patients getting a massage, or we have video testimonials of our patients sharing their actual stories, in the practice of how their lives are being transformed, and these videos, of course, as you know, are going viral, and so what happens is that, it’s seen not only on our page, but it’s being shared so many times, so I think that’s really really key, and really really critical. In taking it a step further and saying, you know you were asking, ‘how do so many people see your posts?’, and it really comes down to being very strategic in terms of creating ads, that will reach your intended audience. So, if we’re, for example, we’re creating an ad about teeth whitening, we’re going to targeting people who are getting married, who are a certain age, and we’re going to target it to people, sometimes we target it to people who are going to see it in our news-feeds, and sometimes we don’t, and when we don’t, it’s because we’re trying to also grow our likes. And so, there very specific strategies that are able to be put in, based on the objectives that you would like to achieve. But it’s really create fascinating, in terms of viral nature, of Facebook.
Justin: what would you say in terms of, with videos, what would you say to those dentists that are listening that say ‘video, you know it sounds like a really big investment, I’ve got a face for radio’, there’s dentist posting on Dental Town, they don’t even want to do photography. Video scares the heck out of them, what would you say to those dentists that are kind of struggling with the camera shyness?
Dr Holmes: right, well, I’ll say this. A lot of what we put on our page, it’s pictures of patients, it’s not actually even me asking my patients to provide the content, it’s my team, their using their smartphone sometimes, and you know, we actually have a system for ensuring hat we will get these video testimonials, and it really has to do with our patient experience. So, patients come in, they you know, they get hot chocolate, they get coffee, they get tea, they get plantain tarts, we give them a tour, we show them our core values on the wall. So, there’s a whole process in our practice, and so, by the time they get to, to having, to seeing me for example, after they’ve seen the hygienist. They’ve already had the massage, they had all of the music, they had a warm towel to relax after the procedure, and the hygienist will say, and this is the system “how was your visit today?” and I mean after all of that, they’re like “it was great!”, and then I come in, you know, and this is our system, and then I come in, I’m like “okay, hi, I’m Dr Holmes, it’s so great to meet you, how was your experience today, was it great?”, I mean I’m not even asking them about their teeth yet, because we’re again, are trying to evoke and emotion. They’re like “it was great” and I’m like “wow, I’m really happy, because we want to make sure that your comfortable, you know a lot of people are really fearful to go to the dentist and we want to make sure you’re okay, that’s the focus of our practice”, and people feel really connected, and then we go through the dental exam and we make our recommendations, then they go to the front desk. The front desk then says “how was everything today, did you enjoy your visit?”, and they’re like, I mean by that time, they’ve already acknowledged, and they know that we care, because we’ve already asked them 2 other times, they like “it was amazing!”, and then by then they’re like “you mind if we just get that on video because we really want to make sure that other patients find out about our practice”, and they’re like “absolutely,, come one let’s do it” you know, they’re having a ball, so it’s really easy for us to get these video testimonials, and like I said, they’re taken on a smartphone, or on an iPhone, and we’re able to just save them, and in terms of video, I would recommend on Facebook, just putting it directly on to your Facebook page, not linking it to YouTube, and you will have more visibility if you do a direct upload to Facebook, versus doing a link, but doing video is huge, it’s huge, even our pin post right now, we have a smile maker competition, and I announced the competition over video so I actually created a quick video, and I announced that we’re giving away a free smile make-over, and because I actually uploaded it as a video, versus a photo or just text words, so many people saw it, and I spend like $20 to promote it, and thousands of people saw it and because it was an engaging post, about us giving away our competition to change someone’s life, it just wen viral, so we didn’t have to do anything after we spent the $20. Our Facebook fans, our community, they really did the work for us.
Justin: you know I, I think that’s great. You know I talk to a lot of dentists that hit me up about SEO, because you know that’s what I do. Content creation is really big in SEO, because Google, Bing and Yahoo, they want to put up the best content, and to boil it down to a basic tenant of how the algorithms work; if you’re putting content out there that people re engaging with on social media, they read it, they absorb it, and they convert. Googles looking at this, and they say ‘hey wait a second, how could we possibly put someone above this, we can’t put someone above this, because they’re the leader in the industry’, so a lot of dentists’ contact me because they aren’t creating content.
What kind of SEO results have you seen, as a result of creating so much content that people love?
Dr Holmes: right, so, we spoke about this earlier, and, you know, I am in a really great position, we are definitely number one in our market, and pretty much any keyword that you type in, and part of it was we were earlier doctors, so that I think is key to actually make that point. Because sometimes you come in a little bit later and it takes a little bit more time to get that traction, but you will definitely get there if you just continue to put out that content. But you know, a lot of the content that we put out, you know, our blog posts, we are always posting and changing up our website, all the time, and we’re posting again on our social media channels, we’re on Instagram, we’re kind of everywhere, we’re on google plus, and I think that’s really big as well, a lot of people don’t really use google plus, but I mean good google plus is owned by google, so you know, that to me, sort of a no-brainer, to do that as well. But like I said, we’re not really, in my particular space, because I’m doing so many other things in terms of constantly putting out content, to be honest I’m not really that focused on my SEO, because I’m just organically just doing that by, all of the things we’re doing in other social spaces.
Justin: yeah, definitely, defiantly. SEO is a result of your marketing efforts, not the tactic being used, but the end result is, ‘hey, this is a leader in the industry’, just like you said, you were an earlier doctor. And, I’d like to go back to the video thing right now because, you know, you touched on a very good point, and that was, the patient was on the video. It wasn’t he dentist on the video, which I think is a great idea, but it’s actually the patient on the video, which I think is, in some ways a better idea.
Dr Holmes: absolutely! And especially if you’re like, you know, if you’re a mature dentist like me, you know, maybe you know, your patient is going to bring more excitement to the video. Sometimes it’s even the team! one time I had a video that we put up and it was my team member, and she was talking about why she had to work at my practice, you know, and that was really really huge, because patients were like ‘wow, if the employees are happy, you know that place might be a place that I need to go to’, you know, you just have to be kind of creative. But, definitely, it doesn’t have to be the dentist, taking the video, it doesn’t have to be the dentist in the video, but you know its something that the dentist needs to be aware of that can actually help them grow, and they delegate it to someone that can make it happen.
Justin: I think, you know, when you say you’re an earlier doctor of this social media and all that, you were an earlier doctor of a website right?
Dr Holmes: yeah
Justin: right now, would you say, the early adoption that can take place now, is video?
Dr Holmes: I would say so, and you know there is a lot of changes’ going on right now, especially with Facebook, and especially in the last few weeks. And, what we’re seeing is that, video is going to be huge. There are a lot of changes happening and you see all of the Facebook emoticons going on and the reactions and you see all of this stuff going on in terms of how they’re collecting data, and you see that you can actually create campaigns based off of how people react to your actual content. So, there’s a lot of really cool stuff that’s happening, but video is the way that it’s going to be in the future. And you can see that even on twitter, I mean Facebook live is going to be huge! you know I mean, to me it’s just all about video and people are engaging with that, and it’s working and that’s way Facebook is putting it out there.
Justin: you know it’s like; 20 years ago dentists didn’t have a website, now you’re crazy if you don’t. Right now dentist are saying ‘why would I do video? Why would I record my patients on my iPhone? Why would I do that?’
Dr Holmes: well I can tell you, you have to be first and I mean, I actually was, it’s very interesting, I think I’m just an earlier doctor.
So, when I came out of dental school, I actually created my website that was like in 1999, or 2000 or something like that, and there weren’t that many dentist that were doing websites and I was like ‘wow, this is gonna be huge, people can learn about your business, and you don’t have to be mailing stuff to them, and they can go whenever they’re at home and find you’, and so I actually created a website and then Dentrix contacted me and I was featured in their campaign for like a year, and I walked into the Hinman dental meeting and my image was everywhere, with my website and I was like ‘oh my gosh this is so cool!’, but the thing about it is that, if you can get in with it as an earlier doctor, you’re definitely going to be the leader! You know, in your community, so you know. IT’s time to take action on that, and not let that opportunity pass you by, but you’re right the earlier doctors are the ones who are going to have a much easier path to take.
Justin: it’s funny because if you write copy for a website, and it’s kind of buried somewhere, you can put, kind of, I mean the dentist will just approve it, but if you try and get them to say those exact same words on video, they won’t, ‘oh no we can’t say that’, well that’s what’s on your website!
Dr Holmes: right
Justin: Video is like a filter, basically if you start with video, whatever you’re willing to say on video, that’s what should be in the copy of your website. Would you agree with that?
Dr Holmes: absolutely, and it’s so interesting because, you know, I just finished writing my book, and I went back through and I looked at the copy again, and the first writing of my book, I went back through and I’m like ‘gosh, you know it’s just not telling enough stories, I’m going to go back and just really talk to the dentist’, and so if I am saying a ‘contraction’, it’s okay, I don’t have to be so technical with my writing, and when you talk to people how you really sound, they connect with you. And so, you’re absolutely right, having that video and just being real with people, they connect with you and they can tell that you’re really a real person. And it’s that sort of people that, I can tell you in my practice, it’s not stiff, it’s not stuffy, we have fun with people, they come in and we’re high fiving them ‘hey, what’s going on, how was your weekend?’, you know what I mean, it’s that sort of culture! And so the patients can just sort of relax, and they’re not so tense, and thinking it’s such a formal stiff environment. The music we’re playing in the background is like, you know, you’re at Starbucks or you’re somewhere, having a great time, it’s just that sort of environment, and people are connecting. And at first, you know, I’ve been practicing for 16 years, and I did not think that that was what was appropriate. So, I was like, when I came out of school, I was really formal, and you know, I wore a suit, and I had played jazz and I was really very formal, because I thought that was what people wanted from their doctor, was to be formal. But, I have actually had the most success, just being myself and being real with people, and they connect and they know that you really care, and I think that’s really, really huge.
Justin: you think that authenticity comes through?
Dr Holmes: I think so. Absolutely, and it’s just like, even how we’re chatting right now, we haven’t prepared for this interview, I don’t know what you’re going to ask me, we’re just having a chat, like we’re old friends you know? and to me, it’s that sort of thing with patients, you don’t have to be so scripted out, just know what your objectives are, just know what you’re trying to accomplish, but definitely be yourself and people will really connect with you.
Justin: I’ve found with these videos, that, yeah, that conversational flow, like you’re saying, and we transcribe these video’s and put it on a blog post, and what it’s done is, it’s made content creature, really, really easy, because I’m only saying the things that I would actually say. When a lot of people sit down, they’re like ‘dentists don’t want to blog are you kidding me?’, when you were in dental school, when did they talk about blogging, right? It’s not why you went to dental school, that’s not why you became a dentist, maybe if you like blogging if you’re a dentist, just by coincidence, but for a dentist, that’s not part of the job description.
Dr Holmes: oh, I don’t know about that. Well, I will say this, if you decide that you want to be, and there are different types of dentists’, right? So, you may this site that you want to, you want to have dentistry as your job, as your profession, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, and so, maybe you want to work at a university, that’s what you want for yourself. Or, maybe you want to work for a company, and you don’t want the hassle of running a business, or maybe you’ve reached a stage where you’ve done that already and you’re like, you know, ‘I just want to go and treat my patients’, and that’s coo, that’s absolutely cool. But, if you are in that space, where you are a business owner, and you decide that you want to own your own practice, then you need to be able to learn some things about running your business, and that’s the bottom line. And content creation, getting your brand out there is how business owners grow their businesses, and so, I challenge dentists all the time, ‘it’s okay, think a little bit out of the box, because you have chosen to be a business owner, and when you do that you have to think about things a little bit differently, yes give amazing dentistry’, and I mean we focus a lot on that, and that’s the reason why, we’re getting the 5 star reviews and the patients are giving the testimonials’, because we are providing amazing dentistry, but to me, that’s just one piece of the puzzle.
Justin: yeah. So it sounds like the dentists that you work with are real action takers?
Dr Holmes: absolutely, absolutely, and I mean to me that’s the exciting part, you can of feel my passion coming through now, and like I said, every dentist is not going to connect with me, and your vibe attracts your tribe, I’m not sure if you’ve heard that, but you know, my tribe are people who are action takers, they know that they want to get results, they just don’t know how, and they say ‘okay, I want these results, I see what your dong and I want that, show me how to do it’, and those are the people that it want to work with, those are the people who want to really grow and learn, and it’s the same thing as being a dentist, you want to treat patients, that when you say ‘okay, you have a missing tooth, and putting in that implant to prevent future problems’, the patient is engaged, their ready, and they’re saying “doc, whatever need to do, I trust you, just do what’s best for me”, and it’s those sort of patients that you want to work with and it’s those sort of dentists that I work with as well.
Justin: excellent. Let’s take about promotion. So, we’ve talked a lot about content; let’s talk about paid promotion and un-paid promotion on Facebook. What are some of the tactics, if you can give us a top tip, or a few top tips on how to promote this content, once we have it?
Dr Holmes: right, so I can tell you some promotions that we typically do in our practice that have been really engaging, and I’ve learnt this just because I’ve tried so many things, and you learn by doing things over and over again. So what have really worked for us are things targeting new patients, or procedures that they have to have anyway. And so, one thing that we typically market a lot on is new patient cleanings, right. And what we do is, we’ll say ‘okay, we are going to do a for the month of’ – and we have it going on right now, ‘for the month of’ – and we’re in march at this recording, ‘for the month march, if you come in during this month only, you will get your cleaning done at 50% off, you have to mention that your coming in off Facebook, so if you’re coming in from any other source, you’re going to be charged your regular fee, this is your reward for following us and being loyal. You’ll come in, we’ll do cleaning, X-rays and exam’, now the reason why this works, there are several reasons, and the reason why this works, it’s something that, everybody has to do. Everybody needs a cleaning, right? Not everybody needs an implant or dentures, you know, everybody needs a cleaning, so you can just target that towards just anybody. The other thing is that, when people come in, and we are discounting in a sense, that 50% off, that’s actually our marketing expense, we’re not paying for anything else, and when they come in, we’re actually offering additional same day service, so we offer to do sealants’ on our patients, the same day, whether they’re a kid or an adult, and I can tell you, I believe in, which is why we offer them. I’ve have sealants on my teeth since dental school, and I feel like, if they’re something that can prevent a cavity, why not go ahead and do it, and so we recommend sealants’ on all of our patients, well pretty much all of them. If you’ve never had a cavity and you’re grooves are smooth, you probably don’t need a sealant, but for the most part we are offering that. We offer fluoride to our adults and kids, and it’s very interesting because if a patients chooses to do 4 sealants, that is way more than the fee that we were discounting for the 50%, and a lot of times people are coming in, and there not actually doing for 4 sealants’, there actually doing 8 sealants, or their doing 12 sealants. So at the end of the day, our ROI on that actual strategy of actually getting the patient in at half off, sometimes we’re actually making triple what we would of made in the same appointment, and the same appointment time, because we’re offering services that don’t take very long, that have high margins, not a lot of overhead to do a sealant or a fluoride. So, it’s an easy ad on and then it actually brings in patients who become raving fans, once they experience all of the experiences that we have, they’re telling other people, which creates internal referrals. And not to mention lifetime value of these patients, who come back for a repeat, and we have tested and measured, because some people will say ‘okay, if you get them in one time, do they come back, or do you just get them in for the promotion?’, well, the thing is that, once you get them in, you have to, what I say, ‘continue to deliver’, you have to deliver that wow. So you have to keep in touch with them with the emails, newsletters and that sort of thing. And when they come in they’re getting an amazing treatment, so I can tell you that 80% of our patients do return in 6 months for their pre-scheduled cleaning, and they become lifelong patients, and for me that am a great return on, you know, 50% off. We also do teeth whitening promotions all the time, again that’s something that has really high margins, not a lot of expense put into that, and then also, from time to time, we’ll actually have a service of the month, and so we’ll say “okay, for this particular month, in this month only, we are featuring crowns”, and so what we’ll do is, our promotional pieces for that month in terms of educations pieces will be on crowns, we’ll show pictures of before and after’s of crowns, and we’ll also create and offer, so if they have read it, the education piece, they seen before and after pictures of my work, on actual live patients, maybe we put up a testimonial, and we do have a YouTube channel with has all of these videos, sometimes we’ll link and all that sort of stuff, and just coming at it in different angles, and then we’ll say “okay, this month only, if you come in you’ll get automatic 5% off, and if you prepay you’ll get an additional 5% off”, or sometimes we do more than that, but when we do these campaigns like this, we get so many patients that come in, and even though we’re discounting the 5% or 10%, those are our best months ever.
Justin: excellent, yeah, and I’m willing to bet that it has a lot to do with the fact that you’re leading. Your putting out that content, your educating, your building report, your touching base with these people, you know you can physically only be in one stop at one time, right?
So, for all those hand shakers and door-knockers, and those that are hitting the streets, or the chamber of commerce, you know and all that. That’s great, that’s probably the best, that’s great. But, with email, social media, you’re website, these videos; you can be everywhere all at once, at the exact time that people are searching for you.
Dr Holmes: absolutely.
Justin: so that’s what I really like about that, yeah.
Dr Holmes: absolutely, and as I said, Facebook is what I really teach on, but we’re also pretty big on YouTube, you know, we’ve got a YouTube channel and we’ve got actually a playlist for each procedure. So, we’ll have a playlist on patient testimonials, we’ll have one on crowns, which will include; videos of what is the procedure, post treatment instructions, and we actually use this a lot in our Facebook. And so, what we do is, when a patient asks a questions, we use private massaging a lot, so a lot of patients will send us that direct message and we’ve actually customized our responses, so if somebody says ‘how much is an implant?’, for example, we actually have taken the time to script out our responses and you know, we can actually input in the patients, you know a little section for the patients to input there name, that automatically puts it in and will actually have a link to a YouTube video about an implant, so it will carry them from that, so it takes literally 2 seconds and we can also do it from our pages app on our iPhone, so we can respond to them. some time’s we’re getting messages, and I mean, I’m at home and on my phone and it’s 11 o’clock, and someone’s’ asking about an implant, and I give them a long detailed description of what an implant is, here’s a video, 11 o’clock at night, you know like ‘oh my gosh 11 o’clock at night, these people as super responsive’, so you can actually use you’re presence on google, or YouTube to actually connect and merge with the strategies’ of social media through Facebook to even get more massive results.
Justin: that’s excellent, that’s great.
Yeah, you’ve obviously seen some great results, I think that’s great, 40 new patients from Facebook. Guys, you heard it here, Facebook it works, but only if you do it right. Dr Holmes, where can our listeners find you?
Dr Holmes: right, so, there’s a few places, but the best place to reach me, is actually I have a free Facebook group, so dentists’ who are action takers, who want to know more, they can go to ‘delivering WOW hangout’, and you’ll be able to get free access to my free private Facebook group, and the dentists’ in there are amazing, and they’re dropping value bombs, not only about Facebook, but you know, ‘why don’t you use this scheduling application’ or somebodies talking about social media or they’re dropping in their social media pages and we’re helping each other. So, it’s really cool it’s like an online mastermind. So, ‘delivering well hangout’ is great, and my website is ‘Delivering Well’ and lots of blog posts on there, and my podcast, which is; ‘Delivering Well Dental’ podcast.
Justin: excellent, well, you heard it here folks, this is Dr Anissa Holmes, and you know where to find her.
If you have any questions, feel free to put them in the YouTube comments, on the blog comments, if you see this on Dental Town, where ever it might be, feel free to comment, if you have any questions for me; I’m the Dental Marketing Guy, at DentalMarketingGuy.com, and Dr Holmes, thank you so much for delivering this value, I think many of the dentist’s that are listening to this, who are, a lot of them are on the fence about Facebook, like ‘I don’t know, should I do it, should I not?’, it sounds like you can provide a lot of value to them to get started. So, thank you very much.
Dr Holmes: excellent, good stuff. Thank you so much for having me it was lots of fun.
Justin: alright guys, thanks for watching the Dental Marketing Guy show.
Read more about dental seo on the dental marketing blog!
Dental Marketing Guy – Bob ‘Maui Bob’
Justin: welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy show, today is a very special episode, I have our guest of honor, Bob Summers, he’s also known as Maui Bob, most people on Dental Town would know him as Maui Bob, and Maui Bob has some incredible value to offer the dental industry, let me tell you; some of this stuff is totally new to me, I think it’s going to be totally new to most of our viewers and listeners and lets jump right into it. How are you Maui Bob?
Bob: I’m doing great Justin, aloha man
Justin: Aloha, excellent, joining us from, I assume, Maui?
Bob: right right right.
Justin: the background matches, I like it, very good.
You know what I was wondering was, the title of this show is the seven psychological triggers of getting google and yelp reviewers without being pushy or needy. I think so many dentist have this block where they just feel salesy to come out and say ‘well hey, if you’ve enjoyed your process or whatever, can you please give us some google review’, it’s really difficult to do that sort of thing, but what you’ve done is you’ve turned the 7 psychological triggers of earning reviews, into a science.
Could you tell us a little bit about that please?
Bob: sure, okay so, it really is a science come to think of it. We’ve sent out on behalf of dentists, come to think of it, probably a million review requests, Justin, and over that time, we’ve learnt so much, what works, what doesn’t work, and I’m also big time into psychology, you know, about what are triggers pro and con. So what I want to do is, I want to demonstrate what we’ve found to be the most effective way to ask for a google review. To get both google and yelp reviews. Now this is interesting because, here’s the rule of thumb, if you want google reviews, ask for google reviews, if you want yelp reviews, ask for google reviews. and the reason for this is, I’m going to get into the psychology of this, yelp has a policy, its actually guide lined, it says ‘don’t ask people to provide a review on yelp, or we are going to filter it’ and you’re thinking we’ll how do they know that, we’ll they know because it’s so easy to write a review on yelp, and when they do, they can see that it’s a new yelper. So here’s the thing we know about yelper’s, they’re avid, they are avid reviewers, and if you ask a yelper to write a review on google, they’re going to do one of two things, they’re either gonna tell you right away say ‘hey, in a yelper, is it okay if write a review there?’ and the answer is of course, ‘yeah, great’, or they’re not going to tell you. So once they see the choices you provide, and I encourage you to send a text or an email with choices in it, once they see Yelp there, and there is a huge warning we put next to yelp, and I’d encourage you to do the same thing, it says ‘please only leave a review on yelp if you’re an active yelper and you already have an account, otherwise yelp is going to filter your review’, so if you’re not a yelper that is going to terrify you like ‘oh no I’m not going there for goodness sake’s’ but if you are a yelper, you’re going to laugh in the face of danger, you’re going to go right to yelp, and write a review. so I want to set this up by saying; we’re looking to get google, and yelp reviews, if you want google reviews, ask for a google reviews, if you want a yelp review, ask for a google review, and let the yelper self-identify.
Let’s look at the 7 triggers, and it’s a 2 part thing. So I want you to role play with me here Justin, and I’m going to ask you to write a review, now here’s the questions, who should we ask and when should we ask. Well you can ask anyone you want, but I want you to think about this, when you ask a patient to write a review, you have one crack at it, so you want to make sure that they are at the peak of their happiness, it’s not the first time that they’ve come and seen you, and you want to make sure they’re happy with the quality of service you’re offering.
So, just role-play with me and lets do part one and I’ll show you the first four triggers, are you ready?
Justin: excellent, yes.
Bob: hey Justin, before you go can I ask you a favor please?
Justin: sure
Bob: alright well thank you, later today or tonight or whenever its convenient for you, would you mind taking just a couple of minutes to write a review for us on google, and Justin the reason I’m asking is, when you write a review on google, it helps other people learn about our practice through your experience, would you do that for me please?
Justin: yeah, yeah okay
Bob: well thank you.
This is part one of how to ask for a review, and by the way, did anything I said or did Justin, sound pushy or aggressive or manipulative in anyway, or anything like that?
Justin: no, and it didn’t appear needy either
Bob: no, needy or pushy right. So here’s the thing, it’s not needy because I provide a great service and as much as love your review, I don’t need it, I would like to have it but I don’t need it, and the last thing I want to do is come across as pushy. Now I’ve seen other people say I want you to write the review in the office, you can’t leave until you do this, and by the way, after sending out over a million review requests, we’ve learned a couple of things, and here they are; Half of your patients are absolutely delighted to write a review, while they are sitting in your office, the other half people like me, I’m not a very good speller, I don’t want you hoovering over me, nor do I even want to be in your office while I write a review. I find that pushy and aggressive and manipulative. So let’s look at these seven triggers, and so far I think I’ve given you four of them. So here they are: ‘Justin may I ask you a favor’ – now there’s a term called ‘commitment consistence’, when you say yes to something small, you’re very likely to do something big, not only that, but this is something people don’t really understand, I’ve got a Blog called ‘likability guide’ and I’m fascinated by what makes people likable, and what you’ll discover, 1 of the 12 laws of likability that I’ve kind of uncovered here, is this; that we like the people we help – it’s not that we like the people who help us, we like the people we help. So when someone goes out of their way to write a review for you on google or yelp, they actually like you more, they trust you more, by the mere fact that they have taken the effort to do you a favor. So the first trigger is, Commitment consistency – ‘may I ask you a favor?’ – ‘yes’. Alright now we’re setting up part 2; the next thing I said, and this is important, ‘later today, or tonight or, whenever it’s convenient for you’, let me stop right there, and Justin did you notice when I said that, you immediately where like ‘phew, he’s not going to ask me to write the review while I’m sitting in the chair’, did you get that feeling? so okay, ‘later today or tonight, or whenever its convenient for you”, now the reason I say ‘whenever its convenient for you’ is because half of your patients, guess what, it’s convenient for them, right now, and that’s when they want to do it, and that’s okay for me. So this trigger number 2; give your patients the opportunity to feel comfortable that they can write the review at their leisure. That is so important, because if you don’t do that, it’s going to sound pushy – ‘later today or tonight, or whenever it’s convenient for you’.
Here’s the next thing; ‘would you mind taking a couple of minutes to write a review for us on google’ – now you notice I didn’t pause there ‘would you mind taking just a couple of minutes to write a review for us on google and the reason I ask is this – when you do, it helps other people learn about our practice, through your experience here, would you do that for me?’ now, what I want you to notice is I didn’t say ‘hey Justin would you write me a 5 star review, would you say something nice on the internet’, I don’t have to do that, because the 5 star review system and all these other systems, they will all separate the people that want to give you good review from those that don’t. And by the way it’s a very honorable reason, the reason I’m asking is, I want you to know that your feedback is so important, I trust you, ‘I want other people to learn about my practice trough your experience’. So that’s the third of these 7 characteristics. Now let’s go on, and I’ll give you the remaining 4.
Now, are you ready?
Justin: yes
Bob: so you’ve just said ‘yeah Bob, I’m happy to write a review’, now the next thing I’m going to say, believe it or not, is the most important three words you’re going to use in the entire in the entire process, here we go. Justin, before you go. Let me stop right there; before you go, now I want you to notice when I said that, you’re like ‘okay, something is going to happen before I leave, before I leave the office’. And let’s go through the rest of it. Before you go; I’d like to ask one of the ladies out front if they will send you a text with a link in it to where you can write a review, and Justin I want you to know, I’m really looking forward to reading your comments.
Now, let’s stop and evaluate what we just did. Point number 4 is, before you go, now this is what we’ve discovered Justin, if that patient walks out of your office, I don’t mean the backroom, I don’t mean the backroom, they literally walk out into the hallway, and you send the review request to them, whether you’re doing it on your own by email or texting or in our case you can do both, if they are out of that office, they are not going to write a review, they won’t do it, so you absolutely have to, and I fully don’t understand the reason for this, but you’ve got to send the review request while they are watching you do it.
Now in about 20% of the cases, the dentist are sending it from the backroom and that’s fine, in about 80% of the cases, they walk the patient up front and they say ‘Julie, Bob has offered to write a review, would you please send him a review request’ Now this is actually the fourth of the seven components; when you walk someone up front, a patient up front and Julie looks up and says, ‘Bob thank you so much for offering to write a review for us, it means so the world to us’, here’s the fourth trigger, now you have at least 2 people that know, you’ve offered to write a review, I don’t want to let you and Julie down. Julie looks up and says ‘Bob, thanks so much for offering to write a review’ etcera, but once I say ‘Before you go’, you now know that I’m going to get this review to you and you’re going to discover or quickly identify the fact that, I now know you know, you got the request, there are no excuses; ‘I didn’t get the request, when did you send it’, you’re standing right there with me, I don’t expect you to write the review, but I’m going to send it to you and you’re going to literally get it before you literally walk out of the office, because emails and text they, before you go here’s the next one, ‘I’d like to ask one of the ladies up front if they’ll send you an email or a text with a link in it to where you can write a review’ now, notice I’m telling you exactly what it is that you’re wondering, and that is ‘Bob, what is it that you want me to do’, this is what I want you to do, before you go, I’m going to send email or text with a link in it, to where you can leave a review. Now if you’re doing this on your own, you need to get something in their hands with the link so it’s really easy to get where they need to go. Now the five star review system of course, you can send text or email or both, and with google particularly, we have 5 different links, depending on what you’re client clicks on, to ensure that they get to your google page as quickly as possible.
And the last thing I said, and Justin we learned this, this was bought to our attention by a guy that runs used cars in south west Florida, and he called me he was so excited, he said ‘Bob, you won’t believe this, the number of people that are writing reviews has skyrocketed’, and I said ‘Tom, what are you doing differently’, he said ‘the only thing I’m doing differently after I said them to write a review is this’. And this is the seventh trigger, ‘I’m really looking forward to reading your comments’, and he said ‘boy the moment I say that to them, there’s like a little trigger that goes off in their head’, and the trigger sounds like this, ‘uh oh, their looking for it, I don’t want to let them down, I’m going to go ahead and write that review’. So that’s the way to ask for a review, and how to send it, and those are the seven triggers without being pushy and without being needy, and by the way, lastly; if you’re asking people to write reviews, and you feel as though like you’re coming across as needy, then you probably are. And if you feel like you’re coming across as pushy, you probably are, you’re not doing it right, stop and re-evaluate what you’re doing.
So there you have it.
Justin: wow that’s, you know I couldn’t agree more with the self-assessment, when you feel pushy, when you feel needy, I couldn’t agree more. If we could record the dentist who feel needy and pushy, and see how they’re saying it. I’m sure they would agree with you, that the reason they feel that way is because it’s real.
Bob: and by the way, just an interesting note, I can’t tell you how many dentist have a high level of trepidation before they ask their first patient and when they follow this guide line, a lot of them really study this, when they ask their first patient to write a review the response is lie this ‘oh my gosh I’d love to write a review I love you guys I love coming here’ and all of a sudden the dentist and the hygienist, who by the way, when they’re the ones asking for the review, in lo of the assistant or the front office staff, they get 3 times the response, because we as patients, we want to reward the person that’s actually providing the service, and the most amazing thing is, after they’ve done that, they’re like ‘this was a very pleasant experience, I want ask the next person, I want them to tell me how great I am’ and you get in this self-fulfilling prophesy of asking, people love you, you want to ask again. But until you ask the first time, and you ask without being pushy and without being needy, and you realise your patients doing you a favor and they want to do you a favor, you’ll never experience what this feeling is like, it’s pretty neat.
Justin: that’s great because you’re talking about momentum, you know; success breeds success. And that’s what a lot of the dentist who are in our audience understand, is that, once you get past that first hurdle, you can just keep going, momentum.
Bob: yeah. And along those lines, I want to mention, you know, once we sign these people up to this system, or they purchase our system, we evaluate them, we don’t sell it to just anybody, if you don’t have a good score on the internet we don’t let you use the service, we don’t want to be marketing a practice that doesn’t do a good job, but we also make sure you’re happy and feel comfortable sending a review request. And the most difficult thing I add is even though we do these 50 minutes of training and really help people overcome the fear of asking, the people that ask right after the training, they do great. We have people that get you know, 20-25-30 google reviews in a couple of weeks because they start and they get caught up, others they never start, they never asked the first patient. And that’s so unfortunate because they have this amazing tool in their hands, and they don’t use it. So it’s a matter of, look, if you’re going to do it – do it, if you’re not going to do it – don’t do it, but don’t pussy-foot around it, either do it and know it’s going to be awesome, or let it go and spend your time and energy somewhere else. And I mean that, because you don’t want to be feeling bad about yourself because you can’t get the courage to ask. It’s just unfortunate.
Justin: yeah, for sure, for sure. You know, my background is in SEO, I do dental SEO, and that pretty much what I specialize in, and by pretty much I mean absolutely, and you know, I find that there are SEO’s made up of about 200 or so different factors, maybe more, and one of those factors is reviews. Have you been able to notice any kind of difference in the SEO of different dentist as they take on your program?
Bob: absolutely, I mean, oh my gosh absolutely. I’m going to say something, I know you know this, of those 200 factors, about 4 of them have to do with reviews, and those 4 factors, and where talking about impacting ranking here Justin, as you know, the 4 factors that impacting your ranking so you can get into that 3-pack, are going to be the number of reviews you have, you want more than your competitors, Your score, so if you have a 5.0 and they have a 4.8, you want to have a higher score, the third one is velocity, which means, are you getting reviews at a consistent rate, you’re not just surging and stopping, and are you getting reviews on sites other than google. Google pays very close attention to that, are you getting reviews on yellow pages and Yelp which are the two biggies. And we have for example one of clients is a dentist in Orlando, there’s 700 dentists’ in Orlando, she’s nowhere near the city center, but if you do a search for ‘Dentist, Orlando’, she floats to the very top, 125 google reviews, something or other, all about beautiful smiles, the last time I talked to her she said ‘Bob, we get 10 calls a day, because we’re up high in the search engines, and 5 of those people turn into customers’ now Justin, I just gave a cursory view of the reviews and ranking, but you know a lot more about this then I do, what are some of the factors you’ve seen with respect to SEO and reviews, that move people up in that local search list?
Justin: yeah, you know SEO is essentially 2 major factors and that is; authority and relevancy. So if we can basically make you relevant, which has to do with the content on the website and the kind of links that you’re getting, and the kind of reviews you’re getting, which reviews are content, you know there’s the old maxim -content is king, which I think is really over-simplifying, because I think a lot of dentist think of ‘oh if I write, if I blog – that’s content’ the best kind of content you can have, is content you can have, is content other people have written about how great you are, you never toot your own horn about how great you are, that’s braggadocios, but what you can do is you can have other people brag about how great you are, to almost an absurd degree, you know, like they can put raving, glowing reviews, and as long as they’re honest and believable and clear and memorable, they’re going to really strike at the heart of what SEO is, which is, you take it from Google’s perspective, ‘who should I put up at the top’, it’s not random, it’s not arbitrary, they don’t rotate in a cycle. The best of the crop rises to the top; you know the cream of the crop rises to the top. So what google is looking for is ‘what is the cream of the crop, how can we measure who’s the best’, and reviews are a really great way for them to do that. So I agree, it’s one of those factors, and it has a lot to do with the click through rate, so if you have 5 stars or even 4.9 or 4.8, you’re gonna get a lot better click through rate then the person who has 2.5 stars. They can get ranked at the top, or a person with no reviews, they may be ranked at the top, but that’s not probably going to last forever, because the dentist whose doing great work, the dentist whose putting out good content, truly is patient based, that’s what Google’s looking for – when I say google I mean all the search engines. As you know.
Bob: Right, well you know like you say, reviews are way more important as a conversion factor as they are as a ranking factor, certainly they help your ranking, but nothing is as powerful for conversion then having a perfect 5.0 star rating. And I’ll tell you in an anomaly I see, I find this amazing – people advertise on yelp, they spend money on yelp, and I’m neither here nor there, I’m actually a yelp fan, I don’t like the way they do business, but if you don’t understand how yelp works, you are missing out on huge opportunities, but this is what I don’t get, people have a 3-3.5 star rating on yelp, they don’t really care about it, but they advertise on yelp, what they’re not thinking of is, they’re paying yelp to tell the entire world that they have a 3.5 star rating. That’s horrible, I wouldn’t pay yelp one penny until I had a 5.0 or a 4.9 rating, and yelp isn’t going to do that for you, you’ve got to get those reviews yourself. Now if I had a 4.9 or 5.0 rating on yelp, hey then I would consider advertising and let yelp tell the world about me. I would never do that if I had people that were higher rated then me, how stupid would that be.
Justin: right.
Bob: yeah, anyway.
Justin: that’s huge, and a lot of dentist actually don’t even know that they’re on yelp.
Bob: do you mind if I talk about this for a minute, because I find it the biggest misunderstanding that dentists’ have on yelp, they’re afraid of yelp, for 99% unfounded reasons, and when I’m on Dental Town, I read what other dentists’ are saying about how evil yelp is, none of our customers are saying that because they’re all benefiting from their awesome yelp reviews, but here’s what a lot of dentists’ don’t get. They will tell me ‘Bob, we don’t have any yelper’s in our community’ let me just assume that’s true okay, lets assure that’s true, but did you know that yahoo shows yelp reviews, Bing shows yelp reviews, did you know that you’re on a an apple iPhone and you’re using Siri, and you’re looking for the best dentist in your community, they show that by your yelp reviews, did you know that? most dentist are like ‘I didn’t know that’, well you only need a handful of great reviews if nobody in your community is a yelper, and you’re going to be the highest rated person on iPhone’s, yahoo, Bing, and even the person that uses yelp for goodness sake’s, so there is nothing to fear with yelp, the only thing to fear with yelp is if you have a bad rating because you’ve not paid attention to your yelp listing and yelp’s strong-arming you into spending money with them. I don’t know, yelp is a fabulous marketing avenue, if you understand how to do it. That’s it, take control, get good reviews, and let everything else happen on its own because it will.
Justin: yeah and I think there is, and you know, in defense of those dentist who are lamenting about yelp, I think there are some valid concerns about, I mean, yelp can destroy your dental practice, you know. If you have a bad rating, if you’re not getting those positive reviews put up, but the bottom line is, that the responsibility falls on you, the dentist, it falls on your shoulders to do something about it.
And as long as that is the attitude, you’re not going to have time to sit around and complain about Yelps business model, because you’re too worried about your business model. Definitely.
Bob: Absolutely
Justin: You know kind of in that same vein, I was hoping you could give us 2 of the most common dangers or pitfalls that some dentists’ fall into when asking for reviews.
Bob: well, I’ll tell you exactly what the 2 are. The 2 biggest downsides, why aren’t dentist’s getting reviews on google and yelp, number one; they’re not asking, and along that line they don’t know how to ask, and number two; they’re not making it super super super easy for their patients to get to where they need to go to write a review, whether it’s on a phone or desktop or a laptop. You know, a lot of dentist are asking patients to write reviews and that’s it. So, they’re asking, they’re doing part one, but part two, they’re expecting patient to just on their own, sit down and it ain’t gonna happen. Other people don’t ask, they do a fabulous job, what I’m saying is, maybe these people aren’t asking, but they’re handing out a piece of paper showing people where to go so they’re making it a little easier, but if you don’t ask someone to write a review, it isn’t going to happen.
So those are the two pitfalls, they don’t ask and they don’t make it easy; it’s that simple really.
Justin: yeah, and that’s part of what your system helps resolve.
Bob: right, and you know what’s interesting about this Justin is, I’m really proud of our system, we have almost a thousand dentists’ that use it, we have dentist that are getting 10 google reviews every week, they’re just killing’ it, we have others who have over 600 google reviews, over a hundred yelp reviews. It’s not the system that makes it happen, because we have another dentist right across the street that’s using the exactly the same systems, it’s set in exactly the same way, and because they’re not asking and they’re not sending the same why, they’re not going to get the same, literally phenomenal results everybody else is, they’re not gonna do it.
So, as proud as I am of the system, I can honestly tell you, that 95% of your ability to get a google and yelp review, and a referral by the way, has absolutely nothing to do with the 5 star review system or any system you use, it has to do with you. Because here is what I know to be true, if your customers love you, they will jump through hoops to write wonderful reviews for you; if it’s mediocre or fair, I don’t care how easy you make it for them to write a review, they’re not gonna do it.
So, you know the bottom line is, it is 100%, in the dentists’ lap and the hygienists lap, really, quite frankly those two, and if they’re using a system to make sure that it is sent to the patient, and now where going to put a little responsibility on the assistant or the folks up front. But your ability to get reviews has to do with you; a system is just a tool, if you use it properly you’re going to get phenomenal results, like everybody else does, but if you don’t get it right, you’re going to languish, you’re going to be like ‘why do I even have this thing?’.
The ball is in your court, it really is.
Justin: I really like that sentiment because of the mood on Dental Town when talking about yelp, I mean I do want to say that yelp has, as any business does, ways that they can improve. So I don’t want any of our listeners who have had a bad experiences with yelp to feel like we’re ostracizing them; I see very clearly that there are flaws in the business model. But, I like the sentiment about talking personal responsibility, that’s really what it’s about. And I like how you’re not selling this system, even though it is very effective, for many many many dentists’ who have used it, you know you’ve got a thread there on Dental Town, it’s quite impressive.
Bob: there are a lot of nice people saying a lot of nice things, that’s true.
Justin: yeah, and so, I mean we have faith in that system, but I like how you’re not trying to take credit for all of it, I think that says a lot about you as a person, that you’re not saying ‘it’s all me, it’s all Maui Bob, it’s not the dentist, it’s not the hygienist, it’s all me’
Bob: so you didn’t see me 3 years ago when was doing that.
No, and it doesn’t take us long to figure out its not us, you know, we just make the best tool we can to make it as easy as possible, but you know as well as I do, if you’re not going to do a great job and you’re not going to ask and you’re not going to make it easy then nothing is going to happen, but if you do a great job, amazing things happen, it’s not just reviews, reviews is just a simple thing, the byproduct of the reviews is more business, and by the way one of the neatest things of all, and I get this from a lot of dentists’ that are like ‘Bob, we got tons of reviews, it’s wonderful but the neatest thing of all is, now when people call us, they call and they say ‘I found you on google, are you still taking patients” they assume you’re not because your reputation is so awesome. ‘We love to hear that ‘are you still taking patients” maybe we are maybe we’re not I don’t know, so, anyway. It is the dentist and the hygienist and it’s very clear, you don’t have to be doing this very long to realize, it doesn’t matter what system you have, the system is just a tool, and so, that’s it.
Justin: so, you worked with some really all-star dentists’, a lot of them, are there any dentists’ who, they might come across this program, I’m wondering, are there any dentists’ that you don’t work with?
Bob: Oh yeah of course there are. You know if you have a 3.5 star rating or less on google or yelp, we don’t, we’re not a reputation enhancement business, so we don’t sell our system, and you know that’s our right, which is in our terms of service. We don’t want to sell our system to somebody that has a bad reputation, now if you improve your reputation on the internet, however you want to do that, and then you want to invest in our system, then we’ll do that. There are very few exceptions to that rule, if you bought a business and it had a bad reputation and you’re starting from scratch, then, yeah.
We don’t work with people that are not willing to ask their patients to write a review and who are not willing to send a review request while they’re with a patient. Now I will tell you, about 90% of our customers use: Demand Force, Light House, YAPI, Revenue well, Smile Reminder, Sesame; one of those, but they’ve all said ‘Bob, we’re not getting reviews where they matter, we need to compete where people are looking for a dentist on google and Yelp’, and when people use our system properly, I’ve never seen a tool that’s better at getting those reviews there, some people are so ingrained with not asking because all of those services don’t require that you ask, and not engaging with the patient to send a request, that their habit of not engaging with the patient is so strong, they cannot overcome the ensue of actually asking and sending. And if they go well ‘Bob, I don’t know how to actually engage with the patient to send it’, I always tell them, ‘don’t buy our system, it’s not going to work for you’. And again, I know, I don’t need to tell them this, it’s not that it’s not our system that’s not going to work, I don’t care whose system you have, it’s not going to work if you’re not going to ask and send. Now, are you getting hundreds of thousands of wonderful Demand Force, Light House, Shappy, Smile Reminder, Revenue Well testimonials, of course you are, people are happy to write testimonials, based on an email, but if you actually go in and look, you probably going to find that less than 10% of the people that you send those requests to by email actually respond and none of them are on google or Yelp. People that use our system properly, asking and sending, they get as many as 70-80% of patients responding, and a huge percentage of those people are actually going to google and Yelp and are writing a review.
So, you know, we don’t work with people that aren’t willing to do what they need to do, and quite frankly, Justin, I don’t want to waste their time and their money, I would much rather work with the people that I know is going to have a good outcome, and in a matter of four minutes of interviewing with these folks I can tell if they’re a good match immediately. And then it’s up to them to look at the systems and ask me all the questions they want and watch our video to see if our system is the best match for them, and most of the time it is.
Justin: so the ideal candidate for five star reviews system would definitely be somebody who’s willing to take personal responsibility to build their own reviews.
Bob: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know the other thing is, you have dentist that have no reviews, 5 reviews, 50 reviews, 100 reviews, the people that go gaga over our system are the ones that have 100 reviews already. Because they look at our system and they say ‘where have you been’, and this is so easy to these requests to these people, texts and email, you’ve got this awesome reminder that doubles the response rate, and we don’t have to worry about it. ‘Where have you been?’, so they jump on our system and they massively accelerate number of reviews they get. People that don’t understand the review process, people that aren’t really that good with their patients, nah our systems really not a good match, they need to look at a different avenue for generating reviews and referrals, because our system isn’t going to be a good match for those guys.
Justin: that’s excellent, I have a client actually, one of the reasons why I took on their case, even though it was kind of a tough set of key words, a big metropolis area for SEO, actually we’re knocking it out of the park, we’re months of schedule, I’m just bragging, one of the things that attracted me to their practice was that they had only been in business for a short while, but they had something like 70+ reviews, 5 star reviews, I mean, it’s just unheard of. You have these guys that have been around for 10 years and they only have like 14, so I thought that was really impressive. So, I mean for those dentists’ who are looking for the best service providers, the best specialists’, that’s one of the first things that I look at is, if he’s not going to be good with his patients, he not going to be good with me.
Bob: Right and you know I want to throw out something most people never think about. When a patient takes the time to write a review for you, number 1, I always encourage you or someone at your office, and when I get resistance about this it tells me something about that practice. Imagine that I write this really awesome 5 star review for you, now nobody expects to hear back when you write a review on google, nobody expects it, but I want you to just imagine for a second Justin, how I would feel if you called me and you said ‘hey Bob, the reason I’m calling is, I just saw your review on google, I can’t tell you how much that means to me and everyone here, thank you’ do you know what that would do for me, that would tell me that ‘wow, I wrote the review for the guy that appreciates it’, in my head, psychologically you’ve gone from here to here, I’m going to tell everybody I know about you. Now, when I recommend this to different dental offices before they buy this systems and just kind of showing them how to do it, 1 in about every 8 or 10 offices, I hear resistance, ‘we don’t have time to do that, we’re not going to do that’, and all of a sudden I go ‘you know what, this isn’t a good system for you, you don’t treat your customers in the manner you need to, you don’t understand that this isn’t just about getting reviews and SEO, it’s about how you do business’, and when I hear that, the last thing I say before I get off the phone in our demo with them is I go ‘you know, the system is not a good match for you, it’s just not a good match, let’s just move on, I hope you learnt some great things about getting reviews, but it’s not a good match’, and they’re like ‘what do you mean, what do you mean’ and I don’t need to go in to detail, but I know in my heart, if you’re not willing to thank someone for writing a review, you don’t need to have access to a system that’s all about interaction. The other thing that people don’t realize is, when someone writes a review, even when you don’t respond to them, there’s a whole other level of commitment consistency. ‘I publicly said something nice about your practice, because I did that everything from this point forward that I say about you is at a different level’. The mere fact that patients say nice things about you, takes that patient to an entirely different level; they are no longer a fan, they are a raving fan, and even if it did not help you with ranking and all of the other wonderful things that reviews did, just the mere fact it brings your patient from here to here, with how they think about you, that in it of itself, is a fabulous reason to ask people to write reviews for you.
Justin: I’m sure you have tons of great testimonials, get references, lots of dentists’ who you’ve help grow their practice, could you share with us just one case study that comes to mind as far as a real success?
Bob: yeah, now I’ll tell you this too. Most of our dentists don’t want to be telling other dentists’ about what they’re doing, it’s just because they don’t want their competitors doing the same thing, but I’m happy to tell you about it. In the last 2 weeks we’ve had 2 dentists’ email me, and this is very typical; ‘Bob, I’ve gone from 6-28 google reviews in less than 2 weeks’ When I called that dentist I said ‘how are you doing it?’ he said ‘we’re following you’re training program word for word, we’re asking, we’re sending right away, we’re just doing exactly what you said’. I had one last week that said ‘Bob we’ve gotten 18 reviews in like 7 days’, I ask them I said ‘What are you doing differently from the training?’ ‘We’re just doing exactly what you said’. I also want you to know we’ve got dentists’ that have had the system for a month, they’ve got no reviews, nothing, they’re not asking, they’re not sending. There’s tons of, here is an example, this is not a dental example, it’s called total access urgent care, they are a, and they don’t mind me talking about them, they are and urgent care facility in St Louis, they have 6 or 7 facilities, they are constantly bringing on new facilities, and they tell me every time I talk to them, ‘this is the single best thing that we have ever done to generate new business, we cannot believe how it’s enhancing our reputation and how many people are saying ‘we heard about you through google”, they have 600+ google reviews for one of their places, over 100 5 star Yelp reviews, their other offices which are newer have 300 google reviews, 200 google reviews, they’re using the system properly. Dr Tejumade St Mathew-Daniels in Orlando, she was using Demand Force, called me and said ‘Bob, look we have thousands of Demand Force views, it’s doing nothing can you help us’, she took on the program, used it exactly as needed to, she’s up to I don’t know, 125 5 star google reviews and as I mentioned, theirs over 700 dentist in Orlando, she’s nowhere near the city center, which as you know Justin, is huge and very important factor, one of the most important, but google has seen that they are so relevant and one of those factors is the reviews, that they have expanded the map of Orlando to include her, and then if click on more, we have another dentist whose in like the fifth or sixth position with 50 or 60 5 star reviews, she’s even further from downtown Orlando, but because of their reviews google has seen both of these guys so valuable. Now, ‘All about beautiful smiles’, when I talk to Dr St Mathew-Daniels, she said she’s getting something like 10 calls a day based on her google ranking and 5 of those are converted to customers every day. I don’t even know how that is possible. Now this isn’t at the top of Ry la Missouri for goodness sakes, it’s Orlando, Florida, so when you dominate you’re community, good things happen, so every week I can tell you a new success story. I just found out the highest rated orthodontist and the highest rated pediatric dentist in the state of Illinois uses or system, and I’m sure that’s true in most of the states, I just haven’t had a chance to look, and the thing is, we don’t want people breaking the rules, you know, it’s against the law and it’s against all the terms of service, to reward someone for writing a review, and the thing is, how would you feel about me if I said ‘hey, I’ll give you $20 Justin, if you write a review for me’, are you kidding me? That’s horrible, and it’s against the law, but you don’t need to do that when you provide great service and you ask in a proper way, you can massively outperform people getting reviews then people who are paying people to write reviews.
Anyway man, I could go on and on about this all day, but, every week there’s somebody new that surges to the top, they’re doing some amazing things, and the other thing about sitting in my chair for example, we send out as many review requests in a week, as most dental practices while send out in their entire existence, so we can see trends so quickly that they will never see, and when we see that, we always try and share that with our customers. You know, do this, do that, try this, try that, and they get just great, great results. Anyway thank you.
Justin: thanks excellent you know it kind of goes in, kind of the theme of this show is that, we should all try to test what works and what doesn’t work, that today it’s SEO, but tomorrow maybe it’s something else, or maybe the way that SEO is being done needs to be changed, and I really appreciate that, and that’s why you’re a guest on this show, you get that, you understand, as our viewers do, it’s really about doing what works and that isn’t always the same for every dental practice, and I do also appreciate the other side that is, ‘hey, here is a proven model, when you ask this way, these are seven psychological triggers that we’ve broken down into basically a science and if you do it the right way, if you’re the right dentist, to take on this take, then you’re going to do it, you’re going to do it really well’. Yeah, I really appreciate that so adaptation in a word, and it sounds like because of your data, you’re able to do that really well. Well I think this has been really really a successful interview for our viewers, and I just want to plug them in to what you’re doing, all the data that you have, your wealth of experience, the adaptations that you’ve made, your constant continual dedication to improving your business and yourself, I think that’s going to rub off on the dentist that are watching the show. Man, let’s talk about where they can find you, where they can tie into your success, so that they can grow their practice.
Bob: Well thank you so, the other thing I want to note is, we don’t have any long term commitments, we work on karma, and what I mean by that is if you don’t use the system properly, and you’re not getting the results that everybody else does, just call us and go ‘Bob, look I don’t want to pay for this system anymore’, that’s it we stop, we don’t do that, and by the way that causes us to make sure we’re doing everything we can to help you do what you need to do.
So, if this interview catches you’re fancy, I encourage you to go to ‘FiveStarReviewSystem.com’, there’s a video that says how it works, you can watch how it works, if you like what you see there, I encourage you to call us, we’re in Hawaii, so it’s generally going to be earlier here then it is where you are, but the good news is, we’re here till 10 o’clock at night, so that’s all good. And then let’s have a conversation, let’s figure out if it’s a good thing, because I don’t want you thinking it is, when maybe it’s not, and I don’t want me thinking it is when maybe it’s not either. If you like that, then we’ll set the system up for you in demo mode, it’s full working demo mode, you can see it work with the text and emails and coupons and flyers, and at that point, if you want to invest in it, then do so. We have 2 different price points, the least expensive is our premium service it’s $99.00 a month, there’s a $99.00 set-up fee, and Justin, as I was mentioning, anyone of your listeners that tells us they heard about the system through you, just mention Justin’s name, and Justin I think we sent you a four digit code, did we not?
Justin: that’s right yeah, 6354, is our code, if you are a listener of the Dental Marketing Guy show, and you heard about this system,6354; that’s the number that you can enter as a promo code, and what do we get for that?
Bob: So, when you do, instead of paying the $99.00 setup, startup training fee, and by the way the training is a 50 minute full on on-boarding program with you and you staff, instead of paying $99.00 for that, we take $50.00 off, so it’s only a $49.00 setup fee, so that’s the thing to do. And, that’s what I’d encourage you to do, You know the thing is, do you need to do this, well I would encourage you to do a search for your business, not a search for business, a search for dentists in your community. There’s all kinds of different things that show up, reviews help you in local search, Justin, you help people with local search, you also help people organically move up, you help them with google ad words in assuming as well, correct?
Justin: yes
Bob: so you help people with all of these different things, look and see where you are. If you’re not showing up when someone does a search for a dentist in your community, then I promise you, that either Justin, or myself can help you. I can help you with the reviews; Justin can help you with everything else. If you see your competition has a better reputation, more reviews, or higher in the search engines, I promise you, you need our help, and getting reviews, is the low hanging fruit, it is the least expensive, most effective way to help yourself move up and get new business. But yeah, give us a call, You’ll find us on FiveStarReviewSystem.Com, put in that code and Madge can help you get started, maybe you can see the new record breaker, you can get more than 45 google reviews in a month, that would be awesome.
Justin: Excellent, that code once again is: 6354, and wow, Maui Bob, I thank you very much, it’s been a huge honor, I think we really got some beneficial information, and hopefully our listeners understand how reviews work, how it ties in to SEO, how it ties into the conversion rate, case acceptance rate, everything is tied in to reviews in one way or another. I’ll tell you, we can get you ranked, but if you don’t have those reviews, it can be tough to make them pick up the phone and call. Let’s get those reviews going, once again that code is: 6354, for $50 off to start off that first month.
Maui Bob, let me tell you, let’s let you take it away here.
Bob: well, I’ll just wrap it up and say thanks a million I really appreciate, Justin, you taking the time to let me do this, and for all of you that are listening, I honest to goodness, I wish you the best, know that when you ask a patient to write a review for you, they want to do it for you, they really do, and then just do what you can to make it as easy as possible for them to write a review, it is rewarding, believe me, it is just as rewarding for them to write a review for you, as it is for you to see the review, and the last thing I would say is when you get a review, and you will, don’t let it slide, please, thank your patient for writing a review and I tell you it will mean more to them, then you could ever imagine. Justin thanks a million.
Justin: Thank you Maui Bob, you’ve been listening to the Dental Marketing Guy Show, DentalMarketingGuy.com, I’m Justin Morgan, the Dental Marketing Guy. Till next time, thanks Bob.
Bob: Thanks Justin.
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Justin: welcome to the Dental Marketing Guy Show, Today we have Dr Christopher Phelps. Dr Christopher Phelps, thank you for joining me
Dr Phelps: my pleasure
Justin: it is a huge honor to interview you and let’s just delve right into this. I’m interested in learning, what’s your background as a dentist?
Dr Phelps: I’ve been in clinical practice for over 13 years. I graduated from dental school in 2013, I started out in a little old house that I, and the original partner that I had started with, had renovated to a dental office. And it was kind of unique in that we had a true fee for service office, so if our patients, you know we charged them $1200 for a crown that day, our patients would pay us $1200 that day and then we would file their insurance and they would wait on the money over the next couple of weeks, so it was kind of a unique situation.
And over the next few years, I’d say about 7 years, I was about to grow our business from 4 locations, from 1 and grown from about $600 000 in revenue, to about $6 500 000.
We had quite a rise, and then I did something crazy, and that most people would find insane, is that, I sold 2 of our most successful practices, the 2 with the least amount of debt, so they had the most profit to them, and I took over 2 of our dental practices that were the highest debt practices, that were producing the least amount, and kind of created some challenges for myself, but I did that because I felt like they had more potential for the 2 if I could focus on their capacity, instead of growing for growth sake. And so over the next 3 years, I grew those 2 practices from $1.6 million in combined revenue, to just over $6.2 million in combined revenue. So basically I had been able to do with 2 offices, what I had been able to do before, with 4 before.
I’ve actually just wrapped up the sale of one of those 2 offices, for profit and now have a plan to; I’m trying to do $6 million with one office.
Justin: nice, that’s excellent, and you know I’m wondering for marketing strategies’, obviously you have a lot of specific tips that you can get in to throughout the course of this show, was there kind of an ah-huh moment? Like where, you realized ‘oh, what I’m doing is really working’
Dr Phelps: yeah, definitely, I would definitely say it was within those first couple of years in practice, because the dentist I went in with had had associates in the past, but none of them seemed to work out, so I kind of realized in that moment, kind of 2 ah-huh moments in my marketing if you will, that why that didn’t work was because, he didn’t have enough patient’s for his other associates, and he thought that if he would just back down his time and put somebody else in the office, then his patients would just go see the new guy, but in reality is, they won’t do that, they’ll just wait and not get their treatment done until their dentist can see them.
So, these other guys didn’t understand how to market themselves and how to get more opportunities in front of them. So, my ah-huh moment was when I really saw the power of using my marketing ideas, to get myself more opportunities, and the benefit of that was, I doubled the business that first year, it went from $600 000 to $1.2 million and so I realized very quickly ‘hey, this marketing thing can work!’ and it can work well as a result.
The second ah-huh moment came, going back to when I sold those 2 offices for profit and took over my least producing ones, you know I realized, we’re spending $36 000 a month in marketing, and only getting 60 new patients for my efforts, 30 at one office and 30 at the other office. So I knew I had a huge problem, I knew my marketing wasn’t working for what I needed, but I didn’t know why. So I set out to create something to give me those answers, to get the data that I needed to make smart decisions. And my next ah-huh moment for marketing, was getting that, once I had the data and saw what was going on, it really changed the scope of how I do marketing and how effective it can be.
Justin: excellent, was there a time in your career, before you were a dentist, or at some point in your career as a dentist, where you started studying marketing?
Dr Phelps: I didn’t really start studying marketing until I got out of dental school. I had all these ideas in my head on how I want to promote myself, and I knew basic advertising tenants but never had any formal advertising training, and I would say to date I still haven’t had any real formal advertising training, it’s been more of what they call ‘the school of hard knocks’ trial and error, and mistakes made and lessons learned, and luckily I’ve been able to recover from those mistakes faster than most would. Sort of stumbled upon somethings. But I’ve heard some get marketers out there like Dan Kennedy, and others, and I try to take away, you know little nuggets away from everybody out here taught from marketing, you know, on the few times that I did listen to somebody.
Justin: excellent, you know you talk about the school of hard knocks; you know it sounds like you’ve got a wealth of experience in not only helping yourself, but helping other dentists’. Can you tell us a little bit about the training you provide, with respect to increasing case acceptance rates specifically, for instances, I think you have 2 top tips that I really have appreciate hearing about, on how to increase case acceptance rates.
Dr Phelps: yea definitely, well if you flash back again to the issues happening in my 2 practices that were under producing, you know, I didn’t mention this but we actually had 2 consecutive years of a million dollars of growth and revenue at each location. And then we had another half million in the next year as we started getting towards our capacity, and one of things, one of the secrets of that was obviously was getting new patients in the chair, but the second secret was increasing case acceptance, getting more people to say yes to the treatment recommendations that we put in front of them and so, how did we do that. Well that was when I stumbled upon the research and the works of a guy named Dr Robert Cialdini, who wrote a book called ‘influence: the science in practice’, and in that book, and in his training’s he taught us about 6 key principles of influence. If you understand them, you can set the stage for more people to say yes to whatever you’re going to ask them. So that’s kind of what I spent a lot of my time doing training’s on. One of that components is ‘how to use these principles to increase case acceptance’, and one of the principles we used, even though it’s not technically a principle, but it should be, is called ‘contrast phenomenal’, and so the idea is that we should always start with our biggest and best option first. And the studies show that when we do that, you know I ask people this questions, I say “what takes more energy, going up the stairs or going down the stairs?”
Justin: going up the stairs, definitely more energy.
Dr Phelps: right? And if all things were considered equal and people had a choice, which do you think they would rather do, go up the stairs or go down the stairs?
Justin: go down the stairs for sure.
Dr Phelps: go down the stairs, and the question is, why? Well because there is a fundamental law in nature that applies to all of us, that is, what? things want to take the path of least resistance, right?, they want to choose the path that has less energy, and so, when we’ve been taught treatment plans, many times we’ve been taught to take people, and what I call; take them up the price stairs, “alright Mrs Jones, your option is this for $2000, this for $4000, this for $6000 and this for $8000”. The science of persuasion tells us that if we actually just flip that around, started with our biggest and best option and went down the stairs, in contrast, every number sounds better, so, not only are you going to sell more of your biggest and best option, by starting with that first, you’re going to sell more of every other option that you present that under that.
And I’ve had practice, where we’ve, I can show you, we’ve actually increased case acceptance 340-540% of their $8000 highest priced option, okay.
Then the question becomes, so that’s my tip number 1: start with the biggest option first, then take them down the price stairs from there. So if you’ve got an option of a Crown, or a filling to present, what should you present first?
Justin: a crown
Dr Phelps: A crown, then you can talk about the filling after that, just by doing that, you’re going to get more people to go for the crown, because it’s the best.
The second rule is that, if price is if price is an issue for somebody, then we have to control what they compare our treatment to. Because the danger becomes, and in dentistry, we have to assume, every bodies concerned about price, because people think we’re expensive, and that’s just their perception. Now I’m not talking about, or we’re not diagnosing their pocket book, we’re not misinforming them, we’re not telling them treatment we need because we don’t want the fee presented to be too high, whatever they need I’ll present it, I don’t care how big the fee is, the thing I’m saying is, because I know price is an issue, I can’t just start talking about what I want to talk about first, right. I can’t throw a number 2 on them first, I can’t say “Mrs. Jones, your crown is $1200, that’s what you need’. Because what’s going to happen is, if I don’t say anything and just start with $1200, in their mind, they’re instinctively going to start comparing and contrasting that number to something else in their life, and they’re going to go ‘oh crap, my house payments aren’t $1200, my car payments aren’t $1200, I can’t afford that’ So, in a little over 5 seconds, you’ve got a mental ‘no, I can’t afford that’, and anything you say there after has been shut down, they’re not even listening.
They may be shaking their head nodding, but ultimately they’re not going to leave with an appointment because of it, and that’s really what a no is; when they don’t leave with an appointment.
So what instead is, that’s the danger, if we don’t control what they compare it to, they’re going to compare it to something that is not going to work out in our advantage. So the idea is, we need to anchor them to something else first, and then get into what we’re going to talk about. So one of the things I like to talk about is, I try to picture, what are the consequences of, if they don’t move forward with the treatment I’m recommending today, and flash forward in your mind a year from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, what’s going to happen to that tooth, is it going to get better, or is it going to get worse?
Justin: worse, definitely.
Dr Phelps: Worse. How bad is it going to get, if 10 years from now they decide to fix it, to get back to where they are today, what is that going to take and how much is that going to cost? so the idea is, and in this case “hey Mrs Jones, you see this decay here, you see this thing in the center of this X-ray, that’s your nerve, if you don’t get to this soon, the decay is going to get to the nerve and it’s going to cause an infection, it’s going to cause pain, its gonna cause more time of work, and to fix it then, it’s going to take a root canal, build up, and a crown, and that’s gonna cost $3600 to fix”, so that’s your anchor, right. In their mind they’re gonna think ‘crap I can’t afford $3600’ because again, their still gonna compare whatever number you throw at them to something, but the good news is, guess what, where not there yet, if we can get to that soon, we’re only looking at a crown and that’s $1200 and after your insurance, it’s only $800, and we’ll take $400 today, and $400 next time. And we immediately go and try and schedule that appointment.
Can you see how better that sounds?
Justin: yeah, you went from, just coming from a dental patient perspective, you went from $3600 to $400 in one conversation. It kind of feels psychologically, correct me if I’m wrong, I think the principle is kind of like this: you just saved them thousands of dollars by consulting with them.
Dr Phelps: and this is why this is ethical, in doing this approach, is because we’re telling them the truth, this is really going to happen to your tooth, if you don’t do this, so why wouldn’t you want to do this today, if we make can save you time, effort, money, energy later, right. And too many times we’re focused on the question we want to ask them, which is ‘let’s schedule the crown’, but what actually matters more is what we say or do first, then what we really want to ask them.
Justin: that’s really an incredible tip, because so many dentist listening and watching this show, I think, are going to benefit from that. Man, I can tell you, a lot of times, dentists’ and dental patients, are on a different wave length psychologically, and that makes sense. Dentists don’t want to be thought of as sales’ persons’, a lot of them don’t even want to be thought of as entrepreneurs. They want to be thought of as clinician, people who do great work and, that’s important though. Because if you can’t convince someone to take treatment, to accept treatment, you’re not going to have any cases to treat right.
So, it’s a great, great thing that you’re telling us, I’m wondering are there maybe, could you list maybe three books that have influenced, I’m sure influence is one of them, that have sort of influenced your marketing philosophy?
Dr Phelps: ah, well see, books from my marketing philosophy? I can tell you 3 books that have influenced my business philosophy for sure. The first one was ‘rich debt, poor debt’ you know, Robert Kiyosakis’ book, all about building passive income streams, so that instead of saving up all this money for a retirement nest egg that’s going to be ticking away as time goes on, what can I create that gives me income for life? Right, so moneys always coming in without me having to do anything. And that was an eye opener for me, from a business stand point, as an entrepreneur stand point. Definitely influence Dr Cialdinis’ book was huge, because it started putting language and science behind someone of the problems that I thought were going on in the practice and how I could use these things to approach them, and because it was based on science, that meant for me that it’s been tested, that means it’s been proven and more important, that means it’s reproducible. So, if I do the same things, it’s going to work just like it does in these studies, and that’s what I’ve been able to put into practice and to prove.
The third book I’d say that probably influenced me a lot I’d say ‘conative connection’ and that was a book by a lady named Kathy Kolbe. And that book was pretty powerful, because it’s all about teams and how to build the right team structure. And how to define the persons nature instincts and abilities. That was another pillar of my success was, once I figured out my team, once I figured out how to hire the right people, once I had to make sure that I had the right person, sitting in the right seat on the bus, well then I could do more with this team and they could produce more together then another combination of teams I’ve had in the past. Right, so we could really start growing as well.
So I would definitely say those are 3 of the biggest books that influenced me from a business stand point for sure.
Justin: excellent, yeah, that’s great. I hope, you know, that the readers, or the listeners, are able to take advantage of reading those books, I’ll put a link to some of the books, in amazon, so you can go start there and buy those. You too, have a book, can you tell us a little bit, I guess you’re creating an update, so the books not available just yet, at the time of airing, so could you tell us a little bit about that book and when we can expect the updated, revised version?
Dr Phelps: yeah, I’ve got the updated digital version already, so if you’d like to read it on your iPad or on in a digital format, then that is available, and then we’re working on getting it back to print, because we sold out of the first round, and then I decided well before we re-print another batch, let me tweak it slightly. Because one of the things you’ll learn about me and my Kolbe, if you understand that language, is, as a quick start, I’m always changing things, always trying to improve it and tweak it and whatever and so the book is called ‘Grow your practice with wine and cheese’ and it all kind of came about, it’s about, many of you have sat in a lecture before, or heard somebody talk about, ways that we can offset and protect ourselves from this corporate storm that’s taking over our industry, right. And if you don’t realise that the corporate storm is coming, I call it the Tsunami, then you need to wake up and realise that it is. And so you have to be on your marketing game, you have to make marketing and getting new patients in the door a science not a mystery. Okay, because if not, then you’re not going to be able to compete.
My theory was that we’re not going to be able to compete in this insurance market, so if you’re in network with all those PPO’s, well as a sole practitioner, you’re going to get out competed, because these corporate groups who are on insurance plans get better reimbursements because they have 400 locations and 400 or 800 doc’s that are in network, so that means that their insurance pays them more for their claims, they got to pay you less as a result. So now you’ve got to work harder for less money. So my theory was, we’ve got to look for other types of patients out there, let them fight over the piece of the pie, where only 35% of the population has dental insurance, well who are those other 65%, what do they look like? Well the majority of them are 55 year and older baby boomers. Baby Boomers are the retiree’s, they have the cash to spend on their teeth, and they value their health and their looks and their willing to put their money on that. But there are a couple of barriers that are keeping them from coming in your office right now and spending money on it. Right, so a barrier that keeps them from coming in the office to start with and then a barrier that keeps them from spending money when they’re in your office, so what I tried to do was something called ‘grass roots marketing’, where I go to these retirement communities, active independent living, so I’m not talking about nursing home care, or assisted living care, just communities here active retirees are together, and I, once a month, I spend an hour of my time doing wine and cheese seminars for them. and I do an educational seminar on the top 5 dental issues affecting the aging population, and I tell them a little bit about ‘here’s where we are, and here’s why we’re different from other dental practices, for those of you that have insurance, great we work with it, for those of you that don’t have insurance’ which 90% them do not ‘let me show you about my dental savings plan’. so this is what I was getting back to before, we’ve probably sat at a lecture and people have told us about how you need to have an in house discount plan or a savings plan, but nobody recognize or realise how to sell the damn thing, okay. Well that’s kind of what I figured out, and how you do that is, you’ve got to go to these communities in person, give them the time, the educational seminar the wine and cheese, that’s re-prosperity, that’s one of Cialdini’s principles. If they like you, again that’s another one of the principles, again you’re more likely to get them over the hump of getting them in the door, okay. If you have a savings plan to offer the, that gets them over the price barrier that’s keeping them from coming in your office right now. And so my theory was if I could get them in the door, lower the price on preventative stuff, like their cleanings, exams and X-rays, then if we did find treatment they would move forward with it. So over a year, I sold almost over a thousand of these savings plans, at $299, and each person spent an additional $1243 each, on top of the $299.
Justin: that is amazing
Dr Phelps: that was over $1.4 million in revenue in just one of my locations, for $135 in wine and cheese and an hour of my time and two of my team members, once a month.
Justin: that’s incredible, you know, wow.
So, okay, and your also very big on tracking results. So your actually the founder of ‘Call Tracker ROI’ and that is a really great tool for, when you’re putting out these numbers, you know $1200 or so, hey, man, you’re not just making these numbers up, you’re tracking them.
Can you tell us a little bit about call tracker ROI?
Dr Phelps: yeah, you know again, flash back to spending $36 000 a month in marketing and get 60 people for my efforts, and I had seven doctors I needed to feed to get patients in front of. So I had a big problem, so I decided I got to figure out what’s going on with my marketing, because I don’t know if it’s working or not, but I got to figure it out.
And I called every call tracking company out there because I felt like the answer was on the telephone, and I felt that it’s not the ad’s not bringing in the calls, but I felt it was something else, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. So when I couldn’t find what I was looking for, with these other companies, they would kind of give us part of the answer, but it was really what I call the ‘half-truth’, it really wasn’t enough data for us to make smart decisions about what’s really working. So I decided to make my own platform and create my own software and stuff. And so when I started digging into my calls and tracking it, and I had live people listen to every call and then monthly give us a report, so in 5 minutes we can look at a snapshot and know what’s going on with our marketing. Is the ad bringing in enough quantity and quality of new patient calls that are scheduling, to justify, are they spending enough money in the practice to justify the ROI, for what we’re spending to get them, right, or is it the other side of the coin, what I call ‘lost opportunity’, are we not answer the telephone, are we not converting, and in my practice, I didn’t answer 220 potential new patient calls, from marketing sources, a month, that I paid to get, right. 220 potential new patient calls, we didn’t answer, went to voice mail, got a busy signal or the caller hung up. If we did answer the telephone, we only converted 24% of those calls to appointments. So, talk about a problem, now I see why I had to spend so much money to get so little people, because we’re not answering the phone and we don’t convert the ones we talk to.
Justin: that’s huge you know. We’re going to do an interview with a different kind of service, having to do with answering the phone after hours, I tell you voice mail kills conversion, and the fact that you’re tracking these results is really, really important.
You know I’m actually really interested because I do dental SEO and we’re always looking for a way to measure the ROI, you know, one of the biggest topic’s that I’ve been asked about is ‘how do you measure ROI, for SEO’ and that can be a little bit trickier then say, Ad words or Facebook `Ads or direct mail, or many other forms of advertising, so it’s a little bit trickier, but I’m definitely interested in learning a little bit more about Call Tracker ROI, because, man that’s so important. Because, you’re approach to marketing is, basically, if I understand it correctly, do what works, and the moment it doesn’t work, and the moment it doesn’t work, test something else, so you’re constantly adapting, you’re constantly trying new things. To our listeners you might say, don’t have a bias for or against any particular medium because I works or didn’t work for another dentist, just figure what works for your practice, which might be different from another practice, am I getting that right?
Dr Phelps: yeah, because the truth is, you don’t know why it didn’t work for them, because if they didn’t answer the phone and they didn’t convert the calls, is that the ad’s fault?
Justin: not at all right
Dr Phelps: no, right, and I guarantee you, that’s probably why they didn’t convert, but again you don’t know what you don’t know, because if you don’t have the data, you have no idea what’s going on, so you have to track this stuff on way or the other, And again SEO’s a big component of that, that’s one of those things I’m a big supporter of, if anything I don’t even track the ROI on an SEO because I feel it’s too important, even if it’s just PR, if I can’t get my website in the presence of people searching for anything, then I have no chance to book anybody, you know what I mean. And even if today’s generation, if you’re market is older, they’re not finding you that way, then tomorrow’s generation they will, and the one after that, that’s the only way they’re going to find you, so the worst thing you could do is not be in the game and be so far behind that when the tide turns that that’s all they do, find you online, your left in the dark, trying to pay catch up. So I still feel like, no matter what you’re spending on marketing, you’ve got to have some money allotted in the budget for SEO kind of stuff.
And my philosophy as you said is, I can’t guarantee that I can get you one thing that will get you 100 new patients, but I bet I can find five things that will get you 25 or 20 new patients each that will get you to 100.
Justin: and you know that because you’re tracking the results
Dr Phelps: that’s right! We track and we do small tests, a small little investment, we track it well and see what working and what’s not and why. If the fish are biting, I call it ‘fishing with multiple fishing poles’ right, if the fish are biting, you feed it more, if the fish aren’t biting you pull up that pole and you throw it somewhere else. but eventually you’re going to have 5 or 6 poles, biting, not only in external marketing, but do some in internal marketing, go some in referrals, do some in grass roots stuff with these wine and cheese events. And I promise you, you can get to any new patient number that you need to get to, with the right quality and quantity, for your practice.
Justin: you know I’m curious, kind of going off on a tangent here, but it’s in line with the calls, you know, recording calls and having live people listening to the calls, I actually did not know this, I recently learned from you that there are other companies and they are recording calls but they are not having human beings listen to the calls in every instances, and that’s something that you actually do differently from the rest of the companies that are call recording.
Can you tell us the kind of impact that’s had, maybe a side by side of a computer listening to a call versus a live operator listening to a call?
Dr Phelps: yeah, well the problem is the computer, it just, technology to date and artificial intelligence and the program that’s trying to pick up on the call, it can’t pick up on accents, it can’t pick up on slang, if there’s something going on in the background, it can’t tell what’s going on. It cannot differentiate the phone noises versus the background noise. So what these programs do, that you don’t see is, a category they dump you’re phone call into which is ‘unknown’, which is where the computer couldn’t tell you what was going on, but guess what, they don’t show you that data, right, and some time’s it’s over a third of your phone call volume is ‘unknown’, but when you actually get into those calls and listen to them, there potential, there new patient calls, okay, so I didn’t like it because again, it’s giving me half-truth but it’s not the whole truth. I need to know what’s going on with all of my calls, not just some of my calls.
Justin: yeah, I have a, I don’t know if you’ve heard of this, voice to text is where you speak, but I actually have the reverse on my voice mail. You know voice mail takes so much time to listen to, us younger generation we just don’t do voicemail that much. And you know it converts it into text, so I can actually read the voicemail, actually see who it’s from, and what’s going on, and I tell you, I get the funniest results sometimes. Some of the messages and I know they’re not saying this stuff so I have to listen to the voice mail anyways, so yeah computers haven’t really caught up there yet, obviously the psychology of the dental patient is something that computers may not catch up to for a long time.
So yeah, would you say, here’s one objection I’ve heard, a lot of dental offices feel like the recording calls are intrusive and they feel like they just don’t want that accountability there and they feel like ‘this is the way we’ve always done it’, which as you know might be one of the most dangerous statements in business today is ‘this is the way we’ve always done it’ and it kind of goes against the grain of everything we’ve been talking about, that, you’ve got to adapt, you’ve got to be accountable, and you’ve got to be able to improve, you’ve got to constantly be making improvements, but, what can you say for those dentist’s listening who say ‘you know I’d love to do this, this sounds like a great idea, I have no idea, I have no idea what my front desk is doing to turn away new patients, or reduce case acceptance rates, but I don’t think they’re going to like this”, have you dealt with dentist who are there?
Dr Phelps: oh yeah, I had this with me own team, how do you think my own team felt when they found out I was recording their phone calls? they aren’t gonna like it, when you shine the light of accountability on people, certain employees, the ones that aren’t necessary the best employees, fight it, tooth and nail, they do anything they can do to avoid being accountable for their actions. Your better employees and you’re A employees and B employees, don’t fight it accountability they embrace it, because they want it, to be able to improve in their job. So the way I present it is this, I went to my team and I said “ladies, I’m spending $36 000 a month is advertising, we’re getting 60 new people for our efforts, who thinks that’s a problem”, have them commit to the idea that this is not good, who agrees with me that I need to figure out why?
Justin: and if they didn’t agree then they didn’t think it was a problem
Dr Phelps: right so now they know it’s a problem, so using Cialdini’s consistency principle I’m locking them into a commitment that they agree that we need to get to the bottom of it. So I said “okay, to figure out the problem we need know what’s going on, on the telephone, so here’s what we are going to do, I’m going to record the new patient calls, now I know this is going to freak some of you out, the good news is, if your husband calls the main line, guess what, it’s not going to be record, these are only calls coming from marketing sources and people who called our tracking number. So if you mum calls, your sister calls, your husband calls the main line, we’re not recording that, I don’t care about those calls okay, I’m only trying to get to the heart of the new patient calls, because that’s were the problem is, and ultimately let’s say we listen to them and we figure out that the conversions are horrible” and I pick one of them out and I say “Tina, let’s say your 15% conversions on your new patient calls, whose fault is that, is that your fault or my fault?” and I don’t let them answer, I say “it’s my fault, because I had no idea of the hurdles you face on the telephone, I’ve given you zero training, I threw you at the front desk and said ‘get them in the front door’ like there was some magic wand you could wave to do that” but it’s actually very challenging to get some of them in the door based on some of the questions they’re asking us, unless you have the right strategies. I said “ultimately it’s my fault because I didn’t train you, id didn’t give you the tools you need to do your job, but now once I have the data, I’m going to be able to do that, and as a result, I’m not asking for perfection, I’m just asking for progress, okay? so if you’re 15% let’s take the data, let’s talk about how you can improve, and lets month if you’re 20% awesome, improvement, progress, the next month, over 25% fantastic” all I want to see is that they’re trying to adapt, they’re trying to change, even if it takes time. The good news for us that I found is, in every one of our new clients, and in every one of our clients, is when you get the data, and that’s one of the things we do, we give you the transcript on why they didn’t schedule the phone call, for that new patient call, ‘by staff members’, and you can see what each other their problems are individually. So I’ve proven that if you just share that data with them and just have a civil conversation about it monthly, and they know every month that the light of accountability is going to be on them, and we’re gonna talk about it, their numbers usually double, sometimes they triple their conversions, by doing nothing else other than just reviewing their data, okay. That’s the power of when you have that data, what you can do with it.
Justin: Wow, that’s incredible, you know kind of in the same line of what we were talking about before with trying, testing different types of marketing, have you, since your tracking all these results for yourself and other dentists’, have you ever been surprised at like ‘wow, this is really working you know, direct mail is really working for this dentist, whereas SEO is really working for this dentist, where as you know something else, you know radio ads are really working for this dentist’, I’m willing to bet that, once in a while, you see this happen and your like “wow, I would of never thought that would work”
Dr Phelps: oh yeah, and again, that’s what I tell people, ‘I don’t care what you’re doing, right, I’m not going to give you a judgement on it, I just want to prove whether it works or not for you, okay?’, and so, I usually poo-poo billboards every time in my marketing, I have like a 2 day marketing workshop that I do for dentists, and I usually tell them that billboards are terrible, they don’t work for 90% of the people that we track them for, but guess what, for 10% their killing it with billboards, so it’s not up to me to decide, let the data justify its experience, and if it doesn’t, pull up stakes and move out. I talked to somebody that’s all their doing is SEO and online stuff and they’re getting 60-90 new patients a month, I’m not seeing that in a lot of people, that’s like unheard of, that’s crazy.
Justin: wow from one practice?
Dr Phelps: yeah, one practice, 2 doctors in there, the real question is, dig into to the why are billboards working for those guys? Well they have a very powerful message, their message is they are an emergency clinic, so if you’re driving down the road, you’re in pain, you see their billboard, well guess what, that’s your market right, they’re more likely to call you as a result. So they’re hitting their niche’ perfectly as a result.
Justin: yeah, I love this approach so much better and the fact that you’re tracking the results and you’re trying different things.
Do you think that diversification is a pretty important thing to implement? I mean, when you talk about 5 different fishing poles, I think of doing a little bit of everything and testing it and do what works, would you say diversification is a virtue in dental marketing?
Dr Phelps: definitely, because for 1, you never know what things are going to work; number 2; you don’t know why it’s not working. So if you find like you’re doing all this SEO and you’re getting a lot of calls but you’re not answering and you’re not converting, well now, it’s not the SEO’s fault that you keep doing it, but now if you capitalize on the lost opportunity, you’re going to take the ROI to a whole other level.
And you know I don’t know if I mentioned this, but the biggest issue I have with dentists is, when I tell them about missed calls, they always think the same thing ‘oh were not missing any calls’, they always thing that, and every time I tell them ‘”look, I’ll take the Pepsi challenge with you all day long, I’ll run tracking, and I’ll give the first few months few if I’m wrong”, but we’re all missing calls from new patients. Our average office doesn’t answer 33-55% of their marketing based telephone calls. These are new patient calls you paid to get, they’re not answered, and their conversion rate is about 34% as well nationwide. So we’ve got a missed call and conversion problem, not necessary an ad generating leads problem.
Justin: that’s really powerful, yeah, man, I’m interested in learning more, and where can our listeners and viewers learn more about ‘Tracker ROI’?
Dr Phelps: well it’s simple. www.CallTrackerROI.com
Justin: and you’re also on the forums, I think that’s your username; ‘Call Tracker ROI’
Dr Phelps: yeah, it’s my username on Dental Town, and so I’m usually posting under that name. Yeah so I tried to make it simple, just describe what we do, we track calls, and then I want them to know the actually ROI, how many actually patients showed up in the practice from these advertisements and how much actually money do they spend in our practice and doesn’t that justify what I pay to get them.
Justin: and this isn’t the first time you’ve spoken on this, you’ve actually, weren’t you nominated or awarded the best speaker at ‘Practice on Fire’ later year? And I think you’re speaking again this year?
Dr Phelps: yeah, it was kind of an honor, you know, because we had about 12 or 14 speakers and we all had evaluations and reviews and I think 75 people out of the 120 that where there turned in their surveys, and I got 4 out of 4, I had a perfect score, from everybody, so it pays to all hear the speakers.
One of the organizers, Dr Michael Lang said, a great quote he said “look, normally you can’t get 2 dentists’ to agree on anything much less 3, but you had 75 dentists’ that all agree on the same thing that Phelps is awesome”
Justin: oh man it’s such an honor to interview you here, that’s really incredible. I wish you luck at ‘Practice on Fire” pretty soon, are there any other speaking arrangements that you have coming up?
Dr Phelps: yeah, April 8th and 9th at Charlotte, I’m doing my 2 day persuasion workshop, so if anybody wants to learn the principles of influence, how I use these in my dental practice and how you can too, to decrease no shows, get more people to pay today, before they leave, or at least get them to pay by their first invoice, increase your referrals, I have a great internal referral system using 5 of the 6 principles of influence, that’s doubling or tripling peoples referrals in offices, and how to increase you’re case acceptance and how to take it to a whole other level, and if I can get more of your team members there, again, the faster you can get it implemented and the better it’ll before you’re practice, so that’s April 8th and 9th here in Charlotte.
Justin: wow, that’s excellent. I’ll tell you, doing SEO is a great allegiance source for dentist, although I do an analysis before I work with anyone, because it’s really really important to know what you’re getting into, a lot of dentist don’t even want to touch SEO because they don’t know what it is, I help with that, And I’ll tell you, one of the best things to compound those efforts for SEO, is what you’re talking about, referrals, because when you get someone through SEO or another advertising method, you’re bringing in someone who tends to not know you’re other patients quite as much. So when you get a referrals from a second generation, someone who’s already been in your practice, those people tend to know each other more, so you tend to kind of cap off. Now you could already get referrals from someone who’s already an existing patient, it’s certainly possible and you do have those all-stars, and I’m sure you’re tracking those things as well, as many dental software’s do. But, I’m really blown away at the idea that SEO and other forms of advertising can actually bring you more referrals per patient, because, it’s like a who new tree of people, it’s a whole new vein of people and I love it. I love the fact that I’m able to bring someone that has probably never heard of your practice, but for the SEO.
So, if we were able to compound that with the kind of training that you’re providing, man think of all the referrals that you can get from people who would of never heard of your practice. So I definitely hope they check you out, as far as you’re new print book and the digital version, can you tell us where we can find that again?
Dr Phelps: yeah, it’s at www.WineAndCheeseNewPatients.com, and you’re right and people ask me, I didn’t mention this part; I went from 60 new patients a month, to averaging over 300 a month, within 3 months, okay, by decreasing my marketing cost 75% at the same time. Why? Because I tapped into that lost opportunities, we answered the phone more, we converted better, now we convert about 80% of our calls. So, phone training works folks, it you have the data to back it up, I’m just telling you, a lot of peoples phone training, they don’t have the data, so they can’t tell you if it really works or it doesn’t. Data itself is powerful, like you were saying before, all of that compounds each other, and so when you get all these new patients from external advertising sources in, and you do this referral system on top of that, everything just blossoms and blooms on top of that.
It’s amazing.
Justin: it’s so, so compounding.
Dr Phelps: yeah, that’s why I said, you can get to any new patient number you want to get to. But you can’t do it with just one thing.
Justin: can you tell the viewers of a specific case study, I think they’re dying to hear about this, how this has worked, obviously for you it’s worked amazing, can you tell us about another dentist that has greatly benefited from what you’re offering? It could be Call Tracker ROI, or the Cialdini influence, anything like that?
Dr Phelps: yeah, I mean just from an influence stand point of get several quotes and testimonials on my website from people that have gone through the workshop, and their case acceptance, and I always joke with them, I always say this whether I’m talking about influence like this for a small period of time for 2 hours or 2 full days, I tell them “if you do nothing else, but do this, take them down the price stairs that I talked about tonight, you give them you’re biggest and best option, but if price is an issue, you anchor them to something first, the consequences of not doing your treatment and what that’s going to cost them, and then go into what you want to talk about from there, I promise you on Monday your case acceptance will start skyrocketing and everything that you do’ and I’ve got testimonials from people backing that up. I have 1 guy who heard me do a 2 hour talk and I said ‘if you hear nothing that I talked about tonight but this, I promise you you’ll see results’, and they flew out to my 2 day workshop because they said “well Phelps said if I remembered nothing else but this, that it was going to work, and holy cow it worked, so I want to know more” as a result. From the contracting side again, I say doctors lose money all the time, because we find problems they didn’t even know they had, I call it ‘the gorilla in the room’, right you didn’t even know there was a gorilla in the room until we identified it, and now we can statistically make a plan to get out of it, get around it.
So this one guy, loved billboards, he was just dead set on doing a billboard, and I said “okay, this thing is $2500 a month, are you sure you want to invest this money in that?” and he said ‘yeah’, and the other thing I don’t like to do is I don’t like to do long term contracts personally until I’ve tested it, proven that it works for me, and then I’ll sign a big old long deal on it, because I’ve already proved that it works. So he was going to get locked into a yearlong contract for this thing at $2500 a month, and think of it, that’s about $30 000 he was about to invest and I said “hang on, see if you can get an out, so say ‘let me get 3 months and let me get out at 3 months or if I stay on I’ll sign a contract for 15 more months'” so in essence he was given them a chance to get an 18 month contract, but he got a 3 month out, does that make sense?
Justin: yes.
Dr Phelps: so we tracked and I didn’t tell him his data, we put tracking numbers on his website, on his billboard, so anybody who call related to the billboard we were capturing, and at the end of the 3 months I told him, I said “hey Doug, how do you feel, how do you think it worked, how do you feel like it worked?”, because many times we make our decisions based off emotion, feeling and the opinion of our front desk, whether it’s the reality or not, so I said “how did you feel”, and he said “oh man, people are always talking about it, traffics always backed out, out there, I know we got new patients because of it”, I said “okay, based off what you’re telling me, what you’re feeling, you would keep doing it, you want to stay on with it?”, he’s like ‘yeah, yeah I’m going to stay on with it’, and I said “okay, you ready for the data, I said okay, well you actually got 14 calls over the 3 months”, he’s like “okay, well that’s almost 5 calls a month that’s not too bad” and I said “yeah but the problem is, 12 or those 14 calls were your own patients, and it kind of went something like this ‘hey Doug, I’m driving down the road I see your billboard, you look great man, alright bye'” I said “in 3 months, you only got 2 potential new patient calls, and guess how many you’re team scheduled an appointment for? zero, so here we are at 3 months, you’ve spent $7500 on it, and you’ve got no new patients from it, do you really want to spend $30 000 more because you feel like it’s working, or we invest that money elsewhere, where I think we’ll have a better chance for ya” so obviously he dropped the billboard, we reinvested in something the next month in something called a newspaper insert, same amount $2500, dropped a onetime ad, and he got 25 new patients from it.
Justin: wow, this part sparks an idea, a question in my mind, all marketing should be tracked, but what percentage of the budget are our listeners are investing into marketing, what percentage goes to tracking the results? This is a great example, a great case study, because the guy felt like the billboard worked, but you were able to save him $30 000 on a substantiate, another 18 months, and wow that’s incredible, so you know, I always have been interested in, with SEO, there’s a lot of, there’s kind of an enigma, until you have someone you can really trust, on the data. You know, with web design for instance, I’ll tell you, I’ve been working in marketing for years and years, nobody ever tells the owner of a website that it’s haggard, even if it is. And it’s kind of like that, you know, it’s like ‘hey, I’m driving by and I see you’re billboard’, but you know, in that case it might not have been the design, it might have been the effectiveness. But yeah, I think, a lot of times dentists might say to me “well, you know I know it’s not the prettiest website in the world, but my patients really like it”, why? Why do they think that? and it’s because you just ask them dead on, ‘hey what do you think of our website?’, and of course nobody wants to be a jerk, they say ‘oh, okay, I think it’s fine’ and they’re really thinking in their head, ‘well, I’ve seen better’. So, sometimes when you poll you’re patients, face to face, that’s not really the best way to track what works and what doesn’t.
Dr Phelps: that’s a lot of subjective information.
Justin: right
Dr Phelps: and again, its feeling, its opinion, its innuendo, but it’s not the truth.
Justin: and you know, if you’re patients don’t want to get a hole drilled in their jaw to bad; they might just tell you what you want to hear.
Dr Phelps: ‘yeah, whatever you want me to say doc, it’s great, I love it’
Justin: yeah, so, I love the objectivity, DR Christopher Phelps, I love what you’re doing for dentistry, you’re helping dentist’s understand what works, and what doesn’t work, and that’s great if a sales person wants to sell them a billboard and make them feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but it’s your job, to tell these dentist’s whether it’s working or not. And you know what I really appreciate about that is, you’re not biased, as to what to try. You know, based on your experience what works and what doesn’t work, but you’re not like ‘hey, we only do direct mail, or SEO and all that’, so I like that holistic approach.
Dr Phelps: yeah, and you know I could give every ad source, every chance to work, and like I said, majority of time, in any market, whatever it is, they are bringing in calls, but the problem is, we’re not answering, we’re not converting, most of the time. But let’s say the other side, the ad don’t bring the calls in, is it the ad’s fault? Well really why isn’t it ringing because we dropped this ad? And it’s really 2 things; either we don’t have the right messages in our advertisement, to catch people’s attention, to our target market, right? So maybe our targets looking at it, but we don’t have the right message, or we have the right message but our market doesn’t look at that stuff, in that medium. And the example I give is, when I talk about sedation dentistry, I have done radio ads for 10 plus years, and one of my best sellers, and why I do radio to this day still, is because I advertise sedation, and I need people that drive 57 miles away to come to my practice because we do sedation, oral sedation. I asked this guy one time, because he literally drove 57 miles, and I said “dude, why are you here, seriously?” and he said “because you do sedation”, and I said “nobody in your town does sedation?” he says “no, no one in my town does it” he said ” I heard you on the radio, I want to be knocked out, this is what I’m here for”. So I want to the internet, to google ‘sedation, Salisbury, North Carolina’, and freakin’ 8 dentists popped up.
Okay, there are 8 other dentists that could have done the sedation for him that I did, so why did they come to me? Because that message of sedation was the right message, but the target, didn’t use that medium to find that info, he used the radio, and a lot of these people do, alright. So that’s just an example. But, that’s one of the 2 things that the ads not working, either; you’ve got the wrong message for the market looking at it, or it’s the write message, but you’re market doesn’t see the message at all, but if you can fix those things, hone either one of those things, give the ad another chance, I promise you it’s going to work.
Justin: right, you know new technology, just to kind of wrap up here, because we are coming to the end of our time, I would say that new technology can be a great marketing tool, but not if your patients are unaware of it. So, you talk about all the money, really the time that it takes to say, research a cerec machine; that’s a huge investment, to even get to the point where you hand over all that money, and yet, so many dentists’ that have a Cerec are not, it’s not even on the website, certainly not on the front page, front and center, so you have this huge internal marketing tool, that nobody knows about, like you said those dentists, they did sedation, they do sedation, they just wouldn’t do a good job or telling this guy, this gentlemen about it.
Dr Phelps: yeah, their totally at large, they didn’t know.
Justin: Yeah, well I’ll tell you, this has been really eye opening, I hope that the listeners and the viewers are able to take something from this, and I think that if there was one thing that they could take away, I think that what you’re describing in your speeches, that you say ‘just remember this one thing’ – could you recap that one more time for us?
Dr Phelps: So remember any number you’re going to throw at somebody, they’re going to compare it to something else; the danger is, if we don’t control what they compare it too. Because whatever they compare it to, is not going to work out in our advantage, 9 times out of 10, it’s too expensive or whatever. So, what we have to think about is, if we want to do say, a crown, what’s going to happen to that tooth in say 6 months, in a year, 5 years, 10 years, is it going to better or is it going to get worse? – If it gets worse, how bad could it get? and if they down the road decide to get it fixed to get it back to where it is today, what is involved with that, and how much is that going to cost, and that’s the number that we anchor them to. The consequences of not moving forward today with treatment; people care more about what they stand to lose, then what they stand to gain, it’s a simply scarcity fact, it’s another principal. Then we go on to talk about what we really want to talk about, ‘but the good news is, you don’t have to pay $3600 for that root canal, because if we can do it soon, or today, it’s only $1200’, and when people ask how much are things, what they’re really asking is, how much are they out of pocket, not what your fee is. So the next level do is, what’s the price target with insurance, its $1200, but after your insurance plan it’s only $800, and we’ll take $400 today and $400 next time, how does that sound?
So if you can anchor them to something first, and then take them down the price stairs, with more options and less fee’s, the more likely they are to leave with something, an appointment for something.
Justin: I totally missed that first part about insurance because I guess I was assuming they were fee for service, but if there insurance, why would you skip that step, why would you go straight to what their portion is? I totally missed that part, I’m glad you repeated that for the rest of us. Man, I tell you what, let’s plug your websites, I think there’s more than one, there’s the wine and cheese one, there’s the Call Tracker ROI, maybe there’s one more website you’d like to plug before we sign off?
Dr Phelps: yes, my influence website, so that’s where you can look at all of my testimonials and look at dates for my next workshops, for influence, and that’s: www.GuideThemToYes.com
Justin: excellent, excellent. Well thank you Dr Phelps, this is great, great material, I’m glad I had you on, and I’m sure the viewers and the listeners are happy as well, so. Thank you very much it’s been a huge honor.
Dr Phelps: hey, my pleasure, and I just want to say to those listening, I talk to a lot of dental marketing people out there, who their nervous, because I want to make them accountable for things, and when I find somebody, like the Dental Marketing Guy here, who; I’ve seen his posts, we have similar philosophy and who gets it, and is really actually trying to help us in our business’s, it’s really actually my pleasure to be here and help out, any way I can for you. So I really appreciate what you do, and what you’re trying to do for the other doctors in our profession, so thank you for that.
Justin: Thank you very much, our guest of honor Dr Phelps, you know where to reach him, if you have any questions for Dr Phelps, or for myself, please feel free to leave comments either below, on Dental Town, on YouTube, on the Podcast, on the blog, whether ever you find this video or the podcast, we’d love to follow up with you. And yeah, once again I’m Justin, the Dental Marketing Guy, From DentalMarketingGuy.com, we’re signing off, thank you Dr Phelps.
Dr Phelps: Thanks Everyone.
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Dr. Sunny Pahouja talks on The Dental Marketing Guy Show to discuss what he does at Lifetime Smiles in Cincinnati to help patients have an unexpectedly pleasant experience!
Justin: Alright we’re live, welcome to the dental marketing guy show; I’m Justin the dental marketing guy. Today it is a huge honor to have Dr. Sunny on the show. Dr. Sunny has some really interesting ideas on how to improve patient experience and how that can actually help your bottom line, and your practice, and really help with referral’s, help with case acceptance, help with everything, and he’s got some really good ideas and actually specific tips, that’s what I like about some of the things he’s done to help with that.
We also have my co-host Vlad, and we are going to delve right into this, how are you Dr Sunny?
Dr Sunny: Great, it’s Saturday, I just had a beer and I’m doing great, how about you guys?
Justin: Really great
Vlad: we’re doing great, we really appreciate you taking an hour out of your Saturday to come help us out and do this show with us
Dr Sunny: sure
Justin: so, let’s talk a little bit about what red carpet treatment is
Dr Sunny: absolutely. So, one of the things that we really strongly believe in, is that if you wanna keep a patient long term, not just for 6 months or a year or 2 years, but if you want a patient in your practice for 5-10 year; you’ve really got to be able to provide them that red carpet treatment, not just 1 time, but every single time. That means from that very first call, when they’ve called to make an appointment, when they’ve called to find out, do we take their insurance or what their insurance is all about, having a smile on your face, having those moments with the patient that other offices may not actually really dive into.
So when a patient first walks into our office we greet them with a smile, we don’t just say ‘hey here’s a medical dental history form fill this out’ take a few minutes to get to know the patients, take a few minutes to really try to understand what their needs are, try to understand why they’re there, and then take a few minutes to go over some of that stuff and then go into the dental. There’s so many parts to it and I’m sure we can spend a lot of time discussing each and every component of that and that’s what I’m here to discuss today.
Vlad: awesome, you know, I was just speaking to a dentist, and I was trying to convince them to start marketing towards a wealthier demographic in their area, so their location is located in an area that’s not as nice as where their ideal patients live in, and you know what you’re doing is exactly what I’m trying to get them to do, and essentially convince them that ‘hey, the way that you get this demographic in your practice is to treat them like a million bucks’ because their worth a million dollars, most of them are millionaires, but they really get the million dollar treatment anywhere they go, or the red carpet treatment, and I think that that stands for most people and I think that is huge, what you’re doing Dr Sunny, is a great way to really retain high end patients, especially for dentists that aren’t located, or dentist that are in metropolitan areas, where one neighborhood could be great, one neighborhood might not be, it’s a great way to attract and retain those high end patients. What caused you to start the red carpet treatment?
Dr Sunny: well you know, one of the things we truly believe in is, we treat anyone, from people that have lots of money, to people that you know don’t have any. We treat each and every patient with that same level of respect you know, we’re not basing our treatment on how much money they have, but their true needs are, of course finances play a big role in all of that, so once you get to know the patient, once we find out what their desires are, what their financial situation is, then you can cater that treatment to them. But each and every patient deserves to really get the best treatment possible, you know once, before I go into the details, I remember this one patient of mine from when I was an associate, a few years ago. He came in and I think we saw him park his car out there you know, it was a very, just beat up old Toyota corolla, and he just had long hair and he didn’t really smell the best, and all his clothes were messed up, we started looking in his mouth and he said ‘it’s been probably been well over 10 years since I’ve been to the dentist’ and you’re like ‘wow this guy needs perio treatment, he needs a lot of fillings, he needs a lot of crowns’. Well we still did the same thing, we didn’t base our treatment plan on what he was wearing or what he had, what he was driving and that kind of stuff, or how he smelt or what he was or how he talked, and that kind of stuff, and once we started talking about his needs he says ‘I really want to get established as a good patient, I want to take care of my health, that’s what I’m here for’ and we go over the treatment and it was pretty expensive it was probably 6-7 thousand dollars’ worth of treatment that he needed in the near future, and we presented it to him and I said ‘take some time to think about it and see how we can get this done for you’, and over the next 2 years he actually got every single treatment that he had to get done on his treatment plan, everything. It took him 2 years but it was worth it. So it just reminds me of that story, and to never base your decisions on how somebody looks or how somebody’s sounds or what they wear and that kind of stuff. When it comes to patients, not everybody that dresses nicely has the most amount of money, or people that don’t dress as nicely have no money, so we really try to make sure we have that clean mind of giving patients what they deserve, really just go into their needs, and wants, and coming up with a treatment plan that suits their desires.
Vlad: what kind of impact do you think that’s had on your practice at the end of the day? Having that type of red carpet treatment for anybody that walks in through your doors?
Dr Sunny: again, I think that red carpet treatment, a lot of times starts with that phone call, and I want to take a moment to point that out. When a person first calls, a lot of the time they’re just asking questions like ‘do you take my insurance?’ ‘are you taking any patients?’ and what not, so, that’s not the first answer the associate, or the front desk gives them, the first answer is really just thanking them for calling, telling them about the practice, where we are, what kind of patients we see, and really just taking about 2 minutes or so and talking about the doctor, I think that is the key point, in prepping that patient that when they come to see us for the first time they can expect that red carpet service, not just from the employees, not just from the front desk person, or from the hygienist, but truly from the doctor also. I can’t tell you how many times I hear things from the front desk or the office ‘when you see Dr Sunny, your gonna love him, he’s amazing with this kind of procedure, or that kind of procedure’ and patients want to know that kind of stuff, patients want to build that trust but it’s easier for them to build that kind of trust when they know a little bit about that doctor, where his from, how long he’s been here, they tie in the doctor that I bought the practice from, so when you have a patient that, and they have that trust built in, that they can come to a practice and get the best treatment possible.
Vlad: that’s great, that’s awesome, so from the very first phone call your letting them in on the unknown, because that’s really what’s scary about going to a new doctor of any kind, or going to a new service provider of any kind, there’s things that you don’t know, and then theirs things that you don’t even know that you might need to know, because it’s been a long time since you’ve been to a good dentist, its phenomenal that you do that from the very first phone call.
Dr Sunny: absolutely and its funny that you say that, it’s been a long time since anyone’s been to the dentist, for a lot of people it’s been a long time since they’ve been to the dentist and they think that someone’s going to make fun of them for not being to the dentist in such a long time and they think that, people are going to judge them for being in that situation where they haven’t been to a dentist in 5 or 10 years and they’re embarrassed, and I think the key is to never make them feel embarrassed, never make them feel that they have a lot going on and it’s their fault, we always tell the patients ‘you know I’m glad you came in today, today is the best day to get started what you need to get done.
Vlad: I went a year and 3 months without going to the dentist and I actually had an experience where a hygienist wasn’t teasing me in a fun way, but giving me a legitimate hard time that I didn’t go to the dentist, I think at that time I hadn’t been to the dentist in I think around 9 months, it was only a few months after the scheduled 6 months treatment just because you have a lot going on and then I ended up moving and I moved and it was a year and 3 months you know when you move nobody likes to go find a new dentist after you already know a dentist, and some of the reasons that we just talked about, and it was a year and 3 months and I thought ‘oh there just going to tear into me and soon as we start having that conversation’ and no, the dentist was great the hygienist was great, and they make me feel like a million bucks so I keep going back to them and no there’s no hesitation for me to go there.
Dr Sunny: absolutely and that’s the key you’re not judged for not coming to the dentist every 6 months, there’s more to life then dentistry for most people, quite frankly and we get that.
Justin: definitely, let’s start with one specific thing, there’s actually a procedure in your practice Dr Sunny, were every patient, is treated like you said it doesn’t matter how they dress or what car they drive, they’re treated like you said with 5 star treatment, or red carpet treatment and can you give us 1 example of how you do that for every patient.
Dr Sunny: sure, thank you cards go a long way, when we first see a patient and it’s kind of easy and a lot of people say it , when you have 4 patients on a schedule for the day, you have 4 thank you cards ready in the morning and you’re gonna get to know the patient and write those up the same day that they’re there and what we do is, we don’t just say ‘thank you so much for coming to this practice’ and just sign it, we actually write one to two lines about specific things that they talked about when they were there, they might have said ‘ hey my kids go to the school across the street and we just moved to the area’ we’ll say that in the card we’ll say ‘it was so nice meeting you yesterday, we’re happy that you chose us, we’re so happy that you moved to the area’ we’ll say the name of the school across the street, saint Ives, we’ll say ‘saint Ives is such a great school for your kids, they have a great education there’ and just tie that into their personal lives outside of dentistry, it really means a lot to patients and I can’t tell you how many times a patient comes back for their 2nd appointment or 3rd appointment and they say ‘we got your card that was so thoughtful of you to remember what we talked about’ and that just builds a lot of the loyalty, that’s what builds that internal marketing, that’s what builds that level of trust that they’re going to tell their family and friends about us.
Vlad: awesome, so from that initial phone call, that’s where it starts, you give them that 2 -3 minute introduction, then you send them the thank you cards after, so what would you say are some of the red carpet features during that visit.
Dr Sunny: take a few minutes’ to talk to patients about their needs, talk to them about what they want. A lot of times the office manager will actually take the patient and just show them around the clinic, ‘this is where the rest room is, if you need something, here’s water, here’s coffee’ just things like that, that your attaching to that patient. ‘these are the hygienists that we work with, these are the assistants that we work with’, your trying to get them to know the people that we employ, from the get go and that’s not very common, the very common thing to do is that when a patient gets here, you give them a dentist medical history form, they fill that out, the hygienist takes them back, takes x-rays, and then calls the dentist, and a lot of the time were trying to do a lot of that stuff from the get go so it takes a little bit of time I understand that it’s not the most fastest way of doing things, but we want patients to keep coming back, we want patients to keep coming for their re-care appointment’s, we want them coming back for their treatments and that’s what it’s about, it’s not about ‘we’ve got to see 20 new patients a day’, that’s not the goal here.
Vlad: it’s not hard to imagine a return in investment just by being friendly
Dr Sunny: absolutely, it’s priceless because most of our new patients are word of mouth, from the people that we already see, so we already have that built in trust, they say ‘my mother in law comes here’ or ‘my friends come here’ or ‘my sister in law comes here’ so you already have that built in trust with a lot of these patients and then it’s even better because you can actually take about that other member that’s just sent them here and just tie the pieces together. We have some patients that when you add up their families their immediate families there in-laws, it goes to an excess of 30-35 patients. It’s amazing.
Justin: There’s probably a lot of dentists’ who are thinking right now, I’m just putting myself in the shoes of our listeners and viewers on YouTube, there’s probably a lot of dentists thinking ‘you know what that’s great sunny, that works for you, but man, my staff, they’re just not gonna write the cards, there not gonna do this or that, they’re gonna think its pointless, who wants coffee before a dental appointment, it’ll make them nervous’ I can just think of all the excuses being made right now by all the dentist watching right now thinking ‘that’s great that works for him but here’s all the reasons why I’m not gonna do it’ what would you say to those dentists who are going through that right now in their minds?
Dr Sunny: absolutely, a lot of people complain about those thing and I don’t think there’s 1 slam dunk thing that you do that makes it all worth it, I think it’s a lot of small little things that you do, when patients get done with their fillings or crowns and those sort of things, especially with crowns you take impressions, it gets messy and that sort of stuff, we’ll get them a warm towel with a spray on it that smells nice and that’s just another example, However, I think it all starts with having the right team and one of the things we truly make sure of is when we hire a team, or I hire a member that is working for us, we make those expectations clear. Your right, a lot of dentists are gonna say ‘well my staff isn’t gonna do this’ but when you have systems in place and you have expectations in place, then you hold people accountable, it works, and 1 of the things that I hold each and every person accountable for is having a smile on their face, and I tell each and every single person this early, especially when their hired, in our weekly or our monthly meeting, from Monday morning, to their last patient, whether that is one a Wednesday or a Friday, the goal is to always have a smile on their face, and I tell them, I don’t care if you’re having the worst problems in the world at home, or in your personal life, when you’re here, you’ve got to put on a show. And that’s what it’s for. And it’s not a bad thing, it simply just means when you’re here, you’re here to do your job you’re here to serve a purpose and that’s to make those patients lives easier and their visits more enjoyable by coming to us, and it’s just one of those things were when you take on a task and you divide up that task by small little tasks then you can make a bigger impact, so it’s not starting out with everything, its starting out with some things and I’m sure we miss out on a lot of those things here and there but the key is to just kept trying and not get to the point where you start something –drop it, start something else –drop it, it’s one of those things where you’ve got to start something, get really good at it, finish that, then start something new.
Vlad: It sounds like you have a pretty good work culture
Dr Sunny: absolutely and please understand why, when a patient calls up at 4:30 in the afternoon, they have a choice of saying ‘hey we don’t have anything until tomorrow morning’ or they can say ‘hey I understand you have an emergency, let’s get you in right now and try to take care of it’ it’s when you’re on the same page, things get done, when people aren’t sharing a culture that you have, when their not sharing what your mission is, then it’s a problem.
Vlad: So how do you keep your employees motivated, how do you get them to continue to give that excellent service?
Dr Sunny: sure. I think 1 of the things; you’ve got to pay them well – I get that, but more importantly, is just recognizing their efforts, most of the time we get so used to saying ‘good job, great job’, but when you get used to tying them to specific examples, and thanking the employee for something, ‘hey thank you so much for taking care of Justin, he was extremely nervous when he came in for his filling and you really made him feel at ease, so thank you for that’ when you tie that with specific examples, it means a lot to that employee, then just saying ‘hey good job today’, because then they just get used to hearing the same thing over and over, but when you tie those things together, you motivate them by being spontaneous, a lot of times I carry these $5-$10 gift cards, Starbucks gift cards, in my pocket, and If I know I’m running late, not only will I give them to the patients, but I’ll give them to employees randomly. So if I notice that one of my employees worked through lunch, I’ll say ‘hey, thank you so much for working through lunch today, I know you weren’t able to get a whole lot of lunch today, but here’s some coffee on me for this evening or tomorrow.
Vlad: that’s phenomenal, I have a video that talks about treating patients, if you’re late, doing the exact same thing, giving them a $5 Starbucks gift card, but what I was trying to get to was, you probably treat your employees the same way you want your employees to treat your patients
Dr Sunny: absolutely and that is absolutely a key
Vlad: and I think what we have to remember is people are people right? I started my career in sales, to pay my way through college, going door to door, I started there, I’ve done everything from that, to software sales, to fortune 500 sales, to fortune 1000 companies, and what you’ll find within any company or organization is, people just want to be recognized for their individual efforts, and yeah you’ve hit the nail on the head, I think doing that is awesome, and its creating a culture to where the machine runs itself, you know the employees are going to perform certain way.
Dr Sunny: absolutely, and I think that’s a key thing, we always have a culture of trying to take care of our issues, and we’re not a perfect practice by any means, and we talk about this all the time, we’re not out there to create a perfect practice, the goal is not to be a perfect practice, the goal is that you strive to become better and you hope that what you knew yesterday, is more then what you knew the day before, and that what know today, is more then what you knew yesterday, and that’s the goal, to have that mentality that pushes your employees to get better every day, that’s really one of the keys, and also I think it really ties into the fact that the employee sees you treating patients with that respect, and integrity, and honesty, they see those things, and they want to do those things for the patient as well, so it pays off.
Justin: and you don’t necessarily have set rules, where it’s like, a set procedure, like ‘okay, 3 report building questions when they get in the chair, that have nothing to do with dentistry’, I know there’s other consultants out there who are like ‘here’s the rules’, and maybe that appeals to dentists because it’s almost a clinical style of marketing
Dr Sunny: And the reason we don’t have that is because it’s a little bit hard to gauge that information from each and every patient, some people could be very type A personality, and somebody could be straight to the point where they just want in-and-out and, you just have to kind of keep those conversations to a minimum, and get them in-and-out, there’s people that love to talk, and as long as you let them talk, as long you let them tell a story, they’re going to be happy with you, so even just reading their body language, it makes a big difference. If I notice somebody that has a t-shirt or a sweatshirt with a sports team tying that into the conversation when you’re talking to them, there’s times when I’ve caught myself talking, and then realizing that the patient really isn’t that into it, so I’ve got to find a way to just cut this out and get to the clinic, get them in-and-out, and that’s what they like, and believe me we have a lot of patients where, we have a guy that just came in on Thursday, he’s been coming to the clinic 30 years, he came in after the selling doctor, I’ve seen him 3 times and he’s very much straight to the point, ‘tell me what’s wrong with me, tell me what I need to get done’, he doesn’t want to talk about anything but what’s wrong with his mouth, and that’s just the way some people are, and that’s okay, there’s some people that love to talk about anything and everything, and that’s also where you’ve got to try to cut that conversation to a reasonable level, so that you’re not running behind also
Justin: I think that’s one of the biggest concerns for dentists, like ‘if I become the Ritz Carlton of dentists’, it’s gonna be a runaway time suck, it’s just gonna take all of my time’, also then dentist say ‘this is just going to cost and cost and cost’, but then how much is that Cerec machine? How much time and research went into buying that steric machine? and if you add up all the hours it takes to the point you spend all that money, that’s a huge investment, meanwhile, nobody knows what the steric machine is, it’s not on the website, it’s kind of counter intuitive, because, compare the steric machine, and all the time and money it takes to get it, to a thank you card ala hallmark, that’s nothing! It’s nothing and you actually have all your employees sign the card right?
Dr Sunny: Absolutely, once we write up the card, we get everyone to sign it and it’s easy, I mean how long does it take for 1 to sign a card, you know it doesn’t take more than 5 seconds to do that. We basically will have those cards done by the end of the day, and every employee will have the chance to sign it at the morning huddle, they’ll seal it and then the mail man will take it that day, so we know for a fact that it can’t take that long to sign a card. And guess what, when we have a family that comes in together, sometimes the mum will come with the husband, or the mum will come in with the kids, your , your basically sending one card to the whole family, you’re not sending out 4 different cards at that time, so it really doesn’t take that long to send a card, and people will talk about it, and we don’t try and customize those cards by our dental logo, it’s just a very generic thank you card, its blank on the inside that allows you to write a few lines about what your trying to do, and then you sign it.
Justin: The barrier to entry here sounds, when your explaining it piece by piece, and of course I’m sure there’s other specific things you can share with the viewers, but really what your describing is really easy, the barrier to entry is really low, but mentally, what do you think it is that causes the average dentist to just say ‘I just don’t want to do that’, do you think there are doubts that that will actually work or do you think that most dentist have just gotten in their way, where this is just ‘ the way we do things’ I’ve heard that one of the most dangerous statements in business is, ‘this is the way we’ve always done it’, and so what would you say to challenge those dentists who are watching, to really jolt them, and really convince them that, thank you cards, it’s not that big of a deal but it’s going to make a huge impact on referral’s, on case acceptance, things like that, or maybe I can ask the better question; is there a point where the light bulb came on for you and you said ‘okay, this is working’?
Dr Sunny: yeah, it was really probably a few years ago, when I was an associate, and we started doing thank you cards, and patients came back and said ‘hey we got your thank you card, thank you so much for that, no other dentist has done that’, that was kind of the moment when I said ‘we’ve got to start doing this with every patient, all the time’ so, I think when you talk about people doing things because their used to doing things; it is that times change, the way we do things has to change, and that’s one of the things we strive to accomplish as a team, not just myself. We have to be adaptable to change, we talk about this all the time, it’s ‘if you can’t work with change, don’t work here’, it’s really as simple as that, and I can tell you we’ve had the conversation with a few of our employees, that ‘when we gave you our employee description, very clearly, it was written that; this is what you need to do not limited to, not including, that this job description is evolving, things change and you have to be adaptable to change’, there are things that the guys down the street are doing that we’re not doing, we don’t offer the Cerec, so we’ve got to be able to do things little bit differently, because we get those questions every now and then ‘what about that ad I seen on TV, do you guys do one day crowns?’, so we have to navigate those and explain to the patients why we don’t do it, its takes a little bit of that conversation builder it’s one of those things. If we all had that mindset, that we have to be adaptable to change, people would be more successful, so that’s my take on change; that you have to be adaptable to change, there’s really no way around it in this business, I mean 10 years ago no one talked about SEO or Google Adwords or digital marketing, and now it’s all about that, it’s kind of like the huge decline in paper advertisement’s and an incline of digital advertisement’s, and that’s changed, and that’s just the way that it is. A lot of guys don’t like it but we understand that that’s the way it’s going. 10 years ago there was no Facebook, there was no big talk about Facebook, there was no twitter, there was no Instagram, Facebook was just starting out and now that’s kind of the norm, and people rely on that information to keep up with time and those things. Nothing different then CE, don’t dentist take CE?
Justin: yeah, and it’s amazing what dentists do with CE, of course its required, so I think that’s part of why they do it, but I think the attitude is,’ we need to constantly be improving ourselves, there’s so many industries where they don’t have CE, and yet there’s one industry where we defiantly have CE, and there’s still resistance to learning, it’s crazy. With marketing, it’s almost as if, I think some dentists are saying ‘if I do this, if I do red carpet service, if I do google add words, if I do video production, if I have a nice website – well if I have to do that, then I’m just not a good dentist clinically’, but the truth is, nobody knows. Nobody knows if you’re a good dentist, and the marketing is all there is, it’s all there! It’s how you treat them, it’s how they feel in the chair, before, there and after.
Dr Sunny: you’re right and I think it’s important to provide excellent care, there’s no doubt about that, I wouldn’t want to work on my patients, and have an great reputation, and not be able to provide excellent dental care because sooner than later that’s going to catch up with you; but to just focus on clinical care and not worry about all the other aspects of dentistry, is just silly, because patients don’t know what a margin looks like. We get very specific on shades of crowns, and patients don’t know that kind of stuff, what they do know is how they are treated when they were there, how they were treated in the chair, how they were treated by his staff or her staff so there’s more to just clinical care and people realize that, I think it’s just sometimes hard for them to act on it.
Vlad: I think what’s so tough is that 20-25 years ago, when website’s where first busting out, dentists didn’t really have a website until around 15 years ago, and a dentist having a website was kind of a faux pas, and now, you’re taking a role that used to be focused on a lot of the clinical, and with very little focus on the actual marketing and advertising and getting patients to come In, but now that part has grown tremendously, now you have to have a website, now you have to do some kind of marketing and advertising. The role of owning a dental practice has so much more information that you have to do, that you didn’t 20 years ago, now you have to do a lot more to stay competitive.
Dr Sunny: absolutely, I agree. There’s no doubt in that, and I think a lot of people just get hung up on the fact that they have to spend a lot of money to do that, and you have to make some kind of investment, however, the small little things don’t cost a lot of money, they just cost a little bit of your time and dedication, and when you realize that and you have kind of mastered some of those systems, it really doesn’t take a lot of time, it just takes that practice to be able to hold that conversation, to be able to read the body language and being able to just get it done. Somebody told my front desk, and I think it was actually a big tip that ‘before you answer the phone, actually smile big, and then pick up then phone and say what you where going to say, be able to hear you smile’, and she started doing that and it worked amazing, and it’s just small things like that, that make an impact on your bottom line – It really does.
Vlad: Doctor we appreciate you coming on the show, you actually touched a little bit on a feature episode we’re going to be doing called the ‘the dental dream-the million dollar practice coming back again’, so it’s a really good lead on it
Dr Sunny: absolutely, thank you for having me, I appreciate the opportunity to do this
Vlad: Awesome and Dr Sunny can you tell us where your located again and the name of your practice?
Dr Sunny: I’m in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the name of the practice is ‘lifetime smiles’; the goal is to give these people a smile for their lifetime.
Vlad: Awesome, that is Dr Sunny of ‘Lifetime Smiles’, my name is Vlad from VladCostDentalMarketing.com and Justin, take it away.
Justin: excellent, I just wanted to say in closing that, I was talking to a dentist last night, he’s a general dentist, but he wants to pivot towards a little more cosmetic.
He was telling me about how in Europe, where they have socialized medicine, dental work is ‘free’, and the guys who are private ‘fee for service’, obviously their doing well for business. How does that even exist? When you have ‘free’ public service. This is kind of like a bigger form of insurance, it’s like, where we have insurance companies sort of beating down prices in dentistry; how does someone become fee for service?
And it’s by doing what you’re talking about. The guys in Europe are immaculate, not only clinically, I’m talking about the fee for service, the social dentistry is a free for all, but you have the guys who can charge top dollar even though it’s free everywhere else. And if there’s ever an example of the fact that there’s always a market for high quality dentistry, there’s always a market for good patient experience, that’s the example right there, that’s the model.
So here in America, where things are a little more free market, to hear people make excuses like ‘oh, I don’t take their insurance’ or ‘there’s no way I could do these thank you cards, there’s no way I could invest this time, and people, and care this much’, I mean look at the guys in Europe, they’re killin’ it, their making so much money in a market where they should not be, so I think it’s great that you’ve shared these tips, this is clearly do-able, the extreme model is in Europe, so here in America, its definitely do-able, not just possible, but likely to succeed, as you have.
So yeah, I like fact that you got specific, we didn’t just talk, you didn’t just say ‘treat the patient right’, we actually got into it. If they wear a Lakers jersey, and they bring you a referral for $20 000 restorative cosmetic case, you’re sending them a Lakers jersey, your thanking them in person, your shaking their hand – don’t pinch the purse strings, get personal, it’s worth it, the market is here for sure, thank you so much for your expertise Dr Sunny, and once again that website is ‘Lifetimesmilescicinatti.com’ and I really appreciate you coming on to chat.
Dr Sunny: absolutely and if anyone needs to get in contact with me, to chat or to ask me questions, they can just call me and I’d be happy to talk to them.
Justin: cool, so thank you again to the guest of honor, Dr Sunny, and my co-host, Vlad from VladKostDentalMarketing.com, and we’re gonna sign off, and if any of our viewers have any questions we’re going to have the podcast version, and we’re going to have the video version on YouTube, so you can just leave a question in the comments, if you have any questions for Dr. Pahouja or for Vlad or for myself, I’m the Dental Marketing Guy, thanks for watching the ‘Dental Marketing Guy’ show, take care.
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Justin: Welcome to the dental marketing guy show, I’m Justin the dental marketing guy, joined by Vlad, my co-host from VladKostDentalMarketing.com
Today we have a very special guest; she started working in the dental industry in 1998, she’s been licensed in 2 states as a dental assistant, and has worked as an office manager for 18 years.
Dentists hire Heidi, because she helps find the invisible profit, in their business and she helps them stop leaving money on the table.
Heidi, how are you?
Heidi: I’m doing great, how are you?
Justin: Very good, thank you for joining us.
My first question is, there’s so many dentist that are working so hard, and they want to make more money, or maybe they know what the issues are in their office, but they’re not sure where to begin, how do you help them?
Heidi: You’re right dentist do work very hard, and they usually do know what their issues are, what their goals are, so basically when I’m on a strategy call with them, of course I spend time finding out what’s going on in the practice and I’ll give them my thoughts, and then let them choose what they want to work on first.
Since my niche’, and what I’m known for, is how to make more money the next schedule day, that tends to be what we start working on.
They don’t want to leave that money left on the table, a lot of help with productions and help with all of that, helps with a lot of financial issues, so, I try and develop a signature solution for the practice, because, its more than just a blueprint or script, it’s like their fingerprint, and its unique, so you can have all the SEO’s and the NBA’s and the AAG’s, and the LMNOP’s, and a 100 new patients calling you, but if you don’t know how to communicate in a way that’s not only comfortable to the person saying it, but in an authentic way, the patients just won’t say yes to your treatment plan, or refer people; if you’re not being authentic and stuff.
So with my experience in the dental field, I do understand the challenges that the offices face, I pay bills for the dentist, I know the high expense they have, so it’s not just a matter of saying the right words to the patient, if you’ve been in the field a while; we’ve all heard it or said it ‘I don’t want to be all salesy’ or ‘I don’t want the patients to think that I need a new car’ or ‘I’m not that type’ or ‘I can’t say that’ so, if you can teach how to convert the potential new patient, and look for a dentist to serve the patients in a way that helps them prevent issues, give them piece of mind, save them money in the long run, then you realise what you have to offer is a gift to solve their problem that they present.
So, one example I can give is, my husband is a chief of a fire department, and he had Lasik eye surgery done to correct his vision, but then about 10 years later he needed a little slight vision correction, so he went to an eye doctor, who knows he’s in front of a computer, he’s a hardworking man, and he came home with his glasses, and then he was like ‘look at these, I got anti-glare, anti-scratch, bendable frames’ and everything he came in for, and my response was, ‘those are really cool and look great and their bending and that’s great for you, but did they offer you some contact lenses? For driving or scuba-diving, so you can read the gauges?’ and he said, ‘no they never offered me that’ so, it’s not a matter of being salesy, do you think offering him an extra pair of contacts to solve his problem would be pushy?
A lot of times we just need to sit back and give the bigger picture to the patient, give them the benefits and everything, and then let them decide for themselves.
Justin: Yeah, that makes sense. So much I’ve heard of patients who, they have the general dentist, and then they go to another dentist for veneers, because they didn’t even know the general dentist did that, and the general dentist is like ‘ah hold on a second, I do veneers’, but the patients didn’t even know!
Can you kind of explain some ways that you get patients to understand or basically motivate them to accept treatment?
Heidi: Sure, well put yourself in the patients shoes, that helps you understand that, no one likes going to the dentist, and you’re getting into their personal space, we literally have an oral business, so the staff play a huge part of this role, getting them trained is so imperative; especially to take it to the next level.
When I worked as a dental assistant, as you said, the case acceptance rate was 98%, but in my coaching, when I work with them, sometimes I find out they have 100’s of leads on Facebook, or they’re trying to get people to schedule, and some have success, and some have under 30%, but usually after a few phone calls, I can get them increased to 50%, converting to either having the patients schedule at their office, or present the treatment plan and pay and things like that.
So when your staff learns to listen and observe, you’ll find what motivates the patients, in less than like 3 minutes.
You know there’s a patient that comes in and is like ‘my mother had these awful looking dentures at 45 years old, I’m so afraid to lose my teeth’, I find a lot of time, no one bothers to listen to that as far as taking it in, or telling others, or writing it in their chart, or discussing it further, and things like that. So if you have that same patient, with an 8 mm pocket around a 4 unit bridge, and the hygienist is doing their perio maintenance cleaning, she might recommend putting an antibiotic chip in that pocket, and has to tell them it’s $75, but if your hygienist is able to say ‘I know it’s important for you to save your natural teeth that you invested $5 000 on that beautiful bridge, I feel if I put that antibiotic chip directly into the infected pocket, its anchoring that bridge, you don’t want to lose that tooth, would you like me handle that for you’, then it’s not being manipulative, but it creates a little tension to get the patient to make a decision. They don’t want issues in their mouth, especially when their reading all over the health articles that ‘periodontal diseases is linked with Alzheimer’s, or high blood pressure, or heart disease’, so patients are pretty easily able to do it if you present it in a way that has some value, or benefit, and touches on what’s important to them.
Vlad: Heidi, it sounds like the dentist that doesn’t want to immediately spend money on advertising, would enjoy working with you
Heidi: They do
Vlad: So what do you tell dentists when they tell you ‘hey, you know what, I don’t want to spend money on advertising’?
Heidi: Well, I mean, you can certainly do it as inexpensive as possible, and every dentist is sitting on a gold mine, they just have find the hidden revenue, and figure out ways to do internal marketing or something like that.
I have one client that is in a big downtown medical building, and I asked them just to spend a few minutes a week, just meeting the other people in the neighboring offices, I told them ‘don’t say anything salesy, don’t hand them your business card, just go in and be authentic’, so a couple of staff members walked into the optometrists office, or some other offices around, they were like ‘hey, I’ve never been here before, I’m at Dr Smiths dental office, on the 10th floor, and we just wanted to say hi’, they did that, they probably spent like 3 minutes one day, because it’s all that they had, and they went back to the office and that week, no kidding, 2 patients scheduled off just walking around saying ‘hi’ and complimenting something about their office, you know.
There could be a patient being seen, and they bring a significant other, or friend, in the office and their sitting for some fun, Mr Slurpee, Mr sunshine, and the child’s in the chair, because you don’t want their 1st visit to be that one where they bang their front teeth, then their experience is not good; not happy to be at a dental office. I like to catch them really young, so they enjoy coming to the dentist, not like every time they’re going to the medical doctor, their getting shots and, it’s just so different, so we want to start them off young so they love coming to the dentist.
So, what you do within the practice is actually what sells the most dentistry. You want to treat your patients like, say you haven’t seen a friend in 7 years, what’s your reaction to them? You’re really excited to see them, you have that look, well what if you treated your patients with a little bit of that? You don’t need to run around hugging them, but just think about it and really try to at least know their name, don’t just walk in, and look at the schedule and figure out what’s going on, you’re trying to make it special.
I remember when we were looking for a new car, I was driving a little Salah, and I wanted a 4 runner, and I shopped around, and I go all the way there, and I don’t know about you, but I hate buying a new car, it’s like buying a new house, the paperwork is super thick, I just don’t like it.
And so, I went to the dealership and said ‘okay, I’ve got this car, this is the one I want’, get all the way done, and they’re like ‘we don’t have it ready for you’, and I’m thinking ‘oh man, I’ve got to go through all these sales people again and blah blah blah’, so this is going through my head really quick, and the sales person said ‘we’ll just take it to your house’, well I live an hour away, and their like ‘don’t worry, we’ll bring the car to your house’ and I thought, ‘this is so cool’, and I know you guys are thinking ‘oh, you paid for it’, but when they did that kind of customer service, I was so impressed. They showed up right on time, with my brand new vehicle, and then when they get there, their like ‘I just want to let you know the license plates are on the vehicle, the registration’s paid for 3 years, and you get the next 3 years of oil changes, and maintenance free’, I’m thinking ‘wow, I don’t even have to go to the DMV, this is fabulous’
I must have told 14 people about that experience, it was just so different.
So we want to be a little bit passionate with our patients, and ask them questions that aren’t really happening elsewhere, like: ‘what are you passionate about?’ or ‘What do you like doing in this world?’, just simple questions that keep it on the patient, or you take their blood pressure and show them that their mouth is connected to their whole body.
It just takes a minute or 2 of your time to educate, taking photos of the patients, and educating and really documenting.
Justin: It’s kind of like a previous episode we did with Sunny Pahouja, we talked about the patient experience, and basically how internal marketing, that’s how you can get really good patient loyalty, really good case acceptance.
We are coming to close on our time now; I was hoping before we leave, we can give 1 quick tip to our listeners.
Heidi: Definitely get to know your patients, finding out what their motivating factors are, is it; pain, time, money, cost, what is it, and use that inter-oral camera to put the nasty looking photo of their tooth on the screen – because a picture is worth a thousand words, and then just go ahead and utilize what you know about the patient, as far as the motivating factor, and use that in your sentences, like ‘remember how upset you were when you lost the tooth on this side, you want to avoid losing it on the other side too’, you’re kind of using their hot buttons in it, like ‘you know you really want to take care of that tooth before an abscess or a crack in the way that you’ll need a root canal at an inopportune time that it’s going to be inconvenient for you, or costs more, because it breaks off in a way that we can’t restore it’
Just trying to educate the patients as much as you can, by giving them what they want, not pre-judging to what you think they need or want, or not having that fear that ‘oh, I can’t say anything because they’ll think I need a new car’
Vlad: Heidi, if one of our viewers want to hire you or have a consultation with you, where can they find you?
Heidi: So, they can just personally email me at ‘Heidi@coachingdentist.com’
Justin: Cool, well, you know, I know we barely scratched the surface on this, I know you’ve got a really holistic approach. You know one thing I like, I’ve just started working with Heidi for one dentist and, what I really like about your process, as we close here, you don’t come in like a wrecking ball, you don’t say ‘you’re fired, you’re hired’, you’re trying to build synergy with all of the staff, and the dentist and I really appreciate that, it’s a really good holistic approach, it’s a really positive approach. We just started getting into it, but I look forward to the results that you bring.
Now one last thing before we go, Heidi actually has a guarantee that you will get at least $500 per day, in increased revenue. That’s a great risk reversal guarantee, I am definitely interested in seeing the results that you bring for that dentist that we’re working with, and just thank you for your time, doing this interview, I know we’re all busy, and our time is valuable, and to our listeners, I hope you gained a lot of good knowledge, but let me tell you, this is just scratching the surface, and if you have any questions for us, I’m the Dental marketing guy; DentalMarketingGuy.Com, We’ve got CoachingDentist.Com with Heidi, and Vlad at VladKostDentalMarketing.com, thanks for watching the dental marketing guy show.
Text summary of what was discussed (narrative, not a transcript):
I’m Justin, the dental marketing guy, your SEO specialist for dentists. Joined by Vlad my cohost at vladkostdentalmarketing.com. Today I am joined by a very special guest. She started working in the dental industry in 1988. She has worked as a dental assistant for 18 years. She has been licensed into states to work as a dental assistant and has been an office manager for a dental practice for 18 years. Dentists hire Heidi to find the hidden revenue and lost profits in the practice. Heidi, how are you?
I’m doing great, how are you?
Very good! Thank you for joining us! My first question is: so many dentists are working so hard and yet they feel like their profit margins are high enough to justify their time investment. How do you help dentists uncover the hidden revenue in their dental practice?
Dentists work very hard and they usually know what the issues are in their office. So basically when I’m on a strategy call with them, of course I find out what’s going on in the dental practice, and I give you my thoughts. And I let them choose what they want to work on first.
And since Coach Heidi’s niche is, what she’s known for, is how to make more money the next scheduled day, that tends to be what we first start working on. Dentists don’t want to leave all that money on the table so addressing things like production and other money issues, we want to help them not leave all that money on the table.
So Heidi strives to find a custom solution for them, not like a script, but more like a fingerprint for that unique dental practice. So you can have all the SEO and marketing that you want, but if you’re not able to talk to the patient and relate with them in a way that creates patient loyalty and case acceptance, it’s not going to matter if you are getting hundred patients per month, or hundred new patients per month, because the way you make money is through conversion of those new patients into paying patients.
You need to be able to communicate in a way with your patience that is comfortable to them and also authentic, otherwise they just won’t say yes to your treatment plan. They won’t refer people. So with my background as a dental assistant and working in a dental office, I pay the bills for the dentist so I understand how high the overhead is and this gives me really good insight when developing cohesive strategies to help you improve your dental practice by uncovering hidden profit.
If you’ve been in the dental field for a while, you know we’ve all heard it or set it where we don’t want to be “salesy.” In other Dennis says I don’t want the patient to think that I need a new car, or anything like that where I feel financially motivated to present a specific treatment plan, for my own financial advancement. But if you present cases to a potential new patient in a way that is authentic and you help line up the patients thinking with that of a clinician or dentist, you can get them on the same pages you by showing them the true value of preventative dental care.
Heidi helps dentists present case treatment plans in a way that the patient understands that this is for their benefit.
Heidi goes on to tell us a story about her husband who is a firefighter and he was able to get some new glasses that had all sorts of great features. They were bendable glasses and they had scratch proof and fog proof lenses all sorts of features. But what they did not do was make her husband aware of the potential treatment of using contact lenses. Now, what’s interesting about this story is the fact that we are able to line it up to what probably occurs in your dental practice. In many cases, some that you may not even be aware of, the dental office run by a general dentist is perceived as the place where the dental patient gets their teeth cleaned. They think of it as oral hygiene. And then maybe some exams and some general dentistry advice.
The host, the dental marketing guy, goes on to talk about how many general dentists will find out, one way or another, that the patient actually would respond to an invisible line or veneer advertisement, because another dentist was known for this sort of thing. And the general dentist is standing there finding out that his patient or her patient, has gone to another dentist for that expensive and profitable treatment, which the general dentist actually offered themselves. And this can be very frustrating for those of you dentists who have experienced this. So it’s actually a really great example of how Heidi’s husband experienced a similar situation with his optometrist. Dentists can definitely benefit from applying this narrative to their own dental practice
The dental marketing guy then asks Coach Heidi about how she motivates dental patients, or actually how she helps dentists motivate their dental patients on the issue of accepting treatment. Heidi goes on to explain that putting yourself in the dental patients shoes, basically having empathy for their position, is a good first step to learning what actually motivates that particular dental patient.
Heidi goes on to say that there are many different ways to motivate dental patients, based on their unique psychology, and the underlying motivating factors, of why they would accept treatment. Based on these principles, Heidi has been able to secure a record of 98% case acceptance rates.
She goes on to tell us that within a few training sessions, she can usually get a typical dentists to increase their case acceptance rates 50% or more. She goes on to tell us that when dentists pay attention to what their dental patients are actually saying, taking the time to listen, that you can usually figure out how to sell any case treatment plan in a way that will appeal to them. She goes on to say that usually only takes about three minutes with the dental patient, for a dentist to understand what that patient really wants.
She provides an example of a dental patient who might be more common in your practice than initially dentist my realize, and goes on to say that this dental patient will complain that their mother had very bad teeth and ended up needing dentures. And they recognize, and are expressing to you the dentist, that they want to avoid that sort of thing. But it’s interesting because Heidi goes on to explain that many dentists just won’t connect the dots in terms of taking a note, both mental and also perhaps a written note, that this dental patient wants to avoid dentures, perhaps at all costs. Or at least at a higher cost than another selling point, such as having a beautiful smile that is attractive to people right now. The real example, this real-life example of a dental patient, is very interesting because she is able to tell us exactly what the best selling point is.
Heidi explains that by listening you are able to pick up on certain buzzwords, in this case “avoiding dentures” is the buzzword. Heidi goes on to cite an example of a clinical dental case where by the specific issues being faced by this potential patient is such that the recommended treatment is actually in line with preventing dentures, in the long run. And so she goes on to explain that this is a real science to presenting a case in a way that identifies those buzzwords.
Basically, Heidi tells us that we should focus our case presentation in a way that promotes the dental patients values, even if those values are little bit different than what we might consider ourselves to be most important, as dentist. This allows the dental patient to make a decision confidently, knowing that the decision they’re making with investing in quality dentistry, is in line with what they actually want. Not what a dentist wants for them. And this allows them to make a great decision, which will inevitably cause them to accept treatment, pay more, and feel better about you as a dentist.
Vlad offers some insight by noticing that a dentist who doesn’t want to spend money on advertising or marketing, might find real value in what coach Heidi is offering. Heidi then confirms that yes, many dentist don’t feel good about advertising when they don’t feel good about the internal marketing, or at least even the way things are run in the office behind the scenes. She goes on to tell us that by having the dental office in order, many dentists are then more confident in their ability to start marketing.
Heidi then goes on to tell a story about a dentist who was able to gain new patients in about three minutes, simply by going up to the upstairs offices in the commercial building, and introducing themselves. She goes on to say that it’s not sales at all to introduce yourself to your neighbors, you don’t need to hand out your business card, you don’t need to present any selling points. Just introducing yourself and allowing people to know who you are and what you do is a huge opportunity that many dentists may miss out on. In the example that Heidi provides, this dentist was able to get to new patients scheduled that very week as a result of just walking around and saying hi and introducing themselves. Vlad listens as Heidi talks about how dentists have many opportunities to just mention what services they offer, and how so many people don’t have a dentist already.
For instance, some people could already be in your dental practice, and not have you as a dentist. As an example, Heidi talks about a family with multiple children, it’s one of the children may go to that dentist however you can introduce yourself to the rest of the family and see if there’s any way that you can help with their dental treatment. This is a really great tip! Because, the people who are already in your dental practice are halfway past the psychological barriers to accepting treatment from you. They trust you because their family goes to you. And they will probably be more receptive to becoming your dental patient.
Heidi goes on to explain how it is particularly important for children to have a good experience with you as a dentist, so that they don’t have only bad memories of going to the dentist. It’s important to make things fun for kids so that they remember going to the dentist as a pleasant experience. This can also impact how they accept treatment in the future, as adults.
Heidi goes on to explain that the dental patient experience is of paramount importance. She talks about how if you didn’t see a friend for seven years, how excited would you be to see them. And perhaps this is an extreme example of how you should be excited to treat your dental patients, however this is actually a really good example of how dental patients really care more about the patient experience, and perhaps anything else. Being excited to see someone, being appreciative and valuing their time and the fact that they came to see your dental practice over all other dentists, this is very important. People want to feel appreciated. Heidi’s examples provide a nice narrative for this. Heidi goes on to say that at bare minimum you should know the patient’s name before you walk into the laboratory. What great advice!
Heidi goes on to tell another story which I’m sure the dentist listening to the show can relate to. And that is her experience of buying a new car. She cites how going through the buying process was made difficult at one point due to the car not being ready in time. What the car dealer ended up doing was over delivering in a way that was unexpected. This is a great example of how you can over-deliver in your dental practice. If the slightest thing goes wrong, and that doesn’t mean that you or your staff made a mistake, but if the dental patient perceives that you did something wrong, you should try and make it up to them. This can be done in a number of ways. And if you get creative, you can really come up with some great ideas, yourself. Heidi offers some of these ideas as part of her service with coachingdentist.com as well as many other great ideas on how to grow your practice without even investing in advertising or external marketing for your dental practice.
The dental marketing guy goes to close the show, citing that Heidi Mount is actually able to offer a risk reversal guarantee for dentists. If you contact Heidi, be sure to mention that you saw her on the dental marketing guy show and she will offer you a $500 a day guarantee. Heidi will uncover $500 per day or more in your dental practice within the first 30 days of her training.
This is an incredible offer! I’ve been working in marketing for many years, and the fact that coach Heidi is able to offer such an amazing guarantee has really sparked some interesting discussion on the dental forums. Without any marketing or advertising for your dental practice, at all! Why not give Coach Heidi a call or email and contact her about making at least $500 per day in increased revenue for your dental practice?
Read more on the dental marketing blog!
Dental Maverick Dr. Tuan Pham Tells All!
It’s an honor and pleasure to interview the legendary “Original Dental Maverick,” Dr. Tuan Pham. Dr. Pham has a high level of energy, which I personally find addicting. Dr Pham specializes in helping dentists take control of their dental office, and take control of their destiny! Learn more about the story behind DentalMaverick.com in this energetic interview!
Justin: Welcome to the dental marketing guy show, today we have a guest who, for many of you, needs no introduction, Dr Pham, he is really known for a lot of great things, but one of the best things that he’s known for, that I’m really enthusiastic to share with you, is about dentalmaverick.com.
Now dentalmaverick.com is something that was started by Dr Pham, and he’s going to tell us about how he’s helping dentists’ all over the country. He’s got some raving testimonials online, I’d like to learn more about what you do with that, Dr Pham, but first of all, how are you?
Dr Pham: I’m doing very well, thank you for the invite
Justin: excellent, yeah, we’re so happy to have you, I’m sure you’re going to put out some great value to our listeners. So could you tell us first though, before we jump into the dental maverick stuff, could you tell us a little bit about you’re background, as a dentist?
Dr Pham: I graduated in 2005, from the University Of Texas Health Science Center Of San Antonio, and when I went to school, and this will relate to in the future and in a little bit what I have to talk about, but, I thought that one should work harder and longer, just keep working at it to be successful.
So that meant that when I went to school, I was the nerdiest of nerds. I studied all the time, I got very good grades and I was at the top of my class, and I was in the 90th percentile across all of my board scores, and all of my tests and stuff, and so, I thought that would be what would gain me success in real life. And so I was a very typical nerd, it’s very easy to think in life, if you work smarter, you work harder, you work longer, you put in your hours, you will be successful – when I joined the real world, that was not the case.
It’s the easiest answer in the book, meaning that if you just work longer hours, you’ll earn more, you’ll be more ‘successful’, but is that really success?
Is it worth it to work yourself to death, to work yourself to the point where, you no longer enjoy dentistry?
Well, I realized that’s not really what I wanted in life, I realized that success in life, success as a dentist doesn’t necessarily mean the traditional ‘working harder, working longer’.
You can, but that’s not really the answer.
So, as I progressed in my career, I needed to make changes if I wanted to enjoy my career long term. Any job that you do is a marathon.
Unless you’re lucky, and you’re Facebook, and they buy you out within a couple of years and you have a bazillion dollars, or you’re Instagram.
Most of us are going to be working a long career, and if you’re in a long career, you might as well work a job where – we are general and we’re successful – we can master our skills. And so, I believe that every dentist, including myself, can create their vision of what they want. We all want different things, some Doc’s want to open 5 offices and just manage and sit back, some people want to see a ton of patients, and they enjoy working at a fast pace, it doesn’t really matter, as long as you know your vision, and you approach that.
So myself personally, like I said, I don’t like to work physically long and hard, and see a ton of patients a day. I like to have an easy schedule and be successful. So in my personal practice, I’m a general dentist, in Austin, Texas. I have a lot of offices around me, but at least in my view, I’m very successful.
Our office does about $1.2 million a year collecting almost 100%, it’s not the biggest in the world, but I work 4 days a week, I have an hour lunch, I’m at the gym at 5:15PM, and the biggest thing is, I see about 4 doctor patients a day. I work at my own pace. I’m not hurrying in; I get to be very obsessive about how I do work. And that’s what I wanted in life, and so I believe, any dentist, myself, the persons/people watching this show, actually I believe anybody, in whatever career they do, especially if they’re the boss, they can create the vision and the reality of what they want.
That’s a little bit about myself, I love my job, I love seeing my patients, I love doing what I do, my fridays – I get to do fun things like this because I wanted to do something else in my world, and I told myself ‘I’m going to do it, whose going to hold me back, nobody?’, so here we are, it’s a great friday right now!
Justin: You know I’ve seen a lot of your videos on maverick.com, it’s just amazing, the power of video. A lot of people don’t want to get in front of the camera, but that’s I, along with many other people that you’ve never met, feel like we know you!
And it’s great, you’re kind of a celebrity in the dental community and I’m sure you’ll never admit it, but we really appreciate you putting out that content.
So, could you tell us a little bit about DentalMaverick.com, and how you’ve help dentists build the dream dental practice for that?
Dr Pham: well, one of the things that I do, that I enjoy doing, is I run a local business group for entrepreneurs and business owners, and as a part of this group, I lead this group, and its mentioned on there; I wanted to teach – I’ve always thought it’d be the coolest thing to teach other people. And so, one of the people in my group was like, ‘great, I know you do nothing on Fridays except drink beer, so why don’t you teach this?’, I thought, what the hell kind of question is that?, I was like ‘I have no good answer for you, why I’m not doing this’, so I said ‘you know what, I will do this’, so I made it my mission, to do this.
I spent about a year, a year and a half writing all the content. I spend a lot of time online, you see me on Dental Town and other Dental things, and so one of the most common things I see is, a lot of dentist complain over and over, about their staff doing this and that, that they don’t like, office problems. Basically what it boils down to is, a lot of P Dentists’ feel like they don’t have control of their office, they feel like their employees are the boss and not them, even though they’re writing the cheque’s every 2 weeks to pay them. They don’t feel in control, and it blows my mind that, a dentist can do these amazing dental works, like; implants, place these crowns, do these beautiful things, that require so much technical skill and learning – yet they readily give in, and accept that they can’t manage their staff.
It blows my mind because, you can read these dentist’s and they readily offload to a third party. Some people pay consultants, and there’s nothing wrong with them, as long as you accept the value, and you accept, you want to off-load it, but some don’t, until they pay 30, 40, 50, 60 thousand a year, for people to take care of these duties. Or some people use affiliates. They use affiliate programs, where they pay a percentage per month, and I’ve read some of these doc’s pay; 10, 11, 12 thousand a month, as long, once again, as you realize what you’re doing, it’s great, but a lot of people feel like they can’t learn these skills, and they feel like they have to offload a lot of leadership and management skills. So, I started reading all these things, just like every dentist. I decided, you know what? I know how to do this because I’ve proven it, with some of my friends and local other Doc’s that I’ve helped, and so I said, ‘I’m going to make this course, and I’m going to structure it in a way, where it’s easy to understand and it’s systematic’, any dentist, if you can bond a crown, very technically and follow steps, you can learn how to be a better leader, and manage your staff. And if you do it, and you learn yourself, what happens? You become more successful, more profitable, but in the long run, the bigger picture is, and you have control of your office, your career, yourself, for the rest of your career. And if you think about 30-50 thousand a year, or whatever you pay, say some people pay $10 000 a month for these duties, compounded for the rest of your life, that’s hundreds of thousands, it becomes millions of dollars throughout your career. But if you learn these skills, BOOM! You’re in control. And then, you don’t have to rely on anyone.
So that’s the main reason I started this course, I think that too many dentists’ feel that they cannot learn these skills, and it’s true, dental school doesn’t teach you, there aren’t many courses that teach you how to talk to people, how to talk to your staff, how to lead your staff. I’m a nerd, I read all the time, I listen to audio books all the time, I love it, when I’m in my car listening to music sometimes, I flip on a book because I just want to learn a tid-bit about something, But in all the readings I’ve learned, I’ve tried to compress it, and formulate it, for dentists’, and in this course what I want to teach is, or talk about is; ‘four reasons to recognize why staff management is needed’, if you understand it, and each reason has a principle – why it needs to be done, and how you talk, and once you recognize these things, its actually not that hard. And as with any skill, if you practice a skill long enough, it becomes like the back of your hand.
And so, earlier in my career, just like any other dentist, or any business owner, I was scared to talk to my staff and approach them about things, and now – it’s easy! It feels good, it feels very empowering to have this control, and not have people take advantage of you!
A lot of doctors feel like ‘hey, if I talk to my staff, I’m going to be perceived as mean, and they’re not going to like me or they’re going to be scared of me’ but, in the interim that’s true, no one likes to be spoken to, or reprimanded – in this case I haven’t reprimanded – but advised on what’s going on that’s not right, but in the long run – it’s a funny thing that, if you talk to your staff, and you correct them, that you give them good reasons why this needs to be done, and you show the bigger picture, they will respect you much more.
It’s a great feeling to be in control and to be in charge of things.
Vlad: Dr Pham, what’s your ideal dentist, what kind of dentist is your ideal client?
Dr Pham: That’s a great question. I have a lot of people that message me all the time ‘is this course right for me?’, ‘should I take this course?’, and actually I try to weed some of them out. It is not for people that don’t want to take control. There are those doctors that are like ‘you know what, I’ve let this happen my whole life, I’m ready for change, I don’t want to feel like I’m no longer in control’, it’s for people that want to take control of their lives, it’s not for people that want their hand held, okay – if you do, and you understand it, and you don’t want to learn it, for whatever reason, then that’s great – to have people like consultants that will take over your HR, they will lead your staff, and that’s wonderful, there is nothing wrong with that, especially on a scale where you have bigger offices, but, if you’re a sole practitioner, then you’re the type of person that wants to take control of their office, then this course is for you.
It’s interesting, you go to a dental convention and you’ll hear a dentist talk like ‘oh, I don’t like it that my assistant did this’, and it’s funny, but say the assistant doesn’t set up the room right, then let it slide once, with the average dentist it becomes twice, before you know it, it’s ten times, twenty times, fifty times, a hundred times and they just say ‘you know what, the next time she’ll correct it’ but, they never voice it, they never attempt to make a change, then what happens, it’s crazy, some of these issues and problems, now it’s a hundred times, it’s a year of their practice, before you know it, it’s become 2 years or 3 years, or these same issues occur their entire lifetimes, and it just blows my mind, because if you have a dentist, a very nerdy dentist, that is doing – let’s say a crown – and a crown falls off frequently, they’re not just going to accept it, they’re going to figure an answer for it, but yet so many dentist, just let leadership management office issues occur and recur and recur, and it’s interesting because a lot of my Maverick users, there are some, they buy offices and they tell me ‘you know what, we had to make all these changes’ and they whipped their new offices into shape, what does that tell you?
It blows my mind, how many reports I hear of this, because that tells you, how many dentists’ previously, are such poor managers and leaders, that they just let all these problems pile up, and continue for their entire careers. And then this new doctor comes in, a maverick, that understands all these principles and they buy this practice, and their like ‘what’s going on here? We’re going to make some changes, it’s not going to be like this, and I’m the boss’.
So, those are the people, the people that want to take control, and want to assume the responsibility and understand that they’re the person that leads to the success of the office their selves; those are people that I look for to do this course.
Vlad: The term that comes to mind is culture, the habit of breeding a healthy culture within a dental practice, sounds like, is a big portion of what you do
Dr Pham: absolutely, a lot of people, and I’m giving you this lecture, and one of the things I want to talk about is, a lot of people are like ‘how do I hire a good employee?’, ‘how do I find these people? Is it simply looking on craigslist? Or ask a few people?’ that’s part of the equation; hiring is part of the equation, but most people don’t realize that good employee’s, don’t occur naturally, you have to lead them to be great employees.
If you have a very motivated employee, a very ‘good employee’, but they realize that they can get away, and slack at you’re office, and get paid the same to work half the time, and surf on the internet on their phone the rest of the time, who wouldn’t do it? It’s human nature!
And so, where ever you find good employees, good employees are made to be great employees, by having good bosses. Good employees can very easily become poor employees if they realize that they can slack in your office, and do what they want to do, and get paid the exact same, because there are no consequences!
Justin: attitude shift, this is a periodontal shift, you’re changing the way the dentist thinks, and the result is obviously much higher profits. I’ve seen a lot of good testimonials, we had Sunny Pahouja on this show couple of episodes ago, and I started wondering ‘where did this guy learn all this good stuff?’ And I started looking around and I found you, and so I’m kind of running on here, but my question is, is it basically, it’s kind of a life style, a thinking style change, is that right?
Dr Pham: Yes. Well, first of all, it’s tailored to dentist, and there are very specific things, that are very specific for dentistry only. For example, there is a potion that is an entire huge portion, about how to talk to your patients, so there are very specific examples that I say, personally, a user may use, if they want to copy exactly in their practice. But before I even get to that, as with anything, I feel like someone should understand the principles, before I give them my personal examples, I advise them that they should exercise and use their brain, about all of the procedures that they offer and formulate their own things, because they may see things in a better way, especially relating to their own personality. And then I come in with my information, and so they have done, hopefully the exercise, and then combined with mine, they may become something even better!
So yeah, a lot of things tailored to dentistry itself, but a lot of it is perception, it’s an attitude shift. One of the first principals, one of the first videos that anyone can watch on the dental maverick page that takes about perception. There is a concept that you can read about, which is very good, its call ‘re-frame me’, it starts with the fact that everything that you do, or every event that occurs in your life; you can train your brain, just like any muscle, to view it, from a different view point. And the reason that’s very important, for example, the average doctor, what do they think about? What do they complain about? They complain about ‘oh, my assistant doesn’t do this, my office does this’ they complain about specific problems that occur in their office, but if you aggregate them together, there is a bigger picture. And so, when I have someone that joins the program, I try to really kind of weed the people that aren’t good users because they’ll just like, they’re not going to take any action, but, the users that join, we start with a perception shift. ‘Okay, you have a problem’, I have problems in my life and my office, what do you do with it? And every doctor that isn’t a maverick, they’re someone that just complains about it, and then they complain about it indefinitely, and problems just occur for the rest of their lives.
When I have a problem, that’s cool, I might complain about it for a second, or a moment, but that’s the opportunity for me to find the solution, and resolve that problem, so that it no longer occurs for the rest of my life, that is the difference.
And yes it is, it’s an attitude and it’s a perception shift, and you have to accept people that are successful, people that are winners, people that are continue to gain success and improve their lives, they don’t get held up by problems, it’s just something that simply shows them that there is something that needs to be changed.
And so, everything was a perception shift, we start with that, because if you cannot accept that, in your life, if you can’t accept that problems will occur, but you can’t accept that there is a reason these problems occur, they are telling you that things need to be changed, you’ll never change your life got the better, and you will never resolve yourself of these issues. So for me and allot of mavericks, problems are opportunities to find success.
So yes it is a lifestyle shift too, I have a lot of mavericks that because of this program, like you said, Sunny, monetarily, they have increased their profits, $200 000-$300 000 their 1 first year and that’s not even using the recent released staff training program, because the original program for maverick is to train the doctor, and now I have a program that’s designed specifically to train their staff, all of their staff members. So, watch in a year or two and you’ll have people going through and training their staff, I bet you we have doctors that say ‘hey, I was at $200,000 the first year, went to $300,000, now we’re at $400,000+’.
It’s very cool to me, you can change these thoughts, they change you’re work, if you’re happy at work, what happens? It migrates to your personal life, and a lot of these doctors are happier, they’re more in control, their families are happier, it’s a win win for everybody.
Justin: I’m really excited to hear that you have staff training coming out
Dr Pham: it’s actually already out
Justin: yeah? Good, good, excellent. That makes perfect sense, if you’re training the dentist, and he’s got to try and parlay that to his staff, that’s kind of like the telephone game, that might get watered down a little bit, so it sounds like, wow, you’ve bought it directly to the staff, that’s really cool.
You know, you mention ‘re-framing’, I think, you know maybe that’s one of the three top tips we can provide our viewers, I’m hoping to have just three quick take-away tips, if our viewers remember anything about this interview, I was hoping you could tell them ‘here’s three quick tips’
Dr Pham: well the first tip I’d say is that, you’ve got to understand that all of the tools start with you; you are the one that must accept that responsibility to lead and make changes as you wish. It’s not the offices’ down the street, it’s not the economy, it’s not the president, and it’s not these things that affect you. It’s what you can control – you’re the person. So, the first tip is, you, you have got to accept the responsibility.
The second thing I would say, is just what we talked about, life is perspective, everything can be viewed from a different perspective. Patient no shows – well there’s your chance to find out the reason, and the solution; your assistant forgets to point something out, yeah it might be annoying, but there’s your chance to resolve it so it no longer occurs. So that second thing is, life is perspective.
The third thing I’d say is, every skill in the world can be learned. Clinical skills; if you’re a dentist, you learn over time, first time you did something, you were probably pretty bad at it, and pretty slow at it, but after you practice it a lot, you’re like an expert – the same thing applies to leadership and management skills – which so many dentists lack in their office.
If you learn that skill, if you learn that skill systematically, before you know it, one day you’re walking into your office, and everybody’s doing everything you expect them to do. And if they don’t, it’s a very quick and easy conversation, it’s not this long drawn out think where you blow up, and you’re mad at your assistant and it’s emotional – no! It’s very easy and your employee says ‘okay’, goes off and corrects it, life goes on.
Vlad: What’s your favorite one – three audible books that you would recommend for a dentist?
Dr Pham: You know my favorite book of all time, is a very simple and silly book called the ‘energy bus’; it is a book about a bus driver that picks up passengers. But that’s where I learned the perspective shift, okay.
I used to be a pessimist in life, like I used to view cup as half empty, when I read that book, there’s amazing equation that talks about ‘E+P=O’; which means E equals events that occur, and P is your perception that determines the outcome. When I read that book, I was like, ‘you know what there’s no point for me being this pessimistic person’.
Vlad: what is it called again?
Dr Pham: it’s called ‘The energy Bus’
Vlad: Energy bus, okay, that’ll be my next read
Dr Pham: well it’s the energy bus, I’d say that, of all my books I’ve read, have been the easiest book to read, it’s my favorite book to read.
Justin: Excellent. Well, you know, I’m wondering what’s next for Dr Pham?
Dr Pham: You know, I don’t know; take over the world maybe? No.
Justin: Well I know one thing, because I’ll tell you, it’s a personal mission of mine, to have the entire ‘practice on fire’, every speaker on this show. So, you know, you’re speaking at ‘practice on fire’, did you speak last year too?
Dr Pham: I spoke last year, yes, and I’m speaking at the Dental Town meeting, this upcoming March, so it’ll be fun, yeah.
My goal is to help dentist take control of their office. There is a reason corporate dentistry and stiff is taking over, and it’s that a lot of doctors don’t understand some of these principals. And these companies that are corporations, they’ve got it down; they’ve got management teams, they’ve got all these businesses.
Vlad: Franchise
Dr Pham: yeah! If every individual dentist in the world, learned a portion of these skills – they would take back for themselves, and dentistry would remain more as it is, versus slowly changing to corporate.
So, my goal; help other doctors understand this nationwide, and worldwide, so – that’s my goal, that’s my future plan – and to fish, I love to fish so.
Justin: I like it. You know there’s so many consultants out there, there’s so many people are like ‘let’s grow your practice, let’s grow your practice’, you’re actually, you’re fun, I like the energy, because at the end of the day, what do people really want? What do dentist really want? We want the life that we want, and that might not look exactly the same for every dentist, and I see that in your videos, it might, like you just said in this interview, it might be a million dollar a year practice, or it might be working 3 days a week, it might be this, that and the other. So, I really appreciate that, because I think it really strikes the core; we’re all trying to do things to be happier, we’re all doing this to get that bottom line, but a lot of times, we don’t talk about that, we don’t really talk about ‘what’s the end game?’, but you’re talking about that.
Dr Pham: you know, one of the common questions I get asked is ‘is this course for my style of practice?’ it’s every style of practice, because all of these principles are universal for how business works. So, it doesn’t matter how you practice your office, but, we all have our goals and we have to work towards it. There is no one, like I said, accept yourself, that can lead your office and yourself to these goals.
Shoot, I like goals, I like reaching for something, and I like reaching for a lifestyle that I like.
And every doctor should to.
Vlad: I like taking Fridays’ off too, just depends on the occasion, you know, but, sometimes I feel like really working hard, really getting to it, some days – I just feel like doing absolutely nothing, I think that’s universal, I don’t think its industry specific.
But I like that.
Dr Pham: yes, absolutely
Justin: excellent, well Dr Pham, Can I call you the original dental Maverick?
Dr Pham: absolutely!
Justin: the OG of the dental Mavericks, right here, you heard it from the original dental Maverick, Dr Pham, and you know, I’m sure some of the viewers and some of the listeners are going to have some questions for you, maybe drop your email address or however they can contact you.
Dr Pham: well, I’d encourage everyone to take a look at my website, it’s ‘www.DentalMaverick.com’, if you need to send me an email, great, feel free to, my email, my personal email is my first name, Tuan@DentalMaverick.com, If you send me an email, I’ll get to it, I’ll respond to your email, I’ll help you out as best as I can.
Justin: excellent, well we’ll put a link below in the description
Dr Pham: Even better, it’s even easier.
Justin: I’m the Dental Marketing Guy, thanks for listening to the dental marketing guy show.
Read more on the dental marketing blog!
Transcript of Video:
Hey guys it’s Justin the dental marketing guy here to talk about the lifetime value of a new patient. If you’re an ophthalmologist, you know that $5,000 is the cost of LASIK. So if you’re spending $500 set to gain a new patient that makes sense as an ophthalmologist it’s a much more predictable model.
Do you know the lifetime value of a new dental patient?
For dentistry, it’s not so clear. What we want to do is we want to talk about some of the variables of different patients. Whether you’ve got a delta dental patient who just comes in for cleanings and moves away in three years different lifetime value than a patient who comes in restorative $20,000 cosmetic and restorative work and refers ten patients of the same kind obviously a big difference so what we want to figure out as we want to outline what makes the difference between gaining the patients that you want most in your practice. And so, to do that we’re going to look at the different variables one of the variables is patient loyalty.
And right there if you’re if you’re a dentist who says you know in certain areas we’ve got college towns where people move in and they moved out a lot so you’re gonna have to gain new patients on a higher basis than you would if you’re in a town that’s a little slower moving and people don’t move away as much. But for the average dentist that’s what we’re gonna do is talk about a common dentist patient loyalty rate.
A lot of dentists with say maybe fifteen years or more for patients with the majority of them. I mean I’m gonna say ten years to be conservative ok so we’ve got a patient loyalty of ten years then that gives us kind of a barometer. And it may be more or less. Adjust these figures according to your practice. Internal marketing is gonna make a huge difference in these numbers as well so that’s something that you always want to have on your mind, is good patient experience. Because that’s going to make a big difference in how long they stay. It’s also, the next thing we want to look at is referrals. And in referrals that that can be a huge variety.
So if you’re attracting the patients who are referring ten, twenty people to your practice, obviously has a higher lifetime value there, Now some patients will refer no one, but once again you have your internal marketing setup in place – a reliable figure I found is about 5 referrals. Five friends will be referred to your practice and so what we want to do is we want to take these numbers client referrals and over the course of ten years and I what we want to do is we want to figure out ok based on the average in your industry if you could attract the patients that you want, or if you are attracting those patients, what’s the number that they’ll spend per year ok and conservatively – and this may be an aggressive figure for some.
So once again adjusted according to your practice. But I’m gonna say conservatively for many dentists $500 per year. Ok, so if you’ve got $500 per year times ten years that’s $5,000 ok so so if you say the value of a patient is $5,000, but then we also aren’t considering the 5 referrals. We add that to the equation that’s $25,000 lifetime value. From referrals. Does that sound too good to be true? Not really, because the math actually lines up. The problem is internal marketing is so huge! If you are not providing kind of patient experience whereby these kinds of figures are are predictable, than it’s too good to be true. But if you are providing even better than these figures the new patient generated through search engines or a referral service or direct mail or through whatever method; that actually has a higher lifetime value than the five friends that were referred. Why is that? Because these friends of this person tends to know each other and so, as you go through these five friends, each time you go through a degree of separation you get less referrals. So maybe like three referrals from one of those five friends and then from there you might get to and then one eventually.
But when you do it through say like search engine optimization you’re bringing in a whole new tree of people. A person who otherwise would have never heard about you. And therefore a whole new branch people to bring in five referrals so not not to say that referrals number will bring you more more patients they certainly could. But fact is, here is if they come through search engine optimization come through pay per click management if they come through direct mail, or some sort of dental marketing that has has stepped outside the social sphere of your already existing patients. Then you’re gonna see more referrals you’re gonna have a higher value her lifetime, especially when you start getting granular, and you start focusing on just the highest value patients. So the highest value patients for your practice might be a cosmetic case Invisalign. And you start there and you start the relationship based off of a high value procedure, where there’s high profit margin. So that’s these are all things to consider.
As far as these numbers go they are reasonable. But the variable is they have to be media generated. They have to come from an outside source outside of being referred from existing patients. And your internal marketing has to be spot on. If you can do this, these two things, generate media generated patients who have an amazing patient experience, they’re gonna tell people about it this figure $30,000 reasonable figure for the lifetime value of a patient in a dental practice like yours that is spot-on with internal marketing.
Here are the types of re-targeting that you can implement to be top of mind for prospective dental patients:
1. Search Retargeting – A prospective dental patient searches for a dentist in your area. We now know exactly what they want. But, if you’re not listed on the top 3 listings, you’re probably not the one they’re looking at visiting. Time goes by and they’re on fb, or reading the news, or performing other searches online. And there is your display ad as they peruse one website after another.
2. Dental Website Retargeting – They visit your website. You place a cookie on their browser. You serve up ads when they go elsewhere. Staying top of mind when they realize they’ve been procrastinating the appointment a little too long.
3. Get Social – This kind of retargeting is kind of rare in dental SEO, actually. And it doesnt have to be! You can keep track of what users are viewing and clicking on, and cater your content to those that tend to take the most action.
4. Email Re-Marketing – You’ve got a list of emails of your current patients – or at least you should. And those emails can help you keep in touch with your dental patients in an easy, automated way. Remind patients who you are and why they shouldn’t leave to see the “doc-in-a-box” franchise down the street. You can also encourage current patients to refer to your practice – even without asking! Simply educate them and watch them recommend you as the expert they know best!
5. Search Engine Ads – Hey wait a second! That’s not retargeting at all, Justin! That may be what you’re thinking. But the simple truth is, your prospective dental patients are searching more than once for your services, so why don’t you stay in front of them in more than one keyword variety? Send them to your implants page when they are searching for dental implants. To your About Us page when they type in dentist (your city). Stay in front of them with a different, relevant search result and you’ll achieve that “top of mind” status we all seek in our dental practices!
Read more of my dental marketing blogs.
The Dental Marketing Guy is dedicated to promoting a simple, direct, yet powerful idea:
Track What Works.
With this basic infographic, we see just how simple it can be to ledger what’s working and what’s not with respect to lead generation. Track where your patients came from religiously, and you might be surprised after several months just how effective (or ineffective) each marketing tactic really is. Whether you invest in SEO or another form of lead generation, this is a great starting point for tracking where new leads come from.
Read more at my dental marketing blog.
Today we’re featuring a dental office who has really turned the new patient faucet on through a variety of internal marketing efforts. Pine Crest Dental’s very own Dr. Williams showcases an incredible Halloween dental marketing strategy which speaks for itself.
The benefits of branding by having children arrive at the practice are immediately evident. Additionally, the practice is aligning themselves with altruistic values and support for America’s military personnel. Promoting great oral health is something you must live by, and preventing excessive consumption of sugars is being demonstrated by Pine Crest Dental in this promotion. Obviously, the contribution being made has benefits to the kids and parents, with cash and xylitol candies being handed out. Overall, this dental marketing idea is one to put in the books as valuable, and one which should be put into action!
From an SEO perspective, this promotion is the sort of thing which can earn you publicity and editorially granted inbound links from local media outlets. Which can improve overall dentist website search engine presence through online buzz.
The True Value of a New Dental Patient.
It could be the most fundamental marketing principle for a dental office. So why is it so confusing to identify an accurate figure? It could be that, unlike an ophthalmologist who knows ever Lasik case makes $5,000, dentist are unable to easily break off such a straightforward number. The fact that someone comes into your dental practice to get a $199 cleaning and initial exam certainly doesn’t mean that patient only means $40 of lifetime net profit to your dental practice. Let’s break down some reasonable inferences from which we can determine a reliable figure to attach to new dental patients.
The Dental Marketing Guy Show Episode 1 Discusses this topic:
First, not every new patient is created equal. Let’s discuss some variables:
Based on how many years your patients tend to stay with you, the lifetime value of a patient obviously varies. Most dentists might assess 10 years as the average time a patient remains a patient with your practice. We’re going to use this number because most dental offices would tout closer to 15 year retention rates, so we’re going with 10 years just to be conservative.
If one in every 10 patients spent $5k on cosmetic or restorative work, this might be conservative for some dentists focusing on cosmetic dental marketing. For a general practitioner, this might be an aggressive figure. For pediatric dentist, this number might be even more unpredictable, due to the rise in popularity in invisalign (and the subsequent lapse of the invisalign patent on clear braces).
Referrals are one of the biggest variables out there. It’s hugely important to understand how dental marketing affects referral rates. First, you need to have a system in place to ask for referrals. I provided 3 tips on how to increase patient loyalty and referrals in this blog post. The typical patient who has been referred to your practice will know some of the same people who have already been referred. Or at least might be referred in the future by another patient who also is form the same circles. This means they have less opportunity to bring in new dental patients.
Put simply, the referred patient tends to bring in less referral patients, because they are from the same social circles as the patient who referred them. The fresh, new “media generated lead” is the one that will refer the most new patients to you, who in turn will refer the maximum amount of new referrals. A new media lead is one which has been generated completely outside your current patients’ sphere of influence. It’s someone who would have never found your dental practice, had it not been for search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, social media promotions, direct mail, radio, TV, a public relations idea, or some other form of lead which would not have occurred if you cut out using these dental marketing tactics.
The media generated new patient is the one which will refer, on average, 5 new patients. Sure, some of your patients refer 15 or 20 people, but that’s not average. Even for a patient who’s been loyal for 10 or more years. And yes, some patients simply don’t refer at all. We’ll go over how to make that an extremely uncommon practice among your patients in future blogs and videos and podcasts.
For purposes of developing an accurate, reliable number, let’s say 5 referrals.
The average American doesn’t budget $1 per year for dental services. But that doesn’t change the fact that consumers spend about $500 per year at the dentist. This is a reasonable figure, and one many insurance accepting dentists would say is true. Many fee for service dental offices would scoff at this figure, and I think that’s great. Let’s
Please remember: If any of these figures sound high or low to your particular dental office, feel free to adjust them. I happen to know that these figures are reasonable and reliable for most dentists, but I also encourage those of you who have more than a few referral superstars to adjust your numbers upward.
So we have a media generated lead who becomes a $500/year dental patient. He or she is loyal for 10 years. That’s $5k. But then we factor in the 5 referrals that person brings in, and we’re looking at $5k x 5. $25k. And that’s not even counting the ripple effect of the 2 or 3 referrals you’ll most likely get from the referred patient! If we factored in that number, a new dental patient could reasonably be worth at least $30k.
$30,000 from one new patient might seem a bit high, but when your marketing strategy is spot on, including the practice policies themselves, you’re well on your way to creating that kind of value in every single new patient. For more information regarding how dental SEO can help you gain new media generated patients, please visit our dental SEO analyst and services page.
Of the popular dental marketing tactics, the level of effectiveness seems to have a common theme. Hitting the right audience at the right time.
I think that’s why SEO has become such a huge boon in dental marketing. You’re only showcasing your practice at the exact moment a prospective patient is actively searching for a dentist.
Some dentists wonder how their $10k mailer campaign could possibly not work. Or that $5k full page newspaper ad for the local weekly paper. Or how that radio ad which reached so many, fell on deaf ears.
The answer is timing. You can’t control other people’s schedule, but you can control what you do. If you’re canvassing, consistency is key. It’s better to be present more of the time, over a long period of time, than to be bombarding for a short period of time.
This is true of both branding, and relationship building. You wouldn’t call a friend 1000 times in one day, then ignore them for 5 years, would you? Your prospective patients are a smaller order of relationship building. Be there when they need you, not when you need them.
To swap roles, this post might find you at a good time. It might strike you to comment, email me, ask for a local SEO analysis or take some other action. But it might be the right message, get a head nod, and then you move on with your day. Your prospective patients are the same way.
Timing. It’s everything.
To read more at my dental marketing blog!
If you’ve ever studied seo even a little bit, you know that inbound links are one of the most important aspects to ranking on popular search engines.
This might be a bit controversial, just so you know. This post will shake up those who design websites and claim to also rank them, no doubt. But it’s important for Townies to know that just because a website designer is ranked for keyword such as “[your city] web design” doesn’t guarantee they’re really the best company to rank you for “[your city] dentist.”
Why? The reason has everything to do with the type of link building being done by these web designers and the lack of any replacement strategy for your dental website.
Website designers will often stamp their work at the bottom of every one of their client’s websites. This is often a link which relays ranking authority (often called “link juice”) from your dental website design to the web designer’s website. You can check your website for the same. It’s industry standard.
Why does this matter? Because these inbound links are lifting the search engine rankings of the website designer. But while this strategy doesn’t exclude the designer from finding a replacement link building strategy for your website, we shouldn’t assume that they have such a replacement strategy.
Tips to deal with this issue:
1. Find out how the web designer actually acquires links that would naturally improve your search engine rankings.
2. Make sure you trust their abilities.
3. Look for examples of other websites they’ve ranked.
4. Ask for specifics as to what link building strategy was used in each case. A qualified SEO expert can show you specifics in any case.
5. Sometimes seo can be tricky. If one link building tactic doesn’t work, find out what back up plans they have in place.
Follow these 5 tips and you’ll have a thorough assessment of what kind of web designer you’re dealing with. It could make you millions of dollars in new patients
Dentists ignore these top 3 tips on how to best ask for referrals all the time.
Why should you care? Because dentistry is riddled with bad marketing practices, and instead of blending in with the crowd, it’s now easier than ever before to stand out. You have to love the dentists that ignore these tips because, there they are, your competitors, making it easy for you to shine.
You can apply these tomorrow! Here are the top 3 tips on how to ask for patient referrals:
1. Thanking Patients who refer to your dental practice. Have a system in place to thank those who refer to your dental practice. I’m talking about every single patient, not just the ones you know personally. Have a budget to reward referring dental patients. It could be a bottle of wine with a handwritten note, or anything you believe the patient would most value. If someone sends you a restorative or cosmetic dental patient, you don’t want to pinch pennies, here. Given the lifetime value of a new patient, you want to create a lasting memory in the referring patient’s mind.
DON’T create expectations before hand by promising them a gift card or cash award for any future patients they might refer. This creates a high expectation, and makes it hard to under-promise and over-deliver. The whole point is to exceed expectations. Promise your patients nothing ahead of time for referrals other than the best patient experience and optimal care for their friends and family. Both the referring patient and the referral patient will respect you more for it, in the end.
The other problem with offering cash for referral cases is that it creates the perception that it’s all about money for you, not patient care. Don’t be that dentist. Be someone that stands out from the crowd by showing your patients that this is about their well-being, not your pocketbook. Many patients feel dentists become dentists simply to make money. Nothing reinforces this belief quite like the promise of a multi-level-marketing scheme, which is a close model to what’s being offered with cash-for-cases.
2. Take Notes on Patient Values. Intake forms allow you the opportunity to learn a bit more than the average dentist about your new patient. In my experience, patients actually like to talk about themselves and what they like or dislike on these forms. Better yet, if they happen to mention in passing that they’re a Lakers fan, or follow a certain sport, make a note of it in the patient’s file. This will allow you to pull up the information when the patient is referring to you, and they’ll think you have an amazing memory!
Better yet, they’ll feel that you truly care enough about them to take the time to address such things. The more personal the gift, the better. Do they like a particular brand of wine? Sports fan memorabilia is particularly memorable. Get creative. This is your time to separate yourself from the pack.
3. Free Marriage Anniversary Whitening. Talk about unexpected! If they have a 10th, 20th, or other milestone marriage anniversary coming up, they’re probably thinking about hiring a photographer or at least snapping a selfie while out to dinner. Think of how meaningful it is to have perfectly white teeth for these photos!
It costs you a whitening kit less than $100, and if you schedule it during an open time in your assistant’s schedule, that’s all your out of pocket cost is.
Make a note of which patients refer to your practice and offer them all this deal. While other dentists cheapen their appearance by shooting out mailers for free whitening to every Joe Schmo, you’re only rewarding those patients whom have the highest lifetime value. Think of the conversations their white teeth will start! Remember, this was a referral source before you gifted them. Think of the evangelical reviews you’ll get when you offer this. Even if the couple doesn’t take you up on the offer, they’ll never forget the dentist who did!
In Dental Marketing, perception is everything. Be sure to create the optimal perception. All that return on your investment for dental seo is depending on your relationship building with the dental patients that refer to you.
Marketing in the twenty-first century requires a lot of know-how and lot of compromise. If you’re doing your marketing on a budget, the amount of compromise you need to include doubles and it seems as though the content you make is never as good as what is made when you have unlimited funds. Marketing on a budget is something that many small businesses have to utilize in order to stay relevant on the Internet. Here are a handful of ways that your business can do top-class marketing on a relatively small budget.
1. Develop your Own Content: Content production can be a costly thing to invest in. Some companies invest as much as six figures into producing fresh, new content that they can use on a daily basis. If you don’t have this exorbitant amount of cash to use for your content production, you can always look into developing high quality content yourself. This content can be in the form of infographics or videos that are inexpensive to make but have a high impact on those who see it.
2. Utilize Free Tools: There is no end to the amount of free tools available for users across the Internet to track their content performance and improve upon it. Google Analytics immediately comes to mind as a very simple way to figure out traffic statistics to and from a site. Using these insights you can tweak your existing strategy to be more viable in the context of what your statistics tell you.
3. Utilize Social Media to Increase your Online Presence: Setting up a social media account doesn’t cost a cent. Based on the kind of outreach social media has, it’s a great way to augment your existing marketing strategy. You shouldn’t treat social media as a marketing vehicle unto itself, but rather as an extension of your existing marketing strategy. It should build on the success and promote the visibility of your content while at the same time give a personality to your business and allow you to interact one-on-one with your audience.
4. Content Curation: Instead of creating your own content continually, you can find content that fits into your niche online and critique it or develop a link repository where a user can find all the useful links on one topic in a single place. This is called content curation and it is among the newest ways to develop content on a budget. It can be quite time consuming finding the relevant high-quality link and researching the background behind each addition to your curation roster. It can well be worth the time in the traffic it can possibly generate for your site.
Low Budget Does Not Mean Low Quality
Marketing on a budget doesn’t have to be lower quality marketing than firms that aren’t constrained monetarily. It requires you to find ways around the typical constraints for a business in the field of marketing and building on your strengths. Exploiting the free resources at hand are a great place to start, but there’s so much more that is available to a company that can do their own research and discover the hidden gems that the Internet has. Check out my dental marketing company to learn more about marketing services!
Dentists,
Put down that hand piece for just one minute. Have you ever stopped to think what your prospective patients really want? Of course you have. But have you ever researched empirical data which indicates what dental patients really want most from their (would be) dentist? 50% of people don’t have a dentist, and yet they need one. These 50% are your target market. Let’s talk about what these people want:
1. Patients want an easily understood, forthright discussion about dental costs.
Dental patients tend to feel that dentists want to charge them for “unneeded” procedures. Help them by discussing the difference between basic care and comprehensive dental care.
2. Patients want your practice to offer convenience.
Many dental patients look for practices that offer weekend hours, and evening hours don’t hurt, either.
3. Dental patients want to see reviews by other dental patients.
Online reviews on Google, Yelp, and to a lesser extent, Facebook and Healthgrades, among others, provide social proof. Get reviews. It could mean the difference between you being fully productive, and being barely above cost.
4. Patients want a clean, informative website.
It’s not enough just to have some cookie-cutter website out of the year 2002. Today, patients expect a true dental professional to hire a true dental marketing expert. If you don’t, that just means you’re not serious about earning the patient’s business. This goes for your website, more than anything. Since the website is the hub of all your dental marketing efforts, it’s critical that you provide the content that patients are looking for. Do it in a modern, clean format that is user friendly.
5. Patients want to know about insurance and financing options.
Of all the things dental offices seem to think the patient should automatically know, it’s insurance and financing. This is counter-intuitive because many times, nothing is more confusing for the patient than knowing if they can actually afford comprehensive dental care. Many patients just avoid the dentist altogether because of this. That’s your target market.
Be sure to contact the dental marketing guy, Justin Morgan, for any questions about how to increase patient acceptance.
Hey Dental Marketing Guy,
I hear you talking about internal marketing for dental offices and dental marketing such as SEO and optimizing a dental website for conversions. Which is marketing, and which is advertising?
Marketing for Dentists:
When talking about dental marketing, what comes to mind? Direct mail postcards with discount dental evaluations, search engine optimization, and online ads that show up in your Facebook feed? In fact, this is not what I refer to as “dental marketing.” Marketing is everything about who you are and what you do to enhance the patient experience. It’s as much about enhancing patient care as it is getting the word out about your dental practice. The architecture of your office, the attitude of your team, the way you accept patients, all the way down to the way you accept payment from those patients. That’s marketing. This blog will help you take action to help gain a foothold in your dental marketing strategy.
Dental Advertising:
Dental advertising is the medium by which you promote your marketing efforts to the world. It can be in the yellow pages, direct mail, or newspaper ads. Sometimes these are great forms of advertising, and there is nothing wrong with a tried-and-true model. If these forms of advertising are working for you, great! But what if I told you your advertising campaign isn’t working at an optimal level? What if I told you that you could design direct mail ads that convert 200% better, create a website that receives 5 times as much search engine traffic and an online presence that actually recalls your most valuable patients?
Read more at my dental marketing blog.
How long have you owned your domain name? You’re going to need to establish some trust with search engines in order to rank well. One of the ways to show that you’re a trustworthy brand is to be around for a while. Another way is to pre-pay for your domain for 5 or 10 years into the future. This is because a valid brand is in the game for the long haul. While not a substantial aspect of your dental domain name’s success, this is something that search engines consider to a limited degree when gauging your trustworthiness. According to Google’s own patent: valuable domain names tend to be registered for longer periods of time. It’s a sign of credibility, Google says.
This aspect of SEO services for dentists is a 1 on the 1-10 scale of importance. With 1 being an insignificant aspect, to 10 being of paramount importance.
Domain names that include one or more of the target keywords, tend to appear more relevant. For this reason, click-through rates increase due to the user’s impression that “hey, this website is exactly like what I’m looking for!” Currently, many major search engines even embolden the keyword or its synonyms, thus increasing the notice-ability of not only the keyword being emboldened but..you guessed it, your website!
This aspect of dental SEO is scored a 4.
Having SEO-optimized URLs is important, as indicated in dental SEO aspect #2, above. Your internal pages, should they have a proper SEO format such as www.dentaldomain.com/your-keywords, can help this particular page rank. It helps searchers find the most relevant page for their particular search.
It’s important to find out exactly what these searchers are actually expecting or hoping to find once they land on this internal page. If you can give them what they want, the superior user experience will help boost you further up the search engines (user experience and how it relates to dental SEO is discussed in more detail later in this article).
This aspect of dentist website SEO has a 4 score.
One of the more archaic ways of delivering superior SEO is to simply buy the domain name that exactly matches the commercial keyword being targeted. For instance, if you want to rank for the keyword “Atascadero dentist,” you simply need to buy atascaderodentist.com. However, this style of SEO actually isn’t SEO at all, and buying a domain name for its SEO value could dramatically hurt your brand’s name in the long run. How many legitimate companies do you know that don’t have their brand name in their domain name?
Further, at the time of this writing, Google has almost completely blacklisted exact match domains as “spammy,” thus rending any positive SEO effects as outweighed by the fact that many top-level search engines simply caught on to the fact that a real brand wouldn’t try to manipulate it’s relevancy levels by purchasing an exact match domain. Yielding stricter standards with respect to the kind of link building that can be done for such a domain name under the algorithms “exact match domain” and other related algorithms which police the manipulative use of spammy links pointed at exact match domains. Simply put, if you have an exact match domain, you better trust your Dental SEO Company to an extreme degree. They have the power to unintentionally ruin your chances of ever ranking atop search engines, especially for the keyword that your dental domain name matches.
I rank this a 1 on dental SEO aspects available.
What the domain name was used for in the past can have a big impact on whether search engines will rank this new domain name. Past harmful uses of the dental domain name can include illegal uses or those which involved some sort of hacking or unrelated adult topics.
Domain names are free to be used by anyone willing to buy them, and they may be used for any purpose the owner decides. Checking the ownership history of the dental domain name, known simply as the “whois” lookup, can show the history of ownership of this dental domain name. To check the past contents of a website, visit www.archive.org. There you can see what kind of content this dental domain name has been serving up over the years.
Since the history of the domain name can rarely eliminate most dental SEO efforts, I rank this a 6 on the 1-10 scale of importance.
Title tags are one of the most heavily relied upon measurements of relevancy by all major search engines. By ensuring that your geo-relevant dental keywords are present in your title tags, you can virtually guarantee that you will rank higher than you otherwise would, without such mentions of the area of service and practice expertise. Here is an example of a proper title tag: “Peach Tree Dental Office | Beverly Hills, CA.” Such a title tag optimizes this particular page to be more easily deemed relevant to searches having to do with Beverly Hills, and also Dental Offices. So when a person combines the two phrases, as in the case of a keyword such as “Beverly Hills Dental Office,” the compounding relevancy is readily apparent. The great thing about optimizing the title tag is that it is one of the fastest ways to see a slight lift in dental SEO rankings. Within 10 seconds you can see a higher ranking, upon the search engine bot crawling your webpage for indexation.
This is a 7-scored factor of dentist website search engine optimization.
This is your chance to tell the search engine user why they should click on your listing over the competition, and a chance to explain to them what they should expect to see upon clicking. This is an important aspect of dental SEO in that it can help your click-through rates. It also is obviously important that you provide great, click-worthy ad copy in order to take advantage of the search engine rankings you already have earned.
I score this aspect of dentistry SEO a 4.
These meta tags are like subtitles, and they are given more weight than regular text.
I rate this a 2 as far as dental SEO goes.
Once the bedrock of manipulation by archaic black hat SEO providers, keyword “stuffing” was the act of increasing the keyword density of a particular page to insane amounts. Today, keyword density still matters. But the congruence and cogency of wording, aligned with the appropriate usage of the keywords and synonyms, is the way to show search engine bots that you’re not just cluttering the internet with mindless repetitions of keywords. You’re actually providing scholarly value to your dental website’s users.
I rate this a 4 out of 10 for the weight of this SEO for dentists factor.
It used to be that any content was good content in Google’s eyes. Today, search engines can tell the difference between copy-paste articles and writings which originated with your website. To check if your website is using so-called “duplicate” content, you can run your website’s text through www.copyscape.com.
Since duplicate content can have your page or even your entire website de-indexed (or at least seriously suppressed), this aspect of dental SEO is ranked a 9 on my 1-10 scale.
While prolix language isn’t helpful for boosting SEO rankings, a common theme related to the search engine query is. The more robust the content, the more likely it is to be successful in being deemed useful and relevant to your target keywords. However, user experience can suffer if you’re writing just to write. Make sure your prospective dental patients are able to easily navigate to what they want to read or watch most of all. Breaking up text with pictures and videos is an excellent way of providing a useful experience for both prospective patients and search engine crawlers, alike. Remember that, above all else, your content needs to be useful and enjoyable to your target market.
I rate this aspect of dental SEO a 7.
This is an underrated dental SEO aspect. How fast your website loads on desktops and mobile devices is a factor that Google patents describe as important. How clean your code is and how smooth your page loads is a major concern of your prospective patients. It could be the difference between them calling you and them leaving your website forever.
I rate this a 4 as far as dentistry SEO factors.
The frequency you use the exact keyword you’re trying to target can have an impact on your search engine rankings. While the exact keyword can be useful any number of times, it’s important to not neglect synonyms. For instance, say the most lucrative keyword for you is “dentist san luis obispo, ca.” You might not want to include “dentist san luis obispo, ca” verbatim within every sentence.
However, you might actually want to use acronyms and abbreviations and synonyms and other latent semantic index relatives. For instance, saying “SLO dentist,” “San Luis Obispo based dental office,” and “dental offices headquartered in SLO county.” This provides a little break to the unnatural feeling that your typing for search engines, and allows you to mix up the vernacular in a way that is easy to read and appealing to your prospective patients. And isn’t gaining new patients for dental services really what it’s all about, after all?
This dental search engine optimization factor is ranked a 3.
This is about to get really nerdy, so brace yourself Dr. Rel-Canonical tags are a technical feature that allows similar pages on your website to “point,” so to speak, to the most relevant result of the pages, based on the search query the prospective patient enters into a search engine.
So, if you have 3 separate but very similar pages about braces, the rel-canonical tag would direct the searcher to the page which best fits their search. So if one of the pages is about an Invisalign competitor (who even knows who #2 is, half the time), and another page you have is about Invisalign, the search engine will determine which of those pages is most authoritative. Based in part because of the rel-canonical tag, among other factors.
This is definitely not an area you’d need to worry about with most dental office websites. Since most dental office websites are not showing dozens of similar pages about each topic, this tends to be a relatively minor on-page SEO aspect for most dental practices trying to get ranked with SEO.
Because of the limited relevance to your practice, this nerdy dental SEO factor is ranked a 1 on my 1-10 scale. It’s generally not a dental SEO concern, as long as you work with a reputable search engine optimization firm for dentists.
This is an interesting topic, because who really in your office has time to write fresh, engaging content on the regular? Well, let’s consider an essential economic reality. Everything that we do to increase our competitiveness in the free marketplace is based on the needs of consumers and we are graded on a curve. If your competitor dental offices never post on their blog or update the content on their website, then you only need to beat them by posting more than never.
If they’re posting 10 times a month, you know where you need to be.
On the other hand, engaging content that offers value to your prospective patients will have legs to it, meaning it will get shared on social media, linked to by authoritative sources, and provide dental education and guidance to those that matter most in your target market. So it’s not just the quantity of updates that matters. But it is a comparative factor.
I rank this factor a 5 for dental SEO.
Not just how often you update your website with fresh content, but the extent to which it is updated. Search engines love fresh content. They like to show the “news” in the dental industry, so to speak. So providing a substantial update is helpful, if such an update is available.
I rate this factor a 4 on the dental SEO scale.
If you have a single keyword placed within the first paragraph, this can help search engine bots to attribute a priority level to the relevancy of this keyword on your web page.
I rank this factor a 2 for dentistry SEO techniques.
The quality of your content is partially judged by the appropriateness of your use of certain dental industry phrases and the accuracy of your grammar and spelling.
I rank this SEO factor a 2, as Google doesn’t actually read the content. It uses an algorithm to detect words.
There are multiple tags that can be utilized which preferably would contain your target keywords for that particular page.
I rate this a 7 regarding dentist website on-page SEO techniques.
Pictures are not recognized by search engine bots for what they are. Alt attributes and image titles, as well as the actual file name of the image, are useful for helping search engine bots consider the relevancy of these photos. By properly labeling images for what they honestly represent, you also have an opportunity to provide additional keyword data for search engine bots to crawl. A dental SEO specialist will know how to research for the most accurate and helpful keywords to place on your image. This also helps rank your images on search engines, for any keywords that the search engine chooses to display images as part of the search engine results page.
Another interesting fact is that the alt attribute is how blind persons would know what the image is about. Consider search engine bots similar to those that cannot see images, in this respect. As is the case with your copywriting, it’s important to not keyword stuff, as mentioned in point nine.
I rank this factor a 2 for dentistry search engine optimization tactics.
Depending on your dental website budget, you might be able to provide additional value to your patients through interactive features. Education software tools, and cost calculators are two examples of creative ideas. It’s not for everyone, but who wouldn’t enjoy a good dentistry game on your website? The use of your website over periods of time shows search engines that your website is useful. This earns you brownie points with search engines.
This is a tough SEO factor to grade on a scale of 1-10, because of so many variables. But I’d say a 4 out of 10 is a fair rating.
Having inbound links to your website is hugely important. The basis of SEO, with all the hundreds of Google patents and other search engine optimization experimentation I’ve performed over the years, boils down to one major scientific algorithmic factor.
Who is linking to you, and why. This is what search engine bots and manual employees (yes they will review your dental website in some cases) are looking at more than most other factors.
If people are linking to your content, that means the content is useful to them, and to the people that they share it with. If the person linking to your dental website is an authority in the industry, or somehow an expert in a field that would judge you well according to your dental abilities, then that matters more than if your dog’s blog is linking to you. Consider links a way of referring someone to your dental website. A sort of endorsement, if you will. By earning editorially granted inbound links, search engines show you favor over those who are unable to get those quality links. Just like in real life, referrals matter. But who provides the referral, matters just as much. Therefore, just one backlink can be enough, and millions of backlinks may not create any upward movement. In fact, it can in some cases actually hurt your rankings. Here is a real-world dental example of what I mean:
The patient is choosing to live in 1999 and doesn’t know what Ask Jeeves is, yet. They’re somehow disinterested in the yellow pages and yeah, they’re pretty much a dinosaur in case you were wondering. Like really ancient. I mean so old they don’t even remember where they placed their glasses, so they can’t read the yellow pages. Anyway, let’s call her Jan. That seems like the kind of name this patient would have.
Jan has a toothache. She knows she wants to end the pain. She may or may not know she needs a dentist or other dental specialist. What she does know is she’s getting her car repaired and she trusts her mechanic. She lets the mechanic know of her toothache. The mechanic recommends Dr. Farr, DMD. She trusts her mechanic and takes his advice accordingly. But she’s not completely convinced, so she asks her doctor who is also a family friend and knows many dentists. The family friend doctor checks her tooth out as best she can, and recommends she go see Dr. Farr. “Boy,” she thinks “this Dr. Farr must be good!”
She doesn’t want to go over the head of her current dentist, who she regrettably hasn’t seen in ages. I’m sure the toothache had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she’s neglected her oral health for years. But I digress.
She goes to see Dr. Fincklestien in her hometown. Dr. Fincklestien recommends that the tooth is such a serious issue, that she must see Dr. Farr.
In this hypothetical, it’s clear that Jan needs to see Dr. Farr as soon as possible. It’s the same way with links. By having a link from industry experts, you empower yourself to be more credible than if you have a link from an auto shop. The family friend who’s also a medical doctor has more clout in his recommendation. So too, a link from such a person would be more valuable than the car mechanic. Once we see the recommendation from the other dentist, it’s all over. You’re seriously one bad (“great”) dentist! And search engines know it.
This factor of dental SEO is seriously a 10 on the 1-10 scale. Maybe an 11.
Search engines know that different people like to consume different types of content at different times. By including images, video, copywriting, and perhaps even a podcast or audio version to your dental website, you will likely be marked by major search engines as a dental website of the highest quality.
I rate this dental SEO aspect a 2.
By having a great dental website developer create your website, without messy and unneeded coding, you provide for yourself an easy to crawl space for search engine bots. This matters because it allows a search engine bot to see all the content on your web page. Which is necessary for high search engine rankings.
I rate this a 3 as a dental SEO factor.
Don’t include irrelevant pages, such as a side business or hobby. You can feel free to mention these things in your “About Us” or “Meet the Team” pages, but don’t dedicate an entire page to your passion for florist services on your dental website. It will confuse search engine bots and turn them off to your website as being too haphazard and probably spammy.
This is an easy one to avoid. I rank it a 5 for dental SEO aspects.
Longer domain names tend to perform more poorly in search engines. The general rule is, while it’s nice to have dental or dentist or DMD or DDS in your domain name, it’s entirely unnecessary and also not a good idea from a branding perspective. Longer domain names tend to be looked at with less regard than shorter domain names. ckfarr.com is better in the long run than dentistservicesandinvisalignbydrfarr.com.
I rate this factor a 3 for dental SEO.
How your URL structure is set up, and the path of the pages which lead to sub-pages, matters. This helps search engines understand the hierarchy of both authority and relevancy to your SEO-friendly dental website.
I rate this a 2 as far as dentist SEO factors go.
How well laid out your site map is will help your local dentistry SEO.
This SEO for dentists aspect is rated a 3.
While search engine optimization is often thought of as exclusive to web design, the layout of the functionality of the website is important because it helps Google see usage metrics which help gauge whether your website is easier to navigate than other dentists in your neighborhood.
If you’re looking to design a great dental website, or possibly redesign your current website, know that this factor of working with a specialist for dental seo is rated a 4 on my scale of things to consider if you are a dentist looking for search engine optimized web design.
I rate this a 2 for dentistry search engine adveristing tactics.
Pages that have been around for a while tend to be more heavily favored by Google. While you do want to regularly update content, remember it’s really the page URL that should remain the same, unless the name of the service you’re offering changes. For instance, if you change from Invisalign to another brand of invisible braces.
This dental SEO advertising factor ranks as a 3.
Just as this dental SEO list has 101 complex and easily misunderstood aspects to dental SEO, yet it’s somewhat easy for a dentist to digest. Do I do the best job explaining the top 101 dental SEO factors? Probably not. I’m willing to bet that there is someone out there who could be more cogent, while still maintaining the integrity of the technical accuracy you need. We want to give people shortlists (whenever possible). With dental SEO, there was not much opportunity to shorten this list from 101, but for most marketing-based materials, the top 3 tips are all people want to click on to scan. Notice I said scan, not read. People want bullet points, lists, and emboldening those words which matter most. Think of the headline as providing the “scent” by which the prospective patients are staying true to. As they make their way down the page, they’re looking for information that helps them stay on that “scent,” so to speak.
Much in the same way that the dental marketing guy produces a list of 101 dental SEO factors to consider, surely you can think of the top 3 reasons why periodontal care offered by your practice is of supreme value to those at risk of developing disease. Promoting such content in front of the target market can give your website the kind of “buzz” needed to be highlighted in search engine results. A few good headlines to consider would be:
Top 4 Tips for…
The #1 Reason to…
Top 3 Reasons to…
There are lots of great headlines available to the dentist clients that I serve here. We’ll be sure to choose the right fit for your branding. By promoting the right message, people are more likely to link to your content, share it on social media, and tell their friends about you. That makes copywriting hugely important to your dental website. Even if you don’t consider a redesign, and just want a dental website that ranks highly using SEO, copywriting is the keystone of such a campaign. Headlines are going to provide 50% of the work because coming up with the right headline is what makes the content click-worthy. If people don’t click. They don’t scan. If they don’t scan, they bounce off your dental website and visit a competitor. Simple as that.
This dentistry SEO factor is a 4 out of 10.
The whole point of using a search engine to find a dentist is to allow someone the opportunity to find useful content that helps the searcher make an educated decision about which dentist is right for them. Or, in short, to find answers. Give them the answers they’re looking for. A dental marketing expert can help you craft content so that it hits home the hidden fears and apprehensions people have regarding seeing the dentist.
I rank this SEO factor as an 8.
A sitemap is basically what it sounds. It’s a technical “map” or the website, one which easily allows search engine bots to crawl the entire website with ease. This comes standard with all websites developed by the dental marketing guy.
This SEO factor ranks as a 4 out of 10.
Where your dental website’s server is matters. Since dental marketing is what I call “hyper-local” marketing, the more local your server, the better.
This dental SEO factor is ranked 1 for dentistry SEO tehcniques.
Pages such as privacy policy and and terms of service. Get them. Search engines know that dental websites which are truly credible are going to hire a dental marketing expert who provides these pages as part of an ideal web design. Without it, you’re basically just “winging it,” to search engine bot eyes. Well, we already talked about how they’re blind, but yeah you get what I mean.
I rank this factor a 1 for dental SEO.
How often your website is down can adversely affect your rankings. Find a hosting service that guarantees 99.99% uptime.
I rank this SEO factor a 3.
A secured connection may be needed to stay HIPPA compliant, especially if you’re allowing patients to fill out the information on the dental website, itself.
This dental SEO factor is a 1.
Having videos on your website, if done by a professional video producer with a dental marketing expert who can help guide the production, will help your overall usage metrics. The longer people stay on your website, the more favor search engines will show you. People stay longer to watch videos than they do to quickly scan through a dental website, looking for signs that you’re the dentist they want. So if you don’t have a professional video producer, one that is skilled in marketing for dentists..get one! Also, Google owns YouTube, and YouTube videos perform well in search. Having useful videos on your practice’s YouTube page can be useful. With a professional SEO expert working on your online campaign, you’ll find that your videos may easily outperform the rankings of your website. At least at first.
I rank this a 5 on the dental marketing guy’s SEO scale.
This is standard practice. Measuring data is a must for any SEO campaign. Make sure your SEO company knows what kind of traffic and rankings you have.
I rate this a 7 for SEO for dentists.
The age of the domain linking to you is an SEO factor. Older domains tend to be trusted more.
This is ranked a 2 for search engine optimization.
The number of pages that link back to your website matters, just like the quality of backlinks.
I rank this a 6 for dentistry search engine optimization.
Just like it sounds, these are links that Google bots don’t follow to your website. It’s unsure how often, or if this has changed. Many SEO experts speculate that nofollow links are actually followed by search engine bots, just that they create a very reduced impact on your rankings. Examples of nofollow links would be the links you can create on Facebook for your dental practice.
This dental SEO factor is a 9, only because if you’re creating backlinks that don’t impact rankings, it’s not worthwhile for SEO purposes.
The number of domain names, or websites, which link to you impacts your rankings. This is part of Google’s famously patented PageRank algorithm.
For this, I rate a 6 for dental SEO.
If a website about your city links to you, this is helpful for your dental SEO since dental marketing is hyper-local. Create relationships with those in your area and find reasons for them to want to link to you. It’ll show search engines that you’re relevant to this geographic area. Which is hugely important.
This is why I rate this dental SEO aspect a 9.
If you can earn links from other dentists in your area, this can be hugely beneficial. As explained previously, your local dentist will provide the best opportunity to gain inbound links of the most powerful kind. This is because a link is sort of like an endorsement or referral. Speaking of which, anyone who provides you with patient referrals would be a good candidate to link to you. Should they not offer a service that you do, that’s a good opportunity for them to link to your useful content.
I rate this a 9 on the 1-10 dentistry SEO scale.
A homepage link will offer you the most bang for your buck. However, some of the best links you can get will often be presented by blog posts or other internal pages.
I rate this dental SEO factor a 5.
The type of links you provide should be diversified. Be the media sources, blog comments, and forum posts, you want to have a broader variety than just these. Try to earn some links from others in your community. Just make sure they’re relevant to dentistry.
I rate this a 3 for dental SEO.
Having the word “sponsored” or “partnership” can lower the value of the backlink. This is because search engines don’t want you to buy links for SEO purposes. They should be editorially granted links from relevant industry experts.
I rate this a 6 for dentistry SEO.
Anchor text is the text which is used within the link. It’s important to know how anchor text which is keyword-rich can help your rankings. But don’t overdo it! Having too much commercial anchor text can look “spammy” and actually get you de-indexed from search results. A top-level dental SEO expert will know how to best handle this, providing the right balance between branded anchor text and commercial intent anchor text. This ties in nicely with your branding and domain name choice, as well.
I rate this a 10 since it’s a serious risk and big reward, depending on whether you hire the right professional.
Where the link appears in the body of copywriting matters. A link that appears prominently towards the top of an article or web page will be more powerful than one placed at the very bottom.
I rate this a 2 for dental SEO.
The context of the link matters a great deal. The body of text surrounding your link is read by search engines and provides the context for the link. Is the content uplifting or negative about your website? Does it satisfy a user’s interest? Is it well written and organized? These things will impact the benefit you receive from your inbound link.
I rate this a 5 for dentistry SEO.
Links that actually are clicked on by your intended audience are more useful in search engines’ eyes than those that send no referral traffic.
I rate this a 4 for dentist website SEO.
If you’re good enough at something that you’re linked from Wikipedia as a source, this can boost your trust factor with search engines. Though this kind of link is nofollow, it does provide trust and value as part of an overall “dental SEO health score,” if you will.
I rate this a 2 for dentistry SEO.
The longer a link has existed, the more the trust flows from such a link.
I rate this a 2 for SEO for your dental website.
If a website is set up for the purpose of dropping links to those willing to buy them, it is what we in the dental SEO industry refer to as a “spam site.” Be wary of anyone trying to sell you links from such a website. Such links may actually hinder your ability to rank. As search engines become wiser to the unscrupulous SEO practices of the past, their algorithms are more and more adept at recognizing this sort of link scheme. Websites that have a high number of outbound links are often spam websites. Your dental SEO professional should know how to avoid building these types of links. If you think you may have been adversely affected by such amateur SEO tactics as the dropping of link spam, contact the dental marketing guy or another dental SEO professional to see about disavowing the link spam within Google Webmaster Tools.
I rank this SEO aspect a 7, since it can be a serious impediment to dental SEO success.
The more people engage with the website linking to you, the better off you’ll be in earning that link. Not only because of the higher likelihood of referral traffic, but also because search engines tend to place high value on websites that appear to be useful to web searchers. The links you get from useful sites are, reasonably so, considered more useful, as well. Therefore your links have a higher value for being earned, increasing your dental SEO overall score.
I rate this 6 on the dental marketing guy’s dental SEO scale of ultimate justice, power, and success.
Integrating links between fellow community members does help. Cross-pollination can help your local SEO, mostly because it shows that you’re an active part of your community. However, if it looks as though you’re simply trading links with others for the purpose of ranking higher, these links will lose value and may potentially lead to SEO penalties.
This dental SEO factor is rated a 2 for search engine optimizing techniques for dentists.
Directories such as Yahoo, and Yellow Pages. Get them. You also want about 100 dental niche directories for dentists, as well. From health grades to web MD, you want links from dental-related websites. Contact a dental marketing and SEO professional to find out the full list of dental directories. It’ll really go a long way to have an SEO specialist fill these out for you. If you go the DIY route, be sure to have the exact copy and paste versions of your information placed on each website. The reason is that Google bots get confused at which directory has the most accurate, up-to-date information available. You make it easy by making each directory listing consistent. Some SEO professionals also call these “citations,” although a citation may be made in more than a directory. Such as a media outlet that quotes you. Those are good, as well. Even without an inbound link, any authoritative source that cites your practice is going to be noticed by search engines. And they’ll lift your ranking as a result.
I rate this an 8 out of 10 for dental SEO.
If you’re active on a forum such as dental town, use the signature portion to showcase a link to your website. It’s also a nice place to have others see your logo if you want to link with an image. These forum links are usually nofollow. But hey, it’s relevant and authoritative, and many SEO experts believe that nofollow links do count. The Dental Marketing Guy is one of them. Yes, I refer to myself in the third person from time to time. I also help you make bank, so I’m sure you’ll forgive me.
I rank this a 2 for dental SEO.
One of the simplest algorithms to understand is that of click-through rate related algorithms. Such algorithms provide an objective measure of subjective liking. Simply put, the more people like the way your listing appears on search engines, the more they’ll click on that link over the others being offered. You get a certain amount of “credit,” if you will for click-through rates. If the #2 listing is being clicked on 20% more than the first ranked result, you can expect to see the rankings flip, over time. This is partly why great ad copy is essential for any dental SEO expert trying to maintain the rankings they earned through the other methods mentioned in this article. And why you should be extra choosy with respect to who does your ad copywriting.
Pick someone that understands SEO, but more importantly, a dental marketing expert that specializes in your field of dentistry. Don’t be afraid to ask for a small sample of copywriting, specifically ad copy. A good place for the copywriter to direct you would be a major search engine, like Google. From there they should be able to show you the ad copy they use in the title tag and meta description. Right on the search engine results page. Depending on how click-worthy you find the ad copy, you can use that as a yardstick to measure the copywriter’s competence. But be careful! Just because you and I might find it click-worthy, doesn’t mean your prospective patients will. Therefore, the best indicator that the ad copy is well written has mostly to do with the length of time the search ranking has stayed aloft the other listings. A good question to ask is “how long has this listing been ranked here.” We’ll be going over the top questions to ask any dental SEO professional, preferably before you hire them, in a subsequent article.
But be careful! Just because you and I might find it click-worthy, doesn’t mean your prospective patients will. Therefore, the best indicator that the ad copy is well written has mostly to do with the length of time the search ranking has stayed aloft the other listings. A good question to ask is “how long has this listing been ranked here.” We’ll be going over the top questions to ask any dental SEO professional, preferably before you hire them, in a subsequent article.
I rate this a 9 for dental SEO.
A dentist’s website should be one that provides engaging content to a prospective patient. If the patient finds your website on a search engine and they ultimately click back to Google to look for other results, this tells the search engine that your website did not provide engaging content to match the prospective patient’s searching intent. The reason why this is so important to understand has everything to do with the fact that bounce rate is a strong indicator of the usefulness of a website. You can check your bounce rate in your Google Analytics account. Any dental SEO professional should provide you with reports as needed. These reports, oftentimes will not include bounce rate data. If that’s the case, you should ask your dental SEO provider exactly what your bounce rates are, and what you can do to lower them, if that is necessary.
For a dental website, I like to see a bounce rate of under 20%. Anything higher than that probably is not engaging the user to move into internal pages quite like they naturally should. It’s not to say that, you should always see engaged users clicking through to an internal page before leaving your dental website, it’s just that you want to have a bounce rate that shows the user is getting what they need the first time they search for your website. Delving deep into Google Analytics, you can find which users have been to your website before, and thus figure out, based on a variety of buttons and options available, whether return visitors have a higher or lower bounce rate than first-time visitors. The reason why this information is important is because it tells us if the user who had originally visited the website was able to find the answers to the questions which originally compelled the search to take place. If a user comes back and decides to look for more answers the second time, this could show one of two things. Either the prospective patient is getting closer to making a buying decision, or the visitor is unsure of your dental practice, based on their first interaction with your website.
The bounce rate is complex, but overall I rank it a respectable 4 out of 10 regarding your dental SEO.
as touched on in the previous paragraph about bounce rates, a dentist’s website needs to be highly engaging, educational, enjoyable, and easy to navigate. Your dental website needs to provide answers to the questions that match searcher content. One of the strongest indicators that your website is accomplishing these goals is the data which shows within Google analytics, just what length of stay the prospective patient has spent on your website. Make sure your website is encouraging active engagement in providing answers that dental avoiders and procrastinators need to see.
I rank this a 5 on my dental SEO scale.
How often do your patients visit your website? Ideally, a patient would visit your dental website more often than they would visit the practice. If you are putting out content that your patients would value, they are more likely to return to your website. One good idea is to provide an online appointment scheduler that is HIPAA compliant.
This dental SEO aspect is ranked a 6.
Inertia. What does it mean to you? To Google, inertia matters. Did you know that the amount of search engine traffic your website receives actually impacts your rankings? It pays to get to the top, and once you get to the top the momentum tends to keep you there.
I rank this a 4 for dental SEO aspects.
By mentioning your location, you can help enhance your rankings for Geo relevant keywords such as your city name dentist. Sometimes, mentioning your city or other neighborhood location, however it is spoken about around town, is every bit as helpful in determining how a search engine should rank your dental website as is the content you place on the website about dental-related subject matter.
I rank local mentions a 4 for dental SEO effectiveness.
Typically, the longer a page has been in existence, the better for search engine rankings. However, the busier that page is, or the fresher the content on that page, the more likely it is to be reviewed as newsworthy or up-to-date. Most dental website pages do not need to regularly be updated. However, there are certain pages that should be updated as technology changes, tactics change, or as you progress as a dental professional in obtaining new continuing education certifications.
Make sure you have everything up to date. If your prospective patients don’t know, it’s because you weren’t able to effectively convey the unique value that you offer. Your dental website is the perfect opportunity to relay the most important information in an easy-to-read fashion.
Freshness is rated a 3 on my dentist SEO scale of truth and justice for successful dentistry.
Based on a patient’s previous searches within the dental industry, you may or may not show up in the same order as you had during the first search. This is because Google uses a personalized algorithm, based on previous actions that the user took in related searches. For instance, whether they clicked on your website in a previous search for dentist Los Angeles California.
If they did not click on your result, the results that they did click on would likely be ranked higher the second time they search for that exact keyword. Similar searches to do with things such as invisible braces in San Luis Obispo, CA will show up higher, due to personalized results.
Since search history affects search engine rankings for your hottest prospects, I rank it a 5 with respect to SEO for dentists.
If you are using copywriting which infringes on the copyright of another website, this can backfire in more than one way. Not only are there legal repercussions, but there are also ethical questions. Most importantly for our SEO purposes, you may become de-indexed or at least de-ranked as part of a penalty based on copyright infringement. As mentioned before, be absolutely certain that your copywriter is using 100% unique content. This doesn’t just go for copywriting, though. This also applies to pictures and videos.
This is more legalese than search engine optimization. I’ll rank it a 2. I don’t care what my lawyer says, it’s not that likely to be an issue if you work with a real dental marketing expert.
If there are large dental chains in your town, this can create an issue from a search engine optimization standpoint. The bigger the brand, the more authority this brand competitor will have over you in search engine rankings. If you are a dental office that seeks to outrank large brands, you need real dental marketing. You can’t just do search engine optimization, alone. Be sure to consult with an actual expert in the field of dental marketing, before you hire a search engine optimization firm.
This one is somewhat intangible, so I’m going to close my eyes and rank this dentistry search engine optimizer factor a 3.
Sometimes, optimization of the “alternative text” on your images, and also the image title, and also the image file name within your computer, can have an easy and also substantial impact on whether your images appear in an image search. Sometimes images appear during normal searches on Google Bing and Yahoo. Make sure your images are optimized properly so that you can take advantage of this search engine traffic that highlights images.
This is usually outweighed so much by organic and map rankings, so I’ll rank picture SEO as a 2. Searches for your brand to show your face and logo do matter, though.
While there is some use of speculation as to the importance of social signals, there is no speculation about the helpfulness of reviews. Reviews are not only intuitively helpful for users, being your prospective patients, as it helps them find what they need. But also Google has expressly stated that reviews are a noticeable ranking factor for dental websites.
Things such as Facebook likes may not be of that great importance for your search engine rankings. However, the engagement of your audience and how they consume and share the content that you put out can be a sign of authority. Sense relevancy and authority are the two major ways of contributing to your own higher search engine rankings for dental keywords, this provides you with such authority. Relevancy is also gained by posting about industry-related subject matter.
Overall, social media should not be used with the end goal of ranking higher on search engines. It should be used as a way to engage, build relationships, and provide quality content to your target market. Typically, the dental marketing guy would recommend that, in addition to providing great content, you also paid to promote such content on social media platforms, such as Facebook. This promotion allows you to get your message out to the target audience.
Who are your favorite clients? Which patients do you like best? Consider what demographics they may belong to. One of the great things about these social media platforms is that it allows you to show in your paid advertising the friends of the target audience like your page. They can also leave reviews on Facebook. This allows you to display social proof of your competency and compassion.
One of the best ways to show these traits is to allow others to toot your horn. No one likes a braggart. Let your patients, the same way in the real world, use word-of-mouth on social media. One of my favorite platforms to get reviews is Google plus. It is a great place to get reviews they show up as once at least seven reviews good review, but glass is better yelp has costs. However, a stream of positive reviews on yelp will help grow your practice.
3 out of 10 dental SEO technique.
The copywriting surrounding a link provided on social media platforms matters. This also goes for any sort of content being shared across social media, with or without a link pointing to your website.
3 out of 10 SEO consideration.
Merely being present on social media platforms can help build the trustworthiness and authority of your dental website.
1 out of 10 SEO consideration.
What is anchor text? Anchor text is the text that you actually click on to go through to the next webpage. It is also called a hyperlink. As a general rule, we want to use branded anchor text. The reason we want to use your brand name in the anchor text will help search engines recognize your brand has a commonplace authority, relevant to the dental industry. We don’t want to use exact match keywords, however. Exact match keywords would be commercial intent keywords that you think prospective patients might be entering into Google. These keywords being used as anchor text can temporarily give you a huge boost in search engine rankings. However, because this system of building commercial anchor text has been so abused on a widespread level, you now risk a penalty for the overuse, or over-optimization, of anchor text. If your brand name is similar to, or as I call it partial match, then you want to be careful about using branded text, as well. While it may be safer on some level, you also risk an over-optimization penalty, just the same. The dental marketing guy recommends not choosing a domain name, and not choosing a practice name, based on SEO.
5 out of 10 SEO technique to know if you’re a dentist.
LinkedIn has a very granular ad platform. Your dental office can reach out to various professionals with high elective procedure budgets. Simply being on LinkedIn can be a credibility booster.
I recommend using LinkedIn to show how professional your team is in the professional world. While it is not necessarily quantifiable, I believe that having a strong LinkedIn presence is a benefit to your dental search engine optimization. I believe that so many dental offices neglect the professional perception element to their marketing, and LinkedIn is an easy way to have your staff present with photos and biographies on who they are.
Really, your prospective patients just want to know that you are normal-looking and personable. There is a huge pool of professionals with disposable income who are just waiting to find a dentist who they trust. Why not give them a reason to look towards you as the authority in everything from cosmetic to reconstructive procedures? The more they see you, the more they will trust you with contributing to their oral health.
Search engines work the same way as people do. Or, at least they try. Search engines are getting smarter every day. And the dentists who prepare for the future right now will ensure a place atop search results for years to come. Why not prepare for the search engine optimization strategy that will succeed in the future? Promote your practice on LinkedIn today!
3 out of 10 dental SEO component.
How often your brand name is mentioned in various places around the Internet, does have an impact. As much as I like to talk about inbound links, simply having your dental office cited by a media outlet or related blog, or some other mention on social media, can make a difference in your brand’s power.
Higher search engine rankings belong to those who are in it to win it. Make sure your dentistry is one of those brands.
3 out of 10 dentistry SEO algorithm play.
This is an algorithm that is widely known. What Panda deals with is essentially the quality of your website. One of the most important factors has to do with your copywriting. However, this is a very complex matter. Just make sure you have a true dental marketing professional, one who is not trying to cut corners while building your website, and produce a beautiful website that your prospective patients will love. You won’t have to worry about any of the following issues:
7 out of 10 SEO algorithm to be aware of.
just don’t do this. Just don’t.
2 out of 10 dental SEO warning.
Be sure not to stuff keywords into your copywriting just for the purpose of ranking higher on search engines. Make sure that your content flows and makes sense. Patients want to read your website. Patients really, really want to watch your videos. Patients love custom photography. Don’t deprive them of any of these things by writing at a fifth-grade level. Just to appeal to search engines. In the short run, it may help. But eventually, it is a losing game.
4 out of 10 dentistry SEO algorithm manipulation.
Your dental website is meant to market your dental services. Don’t waste time trying to earn commissions on various affiliate products. Extra scrutiny is given to affiliate websites, which means websites that are specifically set up for the purpose of earning a commission based on sales of another company. Your dental website is about increasing case acceptance.
2 out of 10 dental SEO way.
If you happen to get past an algorithmic review, don’t expect to get past a manual review. Google employees will check your website to see if the content was written by a computer software program. I don’t need to explain to you why using spun content is a bad idea for the user experience. Your patients demand more. So do search engines.
6 out of 10 dentist SEO company techniques.
Sharing the same dedicated IP address as another penalized website can cause yours to get penalized as well. Be sure to work with a dental marketing professional who has a dedicated server-side professional.
2 out of 10 dentist SEO strategies.
If your dental brand doesn’t deserve an extremely high level of links, then the creation of such links may trigger a manual review of your website. Be sure to treat search engine optimization as a marathon, not a sprint. You should be regularly gaining links because of the editorial value of the content you produced.
8 out of 10 dental SEO cautionary tale.
If many of your links are coming from bad neighborhoods, meaning the neighborhoods which have been penalized, the links which point to your dental website may technically infect your website. Be sure to earn links honestly, and never buy links. You never know when the link seller may be hit with their own penalty, if for no other reason, than the fact that they are selling links. Selling links is against Google’s terms of service. Don’t engage in such business.
7 out of 10 SEO move used with dentists and orthodontist SEO.
Links that come from blog comments and forum profiles exclusively may not allow your dental website to rank very highly. Many of these low-quality links can actually, over time, become downgraded. Causing your website to slip in the rankings.
6 out of 10 SEO for dentists technique.
Where do your backlinks come from? This is an important question for a dental search engine optimizer to find out on your behalf. You can also use software that is recommended by the dental marketing guy. Google Webmaster tools, now called Google Search Console, are useful in finding your entire backlink profile. If you find that there are irrelevant websites linking to yours, meaning they have nothing to do with the dental industry, then it may be time to call a professional search engine optimization firm. Such professionals can help you deal with the prospect of disavowing toxic backlinks.
7 out of 10 dental SEO aspect.
If Google Webmaster tools, or search console as it is now called, provides you with messages, please heed the warning. Pay attention. Google will tell you if there is an issue, as long as you have the search console hooked up.
9 out of 10 dentist website SEO strategy.
You may disavow links within the search console, formerly called Google Webmaster tools. You may also submit a reconsideration request through the proper authorities at Google. A search engine optimization expert can help you through this process. Much like walking into a legal proceeding without a lawyer, so to can be lifting a penalty at a major search engine, without a dental marketing expert who specializes in search engine optimization.
9 out f 10 dentistry search engine optimization expert technique.
The most prevalent form of site-wide footer backlinks would be what web designers use at the bottom of each of their client’s websites. There really isn’t anything that need to be worried about in terms of your dental website’s ranking here. But it is worth showing that a web designer might not be able to rank you very easily, even if they are good at on-page SEO. This is because they might not know how to rank your website with links, simply because they’ve never had to do any kind of creative backlink building of their own They say that necessity is the mother of invention. So unless your web designer is actually a dental SEO professional parading around as a graphic designer, be sure to take any advice they offer regarding backlink building with a grain of salt. Also, be sure your web designer doesn’t just decide to stick your links on their other client’s websites. This is an unlikely scenario, but one worth mentioning.
4 out of 10 for dentistry SEO.
There are some types of software that used to be prevalent for SEO “professionals” (if you can call them professional, at all) which involved listing your website’s link on hundreds of thousands of unrelated websites. The websites themselves were simply known by many SEO Companies as “link farms,” and the only purpose of the websites was to house links for their SEO clients. It was a time of great harvest for SEO Companies who knew nothing about dental marketing, at all. It was money for nothing, checks for free for SEO marketers. But those days are gone, and this tactic can eventually lead to a Google penalty.
3 out of 10 if this dental SEO technique is done properly.
By much of the same methods as described above, or perhaps more meticulously with an overseas contractor who manually enters a link to your dental website, you can earn many links which have minimal impact on your rankings. These links are called “no-follow” because the Google bot (and Bing and Yahoo) are not following the link to the destination, aka your dental website. However, no-follow links DO count, albeit not as impressively as “do-follow” links (links which Google bot follows to your dental website). The key is not just earning both types of links, but the process by which you gain the links. A great dental SEO campaign will EARN links, not just “build” links to your website.
5 out of 10 of some dental SEO company’s techniques.
Often called “keyword stuffing,” you actually can repeat your keywords in your content too many times. This can lead to what many SEO professionals would call a “panda penalty,” which is named after the Panda Algorithm.
A few random dental SEO factors:
To have your copy written by someone who is outside the dental industry can cause user experience issues. Sometimes it’s just best to work with a dental marketing professional who understands the psychology behind what makes people get in the chair. Placing dental-centric words which are target keywords or synonyms of long tail target keywords, all while being careful to avoid over-optimized content – is a big factor.
8 out of 10 for dentistry search engine optimization styles.
Having a photographer who is well acquainted with dental office marketing can be very helpful. The way a photograph is labeled in the “coding” of a website is very important to SEO. Search engine bots pick up on what photos are about only if the photos are properly labeled. This can be a big edge for your dental website, especially if Google, Bing, and Yahoo are ranking images in their universal search results. People love a good set of photos, and search engines understand this.
4 out of 10 SEO for dentists factor.
The on-page SEO for videos is very basic. It can be done in a matter of minutes with someone who has only average computer skills. YouTube makes things especially easy to set up and optimize. You can also use Wistia to set up videos with great analytical tracking.
5 out of 10 SEO factor.
Think of a restaurant that you never went back to. Was it an amazing experience? Probably not. The fact is, if your website is delivering real value, you’ll be able to more reliably count on return visitors. The number of people who visit and revisit a dental website shows search engines how valuable that website is. Google is measuring this sort of data when providing rankings. Be the dental office that everyone is talking about, and search engines will consider you more optimized for a positive user experience compared to other dental offices.
2 out of 10 for dentistry SEO.
The rate in which you’re currently gaining new reviews on Google will impact your map rankings. Be sure to keep a steady stream of positive reviews flowing to your google my business account. (now called “Google Business Profile”)
2 out of 10 dental search engine optimizer techniques.
Contrary to some amateur opinions, you don’t need backlinks to build a good referral engine. Simply being mentioned by an authority in the dental industry can be a signal that search engine bots take notice of. If your name or dental practice name is highly correlated with a certain schema or language, you dental to be valued more as an expert in that field. The more relationships you build with key influencers in the dental industry, the more powerful this effect is.
5 out of 10 importance for dentist website search engine optmization.
If the franchise down the street is winning new patients by charging less, simply outrank them by being equated as a business with a higher value proposition. Promote your website with a video about you and your team, your office, and your superior technology. The only thing a franchise can’t beat you on is who you are. Your personality can’t be bought at “doc-in-the-box.” when users of your dental website see who you are, search engine bots are quietly recording the activity levels on your website shoot up. A highly engaged audience alone may not increase your rankings, but it can often help top-level rankings stay that way. Positioning yourself is something we discuss in The Invisalinks Course, the first and only dental SEO course. This dental SEO course isn’t just about SEO. It’s about how to attract the right kind of patients.
4 out of 10 dental SEO aspect.
Be sure to not rely completely on your dental website. You’ll want to rank all sorts of properties that are favored by search engines. YouTube videos are a favorite at Google, and pictures often are highlighted with Bing. Your FB page may be a great property to rank because the searcher may have a low level of commitment to becoming a new patient, but visiting your Facebook page may allow them to see a bit about you, and allow you the opportunity to convert them into a Facebook “like.” This can be a nice first step in the long road of gaining them as new patients months or even years down the road.
3 out of 10 for dentisry SEO techniques and tactics.
BONUS DENTAL SEO TIP:
The best advice I could offer dentists who are looking to gain new patients is to take a holistic approach with a dental marketing expert who knows how to leverage search marketing, and also understands that it is only one single way of gaining new patients. Work with someone who is able to parlay your SEO success into new patients by promoting a system for dealing with new leads. From internal marketing training to online follow-up procedures, it’s important to know that many of your prospective dental patients will not call the first time they visit you from a search engine. This wisdom can go a long way in growing your dental practice with search engine optimization. Learn more about my Dental SEO Course.
