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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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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.
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 [email protected].
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 [email protected] 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 [email protected]. 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.
Information on dental marketing consultants or dentist SEO services.
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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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, [email protected] 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, [email protected]. 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; [email protected], 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!
Looking for dental marketing ideas? Check out the top 10 dental marketing ideas from the one and only Dental Marketing Guy!
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.
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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 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 [email protected]. 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.
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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!
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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!
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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. 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 OS
