If you’re searching for a dental marketing plan that works, you came to the right place. Dental marketing has come a long way since the days when phone book ads were the way to go.
Today, a good dental marketing plan includes both offline and online marketing strategies. But many dental practices struggle to choose dental marketing plans that work with so many options. Here are three proven dental marketing strategies that work today.
1. Serve your patients well.
Many times, dental practices that put together a dental marketing plan focus solely on marketing to new clients. While that’s natural, a practice’s best and fastest path to higher profits is often by serving patients well.
One way to serve patients well is to implement a monthly newsletter to stay top of mind. Include in your newsletter what you have done that month to serve your community. Include a featured service. Highlight continuing education, new services, and exciting team members and practice accomplishments. Your newsletter demonstrates your commitment to the community and serving patients well in a way that gives patients a gentle reminder to schedule their next appointment.
In addition to a newsletter, look for ways to add excitement to your practice. For example, you can start a kid's club. We implemented one in my practice and kids love it. Each kid gets a t-shirt. When they come in, they get a printed kids’ newsletter that we produce every three months or so that includes a special deal at a local business, which we arrange with other businesses. We also include a few dental tips for kids. The kids love it and feel very special.
Finally, make sure your patients feel like VIPs when they’re in your practice. One thing we do in my practice is bring out warm peppermint scented towels on a silver platter at the end of the treatment, so people can wipe their hands, or even freshen up their face. Patients love it.
There are lots of things that you can do for existing patients to make them feel like VIPs. By doing so, you generate loyalty and raving fans that will start referring you to their family, friends, and coworkers.
2. Build community engagement.
Another dental marketing strategy that works is to invest in getting your community to talk about you. This is an area I'm really excited about because it works so well while improving your local community. I’ve helped a number of practices implement these campaigns in their community, too, and it works incredibly well.
One of the best things about community engagement campaigns is their simplicity. For example, one community engagement campaign that works well is a clothing drive. In my practice, one successful campaign we conducted was a post-Christmas clothing drive. We encouraged people to clear out their drawers and drop off clothes at our office. We then randomly selected someone to win a gift card toward services in our practice who dropped off clothes.
Other examples of community engagement campaigns include having a free kid's dental day or doing coloring contests for kids. You can promote and implement these types of campaigns easily by sharing on social media and even build an email marketing list by having people submit their email to be able to download the coloring sheet.
Finally, one of the most impactful and successful campaigns you can do is to conduct a Project Smile competition, where you ask people to nominate someone for a chance to receive a new smile. Project Smile campaigns are extremely powerful, very fulfilling, and it's really great for your team health and culture.
3. Create a consistent presence and strategy.
The third strategy that works is to be simple and consistent with your marketing. Way too many practices market in piecemeal. They have one look, feel, and messaging on their website but their marketing campaigns look completely different. Others only market online but not offline. Others market only offline.
As simple as it sounds, the most successful practices maintain a clear, consistent, presence and marketing strategy both online and offline. They market online but don’t forget about serving their patients and investing in their community. They have a professional, modern website but also brochures that patients can pick up. They market to patients but also other businesses, dropping off brochures at pediatricians and other medical providers in their area. They go out of their way to thank people who refer patients to the practice and strike deals with local businesses to give their customers or employees special treatment or a special deal.
If your marketing plan doesn’t seem to work very well, it might be that you are investing too much time and attention on only one type of marketing. A simple, consistent, balanced approach to dental marketing helps maintain a more consistent, professional message throughout your potential patient pool.
Do you need a dental marketing plan that works?
With so many dental marketing plans available, it’s easy to get stuck spending money on marketing that doesn’t work. If you’ve struggled to build momentum with your marketing, three strategies can help.
When you’re looking for information, what’s the first thing you do? You pull out your phone or pull up a web browser and go straight to Google. Well, guess what? Your potential patients do exactly the same thing when they’re looking for dental information or to find a new dentist.
Google is the number one search engine, but it’s so much more than that. It’s the default we all turn to when we need information. That’s why I’m going to tell you how you can turn all of those Google searches into an amazing marketing tool for your business, and it’s only going to take you about five minutes to set up using Google My Business. Here’s how.
Update and customize your Google My Business page.
You might already have a Google My Business page set up for your practice, but many practices are not making the most of their pages. If you’ve never taken the time to customize your business page, you definitely want to do that. Start by updating your business hours, adding an online scheduling link, and verifying your location so people can pop it right into their GPS or navigation app and find you.
But if you want to really get the most out of Google My Business, you’ll want to take things one step further and add some real, live video testimonials to your page. That way, when potential patients land there, they’ll be able to see your happy patients talking about their amazing experiences in your office.
If you don’t already have video testimonials, the next step will be to start collecting them. If you do, here’s how you can easily collect even more.
Ask patients about their experience at the end of each visit.
If you’re already a part of the Dental Boss Movement, you know I’m a big believer in the importance of asking your patients about their experience at the end of each visit. This is really important information to have, in general, because it helps you and your team focus on consistently providing an exceptional experience every single time.
And when you are focusing on delivering that WOW factor with every single patient, it’s a good bet that your patient will say, “Yeah, this was a great visit.” Utilize any constructive feedback to improve.
Ask your happy patients to record a short video testimonial.
When a patient raves about their experience, ask them to record a short testimonial on the spot. Keep it simple. You can say, “Well, you know, we’d really love it if you’d let us record a quick video with you to talk about how things went today.”
Emphasize that there are a lot of people who are afraid to go to the dentist, and hearing from real people like them might just change someone’s life. More often than you might expect, patients will spare two or three minutes to film it quickly.
Upload the video to your Facebook and Google My Business pages.
Once you record that video, start sharing it on social media. Get it uploaded to your Facebook page, maybe repurpose it for an ad. You can target the people who watch it with a special ad campaign.
Also, take that same video and upload it directly to Google so anytime someone lands on your listing, that video review pops up. You don’t need to edit it at all. Just use the same video. It is very reassuring for potential patients to see a real patient talking about the incredible experience they had at your practice.
Even better, if you get into the habit of uploading videos to your Google My Business page regularly, your listing will really stand out from others. Very few people realize that Google even offers this option. So while other practices might have an ordinary listing with practice hours and maybe a map, you’ll have a page that really establishes you as an authority.
Add other videos to your Google My Business page so patients get to know you better.
You can add all kinds of videos to your page so don’t stop with only testimonials. Anytime you’re running a community campaign, if you’re helping raise funds for a local charity, or if you go live on your Facebook page to talk about dental care, you can download that video and re-upload it directly to your Google My Business page. You can download any video you record live on Facebook with just a couple of clicks. Uploading them directly to your Google My Business page gets you double the exposure and traffic without any additional work.
What's especially great is that you can then add buttons to your page, so people can schedule an appointment or call the practice with a single click. That’s very helpful when someone’s on mobile.
Are you using Google My Business to grow your dental practice?
If you build out your Google My Business page the right way and make it easy for patients to find your practice when they search on Google, you can start to see a regular flow of patients come from Google searches.
If you want more help, check out my marketing and practice growth challenge where we help you put together and execute a plan to get more patients and build a WOW dental practice. And if you want to join a community of Dental Bosses just like you, I have a Facebook group where over 1000 Dental Bosses are already learning and growing. Join us in the Dental Boss Movement Facebook group.
As dentists, we’re visionaries, and if having an automated dental practice is something you’ve dreamed of for your practice, you might be surprised to learn it’s not very difficult to put in place.If you want to create an automated dental practice, you only need a few pieces in place. After all, a vision alone won’t help you achieve your goal. You also must take action and hold yourself accountable as you pursue your goal. Here are the three pieces to put in place if you want to work toward building an automated dental practice.
Buy a whiteboard to automate setting and hitting goals for your dental practice.
Of all the strategies I teach dentists to grow their practices, using a whiteboard is one of my favorites. It’s simple. It’s effective. There’s no tech to learn. Best of all, it’s very lost cost, often less than $10.I know whiteboards don’t sound very sexy or exciting, but this tool can change everything in your practice. With it, you can publicize relevant key performance indicators and see at a glance whether you’re on track to hit our targets. Even better, everyone in your office can see progress in real-time and is held accountable without any uncomfortable conversations.The public nature of the whiteboard helps people avoid falling behind and encourages others on the team to support each other so the group hits all goals. That means you don’t have to go around talking about production or letting people know they’re behind. As long as the whiteboard is updated everyone on the team can work together to set and achieve important practice productivity goals.
Automate communication among team members.
With your goals on track, the next step to automating your dental practice is automating communications among your team members. In my practice, automating communication means using a project management tool called Asana. It’s a free online tool where we can record and manage information, share resources, and easily assign tasks to team members.With Asana, we can even automate weekly check-ins so every team member can give a quick update on their tasks and progress. We can assign specific to-dos from inside Asana and automatically update everyone who needs to know. And then we can quickly review people’s to-dos, see what’s still open, and figure out why something hasn’t been done. Even better, if someone on the team needs my specific feedback on a task, they can just tag me in Asana in the same way they would tag a friend on Facebook. I don’t need to set up a meeting or even be in the office to review and respond to their question.
Automate your dental practice marketing.
Automating your marketing is an extremely powerful part of automating your dental practice because it will drive new patients into your practice on an ongoing basis. What’s so amazing about automated marketing is that once you’ve set it up, it essentially runs itself—it requires very little time or money on your part.Automating your dental practice marketing is simple. You just need to do two things. First, set up dental marketing funnels to and Facebook ads to key audiences that drive traffic to your funnels. In my practice, we’ve built out multiple marketing funnels. They’re easy to set up and require no work from you after the setup. Through funnels, we send people to quizzes to prequalify them. At the end of the quiz, we offer patients the opportunity to come in and talk to us or leave their email so we can communicate with them. With these in place, high-value dental practice leads hit our inbox on a regular basis.
Do you want to build an automated dental practice?
Automating your dental practice doesn’t need to be complicated. A simple whiteboard can help you set and more easily achieve practice goals. Asana can make team member communication easy. And automated dental practice marketing can keep patients coming in on a regular basis. With those three pieces in place, your job as practice owner will become much, much easier. Even better, your team will be set up for success. They'll be able to continue to perform without you needing to be there and get involved in everything.If you want more help with your practice, join our community of Dental Bosses just like you, in the Dental Boss Movement Facebook group if you want support and training as you grow your dental practice. More than 1,000 Dental Bosses are already in there learning and growing together. Join us today!
If you’re just starting your dental practice, how long do you think it will take you to fill your chairs? One month? Two? Six? What if I told you that you could book out your start-up dental practice on a budget of less than $1,000?
Starting up a dental practice is an expensive project. Between equipment, supplies, team members, and your office space and build-out, many start-up practice owners become stretched financially.
So, how does anybody have enough money to get a start-up dental practice off the ground? If you follow these steps, you only need a little bit of money left. You just need to be willing to step outside your comfort zone and use Facebook to do things differently. Here’s all you need to do.
1. Start early and go live on Facebook.
If you want results—patients in your chairs, a profitable practice, people in your community talking about you and referring patients to you—you’re going to have to get out there and do things that might be a little bit scary at first.
The best way to start building your audience is to start early and go live on Facebook. Set up a Facebook page for your dental practice. This is new for many dentists, but it’s important. Most dentists aren’t very comfortable going live on Facebook. I wasn’t when I got started, but I knew it was important. So don’t wait until you build your audience. I still get nervous when I go live, but I’m much more comfortable now than when I began. But I knew you and other dentists needed to hear my message in order to build a better, more fulfilling practice.
I also know that your future patients need to hear your heart for changing lives through your practice. There’s a mom with kids who hate going to the dentist. There’s a mom who hates going to the dentist for herself! And you’re the person who can change that—but that can only happen if your patients know about you. Your community needs you, and they’re all on Facebook.
2. Speak from the heart.
Facebook provides you with an absolutely incredible opportunity to share your heart with thousands of people in your community. I’ve seen hundreds of start-ups tap into the power of Facebook to get new patients extremely quickly. So what do they do? They speak from the heart.
Go live, and share your excitement about your practice. Tell them your vision for your practice. Talk about why you went to dental school. Tell people why you’re launching your start-up, what your practice will look like when it’s open, and how your patients will feel when they come into your practice.
It won’t be perfect—and that’s okay. This video will show your community that you’re a real person, and that you’re building a practice to serve your community. Plus, once you’ve done your first Facebook Live video, you’ll never have to do your first Facebook Live video again.
3. Go live regularly.
After your first video, continue to build that momentum by going live once a week to talk about dental topics and updates on your practice. When you do this, you’ll position yourself as an expert while you’re building your video views and audience engagement.
The more videos you make, the more people will start to comment and share, and you’ll be able to use Facebook’s amazing tools to retarget those people later on for high-value services like implants and Invisalign.
If you have trouble thinking of what to talk about every time you go live, here are some ideas to get you started:
How can I have a cavity if my tooth doesn’t hurt?
Why do I need a crown—can’t I just have another filling done?
The options to replace a missing tooth: denture vs. bridge vs. implant.
Why do I need a root canal, and what does it mean to have a root canal?
Why do my gums bleed? What is periodontal disease, and how can I treat it?
There are whitening options for every mouth.
Why do we get our teeth cleaned at the dentist vs. just brushing at home?
That’s nearly two months of Tooth Talk Topics, which will give you plenty of time to come up with more ideas on your own. And, you can ask the people who watch your videos to let you know in the comments what other topics they’d like you to cover.
4. Start running community engagement campaigns.
One you have begun to set yourself up as a trustworthy and reliable expert, you’re ready to start running what’s called community engagement campaigns.
Simply put, community engagement campaigns are promotions you host on Facebook to build relationships with people in your community. This gives you an opportunity to network in your area while attracting only potential patients to your promotion. For example, you could run a gift card giveaway with prizes donated by other local businesses. You could run a smile makeover competition to coincide with your grand opening. You could give away a $1,000 gift card or free tooth whitening for life, a 30-day floss challenge—the possibilities are truly endless.
Make sure the promotion involves local businesses or services in your office. If you give away an iPad or Amazon gift card, anyone around the world will sign up. Local businesses or in-office service focuses on potential patients in your area. Community engagement promotions help get positive attention on your practice and often fill up your schedule before you even open your doors. They are incredibly effective.
5. Set up custom Facebook audiences for future promotions.
Once you have started filling your chairs, be sure to set up Facebook ad targeting audiences for your dental practice. Setting up these audiences allows you to spend a few dollars promoting your videos to warm, engaged audiences.
It’s not hard to do, and with the right training, you can make sure that your videos are getting out in front of exactly the right people—the people who are going to start filling those chairs in your practice in the present and the future, and telling their friends to come, too.
Are you ready to fill your schedule even before you open the doors to your practice?
If you like the idea of getting all your spots booked out before you open the door, jump on Facebook, go live, and run community engagement campaigns. It’ll get people talking about you online and offline and help your phone start ringing with patients excited to get in your chair.
If you want help, join me for the Marketing and Practice Growth challenge, where you’ll learn exactly how to get your practice up and running the right way. And if you want to join a community of Dental Bosses just like you, I have a Facebook group where more than 1,000 Dental Bosses are already learning and growing. Join us in the Dental Boss Movement Facebook group if you want support and training as you grow your dental practice.
If there’s one thing every dental practice needs to grow, it’s patients in the chair. Some need more patients. Others need patients in need of higher-fee dentistry. And others need more fee-for-service patients.
If you’re worried about where your next patient is going to come from, rest assured that you are likely just one or two referral strategies away from growth. These are three of my favorite ways for dental practices to get patient referrals.
1. Tell a story that’s easy to share.
When you talk about your practice in marketing materials, with patients, or in the community, are you telling a story that’s easy to share? If not, you’re missing out on an incredible opportunity to get current patients and others to promote your practice for you. Make it really easy for people to talk about you and your practice and they will start doing so.
For example, we want people to talk about my practice as being somewhere patients look forward to going. So we focus on creating an incredible experience andalso give patients ways to talk about that experience. One way we do so is by giving new patients an office tour and a chance to connect with a team member one-on-one. During that meeting, our team member talks about our core values and shows them the cool and fun technology we invest in to provide the best care possible. We make it simple for them to understand what makes us special.
When doing this in your practice, point out the details to your patients and why those details matter to them. You can say things like:
We invest in these items to create a spalike experience for you and help you relax.
At the end of your treatment, we’ll give you a warm peppermint-scented towel to refresh you.
While you’re waiting, you can flip through our coffee-table books.
All of the artwork in the office was done by local artists.
Let your team members show their personality. If they’re talking about the practice’s core values, they can share what means the most to them, and why. If they’re showing the coffee table books or the office art, they can point out one they particularly like or share an interesting fact about one of the local artists. When they’re talking about the overall experience, they can relate their own stories of dental anxiety — and how they moved past it.
2. Ask patients for referrals.
One of the biggest mistakes dentists make is not asking for referrals. It doesn’t need to be awkward or rude to do so, either. Whether a patient has come in for the first time or the 50th time, we highly recommend asking for referrals. It’s totally natural to ask for referrals, even from brand new patients, especially if you are investing so much time and energy to create a WOW experience for your patients.
At the end of each appointment, ask your patient, “Did you have a good experience today?” They’re highly likely to say yes. When they do, it’s completely natural to then ask for that referral. Help them out by calling to mind specific people they can refer to you. For example, we give patients two business cards and ask them to give them to friends, family, coworkers, or a new neighbor who might enjoy a similar dental experience. It’s that simple. You can also ask patients to post about their experience on Facebook and tag your practice. Many patients will happily share a post about their experience.
3. Create a patient referral program.
Encourage patients to refer people to you by creating a referral program. Give them coupons or gift certificates they can give to friends and family and they will likely be even more delighted to refer people to you.
Give your program a fun name, like Share a Smile or The Smile Exchange, and make sure that every person on your team tells patients about the program. For example, you could have your team members tell new patients that you have a referral program that your patients love because it allows them to share their WOW experience with loved ones while giving them something of value like a coupon or gift certificate. That message will get them starting to think about who would be a good person to refer to your practice. Then, at the end, hand them the coupon or gift certificate after asking about their experience.
Are you ready to get more patient referrals to your dental practice?
Patient referrals validate everything we do as a practice and keep us consistently growing without any marketing required. We just treat people well and they refer other people to us. That’s the ultimate compliment about the experience we work so hard to create.
It all starts with treating patients to a truly WOW visit and putting in place simple strategies to get them thinking about referring others to you.
And if you want to join a community of Dental Bosses just like you, I have a Facebook group where over 1000 Dental Bosses are already learning and growing. Join us in the Dental Boss Movement Facebook group if you want support and training as you grow your dental practice.
Social media marketing has transformed dental practices in an almost unprecedented fashion. My team and I have spent years studying, testing, and analyzing the best strategies for using social media for dental practices.
At first, we used Facebook to build an audience of over 50,000 raving fans for my dental practice and turn those leads into dozens of new patients every month, all by utilizing the best dental social media marketing techniques available on Facebook to share our story and build great connections with our Facebook fans and others who had never heard of us.
After testing and refining those strategies, we started helping other dentists and dental practices utilize dental social media marketing strategies to grow their practices, too.
We found the most powerful social media site for dental social media marketing to be Facebook.
Facebook gives the most robust ad-targeting capabilities out of all dental social media marketing options.
Dental Facebook marketing costs less than traditional marketing and other social media for dentists.
Facebook makes available to everyone the same tools that only big companies used to be able to afford.
Facebook allows you to act fast to fill last-minute cancellations or promote an event or special offer, getting organic and paid posts up in minutes.
Facebook gives dentists sophisticated performance data for all Facebook ads they post so you can know your exact return on investment.
Facebook allows you to change different variations of the same dental Facebook ad to split test ads against each other.
And more…
Because of how powerful Facebook can be to build a dental practice, my team and I now use the same strategies we used to grow my practice to help other dentists and dental practices as part of our dental-marketing services. The strategies we use for our dental-marketing clients are the same strategies I share in this guide to Facebook for dentists and can help dental practices of all shapes, sizes, locations, and specialties. They can help you create a dental Facebook marketing and organic presence that is effective, efficient, and predictable—no matter what your practice looks like.
Don’t worry if you’ve tried using Facebook to promote your dental practice before, don’t understand how Facebook can help grow a dental practice, don’t think you have the time for dental Facebook marketing, or think Facebook is expensive. You’re not alone. Many dentists feel this way about using Facebook for dentists. I assure you, each of those objections isn’t true, and I’ll show you exactly what to do to help you get reliable, affordable, and consistent using Facebook to grow your dental practice.
Whether your dental practice has been open for decades, is still months from opening, or anything in between, you can use dental Facebook marketing to grow your practice and get patients in your chair for a fraction of what you’d have to spend on traditional dental-marketing techniques.
The Best Dental Facebook-Marketing Techniques to Build Your Practice
This definitive guide to dental Facebook marketing will walk you through the three things my team and I do to build dental Facebook-marketing campaigns for dentists around the world to help you do the same for your dental practice.
First, I’ll share the most important things you can do to build a dental Facebook page. The best dental Facebook pages have a few things in common. We’ll share what makes the best dental Facebook pages so great, and how you can do the same! If your dental office Facebook page is bland and ineffective, this section will help you give it life and get it ready to build fans and convert them to new patients. If you’re a dentist looking to build an individual presence on Facebook, this section will give you tips to build a great dentist Facebook page to build your individual reputation and following.
Second, I’ll share the best strategies for creating great dental Facebook posts. Creating social media posts for dentists is one of the favorite things my team does. I’ll share the best strategies for creating dental Facebook posts that will help you build a group of raving Facebook fans!
Third, I’ll help you plan and prepare the most effective Facebook ads. Facebook advertising for dentists allows you to reach people with unprecedented precision to help you get better and faster results at a fraction of what dentists and dental practices typically spend on dental ads in traditional media and other advertising. I’ll teach you how the best Facebook ads for dentists perform and how you can get the most effective Facebook dental ads strategies working for you.
If you’re ready to have the best social media marketing strategies for dentists working on your behalf to build the best dental Facebook page possible for your practice, the best dental Facebook posts building engagement and raving fans, and the most efficient and effective dental Facebook ads directing people to your special offers and dental marketing funnels, then follow the steps I outline in the rest of this definitive guide to dental Facebook marketing!
How to Build the Best Dental Facebook Pages
Every dentist or dental practice needs a dental Facebook page to act as their home base on Facebook and give them a platform to grow and connect with their patients, prospects, and Facebook fans. Here’s everything you need to know to build and optimize a Facebook page for your practice even if you haven’t opened the doors yet.
How to Build the Best Dental Facebook Page for Your Practice
If you haven’t set up a dental Facebook page for your practice or a dentist Facebook page if you’re a one-person shop, setting up a dental Facebook page for free is a simple five-step process. If you’re just getting started, don’t worry. The best dental Facebook pages all got started by following the same five steps.
To set up the best dental Facebook page for your practice, you first need to go to the Facebook page creation page. Most dental offices will select the “Local Business or Place” option on that page. After choosing the right option for your dental practice, enter your business category and practice contact information. Common options for business categories for dentists include “Dentist & Dental Office,” “General Dentist,” “Cosmetic Dentist,” and “Pediatric Dentist.”
After you set up your dentist Facebook page or dental office Facebook page, whichever is appropriate for your practice, you will next need to upload an appropriate Facebook page profile picture and cover photo. I suggest using a high-resolution, professional close-up of you for a profile if you’re building a dentist Facebook page, or of your logo if you’re building a dental practice Facebook page. Make sure your images are the ideal size for Facebook pages, which change from time to time. Any quality graphic designer or dental-marketing company will know the right size for a Facebook profile picture and cover image.
The best dental Facebook pages also have robust, custom profiles. Specifically, when first setting up your dental Facebook page, Facebook will ask you to enter a short description of your practice. Enter a couple of sentences to tell people what your practice is all about. Let them know why your practice is different. You will also be asked to enter hours of operation, team members, and links to your website. Fill out all the demographic and contact information possible.
You can also customize a button under your Facebook cover photo. By default, this is usually set to read “send message” and lets people message you on Facebook. You can change it to a number of things. For dentists, I usually suggest editing the button to allow people to schedule an appointment, but if you’re building dental-marketing funnels, you can also change it to send people to your dental marketing funnel or to learn more about your practice. You can also include links to your website or a dental marketing funnel in your about section.
How to Optimize a Dental Facebook Page
If you just set up your new dental practice Facebook page through the instructions on this page and the additional dental Facebook page setup tips, your Facebook and the additional dental Facebook page tips, congratulations! You’re ready to begin posting and promoting your page.
If you already have a dental Facebook page, make sure your profile includes all the elements on this page and the additional tips for effectively using Facebook for dentists.
Specifically, to optimize an existing dental Facebook page, make sure:
Your dental Facebook page has complete practice contact information.
Your page has accurate hours of operation.
Your profile picture and cover images are professional, hi-res images that convey your practice culture.
Your about section includes complete and accurate statements about what makes your dental practice different.
You add trusted team members to your dental office Facebook page list of team members.
Your button under your dental Facebook page cover photo directs people to engage with your dental practice how you want them to, such as to send you a message or schedule an appointment.
With these things in place, your dental office Facebook page will be ready for posts and promotion so you can build a loyal audience and attract new patients to your office.
How to Grow Your Dental Office Facebook Page Following
Once your dental office Facebook page is set up and optimized, you’re ready to build your Facebook following and convert strangers into patients. The first thing you can do to start building your dental office Facebook page following is invite your Facebook friends to like your page. To invite your Facebook page to like your dental Facebook page, click the gray button with three dots on it under your Facebook page cover photo, to the left of your blue “Learn More,” “Schedule an Appointment,” or “Send Message” button. Next, click “Invite Friends,” and click the “Invite” button next to all friends you want to invite.
This is a quick and easy way to get your first one hundred or more Facebook fans. Although many of these people won’t be patients, they will be family and friends who know, like, and trust you; and your invitation to like your page might help you get some of them to become patients. Even if it doesn’t encourage them to become your patients, they will be likely to like, comment on, or share your posts when they appear in their timeline, thus increasing the odds of your posts going viral! You can also ask patients to like your dental office Facebook page when they come in.
With family, friends, and patients liking your page, you will be well on your way to growing your impact and reach through creating the best Facebook posts on your dental Facebook page and placing the best dental Facebook ads for specific promotions and additional reach.
In addition to asking friends, family, and patients to like your page, a great way to get people excited about your practice on Facebook is to create a contest where you hold a random drawing to give away a free treatment to one person who likes your page and then likes, comments, and shares a specific post within a certain timeframe. You could even ask your family, friends, and dental Facebook page fans to nominate someone else to receive the free service.
In my practice, we regularly give back through something we call Project Smile. We do everything on Facebook to reward people who follow our Facebook page and don’t even tell our patients. The way Project Smile works is we announce we will give away a free smile makeover and ask people to share our announcement post on their Facebook timelines.
The post we ask them to share asks people to nominate someone who deserves a free smile makeover with an image of their smile, so we can see if they’re a candidate. We narrow down the list, invite the finalists for a cleaning to take a closer look at their mouths, and then choose a winner for the full smile makeover. Our Facebook fans love following and sharing our Project Smile posts and often see what other services we provide and come to us for an appointment.
Between invitations, contests, and community- or giving-based promotions, your dental office Facebook page can build a large audience of raving fans for your dental practice.
In the next section, I’ll teach you how to draft the best dental practice Facebook posts to build raving fans and loyal patients from Facebook.
How to Create the Best Dental Facebook Posts
Many dentists get overwhelmed by the idea of coming up with content to post to their dental office Facebook page. The reality is, creating the best dental Facebook posts for your dental practice doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, if you follow two simple rules, your dentist Facebook page can be full of high-impact posts that position you to build deeper relationships with existing fans and patients while attracting new patients into your chair.
How to Know What to Post About on Your Dental Office Facebook Page
The most important part about creating the best dental Facebook posts is to make sure your posts are interesting and engaging. Interesting and engaging posts by a page with likes from family, friends, and patients make it more likely that people will like, comment on, and share your posts. This is important because the more likes, comments, and shares your Facebook posts get, the more Facebook will show it to other people, and the more chance it has to go viral. Also, people are more likely to like, comment on, or share your dental Facebook post when they see others have liked, commented on, or shared the post, especially others they’re friends with on Facebook.
To make sure your posts are interesting and engaging to encourage people to like, comment on, or share them, it’s important that most of your posts aren’t promotional offers or even dental tips. Although some promotional offers and dental tips are fine, the vast majority of your posts should be about three things:
Facebook posts showing people your dental practice vision and story to let them know why your dental practice is so great
Community-oriented Facebook posts, such as events you’re participating in or hosting at your practice and other local businesses
Facebook posts highlighting great things about your team members and patients (with their permission, of course)
Testimonials from happy patients
These four types of posts help you get people’s attention on Facebook, make connections with the right people to grow your dental practice, and encourage people to like, comment on, and share in order to get better reach for your Facebook posts. They also make the promotions and dental tips types of posts get more attention, because Facebook will view your page as one with posts people want to see. Finally, they make it much easier to regularly come up with great fresh content for your page so your dental Facebook page isn’t inactive or full of promotional posts.
Creating Dental Facebook Posts About Your Practice Story and Vision
The best dental Facebook posts tell your practice’s vision and story so you can let people know why being your patient will be worthwhile. These posts show people the things you’re building toward (your vision) and the things you’re already doing and have done (your story). These posts humanize your practice and build connections.
In my practice, our vision is to have the best dental practice in the country that treats all our patients like the VIPs they are and delivers WOW experiences to everyone from the moment they walk in until they leave. For example, we provide complimentary gourmet coffees and teas, iPads and noise-canceling headphones to use during an appointment, and hand-and-arm massages by our trained staff to make sure our patients leave feeling more like they just visited a luxury spa than a dentist. We also commit to being active in our community and giving back to important causes.
These things are core parts of who we are as a practice, and we want everyone to know it, so we post pictures of our coffees and teas, our patients receiving their relaxing massages (with their permission, of course), of community events, and charitable initiatives. By regularly posting about who we are as a practice, we get many likes, comments, and shares on our posts and build deep relationships with our Facebook fans because they get to know who we are as a practice and will want their dental-office experience to be like our patients’ experiences!
Posts about events, companies, and people in your community are a great way to become known as a practice that’s active and involved in things that matter to your patient pool.
In my practice, we participate in charity runs, host food drives, and have events at our practice. We also form strategic alliances with different local businesses each month to offer special deals to their employees. If you do this, you can create a post announcing how excited you are to team up with the business.
Creating Facebook Posts Highlighting Team Members and Patients
Creating Facebook posts that encourage, congratulate, and promote your patients and team members are a great way to highlight people who often go unnoticed. Your team and patients are doing great things in your office and community. Let people know how excited and proud you are about them (with their permission, of course). These posts build deep relationships and get lots of likes, comments, and shares, too!
Posting Patient Testimonials to Your Dental Office Facebook Page
Testimonials from happy patients make great posts. You’ve earned those testimonials either through online reviews or testimonials given specifically to post to your dentist Facebook page. Like online reviews, patient testimonials allow other people to boast about why your dental practice is so great, which makes it more likely that people will view it as more trustworthy than if you tell people why your practice is so great.
The Best Types of Dental Facebook Posts on Your Dental Office Facebook Page
Once you know what the best dental Facebook posts are about, the next step is to make those posts interesting, varied, and engaging by posting them in different types of posts. Generally, you can and should post a variety of text, image, and video Facebook posts to get more attention and engagement without seeming repetitive and monotonous.
Most dentists are comfortable with text posts, but less are comfortable with video and image Facebook posts, so here’s how you can utilize videos and images on your dental Facebook page.
Creating Video Facebook Posts for Your Dental Facebook Page
Video is powerful on Facebook for three important reasons. First, video gets people’s attention, especially if their page is set to auto-play. Second, video makes better connections with people once you get their attention because it invites them into your practice, lets people make virtual eye contact with you, and allows them to hear your voice and see your expressions. Finally, Facebook loves video and will show your post to more people if it has a video.
Video posts on Facebook for dentists doesn’t have to be complicated or overproduced. In fact, a good cell-phone camera can be even better than a heavily-produced video because it seems more real and not like a stuffy company.
Great uses for video on Facebook posts include Facebook Live video office tours, short recorded video patient testimonials, Facebook Live video Q&A sessions for your patients and the community to ask you what’s important to them, Facebook Live or recorded videos of community events, recorded video highlights, and explainer videos with tips about dental insurance, teeth care, new procedures, and more!
Creating Image-Based Facebook Posts for Your Dental Facebook Page
High-quality image posts get people’s attention on Facebook and encourage more engagement than text posts. Some of our favorite ways to use images for my practice and our dental marketing clients include to show high-quality images of what makes your practice great, like a picture of the iPads we let our patients use and our gourmet-coffee-and-tea station.
Other ways to use image posts with dental Facebook marketing include posting images announcing community events, celebrating patient accomplishments, showing off how great your team is, and highlighting new procedures and equipment.
Like dental Facebook video marketing, dental Facebook marketing with images doesn’t need a professional setup. My two rules for creating the best image-based Facebook posts are that a well-lit image you take with a quality cell phone is the best type of picture, and if you can use a picture you take of real patients, team members, and doctors, that is generally better than using a stock image. You can make great impacts with high-quality stock images, but nothing connects with people on Facebook like well-lit, authentic pictures of real people and your real office.
The Best Facebook Ads for Dentists
The real power of Facebook for dentists is your ability to post highly targeted Facebook ads. Facebook knows more about their users than almost any company in the world. They know their income, net worth, location, interests, behavior, family status, age, and more.
For advertisers like dentists and dental practices, this information is highly valuable, because it allows you to target the right people with your ads and only pay to reach people who are likely to take action on your ad.
Here are three important steps for successful Facebook ads for dentists.
Improving Your Dental Facebook Ads By Improving Your Message
Before placing dental Facebook ads, be sure each post has an objective. Otherwise, you won’t know who to target or what to say, and the people who see your dental Facebook ad are unlikely to take action. Here are eight common goals for dental Facebook ads:
1. Building awareness of your dental practice’s culture 2. Showing people what makes your practice different from other practices 3. Talking about your services and how you can help people 4. Highlighting testimonials of happy patients 5. Attracting people into a dental marketing sales funnel 6. Filling spots left open by last-minute cancellations 7. Promoting a specific procedure you want to highlight 8. Introducing a new dentist or team member
Once you know the purpose of your dental Facebook ad, you will have a better understanding of whom to target and what to say to get people to take action to help you achieve your goal.
Improving Your Dental Facebook Ads By Improving Your Targeting
Once you know the goal for your dental Facebook ad, make sure you target each of your dental Facebook ads to the people who are most likely to resonate with it and take action. Here are a few examples of how to match your dental Facebook ad targeting to your goals:
If you want to build awareness of your dental practice culture, you might not want to target current patients, because they will know your culture, but you might target an audience Facebook can generate that is similar to your patient population. This is called targeting lookalike audiences.
If you want to fill spots left open by last-minute cancellations, your current patient population is likely going to be your best bet at achieving your goal, perhaps by offering a free upgraded service or discount to the first person who takes action.
If you want to advertise dental savings plans, you might consider targeting retired people who no longer have dental insurance.
If you want to promote a new service, targeting current patients will be more likely to lead to people taking action.
If you want to get people into a dental marketing sales funnel, you can target people who have been to your website (called “retargeting” in the Facebook marketing world) with an ad that gives them a call to action to download a free guide or come in for a consult based on the pages they viewed on your site.
Improving Your Dental Facebook Ads By Choosing the Best Images, Videos, and Copy
Certain words drive people to take action more than others, especially across audiences. The same is true with images and videos. Once you know what you want to accomplish and who you want to target, test different versions of your copy, images, and video. You can do this by creating a split test in Facebook’s ad manager.
Split-testing dental Facebook ads is one of the most powerful ways to lower your advertising costs and getting better results, because it’s not always possible to know what words, image, or video will resonate at any given time.
Split-testing Facebook ads is also easier than you think. In its basic form, to split-test a dental Facebook ad, all you need to do is create an ad, duplicate the ad, replace the text, image, or video, and submit. Here are detailed instructions on how to create a split test in Facebook.
When my team runs dental Facebook advertising campaigns for our dental-marketing clients, we always split-test the dental Facebook ads we set up. By doing so, we lower costs and get better results. To achieve these results, we set up the split-test with a small budget of $3 to $10 per day until we learn which version of the dental Facebook ads is performing the best. Once we choose the winner or winners, we shut off the underperforming ads and let the winners run with an appropriate budget.
Are You Ready to Have the Best Dental Office Facebook Marketing Working for You?
Social media marketing for dentists can be the most powerful way to grow your dental practice, or it can be a complete waste of time or money. By far, the best way to get the highest return on your time and money is Facebook for dentists.
My team has helped hundreds of dentists increase profits, attract new patients, improve social media presence, and lower their advertising costs using Facebook.
If you’re comfortable doing it yourself or having your team do it with (or for) you, I’ve created a full Facebook Mastery course as part of Platinum Mastermind, my online learning center with full step-by-step instructions on everything you need to run and grow your dental practice.
The Training in Platinum Mastermind covers:
Facebook for Dentists
Facebook Marketing for Dental Offices
Email Marketing for Dentists
Online Reviews for Dentists
Dental Office SEO
Facebook Messenger Bots Marketing
How to create a 12-Month Marketing Plan
How to create an In-House Dental Plan
How to set up Strategic Alliances
How to recruit and train a R-O-C-K-S-T-A-R Team
How to get your TEAM aligned to your vision
How to create consistent systems and KPI’s
How to get your patients to say “YES”
How to reverse engineer your production goals
How to set your fees based on margins
How to save on dental supplies
How to decrease overhead
How to create a practice that can run without you
And more!
If you want to know more ways to create shareable content and grow your dental practice on Facebook, you can check out our Signature Marketing Program program or join us in our Platinum Mastermind, where I help dentists like you grow their dental practices so they can make more while working less.
Are you spending a fortune on slow, inexpensive, and ineffective marketing for your dental practice? If so, Facebook marketing might be your solution.
Using Facebook to market a dental practice can help you stop mailing flyers and overpaying for TV and radio spots that don’t bring the right people in the door. Instead, you will be able to get a steady flow of patients with a fraction of the marketing budget.
Facebook has turned the marketing world upside down. You don’t have to have a huge budget or spend a lot of money on overpriced designers anymore. Here are five tips to help you use Facebook marketing to grow your practice.
1. Make sure you’re targeting the right people.
The level of control you have over who sees your ads on Facebook is unprecedented. You can build audiences based on age, location, interests, income, and other key information, and even a combination of a number of qualities.
Unlike traditional dental advertising, you no longer have to spend a lot of money and hope to get the right results. Instead, you’ll spend less money and get your ads directly in front of exactly the right people.
Even better, targeting the right people is really easy to do. I walk dental bosses through it during my growth and marketing challenges and they all catch on right away.
2. Take advantage of retargeting.
We all know the phrase that it takes multiple touchpoints to build any relationship. It’s no different in dentistry. Retargeting is using Facebook ads to create multiple touchpoints with people.
With Facebook retargeting, you identify people who looked at your ad but didn’t sign up. Then, you send special content directly to those people.
Retargeting is one of the most powerful ways to promote your practice because it allows you to target people who are already both familiar with you and interested in your offer. All you need to do is create content that addresses common objections to moving forward.
For example, sometimes people click on your ad, get distracted, and move on. They just need you to pop up again so that they can reconnect. However, other people might click and then think, “I don’t want to go to the dentist, it’s scary and it might hurt.” A retargeting ad that speaks to pain-free dentistry and shows how calm the process can be could help you convert that person to a patient.
3. Take control of your Facebook budget.
What’s so amazing about marketing on Facebook is that you can decide exactly how much to spend. You’re already saving money by using Facebook marketing to target a very specific group of people and because Facebook charges far less than other forms of advertising.
But you can also set a fixed budget so you can calculate exactly how much you’re spending on each lead — and exactly how much you’re spending to get a new patient in the door.
In fact, a lot of the dental bosses who go through my training reach leads for 1-3 cents each. In other words, for every dollar they put into Facebook advertising, they’re reaching between 30 and 100 potential new patients. We’ve seen cases where dentists put in as little as $4 to get new patients booked for high-end cosmetic dentistry procedures, too. You can’t get that kind of ROI with traditional marketing.
4. Move quickly.
Facebook marketing is much faster than traditional media platforms.Takedirect-mail campaigns, for example. You need to design a mailing, hire someone to write it, and get it proofed, printed, and delivered before anyone even sees it. That could take weeks.
Radio and TV are the same. You need to write, record, edit, buy the ad space, and get it played. All of that takes weeks — and then you have to wait even longer to see how people respond to your ad.
With Facebook marketing, you can have an ad up and running to a highly-targeted audience with a compelling offer within minutes. And you can have new patients in the chair within days, long before traditional campaigns were even designed.
5. Embrace the flexibility that Facebook marketing offers you.
With traditional marketing, after you’ve waited weeks to get your ad in front of people, it takes even more time to gauge the response. And if something isn’t working, you need to go back to the drawing board for another expensive and time-consuming round of edits.
With Facebook, you can see right away whether a campaign is working the way you want. If it’s not, you can edit and improve it with a few clicks.
You can even test multiple versions of Facebook ads at the same time. Split-testing, as this is called, helps you test alternate copy, images, offers, colors, target audiences and more. Facebook allows you to split your budget to test multiple versions of an ad and then tell you which ads are performing the best. Once you find the winners, direct your budget to those ads and enjoy even better results.
Are you using Facebook to grow your dental practice?
If you’re still marketing your dental practice like it’s 1999, you’re likely spending way too much money and getting lackluster results. Save some money and improve your results by using Facebook to market your dental practice.
If you want help, join my growth and marketing challenge where I’ll walk you through exactly what you need to do, step by step.
And if you want to join a community of Dental Bosses just like you, I have a Facebook group where over 1000 Dental Bosses are already learning and growing together. Join us in the Dental Boss Movement Facebook group if you want support and training as you grow your dental practice.
If you’re ready to get new patients using social media but don’t know how, these four simple tips can help. Before social media, marketing a dental practice was slow, expensive, and inefficient. A single ad would take days to create and weeks to reach your audience. If you needed to make a change, you’d have to start over, spending days more creating the ad and weeks more waiting for the new ad to reach people.
With social media you can move much faster and more efficiently. You can create an ad that reaches people within minutes. And if you need to create a change, you can do it in minutes, too.
Even better, the cost to reach people using social media marketing is much more cost-effective than in traditional platforms. With my practice, I get more patients using a $500 per month social media budget than I was getting spending thousands on traditional marketing methods.
If you want to use social media in your dental marketing plan, these four tips can help. Tip four, alone, is a gamechanger.
1. Set a strong foundation.
Too many dental practices sign up for social media accounts and immediately start blasting marketing messages to the world. They move forward without a plan, goal, or foundation in place. That’s a surefire way to get frustrated. Within days, they run out of things to say, begin to think social media doesn’t work, and give up.
To avoid this, plan a few ideas for how you will create content that dental patients are likely to connect with. What is your practice story? What is your practice known for? What can patients expect when they come to your office and what do you do differently? Do you give hand and arm massages like we do in my practice? Do you provide gourmet coffees and teas?
Write down the answers to all of those questions. Be as specific as you can. Then, for each question, write down why that item is important to potential patients.
For example, if you give back to your community, write down all the ways you give back. Then, write down why you give back. Did you grow up in the area? Do you want to make a special impact on the neighborhood? Or, do you want to help advance a cause or solve a local problem? Write those down. Soon you will have a long list of content about what your practice does differently than others and the reasons why those are important to you.
The answers to those questions give you a strong database of content that builds relationships with potential patients.
2. Regularly create sharable content.
Take a look at your social media accounts. How much engagement do you get? Do a lot of people like or love your posts? Do they comment or share? If not, begin to focus on making emotional connections with your social media following.
Ask yourself why someone would want to share your content. If you only post about dental care, nobody will share that. But what if you post about how you impact your community or all the amazing things your patients are doing in their business and personal lives? How much more likely will people be to share those posts?
You can also share video testimonials and office tours explaining all the things your patients experience and why you do it. Think of all the things that make your practice unique. For example, one thing that makes my practice different is that we have the kids go to the toy box before their appointment. This allows us to make friends first. Kids and parents love it! When we share about this on Facebook we get strong engagements from parents who know the difference this small change can make to their kids’ dental experience.
3. Run community engagement campaigns.
One of the best social campaigns you can run is what I call community engagement campaigns.
Examples of community engagement campaigns include Project Smile Makeover competitions and gift card giveaways donated from local businesses in your community. They also include things like Tooth Talk Thursdays, and even crowdfunding campaigns to raise money for local charities.
Community engagement campaigns work well because people will want to share them. When done well, hundreds or even thousands of people in your community will see them.
4. Always offer people the next logical step.
With a strong foundation, shareable content, and community engagement campaigns in place, you will be ready to achieve incredible growth and connection. You will grow your followers and build trust and familiarity with people in your community. That level of following and trust will position you to convert social media fans to patients at a much greater clip than before.
With social media, however, it’s critical to actively offer people the next logical step to moving forward if you want to convert followers to patients. People will rarely take the next step without you asking them to do so.
While there are several ways to call people to action, one of the best ways to do so while achieving a high return on your investment is to place targeted ads for high-dollar services, such as dental implants. Your ads can direct people to a dental marketing funnel, to schedule an appointment online, or even to take an online quiz to qualify for a free consultation.
Are you ready to get more patients using social media?
Now that you've gained clarity about how to use social media in your dental marketing plan, it's time to take action.
All these additional requirements and sensitivities make it even more important to be efficient and effective with our marketing strategies. We need to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of all of our marketing efforts. Here are three ways to get better marketing results without having to spend more time and money on your marketing.
1. Involve your patients in your marketing.
Some of the best dental marketing campaigns are the ones that get your patients involved in spreading the word about your practice. At my practice, we like doing coloring contests, clothing drives, and thirty-day floss challenges with our patients.
Patient involved initiatives like these offer great ways to spread the word about your practice while building deeper relationships with current patients.
To involve your patients in your marketing start by choosing a campaign that involves your patients. We’ll use a coloring contest as an example. You can give away free dental care or even gift cards to local shops for winners. Then, hang flyers around your practice so everyone who comes in can see what you are doing. Have your team members encourage patients to submit an entry to the coloring contest, too. In addition, send out emails to your patients about the contest to get patients who are not scheduled to come in involved.
As you get entries, share pictures of the entries on your Facebook page so all of your Facebook fans can see the camaraderie you have with your patients. And involve your team or Facebook fans in choosing a winner. You could even put all the entries on your Facebook page and hold a public contest where the pictures with the most likes and shares wins. That will make it so your patients share posts with their friends and family members and encourage them to interact with your Facebook content.
When we involve patients in our marketing, we create tremendous goodwill and excitement about our practice. People see our practices differently. And they spread the word to their family and friends. And all that leads to spreading the word about your practice.
2. Get your community to market our practice for you.
It’s a lot easier than you think to get your community excited about what you’re doing in your practice. If you’re doing something like a Project Smile makeover competition or treating kids for free one Saturday, your community will likely be very excited to help you spread the word. And the fastest and easiest way to do that is to do a Facebook Live letting people know what you’re doing.
When done correctly, you can have thousands of people in your community seeing and sharing your message. Just start a Facebook live, introduce yourself, let people know what your practice is known for, and tell them what you’re up to. Then ask them to take part and spread the word. Your energy and authenticity will go a long way to ensuring they share your message with their friends and family
After you record your Facebook Live, share the link with your patients by email and ask them to get involved, too. As they watch and share your content, your reach will continue to grow.
3. Think through what great experiences you’re providing for patients in your practice.
If you’re giving patients amazing experiences your marketing can get even easier. For example, in my practice, one of our primary goals is to ensure patients leave feeling pampered. When they arrive, we give them a tour of our practice. We show them our core values. We let them know what we’re known for. We show them new technology, safety measures, and more. We also give them warm peppermint-scented towels to wash their faces and give them gourmet coffees and teas.
Of course, we also provide top-quality dental care on top of all the benefits and amenities After all that, our patients frequently tell us how much they look forward to coming to the dentist. Imagine that!
At the end of each appointment, we ask patients, “How was your experience today?” When they let us know it was amazing, we ask, “Would you be willing to do a quick video to share that experience? There are so many people who are afraid of going to the dentist, it just might change someone’s life.”
You might be surprised by how many people say yes. When they record a video, we can then share it on social media and to our patients by email.
By giving amazing experiences everyone wins. Our practice becomes more enjoyable for us and our patients. And we get patients regularly recording videos encouraging people to come to our practice. While us telling people why our practice is so special is helpful, patients telling them is even more helpful
Are you struggling to market your practice?
If you’re struggling to market your practice, patient participation, community involvement, and experience enhancement might be what you need to start marketing like a boss.
If you don't want to go at it alone, we are helping hundreds of practices during this time in our Platinum Mastermind Gold Program, and are offering special value for you and your teams!
What’s your story? Every dental practice has a story and sharing your story with patients can do remarkable things for the growth of your practice. But, how can you tell your story in the most authentic way possible?
Joshua Scott, the CEO of Studio 8E8, believes that creating authentic stories and bringing your story to life is key if you want to ‘captivate and connect’ with people. Studio 8E8 is dentistry’s story-driven marketing agency.
I’ve always believed that stories are the heart of a great dental practice, which is why I’m a huge fan of Studio 8E8 and how they can help dentists create incredible campaigns and strategies. I’m thrilled to have Joshua Scott join me on this episode of the Delivering WOW Podcast to learn more about his business and how they can help propel growth.
(On a side note, we recorded this episode just before the last Delivering WOW Summit in New Orleans. Joshua had some great insights, so I wanted to share this episode with you and who knows, maybe you’ll catch Josh at the next Delivering WOW Summit!)
In this episode, we discussed:
How Studio 8E8 helps dental practices tell their stories
Discovering your story and learning how to tell it the right way to the right people
The importance of using authentic story-driven marketing and how this type of marketing can help grow your practice
Using video to tell your story, gain credibility, and engage with patients
Why you need a stand-out website to catch patient’s attention
Want to learn more about Studio 8E8?
Head over to the Studio 8E8 website to find out how they can help you bring your story to life!
Waiting rooms are far from being the most exciting places in the world. However, there is a way that you can make your practice’s waiting room entertaining, educational and even (dare we say it) fun for patients.
On this exciting episode of the Delivering WOW Podcast, I’m joined by Dr. Michael Sernik, the CEO of Channel D, a company that creates fun, engaging, and customizable videos to play in your dental office reception area. Their bite-sized videos are high-quality and designed to stimulate interest in the treatments your practice provides. You can even customize videos to incorporate things like your team’s photos, names, logo, and a call to action that drives engagement and practice growth.
Channel D is so creative and unique. By showing short, fun, and informative videos to patients as they wait in your reception area, you can keep them entertained while showcasing a consistent message that educates patients on your latest treatment options. This is an incredible service that I highly recommend, especially if you want to make sure your patients come back to your practice for their next dentist appointment.
In this episode, we discuss:
How Channel D was founded and what they are known for
How dental videos can create interest in your treatments
How to drive patients to accept treatment by focusing on the damaging result of the existing condition
The importance of using videos that contain emotional triggers and humanize the dentist
A brief overview of the process of working with Channel D
Tips to get patients to pay attention to your videos
How dental videos for your waiting room can help improve your team’s clinical knowledge
You can sign-up for a two-month FREE trial with Channel D by heading over to their website and subscribing (no upfront fees and no commitment – you can cancel your subscription at any time).
With the pandemic, there’s no denying times are different. We're all making big adjustments to be careful about Coronavirus—especially business professionals like dental practice owners. As we begin to reopen, we need to take control of our marketing efforts to make sure we get the right return on our investment over the long-term.
That means truly understanding our audience and then taking three simple steps to ensure your marketing fulfills your intended purpose. That's always the case. But it's even more important when marketing through turbulent times. Earlier, we talked about some of the mechanics of impactful marketing during a pandemic.
Today, we're going to talk about how to craft effective marketing content during the COVID-19 pandemic. As you'll see, it's as easy as three simple steps.
1. Take time to understand what your marketing campaign's ideal audience wants and needs.
Often, the dental services we promote vary. That means our audiences and messaging needs to vary as well. Now is no different. Take a moment to understand exactly who you want to reach with your marketing. Are you looking to reach emergency dental patients? Are you looking to reach current patients? Are you going to be talking to others in your community?
Once you know your audience, craft content that matches what they want to know. For the community, you might want to show your social responsibility as a dental practice and business. If you want to talk to current patients, you might want to craft content about safety and cleanliness. If you want to reach emergency patients, you might want to discuss virtual consultations, safety procedures, and readiness to serve.
2. Create content that directly addresses the ideal audience member's needs and desires.
Once you understand what your audience wants, create content that directly addresses it. For example, if you're creating an ad for emergency patients, you will get better results with a video describing safety measures than an image showing you wearing a mask. That's because the picture only implies you have safety measures in place. Your video will directly address all the safety measures you have in place.
This is another rule of thumb that matters regardless of the pandemic. When you’re creating any content for a marketing effort, make sure the content directly addresses what your audience wants and needs from a practice like yours.
3. Include a simple call to action.
Once you create the right content for the right people, add a simple call to action at the end to let your audience members know exactly what to do next. Is the next step to schedule a virtual consult? Tell them and include a link to schedule. Do you want them to call your office to make an appointment? Say so and include your phone number.
Make it as easy as possible for your audience members to take the ideal next step based on your marketing campaign and you will get much better results from your marketing.
Are you crafting impactful marketing content for your dental practice?
If you've struggled to achieve a high return on investment on your marketing, these three steps will help.
If you don't want to go at it alone, we are helping hundreds of practices during this time in our Platinum Mastermind Gold Program, and are offering special value for you and your teams! If you have been wanting to dive into Facebook Marketing though our Facebook Bootcamp Program, now is also a great time to start preparing for when you reopen!
When times are slow, understanding what to do to work on your business can be challenging. But when you find the right opportunities, you can create momentum to help you come back stronger than ever.
Three of the most important parts of our businesses we can strengthen during slow times are our practice vision, branding, and systems. Together, they define where we are going, the relationships we build to get us there, and the methods we will use to achieve our vision. Here’s how to improve each of those areas when times are tough.
1. Refine your vision.
If you don’t have a practice vision, it’s tough to make strategic decisions. That’s why it’s so important to have a practice vision. It guides you in making decisions that lead you closer to your vision. Slow times are prime opportunities to revisit and refine your vision.
Refining your vision can be as simple as asking yourself questions about where you want to go in your business or personal life. How many days do you want to work every week? What roles do you see as being most important in your practice? What do you want to be able to delegate to others? Would you rather focus on the business side of things and be a practice owner or would you like to have somebody else manage the business side of things so you can just do dentistry? What type of practice culture do you want? What do you want patients to feel when they walk in the door?
Write down your answers to these questions and start thinking about any changes you need to make to build a practice consistent with your vision.
2. Work on your branding.
What do you want patients and people in your community to say about your practice when you are not around? It doesn’t matter how nice your website is or how pretty your logo is, your brand is determined by your reputation among your patients and the community. If they think your practice is high quality and spa-like, that’s the brand you have. If they think your practice is behind the times, that’s the brand you have.
Take a look at how your practice is presenting itself to your patients and the community. What do you think those messages are causing people to say about your practice? Does it match what you want them to be saying? If so, great! Lean into that and think of ways to do even more when things pick up. If not, what do you need to change?
3. Improve your systems.
Your operations are a sum of the systems you have in place. Do your systems make your business run like a high-quality engine? Do your patients get a consistently WOW experience at your practice? Are your team members consistently performing? If consistency is a problem in your practice, better systems are your solutions.
What are you doing to work on your business right now?
While the pandemic might make things feel hectic right now, this slow time offers a great opportunity to work on our businesses even if we can’t work in them in the moment. Eventually, this time will pass and we’ll all be back in the swing of things. Taking time to work behind the scenes will make our practices stronger than ever once everything turns around.
If you want more help improving your business, joining me and thousands of other practice leaders in my free Delivering WOW Facebook community!
Dental billing and insurance can be tricky to navigate. There are a lot of components to it from medical cross coding to claim submissions, patient billing, and so on. However, it doesn’t have to be so complicated, especially if you’re working with a company that caters to your individual needs such as D-TECH Billing and Claims.
DeVon Banks is CEO of the company and joins me on this episode of the podcast to talk about what she’s going to be teaching you at the Delivering WOW Live Summit 2020! DeVon is one of our highly-anticipated speakers at this year’s event and we are so excited to have her and her team join us at the event in New Orleans, March 13-14th 2020.
DeVon is an industry expert in insurance, revenue cycle management, and Dentrix. Her and her team at D-TECH Billing and Claims work tirelessly to help hundreds of dental offices across the country through practice management software training, dental billing, medical cross coding, and more. They take the headache out of technology management, so you can focus on what you do best – caring for your patients!
In this episode, we discuss:
How DeVon and her company helps dental practices grow through medical billing
How medical billing is evolving in the dental industry
Why a lot of dentists struggle with insurance and medical billing
What type of things you can bill for that you might not be aware of
What DeVon will teach at the Delivering WOW Live Summit 2020
If you want to find out more about DeVon and D-TECH Billing and Claims, you can visit the website here: https://www.dtechbc.com
Have you got your tickets to the Delivering WOW Live Summit 2020?
Don’t miss the ultimate event for dental practices, taking place at Mardi Gras World in New Orleans, LA, March 13-14th 2020!
If you want to come along and receive 12 hours of CE from speakers such as DeVon, Sandy Pardue, Laura Hatch, Len Tau, and many more, get your tickets today!
Check out this short video trailer of the episode where DeVon Banks gives you some top practice management tips when it comes to medical billing:
At Delivering WOW, we believe the benefits of starting a membership program in your practice make it a no-brainer.
To help you evaluate whether one is right for you, we recently sat down with Jordan Comstock to discuss how. Jordan took the time to explain how membership programs work and how his company, BoomCloud, helps dentists utilize membership programs to get their practice to reach peak profitability.
Here are three of our favorite reasons why every practice should consider starting a membership program.
Help more people get dental care.
At PPO practices, frustration about insurance is common. For many patients, the complications that come with dental insurance make it just as infuriating to them, too. As a result, patients frequently resort to paying more out-of-pocket than they need to. Those out-of-pocket expenses can really add up to the point that they don’t come in for preventative dental care as much as they should. They only come in for emergency care or when they can’t kick the can down the road any longer on their oral health issues.
Moreover, while health insurance is a common employee benefit, dental insurance isn’t. This leaves a big gap in the market for people who would want dental care but need an affordable and predictable option.
Finally, many retired patients lose their dental benefits and let their oral health decline. When patients retire, dental insurance can become prohibitively expensive. So, they let their oral health deteriorate. That’s a huge problem.
Offering a membership program can be the solution for many people and position you as a dental provider of choice.
Create predictable recurring revenue for your practice.
Oftentimes in dentistry, one month will be super busy and another month will be super slow. There’s a lot of fluctuation throughout the years—kids go back to school, holidays mean people have less money to spend, and more. Jordan refers to this volatility as “feast and famine” months.
Running a business in which you have to depend on feast and famine months can be very stressful. A lot of factors can make the difference between practice growth and a struggle to make a profit. Membership plans can make revenue more predictable and reliable.
Jordan works with practices that generate $30,000 to $40,000 a month from just automatic membership plan fees, and that doesn’t include dentistry from non-members. Why start at zero every month when you can start at $30,000 to $40,000? If you’re starting your month at $30,000 to $40,000 as your baseline, you can shoot for higher growth. How nice would it be to aim to start each month with $100,000 in membership plan fee revenue?
Keep your patients loyal.
When patients have insurance plans, they might only be loyal to you until they need to change plans. If they change jobs, you might lose a patient. If their plan gets expensive and they need a new one you might lose a patient. But if they are on your membership plan, a job change won’t impact their dental coverage.
That’s why patients who sign up for your membership plan will likely become very loyal to you. They’ve paid for a membership and they’re not going to forgo the benefits that come with it. Jordan has found that, when a patient becomes a member, they end up spending two to three and a half times more with that practice than a non-member would.
Does your practice have a membership program?
Whether you have a membership program already in place or decide to start one, make sure you educate your patients about your plan. Tell them how it works and all the benefits to them. Be sure to explain exactly how it works so they know what they’re buying into and how to maximize their benefits. If you do, you can create mutually beneficial relationships with patients that can last years and years!
For more strategies on making sure your practice grows to its full potential, join the Delivering WOW Platinum Coaching Program, where you and your team can access the best trainings and coaching from leading experts on all aspects of growing a WOW dental practice.
Accepting treatment is a big decision for any patient, especially when high-value procedures are involved. It can cost a lot, and it can be scary for some patients when you tell them the best plan of action is to do something uncomfortable like get a tooth extracted.
No matter how scary the procedure is to patients, there’s a lot you can do to get patients to accept your treatment plan. For example, acting personable and caring and having the right systems in place can help. But one thing a lot of dentists overlook is word choice. In fact, you can immediately improve case acceptance by avoiding these four simple words.
“Maybe”
If something is “a maybe,” it’ll likely be a “no.” Maybe conveys a lack of confidence. It conveys a lack of urgency. So, if a patient asks whether they need to address an issue, answer confidently. And when you suggest something to a patient, be clear. Never say, “Maybe we should fix this issue.” Instead, say “We should fix this issue” or “Yes, fixing this issue will improve your health.”
Put yourself in their shoes. Imagine you’re at a dermatologist, and after examining your skin they tell you they’re worried about a mole and want to remove it. Most people would be less likely to pay for them to cut it off if they said, “Maybe we should remove this mole.” They’d be more likely to ask about alternative treatments or whether the mole can be tested before spending the money on removing a mole that turns out to be not problematic.
Most people would be more willing to accept treatment if the dermatologist says, “We need to remove this mole. It poses a threat to your health.” That decisiveness makes removing the mole an urgent matter that is putting the patient’s well-being in jeopardy.
“Cheap”
When you tell people something is cheap, there are usually two thoughts that will go through their head. The first is that if it’s cheap, then it’s low-cost. The second is that if it’s cheap, then it’s low-quality.
“Cheap” is a harsh word. Always be replaced with “affordable” or in terms of “value.” When someone tells you something is affordable or a good value, it comes across as being low-cost but without the negative connotation of it being low-quality. Thus, when talking with patients, talk about procedures being affordable or a good value instead of cheap.
“Cost”
Speaking of low-cost, avoid saying the word “cost” to a patient when discussing treatment. For example, if you tell a patient that getting an implant is going to cost them $5,000, they will immediately think of how much money they have in the bank. If they don’t have $5,000 in the bank (or a credit card with a high available credit that they’re willing to tap into), they are less likely to move forward. When discussing financial terms, focus on monthly payment plans instead of the total price and let them know you have several ways to help them fit their treatment needs into their budgets. Most patients think in those terms.
Instead of discussing “costs,” focus most of your discussions on the “value” of the procedure. That makes patients think about your treatment plan as an investment in achieving an outcome they desire. For example, you might say “The real value is having a fully-functioning smile again. You’ll be able to eat what you want. You won’t have to remove your dentures anymore. And you’ll be able to avoid large expenses that come from your teeth shifting or bone loss.”
Reminding patients of the value of your treatment plan and the outcomes they will receive, helps them better appreciate the benefits of moving forward with your plan.
“Problem”
While it might seem logical for people to try to “solve” problems, the reality is most people try to avoid them. Thus, when you describe something as a “problem” to a patient, many patients will instinctively push back or procrastinate. “Problems” feel big to patients. And big feels expensive to patients. Thus, of the patients who are of the mindset to find a solution—rather than to procrastinate—many will seek second opinions, giving another practice an opportunity to woo your patients.
Instead of the word “problem,” reframe your presentation using the word “issue.” It’s a gentler way of saying there’s a situation with their teeth that can be resolved through the treatment plan you’re presenting to them. Thus, instead of “the problem with your tooth is,” you might say, “there’s an issue with a tooth in the bottom right of your mouth that requires” and then present your treatment plan to the patient. Your patient is much less likely to push back when you present the issue rather than a problem.
Have you been using these four words when presenting your treatment plans to patients?
Consistent case acceptance can make or break your practice. Word choice might seem like a nuance that doesn’t amount to much but patients are much more likely to move forward with treatment plans when you avoid these four words.
If you want more strategies to help you increase case acceptance, plus coaching for you and your team, and more, join our Delivering WOW Platinum Coaching Program today.
You can deliver the best dental care in the world, have the latest technology, and serve the most gourmet coffee to your patients, but you can’t run a WOW practice without an amazing team.
One of the best ways to make your team do great work is to make them feel a part of the process. When they feel like they’re a part of a practice family and are contributing to achieving your practice story, they’ll be more motivated and happier to wake up in the morning and come to work. They’ll feel their role is meaningful.
So how do you achieve that? One of the best ways to do that is to create a culture in which both you and your team are open to receiving feedback from one another. This creates a safe environment for growth and support and ensures you and your team are constantly improving. With many leaders, this can be a struggle because many of us feel like we need to have all the answers. But when we hire the best team members, their talents and experiences will complement ours and make their feedback extremely valuable to elevating our practices to a whole different level.
Here are three keys to creating a culture in which giving and receiving feedback leads to consistent growth and high performance.
Always ask for feedback.
Many times, team members are uncomfortable giving feedback to the doctors. It’s a natural concern for people to be concerned giving feedback to their leaders—especially when it’s constructive criticism.
To make your team members more comfortable with giving you feedback, ask for it. Also, ask for it in a very specific area, and request suggestions for improvement. The more focused and specific you are, the easier it will be for someone to respond. For example, you could ask, “Do you have any suggestions for how we can adjust how we schedule to improve production?”
Also, try to get a more rounded perspective when asking for feedback. Ask a number of team members for input when it makes sense to do so. Get everyone involved.
Be grateful for feedback even if you don’t like it.
Receiving feedback helps build vulnerability-based trust and a safe environment where people help each other improve. You don’t have to agree or disagree with what they have to say. Just thank them for having the confidence to try to help you improve. By encouraging it, you also won’t seem hypocritical when you give someone feedback.
For example, it’s hard to not get upset when someone says you were tone-deaf with a patient. But if you want to get the best work from yourself, you have to take a step back and be objective about their feedback.
Everyone has room for improvement. If everyone is able to look at constructive criticism pragmatically, you can start to create a culture of consistent improvement.
Encourage everyone to seek feedback from patients.
Make sure everyone on your team looks for feedback from patients. In your office or online, what do they say? What can you read into how they act when they are in your chair? And what is their body language like when they are in your chair?
Team members aren’t the only ones who can give you feedback, but they can be a very helpful resource for gathering patient feedback. Make sure they pay attention to all forms of feedback from them, and not just from the online reviews.
When you receive feedback from patients, react the same way you would with a team member delivering feedback. Be grateful for it, and look for the practical takeaways you and your team can use to improve.
Are you getting amazing work from your team consistently?
Nobody is perfect, and nobody is going to do everything right all the time. We all have development areas. The best way to improve everyone's performance is to ask for feedback, be grateful when we receive it, and encourage everyone to seek feedback from patients. Then, you will create a culture of constant growth and improvement with a free flow of feedback in all directions. It will set the standard that all team members are expected to do their best work and constantly improve—leaders included.
If you want to learn more about building a practice culture in which everyone thrives, join our Delivering WOW Platinum Coaching program, and start learning from the best experts in the dental industry today!
It used to be that you could hang a sign up in front of your dental practice with the word “Dentist” on it and you’d be one of the only dentists in town. Locals would stroll through your doors when they needed to get treatment because you were the closest and most convenient clinician around.
Unfortunately, it’s not so simple to get patients to come to your practice anymore. Competition is bigger than ever, and patients have access to more information than before. That means we have to adopt a different mindset when attracting new patients as well as to retain existing patients. When we do, we can attract the patients we want to grow our practice and then retain those patients for the long term. Even better, we can get those patients to sing our praises online and tell their family and friends about us, making our marketing efforts even easier.
Here are two ways to attract and retain patients no matter how competitive a market you practice in.
Make all patients feel like VIPs.
When a patient comes in for treatment, they aren’t too concerned about your clinical skills. They have already concluded that you know how to treat them. In fact, most assume you do because of your training. Thus, while it’s obviously important that you do an amazing job, quality clinical care isn’t a selling point. Making all patients feel like VIPs is a selling point. Treating all patients like VIPs creates loyalty with current and new patients and gives you great content to use in your marketing campaigns.
What’s your office environment like? Patients care a lot about how the environment made them feel. A comfortable waiting room with access to magazines that interest them and coffee they like turns what most people expect to be a boring experience into a relaxing one. Having iPads with music people can enjoy in the OP as they receive their treatment can make a stressful experience more pleasant. The list goes on.
Too many practices overlook the experiences they provide to patients but just a few small tweaks can often help attract and retain more patients, especially in a competitive environment.
Create a WOW online presence and get patients to share their experiences online.
In this day and age, everything is on the internet, and online reviews are becoming more and more important. There are sites like Yelp and Google where you’ll be graded on a scale of 1-5 stars and people will talk about their good, bad, or ugly experience at your practice.
If you don’t match your online presence to the in-office experience you provide, you could lose a lot of potential patients. When patients see your marketing, they will often visit your website. Does it demonstrate the look and feel you want to convey in the market? Make sure your online presence matches your dental brand. If you need help, here are seven ways to supercharge your practice website.
Also, you can be sure that many new patients have analyzed your online reviews before they came into your practice for treatment. If another practice has a 5-star rating with great online reviews and you have a 3-star rating with only a few mediocre online reviews, who do you think they’ll go to for their treatment?
Are you attracting a regular stream of loyal patients?
Do you consistently have trouble getting patients to come in and then stay loyal customers? Getting in your patients’ mindset to make them feel like VIPs and get patients talking about their positive experience with you can help you attract and retain patients in even the most competitive markets.
If you want even more help growing and marketing your practice, sign up for the Delivering WOW Platinum Coaching Program where you can find more training and coaching on all aspects of running and growing a high-profit dental practice.
When you first get started with the marketing strategies I teach, you might be surprised by how simple they are at their core. Whether it’s Facebook marketing for dental practices, dental marketing funnels, or any other strategy I teach, all of them boil down to applying what has worked for decades to the modern world. By doing so, we are able to get better, faster, and more affordable results.
For example, dental marketing funnels involve taking the conversations we used to have with patients in person on webpages and email. Boosting Facebook Live videos to thousands of people moves the videos we used to display on television to social media. And Facebook advertising helps us send targeted ads to people we used to only target through postcards. With all of the things we teach, all we are doing is using modern tools to get better results from the things that have worked for decades.
The same is true for collecting online reviews. Whether it’s a restaurant or a dentist, prospects often search Google before going to a business. So, whether someone gets referred to our practice or finds us because of a Facebook Ad, chances are they will search for reviews before making an appointment. Here’s the simple two-step process we use to get online reviews from our practice.
Step 1: Provide an experience people can’t stop talking about.
It is pretty easy to get reviews if you don’t skip this critical first step. When patients have WOW experiences at your practice they won’t be able to help but talk about your practice. They’ll tell you and your team how amazing their experience is. They’ll talk with friends, family, and coworkers, too.
Are you providing experiences your patients will talk about? It doesn’t have to be complicated to do so. For example, patients love when we provide warm peppermint-scented towels after treatment, give office tours, and kids go to the toy box first. It’s so much different than most other dental practices.
In addition to providing experiences unlike other practices, giving patients WOW experiences builds deeper relationships than they get anywhere else. That makes them more likely to want to reciprocate all the goodwill you build up with them. And two of the most common ways patients reciprocate are leaving online reviews and telling their friends, family, and coworkers about you.
Step 2: Ask patients about their experience after every appointment.
At the end of each visit, ask your patients, “How was your experience, today?” If you’ve treated them to a WOW experience, the answer will inevitably be something along the lines of “Amazing!”
Once they answer, thank them for the feedback. Then let them know you are trying to help patients who are afraid to go to the dentist because of past experiences and that you will be sending them an online review link and it would mean the world to you if they would share their experience with others. Let them know that patients often say that online reviews gave them the courage to go to the dentist for the first time in a long time. Also let them know that sharing their experience could be the push someone needs to get the care they need to change their life.
Asking about their experience and connecting it to helping others helps transform your request from asking for help to something with a deeper meaning. We can’t just expect people to enter a review when they get an automated text or email. You have to make a connection with them so they want to help you and others.
Are you struggling to collect online reviews?
Everything I teach is old-school word-of-mouth marketing with a modern twist, utilizing social media and other technological advances to help us get better results in less time and on smaller budgets. Many times—like this—old-fashioned patient care combined with modern technology is the best mix for success. Build deep relationships with your patients and use technology to make the process simple and easy.
If you want even more help growing and marketing your practice, sign up for the Delivering WOW Platinum Coaching Program where you can find more training and coaching on all aspects of running and growing a high-profit dental practice.
Do you want to start attracting more high-value dental patients to your practice each month? If so, you don’t want to miss this episode of the podcast. I’m joined by Charles Biami, the Founder and Chief Marketing Manager of Driven Dental Implant Marketing.
Charles helps dentists just like you attract and convert high value dental implant cases and he does it in a way that provides a consistent flow of new monthly patients. With Driven Dental’s deep understanding of patient needs and the dental industry, they have the experience, insights and know-how to help you drive 20+ qualified opportunities to your front desk each month.
Together, we discuss exactly how Driven Dental Implant Marketing can help drive more high-value patients to your practice. And, we give you some practical strategies to help you convert more patients over the phone.
On the podcast we discussed:
What Driven Dental Marketing can do for your practice
How to target patients searching for dental implants online
How Driven Dental Marketing can help you convert more leads into patients
Why every dental practice should have an online chat service
Strategies to help your front desk team get more conversions over the phone
Why more dentists need to understand that marketing brings prospects, but it’s up to your team to convert those prospects into patients
Want to learn more about how Driven Dental Implant Marketing can help you drive more high-value patients to your practice?
Head over to their website to learn more and if you’re ready to take it a step further, you can book a FREE strategy call with Charles about your practice, your marketplace and the steps you need to take to grow your implant practice.
Watch a short video trailer for this episode below:
How great would it be to send one email and have thirty appointments scheduled? That's exactly what one of our Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind members experienced.
Here's exactly how she put it:
Hey, everyone. I just want to share my experience about a marketing gem from Platinum Mastermind. This morning, we sent an “Use Or Lose” email blast. This is much earlier than when we normally send it out. The email stated that today marks 100 days until January 1, 2020 and don’t wait until the last minute to use your dental insurance. My front desk scheduled about 30 appointments afterwards from the online link and phone calls.
How awesome is that! A week before she sent this email, we trained all of our Platinum Practices on how to run effective end-of-year campaigns. One week later, she was celebrating her success with hundreds of other dental professionals! So how did she do it? Here are the steps we suggest taking to run an effective end-of-year campaign.
Start Early
We highly recommend sending out the email at least 100 days before the year ends. This is earlier than many practices typically send end-of-year campaigns. But it's so important to get the email out early. Sometimes, it takes multiple emails to catch people's attention, even if the first email gets 30 appointments, as this member experienced.
Sending early also gives you 100 full days to get patients in. You can spread out end-of-year appointments so you're not in a big rush in December.
Choose the Right Patients to Email
Although many practices assume it's easier to email all their patients than choosing a subset, it's not. I highly recommend emailing only the right patients for all your email communications. This is so important because it makes it much more likely that patients will open your emails.
If you consistently send emails to your entire patient list, it's likely that the vast majority of emails will be irrelevant to most of your patients. Over time, your patients will see your emails as not worth paying attention to and ignore even the relevant ones.
With end-of-year campaigns, this means only sending your campaign to your active patients with unscheduled treatment and insurance remaining.
Make a Plan and Set Goals
Once you know when you're going to start and who will be included in your campaign, take some time to plan and set goals for your campaign.
In the Platinum Mastermind, we walked members through every step of the process so implementing the plan would be seamless, successful, and fun.
We helped them:
identify the total revenue opportunities if all were rescheduled;
set a specific goal for the percentage of patients they targeted to reschedule;
identify the total revenue that would come in once they hit their goal;
determine how their team would celebrate once their goal was met;
identify the most effective campaigns to use to get predictable results; and
use software to identify the patients and send out the campaigns with ease.
With end-of-year campaigns, we showed them how to use newsletters, letters, and social communications to reach the right patients. This multimedia approach increases the likelihood that your overall campaign will achieve your goals, even if your email is successful on its own. With our Platinum Mastermind members, we also gave them all the email, newsletter and Facebook ad copy and graphics to use.
Having a solid plan and exciting goals for what you'll do and how you'll celebrate makes it much easier to implement. It also motivates your entire team to help ensure your campaign will be a success.
Take Action
No matter how good your ad copy and graphics are if you don't send them you won't get results. If you want results, you have to take action. Start early. Identify the right patients to target with your campaign. Set exciting goals and know how you'll celebrate. And send those emails. That's exactly what this member did and after her first email, she had 30 new appointments schedules.
Do you send end-of-year campaigns?
When's the last time you sent an end-of-year marketing campaign? When done well, they can be very effective. So, take some time to plan and execute your campaign. And, remember, early is key. We suggest sending at least 100 days before the end of the year to maximize the time patients have to use their benefits. If you missed that deadline, don't worry. Send it as soon as you can and mark your calendar for next year!
If you want help, join the Delivering WOW Platinum Coaching Program today. There, you'll get access to all the copy and creative assets this member used to get 30 appointments from one email. You'll also get access to top training and coaching from experts in all facets of running a practice.
Would you like to learn how you can get more traffic from Google and grow your practice? If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, join me on this episode of the podcast for an insightful discussion with Brett Allen, the CEO and Co-Founder of Marketing 32.
Marketing 32 is a Google Marketing Agency for Dentists and Dental Specialists. The team at Marketing 32 are also the creators of “Google Made Easy for Dentists” which is a step-by-step program that is transforming the industry by helping dentist do their own SEO and Google Ads.
Brett and I have a very interesting talk about how dentists can leverage digital marketing to attract more patients and explode the growth of their practices. So, if you're struggling to fill up your appointment schedule or you just want to expand your practice and accelerate its growth, this is the episode you’ve been waiting for!
On the podcast we discussed…
Why you should use multiple traffic sources to help grow your practice
How to leverage relationships and get people in your community to talk about you
Strategies for using Google Marketing to reach new potential patients
The difference between search-based marketing and display & retargeting marketing
How you can use funnels to educate and convert patients
Tips for choosing the best keywords for your ads
If you want to learn more about Brett and Marketing 32, you can visit their website.
Brett and his team have also created a Google Ad training course for dentists, where you can learn how to leverage the power of Google Ads to help grow your practice. To find out more about this amazing course, go to marketing32.com/go
Here is a short video trailer of the podcast episode where Brett explains how to use Google Marketing to grow your practice.
Growing a dental practice can literally change people's lives. It can change patients' lives. It can change your team members' lives. It can change your life, and your family members' lives, too.
Maybe you grow by automating your marketing to get dozens of new patients every month on autopilot. Maybe you grow by using dental marketing funnels to attract high-value Invisalign, crown, or dental implant patients. Maybe you grow by adding people to your team or expanding your office.
When you are growing your practice, it is easy to become overwhelmed. Automating your dental marketing is great but somebody has to serve those patients. Dental funnels are amazing but somebody has to put them in place and manage all the leads they will attract. Expanding your office is exciting but somebody has to manage the process.
No matter what your practice vision is, the journey of getting there can feel overwhelming. Here is how you can prevent overwhelm from the start.
Get support from your entire team.
Setting a big vision for your dental practice is one of the most important things you can do for your practice. Your vision helps you set priorities in your practice and choose what activities will lead you to your practice vision. Activities that do not lead you closer to your vision can be eliminated. Activities that do get added.
All that activity can quickly lead to practice leaders taking on too much work themselves. With all the other work required to manage a practice and care for patients, adding even more to your plate is a recipe for disaster. Not only will you get overwhelmed but you will also likely not do as good a job in any of your duties because you will be spread too thin.
Avoid the tendency to do too much work by getting the support you need from the start. Include your team when putting your practice vision together. Let them know why your vision is what it is. Let them know how your practice vision can help them achieve their personal goals, too.
Make systems and processes part of your growth plan.
Getting your team to buy-in and support your practice vision is important. Making it easy for them to support you is even more important. Without the right systems and processes in place, the excitement they felt about your practice vision can quickly turn.
The best time to put systems and processes in place to support your team is at the start. Make sure you work with your team to establish internal systems and processes for key tasks relating to your growth plan. Write them down and encourage your team to suggest improvements as they get into doing the work.
Documenting what needs to get done and encouraging your team to improve the tasks helps make your growth plan much easier for everyone.
Have the right tools in place to support you and your team.
Dental software has never been as helpful as it is today and it is only getting better. We can do more in a few clicks of the mouse today than we could do with hours of team member time a few short years ago. After identifying the tasks that will help you achieve your practice vision, look for software and other tools to make performing those tasks easier.
Are dental marketing funnels part of your growth plan? Use ClickFunnels to make funnel-building easy. Is automating your dental marketing part of your plan? Consider joining our next Dental Facebook Bootcamp to get our best tools for running Facebook Ads for dental practices. Do you need to collaborate with your team? Use tools like Dental Intel and Google Sheets to keep the most important information organized. Having the right tools and resources to support your growth plan helps everyone do their best work.
Are you ready to grow without getting overwhelmed?
If you are sick of struggling to grow your practice, setting a strong practice vision is the first step to a better life. But your growth plan can easily become overwhelming. Get the proper support, systems, and tools in place to help prevent overwhelm from the start.
To learn more about growing your practice without getting overwhelmed, check out the team of expert coaches, training, and resources we offer in our signature Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind Program.
But many dentists avoid or delay using dental-marketing funnels, sticking to old, expensive, inefficient dental-marketing tactics because those are familiar to them or because they think dental-marketing funnels aren’t a good fit for them or their practice. I’ve heard every objection imaginable, but after helping thousands of dentists grow their practices, I’m more convinced than ever that every dentist can implement a dental-marketing funnel into their practice to make their marketing easier (see how here).
For those who are on the fence, here are three common misconceptions about dental-marketing funnels.
1. They’re only for existing practices
Although dental-marketing funnels are cheaper, automated, and more effective, there’s not much of a difference between them and traditional marketing methods with respect to what type of practice can benefit from a funnel.
In fact, Dr. Ashley Joves didn’t even have a practice when she got started, and by the time she opened the doors, she had over 1,000 Facebook fans, almost 300 people on her Very Important Patient email list, and over 50 appointments booked.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve been in business 40 years or 40 seconds, or if you’re still 40 days away from opening your doors, dental-marketing funnels can help you grow.
2. They’re complicated
Mistakenly assuming dental-marketing funnels are complicated is a common error. The truth is funnels can be complicated, but they don’t need to be. They can be a multi-step, sophisticated series of emails that adapt to what each subscriber does based on internal email links that act as triggers for different email sequences. All of that’s possible.
But they don’t have to be complicated. In fact, the technology Dr. Joves used to get almost 300 people on her VIP wait list and have over 50 people schedule appointments before she even opened the doors involved two simple steps: (1) setting up a squeeze page in ClickFunnels for people to enter their name and email address, and (2) an automated email delivering a coupon to them. Everything else was done on Facebook and by sending emails to her growing list.
3. They’re hard to set up
If you have any experience managing patient contact information for emails or direct mail, you or your team can set up a funnel. Software like ClickFunnels makes it super easy, with a visual workflow approach and drag-and-drop technology to set up your pages. ClickFunnels makes setting up your funnel simple.
To get the most out of your funnel, I recommend either working with experienced funnel experts to help you design the best funnel for your goals or working from a marketing-funnel template that’s known to have worked for others. My team and I have helped a number of dentists implement funnels in their practice and love celebrating with each of them as their practice starts to grow.
Why haven’t you started using dental-marketing funnels?
If you haven’t used funnels to grow your business, let me know in the comments what’s kept you from implementing dental-marketing funnels in your practice.
Is it because your practice is new or not even open yet? Don’t worry. You can build warm leads and raving fans before you even open the doors!
Is it because funnels sound complicated? Start with a simple one like a squeeze page to deliver an offer to prospective patients. Or you can work from a template like one of the funnel templates we provide to Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind members.
Are you intimidated by technology? Don’t worry! ClickFunnels makes it easy. You can learn step-by-step instructions, or you can outsource it to our experienced team. I’d be happy to talk with you about how my team can work with you.
TAKE ACTION TODAY:
Dentists pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month for advertising services that don’t have even close to the results you can get with simple dental-marketing funnels. Don’t let these or other misconceptions keep you from building the dental practice of your dreams! Dental marketing funnels work when you have people to send through those funnels. And guess where those people come from? Successful marketing campaigns!
In our upcoming Marketing & Practice Growth Challenge, every office learns the simple, step by step process to launch their first or next successful marketing campaign where you can grow your visibility in your community AND get new patients through your doors, and they also implement the campaign during the challenge! This is your best next step if you are thinking about getting leads and setting up your dental marketing funnel! Want to be one of the practices in our next challenge? Save your spot here and see what other practices have said — plus get 20% off when you use the code CHALLENGE at checkout!
If you’ve been reading my blog or listening to my podcast, you know my favorite way to grow a dental practice is through dental-marketing funnels. I believe every dentist needs at least one dental marketing funnel in their practice. If you want to grow your dental practice into a busy, high-profit dental practice full of patients who rave about you to their friends and family, dental-marketing funnels are your answer!
Dental-marketing funnels are so powerful, they can help you even if you haven’t opened the doors of your practice yet and don’t have a big marketing budget.
For example, in a recent Delivering WOW podcast episode, I shared the story of Dr. Ashley Joves who used a simple funnel to add over 1,000 Facebook fans, grow an email list of almost 300 patient leads for a waiting list, and have 50 people schedule appointments before she even opened the doors.
The best part about it for Dr. Joves was she accomplished all that by spending only $685.00 on advertising. The best part for you is the process she used to get those results is simple and can apply to a number of different situations, such as if you want to expand your office in a different location, add a new doctor, or renovate your building.
Here are three keys to attracting hundreds of new leads before your big opening, expansion, or renovation!
1. Start early.
Announce your new practice, expansion, or renovation as soon as you commit to making it happen. In addition to public accountability, this allows you to share your journey while building a warm, excited audience and having multiple opportunities to get people to opt into your simple dental-marketing funnel.
Dr. Joves started the day she left her associate position by posting a Facebook Live video where she announced she bought a building and would be opening her own practice. She then worked with me and my team to build a practice page and set a goal of having over 1,000 relevant likes by the time her doors opened.
2. Share your journey.
Let people look behind the curtain as you embark on your new journey. With Dr. Joves, this meant sharing pictures, live videos, and other exciting posts about all aspects of her new practice, starting with her vision and what would make her practice different and better (Check out our list of free dental advertising ideas). She shared design choices, construction updates, and more, boosting some of the posts through Facebook to get important updates in front of even more potential patients!
3. Incentivize participation in your new venture and make it a winning situation for prospects.
Give people a big reason to go from social-media contacts to real leads. Dr. Joves did this by offering people a $50 coupon off their first visit just for joining her VIP waiting list and announcing one sign-up would win a choice of $1,000 to spend toward dental care at her office or free teeth whitening for life! She also offered to invite everyone on her VIP waiting list to an in-person celebration!
This made it an easy decision for people in her practice area to join. Her incentive was great because it was all tied to services at her office, so the only people who were incentivized to join were potential patients. If she had given away an iPad, she’d have gotten signups from people around the world who would never come to her office.
4. Add an extra incentive for people who act fast to schedule an appointment.
As your opening, expansion, or renovation is nearing, announce an extra bonus for people who act fast to schedule an appointment. This could be something like a free service for people who make an appointment by a certain date, or even a discount for the first 25 people who schedule an appointment. Whatever it is, tie it to making an appointment and either limit the number of people who can take advantage of it or the time by which they need to take advantage of it to push people to act fast.
Dr. Joves gave an extra bonus for the first 25 people to schedule an appointment.
5. Use a simple funnel to make it easy to implement.
Dr. Joves worked with my team to build her funnel using a ClickFunnels two-step funnel. The first step was setting up a squeeze page to collect names and email addresses. After people opted in, they went to a landing page that reminded them of the benefits of being on the list and let them know they would be receiving their $50 coupon by email. That’s all she needed to manage her funnel. All her online promotion was Facebook ads and boosting some posts, working with my team, and she an ad spend of only $685! Because she didn’t have web traffic or an existing email list or Facebook page when she started, we mostly targeted people who had watched her videos or people who engaged with her posts for paid promotions and let her funnels do the work of collecting email addresses and sending out the incentive coupons and invitations!
6. Open your doors with patients excited and ready!
By starting early, sharing your story, and using smart incentives and a simple funnel to build a warm, excited audience, you have the opportunity to start a practice or kick off an expansion or renovation project with people ready to jump in your chair, just like Dr. Joves had!
Take a peek behind the curtain!
If you want to see exactly how Dr. Joves went from no list, no facebook page, and no patients to over 1,000 raving Facebook fans, almost 300 patients on a VIP waiting list, and more than 50 scheduled appointments in a matter of months, before she even opened her doors, check out the team of expert coaches, training, and resources we offer in our signature Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind Program.
One of the best parts of leading dentists around the world in the Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind program, my Inner Circle, and the free Dental Marketing and Profits Facebook community is celebrating with my students, clients, and community members as they get better results for their practice in less time and for less money.
One surefire way to get better results in less time and for less money is through implementing and optimizing dental marketing funnels.
Even if you’ve developed a high-performing, leak-free funnel, you can still improve your results and lower your costs by optimizing the way you attract people into your funnel.
Send People to Your Dental Marketing Funnels
The best way we’ve found to do that is through targeted Facebook ads that send people into your funnel by delivering a highly relevant guide or promotion to people to encourage them to give you their contact information.
The most basic form of Facebook ad that gets people into your funnel is a simple post presenting your guide or offer. Although the technique is predictably effective, results can vary from time to time, even if you use exactly the same text, image, and audience—for two reasons.
First, people are often unpredictable. What works in one demographic might not work in another. Also, people tend to act in groups, so if one ad gets many likes, shares, or comments, others will join in. Second, Facebook’s algorithm is set to build momentum in similar ways in order to ensure their members are shown the most relevant ads. Thus, Facebook will give more exposure to ads that get more engagement, and Facebook will do that at lower costs.
The most effective Facebook ads take advantage of both human behavior and Facebook algorithm tendencies in order to reduce costs and increase results.
Get More People Into Your Dental Marketing Funnels (While Lowering Your Costs)
Because it’s impossible to predict which posts will get the most engagement and better results, the best way to get more people into your funnel at a lower cost is to test multiple versions of the same ad, making only minimal changes to each version in order to find the best ad for your goal.
In marketing terms, this is called split testing, or A/B testing. With traditional marketing, split testing is expensive and difficult to do because you need to either print multiple versions of the same physical mailer or place multiple ads in different newspapers, television programs, and more. It’s also difficult to get reliable statistics quickly or to run ads without spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
With Facebook marketing and dental marketing funnels, split testing is super simple and can be done with a few clicks. Even better, you can get reliable data in a matter of a few days for just a few dollars.
For these reasons, the most successful marketers split test every Facebook ad they post.
Here’s how to split test your Facebook ads to get more people into your funnel for a lower cost.
Set Up Your Split Test
The good news is everyone who sets up a Facebook ad to send people to a funnel is already doing the first step of a split test. That first step is to set up a Facebook ad. We recommend setting a budget of between $3 and $10 for the ad. That’s plenty of money to get reliable data.
Once you have your Facebook ad set up, you need to duplicate the ad. You can choose as many copies of the original as you would like and keep your budget for each ad the same as the original. Usually, we advise people to choose one, two, or three copies; so they have two, three, or four versions of the same ad running. Some people choose to have eight versions of the same ad running.
Once you’ve duplicated the ad, edit each of the ads to change one element. The most frequently tested elements include the headline, copy, images, audience, or the offer itself. For example, you might send two ads to the same audience, with one offering a free guide and the other offering a deal, to see which converts better. You can also test two, three, or even four different images with the same audience and ad copy to see which one resonates better. You can even test two different audiences with the same elements. We recommend keeping it simple when you’re starting out or outsourcing your Facebook ads to an experienced ads manager, as we do with our clients, to help you.
Evaluate Your Split Test
After a few days, you check the performance, go back into Facebook Ads Manager or Power Editor and check how each ad is performing. You may find that all ads are working well, producing similar, great results. In that case, you might choose not to change anything. You may also find that one or two versions are performing at significantly higher costs or attracting significantly fewer leads. In that case, with one click, simply shut off the ones that aren’t doing well, and let the ones that are performing best keep going. It’s that easy!
Start Testing!
Split testing your Facebook ads can push even your best-performing funnels to new levels. Imagine setting up a split test and discovering your originalad performed at double or triple the cost of your other versions and attracted fewer people. Had you not split tested, you’d be stuck with those results.
With split testing, you can click one button after spending less than $10 on a $3/day budget and let the other versions continue to perform at levels your original ad couldn’t touch.
If you’re running Facebook ads to your funnel, I challenge you to conduct a split test this week!
In recent weeks, I’ve been talking a lot about dental marketing funnels, because they're my favorite way to skyrocket the profits of your dental practice.
If you're new to funnels, I believe every dental office needs a funnel as part of their dental marketing plan. It sounds complicated, I know, but they don't have to be. Funnels are really just an online or automated way to lead a prospect or patient through an onboarding or sales process that you normally would do in person or on the phone. If the normal sales process is simple, your dental marketing funnel can be simple, like this Invisalign sales funnel.
Even better, a well-designed funnel can even prequalify people so you and they can know they're a candidate for what you're looking to promote through your funnel, so neither you nor your prospect waste time or money on something that won't be a fit for either of you.
Like any onboarding or sales process, the more qualified leads you get into and through your funnel, the better your results will be!
But what if you did everything right, set up your funnel, and the leads aren't coming? Your marketing funnel might have a leak! Don't worry, it happens all the time. The more funnels you build, the better they will work. And the longer each funnel is in place, the more you'll learn about it and how you can improve it.
Here are three ways to spot and plug leaks in your funnel.
Unqualified people are making it into your funnel
A good marketing funnel is designed with a goal in mind. Your goal might be to acquire a new patient, offer a new service to existing patients, or to promote an existing procedure. Whatever it is, your funnel needs to attract people who are a good match for the goal and offer a piece of targeted, high-value opt-in content to get their attention and get them to opt in to your funnel sequence.
If you notice a number of unqualified people making it into your funnel, it's likely because either your opt-in content isn't targeted enough, or your efforts to attract people into your funnel (like Facebook ads) aren't targeted enough.
For example, if you're looking to attract people into an automated Invisalign marketing funnel, opt-in content about teeth whitening would likely attract a number of people who would not be interested in Invisalign. On the other hand, content that answers frequently asked questions about Invisalign or shares how to know if you qualify for Invisalign would only attract people who are interested in Invisalign.
If your opt-in content is targeted and high-value content and you're still seeing unqualified people getting into your funnel, like people from outside of your service area, it's possible your outreach isn't targeted enough. For example, your Facebook ads audience might need to be adjusted by location to your area to make sure you're only paying for clicks from people who are interested in your service and likely to come to you if they decide it's for them.
People getting stuck in your funnel
If you're getting mostly qualified leads into your funnel, but people aren't making it through, take a close look at that part of your funnel. Does it deliver on the promise from the previous step? Is it off topic? Does it skip too far? Does it encourage people to move to the next step?
Adjust that step to make sure it delivers a promise from the previous step, is a logical next step in the onboarding or sales process, and delivers a promise or some other reason for your ideal prospects to want to move to the next step.
People who aren’t ready to take the next step at the end of your funnel
If your funnel is attracting qualified people and leading them through the end, but they’re still not taking action, it's possible you have an incomplete funnel. In this case, it's likely that you've presented your funnel well to attract qualified leads and offered valuable content to them each next step along the way. The issue is likely that
your call to action is too big a step from where your funnel ends,
your funnel doesn't address at least one question prospects typically have, or
you haven't built trust and rapport into your funnel.
Take a look at your funnel process with your ideal prospect in mind. Is your call to action too big a step from the end of your funnel? Are there additional questions you need to answer? Did you build enough trust and rapport with them so they get to know, like, and trust you and don't just take your info and go somewhere else?
It’s your turn.
Are you using funnels as part of your dental marketing plan? If so, take ten minutes to examine how prospects are making into and through your funnel. How can you improve each step of your funnel to get even better results? Do you see any leaks? If so, take action to improve your funnel or plug leaks to get even better results!
TAKE ACTION TODAY:
If you’re having trouble optimizing your dental marketing funnels, these steps can help you! For more help, check out the team of expert coaches, training, and resources we offer in our signature Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind Program.
You can also join our 21-day Marketing and Practice Growth Challenge where you’ll learn what you need to do to build relationships with your potential patients’ favorite small businesses in your community, and how to launch a successful marketing campaign that will build a warm audience of potential patients for your funnel! Ready to learn more or save your spot? Click here.
This week on the Delivering Wow podcast I’ve recorded a solo episode on the topic of email marketing and funnels.
Email marketing really can explode your practice growth, and this can be achieved by having an effective, automated funnel in place.
I’m so excited to announce that we have just launched our Facebook Bootcamp course in the Platinum Mastermind – it’s free to all of our members! So, it seemed timely to record an episode on this topic.
On the podcast I discussed:
What funnels are and why they are so effective
The journey of Dr. Ashley Joves who launched her start-up entirely on social media and through having an effective funnel she managed to get 275 email addresses and 50 scheduled appointments before her practice opened
An example of a really effective funnel for dental implants
The many benefits of email marketing funnels and how they take people on a journey of trust
How to setup a funnel for your practice
The role that Facebook can play in email marketing funnels and it’s powerful targeting capabilities
Funnels enable you to build trust with people. The whole process can be automated and it can provide you with a consistent number of new patients…without you even having to pick up the phone.
If you want to know more about funnels, join me on Delivering Platinum Mastermind Facebook Bootcamp Course, my signature Email Marketing Course, which teaches you how to get an AUTOMATED new patient flow – click here.
This week on the Delivering Wow podcast I interviewed Michael Arias and I got to talk all about my favorite subject – marketing! Specifically, we talked about ground marketing.
Michael is a really good friend of mine. He’s the host of the Dental Marketer Podcast and he’s doing amazing things to help dentists with ground marketing.
Michael is from Texas where he graduated with a degree in Nutrition. He helped to start up two companies before moving to California – where he helped to start up another company working as a nutritionist. A client of his happened to be a Dental Consultant and he assisted him with his marketing. This led to working with more dentists – bringing in new patients to their practices. He went from bringing in a couple of patients daily …to overbooking the doctor's schedule, three months in advance, with quality patients!
Michael has worked with several dentists, dental groups, dental consultants, and agencies. He loves educating anyone who is interested in how to market their dental practice.
On the podcast we discussed:
Michael’s background and how he got into dental marketing
What ground marketing is and some great examples
Ideas for forming partnerships with local businesses in order to attract new patients
Digital marketing is very important but it shouldn’t be everything
Why it’s important to stand out as a dentist and have a “story”
The importance of having a strong online and offline presence and how they can complement each other
The role that personality plays in being successful with ground marketing
What start-ups or practices with available staff can do with regards to ground marketing
How Michael can help dental practices and the service that he offers
How to get started with ground marketing
You can reach Michael by heading to his website www.thedentalmarketer.site where you’ll find links to his social media profiles and be able to listen to his podcast (the Dental Marketer Podcast).
One of the most important factors for patients when choosing a dentist is trust. When people trust you, not only will they be more likely to choose you to be their dentist, they will also trust your care recommendations and accept your treatment plans more easily once they become patients.
Years ago, trust was built based with word-of-mouth recommendations. Although word-of-mouth referrals still happen today, dentists can build trust with many more patients through effective Facebook marketing. And the single best way to do that is through video.
Video is huge on Facebook. Video shows people who you and your practice are. Videos with you in them allow people to see you and hear your voice. It allows you to show people your personality. It allows people to get to know your staff and your office from the comfort of their own home. It builds trust far more effectively than a written post or even an image.
Additionally, Facebook’s algorithm favors videos, so video posting can get you in front of more people because the time people spend watching videos tells Facebook even more about them than what they like, comment on, or share. Although people sometimes like, comment, or share something because it was posted by a friend—even if they’re not interested in the post—they rarely watch an entire video if they don’t genuinely like it. Because of that, when someone watches a video on Facebook, Facebook sees that video as something people are genuinely interested in and will show it to more people.
If you’re not using video on Facebook, you’re missing a big opportunity. Here are three simple ways to use video to grow your practice on Facebook:
1. Post short video testimonials.
It’s one thing to say or write that you have an amazing practice. It’s even more amazing to post a video of a patient glowing about the incredible experience they just had in your practice. When someone sees and hears an actual patient gushing about how they can’t wait until their next dental appointment with you, viewers will want to be that happy leaving their next dental appointment and will see your practice as the place to go for that feeling!
The video doesn’t have to be professionally produced. In fact, recording it with a cell phone and posting it on your page is the best way to show people the testimonial is real. You can even do it as a live video from your phone if you prefer, which Facebook loves.
In our practice, after treating our patients to a WOW experience, our hygienist will ask patients how their experience was. We do this to get feedback on our practice and constantly improve.
Because we so intentionally treat our patients like the VIPs they are, their response is usually that it was great. We ask about specific parts of their experience, like the hand massages, gourmet coffees and teas, and our commitment to timely service. Again, they almost without fail gush about that. The most common response from our patients is they’ve never had that great an experience at the dentist before. We explain that so many people are fearful of the dentist, so we appreciate that feedback. We then sometimes ask people if they’d be willing to share their experience in a video for us to use on Facebook to let those fearful patients know that our practice is different.
2. Post video tours of your office.
If your office is amazing, take a video tour and let people know. When we do this, people see the iPads, gourmet coffees and teas, towel warmers, and more. It shows viewers how well we treat our patients. It helps them imagine themselves being treated that way at the dentist. It lets them know our practice is different.
You can do the same, too. Grab your cell phone and record videos of your office for your Facebook page. You can do a tour of your entire office, or record multiple videos showing people small parts of your office, talking about one thing that makes your office experience different per video.
3. Post videos about your practice policies and promotions.
Video is a great way to let people know about your business policies or promotions. For example, our practice offers our patients an on-time guarantee that guarantees that our patients will be seated within fifteen minutes of their appointment time or their next exam is free.
In your practice, you or one of your outgoing team members could record videos about policies that make you unique, promotions you’re doing for new patients, payment options to make dental care more affordable, and more. Let your current and future patients connect with your policies and promotions by hearing it straight from you or one of your team members. This creates a personal, emotional connection between your patients and the policies and promotions that make your practice amazing.
Get started with video today!
By posting video content to Facebook, in addition to text and image posts, your content will stand out and make deeper connections to your audience. It also allows you to take advantage of Facebook’s love for video content to build organic momentum in addition to your paid reach.
By posting videos with testimonials, tours, promotions, or policy explanations, you’ll make more emotional connections with your audience, who will see your passion and feel your excitement about dentistry.
TAKE ACTION TODAY:
It’s now amazingly simple, and so convenient, for you to achieve your practice’s marketing targets with just your cell phone and laptop! But maybe you’re feeling like video is way outside your comfort zone. You’re not alone: over 300 dentists felt that way too when they first joined the Marketing & Practice Growth Challenge. But then they received step-by-step support from Team WOW and at the end of 21 days, they got very comfortable with using video in their practice to connect with their patients. If you want this kind of step by step guidance and support, you can save your spot for the challenge here — plus use the code CHALLENGE and save 20% at checkout!
