Hey, everybody. It’s Chris Pistorius again with The Dental Marketing Tip of the Day. Today, I want to talk about failure. And most of us fail every day at something, right? No matter how little or big the problem may be, we’re probably going to fail at some point during the day. And that’s okay. People fail all the time. And what I’ve been a big believer in over the 13 years of running my dental marketing agency is it’s okay to fail as long as you fail quickly because you can learn from it quickly and move on. If you fail slowly and methodically and you’re too hardheaded or stubborn to overcome that, then you’re going to have some problems and it could lead to disaster.
So what I want to talk about, though, specifically in dentistry when it comes to failure is dental practices that I’ve seen fail over the years and a consistent reasoning of why. It’s funny, I was talking to one of our clients the other day. And we had a great conversation about dental school. And he was kind of like, “I go to school for four years, get my degree.” “I go to school X number of years after that,” he was a specialist, “and not once did they ever actually talk about how to get patients to come into my clinic.” I mean, that makes sense. Educational institutions make great dentists and doctors and lawyers and whatever, but very seldom do they give you the training on how to run and scale a business.
So for me, it’s one of the biggest drawbacks from our educational system is that we need to really start educating people on how to be entrepreneurs. Because a lot of times, we get caught up in the technical side of things and making people very good at what they do, but if they ever want to go run their own business, it’s a good chance they’re going to fail. And that’s why a lot of small businesses fail, honestly. Whether you bake cakes or you’re a lawyer or you work on cars, you’re probably really good at doing that and that’s why you want to start your own business, but you forget the basics of how to run a business, how to do HR, how to do marketing, how to hire people, how to run payroll, things like that. And people overlook that and it can cause big problems.
So I think that a lot of dentists believe it’s kind of like if you build it, they will come type thing. And let me tell you, folks, that saying from that movie, or maybe it came before that movie too, A Field of Dreams, it’s just not true. Just because you build a dental practice and you put it in a great location does not mean for sure it’s going to be successful. If you build it, they may not come. So I’m just going to clue you in on that now.
The biggest problem that I’ve seen with dental practices, especially startup practices, is that they have this thinking that all these future patients are going to be in there. And the biggest problem that they really have is even getting people to know that they exist. So I think that, and I talk to clients about this sometimes too when we talk about the marketing strategy of their campaigns and waiting for people just to come to you is not a strategy. Hope is not a strategy with pretty much anything. So we try to take most of the hope out of it here.
So these tips are made to be pretty brief and quick. So I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time, but I just want you to think about that. And there’s a lot of ways that you can learn marketing. You can. Anybody can learn it. It’s something that anybody can learn, but you have to ask yourself as a dental owner or management, do you want to take the time to learn it? And it’s not, marketing isn’t one of those things that you just learn and you’re done. It’s one of those things you learn and then you got to keep up on. Because trust me, in doing this for 13 years, it seems like every day something is changing.
This week, Google Ads has changed something and our cost per acquisition for our clients has gone up. And we’re trying to figure out what’s going on in Google Ads, what they changed. That’s just a small example. So it’s not something you can just learn and then forget. I mean, very few practices are running ads in yellow pages anymore. So there’s a lot of things to learn. So you can learn it yourself, you absolutely can. If that’s something you’re interested in, you think that’s the best use of your time, awesome, do it.
Another way is to hire somebody internally. Put a job out for an internal marketing person, have them help out in the community, go to schools, go to festivals, do sponsorships, talk to referring doctors, depending on what you do, and that can be a great way to grow a practice as well. The problem with that can be is that they’re an employee. You’re going to have to pay them a little bit of money, they’re probably looking for some compensation. And you don’t always get the right person every time you hire someone. You’ve probably learned that from hiring other people within your practice. Sometimes they just don’t work out. And it’s just one more burden that you’re going to have internally trying to run a business.
And then the third option, which personally is my favorite because it’s what I do, but you can hire somebody. You can hire somebody like us that has been doing this for 13 years, working with dentists and helping dental practices grow. It’s all that we do. And we stay on top of things. We know the latest trends. We know what works and what doesn’t. And that can be a very good option for a lot of practices.
But no matter which choice you make, make one. Because right now, we’re entering into a time as of today, which is September 22, 2022, where we’ve seen our economy slide a little bit. We may be heading into a recession. It depends on who you believe. There’s a lot of pressure competition-wise from dentists, corporate dentists as well as new dentists coming into areas. So right now is the time to figure this out.
Don’t just not do anything. I get so many calls every week from dental practices that have been in business 20 years, and they say, “I’m just not getting the new patients like I used to.” And the reason is is because they have not been marketing. They’ve been relying on their current patient base to send them referrals. And that’s awesome. But there’s too many choices now, people got too many options. And so now is the time to make sure that you are doing marketing and you’re getting in front of those people.
So I hope this has helped. If you have any questions, please let me know. And if you need some help, either respond to me directly or go to my website, kickstartdental.com. You click on the free strategy session button, and you’ll be talking with me personally. Just set up a time for 15 minutes and we can chat about your practice and what might work and what might not. So anyway, hope this helps. And we’ll talk to you very soon. Thanks.
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