Our CEO, Chris Pistorius was featured on the “The Sales Evangelist” Podcast with Donald Kelly recently. He talks with Donald about how he uses a new(er) video tool called Loom to increase email open rates.
Read The Interview Below
Donald Kelly:
Everybody wants to get in touch with a prospect, but not everyone is willing to do what they need to get in touch with a prospect. On today’s episode, we’re going to talk to you about a strategy that actually works to get in touch with the prospects, no matter who they are, that you’re trying to get in touch with right now, and this is going to really help you. Check it out.
Donald Kelly:
Hey, hey, hey, everyone. Welcome to another great episode of The Sales Evangelist podcast. I’m your host, Donald C. Kelly, the sales evangelist, and I’m so excited for another great episode. I’m so excited to be here with you today. And on this episode, I have a fantastic guest. His name is Chris Pistorius. He is the owner and founder of a company called KickStart Dental Marketing. Now, I know what you’re saying. You’re saying, Donald, this guy, he works with dentists. I’m trying to work with executive. The cool thing about Chris is that not only does he run his own organization and he knows how to sell to a wide variety of people, but he’s also worked with other major corporations that sold to the executives. So the principles that he share has been helpful for him, not only selling to the market he’s focusing on right now, but also, the principles applies no matter what industry you’re in. So he’s going to share his insights with us.
Donald Kelly:
So let’s talk about Loom. So Loom is kind of like that lumpy letter, or this something that’s, it’s going to be a little bit unique here. But where do I start? Because I know I can go and send these videos and I know I’ve tried it. Let’s back up. What are some of the people get wrong when it comes to towards sending videos and outreach method?
Chris Pistorius:
I think they don’t have a process in place. I think the first thing you’ve got to do is just map out your process of what this is going to look like, right? So I use Lucid Chart for that, and it’s like a mind mapping software, and it just lets me be creative and draw what I think this process is going to look like in the beginning. First of all, let’s buy a list, right? Let’s get a list of email addresses or phone numbers, whatever it may be. And then the next step is to-
Donald Kelly:
Where do you get those lists from yourself?
Chris Pistorius:
Yeah, I get it from a few different places. My most recent is DMB, typically works the best for me, but there’s a lot of organizations out there that does it. But the list is pretty crucial, right? But I think the first step into it is map it out. Just don’t wing it and half-ass things. Map it out, have a plan. The plan will change, right? You’ll have to tweak it when you see what’s working and what’s not, but start with that initial planning session.
Donald Kelly:
So what’s a typical process look like? Say I’m reaching out to, go back to your AOL type days, and I’m reaching out to the CMO of a major company. What might a process look like if I have kicks and giggles here?
Chris Pistorius:
Yeah. So the first thing I would do would be, I always identified my dream 100. And it can be dream 50 or whatever. And everybody probably knows it, but that’s basically a list of 100 prospects that I want to go after. These are the ones that I want to do business with, right? So I don’t have a list of 1,000 or 50,000 records, right? I start with 100, right, because that’s what I can handle pretty easily. So I start there and then I come up with my method of the way I’m going to do things. So at AOL, I did it by revenue potential. And so FedExes would go out to maybe the top 25% on that list. The others, I would use more traditional channels like phone calls. This is really going to age me, but I used to send fax messages.
Donald Kelly:
Come on, bro.
Chris Pistorius:
Yeah, just blind fax messages, if I could get a good number. It’s kind of like the Mark Cuban type, beat cop marketing type stuff. You go in banging down doors and do everything you can to get that initial rapport, that initial meeting, right, and you don’t let anything stop you. It’s not about the 90 people out of 100 that say no. It’s all about the 10 people out of 100 that say yes. And I think too many people get really focused in on no, no, no, nos and they get beat down, and I get it. But you got to focus on the few that’s going to say yes.
Donald Kelly:
So go back to now this idea of Loom. We have the sequence. How many of those emails you’re sending to that one prospect have Loom videos inside of them, or have a video inside of them?
Chris Pistorius:
So we approach it two ways, okay? We have one sequence that will send just a plain text email. And by the way, I would really advise sending plain text emails versus HTML emails. Delivery rate’s better and people respond better, because they don’t see it as a commercial sales pitch. It’s just like a text-based email, right? But anyway. We’ve got two different sequences. One sends an email saying, hey, I put together this video for you about your website for ABC Dental. I’ve got some feedback for you. Do you want me to send it over to you, right? So this is what we send out the most, because then we don’t have to take 20 minutes, put together a video and hope that they respond, right? We send that out and then once they respond to that, then I shoot the video.
Chris Pistorius:
I can get it done in 15 to 20 minutes now. And then I send that to them, and then it’s more of me following up personally. And then the other one is is we actually will pre-do a video. This is top 10 stuff, right, of that dream 100. We’ll do 10 of them for those top guys. And we’ll just go ahead and send it out. And Loom allows you to see when somebody’s watched it, it’ll alert you, and who’s watched it. And so when they watch it, I will follow up with them pretty quickly after that, just to try to engage in a conversation then. So, that’s kind of how we have that set up.
Donald Kelly:
So in the Loom videos, what do you say? How long are your videos tend to be when you’re outreaching, or doing the outreach to a prospect?
Chris Pistorius:
Yeah, they’re pretty quick. It’s got to be pretty much to the point, because you’ll lose people’s interest and you’ve got to write it kind of like a news article. You got to have the bang in the front, so that they stay engaged with it, and then you can slow it down towards the end. But you got to get the most critical part of your message in the front of it. But typically, the initial videos are a couple, three minutes long. And then once they engage and I’ll do a deeper dive, that’s a little bit longer. I can get more into a proposal type video. But again, the whole point of the process is to get them actually in a strategy session. So I don’t want to give them too much, because I want to engage with them personally on a Zoom call so that we can really start to develop a rapport, versus just back and forth emails.
Donald Kelly:
Yeah. 100% on that. I love that. And then when you say short, is it 30 seconds?
Chris Pistorius:
Couple of minutes, I would say, for that initial one, yeah. And I always, with Loom, you can share your screen. If you guys aren’t using Loom out there, I’m sure you are, but if not, check it out. It’s awesome. It used to be free. I don’t know what the plans they have now, but I’m on a paid version, but it’s pretty cheap. But it allows you to share your screen. So for instance, when I do a video, I’ll be kind of small down in the corner, and then the client’s website, for instance, will be my shared screen when I’m recording, so they know it’s a very personalized message, right?
Donald Kelly:
It’s them. Yeah.
Chris Pistorius:
Yeah, absolutely. And now, another tip, pro tip, if you will, is that with Loom, you can embed a GIF image. So basically, what I’ll do is I’ll take a whiteboard, a little mini whiteboard, and I’ll write their name on it or something, for the very beginning of the video, and I’ll hit record and I’ll put that welcome, Tom, from ABC Dental, or whatever it may be. I’ll have that on the whiteboard in front of my camera, and then I’ll be waving on the other side. And so what they see in that embed when they get the email is they’ll actually see their name on a whiteboard with me waving at them, right? So you can’t get much more personalized than that. And it’ll be their website also that they’ll see. So that really helps with open rates and engagement rates.
Donald Kelly:
What am I not asking that I should ask when it comes towards videos?
Chris Pistorius:
I think that a lot of, and I fell into this trap for a while, everything has to be perfect, right? And that’s not the case. I mean, look at my background right now, right? I got lights streaming everywhere and it looks like crap. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It needs to be done. Right? So done is better.
Donald Kelly:
One more time for the people in the back.
Chris Pistorius:
Done is better than perfect, right? Because if you sit around and just try to make your studio perfect and your sound perfect, you’ll never get it done. You’ll just keep tweaking and tweaking and spending money and not sending out one proposal or one email, right? Just do it. Get in front of a laptop with whatever you have, and just start doing it. You can tweak it as you go, but just do it. And most people get caught up in the details and try to perfect everything.
Donald Kelly:
If folks want to get in touch with you to get some more of your advice and tips, what’s the best way for them to connect with you?
Chris Pistorius:
Yeah, even if you’re not a dentist, which I’m sure most people aren’t out there, but go to my website at kickstartdental.com. There’s a free strategy session button there. And it’s made for dentists, but I don’t care what industry you’re in. I don’t care what you’re doing. I’ll give you some free advice. Just click that button. I do all of the strategy sessions. Schedule a time on my calendar, and I’ll help you out as much as I can.
Donald Kelly:
That was Chris Pistorius. And if you want to go ahead and connect with Chris, you can find information about him in the show notes. Take advantage of the strategy session and be able to learn from him, and to see how this can help you as a sales rep or as a small business owner, no matter what you do, the principles he share, it is guaranteed to be able to provide some results for you. I promise you. I promise you, it all comes down to taking chances. I’m doing this, because I want you to thrive. I want you to succeed. I want you to find more of your ideal customers. I want you to know what to say when you reach out to them. I want you to close more deals. But most importantly, I want you to go out each and every single day and do big things. Thanks so much for watching.
Every dental practice regardless of its size needs good marketing in order to thrive and remain sustainable. Our CEO, Chris Pistorius was featured to speak about this topic on the Shock Your Potential Podcast.
Welcome to season five of the shock, your potential podcast with your host, best selling author and international speaker, Michael Sherlock. The shock your potential podcast is dedicated to entrepreneurs. Looking to up their game, increase their income and scale their businesses to new Heights shock. Your potential is a professional services company providing affordable services to small businesses, matching entrepreneurs with virtual assistance and offering specialized leadership and sales training to companies around the world. Learn more today@shockyourpotential.com and listen in now to another motivating episode that will help you to shock your potential.
Thank you for joining us on another episode of shock your potential. I am your host, Michael Sherlock in all month long. We’re talking to some of my favorite people. Why? Because they’re authors and authors who have a message to share about something that will make a difference to you. I guarantee you, my guest today is Chris Astoria and he’s the founder of kickstart dental marketing. Now we’re not only gonna talk about dental because he also specializes in marketing for other professionals, including medical professionals, marketers, entrepreneurs, business owners, just like you. And from his more than 15 years of digital marketing experience, he has worked with countless business owners across multiple facets of marketing consulting coaching. And he is built his digital marketing agency into one of the top Mar marketing agencies in the country as listed on places that are pretty impressive, like up city SEO for growth design rush expertise of agency Vista.
Now he doesn’t just do all this. He also shares his expertise by giving marketing seminars across the country, and he hosts his own weekly marketing podcast, which I can’t wait to talk about. But before starting his marketing agency in 2009, Chris worked, this is where he’s got his chops from and just lean into this. He worked for online marketing giants, like AOL time, Warner decks, and MapQuest, and he holds several online marketing certifications. He’s trained also by Google on how businesses can get the most out of their marketing efforts. And he’s also the author of the book we’re gonna talk about today, the ultimate guide to internet marketing for dentists. And I can’t wait to talk. I have a real big history in, uh, in medical sales. I love it. I can’t wait to talk about this. So Chris is joining us today from beautiful Denver, Colorado. Thank you for being with us.
Yeah. I love, I, I love talking to people about marketing because I’m so terrible at it, but I guess I’m not terrible because I’ve got a podcast. We use it in certain ways, but I, I, it’s just fascinating to me how digital marketing is changing and growing and what we learn and how algorithms change and adapt is. We learn how to do things better. It’s fascinating. So I hit some of the highlights of your bio, but tell us a little bit more about you, you, your business and how it helps people to shock their marketing potential.
Yeah. Well, you said a lot there for sure. I appreciate that. Um, when you say names like America online and map quest, that really dates me. I think so. <laugh> um, but yeah, that’s, you know, I definitely learned a lot there. I learned a lot about, you know, what to do, and I learned a lot about what not to do as well, because if you think about both America online and map quest, um, in their day, they were like the Google of, you know, of mapping and, uh, as well as search engines. And when you don’t innovate and you don’t stay ahead of competition, you can see what happens. And you’d be hard pressed to find people that even young people nowadays even know what America online was. Right. And as well as map quest, you know, you know,
I, I have to admit when I, when I wanna know where something is, I actually pull open a, a, you know, browser page and type in map, map quest.com. And then I go from
No, but back in the day, man, we were on fire with that stuff. And, uh, it was pretty cool. And, you know, just a little bit of lack of innovation leadership and taking on a little bit more than you can chew is, is the lesson learned there, but yeah, that’s, that’s where I started. And, you know, I started in, you know, just, uh, back then, it was all about, you know, banner ads is basically all we had to sell to marketing or to, to companies. And so, you know, we knew everybody, you know, it was like the internet gold rush, right, where everybody knew that the internet was gonna be this next big thing, but they didn’t really know how to effectively use it marketing wise. And so companies like America online were just coming out with products and hoping that it worked and selling a bunch of it because we’re America online.
And, you know, so there was a lot of hair on fire stuff back there. Well, now marketing internet marketing is stabilized, but the problem with internet marketing now is that there’s so many choices, right? So, and, and what I’m talking about is specifically for local marketing and so creating such a complex marketing environment now with online, you know, business owners, not just dentist, everything that I talk about today, isn’t gonna be just about dentists. It’s really about local marketing in general, but, um, it’s caused complexity and it’s caused business owners not to have time to figure all this stuff out. And they kind of, you know, the, the go to method is just put your head in the sand and, you know, hope for the best. And that’s why I started this company, you know, is for, to try to untangle the web a little bit for local businesses and help them understand that, you know, there’s a way through this and there’s a way to really promote your local business using online marketing.
So yeah, I started way back with those companies and learned a lot about what to do, what not to do. And then, um, I’ve created a company I’ve owned now for 13 years, um, that helps Dennis specifically, you know, untangle the web and, you know, figure out the best way to promote their practices. But yeah, live in Denver, a little suburb Southeast of Denver. I’ve got, uh, a wife, uh, two kids, one just went to college, date myself a little more. <laugh>, uh, three golden retrievers and a, uh, little Chihuahua mixed dog. So that’s, that’s all about me. <laugh>
I get to ask this a lot and I wish I had some cool story, like a one company and a bar fighter or something, but no, it’s when, when I first started and I left AOL, you know, I started the agency and at the time my kids were really little and, um, you know, I had a pretty good job that I just left to start this. So I started at zero. And so at first we took on anybody that would pay us, basically like, yes, we’ll be your dental expert for auto body, or for a lawyer. We had, uh, what else do we had a mechanic? We had, you know, all these different types of local businesses and it was cool cuz you know, we were helping them. But what we found out after about a year was that it’s hard when you take on a new industry that you really know nothing about to effectively market for them.
Right. We had to learn the lingo. We had to learn who their customers were, how to market to those customers. And sometimes it just took too long and we were kind of felt like we were doing a disservice to some of our clients. So we’re like, you know what, let’s niche down. Let’s just be an expert in one particular niche and go from there and you know, no cool story. We just kind of looked at the clients we had and we had at the time, I think five dentists and they were doing great, getting good results. They paid their bills, which is always good. They’re pretty easy to work with. And we were like, let’s do this. Let’s just try dentistry. And that was, I guess, about 11, 12 years ago, maybe mm-hmm <affirmative> and here we are today.
I think it’s really smart because it, it tell, it does tell a story. It does tell a story of, you know, especially I’m the followers. The majority of my followers on the podcast are entrepreneurs. And I remember even when I left corporate America the last time, cuz I’m kind of a serial entrepreneur <laugh> and I wanted to do speaking and training and I knew I wanted to do it on leadership in sales and everybody kept saying, pick a lane, pick a lane, just one lane. I’m like, I don’t wanna pick a lane. I wanna pick all the lanes. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. Um, and that, and that can work, uh, depending on what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. But every time you get more specialized, if you find the right niche that will pay you, pay you on time, pay you what you’re looking for and that you can learn, um, even better. It’s really powerful. And I’m, you know, right now I didn’t intend to go down, uh, a niche, uh, in the chemical industry. But because of some, uh, other things that I’ve done now, I’m like getting more niched in that area. I don’t wanna stay just in there cause I love leadership and sales as a whole. But you know, as you find this and you find that you have successes with dental practices, um, to replicate that for others in other areas, it can be really, really powerful for your business, but incredibly powerful for your clients.
Yeah. I mean, it was a decision process for us because we were like, wait a minute, why, why would we narrow down our focus and only be able to sell to, you know, this many people when we can sell to everybody. Right. And it took a little convincing and, and we kind of stutter stepped into it, but yeah, it’s great. It, it it’s really helped us and quite frankly, our clients like it, cause they like that we’re only focused in their niche. Right? Yeah. And so when we do podcasts, it’s all around them and it’s, you know, so it, it seemed to help our business at least.
Well, and I know that we’ll first be releasing the audio version, but a few months from now we’ll release the video. And for, if anybody who’s listening to just the audio, you need to go and look at kickstart, uh, dental marketing and look at their logo because Chris, your logo is fantastic. <laugh> just checking it out behind you. It is such, yeah. I, I, I just love it. It’s like a Mo being shot off like a rocket in space. I’m assuming is what it is. That is fantastic.
I love it. It’s absolutely fantastic. So, um, you know, when thinking about, um, cuz you work with, I’m assuming dental practice is not just locally, but all over the country, but teaching them how to operate more locally. What are some of the things that you’ve learned about digital marketing to try and for businesses that really need to, uh, I, I don’t know if I, what word I want to use, but really wanna capitalize on their local marketplace.
I think the first two things that you have to do, no matter what kind of business you are is number one, identify your new customer avatar and put it on paper. So that means who is it? Who’s your ideal customer, right? I mean, you’ll take any customer typically, but ideally who is it that you wanna walk in the door? Is it a 25 to 35 year old female with two and a half kids and a golden retriever. Okay. Let’s put it on paper and that’s who we wanna market to, or is it a 45 to 65 year old that you know, is retired. Right. And it’s okay to have more than one avatar. Right. But you’ve gotta have those. You’ve gotta have ’em on paper and you’ve gotta make sure the rest of your team knows that as well. Secondly, I would definitely, it’s an old term, I think from Dan Kennedy, he talks about us P which is unique selling proposition.
What makes you different from your competition? Right? Um, in dentistry it’s a little harder, right? Because dentist is a dentist, isn’t it? Well, no, we’ve gotta find out what’s different about them, right? Like we have a, we signed on a client the other day that does, uh, at home appointments sometimes. Right. Oh wow. Well that’s a huge, unique identifier. Right? So whether you’re an auto mechanic or a lawyer, whatever, it may be, come up with what you do a little bit differently. What is it makes you different? And then when you have those two things, that’s when you can really get into, okay, what mediums or what advertising platforms are gonna work best for me, based on who I’m trying to attract and what makes me different from the rest of my competition.
Yeah. And I think about, you know, as you’re talking about that, I was thinking about the first time I realized, um, a, a dental practice in my hometown was, um, advertising sedation, um, dentistry. Right. And I was like, why would you wanna be sedated to go to the dentist? And, and I was having this conversation with my oldest brother and he said, I have to make them give me gas when I’m, you know, that was back in the days of gas instead, whatever. Yeah. I think you can still get it laughing gas or whatever. He goes, because I get so nervous that it’s gonna hurt that. I need to have that sedation. And I went, holy, I never even would’ve thought of it, but it’s brilliant. And that practice did really, really well because they had a unique niche and a, and a unique avatar. Right. Which was that person who no matter what age they were, were terrified of the dentist, but knew that they needed to go.
Mm-hmm <affirmative> well, and things like too, it just because you do, um, crowns or, or, um, implants doesn’t mean that there’s only, you know, one kind of person who needs that, but you have to also know who’s, who’s the person that’s not just the 80 year old, that’s getting that done. That’s, you know, the person like me who had an abscess tooth in my forties and you know, needed to find the specialty place with that. So it’s, it’s, uh, it is important for any business to narrow down their avatar, but in dental, I can see how that’s really, uh, productive.
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Go to shock your media potential.com. And we are back with Chris. Pastorious from kickstart dental marketing. Now I also know you’ve written a book and we, uh, highlighted it a little into the intro. And I want you to talk about your book, but I also would love to know what made you want to write the book because I’m always very motivated and interested and excited about what makes people actually sit down and put pen to paper or typing on the computer and bring things out in book form. What, what inspired you? What, what made you finally say, okay, it’s time to write a book and then tell us about it.
Well, quite frankly, selfishly, I felt that if I wrote a book about this, that it would help make me a market expert about it. And you gotta think about, you know, we’ve already niche down, right? We’re already trying to be, um, experts in dental field for marketing. I, I felt that if I had a book that I could say, look, I wrote the book on Dell marketing that can help. Right. And you know, marketing’s a lot about trust and it’s a lot about getting people to know you like you and trust you. Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I think when you have a book and you have a specific niche that, you know, you are more trustworthy, cuz you’re all in, you’re dedicated to their niche. And so that’s really the reason I did it, but what’s funny is once I got into it, um, I was like, wow, I think that, you know, this is something that can, and what the book is all about is like, look, if you’re not ready to hire a marketing agency, right.
Cause sometimes we’re not cheap, you know? Right. You’re not quite there yet. And there’s a lot of businesses out there, there in that situation, this book will get you on the path to help increase your revenues. If you just do the things in the book, you know, if you have the time, you’ve gotta dedicate time to it. But if you have the time, you can, there’s some things that you can do very low cost that will help you, um, in this case, um, you know, market your practice. And so that’s what the book’s all about. But once I got to writing it, I was like, wow, this is, you know, I think this is going to help. A lot of people that, you know, are maybe struggling and you know, just need a little push in the right direction because as you well know, Michael, I mean most small businesses fail even dental practices in the United States.
And the number one reason why that is, is because they’re typically good at something, right. They’re good at baking cake or they’re good at, you know, they’re a good auto mechanic, but they don’t know how to run a business. And they certainly don’t know how to market a business. So even though you’re a great technician at something doesn’t mean you’re gonna have a successful business if you don’t know the other things. And so where I think this book will help fill the gap is that it’ll help people, that aren’t worried to spend money in marketing, but they need to promote their business. It’ll help them kind of fill that gap. So that was my motivation behind it kind of selfish in the beginning. But then I got to writing in, I was like, wow, this is really gonna help people. So, um, that’s, that’s really my motivation behind it.
And it’s, uh, I find that with a lot of people, especially that our experts in an area as they write the book, I don’t know if this was the case for you. It also helps them to even understand their business a little bit better. So, you know, while you’re making other people’s businesses better by giving them access to the book, did you have any aha moments in the writing process where you’re like, oh, well that’s a different way to say that. Or that’s a more, uh, streamlined way to explain that to clients, to get them, uh, you know, interested in what they can do
Without doubt, without a doubt because, um, I’m, I oversimplify things sometimes and I’m like, oh, I’ll write a book, no big deal. I’ll do it over a weekend. No, that’s not. Um, so just anybody that’s thinking of doing that, it’s, it’s harder than it seems, especially when you’re not so smart like me, but it, when you write a book, you have to do a lot of research is what I found. And so you look, you look, what other people do you get inspiration from things. And in that process, I learned a ton, right? <laugh> I thought I knew a lot about marketing and a lot about how to talk to people and you know, just tips and tricks. And once I really started researching, I was like, wow, I didn’t even think of that approach. Or I didn’t really think of a way to, you know, tackle that problem this way. Right? So in the whole experience of writing the book, absolutely the research phase of it was a lot of, uh, I’ve learned a lot of new things.
So I’ve worked a lot in the medical field for a lot of my career and I’ve worked with a lot of medical, dental practices, cosmetic dentistry, those types of things, where when I was doing consulting work, I was helping them to increase their revenue sources. So find different profit centers within their practices. And to your point that you made, you know, a lot of times when there’s people that are specialists in something, they’re a mechanic, they’re a dentist, whatever that that’s where their specialty is, marketing and sales and those elements don’t NA don’t always come very naturally. So when somebody is thinking ma like, let’s say a dentist is listening to this podcast right now, and they’re thinking, you know, I’ve been thinking about something like this for a while. You know, we put the shingle up and we did all right, we’ve got some good referral sources into us. Um, but it’s really time to, you know, invest in something like this and really try and strengthen our local presence through digital marketing. What kind of questions do they throw at you in the beginning? What kind of, what kind of fears or concerns do they share with you? You know, when they’re like, well, I think maybe, but I’m not really sure what’s that beginning of the relationship, like
Yeah. You know, it’s funny because we talked to dentists about kind of that same thing and we tell ’em that a lot of times, the reason people, people don’t go to the dentist is because of time, fear and or money. Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and it’s kind of the same questions that we get when I practice engages us. They’re yeah. They’re afraid of the time commitment. They’re definitely just afraid in general. Cause it’s something new and then of course there’s the money aspect of it. Right? So we get a lot of questions around those three topic, you know, it’s, we also get a lot of clients from, um, they’re already engaged with another agency and for whatever reason, the relationship just isn’t working out. And so they come to us and when that happens, it’s, they’re already a little bit on point because they feel like they didn’t have a great experience the first time.
And it’s kind of like, alright, what are you gonna do differently? So, you know, we have to really take our time to make sure that we answer questions like that. But usually it’s the time fear and money thing. And we’re like, all right, what do you do? How do you do it? I get a lot of look. I just wanna be a dentist. Can you just go find new patients for me? Right. Because dental school I’ve found is a really good job of, of creating awesome dentists, but they actually, they don’t go into business much at all in terms of how to run a business or their own dental practice. And it’s almost scary. So they really want that help of, of marketing and, you know, fill me up. I want to go fill teeth and new group canals and all this stuff, but I don’t necessarily know how to, how to bring in the new patients. There’s a lot of questions around that as well.
Yeah. And that’s, uh, the same with me, medical providers of all clients who lawyers as well, you know that yeah. You know, here’s all the things you need to do to be excellent at your job to serve your clients or your customers or your patients, but not, here’s how you make us build a successful business. And it, you know, with all the physicians that I’ve worked with in, throughout my career, it’s really amazing how many of them, um, have no idea what they’re losing, just because they’re focused so much on their area of expertise and not investing in either the people, the resources or the tools or all three of those that are gonna really build them. And you know, you are saying it’s important when you’re, um, creating your avatar that not only are you writing it down and you’re understanding that, but that your entire team understands that avatar because the way they interact with your patients is good, bad, and ugly for what it does for your business. And if you don’t know how to motivate your team through that, sometimes they, you can have the best marketing and they’re turning people off. Also if they, if they aren’t really sure what, what they’re doing with them, when they walk through the door or when they call to, to say, Hey, I’m interested in, you know, maybe moving over to your practice, that team, all those pieces have to work together.
Yeah. I tell Dennis all the time and it’s kind of like my shock and awes that you’re not you, the dentist position is not the most important position in the office. <laugh> right. Because it’s the front desk person, because you can spend a hundred thousand dollars a month in marketing. And none of it matters unless you have a really rock solid front desk person, because they’re the ones answering the phones. They’re the ones responding to emails. They’re the ones responding to text messages. So if though, if we don’t have a solid rockstar performance there, you’re not gonna have a practice nobody’s gonna be there. So you’re absolutely right. And in local business, if you’re the auto mechanic whoever’s answering that phone. Yeah. And when you get in those type of services, what we found back in the day was that a lot of phone calls didn’t even get answered because okay. You know, they didn’t have anybody there or, you know, whatever. So those are kind of the basics for sure. But yeah, you’re absolutely right.
That’s true. And then they might <laugh> I love it. Well, Chris, we’re gonna have all of your contact information on our show notes, including the links to your book, but just in case somebody wants to look you up right now, before they look at the show notes, what’s the best way for them to find you.
Yeah, just the website, uh, kickstart dental.com. Um, and I always offer this, even if you’re not a dentist and you have some questions for me, or if you want some help, I can help you. And just go to my website, there’s a, uh, free strategy session button there. Just fill out the form. I do all the strategy sessions myself. Won’t charge you a dime if you just have some questions and be more than happy to help out anybody.
Wow. There’s so much knowledge and advice in this brain of mind right now. <laugh>, you know, I think it’s, I think that people, that view podcasts like yours and people that view podcasts like mine, they always have good intentions of wanting to make their business stronger. Right. Oh yeah. But what I’ve found is that of the people that do that, there’s a pretty small percentage that actually take action on things. Mm-hmm <affirmative> right. There’s a lot of people that want the information, they get excited about it and then don’t really do anything with it, right. For a multitude of reasons. So I think my best advice is take action, do something, you know, find your passion, find something that you’re excited about and go do it. Whether it’s a new marketing idea that I might have given you go implement it’s okay. To fail, just fail fast and learn from it and move on. But take action. I think is probably what I would say.
I agree. I love that is so true because you’re right. People will listen. Go. That was great. That was awesome. Oh, I’ll get back to that later. And then it’s just
Me too. I’m not gonna admit to that at all. Oh, I just did <laugh> oh, well <laugh> Chris. Thank you so much. You have been a fabulous guest. It’s been so good having you with us today.
Thank you for joining us. On another episode of the shock, your potential podcast. Learn more about us today@shockyourpotential.com, including details on Michael’s two best selling books. Tell me more how to ask the right questions and get the most out of your employees and sales mixology. Why the most potent sales and customer experiences follow our recipe for success. And as always, don’t forget to subscribe. Great. And like today.
Finding creative ways to get people’s attention online is a challenging yet necessary goal for a dental office owner. However, advertising on Facebook makes it easier to learn who your target customer groups are online. Facebook can also improve your conversion rate by turning ad viewers into paying patients.
There were about 2.85 billion active monthly Facebook users as of the first quarter of 2021. With so many users online, small businesses have plenty of opportunities to promote brand awareness through this social media platform.
Understanding how to leverage Facebook ads and the various ad formats will help you put your business in front of those who are more inclined to purchase your products and services. Consult the brief guide below to create business Facebook ads and boost your advertising efforts.
Why Dental Practice Owners Need Facebook Advertising
Facebook ads can be an incredible addition to any promotional strategy if you understand how to use them. They provide business owners with the ability to target people based on interests and keywords. Instead of broadcasting ads to everyone, the target advertisements will go to a specific audience.
Another reason why Facebook ads work for dentists is their low cost. Some paid advertisements can be costly, but Facebook keeps its rates relatively low. As a result, business owners can experiment with targeted ads to discover what works and what doesn’t without incurring high expenses.
How To Create a Facebook Lead Advertisement
The best Facebook ads are lead ads. Not only do they encourage potential patients to take some form of action, such as scheduling an appointment, but the ads also request information from people about themselves.
With the information patients provide, your company will have valuable insights about the type of people who are part of your targeted audience and most likely to convert into dental leads. Learn how to make a Facebook lead ad below.
1: Create a Facebook Business Page
The first step is to create an attractive Facebook business page for your dental office. After filling the page with relevant information about your business, select the “Promote” button at the top of the page.
The next screen will have options for possible goals, such as boosting a post or getting more calls. Select “Get More Leads.”
2: Make a Contact Form
By selecting “Get More Leads,” your next screen will be a contact form. Facebook automatically generates forms with fields for “form name,” but you can customize the text to add a headline and form description.
The customized text provides an excellent opportunity for businesses to remind users of the benefits they gain by completing the form.
After you complete those fields, you can select the type of customer information you want to collect, like their phone number, email address, and additional contact information. You can also add questions for potential patients to answer or ask if they have an idea they would like to share.
3: Format the Promotion
Once the forms are to your liking, you will need to format the lead ad’s appearance to determine how it will look on people’s news feed. During this stage, you’ll add a promotion description, headline, and image or video. You can also choose a call-to-action by clicking on the “Button label” and picking an option from the drop-down menu.
Choose your words and images carefully for this step. You only have seconds to wow people with your ad and get them to click on it. You want to persuade the audience to engage with your business, so be sure to offer a special discount or coupon for providing their information.
4: Determine Your Ad’s Target Audience
When the lead promotion is perfect, you can tell Facebook who you want it to target. The platform will have existing audiences, but you can create new groups if you like.
5: Select Final Touches
When everything is in place, you will select your budget and determine how many days you want the promotion to run. The site will spread your total budget amount across the course of the promotion.
Tips for Improving Facebook Marketing Efforts
Develop a Content Strategy
Developing lead promotions on Facebook for your dental practice is relatively simple, but their success relies on the quality of your content. Content marketing is a way to use quality content to drive conversion rates online. Most small business owners are not proficient in creating top-tier content, but no one must be an expert to implement a basic marketing strategy.
Examples of content include a blog post, social media post, video, report, podcast, etc. They provide valuable information about a topic and contain details about the brand via FAQ pages, webinars, About Us pages, and testimonials.
When a person reads or views a post and learns about the brand, they will see a call-to-action message. The better the content, the more inclined they are to contact the business or make a purchase.
One effective way to maximize content marketing is to create multiple Facebook campaigns with varying goals and audiences. Having a content calendar with specific days to promote specific ads will ensure that your Facebook page has a steady flow of ads and content.
Learn Who the Appropriate Audience Is
If a post or promotion receives a respectable amount of likes and comments but struggles with conversions, the lead ad probably doesn’t target the right audience. In the end, it’s ad revenue that indicates a successful conversion.
Consider further testing for your Facebook ad copy and its visuals to ensure that it speaks directly to the groups you want to reach. For instance, your promotion may focus more on a specific income that excludes people who would purchase your services. Gain inspiration for your targeted advertisements by gaining insight from your ideal customer’s demographics, interests, relationships, past events, and behaviors.
Use Facebook Marketing to Improve Your Leads
A Facebook promotion is an excellent business tool to increase conversions from your business’s social media page. Despite the ease with which users can create and post advertisements, it takes time to master the best practices for Facebook ads.
Our team are experts in helping dentists gain online visibility and increase patient conversations. We are happy to help you achieve your business goals, so please reach out to our team today using our contact us page.
Chris Pistorius, author of“The UItimate Guide To Internet Marketing For Dentists”talks about the impact of online reviews on dental practices. He also discusses the best way to get reviews, how to handle negative reviews, where you should put those reviews, and some tips on using reviews as social media boosters.
View Full Transcript
Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of the dental marketing podcast. I’m your host Chris Pistorius. And today we are going to talk a little bit about online reviews and how they factor into dentistry and are they important, do they matter? Does anybody actually pay attention to those? And how do we know? It’s a question that we get here at kickstart dental marketing a lot from clients or potential new clients about their reviews and what’s the best way to get good reviews or do they matter at all?
So I thought I would address that here in the next few minutes and maybe answer some of those questions for some of you out there that are enquiring. So Here’s the thing with online reviews. You know we’ve been, our agency has been around serving the dental community for over 12 years now. And so we know a little bit about reviews in terms of how they are actually working with dental practices. And every study that I’ve seen shows that as many as 90% of potential new patients actually look at online reviews before they decide if they’re actually going to pick up the phone and call or fill out a form on your website or click the text chat button or even schedule an online appointment right then.
So I sometimes refer to online reviews as the silent killer because you don’t know how many people are actually looking at the reviews and then deciding to maybe not call you because of that right? There’s a lot of things in digital marketing that we can track. That particular aspect of digital marketing is almost impossible to track. So, you know, I think it’s important to really build a good online reputation, you know, by getting feedback from your patients. I think it’s essential not just in dentistry, but in today’s business culture.
So how do you get, you know, customers or patients, I should say to leave feedback and even more important, how do you, how do you get them to leave a positive review for you? You know, the coveted five-star review, if you will, so now you might be tempted to buy into the thought that good patient reviews and reputation management, we call it in the business are kind of out of your control. It is what it is, just let it happen organically. Right, well, not so much.
I’ve never been a fan of what I call ostrich marketing, which is kind of putting your head in the sand and just hoping that good things will happen. Right. I think we’re past that now and that strategy definitely does not work. And I think that holds true for online reviews as well. I mean, when your practice actually utilizes a structured review system, a way to send out reviews on a consistent basis, there’s no doubt that you can drive more new patients and potential new patients to the website itself and to ultimately schedule an appointment now as a practice owner, you know, where do you begin with encouraging those high-quality reviews.
How do you motivate the patient to leave a google review or a Yelp review or on HealthGrades, How do you even get them to do a video review for you? Would that be cool? So that’s what I want to talk about here is how do we do that and you know, what’s the best way to do it? And I’ll tell you how we do it as well and you know, what works well for us. Somebody is in the industry, I will tell you though, before we get into that, I know that there’s a ton of platforms out there that, you know, they do reputation marketing or they do reputation management, you know, Den tricks has it built into their system, there’s, you know, tons of evil soft, you know, everybody has the ability to do to try to get reviews from your patients.
But what I found and what we found here at kickstart is that it’s not the technology or the platform of actually sending out requests for reviews, it’s what you say, it’s the content, it’s how you, how you theme it, it’s how it’s when you send it, what’s the best time to actually send for that review and also what can we do in the office and not just rely on technology to drive those reviews. So, when I talk about online, our views here, I’m not really talking about technology, there are tons of different ways to do that.
We haven’t technology that does that as well. It’s more about the content, the personalized touch of getting those reviews. So let’s get let’s get to it. So what our reviews, what is feedback, how does it help you as a dental practice owner? Well, patient feedback as we talked about in my opinion is the lifeblood of the dental practice. I mean to start what you need to know is is that there’s dental reviews online, whether you have anything to do with about have anything to do with it or not.
And they’re largely determined by the patient’s overall experience with your practice, right? So the more knowledgeable and thorough that your staff is in delivering great service and a great experience for that patient means the greater likelihood patients are gonna feel compelled to rate that dentist. Now. Unfortunately what we see is that you know, a lot of reviews come from P. 22 things. One there even there just over the moon happy from what you did what you’ve done for them. But secondly, they’re really pissed off and they’re more compelled to leave a review when they’re pissed off than when they’re happy and that sucks as a business owner.
I’m a business owner too I get it. So it’s the patients who have a positive experience with your practice are the ones more compelled to offer good feedback. The thing is that when you can get them to leave you a good review, they automatically turn into kind of a practice advocate for you because they feel loyalty because hey, I put my brand on this practice now, I’m going to defend it right. That makes them more likely to refer friends or family members.
So when you have patients actually leaving you a positive review, you’ve turned them into almost a patient ambassador and they’re more likely to actually refer you out. So there are some, definitely some byproducts of going out and getting good reviews. But on the other side of that reviews are also a great opportunity to help correct mistakes and, and further, kind of refine your services and how you do things because think about it, you know, reviews. If you get a negative review and everybody does right, it’s going to happen.
You shouldn’t get defensive about that right off the bat anyway. You need to learn more about it, see what happened. First of all make sure it’s the right person because we see a lot of people here at kickstart that might leave a bad review for one of our clients, but it actually wasn’t our client, you know, that is similar name to somebody else. So first of all, make sure it was your patient okay. And if, if it’s not your patient, you know, do everything you can, to, to reach out to them and say, hey, I think you have the wrong, the wrong practice.
Could you take a look and you know, if not please call us and we want to, we want to try to work that out. But um, you know, so it’s, if it is a legit review and it is a negative review then learn from it, see what, see what the problem is offered to reach out. You know, give a phone number right in the review because think about when you respond to reviews like that, you’re not just responding to the person that left a negative review.
Your also responding to the people who potentially see those responses, right? So if they see a negative review, They’re automatically gonna be attracted to see what that was all about the -1 and how you responded. So respond to it say, hey, we’re gonna do everything that we can to try to try to earn your business back. We apologize for any mistakes. Please call me directly at this number. Um and let’s talk about it and try to make it good for you. And sometimes when you do that and they actually do communicate back with you, you can actually get them to review or remove that review.
So that’s what feed, that’s what the review systems are all about. That’s some ways that you could potentially respond any negative reviews. So there’s tons of websites out there that allow you to allow people to leave reviews about your practice. But I will tell you today that the top two that I would worry about would be google and facebook now google is increasing and increasing and increasing engagement with the reviews that I believe is the number one platform because people already using their platform, they’re already going to google first to do a search for Dennis near me um cosmetic dentist, dear me best dentist in whatever city.
Right, So that’s where they’re going to automatically see your first reviews. Okay, number one platform, number two is facebook and unfortunately facebook I think made a mistake a year or so ago when they changed how they did reviews, they change their star ratings. So now it’s like recommended versus a certain amount of stars, right? But people are still paying attention to facebook and guess what facebook’s about, the second best biggest used platform on the internet behind google. Right. And then there’s yelp. Okay, that’s where I would probably put number three, let me go on record as saying, I do not like yelp.
And I know there’s a lot of people probably agreeing me with this, I don’t like their business practices. I don’t like their advertising campaigns and how they set those up. Um we’ve tested multiple paid advertising accounts on yelp and we had very few that had gave any type of return on investment. Okay there review system is very strict. You could have 20 patients go and leave you a good honest review on yelp and maybe two or three or five of them would stick stick meaning they didn’t get filtered out.
They have such an aggressive algorithm to try to remove um fake reviews that it’s it’s turned up too high and even the good reviews get filtered out and they don’t ever show up. So you you do all this work to get people to review you and your patients do all the work to actually leave the review and then they might go back and it’s not the reviews are not even there. Right so to me yeah yelp people do look at it but in my in my opinion they look more at yelp for restaurants and entertainment than they do for actual dental practices.
So if it were my practice I would focus on google and facebook and then if you want to go to like a HealthGrades, you know that could be a good third option as well. The mistake that I think you can make with reviews is giving them too many options. So if you send them a review request you say, hey leave us a review google yahoo yelp. HealthGrades dog HealthGrades dog pile dot com. You know you give them like 10 different choices and that just causes confusion and they’re not gonna they’re not gonna engage because I’ll do it later. Right?
Whereas if you give them one or two options. I’ve already got a google account or yeah, I’ve already got a facebook account. So it’ll be really easy. Right? So those are the top top review review sites that I think that I would recommend using. So all right, we figured out where to we want to get those reviews now. How do we encourage positive reviews? So, I mean the average dental patient is pretty darn busy, right? You know, the old saying is with dentistry is people typically don’t like to go to the dentist because of time fear or money, Right?
Or maybe all three of those things. But you know, time is certainly a big part of it. So they’re limited with time. So not only do they not even want to go to the dentist, but they don’t like how long it takes to go to the dentist and now you’re asking them to take another what, 10 minutes or something to leave a review about the dentist. Right? So most patients who had a good experience are are happy at the thought of leaving a review. Um But not all of them will do it just from an email or a text message that’s sent to them sometimes not even it doesn’t even matter how good they’re written.
So the first piece of advice that I want to give you in terms of getting more positive reviews is first of all ask, you know, this should not be you should not wait for technology to ask for you, right? Um I know dentists as a as a kind of a stereotype or a little bit more introverts. You know, not everyone certainly. But you know, and asking a patient for a review might seem like you’re I’m crazy for asking you to do that. But it goes a long way because you as a dentist has have a personal relationship with that with that patient.
They are looking up to you in terms of their health. Um just you being a doctor. Um they really hinge on almost every word that you say. So a lot of our clients, we have actually talked to them before they leave the bay and they’ll say, look, you know, once you’re done, you’ll probably get an email or a text from us asking you about your experience here today. If you don’t mind, it would mean a lot for me if you would give us some good feedback. That’s it, that’s it.
You’ve set it up now. They’re expecting that that that email or text message and somebody of authority has asked them to help them out, help you out. And that is going to go a long way to get more reviews. Okay? So if you feel like you can do that and you don’t have to do it for every patient. But you know, just just try it out and I promise you that that that will work a lot. So another way to cultivate good reviews is to find recurring keywords of online customer reviews or patient reviews about the practice and incorporate those into the content of your website.
Um It’s kind of high level, it’s something that we do here so that when a when a patient is searching for a dental practice in your market, your practice is actually more likely to show up on google. So um it’s just a way to potentially potentially drive some more of that activity. So you some feedback as well. I mean you used the feedback that you get from online reviews to improve the practice. Um it’s a proven way to create better brand, you know and if you want to tell me that dentists don’t shouldn’t be doing brand marketing than you know you’re crazy because they should be more than anybody more than coca cola should or Pepsi or any of the huge brands because a local brand, if you can actually brand a local brand, it’s way more powerful because people resignation with local much more than they do national brands.
So uses feedback to resolve issues and identify what patients love so that you can fix what is wrong and deliver more of what they love. I mean think about it as a dental practice, you’re not selling dental products and services you’re selling solutions to problems, right? So somebody’s in pain, Somebody wants their smile to look prettier, you know that’s what you’re in business for. So also engagement, you know, engage with your patients about their experiences by responding to the to the reviews. Okay. So I see a lot of time, we talked a little bit about, you know, not responding to responding to negative reviews and how to do that, but you should be responding also to positive reviews. Okay.
I mean, it helps that a couple of different things, people are going to see that you’re taking the time to respond. It just takes a few seconds per seconds per a few seconds per review. So it’s not like it’s a big time suck and you could have somebody in the front desk easily do it now. Don’t use the same thanks bob for the great review every time, mix it up a little bit, you know, make sure it’s unique. Um you know, thank them for the business. Um, you know, just engage with them in any way.
It just shows to them it’s worth their time to leave you that that review. And then it also shows people that don’t know you yet, but they’re looking at your reviews that you are actually engaged and you appreciate what they’ve done now, I’ll tell you also that you should highlight positive reviews on your website, everybody does it right. I do it myself. Um, but just know that when you put positive reviews on your website, they are never going to be as trusted as much as actual text reviews on independent websites Because what fool would put negative reviews on their own website. Right.
It kind of makes sense. So you know you can feature some reviews on your homepage. I like to put pictures next to the reviews that just spruces them up a little bit. So if you’ve got some graphic design experience or somebody in the office that can do things like that then you certainly should try. Um I like to pretty those reviews up, put an image next to it and some creative tax and use those as social media posts as well. Those seem to go a long way and there’s tools like canvas C. A. N. V. A. That you can use um to spruce up.
So open those reviews. Um You can also send people directly to customer surveys. That’s a possibility instead of a review. We’ve tested that and yeah you get the surveys back and that’s cool. But then what do you do with the survey? It’s not like other people can see those. Right. So we typically stay away from the customer surveys and we do more of the um send them directly to the review site so that they can leave that review directly online. Okay so we talked a little bit about negative reviews.
I want to kind of cover that a little bit as well because um this just came up with a potential new client of ours. They really had um it was a worker actually that they had to let go and they went on several different review sites and just bashed him and put negative stuff all over the place. So um you know, the point here is no matter what or no how no matter how great your practices somehow somewhere there’s probably going to be some negative feedback coming around as well.
That’s not the end of the world. I mean if you look us up kick start doing marketing, you’re gonna find a bad review on google. And that’s from that same exact experience we were hiring for I believe as a web developer or something. And um when we decided to hire somebody and the person that was in the running didn’t get the job and took it out on us by actually putting a negative review on google for us. So you know, it’s just gonna happen. So you know, I would like I talked about it, I think that I would engage um positively to negative reviews if that makes sense.
I mean the first thing start, you start by responding right away. It shows the person you’re paying attention um any response is better than no response. Um a fast response is best, right, apologize for. Well, first of all make sure it’s actually your patient if you can write if you think that they’ve gotten your name wrong and they’re looking for another practice and you know, certainly respond that way. Um apologize for the experience if it is a real real review, even though you may not be apologetic in the in the situation, you’re validating their feelings, you’re making them feel hurt, right?
And the people that are looking at these reviews are seeing that as well, like I said, offer a resolution, tell them how you can correct the situation, Whether it’s to have them come in for free or whatever it may be, do whatever you can to resolve that. Because number one you could get them back in resolve the relationship. You don’t lose a patient and you can also probably get them to take that bad review down, right? Ask them to give you another chance. I know it sounds desperate and not everybody will be comfortable without, but it shows that you care about their experience and ultimately every patient experience that happens in your practice.
Um and lastly use that negative feedback to correct. And I mean, look for, you know, if you get two or three bad reviews over a year, is that the consistently the same thing is at the front desk, is it they were hung up on is that they were put on hold too long. You know, if there’s something consistent there, then we need to probably change something in the practice business wise. Right? So anyway, I’m gonna I’m gonna stop here. I mean, I could go on this for probably an hour or so, but um you know, I think it’s just to answer the question I originally gave up online reviews for dental practices.
Absolutely do matter. I’ve got studies to show it. I’ve got actual real marketing results to show it. You do need to pay attention to it. You do need to make it a priority in your practice. Um Remember it’s not the technology it’s not den trick sending them out for you. It’s not you know demand for sending them out for you whatever it may be. It’s how you put those together and what you say and how you ask and when you send them is the real connection here and that’s how you’ll drive more good reviews.
Um So anyway of course my company kickstart dental marketing shameless plug. We one of our specialties is this and helping with um online reviews. Getting more of them putting systems in place and writing the content just the way I just talked about so if you do need some help with that, feel free to reach out. Best ways just go to the website kickstart dental dot com and click on the free strategy session button. I do all of those myself. So you could talk you’d be talking with me directly and we can talk about how you do reviews now or any other marketing and maybe put you on track to make everything better.
So anyway thanks so much for tuning in for another episode and hopefully you’ve got a lot out of it and um we’ll be back next week with another great topic so yeah.
Did you know that over 90% of people check online reviews before they buy anything? Cultivating an online reputation by posting, which is essential to success in today’s business culture, seems like a tricky thing. How do you get customers to leave feedback? Even more important, how do you get them to leave a positive review? How do you get a coveted five-star review?
You might be tempted to buy into the thought that good customer reviews and reputation management are out of your control. Not so! When your business utilizes a structured review system, you can drive more new patients and potential customers to your website.
As a business owner, where do you begin with encouraging high-quality reviews? How do you motivate the average customer to leave a google review or better, a personal recommendation? See below to learn how personal recommendations and positive feedback impact your online presence and how feedback will lead to more engagement and ultimately more sales.
What Is Feedback and How Does It Help?
Customer feedback is the lifeblood of your dental practice. To start, what you need to know here is that dental reviews online are largely determined by a customer’s overall experience. The more knowledgeable and thorough the dental practice’s staff is in delivering service, the greater the likelihood customers will feel compelled to rate that dentist online.
Customers who have a positive experience with your dental practice will be more compelled to offer feedback and five-star reviews. They will feel more loyalty towards your dental practice and are more likely to refer friends or family members. Reviews also give you an opportunity to correct mistakes and further refine your dental service strategy.
What are the top review sites for dental practices?
The top dental review sites are of course Google and Yelp. These dental reviews include how satisfied patients were with your dental service, how much waiting time there was, the cleanliness of the office, etc. You should also consider Facebook for reviews as well.
Google: Google reviews happen on the Google My Business platform. Once you set up your Google My Business, customers can leave reviews and read other reviews. When a potential customer does a local search for your business type, you will show up in the Google Map results. Showing up in the coveted map pack ensures your website will get more clicks than your competitors. Google is undoubtedly the most important review platform for dental offices.
Facebook: Facebook is the social site that appeals to the broadest range of ages. The first way to encourage Facebook reviews is to make sure your business is easy to find on Facebook. When customers have to hunt and search for your business, they are more likely to quit than persevere.
Yelp: With the click of a button, a customer can relate an experience on just about anything with Yelp. These reviews give customers more confidence in their purchases and reduce some of the doubt. Statistics show that positive Yelp reviews result in a 15-20% increase in the likelihood that a new customer will engage with a business. Thus, favorable business reviews on Yelp are essential to driving small business growth. Displaying the Yelp badge lets customers know that you have a presence there.
Interacting in a high-quality way with your customers drives more positive responses from satisfied customers. Positive local business reviews bring more business your way.
Ways to Encourage Positive Reviews
The average dental patient is a busy professional with limited time so they will likely not choose to spend additional hours writing reviews for your dental practice. That said, most customers who have had a good experience are more than happy to offer up their feedback online. Here are some tips that can help encourage good reviews.
Ask: Boosting positive company reviews may seem complex, but it is really as simple as asking for them. You can do this with review requests through email, an online review site, or a marketing company. The point is to encourage more reviews without artificially inflated reviews.
Keywords: Another way to cultivate favorable reviews is to find the recurring keywords of online customer reviews about your business and incorporate those into your content creation, product descriptions, and brand wording. When a customer is searching for your services, your dental office is more likely to show up.
Use feedback: Using feedback from online reviews to improve your business is a proven way to create a better brand. Use feedback to resolve issues and identify what customers love so that you can fix what is wrong and deliver more of what they love. Consumers trust online reviews, so use the feedback to position your business for positive customer reviews.
Engage: Engaging with your customers about their experiences by replying to their ratings of your business makes them feel heard. When customers leave positive online reviews, thank them for their business, solicit valuable feedback on what could be better, highlight a change that happens because of their feedback – any interaction shows them that you care. Never overlook when customers leave positive reviews.
Highlight: Highlight positive reviews and patient feedback right on your website. Many dental practices have started featuring reviews on their homepage, and they are proven to boost customer confidence and influence conversion rates. There are many tools to help you display reviews on your site too.
Online review sites: You might feel hesitant to use online review sites, but they are a boon to local businesses. Review websites will manage your digital reputation by ensuring that you don’t have too few reviews. They will also solicit further reviews. Using a review site is especially helpful for new businesses.
Customer surveys: The use of a survey gives you an accurate, statistical measurement of customer experiences.
How Do You Handle Negative Reviews?
In the process of soliciting feedback, you will inevitably get poor reviews. A single negative review can diminish over twenty positive responses, so you can’t just ignore them. Here is what to do with those less than stellar evaluations.
Engage in a positive way with the reviewer.
Start by responding right away since this shows the person that you are paying attention. While any response is better than no response, a fast response is best.
Apologize for the experience. You are validating their feelings and making them feel heard.
Offer a resolution. Tell them how you will correct the situation, whether it is to replace a good or offer a free service, offer some sort of redress for what is lacking.
Ask them to give you another chance. This effort shows that you care about their experience and, ultimately, every customer experience.
Use the feedback to correct. Using feedback to correct an issue is a good policy, especially when you see a trend.
Recognize that you can’t stop negative reviews, but you can minimize them by using the information to improve your business process. Remember that an online review is a connection to your customer that you need in this digital world.
An online review weighs heavily on how people perceive your business. They are the way you will earn new customers and keep those loyal customers. You are losing valuable business when you don’t have a plan to boost your digital presence and then execute the plan.
Prioritizing feedback and online business reviews is a proven way to drive customers to your website, where those visits can convert to purchases. There are strong connections for business reviews and search engine results, so what are you waiting for? Start working on incorporating online feedback today!
Chris talks with Dr. Howard Farran, the founder of the incredibly popular online dental community,Dentaltown. Chris & Howard have an open and honest conversation about all things dental.
Hi, everybody. This is Chris Pistorius here again with the Dental Marketing podcast. Today we’ve got a super special guest. I’m a little star struck because I’ve been listening to and reading his stuff for years. I’m so glad to have him on the show today. This is Dr. Howard Farran. He does a lot of stuff and we’ll get into that in a second, but he’s actually the creator, founder, owner of Dentaltown, which I know a lot of you use as a major resource to help run your dental practices. So Howard, thanks so much for taking the time to be on today.
Awesome. Well, thank you. I’m going to get right to it. As you know, you’ve got tons of experience. You’ve forgotten more things about dentistry than I’ll ever know. So what I’m after here and to pick your brain is how to help my clients, how to help potential clients, how to help dentistry in general, which I know that you’re a big part of as well. But why don’t you tell me a little bit about how you created Dentaltown first and how that idea started, and just a little background there.
Oh man, you got to go back to… I got out of school in ’87 and then it was about 1994, I saw Amazon go public and I couldn’t figure out what all the hoopla was, but I kept an eye on it. Didn’t buy a share of it, and I just kept watching, watching, watching through ’94, ’95, ’96, ’97. And then about ’98, I finally realized, “Oh my God, this really is going to be huge.” I never had an original idea. My next door neighbor was a dentist. I went to work with Kenny Anderson and my dad, and my dad owned a Sonic Drive-in making cheeseburgers, and Kenny was a dentist. And I thought the x-ray machine was a helluva lot cooler than a grill.
But I was on the ESPN website and they started this message board thing. And we were talking about football and I’m like, “Gosh, darn, I wish I could be doing this with dentists and talking about root canals and fillings and marketing.” So I hired Ken Scott and then we started Dentaltown and we’ll be the first who would beat Facebook by five years. And that first mover advantage, the [inaudible 00:02:26] versus Harvard, only because it’s first. Coke was launched 11 years and for Pepsi, they’re still number one. And that first mover advantage, it’s kind of like a hall of fame website.
Then we also have Orthotown too. The orthodontist were the only specialists who wanted their own site. All of the other specialists and all of the orthodontists are on Dentaltown, but they just wanted a private community of just orthodontists. But it’s really been cool to watch social media. We had a first generation, the first 20 years and the first is always the worst and everybody’s learning how that’s going on and everything, but it did change the world.
Facebook, which owns Instagram and then Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube, they sucked out about 80% of all the advertising dollars in America and that killed billboards, it killed radio, it’s killing TV. And that’s why these dentists got to get sophisticated because they’re competing now against DSOs. And DSOs have enough skill where they can sit there and say, “Well, let’s just get the one billboard on the corner of the two highways.” And radio, for $100 you can get an hour commercial. ClearJoy, that implant company has been served five times and now Bob Fontana of Aspen owns it because my gosh, they can do 30 minute infomercials on implants in a day. So now we’ve got this individual dentist.
And the first guys I noticed that were really, really smart about advertising was the orthodontists for a couple of exact reasons. Number one, they knew each of their new patients was worth basically 6,500 bucks and they knew where their overhead was. So if they went on Shark Tank, and if you were on Shark Tank, then obviously, the smartest man on Shark Tank is the bald guy. It’s always the bald guy. Have you noticed that?
And who picks your dental office, and Mr. Wonderful, first thing he says is, “Well, what’s your cost of new customer acquisition?” No dentist knows, but orthodontists, that’s an easy figure. What is the average customer value? Dentists are like, “God, I don’t know.” Orthodontists like, “It is actually 6,500.” [crosstalk 00:04:51].
So on my journey, when I got out of school in ’87, you got to remember the Yellow Pages just became Regal after a Supreme court decision where two lawyers in Phoenix said, “Well, that violates my free speech not to advertise.” It happened in Arizona first, but even by the time I got out, it was a very underused taboo thing, and the first guys that jumped out on it were the orthodontist, and it was an orthodontist who was the first guy I ever met that 3% of collections went straight to advertising. Now, I could name you 100 orthodontists where that is eight to 10% because they say, “Well, I get $6,500 for Invisalign, and here’s my marketing costs and here’s my overhead.” It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
So the orthodontists, they get their money back in tow years. General dentists, that takes about five years, and since they have a whole distribution of just a cleaning, just a filling, all the way to a big old case, they’ve always not understood their marketing. But what’s going to really bring it to their attention is when they’re no longer competing against a single dentist across the street, but now they got some DSO that’s got 1,000 locations and they’re extremely sophisticated. So dentists, if they want to play in the big leagues with the professional players, we’re probably going to have to outsource some marketing to someone like you.
Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head, several nails on the head actually in that we talk with clients a lot about that, about they’re struggling with competition and it’s not just local competition. It’s a lot of pressure from DSOs. And a lot of our strategies are around how to compete with that and there are ways to compete with that without breaking the bank also. So you just have to get a little creative, grassroots about it and you can still compete and relieve some of that competition for sure.
Let me ask you this. What do you see as right now, other than the competitive struggles with DSOs, but what else is really threatening local dentistry right now, would you say?
Well, I think all dentists would say it’s a very competitive environment. I would say that the reason the 20 richest countries all want socialized medicine by the government is because the same government is the one that blocks out all their competition. If you’re a dentist in India, you can’t move to Phoenix, Arizona and start doing dentistry. I’m on the Mexican border, and every time a Mexican dentist comes up here and goes to Guadalupe, which is 100% Mexican and native Indians, and starts practicing dentistry on the poor, the government arrests them, puts them in jail or deports them, or whatever.
So it’s hard to say that healthcare is competitive because when I was a little kid, they couldn’t import cars from Germany and Japan. And General Motors had half market share, they were very expensive and the cars never worked. When I was a little kid, if I walked down the sidewalk on a Saturday, every third or fourth garage was a dad, his son and two uncles trying to fix this piece of crap Chevy and get it running.
So it’s crazy to say that healthcare is competitive because they block all foreign competition from entering with their immigration policy. But within the realm of United States, competing against DSOs, competing against insurance, I’d say what threatens them the most right now is the onslaught of inflation. I turned 59 this month. I hear no one talking about it unless they’re my age. I graduated high school in ’80, and in ’81, interest rates were 20 and a half percent. Unemployment and inflation was double-digit.
And so inflation is just completely back. When this pandemic, the stock market dropped about $850 billion, not quite a trillion. And the Trump buying response was $5 trillion. So you’re looking at a global economy where three out of every $4 in circulation today were printed in the last year. And people compare this to the percent of debt to GDP as in World War II, but you got to remember those bonds were paid by real money from Americans taking their money out from underneath their bed and buying a war bond, which you pay them a nickel a year.
So the deal is, I went to Creighton in 1980. Warren buffet is from Omaha, so was his partner, Charlie Munger and Warren came over and spoke to our business class. And I remember a business 101, someone jokingly said, “Creighton was known for their medical school, dental school and law school.” Someone jokingly asked him, “Which one would you go to?” And he told me to answer and I didn’t listen, he said, “Well, I would never go into healthcare because it’s very capital intensive and someone else sets your fee.” He goes, “I want to go into a business with low capital intensive.” Like if Geico insurance doubled their business, they just need to double the number of cubicles where people are dialing for dollars and typing on a keyboard.
But you double a hospital, you got all this stuff. I’ve seen dental office routinely that by the time you do the land and the building and the Taj Mahal, they’re looking at one and a half to $3 million. So I would say if you’re locked into an insurance company and they say, “You get $1 per filling,” and your costs are going up five, 10, 15, 20%, is the insurance company going to rapidly adjust the fees to keep you up with inflation? Or are you just going to start making less and less money?
So I think the inflation on a fixed third party fee is terrible. And that’s why Invisalign… If we ignore the dentistry, for decades, selling stuff to dentists, about 40% of the market is US and Canada, 40% Europe and 20% is the rest of the world. And when you look at their numbers, it’s a 200 year old profession that started with G.V. Black in Paris, France. So it just really just grows and contracts with inflation.
The only thing that’s growing double digit is orthodontics, clear liners and implants. And the reason they’re so lucrative is because a third party is not setting your fee. They tried to set fees, like remember when the insurance companies said that you couldn’t charge you more than X dollars for bleaching and it went all the way to SpringBoard in Tennessee, I think it was. You don’t even cover bleaching. How could you set our fee?
So the dentists haven’t been fighting for equality in the eyes of the consumer. I expect that will go to a different legal dimension. But that’s up to the ADA and government and things like that. But I would say that when a dentist gets out of school and says, “I don’t know what I want to do,” you got to pick one, you either got a lot of bin guts and get into implants, or are you going to get into the soft and Invisalign?
I can usually tell by looking at their x-ray, because if you’re like me, when you do a root canal and you want to get all the way to the bottom and puff a sealer out the apex, you’re an able barbarian and you just love blood. And all of your assistants, when they see a big puss thing pop, all those assistants go to, “Ooh, yeah.” If that stuff just grosses you out, you go into bleaching, bonding, veneers, clear liners, whatever. But I’m telling you that the number one goal of the species is to survive long enough to reproduce that offspring. And the way the animal kingdom is, unlike the fungi and algae, we just don’t divide into two, we split our DNA into two pairs and we got to go mix gametes with someone.
And going out there, I think this pandemic has been a huge boom for dentistry, it’s already proven, because if you’re a man like me, think about it. I brush my teeth and floss in the shower. I don’t stand around looking in mirrors all day.
I grew up with five sisters, man. They’d spend an hour in the bathroom before they’d go to grammar school. So now there’s all these men on Zoom and they’re looking at their face and they’re looking at their teeth and they’re like, “Oh my God.” And male makeup, which isn’t really even a thing, it’s already up 400% since the pandemic started. When I went into Walgreens, I went to the makeup counter booth area and talked to that lady. I read there, I said, “Is this true?” She goes, “People you would never expect. ‘I want to cover up this thing or this, that.’ And they’re asking me…”
So now that the pandemic’s got everyone looking in the mirror that used to never look in the mirror, like a bunch of old ugly men, they’re ripe for Invisalign. I think the ultimate close if they say, “How do you like your Zoom conference look? Are you liking what you see in the mirror?” And I used to call old dentists…
I remember when I got out of school, the big cosmetic guru was Jim Pryde, and he was sitting there in the lecture. And another one was Walter Hailey. I made this remark twice and got the same response from them. He’s up there pontificating at the Arizona Dental Association saying, “How could you not sell cosmetic dentistry? They all want to do it.” I raised my hand. I said, “Well, why don’t you do it? You’ve got some of the darkest, brownest, gnarliest, ugliest teeth I’ve ever seen and you’re a dentist speaking to dentist.” He lost it. I mean, he almost couldn’t continue. And everybody I was with were just laughing their ass off.
And then Walter Hailey, when I talked to Walter Hailey, I was with actually great cosmetic guru. I was with David Hornbrook, and Bill Dickerson, the two cosmetic legends who had started LVI, and they told him, “It’s true, Walter, and we’ll do it for free. You’ll get $15,000 veneer case, look [inaudible 00:15:34] free.” And he’s like, “Ah, I don’t care.” He’s some good old boy from Texas. Couldn’t even give a crap, and his business was lecturing to sell cosmetic dentistry to dentists and he wouldn’t even do it.
So I think the Zoom is going to make people see the truth that, wow. I remember I lost the… I was able to keep in shape the best when I used to do Bikram yoga, because you’d go into a room in a bathing suit, and they had mirrors all over the wall, and that’s the only time you ever get to stare at yourself in a bathing suit. And I’d look at that mirror and think, “God dang, you’re fat. You need to stop eating crap.” And that whole 90 minute yoga deal was this really reminder that, “Dude, you don’t know what you look like naked.” And so I think this is going to be a big… it is already a big boom for cosmetic dentistry.
And by the way, implants, the same thing. Every study I’d seen on implants, dentists always say… I’ll give you a true story of my first major implant case. Her name was Catherine. It was back in ’87, ’88, ’89. I never had asked her about implants or anything. And she told me she wanted them. And I said, “Well, Catherine, you always told me that you had no problems eating, chewing, that you can even eat an apple and all this stuff.” I said, “So what changed your mind?” She goes, “Well, you know what,” she goes, “at my age, my girlfriends just keep dying and they keep dying while they’re asleep. And I can’t wear my dentures when I’m sleeping and I’m afraid of dying in my sleep and having them find me without my teeth.” And I thought, “Yeah, dang man.”
So even they, when you look at implant cases, if you really get to the crux of it and you really ask them, they’re not doing it because they can’t eat a cheeseburger, they’re doing it because there’s a missing space there and they’ve got mold and mixed gametes and it’s a complicated meeting, ritual meets like a peacock. All the animal kingdom meeting rituals are insanely complex and having your teeth not being negative and just being neutral is a good thing. If we can make them whiter, brighter and sexier and make the peacock feathers all come out, it works better.
Wow. Well, I tell you what, you could unpack a whole webinar just in what you just said. That’s awesome information, and it’s going to help a lot of people watching this. But I did have a question. If you had to do it all over again, the dentistry side of this, what would you change, what would you do differently?
Yeah, that’s a great question. What would I do differently? I definitely would’ve done it because you got to go back. A lot of people, they look at… All of our heroes are failed men. They think they’re a genius and they found out that some great man had a great flaw. They never said he walked on water, but you got to go back to, I was one in 62. There wasn’t any of this technology. There wasn’t computers and this and that. When I first saw my neighbor, Ken Anderson take an x-ray through the tooth, and then you got to go in a dark room with the hottest dental assistant in the world and develop this x-ray. And then I go worry my dad make a cheeseburger and onion rings.
The technology blew me away. And the other thing that blew me away, it was just like physics in the fact that… Well, look at Stephen Hawkins. He lived his whole life and he died before they even knew what a black hole is and what’s on the other side. Is it a white hole? And I realized that dentistry was bigger than any dentist that ever lived and that you could be a dentist and study your whole life and still go to the grave with unknown unknowns that you would never even have known. And it’s part of the human body.
Health is wealth. If you lose your life, you have nothing. The health, the wealth. It was so easy for me to find a real purpose and passion when we were trying to learn, discover, and help someone else stay alive on an earth where 98 and a half percent of all the species before us are extinct and they’re going extinct every year. And the chance that we will go extinct is absolutely positive. We’re not going to go through the black hole. When this whole Milky Way goes through the black hole, I doubt my teeth are going to make it, but I just had a lot of purpose, a lot of passion.
I got accepted to med school too at Creighton, and I didn’t want to do that just because dentists forget of all of the politics that goes on in hospitals. And now it’s something like seven out of every 10 physicians is an employee for a hospital, it’s about 50%, or a big corporate DSO for about another 20%. Only 30% of physicians own their own building. And the thing I liked about what Kenny Anderson did is he owned his own land and building. He was a dictator. If he didn’t want you to work there, you didn’t go. If he didn’t want to treat you as a patient, you can’t go. Just a simple life in a small kingdom where you’re the king and you’ve got a half dozen helpers and you have your own people coming in. Gosh, I love it and I can’t really think anything I would’ve done different.
Yeah. Well, that’s awesome. That’s great. One struggle that we see with some of our clients is especially the ones that they’ve been an associate for a little while maybe, and now they want to start their own. And the question we get sometimes is based on your experience, is it better to buy an existing practice with a a base of patients, or do you start off scratch? What do you think?
Well, that’s another great question you have. I can tell you’ve been in this a long time, but I just want to tell you about when these DSOs popped up, the first round was way back in the days in the eighties, when Orthodontic Centers of America went public and there was a dozen on NASDAQ. And what was their business model? Their business model was if you go sell a house in Phoenix, so that’s three bedroom, two bath, you’ll get a offer today. If it’s four bedroom, three car garage, it’s totally liquid. But if you’re an NFL player and you custom built a 19 bedroom house with a seven car garage, most of your professional players, their number one mistake was the house they bought because it’s illiquid. They can’t sell it.
Orthodontic Centers of America, that founder, Gasper Lazzara knew that if your orthodontic practice did a million dollars a year, you could sell in an hour. But if you built up to three or 4 million, it was a illiquid. So he was buying all the illiquid ones and that’s what Heartland was doing. So when I look back at every single general dentist that had a dental office doing three to $5 million a year, they all had the same strategy and that was this, which to answer your question, they graduated school and went to a small town that had 10 dentists. And every five years, this guy would retire. In most towns, there’s the old guy who would just sell to some new young guy with a lot of energy, and the competition stayed vicious. And these guys would say, “Well, I’m going to buy out the old man’s practice and I’m going to have him rule all this practice, and then I’m going to tell him, ‘Well, you say you’re going to retire, but if you want to stay a day or two a week,'” and they always do.
And so what they did is when they graduated school, they were the 10th dentist in their town. Five years later, there was only nine and then eight and then seven. And now they’re 65 and there’s only four dental offices in the town. But one office has five dentists and they’re doing $5 million a year. And you know what, that was the exact same strategy that Thomas Watson Jr. did of IBM. And the reason he became big is he inherited that from his dad. He drank his way through college and swears he didn’t learn a damn thing and doesn’t even know why got the degree.
But he only notice one thing. They grew up in this small town and they were three hardware stores in this little small town. And he’d go to one lie and belong, and he’d got another one lie and belong. So he’d go to this other one. One and they had two employees and he got there faster. And one day he realized there’s three locations, but there’s just four salesmen. And each salesman has a quarter of the market. So it’s not based on locations, it’s based on salesmen and nobody knows what they’re supposed to buy to fix this, what nuts to bolts they got now. And he goes, “No one knows software.”
So when he took over IBM he told his head scientist, “Look, I’m going to stay out of your way. I don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t even care. Just go to your thing. I’m going to focus on sales.” And he started with IBM sales div. And everyone six weeks, he got 20 new salesmen, and they got him a three-piece suit and a briefcase and went through the whole sales pitch. And he once said, “If 70% of all the computer salesmen in the world worked for IBM, we will have 70% of the market,” and it came true. And they asked him. They said, “Well, why didn’t you go for 80, 90 or 100?” He goes, “Well, then I knew the government would have to step in and they would grate me up. So I just thought that was about the most I can get away with.” And it’s just absolutely true.
So we only know this about a practice. Why would you go in and start a new supply when you can buy out an existing supply? In fact, let me tell you this. There’s 168 hours in a week and the average dental office is open 32 hours a week, which is 19% a week. So if you had a uber dental op where a patient said, “I want to make an appointment,” and all these other dentists uber had dental offices they can rent… 80% of the dental operatory capacity is never being used. So it’s just insane to go build another dental office when every dental office in America is not being used four out of every five hours a day.
As far as competition with the DSOs, every major DSO guy is already on the record saying, “I’m not going to the rural,” because they tried that and by the time the kids get out of dental school, they’re at the prime time to attract a mate to mix gametes, and they have better odds in the city of Phoenix than they do two hours out in the middle of nowhere in Eloy, Arizona.
So by the time they’re well put in the rule, on any given day, 10% of the officers didn’t even have a doc in the box. So you know there’s no DSOs rural. And so that’s a haven. So I would say go to the rural. And by the time you’re two hours away from where a Southwest Airlines plane takes off, they drop insurance. You’re one of only three guys in a town of 3000 and they sell you a ticket. And you could only sell if [inaudible 00:27:09]. Well, how much is a root canal? $1000. How much crown? $1000. How much partial? $1000. How much denture? $1000. Everything’s rounded off to $1000, and they all have about 40% overhead because in a small town, labor, a 15 hour dollar a job or Walmart’s considered a bank and you have to pay a hygienist $50 an hour in San Francisco.
So I would say get two hours away from the airport, go rural, buy out an old guy instead of building more capacity. And if you’re a helluva programmer, you ought to make a Uber dental lab so that patients can meet these young dentists out of school in any office they want you. They could be working for a DSO who won’t let them do that, but on their day off, they could be meeting a dentist… Like my dental office when it’s closed. It’s closed every day at 7:00 PM. It’s closed Saturday and Sunday. So I know that was a long-winded answer to a very short question.
No, that was awesome. That was great. We’re going to wrap up here in a minute, but to any of those that are out there, I can’t imagine there’s many that don’t know about Dentaltown. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about what people get out of Dentaltown, how it works and why somebody should pay attention to Dentaltown.
First of all, all your scientific institutions like NASA, the jet propulsion laboratory, I’ve been to many of them, they only use the message board format. And social media that people are used to is called LIFO, last in, first out. And it’s just almost entertainment. But on a message board format, all 6 million posts made on Dentaltown are still there. They’re archived, they’re searchable. When we look at all the studies on Facebook and Twitter, it’s scientifically factual that everybody bulkinizes. So if I’m pro dental insurance, and you get on there and say, “Don’t take it,” they’ll just unfriend you. So everybody’s in this hardened position.
But when you go to Dentaltown, you can’t unfriend someone, you can’t delete someone. So a lot of people are very in a bubble, and they believe something like say that implants cause gum disease, you got to do ceramic and on their Facebook page they’re a guru. No, on Dentaltown, people just start popping holes in their bubble, and they either are on the scientists and want these observations to grow with, or they’re emotional and they run from it. So I just think it’s a treasure.
And the thing is on Facebook, I know who you are, but on Dentaltown, I know who you are registered, but you don’t want to call yourself Smiley Tooth… There has to be a place for a stupid question, like a specialist. An endodontist can’t get on Facebook and say, “Here’s a case of mine that failed. Does anybody know what went wrong?” All these competitors would be sending that to everybody. But he could on Dentaltown. So I want a place where, no, you’re not going to go and put yourself in some bubble. And you’re still a doctor. And you have to be aware that there’s people that think other thoughts. And so I think it’s a beautiful thing.
As far as the business on Dentaltown, I have my 30 day dental MBA. It’s free on Dentaltown. It’s also on YouTube. It’s also on iTunes. And my gosh, when I went to MBA school, I took my laptop, took notes just towards my dental practice. And then I came out, I ran it out the notes, it was 30 hours long. I call it Dr. Farran’s 30 day dental MBA. It still gets 1000 downloads a month just on iTunes. The views on YouTube are insane, but that’s what’s neat about the internet and Dentaltown. All the information you need to do a root canal or run a business is zero cost. You just need your time.
When I was a little kid, all that information was hidden in expensive universities that only rich kids went to, and you couldn’t do that in a poor town or a poor country. And now it’s all there on the internet at zero cost. So if you really want to work like no dentist has for a decade, you can still live like no dentist has for three decades.
So if you just want to get out there and work your butt off and hustle and do what everybody knows what to do, it’s all spelled out on my 30 day dental MBA. It’s all on Dentaltown. The opportunity is sitting right there, but it’s not going to be delivered to you. It’s not going to be easy. You’re going to have to do it the faster way, which is get out of dental school and work your ass off for a decade.
But here’s my last piece of advice regarding you and me. Number one, this isn’t a paid endorsement. He didn’t give me any money. But if he ever does come out and visit his grandma in Phoenix, you got to invite me. One beer, that’s all. That’s all I was asking.
But the deal is, dude, stay humble, stay in your real house. You think you’re an expert in everything and you’re not. And my gosh, you think you know everything about marketing, but you probably don’t. And I’m telling you that the DSOs, I’ve met their marketing agents and it’s a department. It’s five, six, seven, eight people, and they are not kidding around. So then for you to sit down as a dentist say, “Yeah, anybody can be an excellent marketer and understand Google and Facebook and all,” no, no, no. You need someone that specializes, all they do… You know an orthodontist can do Invisalign better than you. And you know that there’s a marketing guy that can do marketing better than you.
So stay humble, stay in your real house. I’m still always meeting dentists that run into a disaster with little things like their lease. There’s a dentist in Phoenix and on his lease, it was a triple net lease and three doors down, it flooded the whole room. Long story short, he was the only tenant in a 10,000 square foot building who had the money to pay for it. The yoga studio, everybody else just walked out on their lease and said, “Call it a bankruptcy.” So you need a lawyer before you sign a real estate lease. You might meet a guy who’s spent a decade in dental marketing before you start your ad campaign.
I really appreciate this. And if you don’t mind, I know you’re a busy guy, but maybe in a few months we can hook back up and tackle a couple more subjects if that’s cool with you.
That’s great, man. Well, Howard, thanks again. And thanks to everybody out there watching today. I know you got some great information out of this. Be sure to join us next week for another great episode of the Dental Marketing podcast.
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