TDMP Episode 3

[00:00:00] Chris Pistorius: Welcome to the Dental Marketing Podcast, a podcast that helps dentists win in the online world of modern day marketing. Each week, we cover the most cutting edge marketing tactics and strategies that are working right now across our client base to drive leads, phone calls, and more new patients for dentists.

[00:00:21] Now here’s your host and founder of Kickstart Dental Marketing, Chris Pistorius.

[00:00:29] Hey everybody, it’s Chris Pistorius again with the Dental Marketing Podcast. It’s just me today. No interviews, no guests. So you’re stuck with just me. But we’re gonna get into some really good stuff about 2023 and how we should plan and what’s new in marketing in 2023. But I’m gonna go ahead and just go over a short agenda of what I think we want to cover.

[00:00:51] First of all, what’s gonna happen with the economy? How is it going to affect dentistry and what should you do to prepare your business, your dental practice, for a potential economic slide? Right? And then for 2023, I mean, everybody talks about planning and budgeting. What does that really mean? And more specifically, marketing, How should you come up with a marketing plan?

[00:01:13] Where should you be advertising? You know, how much money should you be spending? You know, things like that. We’re gonna get into that a little bit. I also wanna talk about some things that you can do next year to get some quick wins, right? Start the year off great. You know, get some new patients in the door.

[00:01:29] But more importantly, what I’m gonna talk about is how to get your current patient base more involved in that. And then I wanna talk about some long term strategies that I really think you need to start planting the seeds for now that will help you bloom into 2023. So we’re gonna talk about some longer term strategies as well in marketing.

[00:01:46] And then just some must do some things that you need to get involved with. You don’t even have to wait till 2023 for this, but it should be part of 2023 for sure. So we’re gonna talk about a lot about that as well. So, and we’ll probably get into a couple other things in between that if I go out on one of my rants, that’s really the only good thing about having guests because they’re here and they can kind of almost help you keep on track with your subject.

[00:02:09] So hopefully I don’t get too far off the tracks here, but anyway, let’s get to it. First of all, the economy. Well, nobody knows what’s gonna happen, for sure. And if they say they are, they’re lying. Okay. I’m just gonna tell you that I started my business in when was it? It’s 13 years ago. So do the math, and it was right at the end or the tail end of the great recession, right?

[00:02:27] Maybe the hardest time to ever start a business. I don’t know, except for maybe the Great Depression, right? But we’ve seen a lot of economic ups and downs between, then we went through Covid, I mean, remember Covid, right? I think a lot of us are still recovering from that. I mean, for heaven’s sakes, every dental practice in America I think had to shut down for at least 30 days during Covid and many longer.

[00:02:49] So we’ve seen a lot over the years. And even if you’re a new practice owner, I’m sure you experienced at least part of Covid. Like I said, nobody knows what’s gonna happen, but I do believe that it would be practical advice that this is a good time to stress test your business. Right? And what I mean by that is, you know, look into everything, right?

[00:03:08] Know your numbers, right? You need to know net profits, gross margins. You need to have contingency plans. Like if new patients drop by 10%, we do this. If new patients drop by 25%, we do. Right. And again, I don’t think it’s gonna be, I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s gonna be anything doom and gloom, but I always think it’s good to look at your business that way so that you can plan and put contingency plans in place no matter what happens, right? So, you know, while nobody knows for sure what’s gonna happen to the economy, run through a stress test and just look at your business, make sure you know your numbers. Have contingency plans on if this happens or that happens, right?

[00:03:47] I think it’s just smart for us to all to do that right now. So, when we talk about 2023 as well, we talk about, I know, you know, everybody gets with their accountants and starts talking about budgeting and we start talking about, all right, what are we gonna do in 2023? It’s different whether we want to grow our practice or maybe we’re looking to sell our practice, or, you know, how do we plan for 2023 in terms of marketing and other things.

[00:04:12] You know, I think that’s a little different for everybody, but I think what I’m gonna talk about today is in terms of marketing and a little bit of financial, how you plan for 2023. And I think it starts way before you start putting numbers down on a piece of paper or in a spreadsheet.

[00:04:29] I think you gotta know your goals for 2023 first, right? Let’s do some goal setting first, right? Where do you want your practice to be? Do you want to just stay where it is? Do you want to sell it, right? Do you want to grow it? And if you want to grow it, get specific, like 10%, 20%, 50%, because if we don’t have those goals and we don’t have specific goals, then there’s really no way to reverse engineer that and set quarterly goals or monthly goals to be able to get to that overall goal, right?

[00:04:59] So sit down with your team or your accountant or whoever. I would suggest your team and come up with your goals. What are the goals for 2023? And then that’s when you can get into, all right, what does our marketing budget look like? What does that kind of stuff look like? I get asked a lot about that.

[00:05:16] Like, how much money should I spend in marketing, Chris? Well, I own a marketing agency for Dennis, right? So you would think that, I’m probably gonna say all of it. That’s not true. Most financial advisors, consultants, they’ll say anywhere between five to 10% of your gross revenue is what you should be spending in marketing.

[00:05:36] I think probably a majority of our clients are around that, you know, five to 8% mark. I would say some of the more aggressive ones get up into double digits in terms of percentages of total revenue if you’re a new practice. You need to build that into the money that you’re gonna need to get the business started, right?

[00:05:55] So it may be more than that in the beginning and then you can start to taper off a little bit. But I think anywhere between five and 10% is what you should be planning for 2023. Some things to consider in 2023 as we’ve been seeing over the last few years is that there’s more competition and dentistry than ever right now.

[00:06:13] There is. You know, more core pressure from corporate dentistry, right? Big dentists going in and buying little dentists. And you know, those big dentists have big budgets, right? I think that, you know, you need to prepare to market your practice in 2023. And I know I’m the biased guy, right?

[00:06:32] Because I own a marketing agency, but I’ve been doing this a long time, like I said, and if our economy does get a little sideways, you can use this as an opportunity for those of you watching or listening to this at our client of ours. And you remember going through Covid, right? A lot of what I talked about was like, look, there will be light at the end of the tunnel.

[00:06:48] I don’t know if it’s next week or next year, but we will get through this. And the people that believe that and see that and are willing to keep the gas pedal to the floor marketing wise in running their business will come out ahead once that’s happened. And that’s exactly what my clients, a lot of my clients have experienced is stay the course, have some faith.

[00:07:11] You’ve planned out your business. Now keep the gas to the accelerator and once this sideways turn is over. You’re gonna come out ahead. And the way to do that is with marketing. Don’t stop marketing during an economic downturn of any kind, this is the best chance to start marketing because a lot of your competition out there are gonna do just that.

[00:07:33] They’re gonna look at ways and go down and excel spreadsheet and find ways to stop spending money and try to cut back. And I get that. And there are smart ways to cut back, right? But marketing isn’t one of them because marketing done right is not costing you money.

[00:07:49] It’s making you money. Right. It is a true investment. So just think about that when you look at 2023 and you might be thinking, I dunno about this economy, I think we better just kind of slow down a little bit. That’s a mistake. If you have that in your mindset, you’re in the wrong mindset and you’re gonna fall into that trap of everybody else’s going to.

[00:08:09] So just some advice there of doing this for a few years and going through several economic downturns.

[00:08:16] So let’s talk a little bit also when you’re talking about 2023 and, alright, we’re gonna grow 20%, let’s say, or 25%, how do we do that? I mean, where do we go spend our money in marketing?

[00:08:28] Right. Well, you’ve gotta start first with creating what we call here as a new patient avatar. If you haven’t done this already, and even if you have done it, it’s been a few years, you need to do it again. And this is basically, if you could describe your ideal patient, right, The ones that make you the most money or the ones you like to work with the most, whatever it may be, you need to come up with that and you need to come up with it like demographically.

[00:08:53] Like maybe your target demographic or your new patient avatar is a 23 to 35 year old female with two and a half kids and a golden retriever. Right. It sounds silly. I know, but you’ve gotta get that down and it’s okay to have more than one avatar. Right. Maybe you also need, want people that are 45 to 65 year old need more cosmetic work and you know, are on the brink of retiring.

[00:09:19] Right. That’s okay. Write those down, put them on paper, and make sure your team knows about them too, because that’s gonna be an important part of how we get to your marketing budget and how we market. If that makes sense. I’ll talk a little bit more about that in a second. Secondly, the thing that you need to do is think about your unique selling proposition.

[00:09:37] I doubt that anybody watching or listening to this thing is the only dentist in town and they don’t have any competition. And if that is the case, awesome. Good for you. You probably just want to turn this off, but the truth of it is, is that you have competition and you have to be in a place where you can talk and your team can talk about why somebody should choose you versus your competition.

[00:10:02] And I’m not saying go out and bash the competition and that they’re terrible. No, it’s not about them. It’s about you. What is it that makes you special? Why should somebody choose you? Right. And I think once we have those two things right, your new patient avatars, and your unique selling propositio, USP, then that’s what you have, that’s the foundation for a really solid marketing plan to build on, right?

[00:10:28] Because we have clear directives. We know who we’re going after, and we’re gonna tell them why they need to come here right, now the second part of that then is when you start getting into the budget side of things, is really, marketing is all about identifying those two things first and then figuring out where these people congregate.

[00:10:47] And then getting your message in front of them. So if it’s a 25 to 45 year old female of two and a half kids, then you gotta go figure out where those people live online, right? Or if it’s, you know, direct mail, or tv, or radio, billboards, whatever it may be, you’ve gotta figure out where those people are and then get your message in front of them, right?

[00:11:06] That can be the tricky part of it. And then once you figure out where they are and what they’re doing, and that’s when you can get into, all right, this is what it’s gonna cost. This is where I should market. Maybe it’s TikTok ads, Maybe I do smart direct mail, which I’ll talk about in a second. Maybe I’m doing Facebook ads or Google Ads, whatever it is.

[00:11:25] Then you start realizing what it’s gonna cost, and that’s when you can really start to determine what you should budget on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis for 2023. But you really need to put a whole plan together like that with unique selling proposition new patient avatar. Your your annual goals of where you want to get to.

[00:11:44] And then it’s kind of like a math equation of, all right, I’m gonna have to spin this to get this, to get this, to get that right. So that’s how we operate here in a way, in terms of trying to plan out marketing campaigns.

[00:11:55] So I think, some ways in 2023 that you can get off to quick wins. Okay, so like you know, get off to a good start I think is key to any goal, right?

[00:12:07] If you’re setting a goal for 2023, let’s get off to a fast start on it, right? And there’s some things that we do here at Kickstart that when we start with a client, we like to try to get off on a good foot, get some momentum going and get some quick wins for our clients. And one of them are reactivations where if a patient hasn’t been in 7, 8, 9 months a year, you know, let’s get them back in.

[00:12:29] Okay. And everybody’s probably rolling their eyes and saying, oh yeah, DENTRIX does that. Or, you know, my software or Weave, or, you know, whatever it is, does that for me. No, they don’t. And I’m gonna tell you why in a second. But look, reactivations and past patients are people that already know you, like you and trust you.

[00:12:47] Well, hopefully they know you like you and trust you cause they’ve been your patient before, right? And so these should be the easiest people to get back into your practice. Okay. Now some people move, some people pass away. Unfortunately, other things happen, life events and they’re just not gonna come back.

[00:13:04] Totally get that. But there is a good chunk of those people that don’t go back to the dentist because of the first reason they didn’t want to go to the dentist. And that’s because of time, fear, and or money. Those are the three things that keep people from coming to see you. And so when we do marketing campaigns, we’re always thinking about those three things, right?

[00:13:24] Like how do we check these off to make people feel better about these three things? And that’s what you’ve gotta do with reactivation campaigns as well. And so what I said about Weave and DENTRIX and all these other softwares out there that say that they’ll automatically do, you know your reactivations for you.

[00:13:40] Yes, technically they will send out text messages, emails, whatever it may be. But most dentists that I’ve worked with that use those systems are just using their out of the box system with the basic templates there, and they don’t really change them much , other than maybe the colors and the name of the practice and things like that.

[00:14:03] I have to tell you that you’re not doing yourself justice by using those softwares that way. You know, there’s a hundred softwares that has the technological capabilities to send out text messages and emails and all that stuff, but even drop voicemails, right? But it’s not about that.

[00:14:18] It’s about what you say to your patients. It’s about, when you say it, it’s about how often you follow up. It’s about, okay, you’ve reached out two or three times, haven’t gotten a response. Maybe now we give them an offer, right? To get them back in and the science behind that, right? That’s what we do, right?

[00:14:39] It’s not about the technology. We have technology that can do all that too, but it’s more about writing something for you content wise that’s gonna work for your practice. You see, Weave and Dentrix, all these companies, they’re giving out software to thousands, not giving help, but giving software to thousands for paid subscriptions, and they’re using the same message on every practice.

[00:15:00] It’s the same templates that you can choose from, right? You’ve gotta customize that a little bit. They’re not testing it to see what works the best, right? For you specifically, and then tweaking it. That’s where, you know, agencies like mine can have an advantage because we do tweak that and we do look at it and pay attention and we can track open rates and how many people respond to what offers, and it helps us formulate strategies that way.

[00:15:25] But anyway, almost went off on our tangent there. This is reactivations can be quick wins. Okay. You can get people back in quickly if you do these right. I also recommend that you don’t just, even with good content behind them, you don’t just send a text or send an email. You need to have somebody pick up the phone and call you or to call you.

[00:15:45] Have somebody pick up the phone and physically call them and, just talk to them. Right? My opinion, I guess I’m old school, but there’s not enough of that type of communication going on today. But have somebody do it. And you know what? In 2023, we’re gonna be offering a service.

[00:16:03] Little plug, shameless plug for myself of where we’ll actually pick up the phone and call your reactivations for you. We have a highly trained staff that this is all they do. And yeah, we’ll create the content for you to do the reminders on email and text message, but these folks will actually pick up the phone and call and get these people scheduled for you as well.

[00:16:23] So I would do all three of those things to really give yourself the best opportunity. And you can pick up new patients within 30 days very quickly. Not new patients, but your reactivated patients. And by the way, just a little tip on that. If you call somebody and they’re moved or you know, whatever, or they’re just not gonna come back, ask for referrals, why not?

[00:16:44] Right? The worst they’re gonna say is no, right, unless they’re disgruntled or something. But ask for referrals. Like, Hey, do you have a family member or a friend maybe that would be interested in coming in, be willing to give you a $50 gift card to your favorite restaurant. Something like that, right?

[00:16:59] And that can happen over the phone. So a lot of things that you can do with that, that are kind of old grassroots marketing.

[00:17:06] Narrator: Are you looking to grow your practice but are a little unclear on what the best way is? Let us help you out. We have over 13 years of experience in helping practices just like yours, increased new patient growth.

[00:17:19] Just go to KickStartDental.com and sign up for a free strategy session where we will give you some great insights on how to take your practice to the next level.

[00:17:33] Chris Pistorius: Also, with quick wins, paid advertising. Nobody roll their eyes here, right? Some of you, in fact, a lot of the clients that come to us when we talk to them about paid advertising, like a Google, Facebook, TikTok, things like that, they’re kind of like, yeah, I’ve tried that, it doesn’t work. Well, okay, but it does work.

[00:17:51] All right. Now the thing about paid marketing is that on Google and Facebook and all these different places, is that you’re right, it doesn’t work for everybody and every market, we have to figure out what your market is. You know, the demographics of it who we’re targeting, right? If we’re targeting 75 year olds, then yeah, it’s probably not gonna work that well.

[00:18:10] Or if you’re using a company or a marketing agency that you know, just does the same template for every dental practice they sign up or every auto body shop they sign up, it’s probably not gonna work. Cuz you’ve gotta customize those heavily. And what works in New York City isn’t gonna work in Orlando just the way it goes.

[00:18:27] Right. And if you’re trying to do it yourself, unless you’re been doing this a long time and you know the complexities of Google Ads. You’re not gonna be successful. It’s just too complex. You’ve gotta know what you’re doing. You’ve gotta know how to write content and copy. You’ve gotta just know so much about the system to really get the ins and outs of it.

[00:18:46] They’ve made a can’t remember the name of it now, but like a basic system where business owners are supposed to be able to go and write their own ads and make it really. Really it’s garbage. You’re better off taking that money and putting it somewhere else. So it’s hard, it’s complex, but it does work.

[00:19:03] And it can be a short term strategy because those campaigns can be up and running very quickly. They still need a little time to tweak. Right ads, test ads, testing’s big with this. Gotta make sure your landing pages are good. Be more than happy to go over that with you if you have specific questions on your ads.

[00:19:20] But I see a lot of practices using ads the wrong way and just dismissing it completely saying it doesn’t work. It does work and I have the proof of it. But anyway, paid ads can be a really good way to do that with paid ads is something we call retargeting. Retargeting is annoying. But it’s annoying in a good way.

[00:19:39] It’s like if you’ve ever gone to a hotel’s website or something and you’ve left and then you’re on Facebook and all of a sudden you start seeing banner ads on Facebook about that hotel that you were just visiting, and you’re like, What the heck? That’s retargeting, right? So there’s some technology that they use to put a cookie on your browser and then they can follow you around for a little while and serve you ads.

[00:19:57] Okay, it works really, it does. 97% about if you believe in statistics 97% of people that go to your website don’t take action the first time, it’s just the way it is. They don’t, they get distracted. They put it off, whatever it may be, right? Well, retargeting reminds them, you know, for the next month or so of, Hey, don’t forget, you gotta go schedule your dental appointment.

[00:20:21] And you might as well do it at Aspen Springs Dental, right? One of our clients plug. So retargeting can be very powerful. Now there are some rules with Google on retargeting. It makes it hard for Dennis to do it. But with Facebook, we have really good results with that. There’s also something else that we’re rolling out right now, which what I call smart retargeting.

[00:20:41] And it’s basically technology that we can put on a website. All HIPAA compliant, everything’s good, but it basically can find out just people that go to your website, the technology can find out who they are and like what their mailing address is. And so when people go to your website, we can automatically send them a postcard and they don’t have to fill anything out.

[00:21:00] They just go to the website and a postcard gets sent out to them within two to three days. So we’re retargeting. So we’ll retarget them online so they’ll see your ads like on Facebook and wherever. But then they’ll also get a postcard in the mail two to three days later. So that can be very powerful to keep top of mind of people that were interested in you in the first place, right?

[00:21:20] So anyway, that can be a quick win. In terms of retargeting as well, let’s talk about, there’s a lot more stuff there, but I don’t want to be here all day, so I’m gonna get into the long term wins and some seeds that I think you should be planting right now.

[00:21:33] Number one is SEO. Everybody talks about SEO Man. They have been since I started this 13 years ago. Right. And search engine optimization. And we’ll get you the first page of Google. We’ll get you the number one spot on Google. And you know, that’s what everybody is focused on. Well, it doesn’t matter if you’re number one on a page, you’re number 14 on a page.

[00:21:52] The only thing that matters is how many new patients are you bringing in every month, Right? But seo, I will tell you that is gonna be one of your best strategies long term to have as much visibility kind of omnipresence, if you will. Have as much visibility online as you possibly can for people that are actively looking for the types of dental procedures in the markets where you are.

[00:22:16] Just makes sense, right? If I’m looking for dental implants in Castle Rock, Colorado, I can promise you that if you’re a dental implant dentist in Castle Rock, Colorado, you want to be in front of the me right? The problem with SEO is that it is long term. It takes a while, right? You’ve gotta know what you’re doing google’s constantly changing its algorithms.

[00:22:37] You’ve gotta write tons of content, but you can’t just write any content anymore. It’s gotta be quality. You’ve gotta know how to structure the content. Backlinking is very important still, but you can’t just go out and buy a thousand back links and they’re all junk.

[00:22:49] And Google will not like that at all. You have to get good quality back links from authoritative sources. You know, as complex as I painted the picture of paid ads, I think SEO is even more so, and it’s getting harder and harder all the time. However, it’s still worth it because the benefit is there.

[00:23:09] We see so many new patient leads come in from our SEO efforts way more than paid ads can provide. That’s just, I’ve got all the tracking and it shows us where every lead comes from, from all of our clients, and I think it’s like 60 some percent come from organic growth. That means the organic side of Google, Yahoo, Bing, places like that versus paid ads.

[00:23:34] Now, our paid ads campaigns are still very profitable and they’re quicker. Right. So when we put together a strategy, and you should be thinking about this too, for your strategy, put in some things that are quick wins and some things that are longer term wins, right? So this SEO stuff would be a longer term play, but you need to put this into action if you haven’t already.

[00:23:53] And for those of you thinking, well, when I type in my name on Google, I show up at the first page. That’s not it, right? That’s not who we’re after, right? If they already know who you are, then you know they’re probably gonna get ahold of you anyway. I’m talking about people that don’t know who you. Right, and they’re just typing in dental implants or dentists near me or whatever it may be.

[00:24:12] Those are the people you’ve gotta get in front of because unless you’re on the first page of Google and somebody does searches like that, you’ll never be found. They don’t even know you’re in business. 90% of people don’t go to the second page of a search engine just the way it is. Right? And it’s a whole, what’s really scary about this is that people believe that the best dentists, air quotes, the best dentists are the ones on the first page of Google.

[00:24:36] Isn’t that scary? Right? Obviously, there’s no correlation between, you know, best and where you rank on a search engine page, right? But that’s what they assume. That’s the whole perception, reality thing, right? And it’s something that we’ve gotta deal with. So get your SEO strategy started, please. It’ll help you, I promise.

[00:24:54] List building is another one. Okay. Give something away. Please write a little book. Write an e-letter or a little article about implants or teeth whitening or whatever it may be. Like the top 10 tips when interviewing a dentist for dental implants, right? A little e-book. If you don’t wanna write it, have somebody else write it, but have it there.

[00:25:15] It’ll build credibility and authority for you because you’ve written something and you’re giving it away to somebody, right? Have them fill out a form to have to be able to download it or send it to their email, and then you collect that information, okay? You’ve got somebody there that was interested in dental implants, teeth whitening, crowns, bridges, root canals, whatever it may be, and they want more information about it.

[00:25:37] Put them into your database and then start marketing to them by text, by email, by whatever. But start doing it because then you’re building a long term, what we call nurture funnel then, so that maybe they’re not ready to book or schedule an appointment right then and there, but maybe they will be next month, Right?

[00:25:57] Or in two weeks or whatever it may be. And you’re building a marketing asset, which is that marketing list. Okay.

[00:26:04] Some must do’s that I think you should really consider for 2023 that I’m seeing really good results with start podcasting, doing what I’m doing right here. It’s been a big catalyst for my business and we are now starting to set this up for our clients too, and you can do it two ways.

[00:26:23] Set up your own podcast. Where you’re doing something every week, every two weeks, even every month or you are getting interviewed by others on their podcast. So if you’re following mine, you see that I interview a lot of people, right? So the reason I do that is because it helps people. Number one, gets a lot of good content out there and it builds credibility.

[00:26:43] You know, my potential new clients see that and they like it because it’s free information. It’s hopefully great advice and they respect it. And you know, it’s built credibility and authority for me in the dental industry. And it would do the same for you as a dental practice, right? Not many dentists are doing this right now, right?

[00:27:02] And you know, if you can start doing content like this video and audio content about specific things that can really help you build that credibility in authority in your market, we really want people, when they think of a dentist or a dental implant person or whatever it may be, they want them to think of you first.

[00:27:18] And that’s how you do that. Video is big, right? So podcasting and video kind of goes side by side now, you need to do as much video as you can. We have a client that we’re gonna suggest this to of doing like a weekly dental tip on video. Just on their phone, on their camera, on their phone. It doesn’t have to be anything professionally produced or anything like that.

[00:27:39] It’s good to have those videos too, but just do a tip of the week, right? Put it out on YouTube, put it on your website, out on social media. Building credibility, building authority. Be consistent though, if you’re gonna do it. Okay, So if we start 2023 and say, I’m gonna do a podcast every week, do a podcast every week, okay?

[00:27:57] Don’t say, ah, I’m kind of tired this Friday. I don’t think I’m gonna do it. I’ll skip a week. Don’t do it. I’ve made that mistake. I took a long break and I didn’t really mean to. So be consistent. Put it on your calendar and get it done. I promise you it’ll pay you benefits and, a lot of rewards as the years.

[00:28:15] Video testimonials. You know, everybody’s got a bunch of reviews online now, if you’re an existing business, right? If you don’t call me. But now we need to shift gears a little bit. Those reviews online, like on Google and Yelp and whatnot, they are, you know, important. But video testimonials are way more powerful if you can get one of your patients on camera saying good things about you.

[00:28:38] That’s a good thing, right? Whether it’s, again, a video or a camera or whatever, I don’t care. It’s a powerful medium. It’s way more powerful than just a Google review. So we’ve got a technology that we use that’ll send a patient a link, and we’ve got a spokesperson or somebody from the practice that’s already pre-recorded, like four or five questions that they ask the patient, and the patient actually answers those questions on the video portion of their phone.

[00:29:03] And then they hit submit. They say, Yeah, it’s cool to use this in marketing. And he adds HIPAA compliant. And they hit submit. Those responses get sent to us. We edit the video and merge them all together. Put some background music to it put the logo on it and it turns it into a video testimonial. Do something like that.

[00:29:19] Right. And you may only get one or two of them a month. That’s fine, right? Cause people are camera shy and they don’t like to leave reviews anyway. But if you only get one a month, those start adding up, right? And you can put those, again, leverage them on social media, leverage them on your website.

[00:29:35] And they stick out like sore thumbs and it’ll just become overwhelming to people that why they should pick up the phone and call you and schedule a consultation. I mean, you’ve got all this great stuff going for you, right? Why wouldn’t they, really that’s kind of the point of the market.

[00:29:49] So community, you know, get involved in your community. Go sponsor a little league team, you know, put a banner up in the high school for the basketball team, football team, baseball team, get involved in your community. You don’t have to be a pediatric dentist to do this, right? It’s not just about the kids. Kids have parents. Parents have grandparents, right? Get your name out there.

[00:30:10] Omnipresence for a few hundred dollars a year. You probably have a banner anywhere you want it, right? So go do it, right? Just take the time and do it. Get those partnerships, get those relationships. It will help.

[00:30:23] Lastly, what I want to talk about in 2023, two things I have left. Number one is front desk. Okay? Any marketing that you do is at the mercy of the front desk. I’ve argued for a long time that the front desk may be the most important position in dentistry other than the dentist themselves. And the reason is because they run your business . They’re the first ones people see. They’re the first impression of the practice, all of that stuff.

[00:30:50] And when we do marketing and we get people calling you and texting you and emailing you, they’re your first line, right? But if they’re not trained well enough to be able to schedule new patients efficiently, then the marketing money that we’re gonna spend for 2023. Maybe not efficient, and we may waste a lot of money and waste a lot of opportunity just because these front desk folks just aren’t trained as well as they could be.

[00:31:15] Right. Put them through some sort of training. Every one of our marketing programs, we have a front desk training program that we put front desk professionals through. That’s just an online self-paced course that they learn about the intricacies of the front desk, but they also learn about how to answer the phone efficiently and get more new patients scheduled.

[00:31:33] Do that for your front desk staff. They’ll appreciate it too, and it will help your marketing efforts completely.

[00:31:40] And the last thing I want to talk about for 2023 is commit to tracking everything. If you were gonna take the time to market and spend some money in marketing, whether it’s Google or Facebook, or your website, or video or podcasting, whatever it may be that we just talked about, track it.

[00:31:57] Find out where new patients are coming in from, but time out. You can’t use the old excuse of, or use the old regimen of, well, we ask our patients where they heard about us. That’s not good enough. It’s wildly inaccurate. And the reasons are because people see you in so many different ways. If you take my advice just as basic stuff, I mean, you’re gonna put yourself in a lot of different places and somebody might see you on a Facebook ad, and then maybe they forget about you, and then they go back and do a Google search on your name.

[00:32:29] Because they first saw you on Facebook and then maybe they get distracted again, but then they get a postcard in the mail. They don’t know and they don’t know where they first saw you. And that’s really what we’re looking after. Where was that original source? Right? And so there are ways digitally to track all of this stuff, right?

[00:32:47] So we can track every original source from every one of our leads for our clients. You need to put something like that in place cuz that’s when you’re really gonna know what is effective. What’s not effective and where specifically these new patients are coming from. So make sure you make the commitment to track all of this stuff as well.

[00:33:04] So I hope this has helped. I guess my last, last piece of advice is for 2023. Do something right, Do part of this, do a 10th of it. Do something to market your practice. If you’re looking to grow in 2023, I think it’s gonna be a great opportunity for you to get ahead of your competition. I think that there’s gonna be a lot of really successful dental practices out there that are gonna have great years.

[00:33:29] It’s just gonna come down to planning, staying consistent, and actually taking action. Okay. Now of course, if you need help with any of this, that’s what we do here at Kickstart Dental Marketing. Feel free to go to our website at KickStartDental.com. There’s a button that says, Free strategy session or something like that.

[00:33:49] Click that. Just put in a little bit of information. And I do all of those strategy sessions myself, and so I’ll be more than happy to answer any questions that you have. Look at your current practice and just look for gaps and things that I would suggest for you. It’s all free. And then of course, if you do want somebody to implement that strategy, then that’s where we would come and play for you.

[00:34:10] So feel free to check that out or just shoot me an email at Chris, Chris@kickstartdental.com. If you just have comments on this, go ahead and comment get back to you as soon as I can.

[00:34:22] Thanks so much for tuning in and make sure you check out our next podcast episode, hopefully in about a week. Thanks. Talk to you soon.

[00:34:29] Thanks for joining us this week on the Dental Marketing Podcast. Make sure to visit our website, www.KIckStartDental.com/podcast, where you can subscribe to the show in iTunes, Spotify, or via RSS so you’ll never miss a show. While you’re at it, if you found value in the show, we’d appreciate a rating on iTunes, or if you’d simply tell a friend about the show, that would help us out too.

[00:34:54] If you are ready to grow your practice, then you might want to schedule a free strategy session with us, just go to KickStartDental.com and click the free strategy session button and give us 15 minutes of your time to change your practice forever. Be sure to tune in next week for our next episode. And thanks for listening to The Dental Marketing Podcast by Kickstart Dental Marketing, where dentists go to win online.