[00:00:00] Narrator: 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.
[00:00:26] Chris Pistorius: Hi everybody. Welcome to the No BS Dental Marketing podcast. My name’s Chris Pistorius, and on this show we talk about straight to the point. No BS tactics, tricks and strategies that my company Kickstart Dental Marketing has been using successfully over the last 13 years in dental marketing. There’s no fluff here.
[00:00:47] There’s no junk information. Nobody’s trying to sell you anything. It’s just great information that you can truly start using today to help increase your bottom line. So if you’re a dental practice owner, a manager, a front desk professional, really whatever, be sure to click on the subscribe button below or to the side or to the above, wherever it is, so that you can keep up with all of our tips, tactics, and strategies.
[00:01:12] Now, today I want to talk about some no nonsense tips and things that you really need to realize and things you need to hear to help successfully market your practice. These are gonna be things that might offend you a little bit. But there are things you need to hear, and it’s stuff that I’m gonna tell you that others may not be prepared to tell you.
[00:01:30] So let’s get to it. You know today in really over the past few years, the typical small business in America, including dental practices, is typically started by someone who knows how to do something pretty well, right? So when you come outta dental school, for instance, hopefully you know how to do dentistry pretty well.
[00:01:50] Right, and this is the same whether you’re a welder or an attorney, or an auto mechanic, whatever it may be, you’ve learned to do something very well, and you kind of get this idea of, you know what, I don’t wanna do this for somebody else anymore. I wanna create my own business, maybe live the American dream, right?
[00:02:08] Well, unfortunately, the thing that you do well typically is not being able to market a business, and that’s why we see an alarming rate of small and medium sized businesses in America fail. It’s because people are good at doing something. But hardly ever is that marketing a business. And this holds very true for dental professionals as well.
[00:02:34] You learn a ton about dentistry in dental school, right? But they don’t spend a whole lot of time in how to run a business, how to hire people, how to market, how to do accounting, right? How to negotiate leases, things like that. And so that’s really at the root of why I want to talk about this stuff so that you can understand it.
[00:02:54] And if this is something that you wanna do on your own, you’re gonna have some real life opportunity to do that. And some advice from somebody that’s been doing this for a long time. So one of the first things I want you to realize, and this may rub some people the wrong way in the dental profession I can deal with that, is you’re a marketing business.
[00:03:14] You are really, every business in America is a marketing business, right? And the sooner you can realize that, and kind of get past yourself a little bit, if you don’t realize that will be the quicker that you can have more success with your practice. I mean, if you think about it this way, do you really even have a business if you’re not reaching out and motivating a patient to want to call you or come to see you?
[00:03:40] You wouldn’t even have a business if you didn’t have patience. Right?
[00:03:43] So you’re doing marketing, but you need to be doing marketing. And a lot of dentists that I know and that we work with are there to truly help people. It’s not about the money to them, right? And it’s not about the business success, it’s that they want to help people have better oral health, right?
[00:03:59] And I truly respect that. But unfortunately, if you don’t market yourself, you’re not gonna be able to help those people either, cuz they’re never gonna know about you. Okay? Now, The failure to grasp this concept is a big reason why some practices fail is that they just kind of think, you know, if I build it, they will come strategy and it’s not really a good strategy.
[00:04:22] Trust me, , so, Kind of to sum up this point is that you don’t really sell dental services and you need to get out of that thinking, right, of root canals and crowns, and same day crowns and dental implants. You know, you don’t sell those services and your marketing strategy needs to realize that as well, what you’re actually selling our solutions to Problem’s.
[00:04:46] Okay. A couple examples of that could be pain relief, right? Toothache, they want to get out of pain, right? Peace of mind. I mean, a lot of you will offer oral cancer screenings, right? Somebody feels a bump or a lump or sees a spot, you know, you can sell them that peace of mind of knowing that it’s probably nothing, right?
[00:05:06] So the sooner that you can realize that you’re not selling root canals and crowns and implants and things like that, the better, because that’s really what’s gonna help develop your marketing. I mean, really, if we think about it, marketing is really getting people who have a specific need or a problem to know, like, and trust you.
[00:05:28] Makes sense, right? I mean that’s, that’s dumbing it down pretty good. But truly, that’s kind of the root of all of this. That’s why when we talk to our clients about things like reactivation campaigns, You know, you can’t just put those on an autopilot and say, oh, we’ve taken care of that for me. Or every once in a while we pick up the phone and call.
[00:05:47] That’s not good enough because you’ve already got people in your database that know you, like you and trust you. These are the ones that you’ve probably spent marketing dollars on in the past to get as a patient, right? These are the people that are most likely to come back to you. And, much cheaper than it would be to go get, a new patient, right?
[00:06:06] I talk a lot about this in last week’s episode, so be sure to check that out. But again, marketing is getting people who have a specific need or problem to know you, like you and trust you, so, Sometimes another thing that I find that I think that dentists really need to hear and I’m seeing more and more of this as competition rises in the dental industry, more people coming outta school and straight to owning their own practice.
[00:06:31] And certainly with the competition of corporate dentistry now invading even small markets throughout the US. I see that instead of some established dentist grasping really the idea of simple marketing concepts, like what I’ve talked about previously in this podcast and what I’m gonna talk about later is that they’ll do something that I call ostrich marketing.
[00:06:57] Okay. And what happens with ostrich marketing is that, They really become overwhelmed with marketing. They’ve never needed marketing in the past. Now it’s more competitive. Now they do need marketing, but they have no idea where to go with it, right? They don’t maybe hesitant to spend money hiring an agency.
[00:07:15] Maybe they don’t wanna hire somebody internally to help them with it. So what happens is that instead of trying to figure that kind of stuff out and grasping some of these marketing concepts, they do nothing. Right? And they actually will just kind of stick their heads in the sand, if you will, and hope. And so that’s why I call it ostrich marketing.
[00:07:33] This is not a good strategy. This is, if this is you and this is describing you, it’s time to get your head out of the sand and jump on board now. It’s going to be an awesome ride for you because even though that we see a potential economy going a little bit sideways you know, now is the time to jump on board of that marketing train.
[00:07:52] Because having a clear and consistent message to your target market is what will get you through bad times. Not cutting back, but actually accelerating through that. Okay, so. And, kind of to that point, the ability of the building, you know, just talking about in building terms to the ability of a building to stand strong in good times and bad is dependent on the strength of the foundation.
[00:08:20] That’s a quote from somebody. I don’t know who it is, but that’s not mine. But the ability to, the building to stand strong in good times and bad is dependent on the strength of the foundation. This holds true with marketing. Your marketing is only gonna be as good as the foundation you put it on. Okay, so let me talk a little bit about that.
[00:08:40] For instance, a tough thing for some practice owners and managers to grasp is that they’re, it doesn’t really matter what you think. In terms of marketing, okay? It doesn’t matter what you like or what you dislike, it’s all about what your target market likes or dislikes. That’s what it’s all about. And so when you go to, like for instance, we get this a lot with websites.
[00:09:03] Our clients, you know, try to wanna make suggestions on, you know, hey, should this be here, or should that be there? No, stop. . This is what we do. We’re experts in this, just like you’re experts in crowns and implants and everything else. Let us do our work here. Right? So it’s it’s not about you or what you personally feel.
[00:09:22] It’s about what that target market feels. Okay? So another thing that you really need to grasp with this marketing stuff and, and building a strong foundation for marketing is that you’ve gotta find a way to be. A dentist. Can’t just be a dentist. You could well be in a market with a hundred other dentists within a 20 mile radius of you, if not closer.
[00:09:45] Okay? You’ve gotta figure out a way to train your front desk personnel, and everybody in the business will talk about that in a second on what your unique selling proposition is, your USP. Because if you can’t clearly demonstrate why you’re different from somebody else, then you have to start competing with price.
[00:10:07] Okay, and price is nowhere that you want to compete as a dental practice. Okay? I can promise you this cuz there’s always gonna be somebody willing to go out of business faster than you. Right. Kind of harsh and to the point, but it’s the truth. So find
[00:10:28] you know, and so when we start marketing campaigns for Dennis, this is where we start. We start with determining who your dream patient is. And I did another podcast all about this a few weeks ago. Check it out. So find out who your patient avatar is. Who your dream patient is, and then find out what makes you unique to them, and then that’s the foundation of your marketing.
[00:10:51] So you’re building in good and bad will always stay strong. Okay.
[00:10:56] 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, increase new patient growth. Just go to kickstart dental.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.
[00:11:23] Chris Pistorius: So the other thing that, that a lot of people get wrong with marketing, in my opinion, and what I’ve seen is that they try to sell stuff. I’m so tired of being on Facebook and seeing a $99 exam or free teeth whitening. And I gotta be honest, we do it as well at our agency if it works, but we’re seeing the effectiveness of that kind of stuff, especially on Facebook.
[00:11:43] Not working. And kind of a sidetrack, but Facebook is more like people on Facebook aren’t necessarily looking for a dentist, right? They’re on there looking at their stories and their friend stories, and all of a sudden they’re interrupted by an ad from a dentist or an auto mechanic or whoever it may be, right?
[00:12:01] So if you offer a $99 special to somebody that’s not even looking for a dentist, sure there’s a small percentage of people are probably gonna collect that and say, okay. But a vast majority of ’em. That’s not what they’re looking for, and they’re annoyed by it, and you’re probably doing a little bit more harm than good, right?
[00:12:18] So instead of like the $99 here, $29 here, and all of your advertising and marketing is all about you, and it’s all about, you know, you need to come in right now and like almost kind of like a used car sales fashion or timeshare sales fashion, right? Get away from that. If anybody’s telling you to do that kind of stuff.
[00:12:39] It’s just not effective in most cases. You really need to educate. Don’t sell, but educate. That’s the way to go about marketing yourself, and that’s what we have the most success with. And so what I mean, success, what I really mean about that is, Get involved in, we get, we try to get our clients involved in podcasting.
[00:13:00] So we create a podcast and a box for our clients and we send it to ’em. It includes like, you know, a micro, a good microphone a good camera but it’s also got topics that you can talk about, tips that you can do. But it kind of gets them ready to start doing a podcast. And so once a month, just, that’s all you need to do.
[00:13:20] Take 20 or 30 minutes and do a podcast on something that you’re an expert in. Implants, mouth guards, pediatric dentistry. I mean, there’s hundreds of topics that we send out to our clients, right? And just do that podcast and then get, push it out there, put it on your website, put it on your social media, put it out in, into Spotify, into Apple Podcasts.
[00:13:40] Okay? And it’s not a matter of, you know, how many people downloaded. It’s a really a credibility and authority play, right? Because people will see this and they’ll see it on your website that, wow, you know, this person’s doing a podcast about dental implants. They must really know what they’re talking about.
[00:13:56] So you build authority, you build credibility with these people. It really tremendously helps and you’re not selling them. You’re being an expert about a certain topic, and it’s a service that you provide. So you’re educating people on a service they’re probably interested in and they wanna know more.
[00:14:13] Who better to tell them about it than the actual doctor themselves? It’s gonna be performing that particular procedure. Makes sense, right? Another great way to do this is eBooks, you know, write short books on different topics and then put those on your website to give to people. All they have to do is fill out a form name.
[00:14:32] Phone number, email address, right? They fill that out and they get a free ebook about implants. You know, the top 10 things that you need to know about implants before you decide to get implants, right? So something like that. EBooks are a great way to go about building credibility and authority. And then also by having somebody fill out a form to get those, you’re getting leads, you’re getting a database full of people that, you know, were interested in dental implant.
[00:14:57] But you can do this for all kinds of topics. Teeth whitening veneers, you know, whatever it may be. And you put those on those specific service pages of your website. And so then you can target specific services and get leads for specific things that you can retarget later in your marketing campaign.
[00:15:14] So, I guess probably one of the last things I wanna leave you with here is another misconception I think with marketing is that it’s a private or personal thing between the owner of the practice and their agency or marketing person, whoever it may be, and that is farthest from the truth if that’s what you’re thinking now.
[00:15:34] Open up your mind a little bit for just a second, okay? I want you to get your entire team involved in marketing, everybody, because think about it. Everybody in the practice that comes into contact with your patients or potential patients is really performing a marketing function. Would you agree? Right?
[00:15:52] There’s some sort of marketing going on with every interaction that somebody from your practice has. Okay, so not just the owner of the practice or the manager or even just the front desk person needs to understand the marketing and your unique selling proposition and who your dream patients are, right?
[00:16:10] The whole team needs to know this, everybody involved. And another bonus tip here is that once you involve the whole team in your marketing and understanding what the strategy is and what your views are and what your, where you want to be in 3, 5, 10 years. The more you involve those people in that, the more they’re gonna feel involved and they’re gonna be more loyal to you, and they’re gonna stay longer and they’re gonna feel like they’re really part of a.
[00:16:35] So start involving everybody into your marketing. One way to do this, and we have our clients do this sometimes is create a marketing round table and maybe you meet once a week as a team, kind of an all hands meeting, everybody you want involved in marketing. And you talk about what your strategy is.
[00:16:50] You talk about what’s working, you get the front desk feedback on maybe what’s not working right? You discover trends and things like that. Okay? And front desk, man, I can’t, I can’t talk. More strongly about the front desk. They are really the bread and butter of marketing campaigns because whether you spend a thousand dollars a month in marketing or $20,000 a month, it’s really gonna come down to how great that front desk person is or whoever’s handling those incoming calls and incoming leads.
[00:17:18] Okay? So you’ve gotta make sure you’re continually training them. Don’t just send them through a training course 10 years ago and think all is good cuz things change rapidly. Right. And so typically we put our clients through our own front desk training that we program that we have online. It teaches them all about a front desk, but it also teaches them specifically about how to talk to potential new patients about your unique selling proposition, things like that.
[00:17:44] So, I’m gonna wrap it up for this one. I’ve got a lot more that we can go through and I’ll definitely continue to share in future podcasts. But I think the bottom line here is that, you know, open up your mind to marketing cuz it’s not what it was 10 years ago, it’s not what it was 20 years ago and heck, it’s not even what it was a year ago.
[00:18:02] Right? It’s constantly changing. Strategies change. You have, to have the ability to adjust, adapt, and overcome. Okay, so open up your minds. I promise you these things that I’ve been talking about are actively working in the market right now in all different size of practices and all different kinds of specialties.
[00:18:21] So open your mind a little bit. Start doing some of these things. These are things that you can start doing today to really have a dramatic impact on the bottom line of your practice. So as always, my name’s Chris Pistorius. I’m the owner of Kickstart Dental Marketing. We are an agency that does a lot of the stuff that we just talked about for dental practices that don’t want to have to do it themselves, right?
[00:18:42] So if you have some interest in, in wanting to maybe get some help or if you just want some free advice from me, just go to our website. Kickstart dental.com. There’s a free strategy session button right at the top. Just click that, fill out a little bit of basic information. I do all of those strategy sessions myself, and I’d be more than happy to give you a lot of great advice specifically about your practice.
[00:19:05] And don’t forget to subscribe to this so that you can be alerted when I deliver brand new podcasts for you. This, oh, so this has been the No BS Dental Marketing podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I look forward to seeing you next time.
[00:19:17] Narrator: Thanks for joining us this week on The Dental Marketing Podcast.
[00:19:20] 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. In this 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.
[00:19:41] If you are ready to grow your practice, then you might want to schedule a free strategy session with us. Just go to kickstart dental.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.
[00:20:04] Online.
