Effective Digital Marketing Strategies

Transcription – Effective Digital Marketing Strategies Presentation

[music] Now we’re going to talk about something that you all are very interested in, which are called new patients. Now we know that not all new patients are created equal. We know that we like to focus a lot on referrals because referrals already trust you and they are coming because of who you are. Well, there’s three things– and some of you paid attention to the training I did not too long ago. There’s three things that really emphasize on referrals and on getting a quality of new patient, and that’s relationship with the people you have, your reputation in the community, and of course, retention of the existing patients. So we have sought long and hard. There’s nothing in your books. This is just for you to observe and write down and be a sponge, okay? We have fought long and hard to honestly find a marketing arm in dentistry that was a legitimate organization, okay? I like to work with people who practice what they preach. So, as you know, your doctor– whoever answers the phone and the fax machine, you know that you get inundated with scammer companies all day, every day, telling you that you need a better website. “We can do this. We can push a button and make patients rain.” And they’re all liars, okay? I know so many dentists. They have 3, 4, 5 websites still being worked on over the last 30 years and not one of them’s finished yet. All right, it’s very important to have somebody who follows your personal philosophy and customizes the way you get new patients with the type of vision that you have for the practice. It’s not enough to say, “new patients.” You have to have the deliberate strategies.

So when you’re closing out $20,000 a day with one and a half new patients a day or whatever the number was, when you’re hitting these kind of numbers, $100,000 months, some of you in here, two, three hundred thousand dollars. Then sometime you have to stand back and say, “Well, what would happen if I cranked on the faucet and just drove in a lot of A patients?” So you’re not going to just cherry-pick A patient here, A patient there. No, it doesn’t work that way. You have to grow the volume of patients and then start screening and selecting out of that. So in order to find the best A patients, you have to have more supply. So today we invited the very special guest and the creators of the most concierge style marketing in all of dentistry, called My Dental Agency. They’re going to educate you, I think on that screen right there. And they’re going to share some specific tips and strategies that you can be doing and using and things that you need to be aware of. Because how people perceive you, is determining how they accept your dentistry. So I want to welcome Jackie and Shawn and they’re going to spend some time up here and they’re giving you some very powerful things to help grow the practice. A big hand for my friends. [applause]

Thanks so much, Scott. I don’t think I could have asked for a better introduction so we’re so thankful that Scott and the Dental Success Today team asked us to come out here and talk to you guys today and just really appreciative. We certainly appreciate the opportunity. We have a lot of the same philosophies that Scott does and believe in a lot of the same things and we’re just really thankful and humbled to be here. So with that said, I’ll kick it off to Jackie to get started.

So in 2013, about three years ago almost to this day, I woke up one morning and like most red-blooded Americans, the first thing I do is I roll over, go to grab my phone, and check my emails, right? That’s what most of you do. Or like Kevin would say, most millennials. So I open my phone, check my email, and I see an email from my dentist wishing me a happy birthday. And I’m super excited, right? Who isn’t excited to get a birthday email? Not to mention, my dentist before this time had never done any marketing. No online marketing, never connected with his patients outside of the practice. Being in marketing, I’m super excited. Finally, he’s entering the digital world. I’m pretty sure this dentist didn’t even have a website at the time. So I sit up in bed. I’m excited to see this. Pull up the email and open it. Read the opening line, “Dear Bubba.” I’d be lying a little if I didn’t say I laughed. This is the legit email that I got. We didn’t mess with this. This is the email. So, of course, that’s a mistake, right? It’s an oversight. It happens. It happens to everybody. But what if I were a newer patient? What if I had just spent thousands of dollars doing some cosmetic work with my dentist? Do you think I’d feel like he cared about me? But what if he actually connected on a more regular basis outside of his practice? I saw him online, I saw him through email, I saw him on Facebook, and this happened. It wouldn’t carry as much weight. Truly the moral of the story is, connect with your patients on a more regular basis. Try and connect with them online. Show them that you’re real. Show them your personality outside of your practice. And for heaven’s sake, stop giving your staff more work as if they’re a marketing professional and asking them to design and send emails like this.

So at this point in the presentation, most traditional agencies would tell you how great they are, how much experience they have, probably use a ton of buzz words to make you guys think that they’re super smart. But really what matters to us is why we do what we do. So we believe in thinking differently from mass-marketing groups and standing up against corporate dentistry. We do this by helping independent practices build genuine relationships with patients, create and manage positive online reputations, and retain their current patients. We achieve all this by creating custom, relatable, personalized, and distinctly different campaigns that reflect the needs and personalities of each individual practice. Really to sum that up, we give a shit about you and your practice. So today we’re going to be talking about positioning your website for success, building strong, lasting relationships with your patients, taking control of your online reputation, and discussing a comprehensive, integrated approach.

I really like this quote, “You can’t build a great building on a weak foundation. You must have a solid foundation if you’re going to have a strong superstructure.” You can’t grow your practice without a solid marketing strategy and the foundation is a strong website. I know we had a chance to check out most of y’all’s websites, if not everybody’s in this room, so I know that I don’t need to express how important it is to have a website. But one-third of patients say their choice of dentist is greatly influenced by the quality, quality of the practice website. So let me describe to you guys what you’re seeing. These are two different, and I’m using the word different very loosely, two different websites, two different dentists, designed and developed by a marketing company, not our marketing company. What do you think a prospective patient would see when they see these two websites? Clearly, they may not see them back to back, but you could see here that these are the exact same websites, with a few differences, just a few differences. And mostly the difference is the name and the location. But do you think that’s showing the practice personality? If they’re clearly the same website, but two different dentists, how are you showing your prospective patients who you are? You’re using stock imagery, has nothing to do with you and your practice. Probably if we dove pretty deep, I bet you there’s the same message across the board when looking at these. Same thing, this is not showing who you are. You want to connect with your prospective patients before they even pick up the phone. This is not telling your prospective patient who you guys are as a practice.

It’s really important that you show your practice personality using real images, professional, but real images, ones that they know come from you guys. It’s important to connect with them and show them what they should expect before they even pick up the phone to book an appointment. When you’re looking online, you’re going out to a new restaurant in a new area, maybe you’re looking at a resort, taking your family, don’t you want to feel some type of connection? Or do you want to see a bunch of stock images? If I’m going to a resort, I’m spending a lot of money, right, and I’m looking, and all I see are these gorgeous models sitting by a random pool, maybe it’s theirs, maybe it’s not. I can’t tell. I see a bunch of stock food photos. I don’t even see what their buffet looks like. Now, yes, we want to use real nice images, right, but I want to feel connected. I want to make sure that the people that are going to be at that resort are just like me. They’re going to look like me. Maybe I’m going to have fun with those individuals. Same thing goes for your practice, right? You want them to see you and your staff. Make sure that if you’re looking at a certain target audience, if you’re focusing on higher-end, quality patients, you want to make sure that they know that your office looks really nice. Your staff is friendly-looking.

I can’t emphasize enough how much patient relationship or retention is to your marketing strategy. We feel extremely– we feel strongly that your marketing strategy should include your current patients. I guarantee you most marketing companies that you talk to don’t focus on current patients. They’re always talking about, “I’m going to get your phone ringing. I’m going to bring you in new patients. You’re going to be flooded with new patients.” What did Kevin say before? Just bringing in 60 new patients a month? Are they even good patients? Are they patients you want? We really have to focus on the right patients, but also your current patients. We know that you can only see your patients maybe a couple times a year. Maybe you’re seeing them a few more if they’re doing some bigger cases. But I’m pretty sure I heard a lot of you say that you rush through, even when you’re talking to them, right? So why not enhance your efforts? Everything that Scott and Kevin are teaching you here, and you’re doing in your practice, why aren’t you enhancing that outside your practice? Taking what you’re doing and getting in front of your current patients outside the practice? One great way is email marketing. Email is not dead. Now, it’s not for everyone. Not every patient is going to love getting emails, but it is not dead. They may be flooded with emails. That’s okay. But if you’re consistent in staying in front of them and sharing information that they care about, they’re going to open it. They’re going to read it. Email’s a great way to stay top of mind.

So about five years ago, I traveled a ton for work. I was gone most of the week and the last thing that I remembered to do when I was home was book my dental appointment. Clearly, I’m in the dental industry, been in the dental industry for over a decade. I know the importance of dental health. When I was home, I’m a little ashamed to say this, I didn’t remember to book my– and I needed some cosmetic work done. It just was not top of mind for me. When I was home, I was busy and I was getting other things done, and I couldn’t book my appointment when I was in the office, because I traveled so much. I’m sure you guys hear this from your patients. I know I’m not alone. Most of your patients are busy. But if my dentist would have sent me an email every once in a while, not calling me Bubba [laughter], I actually would have remembered. Maybe I wouldn’t remember at the exact same time that I got that email but it would have been top of mind. I would have been more apt to want to pick up the phone. Same thing with referrals. Stay in front of your patients. They’re going to be more apt to talk about you if you’re putting stuff in front of them on on a more regular basis. Email marketing is a great way to do targeted emails. So we know that you guys treatment plans for these bigger cases. We know that a good percentage of them aren’t moving forward right away. Now, we know that some of them, clearly, they’re never going to move forward, right? We know that a percentage are never going to move forward. But we know some just aren’t ready to make the decision then. But when they leave your office, they probably forget or maybe they just put it off. Why not do a targeted email to that segment?

So you treatment plan 50 patients over the last 6 months for Invisalign or an implant case or big cosmetic work. Let’s take those 50 patients and get back in front of them with an email. Talk about the importance, maybe incentivize them to move forward or just simply just remind them by sending them an email, and really enhancing your efforts outside the practice. So everything that you guys talked about this morning about education, right? Why not educate them when they’re outside of the practice through email? It’s extremely important, just like with the website, stop sending these templated emails. We hear all the time, “Well, I’m sending emails on occasion.” Your staff is selecting from a library of content. “Let’s send this Invisalign one. Let’s grab this cheesy stock photo and send it off.” Right? And you’re done. Stop doing that. Clearly, their email is busy as it is. Make it personal for them. Just add a little bit of your personality into it. Include content that your patients want to read. Talk about the benefits and not just the features. So you get a new associate, right? Instead of talking about how great that new associate is, where they went to school, who they are. That’s all great stuff, right? But what does it mean to your patient? Does it mean that that associate is bringing in a new skill set that your patients are going to care about? Does it mean that you now have extended hours? Maybe you’re open on a Saturday? That’s what your patients care about. They don’t care maybe who they are and that’s all the email is about. Let’s talk about what matters to them.

Tease the content by adding a read more link and sending them to your blog. So not only are you getting your patients on your website, and we can’t take for granted that we think that our patients know everything that we do, right? So you’re getting them onto your website. You’re educating them. But then it’s also a great way to see what patients are engaging. We’re able to see which patients are clicking the read more. Why not target those individuals? If 10 people, 10 patients read more about implant work, let’s target those individuals. Or maybe just tell your staff members, “Hey, these 10 patients, we know that from our email they were reading more. When they come in here, they may be interested in this.” [inaudible] we can kind of see what email, and what type of content they’re engaging with. Include links to your website, [inaudible] buttons or forms, your social media. Ask them to follow you in social media. And make sure that your email looks really good on mobile. That’s where we know, just like I said, most people wake up in the morning, that’s where they’re looking at all their email. So we gave you guys a couple examples. Obviously, with the red X is what we see often, and probably what you guys have seen a lot. Templated, right? It just looks like crap, honestly. But that’s what a lot of offices are using. Your patients know when they get that, that it’s not personal, that it’s not– why should you even give them a reason to be interested? It just doesn’t even look good. Use real images. Put a nice button in there. Stay connected. Follow on Facebook. Do the read more links.

This was a case study from one of our doctors that did targeted email. There’s 41 patients that never moved forward with adult orthodontics. It wasn’t Invisalign. We sent two pretty simple emails. Five of those patients just from the email moved forward with treatment resulting, for this doctor, in a net profit of $8,500. Just one campaign. Just one campaign. We talk to a lot of practices and there’s a percentage of practices that will tell us, ”You know, I’m not on social media. I don’t even get it. I don’t get Facebook. I don’t have a Facebook.” That’s great, but your patients do. And your patients want to engage with you there. You may not think that they do but they do. I know that some of you are active on Facebook and what you’re posting is great. I know there’s some Michigan fans in here. There a practice that–? Yeah, saw you guys. That post stuff like that, they want to see, they’re going to connect with you more, right? The point of social media is to build those lasting relationships, to deepen the relationship, to make them feel connected with you. Talk about things, about where you’re going to get continuing education. Talk about things just like that, posting about sports teams and things that are happening in your practice. You’d be surprised. But the point is to get them to engage with you and then you’d be surprised about, organically, they just start posting to your page. We didn’t ask for that mom to post that tooth fairy picture. She did it on her own and tagged us. So guess what? All her friends and family now see where she goes. Hello. I mean, people want to feel connected. When they feel like you care then they’re posting stuff on their own or engaging with you, and you’re getting in front of their friends and family. That’s a referral source just by posting to social media.

When you have a birthday, share it. Look at how many people wanted to wish Gladys a happy birthday. Just like I was saying, when you can leverage your patients to get in front of their friends and family on Facebook, it’s a great referral source. So when we run an ad and use the patients that are following you today, their friends and family see that Jackie has liked Wang and Cortes Dental. I’m going to be more apt to follow that page. If I’m in the market for a dentist, I’m more apt to want to pick up the phone because I know that my friend has also liked the page. Here’s an example, again, this dentist at a continue education course for implants. Post things that are real. Show your patients what’s happening outside of the practice. As you can see on the right-hand side, some of this templated post that some marketing companies will tell you that they pushed to your page, you can see that that video at the very bottom, that could have been a great video. But there’s absolutely nothing there. There’s just a link. Why is anyone going to click on that? You’re not even enticing them. Or my favorite at the very top there, just pushing your reviews over and over and over again. That’s what people love to see in their newsfeed. They don’t.

So Jackie’s talked to you a lot about how you can build and deepen relationships with your patients and I want to take a little bit and talk to you about how you can improve your online reputation, something that’s really, really important and that a lot of your existing patients and referral sources and patients that are being referred to you are seeing, and certainly new patients. So what you want to be thinking about is, what are people seeing when they search for you guys online? If someone Googles the name of your practice, or the name of you specifically, what are they seeing? What comments are they seeing? What reviews are they seeing? What about your competitors? How many of you guys here, by a show of hands, have had a negative review posted about your practice? It’s okay. It happens to almost everybody. How many? A handful. Quite a few, almost every table. So that one negative review can have a drastic effect in how you’re perceived online to people that don’t know who you are and that maybe have found out about you through so many different sources, right? It’s really important that you have some sort of proactive strategy to be generating positive reviews on a routine basis. It’s really, really important because without that, you’re just kind of relying on whatever’s going to happen is going to happen, right? And what’s going to happen is a patient is going to have an insurance claim rejected, or something that’s totally out of your control, but they’re going to post a bad review about your practice, right? Something that you had absolutely no control over, and then maybe someone thinks it’s not a good practice, when we all know, right, everyone here, that’s not the case.

So you really want to be thinking about how you can do that. And I’ll share some tips with you in a little bit here. You also want to be thinking about how you can handle those negative reviews, so I’ll talk to you a little bit about that as well. So reviews are really important. There have been a ton of studies done on this. This one in particular, which is pretty recent, found that 70% of patients said that online ratings and reviews informs their choice of dentist. So that’s 70%. That’s a huge percentage. And you know that everywhere these patients look today, they’re seeing reviews. If they’re looking at your Facebook page, if they’re searching for you on Google, Healthgrades, Zocdoc, even Yelp. Some people look for dentists on Yelp. I don’t personally, but there’s reviews there, right? Not only that, but patients are willing to pay more for practices that have really good reviews, right? So other studies have been done and found that people are willing to pay up to 99% more for an excellent rated service, rather than one with a good rating. So again, these reviews are just terribly, terribly important. But the really key point here is that if you have a plethora of really, really positive online reviews, and your new patients are reading them before they’re picking up the phone and calling, think about how much more trust those patients have in you. They’ve read countless and countless stories about other patients who have had just wonderful, terrific experiences at their practice. The already have some level of trust and faith in you and they haven’t even picked up the phone. So we are building a relationship with them and building some trust and authority with them before they have even picked up the phone which is really, really important. They’re more likely to trust you, have faith in you, to trust that the guidance that you give them, right? More likely to accept treatment plans and more importantly, less likely to fall out the back door, right, because they’re seeing the dentist that everybody else likes and that everyone else trusts and loves, right? It certainly couldn’t be better at the dentist down the street. So there is many, many ways that your online reputation can help you.

We talk to a lot of dentists who say “Well, I don’t need to worry about my online reputation. I grow my practice via word of mouth.” But the fact of the matter is that if I just moved to town and my friend Jackie says, “Hey Shawn, I think you should go see Dr. Smith” when I’m looking for a new dentist, you better believe I’m going to Google him before I pick up the phone and call. She’s not going to give me a phone number in 2016, right? She’s going to know or expect that I’m resourceful enough to search them on Google, right? And so I’m going to read those reviews. And if Jackie can tell me that Dr. Smith is just the greatest dentist in the world, but if I see no reviews or maybe just one or two reviews or Heaven forbid a recent bad review, I might do more research, right? And maybe now I’m not calling Dr. Smith. So even if you are relying on word of mouth or that’s something that is important to your practice, you really want to make sure that you have a solid online review strategy. So how can we do this? Well, there’s a lot of different ways. And one way is just putting some really simple signage in your offices. You can put these in your lobbies, on tables in your lobbies, on check-out counters. Not only do those signs help patients remember that they should– maybe a happy patient that’s sitting waiting, maybe they’ll post a good review because they’ve had really good experiences, when they’re checking out they’ll be reminded, but it also reminds your staff members, right? And you guys who are actually working there that, maybe if you come across a really happy patient, it might remind you to maybe ask them to leave a review about their experience.

Email is another great way. I know Jackie already talked a little bit about email, but it’s so easy. It will take you three or four seconds when a patient leaves to send them an email and say, “We hope you had a great experience today. Our online reputation is really important to us. We would really appreciate it if you’d leave a review,” and make it really easy, right? Just give them the link to your Facebook page or your Google profile or wherever it is that you want to build those reviews, right? I would start with whatever platform you need the most help on. Finally, you have to be monitoring what reviews are being posted about you on these websites. It’s inevitable that negative reviews are going to get posted about you if they haven’t already. For most of you, it already has. But it’s going to happen, and it’s going to continue to happen because people kind of feel like they’re shielded by the computer. They get home and they’re enraged and they bang out on their keys how enraged they are and they feel better. And so you really have to be monitoring that because it’s important that you respond to those reviews in a way that shows you care and that you want to make it right because you really can’t delete these reviews online. They’re there forever, right? And so instead of just having a negative review that someone’s mad about whatever their experience was, now there’s a review and a response that at least shows that the practice cares. So now if I’m looking at that review later on, I at least see, “Well, they tried to make it right,” right? “They at least had an attempt,” right? “These are honest, caring people,” so really, really important.

Outside of your reviews, you want to be thinking about where your practice is listed online today. Likely you don’t know everywhere your practice is listed online because there’s so many of these websites that are listing your practice’s information and never telling you about it. Even popular sites like Google and Facebook will list your practice, right? You may open your practice today, and a month from now you’re on Google, and you never listed yourself on Google. And so you really want to be cognizant of how you’re listed there, and so just keep that in mind. The reason it’s so important is because you want to be in control of how your practice is listed on those sites, right? So you want to be in control of the photos that are there. You want to make sure your hours of operation are right. You want to make sure your description of the services and the products that you offer are right. All that information really needs to be in sync, and you want to be in full control over that to make sure it’s correct and that it’s really communicating your unique practice personality, something that Jackie talked a lot about already. So again, you really want to do that research. So if you don’t know today, when you get home or go back to your hotel room tonight or Monday at the office, search for yourselves and see. Go through the first couple pages on Google and see what you find. You’ll probably be surprised at some of the places where you’re listed and how you’re represented there. And it’s not too hard to fix those things.

So I want to talk to you a little bit about marketing strategy in general. We talk to a lot of practices who are– in the past, they’ve tried almost everything, right? So they might have run a pay-per-click campaign in the past, or they might have done a social media Facebook campaign, or they might have done search engine optimization, or they might have done email marketing. And a lot of them say that “Oh, it doesn’t work,” or, “It’s never worked for me.” And more often than not, what we run into is practices that are only doing one, two, very rarely, three of those things at a time. And usually, when they’re doing more than one of them at a time they have different people or different agencies or vendors that are doing those things. And so there’s no real unified strategy behind them. None of them are talking to each other, they’re not integrated, and of course they don’t have the success that they want, right? Because all these people are just kind of doing these things, and no one’s talking to each other, and there’s really no strategy behind it. So at my dental agency, we believe that the only strategy is a comprehensive one. And that means that we’re firing on all cylinders all the time. So we’re not just doing a website redesign and a pay-per-click campaign, or we’re not just doing a Facebook campaign. We’re doing all these things. And the reason we’re doing all of them is because when we integrate all of them together, the results we see are exponentially greater than what they would be otherwise.

So just to talk a little bit about that, think if someone sees a review, right? Or I referred Jackie to go see my dentist, right? She Googles. She sees great reviews, hopefully. She goes to the website, but she’s busy, right? She’s traveling, like she says. So she doesn’t call today. We know that we have to get someone to your websites usually at least three to four times before they’re going to pick up the phone and call. They’re never going to call the first time they see that. It might be late at night, who knows, right? So now that they’ve seen your website, tomorrow if they’re reading an article on CNN.com and they see a small ad that reminds them about your practice. The next day they’re on Facebook and one of the first things they see when they log into Facebook is your practice’s Facebook page and an ad to follow you there on Facebook. Now when they go to that Facebook page, right, if you’re doing Facebook properly and you have a sound Facebook strategy, they’re going to see your practice personality. They’re going to see how fun you guys are, and what you’re doing in the office, and how many happy patients you have. So now think about– they also might see that some of their friends and family like you guys. So think how all these things together can affect the results of that new patient, right? They’re much more likely to pick up the phone and call. They’re not just seeing some ad now and you’re unknown to them. They almost kind of feel like they’ve built a rapport with you and they don’t even know you yet. So this is why we believe that this is truly, truly the only way to market your practice and to see the best results. Can you have some success if you just do a Facebook campaign? Sure. If you just do a pay-per-click campaign, if you just redesign your website? Sure, you’ll have some level of success, right? But the success you deserve, you will never achieve if you just do those things. You truly have to be doing all those things.

So it’s probably overwhelming for you guys to think about, “My gosh, where do I begin?” right? “I don’t do digital marketing. I have no idea how this works. I don’t have the time to research my practice online. I don’t have time to do this.” Or you just might not know where to start, right? And so today, we’re going to offer you some help there. And so we put together what we call our Practice Evolution Master Plan, and what this truly is, is a very deep dive into how your practice is positioned online today, an analysis of what your competitors are doing in your local market. And that truly gives us a really good idea for where the best areas for opportunity are for your practice. This is not a quote of services. This is not a proposal. This is usually about a 35-40 page document that not only outlines all of our research, but sets a totally custom strategy to achieve your unique goals. So again, everything we do is custom. All the practices we work with have many different goals and objectives that they want to achieve, so this is completely, completely custom to you guys. With that said, I do want to thank Scott and the DST team for having us out here today. We’re really appreciative and I hope you guys took something away from this. [music]