Leveraging Digital Channels for Dental Practice Growth

Planning Your Dental Practice's 2025 Digital Dental Marketing Plan

Overview

• The podcast discusses the importance of planning a comprehensive digital dental marketing plan for 2025.
• Emphasis is placed on enhancing digital experiences, utilizing automation and AI, and ensuring HIPAA compliance.
• Three overarching themes to keep in mind: enhanced digital experiences, automation, and HIPAA compliance.

Assumptions

• Focus on UX website design, clear calls to action, and personalized content.
• SEO strategies include on-page optimization, off-page strategies, content creation, and video integration.
• Paid ads offer hyper-focused targeting and effectiveness in driving key services.
• Conversion strategies involve sales processes, phone skills, automation, and online booking.
• Reviews and referrals are crucial for building reputation and attracting new patients.
• Loyalty and re-care strategies include reminders, database reactivation, and social media engagement.

Testing Strategy

• Utilize Google Business Profile page optimization for local SEO.
• Implement strategies for reviews, referrals, loyalty, and re-care to engage patients.
• Ensure personalized and engaging content on social media and newsletters.
• Consider automation for reminders, database reactivation, and engaging patients.
• Focus on enhancing digital experiences, leveraging automation, and ensuring HIPAA compliance for successful digital marketing in 2025.

Dentist Spotlight:
Robson Crossing Dentistry - Dentist in Flowery Branch GA
Find them on Google - Dentist Flowery Branch

For 12+ years, Flow New Patient Marketing has had a simple mission… to bring you as many quality new patients as possible. We believe in ensuring that when a potential patient needs a provider, you are the one they find, choose, and set an appointment with. We Get You More *Profitable* New Patients!

• No long-term contracts.
• Our clients average an 8X return on investment.
• Personalized, non-corporate approach.
• 5-star reviewed.

Find us:

Website: https://newpatientsflow.com

Google: https://g.co/kgs/zqWTc5a

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newpatientsflow

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/newpatientsflow/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/newpatientsflow

Transcript

00:01 Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the DentalFlow Podcast. As always, I am your host, Benjamin Suggs, and we are recording this in December of 2024.
00:12 The holidays are upon us, the kids are getting out of school, and if you're a parent like me, that means that you're going to have a lot less time to focus on your business for the next few weeks.
00:22 But it also means that a lot less people are working, and there's more opportunity to take an overarching view of the businesses and dental profession.
00:33 So, given that it's December 2024, there's no better time to talk about the subject of planning your dental practices 2025 digital dental marketing plan.
00:47 So, we're going to go through that. What a comprehensive digital dental marketing plan could look like, and really focus on all the areas of your practice where you could be, and should be utilizing digital channels.
01:05 to really drive those critical KPIs, those key performance indicators, uh, for your practice. Things like your production, things like your new patient numbers, your patient recall, your treatment acceptance, all that good stuff.
01:21 So we're going to take a very digital focus on those things and identify opportunities for dental practices to leverage in the new year.
01:33 So, before we dive into it, I do want to say, like, there's three kind of overviews. Overarching themes that I'd like you to keep in mind as we go through this.
01:41 Uh, the first one is I really like you to think about as we talk about these little things and channels and things you can be utilizing is think about enhanced digital experiences.
01:53 That is a term that we have started using to, when we look at, let's just use a real world example.
01:59 Let's look at a text or an email that goes out from your practice to remind somebody of an upcoming hygiene appointment, or even one that's trying to remind them to schedule an upcoming hygiene appointment in your practice.
02:16 So instead of just sending a text or an email that's very plain, why not record a video of your dental hygienist personally inviting that person to your practice? And it doesn't have to be, you know, Hey Dave, I want you to come in and see me again.
02:30 I'm your hygienist. It can be just a general video that is sent out to all the patients that come in through that hygienist chair.
02:38 Uh, and it's more personalized. So really think about how you're how you can create enhanced digital experiences by personalizing, uh, all of these little channels that we're talking about.
02:51 Second, I really want you to think about how you can utilize automation and all of these areas. Uh, automation, we, we know we never want to fully replace human interaction.
03:02 It's very important in a dental practice to have human interaction and it's more important in some areas than others. Obviously treatment acceptance requires a heavy human interaction.
03:13 Uh, and. Uh, uh, phone skills, another heavy human interaction, but there are a lot of ways that we can leverage automation, uh, to, to enhance our ability to succeed in these areas.
03:30 Uh, another thing I want you to think about is AI, and I would kind of lump that in with automation, but how can AI, uh, help you enhance these communications that you're sending out and having with these patients of yours?
03:43 Um, the third thing is, uh, and more of a, it's not as sexy, but it is HIPAA compliance. So, as you think about all these communications to, uh, existing patients, new patients, all the things that are leaving your practice, really think about being very protective of your data.
04:02 Umm, I'll give you an example, like, I've had several of our dental clients approach us and say, hey, can you start sending out, uh, communications to our patient base for reactivation and things like that?
04:16 And, honestly, if I were worked with plumbers, I'd have no problem doing that. But, with a dental practice, that requires them to take their database of information, transfer it to us, so that we can use it in our platform to send out these reminders, emails, things like that.
04:32 That's something you need to be very, very, uh, uhh, uhh aware of and be careful about is keeping your data in-house as much as you can and protecting it by utilizing systems that come in and leverage the data in-house versus pushing your data out.
04:47 So, uh, those are the things that I wanted to point out as we- jump into this, and now we're going to start with our number one area that you should be focused on.
04:58 And before I do that, uh, if you're listening to this on an audio podcast platform, we do have a video up, uh, on YouTube.
05:06 We'll have a link. If to it in the notes, and if you can't see that, you can always just go to YouTube and search for dental flow podcast, and uh, we'll pop up and you can watch the video there.
05:17 So if you want to see, see what we're talking about at the same time versus just listening to it. So number one, UX website design.
05:26 UX is a term we use that is user experience. So, what I want you to think about is think about your own website.
05:37 Your own dental website that it- And I really would like you to take a look at it, honestly. If you have a few to hours over this holiday, take a break and take a look at it and ask yourself some questions about that website.
05:51 Uh, first and foremost, is it a- a good representation of your business, of your practice. So I know you've spent a lot of time, a lot of resources, uh, really building out the practice to be a certain way on the inside, to look a certain way to Thank you.
06:11 Uh, you know, to attract a certain type of patient. So really think about, does that website reflect what you've built internally?
06:19 That's number one. Number two is, does your website really have clear, concise calls to action? Is it re- really asking people to take a next step when they are viewing the website, which is to call you, or to fill out your form, or to, you know, do your AI chatbot, whatever it is.
06:38 Uh, are you using offers? Uh, honestly, if you really want to focus your website to be conversion-focused, offers are a very powerful tool to do that.
06:50 Even if your offer is just a free console for cosmetic or implants, or a free second opinion, uh, you know, really consider using some- type of offer, especially one for people who don't have insurance.
07:04 If I come to your website and I don't have dental insurance, you know, hey, there's a good chance I haven't seen the dentist in a few years.
07:09 Uh, so there's a good chance that when I do come into your office, there's gonna be opportunities for treatment, because I haven't been going- consistently to a dentist because I don't have insurance.
07:18 But think about giving that person some kind of a cash special offer upfront to get them into that practice for the first time.
07:26 Now you don't want to do something that you're gonna lose money on. That doesn't make sense. But you want to do something that- will cover enough of your costs to have that person come in for the opportunity to give them that comprehensive exam and see what's going on in their mouth and what you would
07:44 be able to fix for them. Uh, next I want you to really think about- personalization. Do you have personalized photos?
07:51 Do you have personalized videos? Videos are becoming very powerful for conversion on websites. Uh, more and more people are coming to these dental websites on mobile devices now.
08:02 Uh, we- you know in rural areas, sometimes we'll see 90% of the people that visit our website are on a mobile device.
08:10 So, really think about, uh, how you could leverage video because we know there's statistics out there that say on a mobile device, only 20% of people- will even read a lot of block text anymore.
08:23 They may read some bullet points and things like that, but they're not gonna read paragraphs and paragraphs with text. But if you have video there that can give them a quick one-minute overview of the information they want to know, you have a much higher chance of converting them.
08:36 And they're staying on your website longer than they would have had their not been a video for them to watch.
08:43 So really think about, uh, how you can personalize with video content, with personalized photos, your website, to create more- more of a connection with people that makes them want to pick up the phone and call you.
08:56 I just mentioned mobile, it's incredibly important. So really think about pulling out your phone and looking at your website all the on your mobile phone as well.
09:06 How does it look? Is it formatted right? Does it pull up quickly? Uh, does it make sense? Is it hard to read?
09:13 These are all things that you need to think about given that we know now that more people are coming to these websites and mobile devices.
09:20 Then are on like a desktop or a mobile, oh, sorry, a desktop or a laptop computer. So really think about your website.
09:27 Is it conversion focused? Is it designed to convert? Ask yourself those tough questions and, and if not, plan out what you can do.
09:36 . . . to make it better. It's not always going to be on your website designer to do that, honestly. I, I have clients that have been clients for a decade who have never sent us one personalized photo or one video or anything like that.
09:48 So some of that goes back to you and what you can do in your practice to personal. . Okay. Now we're going to jump into number two, which is a very commonly known term, SEO or search engine optimization.
10:03 So do you have a plan for optimizing your website for organic search? Organic search, uh, means two different things. It's local SEO, which is, are you showing up on that map?
10:19 That is the most important thing for general practices. Honestly, like, you know, you don't necessarily want. You're dental practice in Wisconsin showing up on searches that people are making in California.
10:31 You want your dental practice showing up for searches being made right there in your town in Wisconsin. So, local SEO should be your primary, uh, folk- is when you're talking about search engine optimization, showing up on the map, showing up locally for local searches.
10:49 So, really think about how you can localize your strategy for your practice. There's three main areas. Actually, we'll see four as videos.
10:57 One now. Uh, one is your on-page SEO. That's more technical stuff. So, uh, is your website, uh, technically built the right way to make it easy for search engines to read, categorize, and figure out exactly what it is that you do.
11:13 Or your services laid out in a way that Google knows that you offer, uh, zoom teeth whitening, if someone's searching for zoom teeth whitening in your town.
11:22 Do they know that you can place implants and not just, uh, you know, restore them, uh, if you, That is a service you're trying to sell, and that's what people are searching for in your town.
11:33 That's your on-page element, the technical SEO part. The second part is off-page. So this is creating, uh, links, backlink citations, uh, from big, Directories, uh, basically sending more, uh, we call it link juice.
11:51 So domain authority link juice to your website by getting links in other places on the internet and having them link to your page.
12:00 Uh, you can do it through P-O- Our releases, you can do it through, uh, backlink requests, guest blogging, uh, going to a charitable organization and making a donation and giving the backlink to your website.
12:12 There's many, many ways to do this. And you want to look for good, high domain authority rep- reputable links to have them link back to your page.
12:22 Next thing is content. So, Google's putting a big focus on what they call topical authority, which means, do, are you producing content on your website that shows that you are a- We'll see in the next video.
12:34 The authority on the topic of dentistry, or the authority on the topic of dental implants or cosmetic dentistry, veneers, whatever it is that you want to be doing more of in your practice, you want to make sure you're developing content that shows that you're the authority in your- town for that service
12:53 . So think about developing blog content, uhh, you know, things that you can, uhh, you know, put out into newsletters, put- I'm sorry, put out into PR releases as well, but it's gonna show- Google that you are a content authority, uhh, an assert- an authority on the services that you're trying to sell
13:12 . And then I also had video here, because video is becoming a very critical part of search engine optimization. Uh, Google owns YouTube now.
13:21 They've owned it for a few years. So they are putting more and more, uh, focused on getting people, uh, to be able to watch videos when they're searching for dental topics.
13:32 Like, how much do veneers cost? So if you have a video about that, there's a good chance that Google's gonna show that video to a searcher.
13:38 Uh, so really think about your video strategy as well, for SEO, and especially local SEO. Number three is paid ads.
13:48 Uh, paid ads has traditionally been the most effective, uh, marketing channel we've seen for- the general practices. Um, the beauty of paid ads is that you can run it on different channels, uh, through their own management platforms.
14:05 But the beauty of paid ads is that you can really be hyper-focused with it. Especially Google. So, what I mean by that is when we're doing organic SEO, we're, we're kind of driving a huge boat and trying to turn it very slowly to get to where we want to go.
14:22 And it takes time to make that huge boat turn. With paid ads, uh, we can- be very, very, uh, effective in laser targeting the services that that demo practice wants to sell.
14:35 And I'll give you a perfect example of that. With Google Ads, uh, it's not uncommon that, you know, we'll have a client of ours, uh, reach out and say, hey, you know, uh, love what you guys are doing.
14:46 The problem I'm having right now is that my hygiene is booked out for five months. So, when people are calling and asking for a dental appointment for hygiene, uh, a new patient, I basically tell them, like, yeah, first available's in five.
14:59 In five months, we can put you on a waiting list. Um, but we're having a lot of people hang up with them and call somebody else.
15:05 So, when that happens, what we can do is we can say no problem. What we're gonna do is we're gonna take the budget for paid ads that you have and we're going to refocus it on.
15:15 Not hygiene new patients, but, uh, new patients that would be coming through the doctor's chair versus the hygienist chair. So, we can focus on, uh, you know, services like, uh, root canal or, uh, invisiline, dental implants, the other stuff that that doctor wants to be doing.
15:31 That's not gonna have to go through the hygien chair and be in that bottleneck of an issue right there. So, Paydads gives you that very hyper-focused ability.
15:41 Uh, another great thing about Paydads is if you are in a, uh, small town- town and your town doesn't, isn't big enough to support your practice.
15:50 So, you know you need to pull patients from the other small towns around there. Paydads gives you that ability. So, Google's never really gonna make it easy for you to rank highly, organically, via local SEO.
16:03 So, in a town where you're not located, but with paydads, you can show ads in that town and keep people to come to your practice.
16:10 So, paydads is very, very important. It's very effective. Uh, it can be expensive if not done correctly. And sometimes it's just expensive, no matter what.
16:19 It's all about whether you're getting return on investment on it at the end of the day. Um, so, Google, number one place you want to do paydads by far, YouTube owned by Google, also very effective.
16:31 Uh, you know, the key with that is you just need some video content. If you don't- you have video content, you're not gonna have, uh, any luck doing any ads on YouTube.
16:40 Obviously, it's a video platform. But we are finding YouTube's a great way to get your brand blasted out there in front of thousands and thousands of people for very little money.
16:51 So it really- It really is a very effective brand of building platform. So people will know more about you, but we're even having success getting people, uh, who are looking for information about, say, veneers, showing a video about veneers and getting them to call the practice and reach out and try 
17:07 to get a- So video content also is very effective on Facebook and Instagram. Definitely. Those two platforms we can run at ads on them, but if you have video content, it's going to be much, much more effective to run that there than it is to run.
17:22 Umm. You know, just, here, here's a, here's a nice graphic we made with an offer or whatever it is. We look at Facebook and Instagram, they do have some value as, uhh, you know, direct marketing value.
17:37 Umm, not as much as Google because people who, more on Google are just higher intent, meaning they're looking for your service versus someone who's on Facebook or Instagram.
17:46 It's just on there doing whatever they do on those platforms. Uh, but it's really amazing to use brand building on those platforms.
17:52 Um, and one thing I would really encourage you if you're doing, money, you're spending money on Facebook and Instagram advertising, is really focus on your no-show rate.
18:02 That is an issue that we've kind of seen a good bit of, is people who schedule appointment via those channels versus Google are much more likely to not show, And the likely hit for that is the cause of that is probably that those people were not high intent in the first place.
18:20 They weren't looking for a dentist, or a dentist near me, or someone to pull a tooth, or whatever it is.
18:26 They just happened to be on that social, the platform doing their thing, when we pop an ad in front of them.
18:32 Uh, Bing is another area where you can run ads. Very similar to Google. Much lower, uh, it has a much, much, much lower search and share than Google.
18:43 I think Google is at like, 80% things at like 70%. And what I mean by that is percent of total searches in the United States.
18:51 So there's some opportunity there. We've tested it. We've had, we've done some things. I think if you're trying to do a specialized ads or implants and things like that, there's, more opportunity than just doing general dentistry advertising there.
19:04 Uh, but Bing actually has a way that you can literally take your Google campaign that you're running and throw it onto Bing.
19:11 They have a way where you can just import it right there and run the same campaigns on their platform. Uh, retargeting is something that we also like to do.
19:20 Uh, basically what that means is that after somebody comes to your website, uh, we will tag that person and we will then follow them around.
19:27 So we can then show retargeting ads either on the web so that let's say they go from your website to ESPN.
19:34 Let's check out some sports scores. They're going to start seeing banner ads for your practice on those websites that they visit.
19:39 Uh, we can also do it on Facebook. Usually, again, you want video content there so we can retarget them there.
19:46 Um, I will say this about retargeting. I think it works better when you are trying to sell higher ticket items like implants or veneers.
19:56 Things that cost more money and people think about for a lot longer. Because we know that people will drag their feet on those decisions.
20:03 We know that they will kick the tires and do some research. But if they came to your website and read all about your implant services, we want to show them retargeting ads for the next month and a half to try and get them to push them down the way to make that decision.
20:17 And if they click on that ad, go back to your website. We know there's a much better. It's a very valuable thing to do.
20:26 It's something I would ask. Look at your own strategy and see if it makes sense for you to do it if you're not doing it today.
20:33 Okay. Uh, the fourth area we're going to touch on is conversion. So conversion. This is the process of once we have attracted people via these channels, via your website, via a- SEO, via paid ads, to the actual website.
20:50 And now, we're trying to get them to take that next step. So, let's say they take it to the next step.
20:56 So they either call you, they fill out your form, they use your online booking. Widget on your website so they can book directly in your schedule, uh, or they do a chat with your front desk.
21:08 Um, all of those things, it's important. And this is where, honestly, your dinner practice really needs to own this. There are, you know, you need to own this conversion process.
21:21 And what it's made up of are sales process. So what is your sales process? If I fill out your form today and say, hey, it was on your website, and I'm really interested in veneers.
21:32 What is the process to contest? So you me after filling out that form and sending you that email. Uh, what is the process on your front desk?
21:41 Do they reach out to me five times? If I don't respond? Six times, eight times, thirty times? What is the process you have in place?
21:50 It's- It's very important to sit down and make sure that you have that, because this is something that we see, unfortunately, all the time, where we have a dental prize and they say, well, we're getting all these leads, but, you know, we can't really get them in the office.
22:06 Well, what are you doing? Do it. It's the first question is exactly what are you doing when those leads come in.
22:11 And they can come in through multiple channels. Well, we send them an email and if they don't respond, we call and that if they don't answer, we leave a message.
22:21 Boom, that's it. That's not enough. That's never enough. Just think about the fact that if I send a message to your dental practice asking for information about XYZ, and then I get a phone call, I don't know who's calling me.
22:35 And most people today on a mobile phone, we're not going to answer the phone because we get- all these crap calls all the time.
22:41 So if I don't recognize your number, I'm not calling. I'm not answering. So, you have to have a strategy to say like, this is the number of touch points we're going to do to try and get in touch with this person.
22:53 You also have to have a strategy if they- Do call your practice and connect with the front desk. What are you going to talk to them?
23:00 How was your front desk equipped to make a sale on that call? Cause that's what it is. It's a sale.
23:07 It's not just, hi, thanks for calling. Let me answer some questions. They need to take the mind shift, the mind shift, mind set shift, excuse me, the mind set shift of I need to move from just answering questions and hanging up the phone to I need to sell this person into the phone.
23:30 That mind set shift can make a dramatic increase in your numbers in your practice. We hear it all the time, because we will set up tracking numbers and record phone calls and listen to them for some of our clients.
23:41 And sometimes the stuff we hear. Blows our mind. I mean, even just the simplest thing of just saying to the person at the end of the call, well, hey, you know, Dr.
23:51 Smith has an appointment Tuesday at 10. Come on in. They're not even doing that. They're just letting the call in awkwardly.
23:59 Cause they're not. They're not just pushing to get the person in the practice. So you need to have your phone skills buttoned up tight.
24:06 Uh, whether you need to hire a consultant or just put your own tracking in place so you can listen to their calls.
24:12 I cannot emphasize this enough. You've got to be on top of this as the practice owner. It is so, so important.
24:20 And another thing that we hear when we do call tracking. Miss calls. Wow. Miss calls. Like, and these are not just missed calls at 9 p.m.
24:28 in the night. These are missed calls during practice. Ours. We've seen some crazy stuff. We saw one practice that had 250 missed calls in one month during business hours.
24:42 During business hours. They were missing that many calls. That's insane. And to be honest. With that practice, it wasn't all their fault.
24:51 You know, they, that practice, they were doing outbound calls to, to verify insurance. They're doing outbound calls for appointment reminders.
24:58 While they were also expected to drop everything and answer the phone call coming in. So one of the things we did.
25:04 As we put in automation, we just said, all right, we're going to set you up on this automated platform that will do the appointment reminders for you.
25:12 And you guys don't have to do it. Uh, that saved them a lot of time. They were able to answer the phone and everybody was happy.
25:18 We, we improved those numbers quite a bit. So, get your phone skills, get a sales process, in place. Get your phone skills buttoned up tight.
25:27 Uh, leverage automation whenever you can. So one of the things when we run Facebook ads and Instagram ads, like I said before, those people are aren't high intent, which means they're not really ready right now to book a appointment in your practice, but still a valuable contact to have.
25:46 So one of the things we'll do sometimes is run a lead magnet, where we say, hey, you know, you're sitting at five, uuuh, things you need to know before you get cosmetic teeth, uh, cosmetic, uh, veneers.
25:59 We get people's information, and then we put them into like an automated sequence where we e-mail them over time with information about that dental practice with the hope of cold.
26:09 So, uh, I'm going to reach out to that practice, because I really do want to get my T-3 done. I want to look better.
26:19 I want to look like these pictures of these people. They keep sending me, uh, in these e-mails. These people look.
26:24 They look amazing. They look 20 years younger. Why wouldn't I want to do that? So, automation is a critical piece of this as well, so that on the back end, this contact is happening.
26:35 So, I feel out your form. I'm getting e-mails on the back end from your practice while your front desk, Asking is reaching out and trying to get in touch with me to talk to me.
26:44 So, think about truly, how can you put automation in place? Another one that's becoming very, very popular is online booking.
26:51 I can say that, you know, in the past few years, this has exploded a lot. We've seen a lot of our clients come to us and say, hey, You know, add this online booking thing to my website.
27:00 Uh, we did a little bit of analysis a few years ago, and we did see that it increases the number of appointments being set, uh, by adding that thing, by adding that widget.
27:11 And I know it costs a little bit more money, but, I think it's very worth it. Another thing that we are definitely seeing is that this younger generation coming up, and they're in their twenties, they're gonna be in their thirties, and they're gonna start spending money on their teeth very soon.
27:27 They do not like, talking on the phone at all. They just want a text. They want a book online. They don't want to talk to anybody on a phone.
27:37 They almost think it's like the worst thing in the world to talk to someone on the phone. So, giving people more options is never a bad thing.
27:44 So, if you can have online, If you can have a chat feature on your website where they can chat with you, uhh, through, you know, could be through a Facebook, could be through a chat widget that you pay for.
27:58 The critical part of that is just making sure that your team is equipped. And ready to have those chats. They even have AI bots now that can start that chat, get it to a certain point, and then pass it off to your team members to finish it, close the deal, and bring that patient in.
28:14 So think about chats, online looking, different ways. Thank you for people to contact your practice. All of these are going to help you convert more people from interested to sitting in your chair, which is what we want.
28:27 Uh, conversion, also treatment acceptance, is a conversion as well. I come to your practice, you sit me down, you say, here's the stuff that we should do, here's what you were interested in, we're going to talk about that, blah, blah, blah.
28:42 You sell me and I say, alright, I'm going to go think about this and I'll get back to you. Well, what automated sequence do you have in that?
28:50 I feel, uh, in that area to let me know that, hey, you know, hey, just a reminder, you know, we have, uh, you know, we talked about veneers, we can help you out with that.
29:02 We're doing that. Here's a picture of one of our patients who just did the treat. Look how young she looks now compared to what she looked like before.
29:09 Um, treatment acceptance is an area where you can absolutely start utilizing these digital tactics as well. Uh, another thing that a lot of our clients will do is, uh, I wish they're a better word for it.
29:22 We can. We call it discount weeks, which basically just means that come October, November, which, you know, October, September, we know it can be a little slower for dentistry.
29:31 So what they'll do is they'll say, okay, let's look at our database for the whole year. And let's look at all of the.
29:38 Unfinished treatment that we have, meaning that we told someone you need to get these three crowns. They never came back in and did it.
29:45 And let's say for the one week in October, we're going to be having a crown special, where if you come in and get your crown done, we're going to give you.
29:54 It's 25% off or something like that. So think about discount weeks, where you can drive a lot of treatment that's outstanding and sitting out there, get those people back in to complete that treatment in that one week for that discount.
30:08 So there's all kinds of ways that you can. You can utilize these channels, texts, e-mail reminders, automation to get people back in your office to complete the treatment that you've already told them that they need.
30:22 Next area I want to talk about is reviews and referrals so absolutely once I've come in as a new patient and I've completed my treatment and I'm walking out that door, it is critical that you look to me and figure out how you can get me to give you a review, a positive review, and how can you get me 
30:42 to start referring. My friends, my family, my co-workers, to your practice. That's the way, honestly, you should look when you look at your digital marketing strategy, every person that you bring into your practice as a new patient via SEO, or paid ads, or whatever it is you're doing for marketing.
30:59 Even outside the digital world. Every one of those people should turn into two or three more people for you. You can do that.
31:07 You can make that one person become four by getting them to refer you patients. So how can we use digital for that?
31:19 Same stuff, text, email reminders, incentives, responses. Let me go through those. So for reviews, most dentists now do have some mechanism where as soon as I leave the office, boom, I get a t- text.
31:31 How was your experience? I say, mmm, I'll give it a nine out of ten or four out of five, whatever the scale is.
31:38 And if it's positive enough, it'll then say, boom, can you please review us on Google? If it's negative, it's gonna say, so sorry to hear that.
31:45 Can you please, uhh, go to this webpage and give us some feedback that we can fix whatever happened to. Umm, so, you should always be texting, following up, trying to get people to give you reviews, even if it's just a sign with a QR code in your office, that they can scan and do it with a, before they
32:03 walk out. I always talk about, like, think about you going to visit a dentist. I know you're probably a dentist listening to this, but if you go to a dentist's office and sit there for the hour and a half, whatever it is, you know, you're putting your life on hold.
32:19 When you walk out of there, it's going to be a barrage, all kinds of stuff, text and emails and stuff you've got to deal with, that for that one hour that you were disconnected from the world, now you've got all this stuff to respond to, so that text might get lost, so why not have, your hygienist and
32:37 your dental assistants and those people ask for reviews when people are sitting right there in your office, in the chair.
32:43 You can do that. You know, you could have that personal relationship where you say something like, hey, you know, we'd love if you could give us a review.
32:50 How's your visit going great? Can you give us a review? Here's a thing. Just scan this. It'll take you right to our Google page to review us.
32:56 Uh, think about how you can get more on-site reviews and leverage those texts when they walk out the door. But as far as, um, oh, another thing is important.
33:07 Important for reviews is responses. So every time someone reviews you on Google, you should be responding to that review with a very hip-a-compliant response that tells somebody, we love you.
33:20 You're the best. Thank you so much. Google loves to see that interact. They'd love to see activity on your Google Business Profile page, and they'd love to see that interaction between you and that person, that patient.
33:33 I appreciate it. Another thing, I would tell you to think about when it comes to reviews, is see how you can get patients to use those critical keywords in their review.
33:48 Thank So, So if you're sitting there having a personal conversation with a patient, and you say, you know, I would love it if you could give us a review on Google, here's a link to it.
33:56 Tell them also, like, don't just, we don't want them to, it's great to get a five-store review. Anyway, it comes.
34:02 They could either give you a five-store review and not write anything. Anything? Give you a five-store review and write something generic, like, love this place, they're the best, so it's nice people.
34:11 Or, the best possible thing is they give you a five-store review, and they'd be very specific about what they did in your practice, and what the outcome was, and how great it was.
34:20 So that- That way, when somebody in your area is looking for a dentist that can do veneers very well, Google's gonna say, well, boom, this dentist right here is in town, and they have reviews that we can see on their Google Business profile, where people are literally- saying how great they are at veneers
34:41 . Those keywords are extremely valuable, so really think about, uh, how you can get people to be more descriptive in those review responses.
34:51 Umm, in your responses the- u Reuters, to the review, be careful and HIPAA compliant. We can't say things like, we're so glad you came here and got veneers.
35:00 That's a HIPAA issue. All you can really say is very generic. We'd love to see you, we can't wait to see you again all those types of things, just express your gratitude.
35:09 For those reviews. When it comes to referrals, I would really encourage everyone to think about, you know, how can you remind people to refer you?
35:18 That's step one. Uh, that could be signage in the office. That could be, uh, you know, sometimes when we develop websites for dentists.
35:25 We will put a referral thing on there where somebody can go on there, fill out a form, refer a friend.
35:31 Um, another thing to think about is incentives. I mean, honestly, there's nothing wrong with offering an incentive for somebody to refer another patient.
35:40 Uh, some people do care. To share, which is like $25 to the patient, $25 to the referred person. Uh, what I think works even better is to have giveaways, you know, for three months, say we're, we're, every one of you who gives us a referral is entered in this contest to win XYZ.
35:57 Could be. A green egg grill could be a beach bike. Could be, uh, you know, a yeti cooler. Something that people really want to have, but they don't necessarily want to spend the $500, $600 on themselves.
36:09 But if they could win it, they would love it. So those are great ways to give away- ways to get more referrals into your practice, to really incent those referrals.
36:18 Uh, and then last here, I'm gonna talk about loyalty and re-care. So, all these channels are available for this as well.
36:28 So I have come in, I've got- my treatment, I've completed it, I've given you guys a great 5-star review, I've referred to friends, and now I'm off into the world, and we want you- you want me to come back again.
36:39 So that's re-care. So you have your text reminders, you have your email reminders. Like I said at the beginning of this, why not- I can't personalize those- those a little bit more, and put in information about, you know, put in a video of you and the team saying, we can't wait to see you again, or a
36:55 picture or something, to make it more personalized, to get me back in there to reactivate me. Um. come. 7 So reminders are one thing, database reactivation, if you look at, you know, a patient who hasn't been there for two years, really think about how can we reactivate this patient and get him back 
37:12 in the door. You know, I, we work with clients honestly that, uh, they've been in business for years. They have a database of like 10,000 people that have come into their practice over the years, and they spend so much money still on marketing.
37:27 I'm a fan of that. We're a marketing company, but I often ask, well, you know, it's so much cheaper. You have a database of all these people that have already been here.
37:36 Why not really leverage that versus spending more money trying to get new people in all the time? Just go hit this database of people that have been here once before, once, twice, three, however many times, and reactivate them as patients.
37:49 It's It's cheaper. It's a quick cost of an email, a text, whatever it is, versus the cost of running ads out there to people, uh, who have not been there before.
38:02 Um, so think about database reactivation. And like I mentioned before, or the, This is an area where I really think you need to keep it in-house.
38:09 There are many services that can come in, attach to your, uh, your CMS. Uh, I'm sorry, your practice management software, your PMS.
38:18 And, uh, do it for you. For a monthly fee or whatever it is. They have templates, they have all kinds of stuff that you can use.
38:25 You can really get into the data where, you know, people who haven't been there in two years get this one email.
38:31 People who haven't been there in six months get a very different email. Uh, you know, different offers, whatever you want to do, but really map it.
38:39 And think about how can you leverage your database of existing people to get them back into your practice. Social media, absolutely practices should be posting, should be active on social media.
38:51 I don't think you have to spend way too much time doing it. But if you have video content, you can share it on social media.
38:58 Uh, we know, uh, quite a few dentists that really dive in deep with this. They will use, uh, create video content that's fun, that's engaging, that really shows the personality of their practice, and they share that.
39:11 Uh, frequently, on their social media, and it gets shared by their users, their people that are patients, or sharing it, so other people are seeing it.
39:21 So you're getting this effect of more and more eyes on your brand, on your practice. Uh, so definitely, You know, loyalty, marketing, can also bring in new patients when you're thinking about social media.
39:33 So it's good to always be posting, but keep it fun. You know, I see dental practice, I'm on a million Facebook pages for clients, and I see them doing stuff like, the same old lame cartoon tooth having a conversation with another tooth, that kind of stuff.
39:50 I don't think people really want to see that. You know, they don't want to see about dentistry. They don't want to, you know, go on to social media for it.
39:56 They go there for an escape from whatever there that's going on. So they don't want to go there and see, you know, read an article about how to brush your teeth properly.
40:05 They want to go in there and see fun stuff. So keep it personal, keep it fun. Uh, you know, I always encourage practices to really focus on people over services and things.
40:14 Like, you know, focus on. On your hygienist's son hit a home run in the baseball game last night. That's a post for your Facebook page.
40:21 Not, you know, again, you know, here's the three types of implants that you can get. Um, keep it personal, keep it fun.
40:29 That'll keep people engaged. Uh, really focus on moms to, you know, women make more health care decisions than men. We know that for a fact.
40:38 So the more you can appeal to that, uh, segment that group that demographic, the better off you're going to be in terms of engagement.
40:44 Uh, newsletters, obviously are always effective. Just reminding people that you're there. Hey, here's some news about our practice. Keep, again, try to keep it fun, try to keep it personal.
40:56 Don't have your newsletter. Just be like, we added a new take home whitening product. It's the best. Try to put some personal fun stuff in there as well.
41:04 Keep people engaged. Um, so I have to admit, I made a mistake, uh, going through this. I forgot to talk about a very critical thing.
41:11 We did touch on it a little bit, but I'm gonna jump all the way back up to number two here and talk about local SEO again.
41:17 Uh, I failed to discuss. You're a Google business profile page. We did talk about citations, which that is one of them.
41:25 Uh, that, that is what we could say are off page SEO. But let me just focus on the Google business profile page, because it's very important.
41:34 Google wants people to- use those pages. So they are focusing a lot of their effort to get more people to go to your Google business profile than are going to your website.
41:44 It ain't happened yet. They've been doing a lot of tactics to make it happen, but it is a big focus.
41:50 So you should absolutely- be optimizing your Google business profile as much as you're optimizing your website. And that means making sure that all of your services, all your products, all of the information about your practice is correct.
42:05 Is there doing posts every week on your Google Uh, to, to keep it information flowing, to show Google that you're invested in it and you're working on it.
42:16 Uh, constantly posting new photos up there. Uh, and, and by the way, we have another podcast episode where we discuss only Google business profile so you can look for it there and find it and get more detail on this.
42:31 But I failed completely to mention that in section number two about SEO, so I wanted to go back and do that.
42:37 So hopefully this is a helpful thing as you plan your 2025- marketing strategy, um, your digital marketing strategy. And again, there's a lot more detail that we could fill in on this, but it would take hours and hours to go through it.
42:51 Uh, if you have, uh, an interest in discussing more of this, reach out to us. We certainly can do that.
42:57 More in depth, but I really would just encourage you to really think about these areas, think about what you're doing now, what's automated, what's digital, what could be automated and digital.
43:06 Uh, what is your, you know, enhanced digital experience? Are you doing more? Or do you have person? Or do photos?
43:13 Do you have personalized videos? Really think about those things and plan out your 2025. And I know if you do that, you're going to be successful.
43:21 If you need help, we're always here to help give us a call. But I hope that's great. Everyone have a great holiday and we'll talk to you again.
43:29 2025. five.