Is Your Dental Website Losing Referrals? SEO Tips from Stephan Bajaio - CEO of Vibe Logic

Want more high-value patients without burning out on social media? In this episode, we sit down with industry expert Stephan Bajaio to decode modern dental referral marketing in the age of artificial intelligence.

Many practices view referrals as random acts of luck. Stephan reveals how to merge relationship-building with cutting-edge tech to transform your local digital footprint into an automated Referral Conduit.

Tune in to discover how to align your website, dominate local search, and leverage AI to build a predictable pipeline of high-case-value production. 

What You'll Learn

• The Referral Conduit Blueprint: Streamline your patient acquisition pipeline.
• SEO & AI Integration: Use smart tactics to outrank local competitors.
• Google My Business Best Practices: Optimize your profile for maximum visibility.
• Website Optimization: Convert organic local traffic into lifelong patients.

About Our Guest

Stephan Bajaio is a renowned authority in dental business growth and strategic online presence. He specializes in helping dental practices maximize their local impact through online marketing and modern digital strategies that drive sustainable revenue.

https://stan.store/dentalreferralmarketingpodcast

Ready to Scale Your Specialty Practice Footprint?
Ramping up new doctors and protecting your referral pipeline requires systematic execution. Let’s collaborate to take your business to the next level. Reach out today for dedicated, expert support in:

• Referral Network Growth: Auditing and scaling your active referral marketing systems.
• Associate Onboarding: Building rapid, high-density ramp-up strategies for new specialists.
• High-Impact Events: Planning and executing educational or local clinical networking events.
• SEO & AI Visibility: Optimizing your digital footprint so your practice is the top recommendation on modern search platforms.

[Click here to schedule a strategy session with Michelle and the Referral Conduit team.]

Thanks for Listening! 

See you in the next weekly episode, posted Monday mornings at 8am est. time. "Referral Marketing made simple for Dental teams who want to grow!"

Michelle Hougland

Host - Dental Referral Marketing Podcast

CEO/Founder - Referral Conduit Software

michelle@referralconduit.com

https://stan.store/dentalreferralmarketingpodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Hey everyone. Welcome today to the Dental Referral Marketing Podcast. I am thrilled to bring our guest, Stefan Bajayo, to our podcast. I know you are going to be thrilled. I've really enjoyed getting to know him. Stefan, will you please just introduce and share with our audience what you have done with VibeLogic and a little bit about who is Stefan?

SPEAKER_00 0:25

All right. I'll skip who I am at my essence, but I will say I'm Stefan Bajayo. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Vibe Logic. My history in SEO and online marketing and basically websites goes back to the dot com boom bust. So that's how I've gained all of these white hairs. I've been in this industry for about 25, I guess uh 26 years, 27 years. So um helped build one of the one of the largest um SaaS software companies in enterprise SEO called Conductor. Uh basically put that thing together uh for 14 plus years. We were bought by WeWork. We bought ourselves back from WeWork. It was an interesting story. I was tied to a rocket ship for a few minutes. And then uh we reconstituted the company. We're valued at about half a billion dollars. I took a walk, I did a quick stint for about a year and a half to see how the other side lived as a CMO. And then I came back to my roots of SEO and kind of search and uh decided I would start an agency with a good friend of mine. So uh we are now in the space of helping organizations figure all of what's going on because let's face it, it's very confusing right now with LLMs and all that stuff. So happy to say uh we help companies small and very large to get better visibility online and understand the way their consumers are looking for them.

SPEAKER_04 2:01

I love that. And and for our audience, you'll see as you know, with the dental referral marketing, we're always looking at ways to get the word out there and to just spread our message about our practices and how we can help patients. And Stefan, I find it so um interesting about your skill set bringing into especially this age of AI, as you touched on. I think a lot of dentists I have found, they some of them don't even have their websites optimized just for basic patient user flow. And I think they forget about their online curb appeal. Um, what are some of the things you would recommend for a dentist who maybe is like, well, I got a website up there. What else do I need? What's your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Yeah, so I've always found it um really interesting. Whenever I work with service-based businesses on the smaller end, um even some medium size, right? Um, and it's usually the smaller end to medium size that have not really figured out their web presence. So they really haven't realized the full potential of what it means to have a website.

SPEAKER_03 3:07

Right.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

So, first and foremost, the odds that someone is going to engage with a site, your website, if done correctly, should be far higher than it is that they ever walk through your door. Meaning, whether it's a referral, someone heard about you through someone else, what's the first thing they do? Well, they don't necessarily go and make a phone call because who has their dentist number on them? And, you know, I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've been given a doctor to note and I don't remember. And so, of course, the first thing I do is Google it, right? And so um, granted, that's the person's name, so it's the practitioner's name, or maybe it's the the practice's name, and then you find this site, and then the question is, what is it really doing? Does it speak to the consumer well? Does it speak in the language of the consumer? Does it do a really good job of explaining who you are? Often I see these things as being like we have a website because we have to, yes, versus the other way around. We have a website and it's a great resource that helps us acquire new patients and be top of mind for our current patients to refer people to us. When you think the secondary, you're winning. When you think the first, you're kind of at the will of how many people end up talking about you. So you know, I'm I'm more a fan of the second, and I've seen real success in companies investing time and effort into it. Granted, I know most dentists out there did not, or anyone in the dental practice did not probably get into the space because you wanted to be a marketer, but you did get into the space because you wanted to help people to some degree. And I really believe in a uh kind of a saying, which is if you're not helping people, you're just selling stuff. And I'm not sure how many of you just got in the business of selling stuff. So being able to actually help people with your content and your practice could be a lot more available if it exists online. And by the way, if yours doesn't exist online, here's the funny part. When was the last time you searched Google and got zero results? Someone's always going to answer the question the person has. Someone's always gonna be the result. So you could either decide ignorance is bliss or realize it might be your competitor's market share.

SPEAKER_04 5:22

Oh, that's so good. You know, as you were sharing that, it made me think I know that sometimes, especially with offices, and I know for myself, I've been in the dental industry for gosh, 35 years. I'm dating myself as well. I would have grays as well if my hairstylist didn't have such a nice color. Not in the least. You know, there you go. But I remember having where we didn't computers weren't an option. It wasn't so so it's I don't think it's a surprise that some of our most tenured and experienced physicians and dentists, they don't they think of it as an afterthought. Like, like you said, check the box and just get it up there. But how many patients are searching online first? And even if they were referred, so everyone listening, even though you have referrals coming in, I guarantee you those patients are searching for you online first and they're making a judgment about your practice before you even walk in the door. Stefan, what would you recommend? Because I know you've worked with many healthcare facilities and different um companies to help uh optimize their web presence. Um, what's your thoughts with regards to Google My Business and that type of thing and how that connects to the website?

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Sure. So your Google business profile is fundamental. You have to work on it and make sure people are actually uh finding that. That is your local result. That's much of what's gonna show up when someone types in dentist near me or thodontist near me specifics, right? Where they haven't really defined who they're looking for. They just have a generalization, they put in a query, and now they're gonna get these local results back. So a lot of that is gonna be driven by your uh Google Business profile. It's super important to keep that up to date and actually provide um content on there. Now, what's interesting is it doesn't have to be that different than the content you put on your own website. Um, but you do have to you do have to actively work on it. Um it's something that can be really valuable to your business. But you know, what's really funny to me, Michelle, is I I think about a lot of uh the dentists and and just in general therapists and all the other kind of clients that we work with, and I'm always shocked at you guys all spent so much time and treasure and money, just everything, in order to get the frankly the certificates on the wall behind me, right? And then when I go online to find you as an individual, there's this like lackluster practice page about us that might have a few photos and like one or two lines about you. And I'm supposed to, I'm supposed to just assume that like I should put my thousands of potential dollars I'm gonna have to chill out right into your capable hands. Well, you know, the the ones that impress me, the ones that actually do the best job, they build their profile pages in a really cool way. So some of the best I've seen, and they actually are dentists, which is kind of amazing. Okay. Um, is one, every practitioner in your practice gets their own page. That means that because you who would it rank for if there are 15 names on the on the about us, right? Okay. It's not gonna rank for all your names. So you need your own page. You have your own office in the practice, you probably need your own page in the practice.

SPEAKER_03 8:50

I like it.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

The next thing you could do, if you're willing to spend the money and the time and the effort, you should probably put a video on there. Short video. You don't have to be the most gregarious, outgoing person. Just a quick thing, maybe a little bit of your office and a little bit of you saying, Hey, I specialize in, I'm here to help with, especially if you're one of the dentists who are amazing at, you know, um specializing in those who are scared to go to dentists and so forth. That's like a huge, uh, a huge potential there. Uh, you shouldn't miss out on on providing that. Then the next thing down I'd say is like, where did you study your dentistry? Right? Maybe a logo if it was clear, it was a different school. Like, put that there. Then what memberships or accolades are you a part of? So professional affiliations, awards if you have them. Oh my God, how many times I walked into a doctor's office is named, you know, best doctor of so-on-so county, right? In 2024. Well, okay, great. If I don't see that plaque, which I'm not going to unless I walk into your office, which by the way, you've taken a lot of time to set up your office beautifully, and I find that amazing. But yet, when it comes to the look and and for something that's so aesthetic as dentistry in the first place, and apologies, definitely need some whitening, but uh they really don't think about it when when they think about their website, which is shocking to me because this is a business based on aesthetics to some degree, right? What are we doing in terms of, you know, if you've published in or have been in in media somewhere, that should be there, right? Um even life outside of dentistry. I've literally seen people have a life outside of dentistry section. They show them with their family and Orlando, Disney, whatever. You don't have to do that if you don't want to. If you're more, that's cool. But if I never engage you and all I engage is this page, is it likely to make me want to call or not?

SPEAKER_03 10:50

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

To make me want to schedule or not. That's what you're that's the fight you're in, right? Because it's not a question of whether or not, you know, when under your name, unless your name is a really generic name, which good luck, it's gonna be hard. Or let's say a celebrity has your name, that's gonna be really hard to rank for too. But if you add MD or not MD, but if you add add a particular uh uh acronym at the end that they're looking for, just the word dentist, for example, um, they're going to probably find you unless there are seven dentists with the same name. So when they do, what do they find? And is it like Little Shop of Horrors dentist office? Or is it the beautiful office and feel that you've taken so much time to cultivate anyway, invested time, effort, money into making this beautiful space. And then online you're like, eh.

SPEAKER_04 11:41

You know what? I kind of visualize it as you know, you have your the brick and mortar, the practice, the the the office, like you said, they put so much time into building this beautiful practice or acquiring one, having the sign outside, making sure the waiting room has coffee and all the little patient station and having flowers there, um, you know, everything to make the patient feel welcome when they walk in the door. But in twelve at the time of this recording, um, it is a online is first before they're even gonna walk in your front door. And it's almost like you need you need that bridge. And when you don't have your website, I have some examples of this previous week when I was looking for some practices for um some of my physicians at my dip, my clinicians to go market to, there wasn't even a website on their Google My Business profile. And they had to go to like one-off like Yelp or Webin D and these one-off little things. And I'll, and my immediate thought was, well, gosh, if they don't even have a time to put a website on and have a Google My Business profile, what's it like if I ever do walk in that front door? And if I'm doing that and I'm looking to market B2B, what are our the patients thinking?

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Yeah, I mean, trust happens way before people walk through the door, right? And so we have to realize there's there's a whole host of different searches that go on depending on what a person needs. Now, what I found shocking, but not so shocking because I've had my 10,000 plus hours of expertise in this space, and then some we could probably say it's a hundred thousand hours now. Um I've seen it, which is basically like people don't even structure their websites when they do have one uh in a meaningful way. So what will they do? A whole bunch of boxes that are the services they offer. So, you know, IOffice, yeah, I offer, let's see, uh, I'll give you an example. Uh routine, whatever routine means, restorative, uh remove prosthesis, uh removable prosthesis, root extraction, emergency services. Great. None of those have their own pages. I'm looking at a website right now of the dentistry. None of them have their own pages. So if I have an emergency, the odds of me finding an emergency page, not gonna find it. If I ask about a root canal, which again is a more common term, but removable prosthesis, why why would I, a non, a non-dentist, right, really understand when and how that should be deployed as a service to me, right? Even if they did have a page called removable prosthesis, it's not really speaking the language of the user. The user expresses themselves with the the pain or need they're feeling, right? So the pain and need someone feels is not expressed in your dental jargon most of the time. It's gonna be expressed in ways, shapes, and forms that are like I'll give you a prime example. I found this one site, I love it, does a great job of the our services, the drop down in their navigation, reads a little bit like this I need a cleanup and cleaning. That's one top-level page. Under that comes oral health and mouth guards. The next one, I have a broken or chipped tooth. Under that section, there's dental crowns, there's Cree, uh, there's tooth-colored filling, and then there's full mouth reconstruction. I'm missing one or more teeth, dentures, dental implants, dental bridges. The point is, and by the way, when you go to one of those pages that you understand what it is, like a dental bridge, it says no more gaps. Oh, it's literally explaining what a bridge does. Because I don't know what a bridge does. I was just told that if I'm missing teeth, this might be a solution for me.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

These are the conversations you're having when someone comes in. You can be having them before they come in. Smart. On your own terms, in your own writing, in a way that engages them, so that they're already in a conversation with you before they even walk through the door. And the fact that they learned through you already makes you more likely to be the one who gets them. So good, step up. It's a connection that that's being made. And by the way, it's being made whether you like it or not. I hate to tell you, but like nobody is just walking through the door without doing any form of research anymore. They want to understand, especially now. I mean, everyone's tighter than ever, right? You don't know if it's if you need it. You don't know, you you just know you have a pain.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

What do I do? Right. Right. You you know you have uh a I want to improve my smile. I want to straighten my smile. I wanna um you express yourself in those terms. And that's what we call the demand, right? Now the supply could either be some lackluster boxes on a site, which will never show up because they're not specific enough to map to it, right? Think of it this way: I want to explain to everyone the way a website kind of works in a very rudimentary way. Okay. How do you walk into the mall?

SPEAKER_04 17:12

It's a tricky main entrance.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

There is no main entrance because, like, how do you walk in the mall? Sometimes you walk into Macy's, Northstrom's, Dick's sporting goods, the food court, um, you know, depending on where you're trying to go in the mall, usually, you park your car accordingly, right? Right. Think of those cars as searches. So when I say I'm looking for food court, right? Or I express myself that way, I'm gonna park near the food court and I want to walk in and find the food court. I'm not gonna go through the quote unquote main way and down through the website. So no home page, then I go to the next level, and that's not how the web works. People look for things. The more specific they get, the more specific your pages need to be to meet those needs. Right. And so someone who's willing to give me an entire page about how to improve my smile and then gives me three solutions there and didn't waste my time, right? They're gonna earn the right of having my attention, Google ranking them, and my business, right? Right now, by the way, before we go any further, there's a whole bunch of people who might be on the other side, those who do have a website, those who are marketing themselves, and they're going, This is great, but what about the AI?

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Right. What about the AI?

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Right. What about Chat GPT? What about Claude? What about and I can wax poetic on all the.

SPEAKER_04 18:31

Hey, Siri, hey Alexa.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Hey guys, I'm gonna tell you a little secret so everybody kind of get a little closer here. It's a waste of your time right now. Oh, really? It really is, I guarantee you. Because nine times, nine point five times out of ten, I can rip through your website and say you don't even have a page specific to this need. You haven't even gotten into that persona. You haven't even thought about, oh, you know, your messaging isn't speaking the language of the consumer. All of this stuff that frankly, it doesn't matter whether it's AI today, which by the way is changing weekly. Okay, the models are changing constantly. We are at the forgive me, now this is more towards the older folk. Dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, de d. This is the version of AI that we're looking at right now. It is like slow loading page VGA version.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

You don't build an entire website at a time and place where people aren't willing to put their credit cards online, like back in the day, right? We don't do that now. We worry more about what's to come later. The only thing you have to worry about right now is what does your website say about you? Are you sending the right signals? Because that is 1,000% in your control. What's on your website's in your control? What the rest of the web says, that's the 202. That's something once you have that really well-structured, well-designed office version of your website, and you can say all of the departments are there, all of the service pages, our bios are great. We're doing well, organic starting to pick up. We can tell that Google's sending people to us. We've done a really good job of this. We write blog posts and so forth to validate that we are the experts we say we are. Now that's when we can start thinking about something that's moving at the rate of AI. And frankly, again, I wouldn't chase that. The only people that made money in the gold rush were those who sold you pans and picks.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

So don't spend your time looking for gold. I promise you, first to market and all that stuff. Right. It's a bit of a fool's errand right now because it's changing way too fast. And if you haven't even gotten the foundational stuff right, which, like I said, nine times out of 10, or almost 10 times out of 10, I could say, I could probably rip through your site and show you real quick that it's not. Um, and that's not self-serving, that's just the reality of a lot that happens on the way.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

It's an experience.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Um, it's unfortunately people get distracted by the shiny object. And sometimes it's fools gold. So I would tell you, I say the same thing to enterprise companies right now because they're even worse. Their ability to change the foundational requires 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 people to get on board. You don't have that problem as a practice, right? You can make those changes yourself. You can have someone come in and make those changes for you.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

The office manager can make those changes for you on the website. Right. You do not have to worry about convincing 15 to 20 people that that is a worthwhile effort. It's a very different thing in enterprise. So I'll tell you, you know, you're not Henry Schein, who I've worked with. You're a smaller org and you're working in your world. Your world can be defined and it's only limited by what you're willing to do with it.

SPEAKER_04 21:48

That's huge. You know, as you're saying that, it made me think of you have a boat that has this big hole in the middle, but you're over here trying to fill this little tiny leak on the side, but your boat has a huge hole in the middle. Let's get the foundation right. I think that's so important for practices. What great ideas. Um, that was something that, you know, I with AI, I know I've done a lot of searching and I'm not a, you know, expert on that side of it, which is why I wanted you on the show. Thank you for coming. But, you know, with AI, I know that they go over, you know, best practices, like do your blog posts where you're asking questions. Think about like if you if you've gone on and you started to, and our listeners listeners have started using Chat GPT or Gemini or Claude and you, you're um, I know for I've really been lately using Google Gemini. And instead of going to the main search, I go over here, like, hey, if I do this, I can't tell you the last time I went on the other side because it makes it so user-friendly. But when I'm typing in those things, the um, you know, making your blog posts fix those pain points or those questions. Are you saying that right now, basically just just focus on on the fundamentals before you start getting into rebuilding that?

SPEAKER_00 23:01

I'm so glad you asked this. Sorry.

SPEAKER_04 23:03

Good, good.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

It's a it's a thousand percent important. Okay. So everyone, do not, and I will state that I will, this is the hill I diet. Right. This will be the hill I diet.

SPEAKER_04 23:15

Please don't die today. No, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

But I'm just saying if I have to go, this will be the one. Gotcha. Do not take a bunch of Chat GPT AI generated stuff and stick it out on your website.

SPEAKER_03 23:28

Oh, yes. Tell them about it.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

It will rank for a minute and then Google will recognize that it was AI generated and it will fall out of the rankings, and your ability to regain those ranks will be marred for a very long time. This isn't just me saying this. Statistics that show this, I can show you a thousand graphs that show this. It's kind of a joke in the SEO world that all these people got excited because they could crank out content like nobody's business. I could press a button and boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. I had a thousand articles. Oh, yes. This is the funny part is we seem to have mistaken quantity with quality for those who aren't experts, they will see quantity as quality. But Google is an expert, and you're an expert too. So half the stuff that gets generated out of an LLM or ChatGPT, any of those things is going to be misleading in many ways. And the AI doesn't want, and Google doesn't want to rank AI content because that feeds its own AI engine. So it would be like the snake eating its own tail. Yeah. In the space of medical and medical and finance in general, there's this thing called Google has this thing called your money, your life. Okay. It means that those websites are actually judged differently. So this happens at Hopkins and a bunch of other places I've worked, Boston Children's Hospital, all these places. You cannot just post and assume it's good. Usually you need someone to quote unquote review that content. So you actually have to have a reviewer's name, you have to have an author's name. Because they want to know a real person is behind this. They want to know someone stands behind this.

SPEAKER_03 25:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Makes sense when you think about it, right? Because we're all messing around here. This is different than whether or not I choose the wrong shovel. Okay. Right. Right. Honestly, if if if someone gives you wrong medical advice or gives you wrong, uh wrong financial advice, these things have pretty dire circumstances associated with them. So in general, it's going to have a higher bar to entry. And by that I just mean while I've given you the negative on the AI side, let's not be all downtrodden on AI. There's a great way to use it that I think, especially if you're like me and you're not much of an author in terms of you don't love writing, and you're pretty good with your mouth and you like talking. Some dentists I know do some great bedside manner and talk while they're doing stuff to me. And we're always playing music in the background and they have a lot of interesting personality to them. Well, here's the thing: grab yourself one of these products, whether it's Zoom, Teams, uh, Google Meet, whatever it is, right? Hit record. Answer a bunch of the questions that Michelle brought up that you can look up online. What are the questions people are asking? What are the top questions you could ask? The LLM, what are the top questions people look for when it comes to, you know, bridges?

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 26:34

Uh, or dental implants, or you can also go on Google and there'll be this thing halfway down usually called People Also Ask. And click on it, it'll open and open and open, and it'll give you other questions people are asking. It's based on the frequent questions. Take those questions, put them on your screen, maybe five questions, and this speak. Talk to the it doesn't even have to be a video if you don't want. You could even shut the camera off if you're camera shy, you don't like that sort of thing. It's weird to you. All you're really trying to get is a transcript. Once you get a transcript back of the content you want to actually create as a blog, then it's just about cleaning it up. Okay. Maybe giving it to someone else to do a little bit of cleaning so it doesn't feel like just a transcript and a diatribe. Get the main points out of it. And then the beautiful part is this you have social. Right. You want some stuff out on social? Cool. Um, that's where you go to the LLM or Chat GPT, Gemini. Hey Gemini, can you pull three quotes out of this piece of content?

SPEAKER_03 27:38

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

Take those quotes. That's your image. It's literally name and the quote. Right. Your office is going to be sending that out as a thing. Where does it go back to? The article you just created. What's that article? The transcript that you just kind of shaved and made down into answering these questions. Awesome. Five five questions we get the most when it comes to dental implants. That's literally the title of your article, right? And by the way, it's not just made for ranking. Like that's what I keep forgetting in this game. We're always about the acquisition.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

Remember, it's not just about, it's not just a funnel, right? Where all you're doing is trying to get people through the door. It's an hourglass. More people will actually be your patients and then become potential referrals for you if you stay top of mind for them. So the question is: do you have a newsletter you send out? Will this article be in that newsletter? It's not that hard. A lot of the AI stuff now can make it really easy as long as you have a database of people you would email, right? Right. And now I get an email, says something about from my dentist, that says something about dental implants. You know what? My mom needs to get a dental implant and I forward it to her because it's easy to do. So I forward it to my mom. And my mom goes, I read the article you sent me. Um, you know, I is your dentist available? And the next thing you know, I'm trying to set up an appointment.

SPEAKER_04 29:09

There you go. And you're just one person. So what if they did that over multiple of their practice? The nice thing is, you know, as patients are checking in, they're filling out their demographics. A majority of practices should have their patients' emails. If you're listening, you don't please get your patients' emails. And then you utilize because one, they're coming to you for a service and you are the expert in your field. But if it's not being communicated to those patients who have maybe been presented a treatment plan and like, I need to call you back. I do want to do it. You know, I just have to check my schedule. Doing newsletters, like you said, Stefan, is a great way to stay top of mind and then also making sure that your website and your your web presence is set up in a way that continues that that cycle.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Yeah. And you said it actually, Michelle, you said it best. You know, I have a lot of uh clinics that will have all their practitioners do these because they get to put that on the bios as authored by them. So now all of a sudden, when you go to the person's bio, you can see the content and engage with content they've written. Now, why is that important? We find this a lot in therapy clients. Okay. I I think this translates pretty well also. But before someone's going to go spend tons of hours potentially with a therapist, they will actually click on the blog post that person's written because they want to get a little sense of who they are before they consume. And we've seen that with the data. The data shows they will look for uh information, they will look through the person's bio, click on the informational content they've created, consume one or two on average blogs, and then be able to actually place the I want to meet with this person. So take the next step and the call to action. Um it's almost like I want to know the practitioner before I get involved. So that might not be the case for someone who's just, you know, um, who's just doing something simple. But, you know, when it comes to orthodontry, where you know you're gonna have multiple visits, it's gonna be a little bit of a relationship, it's gonna be a larger spend. There's gonna be all sorts of things like that. The person wants to know who the practitioner is on the other side. And this allows you to build a real authentic, authoritative web profile for yourself that, like I said, you can use in a lot of different ways.

SPEAKER_03 31:30

So I love that.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

You know, I'm not asking you all to convert tomorrow and spend all your time marketing rather than dealing with your clients, but I am saying, like, you put a lot of effort into that brick and mortar and establishing your practice. Don't let that die on the vine when it comes to when it comes to the online version of that. There's so many more people you could be helping, but they just don't know you're there.

SPEAKER_04 31:53

Absolutely. And you know, to piggyback on that, Stefan, I think with the with how you shared with the therapist, where they like to go in patients, the data proves that they want to read the blog post, kind of get the voice and the almost the personality of who the therapist is gonna be, which makes perfect sense. I think um on the dental side, patients want or potential new patients want to connect with, well, who is the dentist? Are they gentle? Are they kind? All the fear, the all the things that they're going, like, they're either scared, they are concerned at how much it's gonna cost, they're concerned about how much time, are you gonna be a nice dentist? You have sharp pokey things coming in my mouth, you know. So I think things such as, like you said, the about us, about each of the clinicians, something about if they're comfortable sharing about their family, or, or maybe something, maybe they love to run marathons, maybe they, you know, maybe they play guitar on the weekends, and or I have a doctor does that, and I have one that plays piano on the weekend, you know, just like they're they're um super smart. These are things I think patients would like because it gives them that human aspect where they can connect to the person and not just the sharp, pokey, painful thing I have to pay for.

SPEAKER_00 33:09

You just literally gave me an idea on the spot. Or uh, I don't know if you realize this, but a lot of dentists, at least the ones I've dealt with who are pretty cool, who I enjoy, have decided that while we're doing a procedure, we're gonna put on music. Uh, I don't know what it is about a lot of dentists love music. Maybe it's just people that love music. They just happen to want to listen to music while they're doing it.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

Right.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

So anyone have Spotify? Because you can make your own playlist and we could put that under your bio, and it's something that's available to them publicly. They could click the link and then get the like tunes, tunes we'll listen to while we uh while we do it. Or like, you know, you don't want to say that. You get where I'm going. Like that's the smallest little thing that could get embedded as code on the site that you could literally click on and they can go listen to it, and all of a sudden they've made a connection with you personally without you ever talking to them. So uh now am I gonna go in because my dentist likes Led Zeppelin and I do too. I mean, maybe, but ultimately it does bring a level of personality to the and breaks the the animosity of the internet in a good way. And that's what you should be looking to do. You do it in your professional practice. You don't, you they call it bedside manner, right? You have it, you've worked on it, you're very good at it, and in the meantime, you choose not to have it at all online, which is kind of wild to me because it's a it's a huge miss. And again, you're not alone in this. No one's blaming. Like, let's make sure we're clear. I'm not casting blame on you for that. A lot of people aren't just gonna adopt this thing, and it doesn't happen with the click of a finger either, which is why AI is not just gonna, you know, make it all magically appear for you, even though it might seem like it does. I would say make sure to um deal with people like Michelle, myself, and others who actually are not snake oil salesmen. Their credentials are there. If anyone's trying to guarantee you stuff, run. Just run. Right, right. Don't reply to the email. I promise you, if I could guarantee you something, I wouldn't be in this beautifully multicolored box. I would be on a yacht in the middle of the Mediterranean. No such luck. Right. I still like my beautiful box, but nonetheless, I like the lights. Thanks, thank you, thank you. But like nonetheless, that's not the case. And anyone telling you otherwise is literally selling you a false bill of goods. Don't do it.

SPEAKER_04 35:41

No, I hear you. And I think too, um, like you said, our uh clinicians spend so much time going through school, having their practices, whether they build it or they've acquired it, joining a practice as an associate. And it's such a disservice to have that disconnect on not only not having your web presence, or if you do not having enough of it being personal, instead of the little boxes on the page, like you said, that has dental jargon that we become so accustomed to, you know, the removable prosthesis and the different things that we know. But the patients, you talk to them and their eyes glaze over because they're like, What? Or when the dentist walks out of the room, I've had this happen, and then they turn, the patient turns, what does he say? What is this? You know, oh, let me translate that. Well, the website should be the same way. And of course, there's a level of professionalism that you want to have with it, but you've got to remember, take it. I I like um you've probably heard this as well. Whenever uh like uh newspapers and TV uh news, they talk at a third grade level, not to be insulting to the listeners, but they want to make sure that there is no misunderstanding, no difficult terminology. We should do the same thing with our patients, you know. Uh yes, they may know what aesthetic crown lengthening is, but honestly, we can lift your gums. We can we can do gum surgery, you know, we can do plastic surgery for your gums. You know, put it in a way that they would understand.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

And it's not unique to this industry, by the way. So just be aware. Like I have a million stories, I won't share them here for lack of time, but I'll give you one quick example. In the uh furniture space, right? I once had someone tell me, um, I won't call it a couch. And I said, Why? And they said, We only call it sofa. I said, What's the difference? They said, Well, couch is a derogatory term. Derogatory. It's associated with couch potato. Okay. So you want to call it a sofa. All right, here was the problem. Four times more people were looking for the term couch than sofa, but yet they didn't dis differentiate between the two. They can't get the memo. So sometimes a business itself can kind of make these distinctions when the consumer isn't, and the consumer's just trying to solve a problem. I need something to sit on and I want it to accommodate multiple people, and I I want it to be comfortable and luxurious sometimes, and blah, blah, blah. And they're not using your terminology. And that can be a complete, like I've said before, your your choice in doing that is fine as long as you do it eyes wide open. If you're doing it from a place of ignorance, then guess what? That's someone else who's going to capitalize on that moment because while you're not ranking for you know, for couch, the other, you know, business is, and they're going to make a lot more money, and you're going to wonder how they got all that money to be able to run in the most extreme case, Super Bowl ads.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

That you're like, how did that happen? Right. Right. So oftentimes it's it's giving that up. I think one of the other things we should probably touch on is this idea of overlap. So there's um there's an overlap of your audience that is occurring that you need to think about in terms of where they go and what they do. Okay. So, um, for example, and and I Michelle kind of educated me a bit on this one. I have a uh a more uh therapeutic version, which is essentially, you know, if we're dealing with grief and you have a page devoted to grief counseling, you might not have one devoted to, you know, loss of a pet, for example.

SPEAKER_03 39:29

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 39:30

Loss of a pet is its own thing, right? If you are not over that within a period of time, that could be really unhealthy. And at the same time, it kind of has a stigma. Other people who don't aren't pet owners are not going to understand what you're going through and being excluded. It's yeah, it can be very difficult for that individual, right? So just like think about what it might be like for someone who uh is missing teeth or you know has this particular thing about what they're going through and and they feel like others don't really understand them and the stigma around it and so forth. Right. So what what where would you find those folks, right? If you really specialize in that particular field of therapy, well then I would say, hold on a second. How many veterinary offices are there in a 10 to 15 mile radius of where I have my practice?

SPEAKER_01 40:16

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

They're putting down pets, unfortunately, every day.

SPEAKER_01 40:19

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:20

What do they do when they're when when that occurs? They give a person a hug and send them on their way, uh, potentially, you know, with nothing more. So why wouldn't you take the time, if you really are specific in that practice and that aspect, and we can convert this in a minute to dentistry. But um, why wouldn't you create a blog post about, you know, how to talk to your kids about the loss of a pet? That would be one, because that person's probably, if they have children, they're gonna have to go through that. Second one might be when is too much pain too much? And it's basically like, when should you seek help? And then the third one might be something like um the third one might be something like uh the stigma around pet loss and that you're not alone through it. Okay. Doesn't mean that every single one of those articles is going to be like, you know, rank super well, be the top performer on your website. But if those were all printed out really nicely and formulated into, I don't know, um, a booklet with your brand on it, and you went to those, you know, vet offices around and you said, hey, listen, I know you put down pets every day. Um, why, why not offer this to people? You can also give them our, you know, if you want to email them afterwards, you know, here's the link to the articles and so forth.

SPEAKER_01 41:39

Right.

SPEAKER_00 41:40

No cost. It's something for you guys to share. It's not meant to be salesy, it's meant to have right. You just A, you helped a whole bunch more people, which you're leaning business of helping people, right? Right. B, a whole bunch more people were just made aware of your of your practice. And C, you've built a relationship with another, with another local business. I mean, it's B2B connection.

SPEAKER_04 42:03

You're serving and meeting them where they are and an unmet, unmet need for the patients where, like you said, or the vet or the clients where they're leaving, they feel bad. They're probably like, I'm so sorry, but I don't know what to do. But you're right there to meet that need.

SPEAKER_00 42:18

Right. You you brought up a great one with me before, Michelle, that I think is worth mentioning, right? So for those getting knee or hip replacement, they should technically be going and getting cleared by the dentist that they don't have any form of uh of uh like gum disease or any type of exactly or infections and so forth that could risk their uh their surgery. Now that's not necessarily top of mind, right? But if your local uh I guess it's your who would it be? It's your orthopedist and or uh like surgeon, right? They may or may not even have relationships established with with other with dentists. It doesn't necessarily cross over that obviously. So in a way, shape, and form, where you could be the one producing the you know reasons why you should be getting checked before your surgery, um, explaining that to them in a take-home that allows them to go and do it. I mean, that's a value add that they get to provide to their patients that you're offering as an ability to be there. And you don't have to, you're just educating.

SPEAKER_04 43:32

Right, right. No strings attach. That's that's a fantastic idea. And and for those listening, I know in the dental industry, there's such a a weird chasm between medical and dental, but it's such an unmet need that is with with whole healthcare, mouth, mind, body, health, you know, connection, mouth body um connection and oral awareness. Um, that's something that you could easily your cardiac. Your endocrinologists, your orthopedic surgeons. For those who are peridonists that are listening or with the periofield, gum disease doesn't stay in the mouth. It connects to all these other areas that Stefan was pointing out. Thank you for bringing that up, by the way. What a great idea. A simple brochure. And putting it in the in the framework of what the patient or the potential patient might say, you know, you're going to have a, you're going to have hip replacement. This is what you should know. And then simply having your contact information there. And then that's something that they could duplicate on their website, right?

SPEAKER_00 44:34

Yeah. And you know what? It's it's also it's also so you don't build it for one, you build it for multi-use, right? The idea is that I hate to say use all parts of the animal, but the intention here is not, and I'm not a hunter, but it's the intention here is for you to like build something, not with one medium in mind. It's with an audience in mind and a need in mind. You need to be thinking the needs. Am I meeting the needs? So a great example of this might be one of the things that's problematic with dentistry, at least if it's not a one and done, is that I'm gonna need you to follow a set prescribed kind of process with me as the practitioner. I'm putting myself in your shoes, guys. And saying I'm gonna need them to come back a certain number of times. Some of it might be preventative, right? So where do I find that same audience? That's what you need to think. I was thinking about it earlier, and I'm like, you know what? Glaucoma. Glaucoma, yes, glaucoma has a sp it's not to say everyone who has glaucoma is of a certain age, but predominantly older have to do something to upkeep glaucoma on a constant basis. They're usually taking drops, they're usually seeing the the uh the optometrist a certain amount of times, the specialist. They are going through that process. So if they're on a schedule, right, there's no reason why you can't slot in and create a schedule with them as well, because they're in the age group, they probably need the sit, they probably need services, and they've already shown the ability, let's hope, right, to follow a medical regimen and do something through that may continue on for a very long time. In their cases for the rest of their lives. So getting your pressure check, that is something they're gonna continually do. There is no home device that does that. They have to go in to see their specialists. So the the same holds true with dentistry, right? They're not doing dentistry at home on themselves. They're gonna need a process and a method, and that's where you all can kind of step in. So I'm just saying there are think of it like a Venn diagram. Where does my audience? Meaning the folks who need me also go where me creating a relationship with them wouldn't seem like selling, but rather like helping.

SPEAKER_04 46:53

Excellent point. You know, I think one of the things that comes to mind for me, and I've seen has been very successful with specialty, is a majority of our patients are an older demographic for the perio and oral surgery and endodontists that are listening. Well, because let's get out of the dental box and think, okay, 55 and up communities are what's going on in those areas? Are there, is there some home health care as long, you know, cognitive decline sometimes has its challenges for patients, but are there are there things within those scopes where you can layer, like you said, that circle um where they can they the same audiences. The other thing, um golfers, golfers have an expendable income where they can afford the surgeries typically. Um, if for if they have the income to be able to go do that and they want to allocate a dental, they may not, they want to book their tea time, but they come over and do not necessarily mutually exclusive, maybe not, but doing that or or ladies going to the spa. They have that extra uh you know day spas and stuff like that. I have seen that be a good overlap of our ideal audience, so to say, of who could potentially be our patients coming in the door or on the website or geotargeting with ads or you know, or yeah, and I mean you can literally I'll I'll give you a prime example of using this on the website.

SPEAKER_00 48:17

So, for example, we had a therapy clinic that is based in um a city that has a very, very large university. Okay now we know that those students have a stigma of being seen going into that the on-campus clinic. They also have expendable, most of them tend to have pretty good insurance. So we literally built a page for the university that it's not gonna outrank the university itself. But if you're a student of that university and we essentially promote to you that we're here for you, what's better than having a page devoted to the university and and saying, hey, and you know what was even better? We realized from the data that that university was putting out, because they have a huge medical center, which was giving us stats on what the mental health issues were that were coming up with students on an annual basis. They have this report they run. Okay. We knew that we should probably talk about roommate issues. We knew that we should probably talk about uh uh living alone for the first time or the life transition to now these topics were already identified. So now we were just stepping up and saying, here, here's some blog content that'll speak directly to you. And by the way, we have a full service page that services you. Does that mean someone else who's goes to another university is not gonna want to come to us? No, not necessarily, but it's going to be something that when someone goes there, they're gonna say, ah, they're talking to me. Right. Talking to me. And that's what people want, right? They really do. They want to be seen and they want to feel like in the cold, dark corners of the internet, I'm not alone in my decision-making process. Because let's face it, the right now, there in in in literally his human history, there has never been an a more anxious time to make a decision.

SPEAKER_01 50:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 50:08

Because you've never had so many options at your disposal. No, and so I don't think I should I I don't think I should sit here and try to figure out what the best color shovel to buy is. Right. Man, if you go on Amazon, there's about a million colors you can choose from, which is an additional decision I shouldn't have to make.

SPEAKER_04 50:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 50:26

Right.

SPEAKER_04 50:27

We have to make it simple, simple and easy, and then get out of ourselves and out of our clinical mindset of, you know, hey, we've got to present this treatment plan and they need this, and we need the x-ray and all that. Let's get into the human aspect of it and say, okay, let's get into the mind of our ideal avatar is another word that's using marketing, but our ideal audience or ideal patient. And what would they be thinking of? Of my daughter's wedding's coming up and I have bad breath. What can I do? I'm missing a front too, you know, different things like that that they may already, and yeah, it's it's a layered approach, which marketing always is, but you you were there to meet the need when they're good when they're searching online for this particular, and then that can overlap into, oh, well, if you already have an article on that on your website or your Google My Business profile. Um, and by the way, those listening, did you know that you could post your Google My Business profile? It's more than just a map and your address and hours, but using that opportunity to say, oh, well, because they're already talking about this problem and they meet me where I'm at, well, they're already seen as an expert in their eyes.

unknown 51:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 51:39

Boom. You know, and by the way, they don't have to, there's no please don't see it as a transaction in that if they don't click, uh either make a phone call or fill out a form that it's a fail, right? Right. People don't necessarily convert on the first engagement. Sometimes it takes a lot. Like seven. You know what they say is that it takes about uh so there's this like to build loyalty, actual loyalty, brand loyalty. It's called the 7-Eleven Four rule. And what it is is that it's gonna take um, I believe it's it's gonna take seven hours. No, I'm sorry, seven uh seven hours. Yeah, seven, uh no, seven touch points across 11 hours. This is building brand like Nike. I want to buy Nike now because I've engaged with Nike's content for so much. So it's not saying you would get that right off the first bat, but it's seven touch points across um, I'm sorry, it's seven uh seven touch points across 11 hours, and I believe it's four platforms. So you basically need to see this, and the the real rule here, forget whether it's the seven hours, the eleven touch points, that's not here nor there. The ultimate case is you need to be seen many times before someone ingrains that into their brain, your name, your practice name, and so forth, before you become familiar. So to build f familiarity, you have to show up. And that doesn't mean they're gonna execute or buy or quote unquote check out on the first engagement. That's a little that's asking for a lot. So be aware that like it's a process, you're not gonna always know it's not always attributable just because it's on the web, for some reason you've come to believe that everything is tracked down to the pixel. And the real secret is it it usually isn't, but we know that if we can use one piece of content we invested time and effort into building, and we can use that as many ways as possible, we've diversified the cost and the time it took to build it into multiple avenues for potential outcome. So that is the way you take one thing you invest your time, money, and effort into and break it up into a multitude of opportunities for yourself. That's what you have to be doing, not worrying about I gotta create 500 blogs tomorrow because I need to rank for every single thing that my patients might look like. No, no, don't do that. I promise you, you will either burn out, you will get frustrated, you'll give up, you'll throw the baby out with the bathwater and say, this isn't worth doing, I'm never doing this again. Exactly. You'll miss an opportunity that, frankly, like anything, it's a habit. You slowly build it over time. And if you're not great at it, you get a professional help you with it.

SPEAKER_04 54:44

There you go. And I really love what you touched on regarding the AI as far as using that for blogs. I have seen marketers do that as well. And like, ooh, this is so easy. I just, you know, shoot out these blog posts and and just try to do that to bridge that gap on the consistency factor. But I think just slow and steady, like you said, just just start where you're at, maybe like a monthly type of article, just pick one thing that's 12 a year, just already plan it out, do it in your own words, use the techniques like you shared to be able to go through those pain points and the different things and and and record yourself with those questions so you can transcribe it. And then just they want to hear from you. I can't tell you how many times, you know, when AI first came out and we started seeing on social and stuff, it's like, ooh, I remember the first thing I saw that I knew was AI. It was this dreamy mountain kind picture. And I was like, oh my gosh, that looks amazing. Come to find out it's not a real place. Well, at first it's like ooh and ah, but now after what, um, almost a year or so of seeing it so prevalent online, you want the real, I want the real people. Like, I don't want these fake videos and different or fake blogs. And I want the voice, you can tell. You want the real voice. Your gut. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 56:06

Your gut knows. Exactly. You don't want perfection. Be people. Just be people. Don't again. Here's the thing. Anyone who's sold you that there's an easy button to life, I have some stuff to sell you. But no, I have a bridge to sell you. But the reality is there's no easy button. Okay, there's no easy button. And if there was an easy button, let's just think about it, and it was available to everyone. Wouldn't everyone just push it?

SPEAKER_04 56:31

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 56:32

And if everyone pushes it, how should Google or the LLMs figure out which one to choose?

SPEAKER_04 56:36

They're gonna throw it out, just like you said.

SPEAKER_00 56:39

So it's not, there is no get rich quick to this. All right. There's no get rich quick. Y'all know this. You went to school for your practices, you put in effort and time. No one just shows up and hangs a shingle and goes, I'm in the dental industry. Doesn't happen that way. The same holds true with the authority on the web. Can someone game the system? Sure, for a little bit, right? But that how that house is built on cards and it's gonna fall. So you don't build a practice based on faulty reviews or on um, you know, fake articles. Those are things that, again, if they work for a minute, they don't work for a very long time. I'm in the business of a 401k approach.

SPEAKER_02 57:22

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 57:23

You are hoping to retire on the value you're building. You wouldn't, you wouldn't make those kind of investments in your own practice. You definitely shouldn't make them in your online version because that is a version of your practice and you need to look at it as such. So if one, if you haven't invested, start investing in your online visibility because it's part of who you are and it should be fundamental to your business. And two, it is not something you're day trading. You're not, if you day trade this, I promise you, you will go bankrupt in the online version. You want to be approaching this as a I'm gonna build it up over time. It's not gonna be something that happens tomorrow, but with enough content, with enough authority, with enough use, right? All of a sudden all boats rise by the same tide. And next thing you know, you're a huge authority in your space. You're able to open up another practice. You have so many things at your disposal because again, the volume and stuff is starting to happen, but it doesn't happen overnight and it's not an easy button.

SPEAKER_04 58:23

No, it's not. You said that so well, Stefan. Thank you. And for all those listening, those online, you you do. You need to think of it as an investment portfolio. Um, it's curb appeal, it's taking that time, investing that time in a company like Stefan with your company with VibeLogic. I know that you can just go in, let the experts come in and help build up your asset, your online portfolio of your practices. Uh, and you're gonna see dividends over time for sure. Uh it's something that's slow and steady, wins the race. There's no cheat code, there's no easy button that's sustainable. And patients can tell, they can feel the difference. So making sure that you're meeting them where they're at when they have their pain points, when they're going online to search and or they're they have an issue where they're searching for a specific topic like you shared, Stefan. Um, but just making sure that you put as much effort into making sure that part of it is is squared away so that you can do what you love best, which is taking care of the patients in your chair. Stefan, if anybody wanted to work with you, could you please share with our audience how they can get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_00 59:31

Sure. Uh so not the easiest name to spell. I'll spell it out for you. It's S T E P H A N. That's Stefan. Baja, which is even harder to spell and or pronounce it. Or say as we said. B-A-J-A-I-O. If you look me up online, I promise you're gonna find me. Either way, uh, I am most available on LinkedIn, so please reach out to me there. Of course, you can always go to vibelogic.com, which is our company, uh, and fill out a form. More than happy to converse and get into it with you. We deal with everyone from smaller businesses on an annual basis because that's how we work with folks. Because again, it's a 401k, it takes time to some of the world's largest brands. But we love working with um practitioners who are making a difference in their communities and who want to be able to ensure their online presence is just as beautiful a smile as they have going on in their own practice.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:28

That is awesome. Thank you, Stefan. And for all of those listening, I will have those details as well in our show notes. Stefan, thank you for taking the time to come on our podcast. Thank you for having me and teaching us. Absolutely, your pleasure. And we'd love to have you back in the future. Continue, especially as AI continues to change and grow. I know that's a hot topic that I've had a lot of clinicians are very interested in. So, um, Stefan, you have an amazing day. And to all those listening, you guys please continue to check back in for future episodes where we'll continue to help build your dental referral marketing plans, whether it's online or in your practice with your referral relationships. You guys have a wonderful day. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:09

And a great one.