#104: Marketing in a Slow Economy

In this episode of the Dental Marketing Secrets podcast, Mark Thackeray discusses the impact of economic slowdowns on dental practices and the importance of adapting marketing strategies accordingly. He emphasizes that while demand may not disappear, patient behavior changes, requiring practices to maintain visibility and trust. Mark shares insights on optimizing conversion rates, building authority, and reactivating existing patients, all while focusing on providing value rather than discounts. The conversation highlights the need for proactive marketing efforts to capture market share during downturns and prepare for future growth.

Takeaways

• Economic slowdowns change patient behavior, not demand.
• Cutting marketing can lead to significant revenue loss.
• Maintaining marketing efforts can lead to market share gains.
• Building trust is crucial during economic downturns.
• Optimizing conversion rates can yield better results without additional spend.
• Providing value is more effective than offering discounts.
• Reactivating existing patients is a cost-effective strategy.
• Proactive marketing helps practices recover faster post-downturn.
• Educating patients on treatment options is essential for decision-making.
• Avoid panic selling in marketing; focus on strategic opportunities.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Dental Marketing in a Slow Economy
00:57 Understanding Economic Slowdowns and Patient Behavior
03:48 The Importance of Maintaining Marketing Efforts
09:08 Strategies for Marketing During Economic Downturns
11:04 Building Trust and Authority in Marketing
15:59 Optimizing Conversion Rates for Better Results
22:46 Providing Value Over Discounts
28:00 Reactivating Existing Patients for Growth

Get Support

You don’t need to do everything. You just need to do the right things in the right order. If you want help building that plan, we’re here. Contact Maria to get started - maria@markthackeray.com

Transcript

0:00

Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Dental Marketing Secrets podcast. My name is Mark Thackeray and welcome in this holiday season. As you can see, I've donned my festive apparel, my beautiful quote unquote ugly sweater. I think it's amazing. So I'm not going to call it ugly. And it's literally a few days before Christmas that I'm recording this. And so Merry Christmas. And if you listen to this after the fact, Merry Christmas. But excited to talk about today, we're on episode 104, marketing in a slow economy. And we're really just building on what we talked about last episode. And it's really sprung out of these conversations that I've been having with clients all across the country. There's one in Maryland, one in California. just different practices here locally in Utah. I've heard again and again, this same sentiment. echoed through from these patients or these from these clients, excuse me, is that the marketing is slowing down and that people are pulling back. not as eager to accept treatment. A lot of them are saying, hey, let me think about this for a while. They're not acting on those treatment plans like they have in the past. You're getting fewer calls as a practice. And really what I wanna talk about, and this is kind of the big takeaway for this episode is that economic slowdowns, they don't eliminate demand. They change behavior. And that's what we're seeing. You're starting to see that, yes, are absolutely there are patients still out there searching for treatment and they're going to accept treatment. But the way they go about that is different than what we've seen. And I liken it to a lot like what an investor would do. During a slowdown, they... The worst move to do when you're an investor is panic selling, is to cut your losses and just sell everything. That's one of the worst things that you can do. The best move is to become a strategic buyer. And really that requires you to look at this whole situation through a different lens. You know, if you can zoom out a little bit and see what's happening, you're seeing a lot of these practices get nervous. They're starting to get cold feet and as a result, they're pulling out. of their marketing campaigns. They're just not doing Google ads. They're not doing social. They are uh slowing down on their spend or maybe even stopping it altogether. And so what does that look like from a consumer standpoint? Okay, so I'm a patient and I've been seeing these brands promote themselves on search or on social or other means, direct mail could be. And now all of sudden I'm not seeing them. And so there's this vacuum and that's where the opportunity lies. is there's this vacuum and now people who are willing and can see the opportunity can actually seize on that opportunity. They can be the ones to show up in those same spots and start making those connections. So let me, but I wanted to show why this is so important, why this is so relevant. So I pulled some historical data with the help of. some of these great research foundations that do all this effort to get this data, which is so cool. But this is what happens when businesses cut marketing. So this is data, this first one is from 2008, 2009, and this was McGraw-Hill Foundation or organization that put together this research. And they saw that companies that cut marketing saw revenue declines of up to 25%, 25 % companies that maintained or increased marketing. saw market share gains and recovered faster than those that did not. So not only are they losing revenue immediately, but they're also those that they're also losing market share down the road and they take longer to recover. So you're seeing the short-term immediate impacts, but also the long-term effects of not marketing of pausing all of your marketing efforts. Here's another study from the Harvard Business Review. And this one is cool because it spans a much greater period. So you have the 1920s all the way up to 2020. Those, the different recessions that occurred during that timeframe. And businesses that invested in marketing during downturns were 30 to 50 % more likely to outperform their competitors post recession. 30 to 50 % more likely. That's powerful, right? So it's not all about what you're doing during the downturn. It's important, right? It's important to remember that and to focus on that. Cause like we just saw, you're going to most likely see revenue decline even up to 25%. One fourth of your revenue could be lost by choosing to not do anything marketing wise, but more importantly, what's that going to look like down the road? You know, it's, it's losing market share, but if you're on the flip side, if you do see that opportunity and you take advantage of that opportunity, you are now the can make up ground on your competitors. You can steal some of their market share. You can be the incumbent in that area and really become the authority and expert, the go-to practice for a lot of patients because they're starting to see you during these times when everyone else is pulling out. If you look at COVID in 2020 practices that maintain patient communication, reviews, visibility, they are the ones who rebounded much faster when restrictions were lifted. And I think we all saw that. Those that were sitting in the background and then they just wanted to see how it played out. I hear those words a lot. I just wanna see how this plays out. Those are the ones that take so much longer to get back up to where they were, right? But those that are proactive about this, and I saw this, and that was a tough time for me and my agency. we're on a standstill with a lot of the practices. And so that was a scary time financially because I wasn't holding my clients to that, you know, as far as their retainers and stuff like that, because I didn't know when they would open and that didn't seem right to me. And so I was, you know, obviously holding my breath with that, but also uh trying to proactively encourage them to, to reach out. And those that, that did were, man, it made a world of difference as far as recovery goes. So marketing, the thing to remember is that marketing works better when competitors go quiet. It's that opportunity mindset to make sure that you are out there and present and that people can hear you and that you're educating them and you're helping them. And again, like we're talking to talk about today, it's just, it's changing the way you do this a little bit. You can't get by with the same things that you were doing before. And you see this all the time, right? When the market is going well, Everyone's booming, right? It's easy. People are like, oh yeah, let's do this. And they accept treatment all the time. Your calls go up. And it's like this, not just in dental, but in all the businesses, right? I mean, when I was doing photography years ago, it's when the market's great, have, all of a sudden you have a hundred new competitors that you're dealing with just because that particular industry has a low barrier to entry and anyone can do it, right? But when it gets tough, all those people pull out because they don't have the structure in place, the marketing in place to keep pulling in those leads like they were before. They're harder to come by. so it's a different, or requires a different approach to capture those leads. And same thing happens in dentistry is you're getting these patients that are taking a, some would say a longer route, but I think it's a great opportunity to refine what you're doing and make it even better so that when the economy rebounds, you're gonna be well, well positioned to capture more of that market share. So again, stick with this kind of stock market analogy. uh When you see these markets pull back or they dip, emotional investors, what do they do? They pull their money out. They're like, I'm not doing this. I can't handle this. And conversely, you see strategic investors buy up those assets at a discount, right? They're so excited because they have the long-term view in mind and can say, man, now I'm getting these at a discount. Marketing behaves in that very much the same way. During downturns, the attention is cheaper, competition is lower, and you're just gonna start to see things like trust building matter even more. A slow economy is like a market correction. It punishes panic and rewards patience. So that's what we're talking about today. The biggest mistake, like I don't wanna beat a dead horse, but biggest mistake you can make during these times is cutting your marketing spend entirely. let me rephrase that because I don't think that's actually totally true. The biggest mistake you can make is not proactively marketing because you can do marketing without a budget. You definitely can. And we've talked about that on the podcast. The referral partners, you can talk about uh directly to your patients. You can do strategic alliances and partnerships with other organizations, employer outreach. There's so many things that you can do without a marketing budget that can still bring in a lot of new patients. So I'm gonna rephrase what I just said. So cutting your marketing effort is one of the biggest mistakes you can make right now during a downturn. uh Going silent is, give me the, I'm not gonna say the kiss of death because you're still getting some patience that will trickle in because you have some goodwill, you have some relationship, things like that, but it's gonna be much different. It's gonna look a whole lot different. And then waiting for things to improve is the last mistake that you wanna make is hanging back in the shadows like I talked about before. Let's see how these things play out. That is not the right attitude at all just because you're gonna be missing out on that opportunity and it's gonna take you longer to recover because you're gonna be acting last. You're gonna be the one who who finally, you know, sees what everyone else is doing and it's like, now you're finally, you know, dipping your toe in the water when everyone else is already all the way wet. You know, they're already all the way in. So let's talk about a few things specifically that you can do to shift the way that you approach marketing during these economic downturns. Okay, shift number one, invest in trust. And think of this as your blue chips stocks. You blue chip stocks are those that are your, your traditional, I mean, historically high performers. They're your safe bets during uncertain times. If you're not sure about these, you always have those blue blue chip stocks that you can, can't, you can rely on for solid, you know, returns. think of Apple, you think of Google, those, those are blue chip stocks, right? So what does that mean from a marketing perspective? while you're focusing on those, like I mentioned before, those trust building activities that can do a lot of good and this goes right into the next one that I'm gonna be talking about. So we focus on reviews. How you want number of reviews to go up, you want total volume, but you also want the recency or the frequency of those reviews to go up. Both of those are extremely important to Google. They just tickle that algorithm so nicely. because there's signals to Google to show your practice in more of the search results. It's such a powerful signal just because it's someone else saying how great you are instead of you telling Google how great you are. So reviews, patient testimonials is another thing and this one uh also is a big player, not necessarily always in the ranking, although they can just because if you have good video for example, that's rich media and that is something that Google loves because it increases engagement and time on your site and all that. But from a conversion standpoint, it is a tremendous medium to build that relationship. Because now, if you're watching this podcast on YouTube for example, if you haven't, then go ahead and check that out because now you get to see my non-verbal cues. You get to see my, you know. my facial expressions, you see what I do with my hands or you even see the background of my frame, my video frame. say, man, interesting books back there. see a logoed hat, I see shells, I see a surfing thing. There's so much that you glean from a video. It's really the next best thing to being in person because you get all those, that nonverbal communication and you get other things as well. So it's very powerful and if you can do that with a patient testimonial. and then utilize that, deploy that asset in different ways. It could be on your website, could be on your Google business profile, it could be via email. There's a myriad of ways to really utilize those patient testimonials. Plus it endears that patient to your practice longer. Studies have shown that those people that speak out in favor or advocate for your practice or become an ambassador for your practice or an organization, they remain loyal to that organization or practice in this case, much longer than those who don't. So it's in your best interest in terms of patient retention to do that as well. So focus on reviews, focus on patient testimonials. You want to again, position yourself as an authority. uh And this is where education really helps because those people that are thinking about it, you can help them understand what their options are more fully. uh you know, a pillar that I've built my practice or my business, my agency on for years and years and years is helping patients see what they need to know to make the best decision possible. That's what a lot of them are, that's a core desire that they all have is they don't wanna make a dumb mistake. They don't wanna make a dumb decision. Help them make a good decision by educating them on what they need to know because you're the expert. They look to you as the expert. So be one. So point out the things that they need to know. Point out the mistakes that people make. Point out the considerations they need to weigh when they're looking at this. Point out the likely outcomes. That's a big one that a lot of them leave out is they don't, you don't always say, okay, if you go down this path, this is what's likely going to occur. If you don't, this is also what's likely going to occur. I'm not trying to pressure you in one way or the other, but in order to make a good decision, you need to know both outcomes. Right, if you were to come to me and say, know, Dr. Mark, I've been struggling with this for years and years and I just, I need something to change and I recommend treatment but then I don't do anything about it and then I come back and say, well, why didn't you tell me that if I didn't go through with this that I was gonna lose my teeth or that my, you know, because of these missing teeth that I have, my facial structure is gonna be changed, it's gonna look all sunken in and all this, why didn't you tell me? Like I'm coming to you because you're the expert. That's how some of them feel. may not come out to you and say that to your face, but sometimes that's what happens. So look at it as your moral obligation because it is to help them understand what the likely outcomes are going to be. Okay. So those are some things to look at during this time. That's kind of the shift that you need to make. The first shift is invest in trust. That's a big one. The second one plays into this. It's all about conversion, fixing conversion or optimizing your conversion before you start to add in marketing spend and things like that. This is one that I just love just because it means really the outcome from this, let's say you're getting 10 calls in a day, instead of converting three or four of those calls or whatever the number is, it doesn't matter. Now you're converting five or six of those calls. You're not spending anything more, but now You're able to convert 20, 30, 40, 50, sometimes a hundred percent more of those leads just because you fixed the conversion cycle. You can, you, you, you better understand what they're really after and can articulate that in such a way as to assuage any fears, to make them feel confident that you're the right person and to feel comfortable moving forward. So how do you do that? Right? Well, it's. You are, there's simple things. One, this is a super, super simple thing. Answer your phone faster. It's so painfully obvious and it is hard to do sometimes just because you are juggling so many different responsibilities. You've got nine plates that you're trying to keep up and so it can be difficult but that should be a high, high priority. If you are investing, everyone's investing something into marketing and promotion whether you think it or not. It could be money, it could be effort, it could be time. And so you're always doing something and it's always an investment at risk. If you don't answer those phones fast enough, you are losing so much of that. That is such a big one and such an easy one in terms of optimizing your conversion. So answer those phones faster. Improve your followup is another key point, right? What are you doing once you've... proposed treatment, what does your follow-up look like? Or what are you doing when someone calls in, is curious about your office, hours, treatment, insurance, what does that look like? And then they don't schedule it? What's your follow-up? Is it, oh, hopefully we'll get something next time, you know, it's across your fingers and hope for a better lead next time. Or do you have something in place, a system in place to capture that phone number, the name? follow up with them and say, hey, I know you called the other day. You probably have some more questions. What can I answer for you? Or what can I do to help you make, we'd love to come just see you for an exam. Just so that you can, know you're probably looking at different offices. You're not sure who might be the best fit. Why don't we do this? We'd love to just have you come in our practice. We're not gonna charge you or make an offer, whatever. It's a new patient special. It's only $39 or $79 or whatever. but just for you a chance to come in and try us out, we'll do a full exam and just make it easy for them, right? What does your followup look like? I'm not gonna get into the offer or anything like that right now, but what does that followup look like? know, if it's someone who's, especially for these big, big cases, right? I mean, if someone's calling in about cosmetic, you know, it could be veneers or maybe it's restorative with a dental implant case or an all on X case or something like that. And they're just kind of shopping around. um They don't wanna commit to an appointment yet. Man, what if you were just to say something like, hey, Don, you know, I appreciate you calling in. It looks like you've got a lot of questions. Let me do this. What's your email address? I'm gonna send you, give me your email address. I'm gonna send you a report that we put together all about All On Accent or all about these denture or these implant-supported dentures, just so that you know and can make a better decision. Solid. I'm not gonna do anything else, I'm just gonna send it to you. You'll really like this. What's your email address? That alone, like that's a very simple thing to do. But now you've captured the email address of uh a huge prospect, right? I mean, so this could be a very big case. And now you can send them something. Obviously you have to create a resource, but that's not too hard to do. You can send them a resource that educates them on the different options, why implant-supported dentures make sense. and kind of go through those commonly asked questions, but that's all about the follow-up, right? Now you have a decent follow-up system to capture these leads, because most of them don't. Most practices don't. They just say, if they didn't book today, bummer, better luck next time. They don't even try and capture that lead, which is terrible. And it's not on you, right? mean, it's just, you just don't have so many things you're worried about, but that's an easy one too, relatively easy one to try and to fix, okay? Another few things, I'm not gonna spend too much more time on this particular shift on optimizing for conversion, but fix scheduling friction. You know, this is a big one too. Patients are looking to schedule sooner than later. What can you do to get people in sooner? What can you do to make it easier for them to come in? Those are two different questions that require two different responses, but both of those can have a huge impact on whether people come in or not. You know, like I gave them the example before, during the follow-up, you made it easier for them to come in either by adding a more convenient time, could be sooner, could be earlier hours after hours, that type of thing, or it could be uh an easier, more low risk offer for them. Hey, it's a free exam, just come in for a free exam, I'm not gonna charge you, I just wanna make sure that you're comfortable. It's what we do because we wanna make, we're invested in the long-term relationship. We're not about just trying to get you in and. squeeze all your money out in the first thing and then just never see you again. We want this to be a long-term relationship. And you make that very clear. That's another way to get them in. That's another way to optimize your conversion for scheduling. ah Again, the potential rewards for this are massive. And this is, if you didn't do anything in 2026, but try to optimize your conversion, that would be time well spent in my... in my book, just because you could be spending the same or doing the same amount of effort and now getting 20, 30, 50, 100 % better results from it, from the same things that you're doing, right? I mean, obviously you're altering them a little bit, the process, but you're not changing what you're doing. That's how important this conversion is. All right, next shift I want you to consider is think about the value that you can provide. Don't think about the discounts. This is what a lot of people go to during economic downturns. They think, I gotta discount this or gotta make this cheaper. People are gonna wanna deal. And that is true. I mean, there are people that do want, they want a fair price, but I don't think you always have to default to discounts, okay? Instead think of the value. Now, how do you provide value? Value comes in different ways. Value comes from education, like we talked about. people value being able to make a good decision. They value someone who they can trust and who clearly outlines what the long-term outcomes are. That's a big value. That's huge, right? Now I know, now I'm empowered to make the decision. Now I don't feel hostage to just guessing or to just comparing on price without proper context. Like that's dangerous. That's dangerous situation. place a lot of value on education. So that's Okay. You can emphasize prevention over or versus future cost, right? So, and this, it's always a harder sell. People are much more likely to uh fix a problem than to prevent one. And we all know that, you know, I mean, it's like the whole exercise, eating healthy before you, so you don't get heart disease and you don't have all these major health complications down the road, yeah, it sounds good, but it's harder to sell people on, right? But it's still important. I don't think you can totally cross this off the list. So emphasize prevention over future cost. So just help them see and be specific. I don't think you're not trying to do scare tactics, but you can just help. I like to use patient stories and just say, you know, I had a patient, was in the exact same shoes, was like, oh, this is so, I'm not gonna do that. You know, I'm not gonna come in every six months. I'm gonna come in when I need to come in, you know? And I tried to reason with him, but he just was gonna do what he was gonna do. And so I wanted to support him the best I could. And so I'd keep reaching out and finally he came in because he had a huge problem. You know, it was something you could tell by the... by the scans and all this stuff that it was uh a relatively minor problem that became a huge issue down the road. It became, it was painful, needed a root canal, and it's just a long drawn out process. Something, it just hurts me because as a provider, as a doctor, I know that that could have easily been prevented. So, I mean, it could be something as simple as a patient story like that. And obviously, yours would probably be much better than mine, but. Yeah, use a story to convey that it's much more valuable to prevent than to pay the steep bill down the road of future cost. You can also weave in their financing options. Now these are getting better and better every year, you know, as far as more and more palatable for consumers. So weave that in. I would also emphasize that it's, you know, if it's, obviously if it's true, just say, hey, we have a number of patients that have found this very, very uh easy or very, comfortable as far as their monthly payment can be anywhere from this to this, just to give them some brackets, some understanding or clarity and just, and then emphasize more importantly, what the value is of that treatment. This is where you articulate those benefits, especially the future benefits of acting on treatment. So if it's cosmetic, or restorative, let's take cosmetic, then you detail out and articulate, you really kind of help them experience those benefits now and see, picture what that looks like on a daily basis, a month from now, years from now, things like that. Just help them see that now, every day you're gonna wake up and you are going to, you're not gonna be dreading your smile anymore. You won't avoid looking into the mirror because now you see this smile that, looks amazing and it trickles down into every aspect of your life. Now you're more confident, you're more social, you're more outgoing. If you're in a professional setting, you're more likely to offer ideas and suggestions and you're more proactive in your job description and things like that. Help them see and just how that translates or how that affects the relationships with your family. They see me as I'm warmer, I'm more apt to converse with them, our relationships have gotten better, things like that really help them see and experience what that looks like down the road. So again, focus that to the next shift is just focus on market value and not discounts. Avoid the discount mentality. All right, one more. I had a couple other ones, but I'm not gonna share it. I just wanna keep it a little more simple. Last one I'm gonna share is focus on reactivating existing patients. This is a lower risk investment. It's something we should be doing all the time in my opinion, because it costs so much less than acquiring a new patient. Bain and company shared the famous statistic that it's uh five to seven times more expensive to acquire a new patient or new client than to reactivate an old one. And that makes sense when you think about it, right? It's they have worked with you before. They're familiar with how you operate. They know where you are. There's that. They like you. They trust you. They've already crossed that bridge, which is the biggest challenge is just getting people to come inside the practice and sit down in the chair. Cause once you do generally you do a great job. So getting those people to come back, what can you do to get them to come back, make it easy for them? goes back up to what we talked about before. making it easy for them to come in, having a compelling offer, articulating the benefits, uh specifically the emotional side of the benefits. Hey, now, you know, we just wanna make sure that we're preventing any bigger treatment or bigger, we wanna prevent these small issues from becoming big problems down the road, but also to know that you are doing a great job. Like you're doing what you know you should do as far as taking care of your health. I think it's a big one too that we don't always talk about. So, reactivate existing patients. So those are several, like I said, I have a few more. I'm not gonna go into them just because I wanna keep this a little more dialed in. But those are ones that you should, and let's run through those too. So we talked about. Let me just scroll up, invest in trust. So we talked about patient reviews, patient testimonials, authority and education. Those are your blue chip stocks, know, things that you can count on again and again and again. Doesn't matter what the market's doing. That's always a good, good way to look at things. Second is the optimization is trying to get more juice from the squeeze, right? Is to do a better job of answering the phones faster, having follow-up in place, improving that follow-up. fixing any scheduling friction. Those are three great ways to improve your conversion. Next, we talked about market value, providing value over discounts. Don't default to the discounts, provide value through education, through focusing on prevention, and even highlighting financing options. And then last, we talked about reactivating existing patients. eh So those are four great ways to adjust your mentality during an economic downturn. Things you do not want to do are slash and burn your budgets. You don't wanna kill off your marketing just because you're scared, just because you don't wanna lose money, right? Patients are still out there and they're still searching for your practice, but they just do it a little bit differently. So you wanna dial in, you still want to do this because it's gonna help you avoid uh Avoid revenue loss right now in the short term, but it's also gonna help you get back up to your normal levels if you're falling behind a little bit. It's gonna help you do that quicker, okay? And you're gonna gain market share. I mean, those are all three great reasons to do this. So don't, again, avoid discontinuing your marketing efforts, okay? Do not. Do not fall prey of the discounts, like random discounts, things like that. Don't feel like you necessarily have to discount your services just to get people in the door. I'm not saying you shouldn't. I think there's a time and place for that, but don't rely on that heavily. Don't just say, well, everyone's looking for a deal, like no one's gonna move, no one's gonna accept treatment unless it's cheaper or that. That's not true. It's not true. Okay? Don't copy what your competitors are doing just blindly because that's what most people do because it's easy because they chances are they have no idea what they're doing either Don't do that as well. So those are three things not to do so that's what um Those are my recommendations for Marketing during an economic downturn. It's it's so important that you continue to do it. Like I mentioned before like those practices that are proactive are gonna, they're gonna capture the lion's share of the patients down the road. You know, it's not, these downturns don't eliminate the demand that patients have, the need that they have, they just alter the way that patients go about accepting treatment or finding a practice, things like that. So if you need any help with this, you guys, I mean, this is, uh this is something that we do all the time. If any of this resonated with you and you're thinking, I don't wanna guess my way through this, then our team would love to help you. Just reach out, we'll start a conversation. Mark at markthackerry.com. I'll put a link in the show notes. But until next time, my friends, gear up for 2026. We're gonna talk a little bit about that next time and some other things that you can do specifically for 2026. But I hope you have a wonderful new year. If you're listening to this after the new year, hopefully you're... Kicking Button, Taking Names in 2026. And we'll talk to you soon, you guys. Bye.