Attract, Convert and Deliver Part 1: Marketing Your Practice

You're listening to the Phil Klein Dental Podcast Thanks for joining us. I'm Dr. Phil Klein. Today's part one of a three-part series titled Attract, Convert, and Deliver. Part one deals specifically with marketing your practice. Our guest is Dr. Todd Snyder, a regular contributor to VivaLearn.com, a cosmetic dentist, international author, lecturer, and consultant to a variety of dental companies. He hosts his own podcast program called Delusional, Winning the Weekly War of Dentistry. You can reach Dr. Snyder at www.legion.dentist. Before we introduce our guest, I'd like to tell you about a new innovative product by Cranberry. Cranberry is known for its high-quality products and has recently launched a revolutionary new biodegradable nitrile glove. That's right, biodegradable. It breaks down. And here's how it works. These gloves incorporate a unique additive that triggers microbial activity to break down the gloves after they're used and put in the landfill, resulting in up to 80% of the material breaking down in less than 18 months. So when you think about all the gloves that are discarded every day in dental practices all over the world, you can imagine how much impact this has on protecting our planet. So if it's important to you to have a comfortable, quality, protective glove, and even a nitrile glove that's biodegradable, check out Cranberry's website at cranberryusa.com. Dr. Snyder, thanks for joining us. Thanks, Phil. It's great to be here. So you've worked with a lot of dental offices in the past, Dr. Snyder. You've done a lot of coaching. So typically, how do most dentists market their practice? They don't. You know, it's interesting. I was just doing a program out at Spears Educational Facility. And I did a survey of the room and there was literally only like five people out of about 180 that actually said they were doing marketing. And I find this quite often that, you know, dentists rely a lot on word of mouth at some point in their career. They get comfortable enough. They say, you know what, I'm not marketing anymore. Now, whether that's they whether that's they haven't been happy with the marketing or that hasn't been converting the way they wanted or they're frugal and not wanting to spend the money. You know, there's a lot of different reasons why they don't do it. But just from talking to people, it doesn't seem like there's much marketing being done other than a website, maybe some pay-per -click. Every once in a while, I hear someone that does mailers. I don't hear a lot from people. So what do you say to the dentist who's doing pretty well? He or she is happy and satisfied with their practice, the way it's going. They're profitable. Their practice may be growing at a small clip every year. They rely on word of mouth. What do you say to a dentist in that situation where they said, I don't really feel like I need to market. I'll just rely on my patients getting me more patients by telling their friends and family. You know, everyone's got to run their own business, do their own thing in life. As far as I'm concerned, you know, if I'm coasting and just being content with what I'm getting, that I'm not really growing and pushing myself anymore. I'm just reactionary to whatever shows up each month. And let's face it, everyone's not standing around the water cooler talking about their dentist. So if you're content with 10 or 20 patients a month, whatever that number is, and you're able to pay your bills and you're comfortable, okay, you're comfortable, but you're not really growing. running down a goal and trying to create, you know, more revenue to have a different type of lifestyle and you're just, you've either just succumbed to the fact that it is the way it is and you're not going to work any harder and you become complacent or you're someone's like, no, I want way more in this life since I'm only here once potentially, I'm going to do everything I can to be the most successful and achieve all the goals and desires I have in my life. And if you're going to do that, then you need to have a different type of marketing approach. Right. So it sounds like to me, even if a dentist is doing well, the practice is growing at a steady rate, marketing should still be something they should be considering or they should be doing as a regular thing. So for those that do market their office, what are they typically promoting? You know, it's interesting. Yeah, because you look at companies, you know, anything out there, you know, Mercedes, Tiffany, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, take any company we all know, they continue to market because they know the value of it. So why is it that a dentist gets so complacent that they don't do anything is beyond me? And it's not easy. I get it. So maybe disappointment is why. But I would say if you're going to market yourself and you want to do more, you need to think differently because most dentists market everything to everyone. And that was another discussion we had when I was out speaking that basically three or four out of 180 actually marketed different than the rest of the group. So when you think of marketing, if you market to everyone, everything, the same as every other dentist, you are not playing in a little tiny pool. You're playing in an ocean with everyone else. And so it's a lot harder. Hence, people shop you based on your fee. Because there's nothing else to base it on because you look the same as everyone else. You offer the same as everyone else. So in my mind, your marketing needs to change as far as the message you deliver to differentiate you and make you unique so that you stand out. And people will value that if they're looking for that particular type of individual. We're going to continue to talk to Dr. Snyder and hear about what he calls the singularity of a practice. But first... If you're looking to raise the bar with your adhesive dental procedures, you should definitely be looking into Bisco. Bisco is a great company that has an unparalleled track record. I can unequivocally say adhesion is their passion. They are genuinely dedicated to understanding and improving the ability to bond dental restorations. Bisco is a company that places tremendous value on research and scientific knowledge to benefit you and your practice. Being an endodontist myself, my favorite Bisco product is Theracal LC, which hands down is one of the best materials to use for direct and indirect pulp capping procedures. It not only seals the dentin, but offers significant calcium release, which stimulates hydroxyapatite and secondary bridge formation, which is exactly what we're looking for in these kind of procedures. So check out their entire product line of premium adhesive products at bisco.com. So each practice needs to identify themselves in their own unique way, whether that dentist enjoys a particular category of dental procedures, whether they're aesthetic, whether they're doing more edentulous stuff, implants, sleep apnea, wellness. Some dentists are into the wellness market. And that actually builds a following because those patients are saying, hey, I haven't seen one dentist in my area that's focusing on wellness. connecting the oral cavity to the systemic health of the patient. So how do you determine what the best way to market your practice from your perspective and your experience? And also, what do you see happening over time with that type of marketing? You said a lot of great things there. So inside of Legion, we call it your singularity. The single unique thing that makes you rare. is your singularity. And so for each person we coach and work with is trying to figure out what that message is that, you know, what is it that the dentist likes doing mostly and how are they perceived by the public or their patients? And sometimes that message has to change because what you think you should be perceived as is not in reality what you're perceived as by your patients. So that's the first thing is figuring that part out. From there, we go into basically talking about like Pareto principle where, you know, 80% of your revenue or income comes from 20% of your procedures. So if you look at your CDT codes and you go, okay, what is the thing that I like doing the most? What shows the most profit in my business? And based on those two, are they the same or are they different? And once you recognize who you are and what you want to offer in your messaging, then you start to go, okay, if I market for one specific thing, call it my platinum offer, I can still offer every other type of dentistry under the sun, but my marketing is directed to exactly those type of people that want that one thing. Now, from there, we can have a gold and silver offer, which, you know, like so if you said aligners is the first thing you want to do and then implants is the next thing you want to do and then maybe veneers. OK, so you've got three offerings, but they're not all on the same page. There's one on, let's say, a website page where when people come to your page, they perceive you as doing one thing and one thing alone. So you're attracting and qualifying the exact type of customer you want. From there, you can have additional landing pages on your website that your marketing could drive people to those pages, where again, it speaks one thing on one page that you're the expert in that area. So the mindset of a traditional website is, I hope people call me or I hope people write me if they find my website somehow. That's an old mentality. Nowadays with social media and the internet and AI and... many crazy things that are available nowadays, you can actually target certain types of individuals on this planet and direct them to your website or other information. And when they go to these places, you can actually start to track them. Or if you give them something of value where they have to give you their email, you can now start to reverse market to them based on them having given you their email. So there's a lot of things you can do to specifically go after the type of patient you want versus hoping and waiting they'll pick up the phone and call you. How does a dentist who doesn't have a lot of knowledge about the internet, they're more of a consumer on the internet rather than a marketer. How do they learn about these things where they can focus on doing dentistry, but at the same time, they're building a program like you just talked about where they can highlight their interests and what they want to create as far as their singularity, as you explain, and grow their practice and follow these patients, et cetera. What do they do if they're not knowledgeable at that level? You know, I have not seen anyone inside of dentistry other than my group training on this kind of thing because... out and learned these things because I saw something missing in the dental world, but I saw opportunity because it's done regularly in the business world. So I went out into the business world and listened to speakers and found things and, you know, obviously educated myself. And then I started going to marketing companies outside of dentistry and getting them to do all these things that I was learning about. So I would say there's not one place inside of dentistry other than, again, you know, I've got singularity where I can help someone. And I show all the things that we've learned and done so we can help streamline someone's process versus spending years learning. But as far as a specific company I would tell someone to go to that will do other marketing for them, I have yet to find one place that does all the things that I've found over time. What do you think about a dentist who I recently did a podcast with who uses Instagram to show her cases? Now, she used something called resin infiltration, and she was showing how she was treating white spots. specifically white spots, as a very minimally invasive procedure. No drilling, no pain, minimal investment monetarily, and great results. And she did this over and over and over, and she said that she's had very good success with getting those particular patients. Some of them are high school patients that just had their braces off. Some of them are young adults. What's your feeling on using those kinds of platforms? Well, you hit it right on the head as far as the type of patients that's potentially getting someone out of braces, a younger individual in high school is, you know, if you look at the target market for like Instagram. It's not like 30 to 60 year olds that want to spend a bunch of money and do veneers. It's going to be younger individuals. So depending on who your target market is, your demographics and your psychographics, you can market to certain types of people, certain procedures. So I'd say for her, it's a perfect niche as far as going after people with maybe minimal money or they don't want anything done to their teeth. So a non-invasive approach could be great. Now, from there, if that gets shared to parents, parents are talking about and wanting to take care of their children. I could see that maybe becoming a viral type of thing. So picking where your customer is becomes very important on where you spend your money on the digital footprint that's on the Internet. So social media being that it's free, I would always post stuff there in the sense that. It potentially is going to take people to other places and it helps your SEO ranking. So I would tell anyone to always post on social media, but I don't think that's definitely the catch-all like all the marketing companies want to make you believe and trying to get you to spend your money there. I think there's far better places to spend it if you're going to do actual paid marketing. Thank you very much, Dr. Snyder. We appreciate your time. We're looking forward to part two of this three-part series, Attract, Convert, and Deliver. Part two is Patient Communication, and that's coming up soon. Thank you very much. Thank you, Phil. If you've been enjoying our podcast, we'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback by leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. whether it's Spotify, Apple, Google, or any other platform you listen on. Leaving a review is a fantastic way to support us and help others discover our show. Thanks for listening. See you next time.