From Online Visitor to Booked Appointment: Dental Website Strategies That Work

It's the same thing with a blog you want to answer questions that people have online put those questions on social media like people will look up those questions You just want to make sure that those questions are tied to your content into your website and you have a call to action so when they read that content they want to call you what you don't want to do is just start creating content just for the sake of creating it it's like hey i'm gonna write a a blog post or create videos on abscesses this month it's like why right like let's look at the analytics let's understand what people are actually looking for in your area and then create content based on that Welcome to Austin, Texas, and welcome to the Phil Klein Dental Podcast. So what's the most powerful tool in our marketing toolkit? Take a second if you want to think about it. If you guessed website, you are correct. But it's not just any website. It has to be dynamic, content rich, and it has to be a lead generating machine that works for you 24-7. The reality is if your website hasn't been updated in months or worse years, Google notices. and penalizes. A stale, outdated site will drop you in search rankings, making it harder for potential patients to find you online. In this episode, we'll talk about why keeping your website fresh with content that matches what people are actively looking for is critical, not just for visibility, but for converting visitors into leads and leads into new patients. Our guest is Brandon Bosch. president and founder of Dr. Marketing. He is a certified marketing expert in Google and meta advertising, and he works specifically with dental practices. You can find Brandon by visiting his website, drmarketing.io. Before we bring in our guest, I do want to say that if you're enjoying these episodes and want to support the show, please follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You'll be the first to know about our new releases, and our entire production team will really appreciate it. Brandon, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks, Phil. Happy to be here. So it wasn't that long ago when dentists were asking one another, do I really need a website for my practice? Fast forward 25 years, and now the question is, how important is it to a dental practice to have a well-designed website? So we all know you have to be on the internet. You have to have a presence on the internet as a dental practice. The question is, is it important for it to be really well-designed? Does that make a difference? What's your response? Yes, it has to be well-designed, right? There are websites that are... still online that are 20 years old imagine those functioning limited content it doesn't format correctly to the device size it doesn't load correctly you know glitches with the technology right so having something that's easy to use easy to function formats correctly as well as having information that's easily accessible or being able to be easily found from from their website right from their home page or even from google like you can go straight to us sub page within your website. If you just know what keywords to type in, you type in like dental implants near me or like root canal near me. And like, it'll go straight to that sub page within your website. So yeah, it's, it's incredibly important to make sure that your website stays updated as time goes on. So you and your company work exclusively with dental practices. So you have a lot of experience understanding the marketing, the mindset, how busy a dentist is and everything else. When a dental site, a dental website is outdated, does the dentist understand it's time to revamp it and do they know what to do or does it go on longer than it should? I mean, if there are blogs up there that are four years old, and like you said, the technology is not working correctly, it's pretty obvious to most of us that the site has to be redone. But if a dentist isn't paying attention, it could stay up longer than it should. What are you finding? Sure. So typically, dental office owners do not even look at their website, 99.9% of them. They put something up, they have a friend or family member do it, and then it's really never looked at again for years, which is a sad truth. And if we're just talking about the blog component of it, I'll get into the design in just a second, but if we talk about the blog component of it, blogs are built through something called an RSS feed. And so if the RSS feed is basically a piece of technology that says when something is republished, it sends a signal to search engines to come back and scan the website. if the content it does not if the website does not produce content on a regular basis the rss feed becomes stagnant which means that you've you've lost credibility with the search engine so it's very important to make sure that if you do create a blog on the website that you keep it updated on a consistent basis very very very important so dentists when they do take a look at their website um really they just have to they just have to make sure that the that it's something that they themselves they try have to try to recuse themselves from being the actual dentist and try to imagine themselves as the patient how would you like would you engage with this right and so that's why That's why if you get a lot of clicks, but not really a lot of leads coming in, it's probably because the vibe of your website doesn't match the vibe of your audience that's viewing it. And so depending on the area that you're in, geographically speaking, or the demographics of the... of the area that you're actually in it could be a geriatric area it could be very family oriented could be a high-tech downtown toronto or or or los angeles area where you need to match the vibe of the area that you're in and that's what a lot of dentists don't realize is that they build websites not knowing their demographics or their geographics and so it's very important to make sure that you're building a website that is that is modern to the area that you're actually in, so it matches the vibe of the people that are around you. We'll be right back with our guest, but first, I want to tell you about VOCO's newest composite, Grandioso 4U. Top clinicians are calling it the most tooth-like universal composite ever made. Unlike traditional composites that force you to choose between either an anterior aesthetic composite, a stronger layering posterior composite, or a fast but aesthetic-compromising bulk fill, Grandioso 4U does it all, simplifying your workflow while delivering superior results in a single material. It cures 4mm in just 10 seconds, looks stunning with 5 cluster shades covering all 16 Vita shades, and handles like a dream with 50% less resin. It's a 91% filled nano hybrid, giving you tooth-like strength, ultra-low shrinkage, exceptional wear resistance, and an amalgam-like high radio opacity. So as they say, seeing is believing. So grab your free sample of Grandioso for you today at voco.dental. That is an excellent point. I'm not sure dentists are fully aware of that, how important it is to cater to the community that they're working in through their website. What do you think of... websites that are more of a template that was very popular it still is when the websites were becoming routine for dental offices back in the day you could upload a custom picture you can choose a custom background and it looks kind of different but it's all from a sas model software as a service model they pay a monthly fee are you still a proponent of of doing it through a template So the word template has a lot of negative connotations around it because people think that template, oh, this website's going to look like everybody else's. But in the web design world, a template is just a term we use to streamline a design process. So it doesn't mean that the content is going to be the same on the website, like the actual verbiage itself or even the pictures, but the way that the website is actually structured. So if I put together a website and I say the header goes up here, the logo's on this side, the phone number's on that side with the navigation here. that structure, I can put somebody else's logo in there, somebody else's color around the back, somebody else's phone number, different navigation tabs, but it's built, the structure is built in a specific way. So the actual structure itself, there's only so many ways that you can put the logo there. The logo goes here, the logo goes here, the logo goes there, right? So either way, like there are certain pieces of websites that will be template, even if you built a custom website. There are pieces of it that will just be templated. And so custom coding doesn't have to be required when we're saying, all right, the logo is going to go on that side for a template or for a custom website. That's where it's going to go so we can streamline a design process. So I would just say don't get too hung up on the word template versus custom. All you have to really do is just pick a structure that you like. and then just manipulate the content colors and imagery and you'll be good. It doesn't have to be fully custom. It doesn't have to be fully templated. You can find somewhere in between where you've got templated design, but then work in some animations into it. For the most part, with your experience in this, and you came from a marketing background and then you developed your company, Dr. Marketing, which is really phenomenal that you're focused on the dental space. What do you think... visitors are mostly looking for? What are they prioritizing in their mind when they go to a dental practice website? Are they looking to meet the team? Are they looking to go to learn more about a particular procedure? You know, it's interesting. It's actually, it doesn't even have to be a thought. It's based on solely analytics. So there's analytics for everything. I can see analytics for what pages are your most popular ones, how long they stay, what pages they click on, if they actually submit their contact information on specific pages, what keywords they typed in, what device they're searching on. Like there's literally analytics for everything. And so the top pages that we find. are obviously going to be the homepage of the website. It's going to be the contact page of the website, pretty much anything to do with kids, right? Like the kids' pages across every subspecialty within the industry are also very popular. But when we go and actually take a look at it, usually there's only one or two services that are really popular on a website, emergencies. are going to be big uh emergencies are going to be big um obviously on an orthodontic website you would think that it would be braces or invisalign as an example but no it's it's usually orthodontic emergencies like on a poking wire or something like that so if you're going to build uh if you're going to build a website just make sure you're focusing Part of that website doesn't have to be on every page, but part of the website solely on emergencies because that's going to go a long way. Financing as well and insurance pages also do quite well. What about the bio of the doctor? Like when I'm looking for an orthopedic surgeon because I had trouble with my shoulder, I read the bio because I want to know what school he went to or she went to. Is that important for dentists, what their education is? Not for the average dentist. If you're an oral surgeon or a specialist, right? Endo, perio, ortho, maybe. But like most people don't even look at the bio. Most people don't even read the content of a website. When the average person comes to a website, the only thing that they do is they look at the top. They look at the design. If the design is appealing to them, the vibe of the website, they're going to stick on it. They'll read the titles. of your website so your h1 h2 h3 h4 h5 h6 headers they won't read any of the content or if they do they're going to just skim the first sentence they'll read the title it's like uh yep yep yep yep yep and then they'll decide to move on within 10 seconds they'll decide to move on so when it comes to the bio really it's only really effective when you're when you're a specialist within dentistry Oral surgeons usually have the biggest bio reads, but most other, like general, peds, denturists, ortho, not at all. The pages, they just don't get clicked on. The patients don't particularly care. It's the vibe of the website that they mostly are interested in. Yeah, and that's true with a lot of retail operations. When you walk into a store, Nike spent millions of dollars designing their stores. many of which were losing money in New York City. You know, every month, the rent in, I don't know if it was in Times Square or where it was. These stores are just literally to bring the visitor in. It lures them into their world of what products they sell. So getting back to the dental website, you're telling us that most of the visitors don't care about the bio that much, except for specialists. But content is important though, because the SEO is regarded as being important and you want people to find your website. Tell us how important content is and how does a dentist keep it refreshed? Because if it's stale, the dental website will be penalized and patients who are looking for dentists won't find you on the top of the list. It is very important. So if you take a look at all the keywords that people type in online, right, if you look at something called Google Search Console, basically it's a free system that you can plug into your website that tells you all the keywords people type in and how they find you. And so if you take a look at those, 50% of the keywords that people search are like dentists near me, open now, open weekends, dentists around Main Street. The other 50% of the keywords that people type in are actual questions. Why are my teeth yellow? my teeth straight how do i fix a crack tooth from home right and so those sorts of questions are answered through a blog or they would be answered through video right if you like what we're doing right now if we just sat in front of a camera for 90 seconds recorded a video stuck it on youtube and optimized the video meaning like if anybody is looking for how to fix a crack tooth from home. Like this is the video that you should see on YouTube. And then you stick that video, put it on your website. It's the same thing with a blog. You want to answer questions that people have online. It's the same thing. You put those questions on social media. Like people will, they look up those questions. You just want to make sure that those questions are tied. to your content into your website and you have a call to action so when they read that content they want to call you so it's very important to produce content uh in all facets but a dentist doesn't have time to sit there and write the content or even be able to understand the raw data that comes in from google be able to interpret it to create an effective marketing campaign campaign that that can utilize that content uh or or utilize that raw data so that's why they would hire someone like us is to because they're going to take a look at all that all that data we're sorry we're going to take a look at all that data we're going to figure out how to interpret it into an effective marketing plan that would then draw traffic for those specific things so what you don't want to do is just start creating content just for the sake of creating it it's like hey i'm going to write a a blog post or create videos on abscesses this month it's like why right like let's look at the analytics let's understand what people are actually looking for in your area and then create content based on that and that's why people would typically hire us because they don't have time to do that. From the standpoint of typing in a question about a condition, people do that all the time. That's one of the most prevalent things people do on the internet is to ask about a health condition. Now, I did it with my cat. My cat had some problems, and I found blogs that answered the question. They were great, but they were like this veterinary practice in Alabama. I live in Austin, Texas. Then there was another one in... you know, New Hampshire. And it was a great office, a beautiful website in New Hampshire. So if you're doing this for a dental practice in Austin, Texas, and they are putting blogs up that respond to strategic questions that you know through metrics are often asked, how does the SEO send them to a practice near them? That's actually a good question. So that has to do with Google. So there's kind of like two approaches to that. Before we continue, I've got to give a shout out to our sponsor, NSK. These folks are the real deal. Their air and electric handpieces are not only top... They're the highest rated in the industry, peer-reviewed by Dental Product Shopper. Their Timex Z99L electric handpiece actually scored the first ever perfect rating. And the Timex Z990L is the most powerful handpiece on the market. So do yourself a favor, check out everything they offer at nskdental.com and take advantage of their free trial by reaching out to your local NSK rep. I've heard this many times from many dentists. Once you start using NSK handpieces, you'll never look back. One is you have to make sure that any content that you produce is optimized correctly. So that way you're not drawing traffic from across the country, but you're drawing traffic locally, right? The other thing is that when you went and Googled that, Google takes into consideration every single office that is around you. And if they are producing content that is relevant to your search, that means that Google thinks that there is no one that is near you that would be relevant to what you're searching for. So then they start to expand the geographic radius, which is why you're getting someone from Alabama or from from where was the other place? New Hampshire, New Hampshire, New Hampshire, from New Hampshire, because nobody else locally is producing content that would answer those questions. And that's not because – like it's not because Google can't find them. It's because they're not – one, the office might not even be optimizing. Like if the blog is not built through an RSS feed, Google doesn't care. You can't just put content on your website and expect Google to find it or know how to properly index it. And then the other thing we have to make sure that – You are actually marketing, right? You can't just put yourself online on Google and say, all right, people are just going to come and find me. No, you have to make sure that Google knows where the content is, where you are specifically, right? So usually the three key pieces of information that you want to give Google is who you are, where you are, and what you do. So that way, anytime somebody goes online searching for something, let's say an endodontist. in texas who uh you know is going to help with you know kids root canals or something like that google knows that hey you're an endodontist in in texas and you offer kids root canals let's have you show up to that specific individual now on those blog articles that pertain to those common strategic questions that you would help your clients work with who writes that blog article well usually the client doesn't do it because that's what i'm saying in order Yeah, in order to keep the RSS feed consistent with Google and to make sure that it has the proper authority with Google, you have to post at minimum at least once a month. And if you don't, then that RSS feed becomes stagnant, which means you lose your authority with Google. So usually that content is written by us. Yeah, so you talked about the RSS feed, but maybe you can clarify for our listeners. They may not completely understand. The coding that goes in the dentist website, the dental practice website kind of absorbs the content based on. So there's a space there that says, OK, in this space will be an article on clear aligners. But someone else writes the article. So the question that I have for you is, what do you mean by frequency? If I'm paying to have the article on clear aligners show up on my website. i didn't write the article i'm just paying for the rss feed right uh well not exactly you'd be paying for the actual service to create it so if you tell me as let's say as an orthodontist or as a general dentist that you do clear aligners we would look at is something like google search console and google analytics to find out okay are people even searching for keywords that are relevant to that and so we'll take a look and see how many keywords there are how many impressions an impression is just simply a view right you type in a keyword you see all the listings every listing you look at is a view for that listing right so how many how many how many impressions there are for specific keywords related to clear aligners and so We might deem it that clear liners in your specific area isn't even worthwhile to write about. There could be zero searches in there. So why would we spend time creating it? Instead, we might look up like misaligned teeth, right? Or different types of malclusions, or we might type in crowded teeth or something like that, where you could still promote for clear liners, but through a different means, different keyword choice, right? And so it would really be up to us to figure out how how we would create that content in a way that would draw in the type of traffic that you are ultimately looking for. Right. And all that content that we're talking about, somebody that goes to that dental practice website could search that content on the website too, not just through the general Google search capability. They can go to drsmith.com and use a dropdown and it talks about aligners. That same piece of content is right there for me to read without going through the general internet. The general search, the SEO stuff. Okay. And you would be someone that would help that dental practice get that content produced. Yeah. So the, the partnerships that we usually have, like I'm talking like 99.9% of offices, we do everything for them. Uh, out of all the clients we have, I only have two clients that write blog content themselves and actually send it to us on a consistent basis and consistent at least once a month, they will send us a blog. piece of content they've been doing that for six months seven months eight months right and so it's good that they are consistent with it i just hope that it keeps up otherwise that that feed can become stagnant. Now, when it comes to social media, that's a different story, right? Like if we're talking social media kind of thing, you can still draw in traffic to your website from social aspect. Usually clients are a lot more willing to produce content for something like social than they are to sit there for an hour and write an essay on a specific service for your blog content, right? Social is a little bit easier to produce content for. If you're looking for speed, beauty, and strength in a zirconia block, check out Katana One Speed. It is a game changer in CAD CAM dentistry. To learn more, visit curaridental.com. ChatGPT and some of these other things, perplexity and some of these other AI free services help write content as well. They can, but they're more like idea-driven because you have to know how to properly prompt it because it's not just write me a blog content on clear aligners, right? You have to say write me blog content that is clinically accurate, written for Google, and is written in layman's terms so patients can understand it. Make it, and then you have to use adjectives, right? Like make it happy yet witty and educational but fun, right? So it will change and manipulate the content. Then you have to say don't. don't use these specific words or include these keywords and so you have to know how to properly prompt these ai tools but they can be useful uh but don't just copy and paste it directly from there like read it to make sure that it is actually correct now you are not a dentist but you know you must know a hell of a lot about dentistry but do your clients proofread the content that you post on their website because i would i'd like to know what's being put on my website before it's posted Not all of them. We do have a select few that will read the content, but even the clients that we have, because I've been in the dental space for 15 years, and we're... All of my staff are very good at what they do. And so it's very seldom that we would actually, because normally what we do, even for social media posts, we would still send a posting schedule for the month over to our clients. Like literally none of them ever adjust it. They'll read it and they'll be like, no, this is good. Send it. You know, dentists are overwhelmed with so many different aspects of running a practice. HR, OSHA, HIPAA. infection control, all the new gadgets that are out there, the laboratory, it never ends. Yeah, they don't need marketing to be on top of that. No, no, I mean. I don't practice. I would hire you in a second, Brandon, and not to patronize you on the show. I mean, based on, we found, and I'm talking to the audience now, we found Brandon based on the fact that he's been speaking at a lot of major dental conventions. He draws a very big crowd. I've listened to his YouTube stuff and was very, very pleased with what I heard as far as the way he presents and the information that he backs it up with. And it is all metrics. There's no question about it. And you got to work with a responsible company. Dr. Marketing is one that I certainly recommend. How can a dental website help turn visitors into patients? This is the question that we're going to end this one with. Conversion. conversion tools are huge right so there are different types of conversion tools uh click the call now button from a mobile device is a conversion tool a book online feature conversion tool a chatbot a web form the ability to email any way to communicate and patients will choose the the method and mode of communication that is convenient for them And so obviously, if they're only available at nine o'clock at night, they know that your office is not going to pick up if they call you. So they're going to choose a different form of communication. So while you can't convert. someone into a specific patient right from an initial phone call right because they have to come into the office you can convert them into a lead a lead would be someone who just communicates with your office and then it would be up to your staff to make sure that you've or that you've you've reached or they've reached out uh that they booked the appointment and that they followed through and actually showed up for their appointment so the biggest piece of advice is i would say is make sure that there are actual calls to action The ability to be able to convert on your website more than just a phone number. You want to make sure that the phone number is clickable from a mobile device in multiple places on the website, the ability to use the chatbot or book online option. The other thing that I would say is incredibly important is we have a new software that we launched a few months ago. That is a lead management software. So anybody who fills out a chatbot, a web form, clicks to call, goes directly into this CRM system that tracks every single lead that comes in. And then it would be your staff's job to make sure that, yes, they converted, no, they did not. Yes, they did, no, they not. And where did they come from? So you'll actually see how effective your marketing campaigns actually are, and no lead will ever get lost again. So if you want to be able to convert traffic, just make sure you have clicks to call and that you... have a lead management system in place to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks. Now, do you have all the software on your side? So a dentist doesn't have to worry about buying or paying subscriptions to all these different services individually. You have a full package that handles anything they want, like a menu type approach. Correct. And everything is a la carte. So not every service will be applicable for every office. So we adjust our approach based on what the office's goals are. So if their goals are to go from 50 patients a month to 55 and they have a long time frame to do it, they're going to have a different approach than if somebody says, I want to go from 10 patients to 50 patients and I want to do it this month. So every office that we approach is going to have different goals based on the procedures they're looking for. the number of patients they're looking for and the timeframe it takes to hit their goal. Yeah. Yeah. I said it was the last question, but I have to ask you this last one. So a dental assistant told me the other day that she's been working for a dental, a dentist that doesn't do any advertising. I don't even think the dentist has a website. The guy's booked solid. And it's, you know, again, it depends on where your office is. He's been around a long time. People love him word of mouth. I mean, that might work for an established dentist. But I don't see how a new dentist starting a practice today can survive without doing the things you're suggesting here. Even the ones that are fully booked, they might not necessarily need to do all the marketing, but having a website even for their existing patients, it doesn't even have to be anything dramatic, right? A simple landing page with a contact form, a phone number, and just a couple pictures about you would go miles even for your existing patients or the referrals that you get. You don't use it as a lead generation source, but... Yeah, every new office, just to kind of flip the script, every new office should be doing something because it's going to be really hard to compete with offices. As an example, I have this one client that we've been working with for over a decade, and he shows up number one for every single search in his area. And I'm telling you right now, if anyone even tries to compete with that, we will crush them because he has so many pages online, so much content we've produced for him over the past 10 years, videos, blogs, social posts, reviews, like he shows up in all ads. And so it'll be incredibly difficult to promote yourself against. people like that and so you kind of have to think outside the box when it comes to stuff like this but again we don't work we don't work in every single city so if if they're you know if you're out there and you need help with marketing give us a call and we'll see what we can do to help Brandon thank you very much good discussion and we really appreciate your time have a great evening thanks phil