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Are You Paying More and Getting Less for Marketing?

For many dental practices, their marketing strategy is HOPE.

Hope we can pump more money into the budget and get more patients.

Marketing and advertising have become significantly more complex in the past ten years, and is a faster moving target than ever. Hope is NOT an effective strategy.

If you’re like most dentists, you just need a consistent flow of new patients without all the headaches. To do that, you need to understand how the new game works, and how you can keep up with it.

As the co-founder of 1-800 DENTIST, I have spent over $500,000,000 in marketing. I know a thing or two about helping to create thriving dental practices and I’ve made it my mission to help a select few dentists get ahead of the curve.

My books, Everything is Marketing and Becoming Remarkable, are two of the most influential books in dentistry, and they have transformed many dental practices.

BUT BOOKS ARE JUST THE BEGINNING.

Things are changing too fast, and you need someone to guide you on how to spend your money, where to spend it and where else in your business you are LEAKING MONEY.

In January, I’m doing individual marketing consultations with a select group of dentists to help you FIND RESULTS IN YOUR BUSINESS to help you STOP BLEEDING MARKETING MONEY.

If you qualify, I’m putting together a select group of dental owners to participate in my Beyond Dentistry Mastermind (Virtual) for founders, owners and executives in the dental industry doing at least $1.5 million in business annually. The Mastermind has a few spots available 

(You must be located in Southern California to participate in the Mastermind.)

If you are interested in the marketing consultation, email me and we’ll arrange a time. To learn more about the mastermind, you can watch this video or go to www.fredjoyal.com.

2020 was no picnic. So let’s get out of the business of hoping your marketing strategy works and let’s make 2021 your best year ever!

Email me directly if you have more questions. fredjoyal@gmail.com.

It’s Time to Elevate Dentistry!

Let’s face it; the majority of the population doesn’t value dentistry anywhere near as much as they should. And they don’t value it anywhere near as much as other things of considerably less value that they spend money on gladly.

Now couple that with the fact that there is no single place where people could find out anything they wanted to know about oral health, and then find a dentist and even book an appointment right there online.

Which is why Dentistry.com was created. Imagine a website with all the benefits of WebMD, ZocDoc and Yelp, rolled into one, and none of the negatives. That’s what Dentistry.com is–a website dedicated exclusively to our profession, the ultimate resource for the dental consumer.

Dentistry.com is the new, free online platform from Dentsply Sirona. The goal for the site is simple and powerful: to improve the state of the nation’s dental health by increasing the number of new patients who go to the dentist and accept treatment.

It’s time we elevate dentistry to its proper place in healthcare. And no one else is in a position to do it–not the societies, not the search engines, and not the review sites, because they don’t have the resources and they don’t have a comprehensive goal in mind.

Consumer Education Is Essential for Dentistry

We all know that dental health is integral to overall health, but the rest of the population doesn’t. We don’t go six months without finding some new disease that is linked to periodontal disease. And we’re the only ones who aren’t surprised.

Understanding the value of dentistry and then easily finding an appropriate dentist will do something very simple and profound: more people will go to the dentist, more often, and will accept more treatment.

Dentsply Sirona wants more people to understand the critical role good oral health plays in their overall wellbeing, which is why Dentistry.com was designed as the ultimate consumer site for all things dental. And they also understand that consumers want things fast and easy, and they want it on their smartphone. And they want it in one place. Which is why Dentistry.com features:

  • An active community of dentists sharing advice with patients
  • Authoritative information and articles from dental professionals
  • The most detailed directory of dental practices – anywhere
  • Advanced online dentist search and booking tools

Best of all, it costs nothing to join Dentistry.com. As a new member of this online community, you’ll receive a free profile that helps you to attract more new patients online, improve your website’s SEO, and receive online appointment requests.

Boost Your Website’s Search Results

I’ll explain how that all works. First of all, being part of Dentistry.com boosts the SEO for your own site because it is a directory, and Google likes to index that information and boost results accordingly. (Sounds technical, but trust me.) And Dentistry.com will also appeal to Google because of the rich, detailed content about dentistry, along with advice directly from top professionals. And this is the latest online tool, written in the most efficient language (Google likes that too!) and will eventually have the most information about dentists that can be found anywhere.

I said “eventually” because that last part requires your participation. It costs you nothing to be listed, and there is substantial benefit to do so. But this is how we make it the ultimate destination, by thousands of dentists participating.

It’s time to give the people what they want: an easy way to research dentistry and find a dentist, and then book an appointment. Hey, it’s 2018 already–let’s join the future. And the result will be more patients going more often, with a better understanding of the value of dentistry, which will lead to easier and greater case acceptance.

So claim your practice now. (Did I mention it’s free?) It will only take five minutes. Just click here: Claim My Practice.

Let’s band together and elevate dentistry. It’s time!

Want to learn more about Dentistry.com?

Dentistry.com is hosting a free webinar on November 16th where you can get an inside look into the consumer research that led to the creation of “the new patient destination for dentistry.” Register now.

 

 

Is Facebook Over?

There is a LOT in the news about Facebook this year, and none of it is particularly good.  First, they let us know that if we wanted even our own followers to see our postings, then we were going to have to pay. Then Cambridge Analytica comes along and lets us know that they can easily influence elections using our Facebook data. And that our data is out there a million times over.

So dentists are asking me if they should stop using Facebook, because people are going to be bailing out of the site.  And so my question is, “And go where?”

People have a social media addiction.  They need that dopamine hit all through the day. The average person spends 50 minutes a day on Facebook.  So if they stop using it, are they going to start reading newspapers? Or worse, talking to people at the dinner table?

Or maybe they’ll switch over to Instagram. Well, Facebook owns Instagram.  And Whats App, too.  And Snapchat is losing people much faster than Facebook, and Twitter still can’t find its purpose, except as a national broadcast system for our current president.  LinkedIn?  Great if you’re looking for a business connection. Pinterest?  Not for the dental industry.

The reality is this: most of what’s going on with Facebook has nothing to do with small businesses.  The fact that they are curtailing their merging of outside data sources with their own data doesn’t matter except to large businesses, who spend hundreds of thousands targeting ads to people, and of course to political campaigns. For the rest of us, it’s a slightly different version of business as usual.

People will still use Facebook to connect with their friends, to get the news and to get spending ideas.  Ads will still work. Pages will still use it to learn what it’s like to be a patient in your practice.

Granted, Facebook shows a lot fewer people your posts than ever before. We have to adapt to this by making sure our content is interesting, and incorporating things like auto-responses through Messenger whenever anyone comments or likes a post.  And we’ll have to pay to boost posts. But the audience is still there.

The fact is, 20% of the world’s advertising dollars are spent on Facebook.  They’re not going anywhere. They need to make some major course corrections in terms of privacy of data and a few other things. But they are already moving in that direction.  And they will be forced to by the government if they don’t.

Stay the course. Post interesting videos and photos and contests and events, as well as patient testimonial videos and recommendations and reviews.  Boost popular posts. Test some advertising for implants, or aligners, or implants.  All the stuff I’ve been recommending for years. It will still work. You might just have to buy some more eyeballs, but hey, it’s been a free ride for a long time.

Tips to Overcome No-Shows

If you were lucky, you had a chance to hear Gary Takacs and I do a webinar on how to radically reduce no-shows in your practice. My marketing team enjoyed it so much that they thought it would be good to boil the points down to a tip sheet.   If you’re interested in laying your hands–or at least eyeballs–on the aforementioned sheet, click here!

To see the whole webinar and a whole slew of other great resources, sign up at our Futuredontics page here.

50,000 Facebook Fans Can’t be Wrong!

I’m very excited about my upcoming webinar on June 14th.  It’s with Dr. Anissa Holmes who, along with being named one of the top 25 women in dentistry, also has 50,000–yes, 50,000–fans of her Facebook page.  I am in awe of this, and we’re going to dig deep into how she managed this.

She’s also going to talk about how to effectively advertise on Facebook, how she generates 50 new patients a month from Facebook alone, and even how to use Facebook to fill last-minute cancellations. We are going to pack your brain with social media wisdom, so don’t miss it!

That’s Wednesday, June 14th, at 11am PST, 2pm EST. Register by clicking here. As always, even if you miss the webinar, if you register you will get a link to the recorded version emailed to you.  You may just want to watch it twice!!