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The Influential Dentist Series with Dr. Chris Phelps – Part 1

Quotes & Notes:The Influential Dentist Series with Dr. Chris Phelps - Part 1

  • Everybody needs a coach, no matter how successful you are. For me, my best coach has been something called the Strategic Coach.
  • From a clinical side, there is very little I don’t do. But now I focus my time, because I have two offices and six doctors that work for me, so the patients I get are bigger cases. So my time in the clinic is more productive.
  • When I heard Dr. Cialdini speak for the first time, I had another one of those moments, like holy crap, this is the answer. And I have to go learn the answer, and this guy has it figured out.
  • The thing I love about this stuff (Dr. Cialdini’s research) is number one it is based in science.

Dr. Cialdini, what he did, is he figured out these principles which are so suddenly simple but yet so powerful.

  • The powerful thing about it is that it works no matter what. The key to remember is that it is a universal concept; these six key principles are present no matter what society you’re from, what culture you grew up in, what part of the world you grew up in, they still apply.
  • We’re looking for the first satisfactory clue or indication to make a good decision, and this decision basically has to have two criteria. It’s got to be a good decision, and it has got to be gone, meaning once we make it we don’t have to circle back around and deal with it again.
  • We as clinicians and business owners, we have to be very careful about how we use these things. Because we have to protect our credibility and our authority with our patients in our practice.
  • We try to recommend you be in all three of these areas, then you know you are safe and totally ethical in whatever it is you are trying to use the principle for: Is it true? Is it natural to the situation? Is it a net win-win for both parties?
  • There are seven things we are going to talk about, the first of which isn’t really a principle, but it is a powerful phenomenon called the contrast phenomenon.
  • Then we will dive into the six principles of influence:
          1. reciprocity
          2. liking
          3. consensus or social proof
          4. authority
          5. consistency
          6. scarcity.

Be sure to check out the next episode in the series with Dr. Phelps, which will air tomorrow.

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A non-conformist’s view on growing a dental practice with Jeff Gladnick

Quotes & Notes:A non-conformist's view on growing a dental practice with Jeff Gladnick

  • I do think it is a trend [of digital marketing] that will continue and I do think it is a national trend.
  •  If you really want to do it right, you really should track it.
  • It’s useful to have a website so your patients can download forms so that they can have a very easy way to contact you. People have an expectation you will have a website or some way to contact you.
  • Websites are kind of viewed as a piece of technology and a bar of professionalism. It’s like you hand print your business cards on your home printer. You could have a state of the art office, everything could be beautiful, but you cheap out on the business cards.

Take a smartphone, and bring up your office’s website. It should at least function. You should be able to navigate the site and click links. If you have flash you need to change that ASAP.

  • All the sites we make are responsive, which means they will adapt to a smaller screen. If you want to impress them or convert someone who is doing research, you want to update to something that is responsive.
  • Anything that you can promote that will positively impact the impression of the practice [should be put on social media].
  • There are two kinds of ways that your practice will appear on google search results and one of them is the local results. Part of the algorithm is the number of reviews and the quality of reviews that you have.
  • One thing we want them [clients] to do is have a video for every single service or procedure that they provide. And what we want them to tell patients is what is their unique training for this? What are the special materials they use?
  • The other two bits of content that we’ll twist our clients’ arms is a little bit are pictures and copywriting.

If you would like to learn more from Jeff Gladnick, you can go to greatdentalwebsites.com, call his company with (415) 814-0078, or email him at [email protected]. You can also find him on Dental Town.

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Is your practice website working for you? . . . or against you?

Quotes & Notes:Is your practice website working for you? . . . or against you?

  • Dentists don’t know what they don’t know, and they are not at fault.
  • Don’t have a dark website.  It’s gloomy and also a dark background with lighter text in front of it, it’s very hard for the eyes to read the text.
  • Get rid of those slider images on the front page.  Let’s pick your favorite one, and stick with it.
  • Over fifty percent of people searching for a local business are searching on mobile.  Find out if your website is mobile [optimized].

The goal of your website is to get a phone call.  The most important thing on your website is your phone number.

  • Put a call to action to the left of the number.
  • The name address phone number has to be the exact same across the web on any occurrence anywhere on the internet.
  • You have five seconds when someone lands on your website.
  • There is no need to have a big image on a dental website.  The main images on the first fold should be one of the dentist, or maybe one of your staff, or even one of your office.
  • On the home page, there should be one or two paragraphs on really what is specific about your practice.
  • A potential patient wants to see your work. It has to be something that will show you will take care of them.

55% of the average internet person leaving within the first 15 seconds.

  • Just imagine a 60-second video.  You just got them on your page for 60 seconds. Google is going to like your page.
  • Another one is an info-graphic.  Infographics are great for they cover quite a large amount of information but in an image format.  If you designed the info-graphic to lead them down a slippery slope, that’s going to keep them on the website longer.
  • If it [videos] looks too commercial, it is going to turn people off.  They might treat it like an ad.
  • People need to be led by the hand.  There should be a call to action at the bottom of every page. Always put the phone number there.
  • The About Us page should have a picture of every one of your staff, and then have them write a hundred-word blurb about them.
  • Dentistry is a medical profession and it is a personal profession.
  • I want every dentist to think when was the last time they updated their website? There are reasons to update your website on a monthly basis.

If you would like to learn more from Mike Pedersen you can go to www.aznetmarketing.com and even get a free report.

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Everything you do in your practice is a marketing function!

Quotes & Notes:Everything you do in your practice is a marketing function! - RD Podcast

  • “When an underdog fought like David, he usually won. But most underdogs don’t fight like David.”
  • The book is all about working smarter, not harder.
  • Let’s treat marketing as a system. That’s what Duct-tape Marketing became.
  • If you can picture an hourglass, that top of the hourglass looks like a funnel. But what if the bottom half of the funnel became something that opens back up and instead of getting a one time customer at the end of that funnel, you get a repeat customer that also refers customers to you.

The marketing hourglass has seven steps in it, and the steps are:

Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, Refer.

  • When you start to think of marketing like this, everything you do in your business becomes a marketing function.
  • A strategic partner is another business owner who serves the same target market that you do, but who is not your competition.
  • This prospect of a strategic partnership is a long-term endeavor, not something that you can do overnight, and it does take time, effort and energy from both parties to make it work really well.
  • When you think of sponsorships, that what you think of, your logo slapped on somebody else’s stuff. And those types of sponsorships are great, that is some that you should do. It is not marketing.
  • It is very very difficult to get people happy with your service to take the time and energy to leave a positive review with you online. So the flip-side to that is that somebody who has had a terrible experience, or a bad experience, and who feels like they have some sort of injustice, they are going to feel very motivated to take revenge by going online and leaving a negative review.
  • If you have 10 or 15 positive reviews, if you get one, one-star review, nobody is going to pay attention to that.
  • You want to build up that positive online reputation so that when the totally unjustified negative reviews come in, it’s really no big deal.
  • Whatever you do, don’t get into a public argument with your customers who leave negative reviews, and don’t take legal action against them. The only thing worse than a negative review online would be a story in the media about you suing one of the patients.
  • You really need to go onto wherever this review is appearing publicly and respond in a way that’s saying, “I’m really sorry about your experience.” You want to apologize not necessarily for what happened but apologize for that they had a bad experience. Let them know that you would like to do everything possible to resolve the situation, and invite them into a private forum where they can do that with them.
  • There are so many people using mobile devices now, in fact, more people in the US access the internet with a mobile device than desktops and laptops combined. Google came out and said, “If your website is not mobile-friendly then we are going to make it more difficult for it to show up in search results.”

If you would like to learn more from Kevin Jordan or get his book, you can go to localleadgenbook.com or redpointmarketingconsultants.com.

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Google Domination: Wipe your competition off the map

Quotes & Notes:Google Domination: Wipe your competition off the map - RD Podcast

  • It’s near impossible to own a number one google ranking forever.
  • Google is upwards of 70% of all searches on the internet. So that’s the one that [dentists] should be focused on.
  • Really that map section, or the “seven-pack” should we say, floats on the page. It is never in a set spot.

Dentistry is a real business and you need to treat it like that. You need to have experts in your different areas to make sure that you really maximize your business.

  • It’s [your website] your storefront on the internet.
  • If you think about your marketing pieces, every single one of them should go to your website, and theoretically, in a dream world, it should go to a landing page.
  • Your marketing offline to online needs to be seamless and congruent.
  • Number one . . . your google local page should be 100% percent completed.
  • You could have the most beautiful bells and whistles website and even your google local, it could have twenty reviews, if it is not on that first page, nobody is going to ever see those awesome reviews.
  • Google, on the surface, has no rhyme or reason for how they are ranking.
  • You can make some small on page optimization changes and instantly see a boost.
  • If you have a website that is static, and you haven’t changed a word on that website for six months, google won’t spider your website very often.
  • Any webpage needs to have 400 hundred words or more on it.
  • Check out how many times the keyword is on your page. It should not be more than three to five times.
  • You have to be really careful how many times the keyword and geolocation is on your website.
  • Even a non-optimized website on a tablet looks ok. But on an iPhone or Android, that’s a whole different ball game.
  • You can build a free mobile website. It’s called dudamobile.com.
  • People are not going to spend twenty minutes reading a webpage on their phone. Now if you have a video that you have embedded, sure they will watch a 90-second video on their phone.

With the last update from Google, a mobile-optimized website is basically a must now.

  • SEO is a tough one because depending on the competitive nature of your city, it can take upwards of six months to really get some momentum and some ranking.
  • When you are working with someone, ask as many questions as you can just to test their knowledge.

One thing I have learned in the last four years working with dentists, relationship is everything. A good consultant becomes an advisor.

 

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Part IV: Dr. Mark Costes’ Practice Growth Bootcamp – Referrals

Quotes & Notes:mark costes

  • I believe that referral generation is the number one thing for building any person’s practice very very rapidly.
  • We want to identify who our ideal patients are.
  • You get those people to bring in their friends and families, and then you will have more of those ideal patients.
  • We have to do everything we can to build trust. To lower the suspicion level and show that we are there for their best interest and not to just steal their wallet out of their back pocket.

We have an eight-step process where every step-point of the patient has a very set script and it’s choreographed really.

  • We have to remember that this is a job interview for us.  We want that patient to hire us for their lifetime.
  • What we like to do is create a culture within our office that they look like “We know that you are the ideal type of patient but we want more patients like you.” To do this we have a built-in system.
  • All we do is take our active patient base and we send them a letter with three referral generation cards inside.  For each referral generation card, we have a referral reward.
  • When people send in a referral we have a fishbowl on top of our counter.  That referral gets dropped into the fishbowl and every three months we pull a grand prize winner out of the fishbowl with the referrers name and referees name and that person gets a grand prize.
  • We have a quota every week to get three testimonials and three pictures with the doctors. We only get them with our favorite patients. And that makes it much easier on the staff.
  • People will automatically assume you are busy enough and don’t need more patients unless you say you are never busy enough.

A simple thank you will sometimes go a long way.

  • If you create this feeling for the patients that they are recognized and everybody on staff knows who they are, when they walk in they feel like norm from cheers, those are the people that will become the walking billboard.  They are the rockstars, just because they feel like they belong there.
  • If you want to learn more about what we talked about on the relentless dentist, be sure to check out Dr. Mark Costes book, Pillars of Dental Success.
  • Be sure to check out the dental success summit, which takes place on March 20th and 21st in Scottsdale Arizona at the Scottsdale Resort, if you want to hear more from Dr. Mark Costes. 

The website is dentalsuccesssummit.com. Have any questions? Then email them at [email protected].

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