Identity Dental Marketing

Do you have a dental specialty, such as endodontics or periodontics? Are there multiple doctors at your business location? A doctor biography website may be right for you to help set yourself apart from the business.

Referring dentists need to be able to send their patients to a specialty (not general dental) website. This website can also serve as a resource for your referring doctors.

This website includes:

• biography
• education
• specialties
• achievements
• certifications
• testimonials
• and more

We hope you find the marketing idea both beneficial for you and your patients.

To receive your custom-created biography website, let us know. We are offering this for only $899.

This month we are wanting you to bring attention to the oral / overall health connection by providing your patients with a custom designed and written article.

Making a point to educate your patients on the importance of oral health for their overall health can lead to more new patients and increased acceptance for SRP.

This is how it works:

Each patient receives health connection as take-home material. The flyer discusses how your practice promotes overall health and educates the patients.

The patient, enlightened, brings the article home to her husband or father or friend who suffers from one of the mentioned illnesses.

Your printed material also offers a complimentary consultation for new patients who are coping with any of the mentioned concerns:

• diabetes
• heart disease
• osteoporosis
• alzheimers
• sjrogrens and other autoimmune diseases
• cancer
• mystery symptoms or ailments
• etc.

We hope you find the marketing idea both beneficial for your business and your patients. Let’s spread the word about the importance of preventive care and oral health maintenance, while helping more new patients receive the highest quality of dental care possible.

To receive your custom-created branded Oral and Overall Health flyer, let us know. We are offering this in May for only $100. Starting June 1st, it’ll be available for $150.

1. Your dentist can help you find love.

By preventing halitosis, your dentist can increase your chances of landing a second date.

2. “Do it yourself dentistry” is never a good idea.

3. A whitened smile can shave 10 years off of your appearance… unless you are 15 years old.

4. Visiting your dentist prevents periodontal disease (a very common condition that leads to tooth loss).

5. Visiting the dentist regularly can provide a much needed, relaxing break from your routine.

There are certain words that carry negative meaning in the minds of many. I wrote about words to avoid in dentistry in my previous blog post, Dental Curse Words.

I’ve noticed that almost unanimously when recommending “Email Marketing” to my clients, they often get the concerned look on their face. It’s the kind of look that I can hear over the phone. They instantly think “SPAM”… which of course it is not. Somewhere along the line, email marketing has made a bad name for itself.

Email marketing is still very powerful. It’s often not recommended by marketing companies. Perhaps it’s because I always hear “We’ll try it on our own.” Of course, it almost never gets done and when it is done, it’s not done well.  Let’s face it, you’re team excels in dentistry, but may not be highly trained in written communication.

So what’s the solution? Well, it’s time to start prioritizing your communication with your existing patients. It’s important to stay top of mind to generate referrals. Existing patients lead to new business. Patient referrals should ALWAYS be your top referral source, no matter the size of your marketing budget. As you get more new patients, those patients should be referring friends and family. If this isn’t the case, it’s time to implement a referral program.

Dental email newsletters can accomplish the following:

• Generate more patient referrals (through forwarding of the email)
• Generate more positive reviews online
• Improve patient education
• Promote advanced dental services
• Improve recall
• Improve case acceptance

Avoid getting marked as SPAM by:

• Sending monthly instead of weekly messages
• Sending to active patients only
• Writing interesting, relatable topics
• Planning out new content
• Including topical, relevant information that can protect or inform a patient
• Don’t be “overselling” but instead represent yourself as an advocate for your patients’ interests
• Keeping an updated patient email list

Email marketing is the bridge between your existing patients and your new patients. It’s the ideal, most affordable marketing strategy that is most ignored. It’s the secret to improving your bottom line. It’s the glue that holds your internal marketing strategies, your internet marketing campaign, your online reputation and your social media presence together.

It’s time that I stop using the words “Email Marketing Campaign” since these words do not do justice and have been ruined by spammers. Call it email marketing or call it POWERFUL PATIENT COMMUNICATION CAMPAIGN. I don’t care what we call it, but it’s time to stop ignoring this platform. It’s time to start utilizing one of the most affordable and effective marketing strategies.

Please contact me if you are not already utilizing email marketing to its fullest. We can create a complete marketing plan to achieve your goals. Call me directly at (847) 629-4646.

Grace Rizza

Owner of Identity Dental Marketing

There are many things to consider when starting a dental practice of your own. We’ve taken the time to carefully analyze the process of starting a dental practice.

Besides marketing, you’ll need to choose a location, decide if you’ll purchase an existing practice or start from scratch. You’ll need a contractor, a designer, a management consultant to assist in hiring and setting up systems. You’ll need a dental CPA to help you appropriately allocate funds to equipment, employees, marketing and more.  Of course you’ll need a dental marketing professional to help you connect with the right kind of patients.

The process definitely seems overwhelming. Where should you begin?

Start here.

If you’re considering starting a dental practice, consider attending our Dental Practice Jump Start Event in Chicago this November. Contact Grace Rizza at (847) 629-4646 for ticket information. Seats are limited. Speakers will cover topics such as:

• Choose the best location for your new dental practice
• Top Mistakes Made in Office Design & Construction
• Branding For Success
• Marketing Must-Haves For Start Ups in 2014 & 2015
• Hiring For Your Long term success
• Budgeting your Build Out

It’s no secret that SEO works for attracting new patients. Of course, you want your website to be first when someone searches for a dentist in your town.

In the race to the top of the page, there are many things you can do to help yourself get there, including:

1. Get real reviews onto Google
2. Have ONE person managing your online presence
3. Blog (or pay your marketer to blog) regularly
4. Regularly add on-site ranking factors to your website
5. Have a custom website developed
6. Acquire high-quality, organic back-links

You may have heard some of these things before, but have you heard about what NOT to do?

1. (In most cases) DO NOT pay a local directory site to be listed next to several other dentists in your town.  In doing this, you are paying that directory site to outrank YOU. That’s right. Advertising on these websites helps the directory website outrank your website. INSTEAD, get first on Google and bump the directory site below yours. Invest in your own website.
2. Change keyword focus to frequently or have a broad list of keywords. This will “water down” the strength of your campaign. There comes a time when it is appropriate to expand your keyword reach, but this doesn’t typically happen in the first 6 months.
3. Ignore bad reviews. Bad reviews can undo all of our hard work to get you ranked. Instead, ask about our ORM (online reputation management) services to attain a 5-star reputation.

Call Grace to get a free marketing plan. (847) 629-4646

Thursday night around 10pm, I was getting myself ready for bed when I heard 8 gunshots outside of my house.  I live in a  safe neighborhood in the suburbs. It was rare to hear such a thing. I checked if my husband had heard it and he confirmed without any doubt that they were in fact gunshots.

I immediately called the police to report the incident and within minutes saw the squad cars circling my block. It should come to no surprise that I wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon. My husband had no problem falling into a very deep slumber, as I lie awake watching my 3 month old daughter sleep.

Out of the blue, she wakes up to clear her throat and without warning starts choking. I’m not exaggerating here. She made no sound and started frantically waving her arms about in a panic. I quickly picked her up, flipped her over and started hitting her back as I learned in CPR.  After about 8 hits to the back, a thick clear mucus came out of her nose and mouth and she started to cry.

Despite my loud screams to my husband (who was sleeping peacefully in the  next room), he didn’t wake up or even hear me. I then was faced with a decision. What to do next. The baby was now fine. She wasn’t even upset and went back to sleep. I however wanted an answer. I wanted it now.

I called the only person I know that is always awake, my Aunt Wendy. She advised that I call her pediatrician. I talked to the doctor on call who said to elevate the babies bed and call in the morning for an appointment. I followed her advice.

At  my appointment the next day, her doctor asked about the incident. He had no idea why it had happened and said not to “lose sleep” over it. Seriously?! Well that’s ridiculous advice.

After being given very little useful advice from her doctor and not wanting to “wait for it to happen again”, I started Googling. The research continued for several nights as I sat awake while my daughter sleeps. Finally, I stumbled upon something that made sense… a possible solution to my problem. I learned about milk allergies and mucus in infants. The symptoms aligned with her symptoms, which I hadn’t noticed before. As a first time mom, I thought all babies were noisy breathers while they sleep. I thought dry skin was normal for her. Her ridiculous amounts of gas, well I’ve always thought that was excessive and painful for her, but didn’t think there was anything I could do about the “colic”.

As I read more and more, I decided to change her formula (I was unable to breastfeed.) I switched her to a formula that if she were allergic to milk she should start (most likely) sleeping better. I called her doctor back on Monday to tell him what I’d done and he said it was “an appropriate” solution.

WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN TO YOU?

Well, healthcare has changed. Patients like myself are now used to finding our own  health solutions online. We don’t completely trust doctors anymore. We see physicians and medical providers pushing patients in and out with less and less time for appointments daily. We respect doctors, but feel that we can find the information ourselves online.

When providing a diagnosis to a patient, you should give him/her material to read. Information about the diagnosis. Periodontal disease for instance can effect your patients overall health, lead to tooth loss and cause halitosis. You know this, but your words no longer carry the same kind of weight as the almighty Google.

THE PROBLEM: PEOPLE CAN FIND WHAT THEY WANT TO FIND

If I want Google to tell me that I don’t need periodontal disease treatment, I can find an article about treating periodontal disease at home. I can also find a mouthwash that fights periodontal disease instead of making an appointment for treatment. Since search engines show results based on your search, all results are biased.

A REAL WORLD EXAMPLE

My mother called this morning. She told me about the headaches she’s getting because of her TMD/TMJ. Her dentist told her to just wear a night guard, which she didn’t feel would help, since she’s tried this before. She is now looking for a TMJ specialist in her area. You may be the best TMJ dentist in your area, but if patients like my mother cannot find you with a simple  google search for TMJ services, you are missing out on patients. Other dentists, some of which are less qualified are getting the patients that are searching for you online.

10 years ago, a patient may have just gone to his/her general dentist and asked for treatment or a referral. NOW, Google is the solution for all of our health problems.

Contact us to learn more about getting found on Google.

(It’s been 2 days since my daughter’s formula change and she’s already breathing better. I’m looking forward to my first night of sleep tonight.)

(My beautiful girl)

Many SEO companies are now saying “link building is dead”. They are dead wrong.

SEO pro’s are noticing that Google is favoring on-site SEO ranking factors more than they did in the past. On-site factors (including how your website is developed) have been major ranking factors for years and continue to increase in importance. In the SEO world, we’ve all heard a million times that “content is king”.

Yes, content matters and development matters, but so does link building.  Your competitors can easily look at how your website was developed and copy your strategies, but they cannot easily copy quality links that have been ethically built over the course of time.

The obstacle for many SEO companies:

They are lazy. They look for ways to automatically build links with software or spammy websites, instead of putting in the time to research manually build a presence. They may purchase links from a third party—this will surely get you penalized eventually and your site will disappear from Google, leaving you no choice but to start over. So, yes, now SEO companies are saying: link building doesn’t matter anymore.  Why do they say this? It’s either because they are lazy or because they don’t know how to build quality links.

If you and your competitor both have the same on-site ranking factors and you have 1,000 quality backlinks, you will outrank your competitor.

Think about it this way…

Pretend Google gives you 10 points for a proper page title, 10 points for meta description and 3 points for every other on-site ranking strategy and 1 point for every quality backlink. The site with the most points ranks first. Why wouldn’t you want to have all of the possible on-site ranking factors while continuously, manually building diversified quality backlinks?

What is a backlink?

A backlink or “inbound link” is a hyper link to your website from anywhere else on the web. There are several types of backlinks, some stronger than others. Since Google is constantly changing which types of backlinks matter most, you need an SEO company that understands that diversification matters.  Our diversification strategy is the special sauce on our Big Mac. It’s the best protection against Google Analytic changes.

The Conclusion

Both on-site and off-site SEO ranking factors count. Call us to get an estimation on what it will cost to outrank your competition. It’s more affordable than you may think, and the ROI will likely be the best you’ve seen.

Call Grace at Identity Dental Marketing (847) 629-4646.