Episode 154: Dental Marketing in 2024: What You Need to Know to Get Ahead

https://youtu.be/BYqBZ89Jtd4?si=QlFSJspjQ2wmxA0v How Authenticity Can Help Your Marketing Efforts The following podcast has been lightly edited for flow. To enjoy the audio conversation, you can watch on YouTube or listen to our podcast on iTunes, Google Play, or Spotify. Carrie Webber: Welcome back to the Jameson Files. I'm your host, Carrie Weber, and so excited to be coming back. While we're recording this, we are entering into the fourth quarter of 2023. And why I wanted to bring that up is because today's topic is going to be all about the trends in marketing, what we see happening, because what I hope that all of you are doing is preparing yourself now for the year you want to have in 2024. I'm thrilled to be joined with my guest friend and teammate, Nate Porter, who is the chief marketing officer of the Jameson Group. Nate, thank you so much for joining me today. Nate Porter: Yeah, thank you for having me. Excited to talk about this topic. Carrie Webber: Yeah, and my hope is that in this episode we can share with you what the Jameson marketing team has been seeing, as of late, in terms of what's getting results in marketing or what's happening that dental practices or dental business owners need to be aware of. And also, like I said, how to plan for this upcoming year–what you need to review and what you need to strategize for so that we can help you grow your practices or your businesses, whatever the case may be. So, Nate, I want to pass it over to you for a little bit. Tell me what you're seeing and what your recommendations would be at this point in the year. Authenticity Breaks through the Noise in Marketing Nate Porter: It's interesting to watch trends and see what's happening with marketing in general. One of the things that we see a lot of is a really widening gap in terms of what people are doing for marketing. Things have evolved and some people are still looking back at their 2015, 2016 strategy, and they think that it’s going to continue to work, and it may in some markets. But what we are seeing is that there's a lot more people who are really advancing in their marketing, and they're really putting a lot of effort, a lot of resources behind their marketing. And so what that looks like is, as we've been talking about over the last number of years, is a trend towards more authenticity. And so they’re moving away from this templated, very static, very generic feel to online marketing, to social media, all of that sort of thing, to a much more genuine approach. And, I think, as you look at the marketing industry as a whole, and you listen to leaders in the industry, what you hear is the importance of understanding the signal-to-noise ratio. So as you have more demands on attention, more demands on people's time, more competition, frankly, in the marketing space, including dentistry, you have a harder time breaking through that noise. And so what can break through is not shouting louder about your list of services that you offer, or being more pushy about your message, but being more authentic. And so what we see as tools for that are creating a conversation with your potential patients or even with your patients online. That conversation needs to start online.You can't wait for it to start in your practice. And so that can be things like video, like what we're doing here today, where we're having a conversation about topics that are relevant. It can be authentic photography of your team, and your practice, of you interacting with patients. Dentistry can be something that creates anxiety. This feels warm, it feels welcoming, it feels like something that you want to engage with. The contrast has gotten so much clearer between what was common in the early 20-teens to today. It’s night and day from people who have kept up and kept moving their marketing forward. Carrie Webber: I love this point. I think the hangup, especially in dentistry, is historically it felt like you could have this set-it-and-forget-it mentality.  I am there, I'm online, I have a website, I have a logo. (Whether it's a good one or not is for another conversation.) We just don't put enough emphasis on the “why” behind marketing in the first place.  I love your point about the authenticity and the use of video. People feel like they don't even know where to start with that. Start with the people and the products and the brands and the businesses that you really enjoy seeing online. I guarantee that almost every time, the social media influencers or businesses that you follow have some kind of fantastic video piece that's included, because of your point, Nate, the authenticity of it. We get to see a little bit more of the “who” behind the “what” and to see that type of connection. I always tell people in lectures that marketing evolves quickly, and it evolves because of how the consumer is gathering information, how the consumer is using online resources, and how the consumer is finding what they're looking for. So marketing isn't continuously changing just to make your life harder. Marketing's actually changing to make the consumer's life easier. And so that was something that I wanted to share concerning what you're talking about. Sorry to interrupt, but I love the point that you're talking about in terms of authenticity. Authenticity Helps Businesses with Smaller Budgets Compete Nate Porter: I think it's a really, really important point. The other thing too, I think is, you can probably get a little bit discouraged if you see some of the big corporate entities coming in. Some of them look really polished, and a lot of them are spending a lot of money on marketing– TV and otherwise– and you wonder how you are ever going to compete with a $12 to $15,000 a month budget per practice. The thing is that they are taking a shotgun or sledgehammer approach to it. So there are a lot of ineffective dollars being put towards marketing in those situations. And you can compete if you're authentic and you're strategic with a much, much more affordable plan. Just the fact that you are personal, that you do care, and that you are focused on the patient is a big differentiator if you can frame that message in a way that breaks through. Carrie Webber: Absolutely. And just to answer the question for yourselves as businesses– how can I be more present in my efforts? How can I really show up more? It doesn't have to be perfect. To your point, Nate, it doesn't have to be this shiny thing. It's really about that authentic presence in your message, and repeatedly doing that. You have to be continuously putting effort into it. Some of our favorite clients use a combination of the services that we provide for them, and they bring in their own mix to the recipe, using their own team and skills and time and efforts. And I think that's really a secret sauce–using professional services to give you some really high level great content, great video, a great website–all of those pieces. Then combine that with your own personal efforts as a team to be continuously posting and reaching out and connecting with your community, your patients, your online reach, and so on. Would you agree with that? Nate Porter: Yeah, a hundred percent. I think it’s really important. One of the things that can be overwhelming for practices is understanding what tools to use for what purposes. And so you try this, and try that, and do a little bit of everything, and you can probably feel overwhelmed and discouraged pretty quickly. One of the things that we look at when we look at practices is their goals and the outcomes that they’re hoping for, and then we identify what tools meet those needs.If you're looking to build referrals and engage with your current patient base, we really recommend strengthening your social media efforts, and maybe even personal email campaigns, because that really connects with your existing patient family and it helps create some buzz around your practice. Improving Your Business’s Appearance on Google If you're looking to grow new patients and build traffic in that way, your focus really needs to be on your website, and it needs to be on the ways that you can leverage your website to grow traffic from Google. We know that 85 to 90% of that traffic comes from a Google search to your website, so that's everything. It can be as simple as making sure that you're asking for reviews verbally when you have patients in your practice, not just putting a sign out there that says, give us a review. The other thing that you might want to look at is what the patient sees when they are searching for dentistry in your area. If your listing comes up on Google, and there's a picture on your Google listing that looks dark and uninviting, or maybe just a picture of the street view of your building, you can change that really easily and give a more welcoming feel. And often for people that's the first, and sometimes the last, impression of your practice. Things like that are things that would be easily updated and changed. I really like what Gary Vee says, putting it in dental terms, “You no longer have the luxury of being a dentist who does marketing, you're a marketer who does dentistry.” You have to think about how you incorporate storytelling throughout your process and your day. Carrie Webber: Oh, I love that. And you can see it online. You can see it with the people that just get it– that recognize they need to be continuously on top of what's working and staying relevant. I was just talking about this the other day. Your online presence is not only building a type of perception for potential patients and your existing patients, but it's also building perception for potential employees of whether or not you are a practice that they would want to work at and be a part of. So it's important to keep in mind that this needs to be a priority, not just once,...