Have you ever regretted a decision? Have you ever leapt at a chance only to end up slipping on a banana skin? That pretty much describes my dental career. "Do I Get Another Go?" Rethinking A Dental Career After Retirement By @DentistGoneBadd
Considering online marketing it's useful to look at:
For a dental practice website to be effective in attracting the right type of new patients we need both traffic and conversions. In previous articles we’ve looked at various forms of traffic optimisation as well as conversion optimisation and e-mail marketing… In this final article we will take a brief look at social media which you may notice appears in both traffic and conversion optimisation.
Everyone knows that the best form of new patient attraction is word-of-mouth marketing, social media is simply word-of-mouth marketing on steroids. Social media gives us the ability to communicate with the widest number of people in one go.
In order to understand social media marketing and relationship building we need to understand some basic business marketing theory.
In a product-based industry (which dentistry is NOT) consumers can evaluate the product before purchasing by trying it out in the store. They can also take back that product after purchase. Marketing for a product is about encouraging the consumer to make a snap decision, product marketing is therefore special deals, offers and incentives such as buy one get one free, 50% off sale today etc.
This is what is known as transactional marketing.
Dentistry on the other hand is very definitely a predominately service-based industry. Let’s take a white filling for example, consumers are not able to evaluate what that filling is going to look like prior to purchasing, nor, after you have completed it and if they dislike it are they able to request you put back any removed tooth and give them back their decay back!
Because of this basic difference between a product and service it means that service based marketing is entirely focused on building trust and reducing risk… when a consumer purchases a service they are (on the whole) unable to make a snap decision and the marketing should reflect this by seeking to build a relationship with them.
This is what is known as relationship marketing. [1]
If we are to use relationship marketing, which happens to be almost tailor-made for social media, then we need to understand the core of how a relationship develops… When we understand how business relationship forms then we can take our social media marketing to the next level.
Business relationships, indeed almost all relationships, form in 3 distinct stages.[2]
In order for any relationship to move forwards there need to be bonds between the actors, bonds between yourself and your prospective new patient. Basic human psychology means we tend to like people we are like… So help patients to like you.
This is where sharing personal stories and information really comes into force. Great examples of this are:
Indeed, any type of invent at the practice which allows someone to say “Ooh, I’m just like them, I like that too…”
These are conversation starters, they opened the door to take the next step in the relationship building process.
The next stage in the process will only occur when someone feels as though they like you, this next stage is giving people something to do.
This is typically handing out useful, free and relevant generic dental health advice, great social media posts that fall into this activity link category are things like:
The key here is to put a clickable link into your social media post, that link can either be to an image or to a website which has the answer to this particular dental question.
The key thing to understand here is that it DOES NOT have to be your own resources… You could link out to the British Dental Health Foundation, or Colgate or any other dental resource. The point of this type of post is that you are demonstrating that you care about solving patient’s problems over and above making a profit as a dental practice.
If you are trying to sell them something by deliberately pointing them to your website all the time it does not necessarily build trust.
Once we have spent some time building trust we can then move onto the final stage of the relationship building process.
And this is the part of relationship building marketing which feels like conventional marketing, it’s the part where we tell people how great we are and how well we can solve their dental problems.
In the resource ties section of the relationship building process we are asking a prospective new patient to commit some form of resource to us, either money or time.
Time resources could be reading a blog post you have written (answering one of the questions listed above) or it could be to come and see you for an initial consultation.
Patients are not going to jump to the resource ties section of the relationship building process if you haven’t spent time developing that relationship in the first place and they don’t trust you or view you as a low risk option.
Too many practices can’t resist the urge to jump up and down, shout loudly and wave their hands talking about how great they are, how fabulous their free consultation is, how much they want to give patients 50% off for a particular treatment on a certain day of the week… Completely missing the point that social media is about RELATIONSHIPS, not TRANSACTIONS.
My recommendation is to keep posts in the following percentages.
Each time you go to write a social media updates, think about which of these categories it falls into, it’s absolutely fine just to seek to deepen the relationship with someone… Not all of your posts need to be about teeth - posting a picture of your dog, or a book you are reading, or restaurant you have recently visited may be the right thing for a person to see for the very 1st time on social media… You can then develop their relationship with you over a period of time as they see things about you in your practice that they can connect with.
Social media is about connecting with people as human beings, developing the relationship by increasing trust and lowering risk… Follow this advice and your social media marketing will work incredibly effectively.
[1] Gummeson E. (2002), Total Relationship Marketing, (2nd edition), Oxford, Butterworth Heinemann
[2] Hakansson, H. and Snehota, I. (1995) Developing Relationships in Business Markets, London: Routledge
It's the summer, and soon you'll all be inundated with patients wanting their teeth fixed before they smile nicely for the border control people. Brace Yourselves, People - The Holidays Are Coming. By @DentistGoneBadd
I'm sure I'll take you with pleasure!" the Queen said. "Two pence a week, and jam every other day."
"Well, I don't want any to-day, at any rate."
"You couldn't have it if you did want it," the Queen said. "The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day."
"I don't understand you," said Alice. "It's dreadfully confusing!
Poor Alice, life had seemed much simpler when she graduated BDS, two years ago. A sunny summer passed living on her parents’ credit card visiting her friends from university. But the confusion had already started.
Alice was qualified and fully GDC registered so could work privately. She must wait 8 weeks until September to start her FD job post. She kept hearing about the shortage of NHS dentists but this was the “system”.
Her FD year went well, learning new skills with a supportive trainer, and then she failed to get either of the associate jobs in “mixed” practices for which she had been interviewed. The successful candidates were people who called themselves “Cosmetic Dentists” with portfolios of perfect photographs of composite restorations and who boasted about how many Invisalign cases they had done.
Soon, she was back living at home to start her first “proper” job; working in Mr Jackson’s practice where she had done her work experience from school. Mr Jackson didn’t own it any more and it wasn’t quite the same, being part of the “GleamDent” chain where everyone wore identical, shapeless “scrubs”. It didn’t seem as friendly as she remembered.
Her interview had been OK, although they didn’t seem keen on her charity work and hobbies nor did she didn’t get to meet any of the other dentists. The practice manager, “Queenie” as everyone called her, seemed a bit brusque and insisted on her signing her employee contract before she left the building, although she was sure they had told her on her FD course days that wasn’t best practice. Queenie said that was what GleamDent did and it was a standard “BDA” contract, so it should be OK.
The confusion continued. When she was eventually paid, four weeks after the month end, she hadn’t earned as much as expected. There were so many deductions! Laboratory work she understood, but laundry bills for those awful scrubs? She had made a couple of private crowns for an old friend using a different impression material, so she must pay 100% of the material cost as it was a “non-standard” GleamDent product. Hadn’t she read the employee manual listing what was acceptable and what was optional? Well no, she hadn’t because it wasn’t available.
CPD provision and certification was available in-house, at a cost. £100 for someone from GleamDent HQ to recite Prof Welbury’s child safeguarding manual, seemed a bit steep.
She did at least have a GleamDent online mentor and coach. He worked at a practice 150 miles away had seemed encouraging when they first met via Skype, “the first five years are the worst!” he had joked, she presumed it was a joke. She hadn’t been told that she would have to pay him too.
Alice had been a diligent student and enjoyed statistics but “practice KPIs” were a mystery all of their own. She received daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly reports, which usually arrived in the early hours of the morning. Queenie expected her to have read and understood them by the time of the next team morning huddle, or “The naming and shaming session” as the other associates called it.
Whatever the KPIs said, Alice felt as if nothing could improve. She couldn’t grasp why patient’s late cancellation of hygienist appointments could be her fault or why she was then expected to make a contribution to the hygienist’s wages.
Twelve months later and the promised “loads of private patients” was rarely more than a trickle of challenging full denture cases. Alice was the last to arrive and got the highest needs NHS patients, she had trouble making her UDA targets and was now facing subsidising any practice clawback. “Your problem”, said Queenie during one of her little “pep-talks,” is that you care too much. You spend too long with the patients; the chatting and consent should be done by “TCO Jackie”, the treatment coordinator. “You must learn how to become a more effective operator, you’ll never be a success unless you cut corners. How do you think Dr King, (the founder of GleamDent) made his money?”
Alice remembered a line from her FD Information Handbook, warning about social media blurring the boundary between public and professional life. She hadn’t realised that there could be a similar blurring between ethical and less ethical behaviour.
It all seemed dreadfully confusing.
NHS hospital doctors are understandably concerned about refusing treatment if overseas patients can't pay. But is it that hard to deny patients treatment?
I'll Do Anything For Teeth But I Won't Do That)
By @DentistGoneBadd
