You are in an elevator. A man asks what your company does. You have 15 seconds before the door opens. What do you say?
We utilize artificial intelligence to help track and optimize marketing for dental practices.
What is your background in dental?
My background is actually in computer science. I have many friends who are dentists, so I notice everyone's teeth when I first meet them. I got involved in the dental field when trying to solve a marketing problem for my friend using a data-driven approach.
What's the history of Call Sumo?
Call Sumo came out of our work helping dentists with their marketing at Dental Web Now, Call Sumo's sister company. We realized that the core of what gives us an edge over other marketing companies is the call-tracking technology integrated with practice management systems.
Since we are able to pinpoint exactly which search terms and marketing brought in which patients (good or bad), we can simply put more effort or funds toward those initiatives. In February, we decided to offer Call Sumo directly to dentists, and dental agencies such as marketers, to help take their marketing efforts to a different level.
How does it work?
We leverage artificial intelligence—machine learning algorithms, to be exact—to help with dental marketing. While it may seem exotic, companies both big and small often use these techniques to give their marketing the type of boost that a human marketer couldn't realistically achieve.
The Call Sumo Pop-Up Box brings the power of our system right to the screen in front of you, letting you know when a potential new customer is calling. It may seem like a small thing, but really, think about it: Can your caller ID identify if someone is calling with good news? In our case, the good news is that a potential new patient is on the line! In order to know that, you'd have to know quite a bit about the person who is calling, which Call Sumo does. That gets my predictive geek sense all tingly!
What was the inspiration behind Call Sumo?
One of the great innovations of our day is Google. While Google helps you find just about any piece of information you're looking for, there's another, subtler way that Google has changed the world.
Prior to Google, marketing used to be more of an art than a science. You paid a TV or radio advertiser lots of money and they would give you some numbers, claiming X million people saw your ad.
But Google introduced AdWords, through which you can account for what every one of your marketing dollars is doing for you. Google has taken the world of marketing and turned it from a mysterious art into something that's accessible to just about anybody.
Interestingly, we saw this tool not working quite as well in places like dentistry, where a dental team might not know exactly what their dollars are getting them. After all, unless you measure very, very carefully, you won't know how many clicks—and more specifically, which keywords—led to a phone call that became a new patient.
That's exactly what we built our system to do: to be more quantitative, even when the end result isn't someone buying something online but, rather, someone moving to a phone conversation and setting up an appointment in your office.
What is the philosophy at Call Sumo?
We believe in democratizing artificial intelligence for businesses of every size. The promise of artificial intelligence, to us, is that it will take care of mundane things like number-crunching in a fashion that's better than what any human could achieve. That leaves us humans to be even better at what we're good at—i.e., nurturing better relationships with patients.
What would you consider to be the best-kept secret about your company?
Sometimes the best-kept secret is our company. I've had dentists actually worry that their competition might use Call Sumo. Honestly, it doesn't hurt if the dentist down the street uses us, too. We believe that the technology we offer will be as ubiquitous as phone systems. The dentist down the street has a telephone, so it's not a bad thing for either one.
What kind of service can dentists expect when they pick up the phone and call?
We're pretty focused on helping dentists optimize their marketing. When dentists call us, they can expect a company dedicated to doing its best to help them reach their practice's growth goals.
Anything else you'd like to add or tell us about Call Sumo?
Call Sumo is always improving; we believe in continuous development and many people are surprised by how fast our capabilities improve and how much we add on. If a customer sees something that requires a change and we think it would be a positive change for all our customers, we move very quickly to make it happen.
How can a practice begin working with you?
A dentist can visit our website, callsumo.com, or give us a call at (866) 320-7070 to see how we can help tackle that practice's marketing.
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