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VIDEO - DUwHF #770 - Colin Receveur
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AUDIO - DUwHF #770 - Colin Receveur
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Receveur is a nationally recognized dental marketing expert, speaker, and author of several best-selling books. His latest book, "The Four Horsemen of Dentistry: Survival Strategies For the Private Practice Under Siege," is available for order for $2 special offer at dentalpracticesurvival.com
Colin Receveur is the CEO of SmartBox, a company that helps dentists thrive. Colin built his first marketing system for his Dad in 1997, who's been in private practice since 1981, so Colin is in his 20th year of helping dentists thrive. He heads up SmartBox, the fastest growing patient attraction firm in the country with 80 full-time employees growing 100% year over year.
www.smartboxwebmarketing.com
Howard Farran: It is just a huge, huge honor for me to bring back a guest on a show. I've hardly ever brought a guest back. Colin Receveur is the CEO of SmartBox, a company that helps dentists thrive. Colin built his first marketing system for his dad in 1997, whose been in private practice since 1981. So Colin is in his 20th year helping dentists thrive. He heads up SmartBox, the fastest growing patient attraction firm in the country with 80 full-time employees, growing 100% year-over-year. I'm a big fan of your podcast, The Patient Attraction Podcast, and you got a lot of views on Dentaltown. I know most people tell me they find the podcast on the Dentaltown app; then they usually subscribe to it on iTunes. But shoot, you got a gazillion views just on the Dentaltown app. So tell us about the Patient Attraction Podcast, and thank you so much for doing that podcast to help dentists and for putting it on the Dentaltown app.
Colin Receveur: Thanks to you for providing a great platform. It's awesome how you've brought all these dentists from around the world together in one big community to collaborate and really grow the profession. The Patient Attraction Podcast was something that I started. Yeah, I started with the little GoPro camera up in the corner of my car as I drove down the road. Now we're up to like 1,100 something episodes, and it's all about ...
Howard Farran: Dude, we only have 552 on Dentaltown. You got to update them.
Colin Receveur: Well, we didn't start putting them on Dentaltown until we were half way through.
Howard Farran: Oh, okay. So you got the last 552 on.
Colin Receveur: Yeah, we got the most recent on there, and it's all about attracting more and better patients. I don't know any dentist that ever said, "I've got enough patients. I'm good to go. I'm set." Everybody wants to grow their practice. Everybody wants to maybe not get more patients, but maybe grow their case size a little bit, and work a little bit less and make the same money. So those are the kind of doctors that we help.
Howard Farran: But, you just pointed out though the entire flaw of what you're doing. Why are there no dentists that filled up their practice and can't take anymore new patients? I mean, if your hygienist can only clean eight people a day, and you only got one or two, and you've been in that small town of 5,000 in Indiana for 30, 40 years; why do you still need more customers?
Colin Receveur: Your old customers are, unfortunately, expiring. You always have people moving out of the area. If you're not bringing new infusion into the practice, ... Every practice I've ever seen is going to dwindle eventually if you're not looking for that new infusion of new patients.
Howard Farran: What do you think the average flip is in a community? Like you're out there ... now are you in a suburb of Indianapolis?
Colin Receveur: We're in a suburb of Louisville, Kentucky. We're on the Indiana side of Louisville, Kentucky. Indy is about two hours north of me.
Howard Farran: So you're in Floyds Knobs.
Colin Receveur: Floyds Knobs, yep.
Howard Farran: Isn't Woody Oakes around there, too?
Colin Receveur: I can throw a rock and hit Woody's house.
Howard Farran: Oh my God. Tell him I said, "Hi." He's a great guy. Do you think that advertising dollars should be split 50-50 with more loyalty programs of keeping these new patients for life? Do you think dentists should just always focus on getting more new clients? It seems like the Fortune 500 always talks about loyalty programs, and then small businesses always talk about new patients.
Colin Receveur: If you have to spend 50% of your ad dollars on loyalty, you've got a loyalty problem. That being said, any thriving practice should see 50% of their new patients coming from referrals, but you shouldn't have to spend 50% of your ad dollars to get that. You should spend 10 or 20% of your ad dollars on loyalty programs. If you have somebody's loyalty ... loyalty and ... That's why advertising's so expensive. They have no loyalty. You have to build that trust, and build that rapport with your cold prospects, cold leads to get them to call you.
Howard Farran: By the way, when we release this podcast I actually want to release the first one. You were show #69. Do you know why 69 is my favorite number?
Colin Receveur: I bet you're about to tell me.
Howard Farran: That was how old Mother Teresa was when she got the Nobel Prize. When I grew up in Catholic grammar school, high school, Catholic [inaudible 00:04:41], and my favorite nun was Mother Teresa. My favorite priest was Martin Luther, and that woman was an amazing woman. But it's a perfect joke. As a joke you're supposed to have a setup. So you're leaning one way, and then you come back with Mother Teresa of Calcutta. So, my gosh. Anybody that thought I was going the other way, now they got to look at Mother Teresa and say, "What the hell was I thinking?"
Anyway, I love that podcast, and I want anybody listening to this one to go back and listen to that one, but that was two years ago at Townie Meeting. So I brought you back on the show because everybody wants to know about marketing, marketing, marketing. So what's changed in the last two years since that podcast? What can you tell my homies today that you didn't know two years ago?
Colin Receveur: I think it's much like getting a driver's license. The cars change, the models change, there's something newer and greater and flashier out there, but just because the new model comes out doesn't mean you have to go get a new driver's license. If you follow best practices today and you followed best practices two years ago, your marketing's still going to be successful. Now, there's new shiny objects out there. There's new tactics and strategies, but the best practices haven't changed. Does that make sense?
Howard Farran: Yeah. And what are the best prac ... I mean there's so much ... I see one thing like millennials, they're all going to build their practice on Facebook. The old guys, it's all going to be direct mail. Who's smarter? The old guys like me? The old, fat, senile grandpas doing direct mail like me? Or these young kids doing it all on the internet, and Facebook, and social media?
Colin Receveur: You know you can kill it either way, and I think the most sensible guys are doing both. I think it's shortsighted to do one or the other. Direct mail in most markets still is very effective. Facebook in most markets is very effective. Why limit yourself to one or the other? Do both and dominate your market.
Howard Farran: And I would think it would have to have different customers showing up because I just can't see all these grandmas that need implants under their dentures on Facebook, but I see them all walking out every morning and getting their mail and picking up the newspaper on their driveway. And then I hear all the millennials tell me that all the newspapers are dead, and all the mailboxes are gone, and no one does direct mail, and it all gets thrown away. What's the only thing that you've seen die since you've been in dentistry 20 years? Is the phone book dead or is the phone book still alive?
Colin Receveur: I wouldn't say phone book's dead. I would definitely say it's on life support. There are still, geez ... I've got maybe one or two clients that still do the phone book, and they're in very, very rural market areas, and they still do well with it. They can spend 1,000 or 2 a month, and they can get patients in the $75 range. That being said, it's definitely on life support. Any reasonable market size and above, it died several years ago. It is no more.
Howard Farran: And what about newspaper ads?
Colin Receveur: Newspaper ads can still be effective. The circulation's down on a lot of newspapers, but the biggest thing, I think, is not so much around the medium, if it's newspaper or magazine or whatever it is; the biggest problem I see is with the approach of marketing.
You've listened to some of my podcasts. I refer to the Golden Ages of dentistry. You remember the days, in the 80's and 90's that ... like my dad ... The dentist opened up shop, he hung up his shingle outside, and that was all the marketing they did. And he had floods of new patients coming in just from a sign on the door.
And then there was the age of the Yellow Pages. So that was like the easiest entry point, you had to stick your sign on the wall. Then you had the Yellow Pages, which was the next easiest point. That was the directory for everybody. You paid your dues, and you got in the Yellow Pages, and you were good to go.
Since then, marketing has become complex. There's no one place that you send a check to, and you get your advertising anymore. It was easy for so many years in marketing and now it's more complex; competition, bidding and auctioning, and all these complex marketing strategies.
So the biggest thing with it is not necessarily where you market, but don't think of market as a single step. Don't think of, "Okay, I do advertisement, and then I get new patients out of it." Think of it as a nurturing process, where you get seen and you build trust. Maybe they request some information from you. Maybe they come in for a consult, and then you're nurturing them down this path.
Google ... Many places have released that people are referencing 10, 11, 12 sources of information before they make that buying decision, and that's what's fundamentally changed with people. 20 years ago people referenced two sources of information. They only had two; Susie, their friend that likes Dr. Farran and the Yellow Pages of Dr. Farran's ad, and that was it. From there, they have to call your office. Now there's online reviews, and videos, and websites, and all this stuff, and you have to think of it more as a path rather than an event. It's a process.
Howard Farran: I've been reading a lot about your website, Practice Under Siege with the Four Horsemen of Dentistry. When did this come along, and what are your thoughts on The Four Horsemen of Dentistry at practiceundersiege.com?
Colin Receveur: I think there's four big threats that dentistry is facing right now. Of course, there's corporate dentistry. In many markets you've got your Aspens and your ClearChoices coming in, and they're kind of the big gorilla in the room. They are coming in. They're driving up marketing expenses. Of course, they've got economies of scale. Right? They get everything cheaper. They buy lab supplies cheaper. They have more marketing dollars.
You've got more dental grads than ever. You've got dental schools opening up everywhere. You've got older doctors that are extending their retirement because of the Great Recession. You've got more competition.
Insurance sure isn't something to write home about these days. I saw an interesting article. I put it on my blog earlier this week, that four doctors in Massachusetts have filed a class action lawsuit against Delta for what Delta has done in Massachusetts. And I posted it to our Facebook page talking about how they have ... Delta cut their top tier right off in Massachusetts and, I believe, Washington State a couple years ago, and there's a lot of pushback on that from a lot of guys who ... a lot of dentists that that's their livelihood.
And then, of course, the economic uncertainty. I'm not standing here with a "the end is coming" sign, but the fact is we've been in the largest, the longest bull market since World War II. To not consider a plan if there's a small setback in the economy I think is shortsighted. I'm a big planner, and I think the numbers ... It doesn't mean the ends coming tomorrow, but think about what you're going to do and how you're going to prepare for these things in the future is what I push our doctors to do.
Howard Farran: I graduated from high school as a freshman college in 1980 when out of nowhere interest rates went to 21%. Inflation, unemployment, and interest rates were all double digit. And then I graduated from dental school seven years later in '87 in March and then in May of '87 and then October the Dow just nosedived. And then just 2008 was just 10 years ago, so you go from '80 to '87, that's seven years. What's '87 to 2008?
Colin Receveur: 21 years.
Howard Farran: If you're a young kid coming out of dental school, I just want to tell you that you never know what's around the corner.
Colin Receveur: It's just always good to be prepared. Knowing and preparing for the future, having a reserve and a plan; you can't go wrong. Plan for the worst and hope for the best.
Howard Farran: So give us ... give my homies a sense of what you're doing. What are they doing? Do you want them to go to practiceundersiege.com or you want them to go to smartboxwebmarketing.com? What is your ... Your dad; is he still practicing?
Colin Receveur: He is, since '81.
Howard Farran: So he's doing a filling and a crown. What's your filling and a crown and a root canal? What are you doing for dentists these days?
Colin Receveur: Ron isn't doing any fillings or crowns anymore. He's got an associate that does all his GP side. Ron does all surgery; has for the past decade now. So he does anything from single implants all the way up through complex All-on-4's.
Howard Farran: Nice.
Colin Receveur: That's what he does. All of the marketing systems that we built are built really around Ron as our test bit. Ron is kind of our poster boy for how we build our marketing systems and a sandbox for making sure they work.
If you want to plan, and you want to grow your practice, you can find general "bread and butter" patients. You can do new patient mailers, and you can grow your practice. You can sign up for all the insurance plans out there. There's nothing wrong with that. There's a lot of great practices that operate under those models.
The doctors that are our best clients are the ones that want to find a better kind of patient; whether that's an implant patient, Invisalign, cosmetics. Doctors that are looking for that higher quality patients, that instead of being 1,000 or 1,500 or $2,500 average patient value, some of our docs are working in the 10 to $20,000 range. Like Ron, and he works four days a week. Does consults two days a week, and does surgeries two days a week. And he's got a thriving practice even in Floyds Knobs, Indiana, a small suburban market area, a suburb of Louisville.
Howard Farran: I love the way you say Louisville. Louisville.
Colin Receveur: Yeah. If you say it like you do, we know you're a tourist.
Howard Farran: I actually ... My dad had a Sonic Drive-In in Louisville, Kentucky.
Colin Receveur: Really?
Howard Farran: Yeah, he was kind of ... He was a crazy man, and I don't know ... The crazy must skip every other generation because I'm normal, but all four of my kids are crazy.
No, he had five in [inaudible 00:15:59] and he wanted to go national. So he went north; put one in Abilene, Kansas and Kearney, Nebraska. Then he went south and put one in Childress, Texas. Then he went east and put one in Louisville. And so my four years of high school, each summer I lived in a different city on the new opening deal, and I loved my summer in Louisville. That was so damn fun. That was so cool.
Childress, Texas was the most fun because he was gone the whole time and left me in a hotel with his Lincoln Town Car. So I was like 14 years old, cruising the streets, dragging around in a big, old Lincoln Town Car with a hotel. Oh, man. It was just so damn fun.
So what ... So most dentists are just going to call you up and say, "Dude, I want more new patients." So when they call you, what do you say?
Colin Receveur: It's like when a patient calls your office and they say, "Hey, I got this pain. My jaw hurts." What do you tell them?
Howard Farran: I need a consultation. We need to talk. I need to meet you. I need to take pictures.
Colin Receveur: Yeah, you've got to do the diagnostics. You've got to jump in and do a consult; meet with them and see what they want. Every practice is different. Every market area is different. And figuring out what they need and figuring out ... Often times, sometimes what a dentist calls us and says they want is not necessarily what we establish that they need. Sometimes they're a little bit missing, and connecting those dots is what we do. Putting together a blueprint on our discovery call of where do these wants and needs align, and how does this plan look? What kind of results do we see as realistic for you to achieve?
Howard Farran: And I also really think it'd matter on what type of dentistry he wants to do. Like Invisalign would be a totally different patient than needing an implant. Would you agree that the majority of the implant people are elderly?
Colin Receveur: Oh, they're all the boomers. That's where the money is. That's where your largest dentureless population is, is with your boomers. That generation didn't have access to dental care. They didn't have, in many cases, fluoridated water, which I've heard you talk about at length ...
Howard Farran: I'm actually on the towel about that now. I think I'm just going to give it up. No, I really am. I think that as a businessman you want to listen to your customers. Right? A couple of us dentists got it in the water here in Phoenix in 1989, and there was 1/4th was looney tune. And then it expired in 20 years. We just had to do it again. They had the big, old city council and all that stuff. And the looney tunes are growing, and they hate the government. They thinks it's a conspiracy. They don't trust the CDC. They think it's all corruption, bribery, whatever; but, my boys keep showing me the comments that people are putting on my Facebook or YouTube. And he says, "Dad, there's violent nuts out there, and they seriously believe that you're doing bad things."
It's almost like, "You know what? If a quarter of the people don't want it in the water and you just want to come in to the dental office with twice as many cavities, knock yourself out."
And then when they do come in, you say, "Hey, do you want this filling to last 40 years? I'll put it in silver."
"Oh, hell no. I want the plastic cheap one that'll last six and a half."
And I'm like, "Great. You don't want fluoride in the water. You want fillings that only last six and a half years. Knock yourself out. I'm here to serve you."
Colin Receveur: Yep, they don't get it. And they'll ...
Howard Farran: So I don't know if I'm getting tired and giving up, or just being a businessman and saying, "Well" ... In fact, I think the biggest underserved market right now is the natural toothpaste. Bob Ibsen started that Rembrandt toothpaste, and then Colgate or Crest, I forgot, one of the big boys has that natural Uncle Tom's. But they don't even know their own market because, basically, there's 20 ingredients on the side of that box, and these anti-fluoridationists they have some rules. Like if there's more than five things in that toothpaste, and they don't know what every one of them is, they think it's a toxic chemical soup.
The [inaudible 00:20:14], if you're 64 years old in America, 10% have no teeth times two, 20% are missing half. By 74 in America, 20% have zero teeth times two, 40% are missing half. So you're saying the implant market is the boomers and is the Invisalign market the millennials? Is that a completely different campaign than for implants for you? Is it a completely different target market?
Colin Receveur: The target market's different, but the mechanism, the strategy to get people to buy a $5,000 Invisalign case or a $25,000 implant case is still the same. It's still ... As transaction increases so does trust required. And building that trust, whether you're building it with a millennial or with a boomer, it's all the same. People do business with the dentist they know, like and trust. Nobody's going to go to a dentist, never ... I would guess in your career, Dr. Farran, have you ever treated a patient that did not trust you and did not like you.
Howard Farran: Are you talking about my ex-wife?
Colin Receveur: Well, maybe we'll make one exception there, but people go as they like. They're not going to let you ... They're not going to accept treatment if they don't trust what you're telling them.
Howard Farran: Yeah.
Colin Receveur: Build trust. Build trust.
Howard Farran: I think it's another interesting thing. I think self-limiting beliefs are amazing. I just read the other day that the average price of a new car in the United States is 33 grand and what percent of Americans in their lifetime do you think will buy one new car around that median price of 33 grand?
Colin Receveur: 40%.
Howard Farran: Okay, 40%. And what percent of dentists have never done one single full mouth rehab case over 25,000 in their entire life?
Colin Receveur: Probably 90%.
Howard Farran: Yeah, and how many has your dad done?
Colin Receveur: He does three or four a week.
Howard Farran: I know, and ClearChoice that you mentioned earlier, they did 18,000 arches last year at 25 grand a arch, 50 grand for a full mouth, and these dentists they've never even presented a new car. They've never even had someone come in and say, "For 25 grand we can take everything out and make everything brand spanking new. You'll drive out of here eating on a Lexus," and they ... How do you deal with that road block? Because when you're looking at a marketing cost if you were on Shark Tank, I know the first question Mark Cuban would ask you is, "What is the acquisition cost of a new patient?" And then when you told him and I ask that to you and then you told him, he'd say, "What is your average new patient spend?" Delta is saying that for the United States of America that new patient is $418. And then there's guys, like your dad, whose average new patients spend is several thousand.
Colin Receveur: The numbers we work from ... A solid 800,000 and up practice with, of course, good systems on the back end, average patient value is between 12 hundred and 18 hundred dollars. The average cost that we see to acquire a new patient ranges anywhere from $59 to $91.
Howard Farran: So how are you keeping all this acquisition cost under $100 a head? A lot of people when they start doing Facebook ads, and banner ads, and drug email campaigns, they're acquisition cost is well north of $150, sometimes $300 a head.
Colin Receveur: We don't see those kinds of costs come in until you start getting into the more niche territory. It's not uncommon for Ron to spend 600 to 900 bucks on a new patient, but the average value of that patient is going to start at three grand for a single tooth abutment and crown. You spend $600 and get 3,000 back; that's acceptable. You spend six, eight, nine hundred bucks on a patient and you get a $10,000 case in the door, now you're rocking and rolling.
Its lower volume, but if you've got the marketing systems in place, and you have the back-end sales systems ... I think the biggest overlooked part is ... You can't just throw an advertisement out that says you do implants and all of a sudden all the patients that want implants are going to call your practice. This is again high trust, high reputation. Patients have to trust you, and they have to know that you're their guy. Right? You got an attorney. You got a plumber. You got an electrician. They're your guy, right? They trust you. You trust them. When you have a leak when something breaks, you can call them. And when you develop that kind of rapport with your patients or perspective patients, your community. You're the end-play guy. You're who they call when they have a problem like that.
Howard Farran: So what do my homies find if they go to practiceundersiege.com.? You got a new book out.
Colin Receveur: New book. New book. Before everyone bounces off the video here, I'm not even selling it; I'm giving it away. It's the Four Horsemen of Dentistry. Practice survival strategies for the practice under siege. What it goes back to is the four forces that I talked about. Corporate, competition, insurance reimbursements, and economic uncertainty and how to overcome each of those four forces to have a thriving practice.
Howard Farran: So they go that website and you enter your first name and your email and then what? You email them the book?
Colin Receveur: We email them a copy of the book or for 2 two bucks, we'll send you a hardback edition of the book, as well.
Howard Farran: Alright, well how do I give you two bucks right now?
Colin Receveur: You opt in right there, and it'll take your money.
Howard Farran: Nice. So what is it? On PayPal?
Colin Receveur: It's just through a credit card account. Pop in your credit card number. Two bucks for the book, free shipping and handling, and we will mail you a book. I'll even sign it for you, Dr. Farran.
Howard Farran: Oh, nice. Nice, and a picture of you and your dad. I'd love to ... You should post that on Dentaltown.
Colin Receveur: I'll do just that.
Howard Farran: Say, "Howard wanted to see a selfie of you and your dad." That's a ... I've heard so much about him, but I don't have a face to put behind that sound.
What are they going to learn in that book? What are they going to do, and should they go to practiceundersiege.com or should they go to smartboxwebmarketing.com?
Colin Receveur: SmartBox is our website for our work that we do with dentists. If you're interested in seeing how to attract more and better patients in your practice, go to the SmartBox site. If you just want to get the book, you want to read it and digest it on your own time, and see what we're talking about, see the kinds of strategies that we implement, go to practiceundersiege.com. Two bucks, we'll send you a copy of the book with free shipping and handling, and you can see all about what we do and how we do it.
Howard Farran: I love your tagline on your book. By the way, I like that YouTube video on SmartBox Web Marketing. Do you want us to add that at the end, that YouTube video, at the end of this podcast?
Colin Receveur: Yeah, I would love it! That'd be great!
Howard Farran: Yeah, can you do that Ry-? Yeah, because you put a lot of work in that video and that was good. But, I also love underneath that video where you say, "Attract more patients in the next six months than in the past six years." How many times can you do that?
Colin Receveur: Well, there might be a little bit of hyperbole in the topic. That's actually my old book that I released in 2014, but I see so many dentists that have never marketed at all. They're 50 or 60-year old docs. They got 20 good years left in them to practice, and they've never spent a dime on marketing. Or they're marketing's just not producing. Those are the guys when you talk about more patients in the next six months than in the past six years. Those are the guys that really have huge, huge opportunity to explode within their market area.
Howard Farran: What do you think the conversion rate is of the average dental office? I see a lot of dentists doing ads, or Facebook ads or doing something to get you to their website, and then when you land on their website it's like, "Dude, did you buy this at a convention 10 years ago?" I mean, it's a ... I mean what percent of the websites would you consider are lame, and what is the conversion rate of the lame websites versus the hottest website you could build?
Colin Receveur: I'd say 90% of the sites I look at are awful. It's like the old expression, "You can't polish the turd." You can have a turd of a website, and you can spend 10 grand a month on pay per click, and SEO, and whatever you want to do to it, and it's still going to be a turd. What we do with dentists is help them look at the marketing, the advertising, the website, the follow-up, the phone tracking; it's all a system.
It's moving these patients through this system, holding the staff accountable at the other end of the system. We're the only patient attraction firm in the country that handles everything from advertising and marketing all the way through actually scheduling butts in the chairs for our doctors. And making sure that the front desk is held accountable to actually scheduling a reasonable percentage of the calls that we generate for them. And that's what it really comes down to.
Howard Farran: So what kind of measurements are you able to get? Back to the first questions, how many people do you think go to the average lame, puttin' lipstick on a pig, dental website and look at that before one calls the office? What do think that confers in a radius? Just website to call on a lame dental website versus the best you've seen.
Colin Receveur: I think the average five-year old website that is just as awful as you and I can probably imagine probably has zero to none conversion rates. If you've got a five or ten-year old website that looks like a brochure online, and you have a millennial that's out ... Listen, I'm a millennial generation ...
Howard Farran: How old are you?
Colin Receveur: 33.
Howard Farran: So what year were you born?
Colin Receveur: '84.
Howard Farran: So the first millennials were what, 1980?
Colin Receveur: The first what?
Howard Farran: Millennials started in 1980, and you were born in '84?
Colin Receveur: I believe so.
Howard Farran: But go ahead ... What do you think that conversion rate is on that website you're describing?
Colin Receveur: Oh, nothing. When I go to a website that looks horrible I don't even call them. I click back.
Howard Farran: Do you think it's 10 to 1? 20 to 1? 100 to 1? You can't say zero in this math equation. You got to have one. How many would have to hit that website before one would convert?
Colin Receveur: I think it's a divide by zero proposition. I think ...
Howard Farran: I know, but you can't do that one. I'm throwing that excuse out.
Colin Receveur: Alright. I would say that if you spent ... Let me back into this number that you're going to hold me to. If a junk website spent $5,000 a month on marketing, I would say that even a poor performing website that spent five grand on marketing it, would get five new patients a month.
Howard Farran: But how many would land on that site from the marketing to get that five?
Colin Receveur: I think that's an impossible number to reach because a bad website may not even rank. A bad website might not have enough SEO juice to even rank. That might be why you only got five people to it.
Howard Farran: I know that's why I always say I would never go into your space. I would never go into that business, dental advertising, because you can do the best dental advertising in the world for them and their website is a dog. And then when they call the office, half the incoming calls go to voicemail, and if a human does answer the phone, they say, "Can you please hold?" And then they blame it on you.
It's like, "Dude, we sent 100 people to your website and only three converted, and two out of three went to voicemail that you never even listened to the voicemail or called them back. And then you're saying it's all me."
Colin Receveur: That's why we don't talk about hits and clicks in conversion rates. Here at SmartBox, we've got a whole team of people that listen to every phone call that comes into the practice.
Howard Farran: I just heard the phone call come in.
Colin Receveur: There you go. That was it. Every phone call that comes into a practice we're working with we have a team of ladies that actually listens to the calls, and monitors them in near real-time. So that our reporting is this at the end of the month: You spent this much on this marketing campaign. You got this many phone calls. You didn't answer this many of your phone calls and from that, you scheduled or didn't schedule this many new patients.
So if you spent five grand, and you answered 60% of your phone calls, which the average practice is only answering a little bit over half of their phone calls during business hours; it's abysmal. And then they only schedule half of that, and you have a 20% no-show rate. Of 100 new patients that you generated, you're down in the 10 to 15 new patient range. So much revenue, by way of new patients, is lost in the funnel.
They don't answer the calls, or they don't schedule them, which is why we give so much attention not only to the marketing in our patient traction systems to get the phone ring, but an equal amount of attention to making sure these doctors have good front desks that they answer their calls; that their appointing the patients at 80 or 90%.
We have a guarantee, and our guarantee is voided if the doctor doesn't answer 90% of his phone calls. And that's how we help hold the doctors accountable. Listen, we're going to make your phone ring, but if you don't answer your calls don't come back and yell at us. Because, listen, here's all these calls you didn't answer. Now we'll guarantee it if you answer all the calls we send in.
So we approach it very differently than a lot of marketing agencies because we're not a marketing agency. We're a patient attraction firm, and to attract new patients you have to take it all the way to the butts in the chair.
Howard Farran: Yeah. I love what you're doing.
You know it's funny. If you left dentistry, everyone else would call your front desk lady, you call her a front desk lady. You name her after a piece of furniture and she's really like, almost like a ... in any other business she'd be inbound telemarketing. And she'd be answering those calls, and dial ... She's not dialing out. She's not outbound telemarketing dialing for dollars. She's receiving inbound calls from marketing leads, and she would be completely trained on how to take that incoming call within three rings and convert it to a scheduled patient.
And then you go in the dental office and here's the hygienist checking out a patient, and says, "Hey, Colin, why don't you schedule her for a cleaning in six months because you're not doing anything. You're just a receptionist named after a piece of furniture, and can you get me a cup of coffee?"
And then the dentist comes out there and says, "Hey, I want to buy this new book from Colin Receveur. Will you order this for me?"
It's like, "Dude, the phone's ringing. She's inbound telemarketing, and she's making your coffee and schedule" ... I tell the hygienists schedule their own damn patients. The assistants schedule there crown seats and all that kind of stuff, because when that phone rings it's going to answer and it's got to roll over to other lines. And I can not believe that half the phone calls in dental offices every single day go to voicemail.
Colin Receveur: Yeah, that's ...
Howard Farran: And then they blame it on Obama, and Trump, and North Korea, and Putin, and the Ukraine. It's like, "Dude, I'm pretty sure it was your office that you owned that didn't answer half the phone calls."
Colin Receveur: Yep. I've not seen, and of course we work exclusively with dentists, but I've got a lot of friends that are business owners. We ... I've shown them how we monitor calls, and a lot of them do the same systems in chiropractic and personal training, and we've kind of compared stats. And it's amazing how many more calls go unanswered in dentistry than every other market I've compared to.
I think it really comes down to, it's not the dentist's fault. They're wearing seven hats. They're in the back doing restorative. They don't have time to be up front monitoring what Susie Q's doing, and if they're staggering their lunches, and how many phone lines, and if they're holding people accountable to following the best practices of appointing patients.
It's really a resource issue. Dentists need help. They need to be doing dentistry. That's where they make their money. They don't make money managing and playing around on their website. They make money doing dentistry. That's their most profitable activity.
Howard Farran: Nice reference to Susie Q of the Creedence Clearwater Revival. That's one of the 20 greatest songs of the 70's. God dang, I love that song. Remember that song?
Colin Receveur: I've heard it. I can't say I remember it because that was before my time.
Howard Farran: Oh my God. I thought maybe you heard your dad play it in the background.
So how are you getting metrics? What are you measuring, and how do you measure it?
Colin Receveur: We not only track phone calls coming in, but we have a team of people that listen to every call. So the metrics at the end of the month are: total calls and then how many of these were answered, scheduled, and not scheduled. So we know how much marketing was spent on a marketing campaign, whether t.v., radio, billboard, internet, whatever it is, and then out the other end we know how many actual butts were scheduled into the chairs. And from that you divide them and you get a per patient acquisition cost.
Howard Farran: How do you actually measure that incoming call? How do you listen to it? What are you using?
Colin Receveur: We hire a team of people to do it.
Howard Farran: Huh.
Colin Receveur: I get a team of ladies that listen, literally, to every call in near real-time and click tag that call based on what happened on it.
Howard Farran: Now do you have to have that warning message? "This call may be monitored for ..." Do you have to have that?
Colin Receveur: In some states. There's some states that require that, some states that don't.
Howard Farran: Yeah, and what software do you ... practice management software do you like working with the most to be able to monitor if that patient was scheduled or that kind of stuff?
Colin Receveur: We work with all of them: Dentrix, Eaglesoft ...
Howard Farran: But which one do you like working with the most? If some new millennial was going to start [inaudible 00:40:19] and get a [inaudible 00:40:20] software, you get to see all the softwares. Is there one that you like more than the other?
Colin Receveur: I think there's perks. There's the new software that's developed in the cloud that's really cool. There's of course the advantage to that is you don't have to have in-house IT, servers and such. The downside is, of course, you better make sure your internet works damn well. The phone systems that have come out ... [inaudible 00:40:53] Have you seen the Weave phone systems?
Howard Farran: Yes.
Colin Receveur: They're pretty cool where they can integrate in and pull it right up on the screen as the calls come in. I can't say ... I don't work in a PMS practice management system myself. I can't say I recommend one over the other anymore than just to talk generally about the pro's and con's of them.
Howard Farran: Back to that VoIP. You can have a phone system. Most dentists are getting their phone from their cable company or internet. But some of these VoIP ... If you go on Dentaltown and you do a search for if you switch to a VoIP, a voice over internet protocol, now all your phone calls are coming in in ones and zeros so you can do a lot of that information. But some of these dentists are finding out that their internet is not as reliable as they thought they were.
It's one thing to think your internet's reliable when you're surfing Dentaltown, or Facebook, or LinkedIn, but it's a whole another thing when it's your sole incoming phone call. Do you think VoIP is there enough for your average dentist or do you think it's too general of a question and it really depends what city you live in? What is your experience with VoIP?
Colin Receveur: I come from a techy background, Howard, so I can talk about VoIP, and latency, and bandwidth all day long. But I don't want to get too techy here and destroy everybody's minds with latency of your typical cable modem versus latency of a DSL line or a fiber line?
Howard Farran: What is latency even mean?
Colin Receveur: Latency is how long it takes for the information to travel from your office to the first hop, the first router in that connection. So effectively, what is important to people that are considering VoIP is if they're going to do VoIP, don't run it over your cable; your Spectrum, Comcast cable modems. If you're going to do VoIP, look at DSL. Look at fiber. You're going to have to pay a little bit more for your internet access because typically cable, the latency on your typical cable modem is poor and you get a lot of that chop. You know, the cutout.
Howard Farran: Would you talk about Cox Cable or what were the other ones you mentioned? The cable companies?
Colin Receveur: Spectrum, Comcast, Insight. All the big cable providers.
Howard Farran: You would say not do VoIP over cable, but you said fiber optic, I understand, but what was the DSL?
Colin Receveur: DSL and fiber both are going to have a much more solid ... be a much more solid platform for VoIP if you're going to run it.
Howard Farran: Okay. Is fiber optics obviously better than DSL? Is that the gold standard? Fiber optic?
Colin Receveur: It's the new standard. Having a DSL line, a copper dedicated line is never going to go away. Every neighborhood in the country has copper lines run through it. Fiber's the new stuff. It's uber reliable, super fast. It really just depends what's in your neighborhood.
Howard Farran: I know ...
Colin Receveur: We run all VoIP powered. My father runs all VoIP. When we both have fiber lines run into our building so it works really well for us.
Howard Farran: Is he using Weave?
Colin Receveur: He's not, but he is looking at it. I pointed him to it. I'm trying to get him on it.
Howard Farran: That's kind of a funny thing because you talk about these copper lines laying around. People don't realize that the phone was just the telegraph 2.0, and the internet was just the telegraph 3.0. The telegraph, to the phone, the internet it still ran on the same copper line, and it's all in the same space of communication. I wonder what the fourth line will be? From telegraph, to phone, to internet. I wonder what's next?
Colin Receveur: Much faster internet. That's what fiber's going to be able to bring us up to the standards of the rest of the world. A lot of people think the U.S. has this great internet infrastructure. We are actually poor among other First World countries for internet access. There's a lot of good fiber initiatives right now bringing the United States as a whole, providing a lot more connectivity, a lot more underprivileged connectivity, as well as high-speed for businesses.
Howard Farran: I think the coolest idea that I've heard of now I think it's going to be the greatest new company is ... You know when you put a satellite up there for internet it's 25,000 miles up, and it takes a few seconds for the message to go up to the satellite then come back down. And they realize that on any given moment the world has 27,000 airplanes in the air, and if they put an internet WiFi thing on the belly of those planes, the world ... Instead of having your internet at 25,000 miles up there on a satellite it'll only be 25 to 35,000 feet. And this guy I heard listening to from MIT said that if they would put that on the bottom of every airplane, almost the entire world would have internet connection tomorrow. Isn't that just crazy?
Colin Receveur: That's exactly what Mark Zuckerberg is doing in Africa. He has launched ... He has that drone, solar-powered aircraft that can fly for like six months at a time and is providing wireless connectivity for huge swaths of area that ... He's launched in Africa. It's an awesome idea, just on the edge of being implemented just by limitations of technology right now. That's a great idea. Now who's going to pay to deploy it, right?
Howard Farran: Right. Money's the answer. What's the question?
Colin Receveur: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yep.
Howard Farran: Okay. So what else do my homies need to know? So, you monitor them. How do you monitor that that phone call is answered, to being scheduled, to a butt in the chair? How do you monitor the phone call answered to showing up on the schedule?
Colin Receveur: Like a lot of marketing companies do out there, we track the calls and we record the calls. We then have a team of people that go in and ... You know we're a fully HIPAA compliant company so we've been through all the same HIPAA training that any dental practice goes through, probably more because we've had to certify all 80 people in our company. Our team listens then to the recorded calls, and we deliver a report at the end of the month to the doctor that says, "Hey, here's this marketing campaign A, B and C, and here's how many calls, and scheduled and not scheduled and non-answered calls came from it.
Howard Farran: So with these 80 people you're putting your people physically in the office? I mean these are people around the country or this is all done digitally?
Colin Receveur: All digitally. It's all in the cloud. Our [inaudible 00:47:54]call system is in the cloud. We track and record the calls for all of our practices around the world. And then my team here in New Albany, Indiana logs into the cloud, and listens to them, and tags them based on what happened on that call.
Howard Farran: Dude, that's ... How old did you say you were? You're 28? How old are you? 33?
Colin Receveur: 33.
Howard Farran: 33 to have 80 employees. Dude, you are crushing it.
Colin Receveur: Well, thank you. It's been a long road, and I had some good advice along the way from my dad and others.
Howard Farran: You know how many people work for me?
Colin Receveur: How many?
Howard Farran: About half. That's what I always tell them as they punch me in the rib. Seriously, that is amazing. Where is your company headed? What's next for you?
Colin Receveur: We want to help 10,000 dentists by 2020, and to get there we're launching some additional products that are going to help dentists in addition to our marketing and our call platform. We've got a few new products that I'm not going to reveal just yet that are coming online later this year that are going to be instrumental to really spread our wings out, and to be able to help dentists grow, to thrive, to attract more and better patients, which is our motto. It's not just volume, but the guys we work with, the private practice dentists are wanting to not go to the insurance route. They've been fee-for-service for their whole livelihood, and that's how they want to finish.
Howard Farran: Well, America doesn't realize it but the whole planet, 7.5 billion people, they got the same brain, they have the same needs, wants, desires. They're all in different stages of their dental journey, and I think the United States is following the NHS about 20 years. When I got out of school 30 years ago, everybody worked for the NHS, but the fees just kept going lower and lower and lower, and finally dentists had to go bankrupt. Or if they said, "Okay, I can't do this fee schedule anymore."
So now there're dentists ... there's like 5,000 that are totally out of it, and since your dad and I got out of general school, the fees from dental insurance companies have been reduced about 42% for the country. And 10 years from now, it'll be 50, 60, 70% reduction so they're all eventually going to have to have their fees lowered, or they can't do dentistry they do on their kids on this insurance scheme. And then they're going to have to realize that the people in New Albany, Indiana are going to have to pay for their implants the same way they pay for their iPhone, and their car, and their house, and their trip to Disneyland. They're just going to have to get out their wallet and pay for it. And I think it's a journey that dentists don't want to hear.
They want to hear that the insurance is going to get better, they want to call the PPO and try to negotiate to raise their fee, and they're trying to go back in time. And I just think there's too many examples in other countries, especially United Kingdom, of how this rodeo's going to play out.
Colin Receveur: Like you said, the reimbursements haven't gone up in 30 years, discretionary spending on dentistry, as a whole, has not increased since 2008 while the population has increased, spending has remained flat in the last decade. It's just with corporate coming in, with these new grads coming out of school, that corporate can hire them for fractions of what it costs to hire a dentist a decade or 20 years ago. A lot of states are introducing that kind of mid-level dentist; not the dentist, but like the nurse practitioner.
Howard Farran: Georgia just signed that bill yesterday that hygienists can work independently in a whole list of situations.
Colin Receveur: The direction that the industry is going is towards cheaper and lower reimbursements, and if you pursue that 60% of the population that is looking for cheap and fast, that's who you're going to get. You're going to get the industry as a whole. There's still a lot of people out there that want somebody they know, like and trust that are willing to look outside their insurance network and pay for it. And if you can build trust and you can be their guy, there's still lots of dentistry out there to be done.
It's just like the medical industry. Here in New Albany, in Louisville, the big medical chains, Floyd Memorial in our area, Baptists, have all bought up all the independent practitioners. Yet there's still private practitioners that are practicing around the area, and there always will be.
I think dentistry is a decade behind medicine. I think if you want to see where dentistry's going to be in a decade, look where medicine is right now. The insurance companies rule the roost. They dictate everything that goes on. That's where you're going to see dentistry at in a decade. And if you don't like that paradigm, start preparing, start changing your model now ... Ron started his implant transition in '05, '06, '07.
Howard Farran: That's your dad?
Colin Receveur: That's my dad, yeah.
Howard Farran: You call your dad, Ron?
Colin Receveur: Ah, yeah. I do. Everybody makes fun of me, but we have so many business interactions that I just always call him, Ron. It took him five years, of course it was in the middle of the recession, but five years later he had this implant thing really cranking. When he's doing 3.5, $4 million a year in implants right now working three days a week. It's pretty incredible. He had a guy fly in last month from the Caribbean to do an All-on-4 on him. So he's pulling in people from, not even just regionally, but internationally as we can now say it legitimately, to do implant work. That kind of presence you don't grow in 12 months. 12 months in, his inplay kick he had a solid implant practice. So it's just ... it's a talk. It's walking patients down this path, building trust, nurturing them, and showing them you're really here to help them. They can trust you. Building that trust up is paramount for dentists.
Howard Farran: You know when I got out of school in '87 only rich people could fly on Braniff and Delta. Really there was hardly ... the planes were only a third full and everybody was pretty much wearing a suit and tie or dress and shoes, but Southwest has made flying so low cost that these dentists that are getting people to come up from the Caribbean ... They got to get a dental camera, and they got to start photo documenting their work because those people want to see your work on the website. And you and I both agree that 90% of the dental websites are a polished turd, and you have to mail dental photography. And you have to put, "This is all my work from Ron," on that website.
And what's really bizarre is there's patients who think, "Well, you can't get the best dentistry in Salina, Kansas so I'm shopping around these really highfalutin dentists in Kansas City, and I'm going to fly up to Kansas City and have it all done there. And then that dentist there finds out what town she's from, and isn't even aware that there's some guy with a diplomat in international Congress, oral implantology right up the street where they're that he's met several times at classes. And it's all because that guy was all that, but nobody would know it by going to his website.
Colin Receveur: That's it. Oh yeah. Yep, that's all too common.
Howard Farran: And also from that 2008 crash the American Dental Association actually hired one of the greatest healthcare economists that have ever lived in the last 10, 20 years. And I love his last blog: Dentists, Lawyers, and Lattes. Those are the only three industries that have not recovered to their pre-2008 levels. And after that crash, so many people said, "You know what? I can't buy a Starbucks every morning for $5. $5 times 365 days a year is one area I can cut back." What is that? 3-6-5 times 5. I mean, shit, that's $1,800 a year and a lot of these lawyers, these sites ... What are those do-it-yourself lawyer websites where you just buy all the standard forms for ...
Colin Receveur: Prepaid legal. Yeah.
Howard Farran: Yeah. What is it called? Paid legal?
Colin Receveur: Prepaid Legal's the one I've seen.
Howard Farran: Yeah, Prepaid Legal and lattes and dentists. In the minds of a lot of people has turned into a commodity. Isn't a filling, a filling, a filling?
Colin Receveur: Isn't it. Yeah. A crown is a crown is a crown. How many $400 crowns do you have in your mouth?
Howard Farran: Seven. I have seven gold onlays. My friends put them in and I didn't even have to pay the lab co.
Colin Receveur: The consumers don't know the difference. A $500 crown versus a $1,000, versus a 12 or $1,500 crown. You're right. Things are commoditized to the point that ... That is the 60% of consumers that are fueling corporate dentistry right now. The part that they want the cheapest price, they want the best hours, and they just want to show up and get it done, and they don't care if they have a relationship with their dentists.
The same way in medicine. How many people go to only outpatient clinics or emergency cares these days versus actually have a doctor that they know by name? A much, much larger percentage, exponentially larger, than there were 20 years ago. That's the direction the industry is going; is cheaper care, like Georgia did. They introduced that intermediate dentist. That's what consumers are speaking with their wallets. I think a lot of times, I talk to dentists and they say, "Well, it's the insurance companies and it's the ADA is screwing us and all these" ... Well, it is them, but I think they're missing the bigger picture; that the consumers at large are voting with their pocketbooks, and this is the vote that people are casting because if it wasn't, there wouldn't be any fuel for these machines that are being built.
Howard Farran: Yeah, it's funny. They always blame it on everything but themselves. They're not going to blame the fact that ... I'm a big proponent that your website has to have a YouTube video of your [inaudible 00:58:41]. There's so many adorable, amazing dentists who just don't come off well on a photograph. But if you click into the YouTube video, and you get to see this guy's warm and fuzzy and nice, and you trust him and all that kind of stuff. And they don't know that 10 people had to go to their website before one called. They don't realize that half the calls weren't answered.
So their entire practice works in this little middle of the funnel where they'll bring in 675 and take home a buck 45. And then they don't realize that by the time they got 5,000 charts, 4,000 are gone because the hygienist cleaned eight people today, but she only scheduled six for a recall. And then in six months, one of them called and said, "I can't come in today. I'll call you back tomorrow." No one ever called her back, and they just keep just falling off all these little ... just falling off. And then the dentist is having high staff turnover. It seems like all the million dollar practices I know, the average staff's been there about seven years or more. And there's so many of these corporate chains where ... Hell, they can't even keep the dentists there for 20 months, and then they hire a new dentist they find out that the assistant just got a job there yesterday.
Colin Receveur: Oh, yeah. I've got a friend that graduated from U of L School of Dentistry a couple years ago and he went to work at a corporate chain. It was him and another dentist, and they would strategize, and they would play against each other for who was going to do the hygiene check, and who was going to get that patient waiting in the waiting room, because they had quotas to meet, and the doctor that got the waiting room patient got more towards his quota than the hygiene check. So patient care was shit because you had two dentists that were eyeing to fill their quota faster because a non-dentist, a business person, not a dentist, is assigning them quotas for how much care they have to present and close.
Howard Farran: I know and it's sad. Some of these offices if a patient has a five millimeter pocket or greater, you got to put in these minocycline chips or ... These are medical decisions made by non-medical people. And my question's: in medicine, if all the physicians and dentists work for the insurance company then where do the Americans go if they need a doctor?
Colin Receveur: Good questions. We'll find out in a decade.
Howard Farran: And the answer to corporate dentistry is personal dentistry, and that's what I would do. I would sit there. You're following the UK. The fees are going to get lower and lower and lower, the volume's going to get so high, the fees so low eventually you'll say, "Hell, I can't send my children to this office." So eventually you'll just start, and say, "Well, instead of corporate care, low fee, high volume I'm going to do personal care; low volume, high fee, and if you want it done once and right it's usually cheaper in the end run anyway."
Colin Receveur: The biggest private medical clinic here in Louisville, Kentucky is a subscription clinic for the privilege of joining their clinic, their practice you pay $10,000 a year and that's just to have one physical a year done. You still pay for all of your other visits, but if you want direct access to the doctor ... You literally get his cell phone number. You can call him 24 hours a day. Ten grand a year for a family of four gets you access into that, and then they still bill you at the regular rates.
It's an interesting model in medicine because, like I said, I think medicine is where dentistry will be in ten years. Right now. And I think you are going to see more of these in-house finance plans that you've seen everywhere. I think this subscription model is something that we'll see play out in dentistry. I don't really have a clear bearing yet on it, but it's a very successful model that I've seen here in Louisville and other areas for M.D.'s. It'll be cool to see where it goes in the next decade.
Howard Farran: Yeah, and there'll always be price segmentation of any market going from a Cadillac to a Pontiac, to Olds, to Buick, to Chevy. I'm sure half the country ... When you go to these countries with socialized medicine half the country just loves it because everything's free, but if you wanted the high end it's not necessarily delivering, with the exception of the country of Taiwan. That was the fastest hour ever. Big fan of your work. I actually watched our first podcast before you came back on today because it was just ... that was just as informative. That was amazing.
Colin Receveur: We did live at the Townie Meeting, didn't we? In Vegas?
Howard Farran: Yeah, we did. That was an awesome Townie, and now the next two years are going to be in Orlando.
Colin Receveur: I'm looking forward to it. I hope to be there.
Howard Farran: Well, you know we always went to Vegas, but there's a difference between boomers and millennials. And millennials aren't into going into a casino and smoking, and gambling, and all the Rat Pack stuff of yesteryear. Their more into Orlando, and I got grandkids now. And my grandkids want to go see Mickey, and Minnie, and Goofy, and Pluto. I'm so good I even know that ... You know how to tell the difference between Goofy and Pluto?
Colin Receveur: One's orange and one's not.
Howard Farran: Goofy's the one with the big goofy teeth. The other one don't show his teeth.
Colin Receveur: Ah, there you go.
Howard Farran: See that. Dentists would only notice that. You notice the color. I notice that Goofy has two goofy-looking teeth, and the other one ain't showing any teeth.
Colin Receveur: I got three kids under four and we're doing our first Disney trip next year so I probably ought to figure that kind of stuff out.
Howard Farran: Alright? Well, go Goofy. Seriously, man. Thanks for ... How many posts have you [inaudible 01:04:25]? You've answered so many posts. You've uploaded 500 podcasts on the Dentaltown in the app. You've done so much for dentistry. You've done so much for Dentaltown. Thank you so much for all that you've done for dentistry, your dad, Ron, and Dentaltown.
Colin Receveur: Thanks for the opportunity. I appreciate it, Doctor.
Howard Farran: Alright, we'll talk to you later. If you see Woody Oakes, have him come on my show.
Colin Receveur: I'll tell him. I'll tell him. Maybe I'll have lunch with him and I'll point him your way.
Speaker 3: He's a dentist who owns his own practice. He's been successful, but he spends too much time working in his practice ,and not enough free time doing what he enjoys.
To get more free time, David wants more and better patients but his online marketing strategy isn't bringing in enough of them. Sure, he's doing what we call the "alphabet soup" of online marketing; SEO, PPC, Local Search, SEM, blogging, and AdWords, which gives his practice online visibility, but that visibility isn't translating into more and better patients, increased profits or more free time for David. There's a reason it's not working for David, and there is a solution that can deliver the type of patients he's looking for.
At SmartBox Web Marketing we help dentists like David. We help you to attract the patients you want. Here's how:
1. Putting your most valuable assets to work for you to attract new patients. Some of the most powerful patient attraction magnets are actually hiding in plain sight right in front of your eyes. These magnets are you, your staff, and your best patients. We help activate those patient attractors by capturing their stories and telling them in a powerful way through high-quality video. These videos will allow you to make an instant, personal connection with high quality prospects. Dr. Robert Cialdini calls this social proof, and it's one of the strongest ethical powers of persuasion you can use in your marketing.
Hear why Dr. Robert Klein from Kansas City leverages video on his website. "The power of video is incredible. People are responding to video media more and more, and they're sitting at their computers longer and longer. Video gets through. It has a message that is immeasurable. It gives me a chance to interact and to show them who I am before they come into the office."
2. Automated patient attraction. Follow up is one of the keys to attracting more high quality patients. Large elective procedures require a higher level of trust, and keeping your name in front of your patients builds your expert status. Patients want assurance that you're the real deal who won't hurt them, will charge them a fair price, and provide lasting dental work.
Listen to what Dr. John Argeros from Boston has to say about our premium choice for automated prospect follow up, Infusionsoft. "Right now everyone wants to be contacted or stay in contact and it's not the way we used to do it before. Everything now is either texting or digital. The internet is what people want. People want it in the format they want it in which is not really in the mail anymore. It's all on the web."
3. Picture perfect clarity of where you are and where you're going. Measuring numbers in your practice isn't enough. You need to watch the right numbers. We see lots of dentists who spend too much money on numbers that truly don't matter; like Facebook likes, Twitter followers, and Google page rank. You can focus all day long on these numbers, but it doesn't mean you're ever going to get a new patient because of them.
We help focus your vision on knowing and improving the numbers that matter, the ones that will actually lead to more and better new patients. To start attracting more of the patients you want, download our free patient attraction guide and discover the secrets today's most successful dentists are using to attract more new patients with far less effort than ever before.