Growth Hacking Your Dental Practice: Why Understanding and Designing The Four Moments of Truth Is The Key To Your Dental Marketing Success
When dental marketers talk about “real time” online strategies, they are almost always thinking about rapid engagement and response. Growth Hacking your Dental practice focuses on the splendor of what real time truly offers you: the ability to listen, learn, and instantly adapt your dental marketing strategies.
Growth Hacking strategies are able to move faster than real time in order to get in front of it… eliminating a shortfall of traditional dental marketing: “the continual rhythm of reacting rather than leading.”
Growth Hacking Your Dental Practice delivers a level of sophistication available to dentists for the first time – ever. Tremendous opportunity and/or tremendous failure lay ahead because in 2014 you are competing for the attention of prospective new patients in real time and at the right time.
This “Right” Time is Often Referred to as:
The Moment of Truth.
The MOT is that critical moment when your existing patients and/or prospective new patients decide at some point along the journey to stay with you, or schedule an appointment with you for the very first time. In a real-time world, the “urgency of now” is that moment of truth that happens, well, right now.
On August 28, 1963, one of the greatest speeches in American history was given by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC. Dr. King shared with us his dream, a dream that united people, hope, aspiration, and ambition to convey the urgency of now.
“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”
That’s what the urgency of now is all about, at least with respect to creating sustainable growth in your dental practice.
Answer this question honestly: In the moment of truth, how do you fare and what shared experiences are awaiting your existing patients (to improve retention) and your prospective new patients (to increase new patient traffic in your practice)?
If you cannot answer that question with a clearly defined strategy, then the urgency of now and the moment of truth will lead to the demise of your dental marketing efforts. I realize that I’m repeating the obvious here… but stop for a moment and seriously consider how technology connects us and binds us together through actions, words, and shared experiences.
The Moments of Truth, (i.e., ‘the experiences your existing patients have with you, your team, and your process - on every level “that you have designed with the intention of creating a specific outcome”) pre- and post-purchase are paramount to your future success.
More and more your prospective patients (consumers) research, read reviews, tweets, and blog posts, ask and answer questions, watch videos, and simply learn from the experiences of others, and as a result these moments of truth require in-depth study and definition.
By investing in the detailed study of your prospective patients you will begin to realize the vast number of opportunities available to you for engagement with patients and prospects before, during, and after treatment in your practice. Without proactive and continuous engagement from you with your patients and prospects, decisions are either made for or against you… in the moment.
Understanding how you can add value to your patients and prospective new patients directly and indirectly shifts their choice for a Dentist in your favor. Even more importantly, creating a strategy that leads to your patients having incredible experiences (at critical touch points in your practice) will ensure that you’re in, as the saying goes, the right place at the right time.
In early 2012, Google published an exceptional eBook, ZMOT: Winning the Zero Moment of Truth, written by Jim Lecinski, which continued to explore new touch points or moments of truth.
ZMOT, as the eBook states, “is that moment when you grab your laptop, mobile phone, or some other wired device and start learning about a product or service (or potential boyfriend) you’re thinking about trying or buying.”
In other words, your existing and prospective new patients will “Google it” (whatever is important for them to learn more about) and that’s where FMOT begins.
In addition to Googling, they’re asking and investigating on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, and so on, until they either get information or conversations about the dental services they are searching for.
Top 10 Ways Dental Marketing On Google+ Will Help Your Dentist SEO
According to Google, 79 percent of consumers say they use a smart phone to help with shopping. In addition, 70 percent of Americans look at product/service reviews before making a purchase and/or an appointment.
If 70 percent of consumers pick up a laptop, tablet, smart phone, or another connected device to learn more about your practice after their initial contact (on your website; reading your reviews; watching videos; and a whole host of information about you being circulated on the web): What is it that they find?
If you’re like most Dentists marketing their practice online today, you might think that you’re doing everything you need to. After all, you have a website, right? You have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest to!
But to the person who’s connected not only digitally but socially, today’s online presences are just pages with a lot of marketing text or videos. The dynamic new patient prospect is just that… dynamic. Static pages, commercials, or walls rich with trivial conversations and promotions are not going to guide quality new patient prospects from ZMOT to FMOT.
The connected consumer “Gen C” needs substance, personalization, and shared experiences to help guide them to the next step . . . to help them complete their journey into your office.
If we dive even deeper into Google’s ZMOT, it expands your new patient prospect’s journey by connecting the Second Moment of Truth or “the experience” with among the most influential of steps, the Ultimate Moment of Truth.
The UMOT as I call it is the influence loop that connects back to the Zero Moment of Truth for connected patients and prospects. It is these shared experiences (i.e., “videos, content, images, etc. that your patients post in their social platforms”) that influence impressions and decisions when someone searches or asks for information.
When a prospective new patient in your town searches for a Dentist, it’s often that the shared experiences of those who’ve already completed the journey that will influence the moments of truth for these individuals and the choices they make.
While that may seem commonsensical, the experiences your existing patients have in your practice AND SHARE ONLINE can be designed. And for the most part, they aren’t today. More and more Dentists are using patient testimonial videos (online and offline) which is helpful, but the rules have changed (again) and the shared experiences posted by your patients online now rule.
No matter how brilliant your website design, the list of credentials you have, the number of services you offer, or the creative genius behind your dental marketing, advertising, and social media campaigns, the ultimate moment of truth, what patients are actually saying online about your practice, is more aspirational in design than intentional.
The experiences your patients share online are the natural result or byproduct of experience (and/or product) design for your practice. You either provide an exceptional, shareable experience to your patients or you don’t. Patients are either delighted or they’re not. If you aren’t proactively engineering patient experiences that loop back and contribute to the Zero Moment of Truth, they are by default… left to chance.
Your patients will then share whatever it is they encounter because that moment is left for them to define instead of you. And with the pervasiveness and accessibility of new media in 2014, the experiences your patients have are going to be shared more and more.
As Jeff Bezos once famously said:
“Your brand is what people say about
you when you’re not in the room.”
Here’s the bottom line:
It’s time to think about the experience you want patients to have and share and then use new digital channels to steer each step along the journey to win in each moment of truth.
Dr. Ken Newhouse is the 'OFFICIAL' Growth Hacker of the Dental Profession Worldwide™ and Founder of Growth Hacker Central. Growth Hacker Central is the leading provider of Dentist SEO, Dental Web Marketing and Growth Hacker Marketing for Dentists.
You can read more of Dr. Newhouse’s articles and access multiple Free tools (no email required) by visiting www.GrowthHackerCentral.com or you can contact Dr. Newhouse @ Ken@growthhackercentral.com.
