Adam Zilko is the CEO & Founder of Firegang Dental Marketing and has 18 years of digital marketing experience with over 10 years in the dental industry.
VIDEO - DUwHF #1230 - Adam Zilko
AUDIO - DUwHF #1230 - Adam Zilko
Since starting Firegang, Adam has become an expert in new patient marketing and now he works exclusively with dental practices. He has written 3 Amazon best selling dental marketing books, scaled Firegang to millions in annual revenue, and has helped thousands of dentists all across North America attract new patients and grow their practice through cutting edge marketing strategies.
Howard: It's just a huge honor for me today to be podcast interviewing Adam Zilko, the CEO and founder of Firegang Dental marketing for 18 years he's been doing this with 10 years in dentistry. Since starting Firegang Adam has become an expert in new patient marketing and now he works exclusively with dental practices he has written three Amazon best-selling dental marketing books scale called scaled fire getting to millions in annual revenue and has helped thousands of dentists across North America attract new patients and grow their practice through cutting-edge marketing strategies. For more than 10 years they've been passionate about one thing helping dentists attract new patients and grow their practice as a company Firegang exists to help you bridge your new patient gap with a comprehensive unified dental marketing approach for the most powerful strategies to ensure your practice a keep going they spent over 1.2 million dollars perfecting the marketing strategies they used to deliver to over 3,000 new patients per month to their clients across the US and Canada. Their comprehensive personalized approach to dental marketing works. Oh my gosh I'll tell you what when I got out of school I was a rebel and got a free lunch by the head of the Arizona State or Arizona Dental Association because I had a full-page ad in the Yellow Pages and I got a free lunch with this old guy telling me if you had prostate cancer would you pick your oncologist out of the yellow pages and then I did something else which everyone does now but everyone thought was crazy I went to a retail center instead of a medical dental building and I was right next to the grocery store Safeway and they're like would you would you send your kids to a pediatrician that was next to Safeway and I'm saying God and now the yellow pages are dead and now location real estate everybody gets that. So what's so what's going on now how if one of my homies listening and saying you know I got all these your fixed costs and your variable cost your variable costs are costs to go up and down with a number of patients you have, obviously you only see one patient versus a hundred you'll have different costs in labor lab and supplies but your fixed costs you pay every month whether you don't see anybody in here on vacation or you see a million people rent mortgage equipment like computer insurance malpractice professional dues. So she's listening to you right now she's commuting to work and she should be watching on YouTube you just have like perfect hair and you're just like the face for YouTube I hope you're listening to me on iTunes I have the face for iTunes and you have the face for YouTube and she's sitting there saying dude if after I pay all my bills Adam if I just had ten more new patients a month it would just be gravy train what would you tell her to do?
Adam: Our approach, what we've done is we've studied why some practices absolutely kill it why others don't and it's it's almost more like an understanding from a holistic point of view so what we do is we refer to it as an integrated approach you know just a quick fact but in as a 2017 this is the most recent data we have the ADA said that 42% of dentists in America were flat and on average they their expenditures went up by $50,000 that over that same period of time so you got literally almost half the country that's not growing at all but their costs are going up in what we find is a lot of dentists playing marketing roulette you know they're they're listening to noise they don't really understand what they should be focusing on and obviously the marketing companies really aren't telling that so what we try to do is understand what should the KPIs be and anyone that really maps out their business you really understand what the key performance indicators are and that's what we want to help them understand. So when we were understanding or digging into a marketing system we're approaching it from what's going on on the back end and how does that affect everything on the front end so what we do is we look at you know what's going on in the office we actually have software that all API call into the practice management software to understand what's going on by department how's hygiene doing versus you know another department how are we stealing then we back it into looking at the phones and the staff and we back it into what's being said on the site on the website or whatever else we were doing and then we back that into the front end of the model or the funnel which is you know your paid ads and things like that but when we start with the correct KPIs in mind that we always know we're on track who or not so some some KPIs would be cost per lead and cost per new patient and that's something that really nobody is telling people they should be looking at and so because of that you know what we find is a lot of times dentists are just tossing up a site because someone says it looks good or it's better and they're running the same generic ads as everyone else and you know this is why it's not working this would be like placing a maybe a crown on a rotten tooth with someone with a blood infection or something you know like you've got to diagnose the root issue and then start to fix it as you get to the you know the beginning of the funnel if you will and so you know while the crown might look great that doesn't really fix the root issue and that's what we're trying to do is understand that you know what is what's happening on the back end is also really working well on the front end. So for example we have you know we've had we it's getting a ton of implant leaves they ranked number one for gosh every type of implant search in their state or city everything else but they're not seeing a lot of new patients from that what we found is that through the back end they had we had new staff it was kind of batching the leaves their schedule wasn't open the way that it should have been and because we have our team that's looking at those things on the back end of this funnel we can then not only go back to the staff and go back to the doctor but address what we're saying on the front end of the model so we can change what we're saying on Google change what we're saying on the ads and so on and that's how we're able to really move the needle by improved conversion rates throughout these these entire points of conversion really is what I mean by that is if I can improve the phones if I can improve the website conversion rates if I can improve the ad conversion rates everything works better but if there's a break in any of that process you start to lose people and that's what we refer to as kind of our integrated approach and nobody in dental marketing is doing it like this there's not a single company I've come across it's really trying to diagnose the root root issue and then make sure that everything aligns all the messaging aligns everything you go through this entire system that it's all designed to get that patient just shopping all the way through and in the door and into a paying patient so when we're doing and looking at one of the results we're actually pulling out results based on revenue generated in the practice because we can actually see it we can maybe API call right into that Paxman software and see that. Does that make any sense?
Howard: Yes, you're doing great before I get back to I'm gonna go back to these key performance indicators and they're young, they're out of school they're working at Aspen they're trying to learn they're filling crown root canal you know basic and after three or four years she's gonna open up her own place I'm what practice management software do you work with?
Adam: Most all of them I mean the systems that we use that the API are so he uses software analytics and we in it can pull in from I don't know about 95% of all that practice management software is out there you know your Dentrix and EagleSoft almost all of them really.
Howard: Now would it would it hurt your business if you picked one would you have channel conflict I mean would you not win friends and influence people if you said which one that you like the most?
Adam: No because what we're looking at its the analytics it's just raw data and then we we see it on our end the same so it doesn't matter to us what practice management software they're using because we're using the same codes or use it they have revenue by Department usually broken out we can actually pull that in and then tie it back to what we're seeing it can pull in you know patient names and information things like that and so that we can align that into the funnel with marketing.
Howard: but what would it but if you but if you gave her a recommendation for a practice management software however do you think one works better for the business of new patients well first of all if you if you said that you would in trouble from someone?
Adam: No you know I know I've never really looked at honestly I would say whatever works best for them you know a lot of practices that we work with they have to have a software but they don't really know like they know the analytics behind it they don't really know like try to take the data and make it useful so you got services or software out there that help you do that like practice in town or seek out or others and they can actually roll that day to add and then you can actually make crêpes benchmarks and goals and look at you know fee optimization based on that things like that and so then that's what really what we want to see we don't really care what they're using on their end but what I would recommend is whatever they're going to get the most out of that they're comfortable with but I don't really have a recommendation in terms of the practice management software that they would use themselves.
Howard: and when you who is your when someone calls you up you're talking about key performance indicators you know and they're you know the key performance indicators I mean it's practice production it's collections its net income profit its percentage of active patients your computer system that currently have an appointment its overhead its average production per patient average production per new patient case acceptance number new patients patient attrition would end in labor lab supplies we've gone to overhead when you talk to a new client I mean who's calling you and do they know their numbers?
Adam: Good question so most most of the case they don't know their numbers DDR DSO or they have multiple locations we work with a lot of group practices at multiple locations and they've got either C up over so you know over somebody else that we're talking to you sometimes a CEO did typically will know their numbers and that's it's always a much easier conversation for us because the things that we're looking to do is directly aligned with what they feel should be done our challenge is when people don't know their numbers and so then it's it's really this back to marketing hype and who's got a shiniest object in the room kind of thing so that's what we see is that most times they don't know the numbers.
Howard: and to me if you know in your field marketing I mean number one I mean key performance indicators how many people land on your website per month they don't know how many people of those let's say a hundred land on your website how many of them convert and call your office they don't know the incoming calls they call your office how many of them does your receptionist convert to a new patient to come in they don't know, if a hundred people came in and they had one cavity and you told a hundred people they each had a cavity how many of them would convert and get treatment done they know nothing yet based on all that nothing they're doing seven hundred eighty thousand year taking home a hundred eighty thousand dollars a year what a great job to be completely blind Stevie Wonder blind oblivious to anything going on in that funnel and you're still successful with a point four percent bankruptcy rate per year when restaurants have a 20 to 40 percent bankruptcy a year and when you go into those office if you just they're smart these guys these guys know the difference between geometry and trig they know the difference between Niels Bohr and Sir Isaac Newton and if you show them these key performance indicators like dude a hundred people on your website only three convert they're like wow well let's fix that.
Adam: So we we take all that of their plate we track all of that because it's important for us and this is a issue that I see with a lot of marketing you know agency of startups other companies is that they're not benchmarking it throughout the whole process we're looking at again by a receptionist or an agent and what their conversion rates are on the phones and then again if we have a lot of KPIs eternally what we're trying to do is simplify it out and really the end the most important KPI would be cost per new patient right literally from marketing is a cost per new patient right now we can extrapolate out what type of patient that is what are they worth and so on but as long as alignment there that's that's always kind of our North Star then we can break that back into cost per lead.
Howard: Wait you're too fast for me remember I'm old and senial so you said the main was cost per new patient
Adam: Yes, absolutely
Howard: and are you just calling it cost per new patient or you call it patient acquisition what do you think is the formal just cost new patient or patient acquisition cost?
Adam: Yeah it's a similar basically it could be called the same thing we just refer to it as a cost per new patient but it is a patient acquisition cost and then really what we want to try to do is understand through the use of actual software what are the actual end results from the practice like four dollars incentive paid. So what I mean is like for example a lot of one marketing that I see is like we're gonna send you all these leads but they don't actually validate those leads so they'll say well you got 50 leads this month but nobody's listening to those leads nobody's validating those leads to see if they're actually real new patient leads to be somebody was calling because they had the wrong number somebody's calling to sell it off is something somebody is not really looking they don't have the right insurance or they don't you know they're not really serious about services you know or whatever it might be what we do is we try to validate that so we actually listen to the calls we validate what actually are validated leads and then that becomes...
Howard: So you're listening to the calls?
Adam: We are
Howard: Okay well what is this program cost I mean when you're paying people listen to people talk what is this program cost?
Adam: Well we sell a full integrated system we have a couple of programs for that and so you know they might start anywhere from 2,500 we've got clients that are you know north of 15,000 but most are most are the lower into that twenty five thirty five forty five hundred per per location if they're you know a DSO or...
Howard: It runs from what range from what?
Adam: Twenty five hundred or so give or take a month yeah and then on up.
Howard: So you sell a full integrated marketing package for around $2,500 a month that's what people are getting it at?
Adam: Yeah usually add some consulting costs on top of that.
Howard: Okay so that's the consulting cost that's not the ad spend?
Adam: Yeah usually we start with about a thousand dollars a month and 100% of that money goes direct to those ad sources so you know Howard you call me up say hey I want you to run my ads as part of this program what we're gonna say we'll spend X let's say half it's a thousand dollars we don't mark that money up one hundred percent of that money goes right to Google reason we do that is this it's completely transparent and we're gonna show that the client. So I've seen somebody just take as high as like sixty five percent of that money or a lot of times it's just bundled in with us it's just going to be fully transparent so we made some that money might go to Google might go to Facebook we might spend it on Yelp we may spend it on Instagram.
Howard: In that fully integrated package what are you gonna measure what are you gonna measure their incoming phone calls?
Adam: Everything absolutely
Howard: So whats everything?
Adam: Yeah we're on the front end managing their basically online profile where they show up here's a big thing out most times we look at marketing there's a lack of front end differentiation and then middle differentiation of back to differentiation so what do I mean by that I'll be back to your question here but we people market their practices they're saying things like we treat our patients like family and we offer top-notch dental care we have professional staff a warm and caring environment every dentists in America could say that. So what we're looking to do is we're looking at how do we market someone on the front end that differentiates them within the market right and so we're going to put that we're going to market that through numerous channels we're then going to send it into either a funnel which we probably won't have time to get into see what we've been getting into a lot of advanced marketing funnels for implants things like that otherwise I'm gonna send them to a website the website is designed to align with that messaging right which a lot of times falls off so somebody runs an ad on Google with an offer or something it usually doesn't mirror that on the website we're going to track that we're going to make sure the website is designed to optimize as high as you can split test this so what we do is we take traffic from one website to an then send it to a variation. So for example let's say you send out two emails on your test in one versus the other to see which is better we do have their websites to figure out how we get the best conversion rates possible and then on the back end so we're listening to all the phone calls, we listened over 65,000 marketing marketing related phone calls last year so have a team of people that are listening to those calls marking down what's going on and then I'm the back end further beyond that we've got success managers that are then going and looking at the data and working with the staff and also reading the software the analytics to understand what happened on the back end so they're able to tell ok to Jenny at the front desk convert yes or no and why did that patient turn into a new lead turn into a new patient were they worth and why and it how does all of these things on the back end how are they affecting what we're doing on the front end. For example as I said earlier you know we had a client we have a client that's struggling to close and plant leads and if we weren't doing all the stuff on the back end we didn't have this integrated approach we would think that the ads in the front end or the market at the front end for implants was ineffective well it turns out is quite the opposite they just were born into leads and then they didn't know how to close them on the back end because they didn't have openings that they're spotted looking five to six weeks out and realize that they didn't realize that the staff is some people that couldn't get them in for six weeks and then referring them out a set up finding another solution so we're the ones that actually coming back to the doctor saying hey listen this is what we're finding and we need them at we'd either stop them in the ads or need to adjust our message this were launched off the staff we do staff coaching on the phones things like that and so that's just one example what we do that with all aspects it could be for you know any type of services and so you know we start with understanding what our client acquisition cost per new patient and if that's low enough we know that everything else is being handled appropriately right but if the cost per lead is really low but the cost per new patients really high that means that if there's a conversion rate. So to step back from what you were saying we do from the front end with someone starts their search on Google whatever it is what are we saying how we advertising with their online reputation we actually have software that will help them get more reviews on kind of like on autopilot on Google and Yelp and Facebook so what do they look like on that end and then to the website how does that convert it the best rate possible how does the messaging aline how are we differentiating them in the marketplace and then we're looking at was point out the phones listening to all the calls breaking down the KPI is breaking down the conversion rates and then we're looking at the back end to understand what actually happens with with basically money what happened with the revenue do those patients come in to pay the money where do we have an issue with you know case acceptance and do they need some training things like that. So it's just it's tying it all together and if you piecemeal this out which we see all the time you've got one company that's listening to calls we got another company that's you know maybe doing some coaching another company that's running a website and maybe some ads well again if there's a break in this process you know you don't have them all talking together and that's when you start to lose people through this funnel and that's that's really where we see the cost big acquisition costs drop considerably climb because you know you could be running great at seeing what's right on the back end and tying that all together and that's really what we want to integrate this together and that's the best thing you get effective marketing.
Howard: and I really like your integrated approach because I always told people the one business I would never get into is marketing helping dental offices market the business you went into there's no way I do it because when a consumer buys an iPhone they know the difference in Android they knew the difference in a BMW and a Chevy but my homies I love them because I love the fact that they love their art they want to do surgery all day and they loved dentistry but they don't ever know their numbers and so you could do world-class marketing and they don't know that it increases number of people any other website it increased the number of website conversions called your friend desk and your front desk answered every phone can you please hold and then they just fell off. I mean we look at it what do they call that web sites the that the latency period the latency period... latency period meaning there on social media they they click a web link if it doesn't load in like three seconds there you know and so so latency is the probably the biggest variable that machine learning artificial intelligence has found on internet and they're like oh my god these Homo sapiens are they they they got to two seconds of patience and if it doesn't load they're gone and then they and then they call your office and every data I've seen 25 percent go to voicemail and then another half go to can you please hold and then and then they're gonna blame on you argue forget those no there's nothing happened yeah because you're incompetent and and you're understaffed of the front in every business in America the most important person is who's incoming calls and who's their salesmen so those are the people in three-piece suits a tie and make a hundred grand a year the guy in the back making the the machine shop which is the dentist in overalls and a lunch pail that's something key guy and these guys all treat the incoming calls as chaos. So if I called you up and I said okay I'm with this fully integrated package how are you gonna measure my number of people landing on my website converting to calling and if a hundred people called does my girl surely convert how many to come in how do you explain that to my homies cuz they clearly don't get it.
Adam: Right so we have to do that we have tracked them that allows us to tell where the phone calls are coming from what generated them were able to file that together a few systems that we created and then there's a there's a manual approach to listening to the calls we have people do that because I've used every sort of AI system Amazon's everyone for listening to calls and trying to understand what happened and it's still not the same and then it's real people that are trained to look at these things going in that know the numbers that know the things that these doctors probably don't know or haven't been taught or their marketing companies never looked at right and that's what they're looking at. We found I found it I can't expect them to do that so if I'm going to a better marketing system for them I have to be the one that knows these better than them and then we got a call with them every month and say listen here's the facts here's what we're seeing here's the numbers here's where we're working well here's what's not what's working well and here's how we improve that you know most times when we talk to doctors are like well I got to stop my marketing person what to do not with us we're going to be saying listen here's what you need to do here are the steps and here's why and it's usually data-driven but we have software that tracks where we have people that track and so it's this really you know my goal years ago was how do I understand every single step that someone takes when they start looking for a dentist all the way to paying that money and and then even through patient reactivation we've got software that allows for that. So how we then figure out okay when we what are we paying for those new patient what's that work to the practice and where's the where's that ROI and then being able to you know arbitrarily or not arbitrarily but break it down in a way that is there's no room for subjectivity you know it's it's black and white.
Howard: So again I'm trying to you know my whole deal was in 1998 that with the internet no dentists should ever have to practice solo again she's driving to work and like all Americans she's the only one in the car and she's wondering she's a fit for you I mean so tell her who's the average homie calling you what would they young they old a rural they urban why are they calling you and why do you have several how many clients you have?
Adam: Hundreds
Howard: So it was a why well because she's wondering am i part of this tribe or am i different kept the I always say when I lecture hey does anybody have any questions no okay well let's take it ten minute break and then everybody runs up with this unique question that they know is so unique that I've only heard it like eighty million trillion times.
Adam: Sure we so we weren't I mean every type of practice that practices that I would say we wouldn't want to work with are those that want to hire someone pass of the front desk did not be part of it and don't really want to partner with the company they fail they do if your marketing company after marketing company different with us because they don't have the desire to change potentially a house. Aside from that I we've got I mean we recently signed up try it is in a rural area of Florida in a small little town that has three other dentists I mean so small on the flip side we've got like I said we've got DSO's and massively scaled out group practices and then really anything in between we've got practices that are doing you know upwards of 8 million out of a single location all the way down to you know they're doing 750 to a million plus and so it's everything in between we do find that most times practices typically won't move forward with us that are you know under about 750 because of the fear of cost element I think they haven't spent the money to market themselves or you know especially if they're in like the 3 4 or $500 range they're really never advertised and it's a scary thing and so you know that comes down to mindset but aside from that you know if someone's really interested in partnering or the company knows what they're doing and in growing their practice you know we will work with about anyone that makes sense you know.
Howard: So you the first thing he said it's that flew over your head because I know you're a quarter of my homies are still in dental kindergarten school they hadn't graduated yet is a he said doing works for the company where the dentist just says I'm not dealing with this he throws the front desk they just burn into him because he fish rots from the head down and the dentist's owner as CEO is the root cause of dental offices failing any organization family I don't care if it's an organization or a country you get the wrong president of a country and things can go south really really quickly all through its own history. So if you do not want to be the CEO will don't torture your staff you'll get a job and work for someone but if you're gonna own your own business you own all these problems and yeah it looks easy the way I do it because I've been doing the 32 years and I got a half dozen people have been with me two decades so my so my fish head has already been transferred over to a management team where if I pass away it doesn't matter the culture of the vision it'll just keep going but when but it took me 12 years to get these people that have been with me all these times so you have to own every single problem and it's a lot of work and a lot of dentists want to do everything in-house and then they realize there's none have time to do everything in-house so you're looking for clients that want to partner with you or the Dentists CEO says ok I want to understand and I call it the funnel so will you go back to the funnel have how you see the funnel and how you can fix that?
Adam: Yeah the funnel starts with I believe it starts largely apart by market differentiation dentistry is becoming incredibly commoditized today right everyone in their brother is a dentist but dentists on a million corners how do you separate yourself from the next 30 guys down the street so that's the first thing to think about it I kind of talked about that if you're advertising it you're accepting new patients or that you you know I have a professional staff basically if I put a hundred dentists in a room and I said raise your hand if you say you treat patients like family they raise your hand if you offer top-notch dental care and raise your hand if you have a warm and caring environment right and everyone puts their hand out that's you should be advertising that you want to know you want to figure out what makes you unique map out your avatar if you grab a book will tell you how to do that and how to set basically distinguish or differentiate yourself so that's at the very beginning of the problem and that's done too as it's done through optimization how you show up things like that then we drive there's also done through your reputation having a strong reputation we advise that you should have 2x the amount of reviews as the next guy you look at how people shop on Amazon and these aren't just reviews on some private site like rateabiz.
Howard: but the first part of the funnel was what?
Adam: Market differentiation
Howard: Ok market differentiation I just want to share a couple thoughts on that you know when I go out in town and I drink with my friends I know what they're passionate about and while you're talking to them you google their website and say dude you're like an implantologist on a national level I go to your website I don't even know it I don't see one single one of your cases so you're saying market differentiation which they just they need to look at it from fresh eyes and then number two.
Adam: So number two would be consistency well is the online reputation so some of it is what you say the other part of that is social proof but it needs to be visible where people are shopping what I mean is you know and I think everyone kind of knows this now but hasn't always been that way but you know if you're buying a product on Amazon well I can have the most amount of reviews of any of the products elsewhere online but if they're not on Amazon doesn't matter so same with Google same with Facebook same with Yelp whatever if you're driving traffic through google you should have the most amount of reviews and that's something that we work with our practices to get so there's social proof and there's market differentiation. The next part of this is consistency and messaging so I see this all the time someone will run an ad you get to their website see they're running a promotion I looked at one two days ago for an ortho group that's running a promotion for a new Sonicare toothbrush yeah you mentioned the end you get back you go to the website it's nowhere to be mentioned right and we see this with all sorts of things new patient specials or anything else which you can advertise you see an ad for it you know the website's missing you see the ad for what makes them different let's say they're open Saturdays and we're open nights and weekends but when you go to the website it doesn't really reflect that right it doesn't just call out front and center the social proof is not calling out front centers it's not above the fold be before you scroll down the page what testimonials are you showcasing what what you need to appreciate are you showcasing so that consistency in messaging has to be out throughout that process nice actually transcend all the way through the staff so the when someone's calling in asking about you know offers or promotions or hey I'm a new patient do they know what promotions are being run do they know what's messaging is set on a site and said in the ads now the validating now or reinforcing matter bring it to their attention so all that throughout the process they asked is a stay consistent and then the site needs to be built to convert and so you kind of hit about latency you know we build sites that are mobile first we build sites that are designed and convert because we've tested them we we've split test countless websites and it's been tremendous amounts of money sitting half of the traffic to one website and then half of the traffic to a different variation of that same website real-time to see which one performs that more phone calls which one gets more clicks to book an appointment so we split test our websites and then we use that data to build better web sites and then at that point we even integrate the call tracking coaching and all that and then on the back end we do all the backing strategy some level of consulting via pulling data from the practice management software and everything we learn out of that phone calls we reapply that back to the fundamentally 3p3 rinse and repeat basically. So if we're running a promotion or something's different differentiator it's not effective we're looking at why or why not how we even change that we're listening and looking for those things.
Howard: So do you do you sell a dashboard for all this marketing data I mean do you have a dashboard or do you work with?
Adam: We built an internal system for a dashboard we don't sell them.
Howard: Do you recommend any dashboards I mean if someone called you up because there's a lot of dental dashboard companies do you do you like them do they help you do not use them if someone had a dental dashboard would you...?
Adam: Look back yeah the backend systems that we use the API calls to their practice management software will use some of those so the some that we would recommend would be dental intel or Sica things like that and so we'll leverage those in some capacity but in terms of understanding like what's going on through the whole funnel we've created our own system and all these data points because we're those dashboards won't tell you you know the journey is converting at 38% on the phones whereas Tammy is at 76% of the phones and here's how it's trending month over month and here's you know what types of leads the you know site is these callers are things like that so we've created all that in-house.
Howard: So what are the main dental dashboard out there you said Sica...
Adam: Sice, Practice Intel so those are the big ones I'm aware in terms of like third-party systems that you could go out and pick up I'm not familiar with any others off its top I know there's a couple but I can't remember there name.
Howard: but you feel like you are you had to go on make your own
Adam: For what we're doing yes but in terms of pulling just pure analytics out of the practice management software those systems will do very well they'll give practice a lot of insights that they probably would not have otherwise had they have to use them you know so it's not just buy it you've got actually set it up use it you know create goals with that out or benchmarks within them and then you know you actually use a system.
Howard: Right on okay so on so then what so you're talking about that fish rots from the head down the dentist is CEO has got to get involved first you got a market differentiation so you can have your increase online reputation for your social proof be consistent with your message your mobile website then call tracking and then pulling numbers from practice on your software and dental dashboards what are you tracking on the dental dashboards and are you sharing this with the your clients?
Adam: We are yep, so we're tracking really what's going on revenue wise and if we're if we're seeing an issue somewhere else for example let's say that their fees are you know either crazy low or crazy high or the norm you can some of these systems will allow us to optimize our fee schedules based on what others in the market are doing so there's other things that we can look at some of it is dependent upon what we're finding within that but most of what we're sharing back to the practices the cost per new patient as it pertains to the market and then how that's trimming.
Howard: Okay so then when, so here's what I already know it's happened they're there their website doesn't have any calling things it just you know it's just this website about all of them all this stuff it never says call here if you have this problem here's work I've done it's not built for conversion if that's the problem do you redo their website?
Adam: Absolutely
Howard: but do you do that yourself or do you or does someone else do it for you?
Adam: No we do those in house.
Howard: Oh you've got your own programmers?
Adam: Yeah yeah so we've built I've got people who build ads I've got people that work with optimization I've got people that build websites and design them I've got people that listen to calls I've got people that work with the practice on the you know on all of this so we assign them a client success manager that's gonna get on calls with them to work with them on what they're seeing and how to improve I provide strategy or you know whatever is needed and then all the support behind it seems for all of those departments.
Howard: That is oh go ahead....
Adam: Yeah so there's your question yeah we built the sites we test the sites they are created in-house we've got a framework that we know works and then we model off for that as a starting point you know one of the things I see is a lot of a lot of practice owners they want what they considers a pretty website but that doesn't mean it was based up ground data so you may have what you think subjectively is a prettiest website but it doesn't convert well and I wouldn't know that unless you've done the testing. So we've done that testing and we know what works well we know what to say we know how to say it because we've done thousands of sites we operated over you know 150 plus markets we know what's working what's not so be that scale can say okay this is what we want to lead with as our framework model from and then we can we can you know customize it to a degree for the practice what you need about them what are their differentiators with the monitor.
Howard: Well I know I'm proud of you because you're you're in Spokane Washington and you know I've had dentaltown for since 98 and it's hard to find programmers and I have four million people in the valley so Congrats on being a little old Spokane with two hundred and fifteen thousand people and you got programmers so...
Adam: Well we are distributed team so all my entire team they all remote every single person so basically I've got I've got developers in Florida I've got developers you know all over I'm going to staff all over I've got people that I have a couple of employees that are in Spokane but I've got you know I've got people in Oregon and like I said Florida and Texas and you know all sorts of places.
Howard: I know you're doing good I mean he'll just on LinkedIn you got 30 employees just on LinkedIn so that alone I know you're crushing it so when you're homie comes in the website looks bad you guys will fix that and then you start recording their calls and what software to use for that?
Adam: We use Callrail
Howard: You use Callrail...
Adam: Yeah I mean we just we just happen to work with that we're testing some new software's though I mean we're always testing to see if we can find a better platform but so far they've been a service well for a lot of years so we that's what we use as a backbone and that could integrate into everything and they have you know API is for all community we need for that.
Howard: Okay well tell them about Callrail, how does that work you set him up with Callrail and then what that's gonna track?
Adam: Yeah so the way it works is we can we can set up dynamic call insertion which made me is that if let's say we we are driving traffic from the Facebook ad we can set that out up to trigger the phone number to be dynamically swapped out on the website that means it was something clicks on a Facebook ad they get a different phone number when that website loads and when they call that number brings right to the staff right to the office were able then to intercept that record it and hear what's going on we can do that for all types of sources we can do that for Google organic any title advertising we can help give them these do this for their own you know if they're doing direct mail or something like that we can give me numbers for that too.
Howard: Yeah I meant I had lunch with him an attorney he was on the back of the phone book he's on all the billboards and he's on TV and he's always talking about the same 1-800 number and I've been listening to him for 30 years I'm like dude you that I mean how do you know if they called from any of these three things I mean though I mean even 1-800 dentists had to completely redo everything because that's not how it works on a smartphone that's how it worked on a dial-up phone okay so then you set up the call track so then what it so how many of these calls you listen to her you listen to them all than speed listen to some or how does that work?
Adam: We try to identify we can't so these numbers are designed on this show from marketing related activities so that means that if someone goes your website by typing in your website address directly we assume they already know who you are and it will trigger the number and so you know people can still false trigger it if they Google a practice and you know whatever then they might but we try to quickly identify those but last year as it just became sort of the marketing specific calls we listened to over 65,000 of those a whole lot...
Howard: Holly and what do you think when you start working with a dental well you know I hate to say when you start working with the dental office because that's a select a bunch of people that want to get help I mean we know when I've told him a thousand times on the show that every dentist that works with practice management consultants they average about a million two in collections and take home 250 plus to 350 but the average dentist who's smarter than all the consultants they're doing about 780 taking home one sending page 180 so I don't want to know the numbers of the people that call you because that's a separate breed of cat but but that's the only thing you need on when you start working with a new client what is your incoming call conversion rate and what can you move it to and is that with training is that phone call what metrics are you finding on the inside well first of all what metrics are you are you finding from the website conversion rate of a hundred people land on an average day off website how many of them convert?
Adam: That so that would be determined based on the market and the type of practice for dealing with like a pediatric practice those are always much higher than we're dealing with like a fee-for-service or cosmetic. So some of that's kind of difficult to break down per se for that and then it's also based on a few other elements that I won't get too in-depth in here but the terms of the calls what we're seeing typically is about I mean on average you see about fifty percent forty to fifty percent conversion rates let's see from people that are that are calling it they're actually making it through and then about half of those actually converted into patients kind of numbers that you alluded to earlier twenty five and fifty percent and so that's typically we see we train as part of our system will actually coach practices and scale them up some come in that have had training in the past but that's that's a little bit thing to if someone's had a training in the past but they're not staying on top of it the staff typically will revert back to whatever is easiest and their call conversion rates will drop however if they're constantly being worked with over time those numbers will stay high so we've taken practices from thirty forty percent and helped get them well north of seventy-five to eighty percent conversion rates on the phones for patient leads coming through I with coaching but has to be done over time it's not like you do it a couple months you stop and hope that they're going to fix themselves and stay good you know states they are.
Howard: and when you talked about you know pediatric dentists have the highest conversion rate you know never never ever forget the fact that you know when your product it going to the number one goal of a species is to reproduce and have offspring and you see that always in dentistry you see that the pediatric dentists have the like just said the highest conversion rate you know that's a big deal then you see orthodontist there's ten thousand eight hundred orthodontist and on its how I own orthotown it is huge but then the dentist they go focus on on restoring the warmed indentation on some seventy eight year old man with liver spots and and then they're shocked that that guy he doesn't want to spend the a seventy year old man knows that at best he's just fertilizer for next year's wheat crop and he's not gonna spend seven thousand dollars while he's got a grandchild that might need the money and grow up and go to college someday so dentists are always focusing on TMJ occlusion wearing the restoring dentition on people with liver spots dude if they have a liver spot that's not the market the market is you you I mean I mean come on I don't care if you're an ant or a scorpion or a cockroach you your whole drive is to replace yourself when you when you pass on so again if you're in dental school and you see I'm that you know if you specialize the average specialists and dentists was gonna net a hundred thousand more will go into pediatric dentistry and ortho and in geriatric dentistry it's not gonna be a thing for a long time because there's no money in it because the geriatrics I mean why are you gonna give grandma a million dollar heart lung and liver transplant when she's a million years old when her kid can't get a five thousand dollar grant to go to school. So so you you have to you know biology matters if you're an ant or a butterfly I mean it's just straight-up biology. So then so then what's next so you got so then you're you're gonna try to increase the so the if you if I spend money with you and you redo my website and increase the conversion to the front you record those calls which just recording them changes everything I mean we've learned this in retail work the minute you put a camera above the cash register they quit stealing they're humans they're not stupid they game theory as soon as your mind says well you know no one's gonna see me do this the minute you start recording the phone calls all you have to do is that you probably don't even have to do that's probably 80% of it 80% of it oh do you know where with Adam Zilko of Firegang and so we're gonna record all your calls and they're gonna listen to them all on they're gonna go after it once a month you don't have to do anything at that point they raise their game.
Adam: Yeah I mean we we looked at the data years ago we have a mound we share it with our practices but I think it's like 97% of all calls that come into the practice or like one of four types of collars you know one for example it would be that price shopper again I don't have them all in front of me but when you understand that you can bracket individuals calling in into like one or four groups and then you are given straw scripts and strategy on how to convert those and think about how you're dealing with those leaves things change we've stopped we realize like this staff shouldn't be trying to treat people on the phones but they should be pushing for an appointment so that person will come in and the doctor can then provide you know or prescribe treatment in person that changes the game there's a lot of other things that we do but again we've listened to so many calls over the years we know what works and it's you know if you've got someone new or you you you got someone that hasn't been trained in a long time or what have you you know as long as they receptive and this gets back to that partnership as long as the doctor partners with us in this to get that person on track to get them trained up though did a hold them accountable because they work for the doctor they don't work for us we will scale them up if they follow our system on how to how to answer the phones of the group those leads they will convert at a much higher rate significantly so and it's I mean it's it doesn't cost the practice any more money to do this other than what they would pay to us they just have to execute the problem again is you know they don't want to spend the money because they don't think there's an issue we've got the data to prove that there is or they'll hire us but they won't hold people accountable because that's just you know they're afraid to for whatever reason they don't want to partner up after after doing that it's usually falling into one of those two things that we see.
Howard: So when we look at the phone calls I'm seeing a five so you have the new patient emergency caller the new patient Reid care caller this someone he doesn't meet or work now they're not in pain but they moved and they need a new cleaning the shopper called then the patient canceling an appointment and then the financial or clinical question so let's start with the new patient say oh my god Adam my tooth is killing me I need to see Dr. Farran... any critiques you you want to add to that or?
Adam: Yeah so we have scripts for this but basically you want to engage the patient you want to get their information get their name get their number so that if you need to call them back you can and really push to get them booked because you shouldn't treat them on the phone I've heard people calling for implants and they're trying to quote prices over the phone when how could you know how could you know what it's going to cost so you know the goal is is really connect with them build rapport and get them in the door it's not hard and you want to keep that call time down make it quick make it easy and understand what your directive is, your directive from the front step perspective is to schedule that appointment whatever you need to do get them in the door get them scheduled if you're running a promotion for emergencies lead with it if you have to forget them convert it and get that person that door get them off the market stop them from shopping you know you don't want them to be calling the next five practices because if someone's gonna get them someone's been trained and knows how to do this and it's gonna get them in so you might as well be that person because he paid the money and get them to call you in the first place.
Howard: Nice very well then and then um in any tips on we just get that call for these when I cancel it from all the phone calls you listen to 60,000 of them, when someone calls up and says they're gonna cancel is that pretty much a done deal I mean is talking them out of that can that be done or done or not really.
Adam: It can be but the reason is I had an existing patient on your patient which happened you know if you find that people are canceling as well you know there's a lot that can be learn from that so is it because they're booked too far out and you know they want to see somebody sooner and you're seeing the history of that well that's something that we'd want to know from a marketing perspective because that changes what we do and a lot of practices will know that notice the openings and their schedule and not realized why we're trying to understand why those things are happening so that we can advise and practice on what they need to do next either get more support in the office like we're working with on someone that's doing implants or you know find another solution they order we need to basically address our marketing or whatever else it is so it'd be subjected to I think what the reasoning is mind why they're cancelling and if this is a pattern but yeah people can be talked out of it if there's something that's going on it just would be somewhat specific or depended upon what that reason was.
Howard: Okay so then what would be next on that list I'm trying to I we talked about what's working in a group approach you say the two-part formula to dental practice success action versus execution that's the head go ahead..
yeah so success typically in anything is action times execution right so whatever activity you're taking how well you execute that then that successful person success is 100% action times 100% execution. So what we look at firing is our action is us building out this this proven integrated marketing system right we know that that thing works because we've replicated success in it in market after market after market large and small. The variable in the rule is the execution part meaning how well does that practice execute now we not support them in that we can't do it all for them I can't answer their phones I can't approve the keys acceptance by sitting there and you know I can't provide a higher level of service to keep people to come back keep them coming back to reduce that turn rate right I can't I can't make sure that they get on calls with me I can't make sure that their staffs happy all these other things but I can help support them in there. So the part that we have that we know is that our action is 100% effective I know for a fact because I've done it a million times the variable is the execution so the clients that work with us that execute really well become our partners we speak a lot about this in partnering with us follow our advice just like hiring and coach right now I are a business coach if you follow their advice you're probably better than if you don't so we have people that hire us they don't follow the advice they don't get our calls the past of the staff and his struggle they lack execution that's then where that success will struggle the better the execution again will support that then it's a better likelihood of success and so that's that's really what we mean by that again it's no different than if you hire a business coach or consultant or a financial adviser or whatever it is you don't you heed their advice and execute on it you're going to struggle but yet it still happens.
Howard: So then the next problem all this I mean to me it's overhead is so simple I mean if your cost or $1 a month and your collections are a dollar a month you have utter percent overhead but the dentist try used to say oh my god my costs are dollar month so he tries to change the cost of electricity and the market for hygienist he says well everybody's paying their high Kunis forty dollars an hour let me just pay mine thirty five okay so now you don't have a hygienist you know you you can't fight the free market so all these prices in the cost of people I mean I mean the difference in cost in San Francisco's different than Kansas so you pay all your costs and it ends up okay I'm a frugal dentist and it cost me a dollar a month and what's your goal why 150 she's never right okay so now we got to collect two dollars a month so where do we go from there so the first thing is always the collection policy they're dollars for the dentistry but they're gonna slowly pay you then pay you for three months you go bankrupt waiting for three bucks. The other thing is the treatment plan presentation and I know my homies and loved them are you know they're so challenging they say dude I hate sales so they give you money you do you do your job you fix your website increase it convert you do everything and now you give a more new patients and they couldn't sell an Eskimo a heater I mean so what are you gonna what do you do there?
Adam: Part of it is getting somebody there, you get somebody in the door just get them in the door that's probably most of the battle there when you start getting into higher end services like implants and cosmetic related services we probably with companies where we have some training internally or work with coaches on back case acceptance on that I won't get too into depth on that on this call but for most services as long as you get them in the door to treat people well you've done a lot of that. That would be the biggest thing but getting back to it I mean here's a here's a just a quick staff we did it all up we do this all the time as of the last month all of our average average will bring a new clients clients that we're executing those clients to did execute well on average for every dollar what a Firegang's client spends with us and advertising they're seeing nine point five six cents nine dollars or 56 cents back in their pocket so 956 X return on the money so that is a fact that's the number as of last month for every dollar they're spending with us you're seeing almost 10 in return or nine and a half to ensure that is a very good return and so that's all in practices that execute well we usually see some other numbers it's been a crazy crazy crazy good and less than $30 a lead and less than $50 in deviation in the door pay knowing when the first year value of lifetime values of those patients the bottom line is really good.
Howard: So I can't believe we did an hour and give your best sales pitch of why my home we should call you right now.
Adam: It's right there I mean our ROI actually is amazing, we have the most comprehensive marketing system out there that I've seen that I know about the only ones that are working as an integrated approach all the way to from the back into the front. Most people again I use this analogy I don't know how well this resumes but you know they'll put up a random website and throw some ads out and hope for the best it's like putting a crown on what potentially could be a rotten tooth right you need to fix her look cause holistically someone's got an infection you gotta fix that first we're looking to tie all that together because we know that the better we can do on the back end better we can do want to find they all work together. So you know these these doctors they gotta stop playing marketing roulette they gotta start understanding their numbers and if their marketing company isn't giving them their KPIs and breaking it down for them that's a red flag shouldn't be told these marking companies they don't know those numbers either they're just saying hey I see all these leads and good luck but what does that really mean.
Howard: and to wrap this all up I mean when I got out of school in 87 dentistry was a cottage industry a cottage industry means that nobody has 1% of the market and right now there's 150,000 dental offices and to have 1% Hartland would have to have 1500 and they don't have 15 that are they haven't even had thousand yet but dentistry is slowly starting to mature and at the end of the day it's never gonna be it's never gonna be a commodity because the commodity is coke chocolate my iPhone not somebody touching me and getting into my body and doing a root canal that just that is a totally different ballgame and people always say well look what happened yeah Walgreens a Hannya a bottle of pills and I've been in France where you take your prescription on your smart card your stick in an ATM machine and a bottle comes down and hoppers I don't need a pharmacist to hand me 28 tabs of penicillin but I'm gonna let touch me and give me a vasectomy that is extremely different behavior and but we have these ideas oohs at about they're about 12% of the dentist but Stan Bergman the Schine says they're buying about 18% of the supplies so it's almost 20% and it could be a tipping point but what those guys are doing better is the business of Dentistry.
Adam: Absolutely
Howard: They know their numbers they know their numbers they're the you don't have to produce
Adam: It's a mindset.
Howard: Yes
Adam: It's amazing this is a whole different animal we work so much better with those guys we're trying to help the others but beyond those guys they get it and it's just like it's just so much easier.
Howard: Yeah and I mean and when Clearfield came to town I I didn't sit there and join the bitching committee with all the other Perry dollars oral surgeons about the sky is falling and what's happening just like people you just shut up and look what they're doing they're they're doing in one appointment they got an in-house lab they're mixing a surgeon with a prosthodontist with and just that just look at what they're doing, I mean they're doing 20,000 full arches a year at 25,000 a pop and you're doing two a year and your answer is to start moaning and complaining me obviously America is happy that the people have got to be loving it because....
Adam: It's better like I mean I always referred to it as like how they're they're kind of like the best buy of dentistry it's just creating a better patient experience or open on Fridays or open after hours or open because they have promotions they can get you in and out I know that some practices have better service and they're doing it better because they're more committed or whatever right you've seen you've seen issues with DSOs and customer service stuff they're gonna fix that and some of them already have and you know you're starting to see that as they put more effort there that'll shift and so either you catch up and you innovate it realize this is what people want or they're going to continue to push them out and that's gonna happen.
Howard: So how do they contact you?
Adam: Go to Firegang.com they can sign up for a free marketing assessment if they want to chat with either myself or someone on my team we could we could chat with them on what's going on or they you know just go to Firegang.com and so firegang.com and grab a free copy of our book I believe we still have it up for it at the time there so then grab a copy there on that if they want to chat just fill that out.
Howard: and if you're listening to this podcast you like audiobooks I mean just go to Amazon type in Adam Zilko grow your practice online proven strategies to attract and convert new patients, it's an amazing book every one of their reviews is five-star. So it's on audiobook you can read it listen to it but Adam thank you so much for coming on the show today and talking to my homies about some ways for all things marketing alright I'll see you on the board, see you on the message boards.