'Zero Moment of Truth' by Flo Couper

The phrase zero moment of truth, coined by Proctor & Gamble, relates to the precise moment a customer decides which product to choose from the shelf in a pharmacy or supermarket.

In 2014 Google modernised the phrase by identifying that 70 percent of ‘zero moment of truth’ now happens online! This figure relates to a product or service. This means that if your online presence is poor, who are your potential patients finding instead of you?

Patients don’t know their exact treatment plan, of course, but what they do get online is answers to questions they specifically have. By answering questions in the form of blogs and video content on your website, you build trust quicker and create educated, qualified patients.

Video is proving to be a very powerful platform, and more customers are making their buying decisions because of video content. It’s predicted over the next couple of years that 80 percent of content consumed will be video. Are you doing video?

When you produce really good content, it will result in:

• Better-qualified patients.
• A smoother flow through your services.
• Patients who spend less time asking you copious amounts of questions.
• Fewer patients who ‘think about it’.
• When practices provide answers to the many questions their patients have through marketing, they help to build trust more quickly.

We are serving a ‘no-wait’ generation and everybody wants answers and solutions at their fingertips. If you are not providing this, your competitors could easily be outshining you.

Dental hygienists educate their patients and help them move toward optimum health. Your marketing should have the same philosophy. Marketing for numbers and hard selling doesn’t connect well with patient care. If you always demonstrate a helpfulness philosophy in your marketing and in your patient care, the money should naturally follow.

The more preparation time spent creating your marketing in line with your practice personality will result in more genuine, higher qualified enquiries.

From enquiry to consultation and treatment presentation, the objective should never be to close a sale—it should always be to begin a relationship!

Content marketing in the forms of blogs, videos, podcasts, etc., will serve many purposes. It creates many benefits:

• It attracts patients who are typing questions into Google.
• Video content, in particular, is becoming the most-watched online content, and Google rates that highly.
• Google also likes sites with updated content, and those with a low ‘bounce rate’, which refers to when users land on a website but then leave it very quickly instead of sticking around for a while. Having interesting, valuable content on your website keeps people on it longer.
• You provide a free, valuable service of education; potential patients will likely return to your website when doing more research.
• It provides you with useful content to product and share on social media.
• You can use content internally by guiding your current and prospective patients to specific content that could help them get more information.
• You will outshine any competitors by providing free, helpful information.

An example of how content marketing works (or doesn’t)
Head to Google and type in the question ‘Why do my gums bleed?’ Then, click on the top organically ranked UK dental practice that appears. (Avoid dental trade organisations, associations and US practices.) It should provide a specific answer to the question, and you shouldn’t have to navigate through copious amount of information to get your answer.

You will very likely find getting a precise answer from a dental practice is a challenge. Very few practices are doing this type of content marketing well. Can you see the gap—and the opportunity that exists?