198 Low Cost Dental Marketing Strategies for New Practices

Hi guys, and welcome to another episode of The Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. Super excited to have you here today. Today, we're here talking all about low-cost dental marketing strategies for startups or new practices. So excited to be here today with you talking all about marketing strategies. As many of you guys know, I absolutely love marketing. It is a way that we are able to have all of the people who are there out in our communities who need dentists to actually find us. And so, again, so excited to be talking today about what actually works for startup marketing.

So about four or five years ago, I started working with startups to be able to understand how to be able to bring in new patients before they open the door. And what that looks like is having patients not only scheduled but have patients who know what we're known for so that when they're coming in, they're actually telling their friends and family so that when you're out at the supermarket, at the gym, they're saying, "Aren't you that dentist? Aren't you that dentist that just opened a new practice?" Getting you to a place where you have other businesses that are actually sending patients to you, having people in your community who are sending patients to you, that's the type of marketing that we're talking about.

Now, as we know, there are many types of marketing and as startups are looking to get new patients, and a lot of times what happens is as you're getting your practice loan, the banks are saying, "Well, this loan is contingent upon you actually having a marketing plan, knowing exactly how you're going to be able to get customers," or, in our case, patients into our practices. And so that's the first thing that we want to look at, is creating your marketing plan. How are you going to get patients in? How are you going to get patients to refer to you your community? What are you going to do in terms of external marketing, whether that's going to be building out your website or it's going to be building out business cards, if you still are looking to do business cards, right?

What's going to be your Google strategy, your Facebook strategy? It can be very, very overwhelming. And so what we've actually done is we want to talk about how can we simplify this process? Because as we know, there are so many moving parts. As you have a startup, you're looking at the build-out, the equipment. And at the same time, you do need to think about where are you going to get patients coming in? And so, one thing that we want to look at is how can we, again, create a marketing plan that allows us to be able to get patients in without having to spend a lot of money. Now we've got a few options. Number one, we can go ahead and drop down $5,000 and do a mail drop. Now I am, a little bit, not the biggest fan, to be honest with you, of mailers.

Not that they do not work, but the problem with mailers a lot of times is that they are very expensive. And if you are doing mailers, many times it does take two or three months to kick in which means that you've spent about $15,000. The other thing with mailers is that because a relationship is not built, a lot of times you have to provide a gimmick or a freebie or some sort of hook that's going to get people to actually call. The other thing with mailers is that if you stop putting out that $5,000, a lot of times what happens is that your leaves dry up. And so what we want to do instead is we want to create marketing solutions that allow us to be able to do the work once and essentially have the results or get paid forever. And that's the type of marketing that I'd love to be able to help you guys with implementing for your startups.

So the first thing that we are looking at with our marketing is number one, having that marketing plan. Number one, you want to make sure that you have that in place. The next thing that we want to look at is how do we build rapport in our community as fast as possible with the lowest cost. And what I'm talking about is not only the lowest cost, but how do we build rapport for in our community so that they see exactly what we're doing so that they are, number one, ready to come in and ready to tell other people. And as we all know, the best way to do that is by using

Facebook marketing and Instagram marketing. This is going to allow you to get out there, let people know what you're known for, take people behind the scenes of your practice build-out and it's going to allow you, as well, to be able to start talking about dental topics so that you can show people how much that you know about the dental topics.

And so, as we start looking at marketing through Facebook, we want to make sure that we have a plan. We want to make sure that you know exactly what to post. We want to make sure that you have a strategy so that you can not only post your, if you call it, to talk Thursday videos but how do we get people to see them? And that's the biggest thing that a lot of people are not aware of as it relates to Facebook marketing or startup marketing. They're getting on there, maybe they're doing some good posts, but what I've seen, the mistake that so many people make, is that they've actually invested the time into learning how to boost effectively.

And what's really cool about boosting Facebook posts is that now you're able to spend $30, $50, and you're able to have a lot of people who see it, who live in, for example, a specific street, a specific neighborhood. You're able to target based on location. Perhaps there's a country club in your area. You can target people who have recently visited that country club. If you're in the US you can target people who are in the highest net income. Once you start doing your videos that is allowing you to become that expert and talk about dental topics, now what happens is that you're able to, again, have people who have previously watched your videos, people who are within a certain mile radius, who live in certain neighborhoods, see those videos.

And now that people are starting to watch your videos, what happens is that now anybody who's watching your videos, you can retarget those people to see your additional videos. And so what happens is that you start to build this rapport where people start to see you coming on over and over and over again. And as you're building your startup, you want to make sure that you're taking people behind the scenes. What sort of tile are you picking out? What sort of team are you looking for? How are you going to serve the community? What's going to make your practice different? And as we start looking at startup marketing, what's really cool is that you're able to get the marketing done at a really low cost.

I would say nine out of the 10 startups that we work with, with delivering, while they're able to launch their startup and their total budget is between $700 and $1,000 for their total marketing, I do recommend that you start marketing at least three or four months before you open your startup. And what if you say, "Okay, Anissa, this is great, but I'm already a startup, I'm already opened. The best time to start is now, right?" Because it does take a little bit of time to go ahead and have that awareness. Imagine if you are seeing a commercial on TV, you see it one time, you probably don't even pay attention to it. But after it shows up two times, three times, four times, all of a sudden you start taking notice, you start singing the jingle.

So what we're going to want to look at as well with your marketing strategy are what are other things that you can do. How can you leverage YouTube? How can you leverage Google My Business? There's some really cool things that you can do to actually get all of your videos seen for free on Google, so that when people are searching for your practice, they're seeing those videos. As you start opening and you're getting patient testimonials, there's actually a really cool feature where you're able to get those videos on Google, again, at zero costs, which is really cool. So these are some tips that we want to look at as we are marketing our startup practice. I'd love to be able to help you guys. What I would recommend that you do 100% is get started, get into our marketing and practice growth challenge.

That's going to be able to help you to be able to kickstart with a social media campaign. And if you know that you're ready to get started with marketing your practice, we'd love to be able to get you inside of our Delivering WOW marketing Program. We have a program just for startups. We actually have a startup call for our startups, where we help you along the journey, helping you month to month of what to do. We have monthly marketing calls. We have all of the marketing content that you need to be able to run your campaigns as you are opening up and

you're wanting to go ahead and promote your high-value services, your implants, your Invisalign, your cosmetic dentistry. Maybe you're an orthodontist, maybe you're a pediatric dentist, we actually have high-value ads that you can actually use and implement and execute right away.

If you're looking at doing marketing funnels to be able to grow your email lists, we've got everything already ready for you, built out for you as well. And what's really cool is that our program is extremely affordable. You're able to get in there and get started right away. All right, guys. So I would love to be able to help you in any way. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. But again, looking forward to seeing all of you guys grow and be able to take your practices to the next level. What we do absolutely matters. And as we're building a business, it's really important to think about our marketing strategy, how are we getting our patients into our practice? Are we're getting patients based on patients who are discounting? Or are we getting patients who are going to come in, who are going to have a great experience and refer their friends and family?

And this right type of marketing is not just about getting patients from Facebook. It's about how do we do internal marketing? How do we get our patients to tell other people? And again, how do we get relationships with other businesses so that they can market for us as well? All right, guys, that's it. Take care. We look forward to working with you and your teams to be able to get your startups to the next level. Again, to learn more, deliveringwowmarketing.com. All right, guys, take care. I love chatting with you guys inside of this podcast, and we will see you in the next episode.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Delivering WOW Podcast with Dr. Anissa Holmes. We'll catch you next time.