Unlocking PPO Handcuffs with Dental Marketing

welcome to the automatic patient podcast where we help your dental practice create a kickass recurring Revenue model here are your hosts Mr Jordan and Justin comto this podcast is powered by boomcloud create manage and grow your dental membership program schedule a demo on Boom cloud.com [Music] what's up everybody welcome to another exciting episode of the automatic patient podcast I am your host today Jordan comso with me I got my director of marketing Bentley folman is with us what is up Bentley how you doing dog I

am happy as always to be here especially with you two so this is gonna be a fun day yes we're gonna have a fun day we have a guest his name is parum he's at one of the partners of Doc sites and today we're going to be talking about unlocking poo handcuffs with dental marketing one of my favorite topics PM what's up and welcome to the show dude thanks for having me Jordan I'm excited to always talk to you yeah got a lot of fun yeah

we always have fun when we talk and uh happy to join you on this Friday and let's uh have a good time and help people out absolutely dude parm if somebody doesn't know you they're listening uh tell give us a rundown of who you are and what got you started in Dental marketing right right so you know even though I look like I'm 25 um I've actually been working in Dental marketing for about 14 actually 15 years one of my close friends started his dental practice

around the time I started my marketing agency we helped them to grow to 10 plus offices then he you know he connected us with his brother-in-law and other friends and you know how it once you get in I think I heard you once say this and I use it as once you get into Dentistry you never leave so you're dead dude yeah you're dead in the water in dentistry I've tried to leave three times JK doesn't happen just once I've tried to leave once and Dentistry

is an awesome industry so Bentley I know you're new to uh the dental World dude you're stuck here forever now I'm I couldn't be happier about it either to be honest I've been stuck in other Industries this one seems a lot more friendly totally is yeah awesome so you started working with a friend who owned a dental practice helped them scale the 10 offices that uh I would say uh we should do an episode just on that yeah I mean I'll talk about a lot of

those principles today because they still apply that's awesome so you got started doing that helping a friend you have a a couple Partners or one partner that helps run two partners yeah two partners what are their names Ali and Kavon and and imagine being partners with people in business for 14 years yeah um you know it's literally a marriage except for you're spending pretty much 9 to five in work travel yeah you're making a lot of decision so we've made it out alive yes I got

rid of my partners a long time ago because yeah it is definitely like a marriage yeah I only want to be married to one person so yeah cool dude let's get started so unlocking po handcuffs with dental marketing the average practice writes off I believe $300,000 a year over the course of Lifetime that equates to about $12 million uh in a career in dentistry uh we know that Dental marketing the the costs of it compared to a PO are quite less than $300,000 a year so

let's get through this like how can a practice grow with dent marketing as they start dropping dental insurance the first thing I mean you got to have a plan right so the first thing is doing numbers you know I think that's one thing I talked to a lot of dentists with and they're not doing their numbers and it's like the last thing they do so Dennis way smarter than me right I like barely made it by it took me six years to graduate college right they

did extra college right sure but then when I ask them numbers and I generalize when I say this because there's some that are amazing with numbers you got to sit back and do numbers right and do a little bit of quick business school maybe it's a quick weekend where you take a course right because the numbers will tell you how to run a business because that's what you're doing it's the only business I've done a lot of research it's really one of the only businesses where

you have to work on the business and in the business right oh totally we just did an episode last week with Dr Mark coses and that's exactly what we talked about so like literally if you go to any business school and you talk to the top business people in the world right and that is the principle of this business to succeed they're going to tell you you're set up for failure right away right so what does that have to do with releasing the PO it's because

understanding the numbers is going to help you understand what your opportunities are for growth right so what makes you more money in your office right start from there what can you and your team do a really good job at internally right are you really good at implants are you really good at doing bonding are you really good at doing Invisalign or other clear aligners you know I don't know we're Associated to any here but yeah not yet if you want to break the PO handcuffs you

need to First Look internally before I tell you this is what we should spend on right you have to sit as a team with your office manager your dental hygienist maybe even your significant other and they could tell you hey man you always complain when you come home about these procedures maybe you should cut them out of your office right sure yeah so look at it and then internally talk about how can we work together and make ourselves known to the public about why we're so

good at it right sure there's a reason why C does 15 commercials during the Super Bowl because they want to let you know throughout that time this thing is this drink is going to make you feel refreshed and you know get your blood they don't tell you that get your blood sugar up but you know you know what I mean right they keep pushing that refreshing feeling to you right so as a dental office you have to apply the same I think principles of Big Marketing

and realize like what do you want to be known for are you good at doing aligners are you willing to take some courses and Implement dental implants once you get that improved and let's say you say hey I want to do more Family Dentistry right sure then now you have a plan for for that right and then guess what happens when you have a plan now you can across the board in every marketing platform right whether it's your website your Google profile so we know now

everybody goes online no one's going to Yellow Pages so what yeah I still do online one though that's how you found me right yeah that's how I found you online Yellow Pages so but they're going online they're going Google right that's why Google stock is so high I hope you have some shares um right if you don't start buying some yeah um or wait till it drops then bye you can keep saying that but it'll it's not dropping yeah probably not so but Google's the place

they go then they go to other platforms like Facebook right one thing a lot of people don't know is if you join the Facebook communities in your neighborhood you'll go see right now go look in one of those and search the word dentist so back to my initial point is once you understand what you want to do on all these so find like find your Niche and yeah find who you are right um and find what you want to you know what you want people to

come in and see you for right and you can be the Cheesecake Factory and offer all the different menu items right but if you're going to do do that then you have to also understand that you're going to have to promote yourself like the Cheesecake Factory right like come to our place and everything you want is going to be done but we're going to be like the Cheesecake Factory and seat you on time and have a big dining room and you know so you got to

know yourself right and then when you do that this is I'm a big believer and you're good at this right personal branding that's the next step right sure personal branding I'm a big believer in that and I know some dentists are like man I went to school for seven years now you want me to do Tik Tock dances not at all I do not ti do Tik Tock dances even work bro if you know they do in some areas and some people right if that's who

you are honestly you know if you're if you're a Tik Tock dancing type if you watched someone do a Tik Tock dance and you said to yourself man I'd love to do that and record myself then you might be the Tik Tock dancing kind of person but what I believe in is you became a dentist to help people right yes so right get that point across and I'm not talking about like you know making like these fancy content or anything I'm talking about your website bio

should have it your Google Maps profile should have it your local Chamber of Commerce should have a photo and bio of you sent out to the community the Facebook groups right so this is I'm going all over the place but what I'm saying is like this is a big factor and you don't have to do it all the time you don't have to do a weekly post about you you know shopping or whatever but once a year like this is what I'm eating tonight cck yeah

yeah yeah exactly like put it out there that like you went to a c course course or you just finished the CE course on you know improving people's Smiles or on you know delivering better care in the office right so I'm talking get and this is it's weird to say because a lot of marketers push this idea of search engine optimization ads and all that but until you have these foundations those tactics don't work and I'll tell tell you why I know this because I'll admit

that we failed for clients right you know a lot of marketers should admit that like we've all failed for clients I'm friends with a lot of other marketers and we can talk on the phone and say hey you know what could have we done better but the ones that we do a great job for what do they do they give us the Apple phone right and we just put the Apple phone out there in front of the community's eyes right also Alo one thing that Dentistry

is is it's a community business right it's got a HomeTown feel it's got a HomeTown feel you gotta know that uh Dr Jordan is a gentle guy I don't know about that yeah no but you know that's a funny buzz word but at the end of the day I like so I just picked out a pediatric dentist for my kid right my wife put it on my hands because she's like you're the one that knows you're the dog sides guy go yeah you go you go

after it so what did I do I went and read the Dennis bios right sure and then I go look at my analytics on the 800 sites we manage and guess what the top five visited page on all of these sites is the about us page doctor's bio specifically I know because I do the same thing I just was going to a new doctor went straight to the about us page read about the doctor and the staff if they don't have one of those pictures or

bios I just skip over I'm like I don't I'm not going to go to an office if I don't know who is working there if they don't have online sign up or schedule I'm out yeah yeah yeah so I have a question on that front because understanding who you are obviously is a marketer myself that's so big and having worked with you know medical providers and those over the past a lot of times they struggle with knowing what that is how do you help them find

their identity nice that's a really good question and we talk to them in the beginning right before they sign up we don't sign people up because just to sign them up because we don't have contracts you can literally leave us at any time so we want to get to know you and be able to attack it the right way we do send you a question questionnaire we do tell you if you need help we'll work with you on that right we do ask you like who's

your demographic what do you want you know to accomplish with the website and that's what we can do our business model is not set up to come to their office and do you know self-development workshops and things that nature there's a couple marketing companies that do stuff like that huh yeah there's a couple Dental Market companies that do things like that which I love right I I would say I would I would say and I'm I love some of those companies and they're great and I

think they do a really good job I would personally say get away from a from a provider like us for that and hire a one-on-one person a little bit more somebody in the office a little bit someone that's gonna like a one-on-one like let's say like we're a part of admc right there's a bunch of cons consultants in that group that do like one-on-one meetings and things like that someone that will sit with you on a zoom and drink coffee with you and there's a few

people like we're in the dental nachos community that are great at that and they're even like free some of them say hey call me for free and I'll sit do that take the time and say hey because I don't practice clinically and I don't know a lot of clinical I do know enough but I think you should talk to someone Bentley to answer your question that's been in the clinical office and can say hey I know you're trying to push doing like aligners but between you

and the way you talk about stuff and the way you do things you're not ready for that yet right yeah yeah I love how you said that because I think having someone who can be objective that knows the industry is is super important as marketers I know how to I know how to present a face or image or an identity based off of what you tell me you want but if deep down that's not who you really are and there is a clinical aspect to this

you have to know you know how you how you want to present yourself as a clinician in the community um you you need that you need that expertise and I think everybody in every industry needs that objective Mentor or uh personal connection of someone who can Holtz check them and keep them on on task of where their personal brand should be which in the case with most Dennis that is also their corporate brand right exactly and I'll give you a great example in our in our

world where we are marketers right me and my partners we've been doing this for 16 years we wanted to work on our own personal Instagram guess what we hired a Instagram marketer to consult with us and teach us hey how do you improve this what are ways that Works to get more views right even though we know SEO really well we know email marketing Partnerships we know 10 things really well but we didn't know this one thing that well because we didn't do Tik Tock dancing

videos ourselves and right we're like hey let's go to the Tik Tok dancing video guy I just want to know what Instagram dancing you did what kind of Instagram Dan yeah are you doing dancing on your person instram I can't dance but you know a little shaky shake but um so but yeah like you gotta you gotta talk and you know I think what happens is investing to grow is a challenge that I have right and I can relate to the dental uh owner mindset because

it's a risk adverse adverse mindset right yep it totally is so to unlock those po handcuffs I say don't just clip all the ppos yet yeah take these steps for a year or two and and then once you're ready to attack then you could do like all the marketing things and all of it and guess what you're not going to call me and say hey I've been doing marketing for the last three months I'm not getting that many leads you're gonna call me and say hey

man like I had a good plan I know who I am as a practice my staff knows how to answer the phone right I know how to talk to someone when they walk in the door and even though I'm not getting the 30 Insurance leads I'm was getting I'm getting 10 to 15 I'm tripling my income because everything in the office is running so well yeah and you're not working with the PO writeoffs if you're doing marketing right yeah because what's happening you guys and and

like I got a little bit of push back by some friends on this but I'm seeing too many marketing companies give young Dennis startups these kind of generic ads and it's not working it's like hey so and so town we have 30 new Invisalign cases to give away it's a great program I'm not dissing those companies I got kind of like hey you're you're bashing those I'm not I'm not those work but the average startup dentist should not be marketing like that like I'm getting these

really like presentable like good look looking like girls and guys that like care about what they're doing running their Clinic even like the older people like really presentable fit like actually effective in the community getting authentic five star Google reviews and they're running these generic marketing programs and I'm like you're missing the point like you are the star of the show like I asked them I'm like how many years are you going to run this practice with you as the star of the show they're like

10 more years I'm like so why are you not putting your face out there and that's one of my favorite ways to unlock the PO is Market yourself you know and like get yourself out there present yourself people are going to trust you and when they walk in the door and you are honest and you are trustworthy and you let them know hey you need to do these things to make sure that your smile in 10 years is not an issue and this is how I

can help you they're going to say yes let's do it not like hey let me see if my insurance can do it right sure yeah yeah yeah awesome thanks pom um what are your thoughts on how practice can Market a a a patient membership program I love what you guys are doing I think I'm not biased by the way about membership plans I'm I'm biased too I'm biased too I think it's such a good program because we live in a country that has instilled in all

of us monthly payments sure yeah so subscription economy the subscription economy right everybody is instilled like I'm gonna pay monthly for something right so I come from an Iranian background where when you buy something you go into the car dealership with cash right or a check and you say hey this is how I grew up with my dad right you go to the TOA right not a like a Mercedes but like a Toyota and you say hey here's like the C at the time you could

buy a Camry for 15K and that's what I would see right but nowadays even he as a 70y old guy and our generation knows you're better off putting monthly payments I mean maybe in some's cash right is better I'm not getting into the you know financing talk but everyone's instilled right so membership plan is amazing for that because if I could reduce my cost right even if you let me pay everything Upfront for the year which I would love that because it's not a crazy expense

right you let me pay a plan and become a member of your dental practice why wouldn't I want to be why would I want to jump from office to office I'd rather have you schedule my appointments I'd rather have you give me a discount when I need need a clean like a cavity filling right sure so I think marketing a plan is essential I tell every client you know our templates so you know are we're template based company and we personalize it our templates come with

the auto Dental savings plan page so and I have so many people that sign up believe it or not they're like I've never had one before like this page now gave me and my staff an actual idea of what to do you know what we should definitely talk about after this like hey take a look at what we're offering maybe like we have something that you guys do or something you know and we could even collaborate on an idea for that but sure I think every

Dental website should offer that and I think your offers page should promote it to not just the savings plan page or the membership your offer page should actually say we offer a membership plan right yeah and that'll get people to call who went in there to look for that $40 cleaning and exam and say hey you don't have that but what about your membership and then your staff can talk about it the value what they get out of it how if their whole family joins it

becomes a better deal for them you know things like that yeah I I see I see some practices putting putting a you know some practices have an insurance page hey we accept these insurances um I've seen practices put uh information about their membership program on the insurance page of their website too if you're doing that you know but if you're cutting out insurance hopefully you don't have an insurance page right right you wanna you know you want to say in lie of insurance we offer a

friendly membership plan yes yes friendly yeah well and how many patients are still coming in without insurance and are you if you're selling the insurance are you getting only the PO because that's what you're marketing instead of hey 50% or give or take your demographics of the people living in your community don't have access to dental insurance through their employer um what are they doing and if they're not coming to you because you only have you know ppos coming through the door P patients on on

poo plans then what are you what are you missing out on in the community and how many people are afraid to come to you because you're you're selling insurance I love that and let me ask you guys a question that would help us as marketers does your membership plan also promote like cosmetic yeah treatments yeah so membership plans are are since I started the com our company you know they've evolved quite a bit so there are a lot of different types of membership plans from the

preventative care membership which is the most common to like Peri odonnal memberships to denture maintenance plans to Botox plans and unlimited whitening subscriptions so really the practice can design and and create any any type of plan for the office so yeah there's a lot of different types they can even just do like discount only membership programs there there's a lot of options no I love that and imagine like the the aligner page the Cosmetic Pages the restorative Pages all say hey are you interested we have

some form of plan rather than just our generic text on the like treatment right that helps you for SEO but then you start getting into how do you get away from the PO handcuffs and I tell every client I say you need to have unique value propositions right and Bentley you're the marketer so you know what are unique value tell it better than I tell it well I think that's one of the benefits too is uh one thing I've noticed with with the dentists that I've

worked with now granted I've been in this industry for a lot less than the both of you but I have noticed that there is some shiny object syndrome a little bit with with some dentists especially if they're trying to grow their practice they'll look at the next cool cosmetic treatment or whitening Techni technology or now there now there's bow in the play lasers you know all the cool Tech and a lot of that goes back to their education they want to be Innovative and and forward

thinking and that's one thing I love about the dental the dental Community is that they are trying to push the envelope with Innovation but they could also do that with their with their marketing as well and I think they're afraid to give themselves that unique perspective in the eyes of their audience or their patient based because they don't understand the fancy laser you're using to numb my nerve instead of giving me the novacaine shot or the difference between this whitening treatment and this whitening treatment they're

they're coming because of you going back to your original statement of do I have a personal brand personal identity and the unique offering can have all of those cool features have all these cool offerings but at the end of the day it's back to who you are as an individual how you how you support them as an individual and how you're their their guide to their Beautiful Smile Dental journey and I think membership plans give you a chance to paint that picture holistically in a little

bit different way than if you had you know discounts or hey we're giving away 30 whitening treatments for free like you said before uh or Invisalign or whatever you know a lot of dentists can offer those things but there's a difference between offering them and offering the value to the patient based offu of what they need and if you're being personal and authentic in how you communicate you'll get there I love that and I think that's where marketing with each page having an intention yeah is

going to help them you know y because it's like like what's something expensive someone buys right if you buy a watch you buy a purse you buy a you know you want to buy the latest guitar right you know what I mean you speak my language now yeah yeah exactly so are you gonna play today um no that's not I could sing um yeah this this guitar in the background is actually just an piece of art I'll show you okay okay if you like uh ACDC

it's a acdc's album with our one of our core values on it nice I so those that are just listening to audio go check out the YouTube and you can see the guitar I'm showing on my screen yeah see he has a guitar with his values of the the his business ready to you know share with everybody but you know the point I'm trying to make is essentially you gotta you know get the word out there and like let everybody know what you're doing because people

are researching right and they're G to spend the time and the good patients right I mean good patients meaning the ones that aren't coming there and haggling you down to the bare bone right those patients they're making decisions based on who is going to take the best care of me right they're not coming in with the question as who's going to be the most affordable right sure so how do you attract someone like that make it where when they are sitting at home after they put

the kids to bed and they're doing their research on the laptop your website your web presence makes them feel like hey I want to go to J Dr Jordan I think he's going to be the best to take care of me right yes I totally will be and you have to think about it this way too the old way of marketing was always referrals referrals referrals right now it's reviews and then no one's just getting one referral right everyone's asking for two three people and then

they're going to decide right sure you know some people yeah some people want you know want to go to this type of office where the office is new modern technology believe it or not I'm young when I see like a super modern dental office I for my daughter I didn't pick that I was like not a fit for my taste you know but some people want to walk into we have what's called aroan here in La where believe it or not you're going to pay like

$25 for a breakfast burrito which is pretty $20 crazy right yeah that's pretty crazy that's crazy right so I'm not g to walk into there but there's like that place in like for lunch has like a line out the door you know um so people want different things they want that feel so if that's who you are you should promote that and if you're more like I'm the caring Denis I've been here for 25 years or 20 years I'm active in the community you know I'm

G to sit with you and take care of you and your family mention all those things awesome yeah I love that I love that because it's the it like going back to it it's those relationships that matter um my wife is the the daughter of a of a physician and both of her brothers are Dennis and I'll tell you what we've changed Dennis just because she had a question not answered the way she thought she's so used to having know a dentist at the dinner table

that if she feels like she's not getting A+ Care and treatment we're we're bouncing right and so for her like you we almost I'm almost at the point now that when we go to a new dentist or a new physician or whatever I'm almost like can I go first and interview you to make sure that she's not gonna come home and say I didn't like that guy because he didn't answer this question or he said this the weird a weird way or you know I'm like

oh my gosh but she's you know obviously a unique case but I think everybody has their unique flavor oft who they associate with who they resonate with if you're being authentic to yourself and showing yourself off in the community um that can that can definitely help and I think going back to the the question on membership plans um making that part of your offering you know um looking at what services you're offering and and what services those people that resonate most closely with who you are

as a provider what would they want and if you're building plans that that cater to those individuals they'll look at that and go hey this this isn't some generic insurance plan or you know hey free cleanings everybody you know can offer a discounted or a free cleaning with their membership plan but here's two or three things I care about with my family or or whatever um and they're included here just for me I love that exactly I mean this is all hitting the nail right here

yeah and then make sure on a marketing scale make sure it's included in all your like website Google profiles everywhere that people look you know sure love that all right pal here's one of my last questions for you um the state of Dentistry is changing marketing is changing technolog is changing there's AI there's Tik Tock like sites you know popping up what is the future of of dental marketing from from your perspect perspective this is you know a really tough question to answer because I'm tell

us tell us the future pum yeah let me tell you the future I think the future is gonna be in terms of applying that dental care that like that people applying the this is a hard an this is a hard answer because I may ruffle some feathers but it's gonna be the automation right it's going to be like how are you um accepting the new ways of doing things right like sure for example do door Dash or Postmates right I'm not saying be the Postmates of

Dentistry because I'm not a clinician right so you have to be a good clinician at the end of the day I want to preface everything I say right but I think all your other things have to be the way of the world that it is now right you can't make people wait for filling out paperwork you can't you can't you can't not have memberships you can't not have a website that's intuitive and answers questions right you can't um I'm kind of answering what you can't be

but that's kind of the answer right um yeah you got to embrace all the new items and at the end of the day what doesn't change in any business Jeff Bezos answered this you guys know this right what does not ever change customer service there we go yep Patient Service right yeah so as long as you apply the new Forward Thinking ways of doing things to your patient service you'll be great great I I agree with that I I don't know why this Ed me of

this but I uh I watched that movie I can't even remember the name of it now but it's about the history of McDonald's and one thing I loved about McDonald's and what they did in the early days the the brothers the McDonald's Brothers is that they literally Drew on a playground in chalk the layout of their kitchen so that they could optimize the customer success the customer experience yeah and and because they knew that if I if I can do this in an assembly line you

know way I'm G to be able to provide fresh food really fast I can lower the price I can do all these things that are great and everybody will come flocking and they were absolutely right now they've turned that into something a little different whether you like McDonald's or not I would say it's definitely I you know there's a there's some value there right I ordered some last night but but there is definitely value in taking a look at your whole business and what is you

can be the best provider in the world um and have the best Public Image but if they walk in the front door and the front desk staff is telling a different story or um experience they have yeah the experience they have getting into the chair with like you said paperwork and and those kinds of experiences that can sour someone and I think you're right people are not as patient with that kind of experiences they used to be because we're getting everything else automated right to our

front door or right into our living rooms and homes you know whatever that that experience may be we we're just not used to having to work for what we want sure exactly and that's why we at Doc sit we we work with other third parties really well so if you're whether your boom cloud or your you know uh like a paperless form or any type of item we work with you and I think you have to embrace that to make your customer service better and I

think you hit something I didn't talk earlier so I do want to mention it if you're going to you know include this is your front desk has to know how to talk about you as the dental provider right oh I love that even if you're hiring you're a DSO or you have five practices and you hire a Associates your front desk should be able to talk about hey you're gonna go see Dr Jordan today he's really good he's going to sit with you answer all your

questions he's been doing this for however long he's looking forward to meeting you imagine you hear that when you walk in the door like or you call in and you say hey I have a tooth pain can I schedule appointment great what day are you available Wednesday awesome we're excited to see you I'm Jodie Dr Jordan Dr Bentley they'll one of those two will see you and they've been here for a while and they're they're gonna like really get to know you here dude I'm gonna

not missed that appointment compared to hey it's Wednesday your appointment we'll send you a text see you then yeah what you're saying is just get more P personable with with patience and and more memorable much like how we were talking to the sales team today Bentley be more memorable right um get get to know the people you're talking with and that are scheduling you know we had this conversation with our our sales team this morning you know trying to get them to be a little bit

more memorable and and get to know the people that they're talking with on the phones that are interested in starting to use boomcloud you know so it's the same thing that that goes over in in the dental uh industry and this in the staff is really uh connect with potential patients and existing patients so that they feel more they feel a stronger bond in relationship with the practice versus well do just do what my insurance will bill yeah exactly man those handcuffs yes let's unlock those

handcuffs so PM people that uh practice owners office managers if you if you're needing a website and some marketing Services uh pum talk talk about where they can find you and the your process yeah you can go to docs sites.com take a look at our work our our pricing is there too and if you do like it and you want to talk and you want to schedule a no obligation complimentary demo just fill out the form and mention that you heard from this podcast and you'll

get a bigger discount sweet appreciate you coming on the show today and uh definitely we'll have you on again and be doing more with you with that said we hope everybody has a rocking day thank you thanks everybody