How Much Can One Viral Video Be Worth to Your Dental Practice? You’ll Be Shocked

When you’re working on a fun video to post to your dental practice’s Facebook page, your team might stop and ask “Wait, how again is this going to help us grow the practice?” Here are some real, tangible ways it will!

It’s fine to admit it: sometimes it’s hard to explain to your coworkers or your practice’s dentist exactly how posting a lip-sync video or team member interview will bring in new patients or boost retention. If you work with people who don’t already have that deep-rooted understanding of the value of social media, it can be difficult to get them to participate in anything even slightly out of the ordinary.

However, you’ve still got some rock-solid reasons you can bring up when talking about why your dental practice should get into creating social video. And these reasons have been wonderfully illustrated recently by our good friends and clients at Patricia A. London, DDS, who recently had one of their videos get 40 MILLION views and worldwide coverage!

They got the idea for the video from the annual Dental Digital Marketing Conference, which is coming up this April in Las Vegas! Learn more and register here!

Let’s break down a few of the ways their video contributed to their practice growth in substantial, measurable ways.

1. A Viral Video is Worth Thousands of Dollars in Equivalent Ad Reach

A key concept in online advertising is the cost per thousand, often abbreviated as CPM (the “M” represents the Roman numeral for 1000). CPM is a term used to denote the price of 1,000 advertisement impressions on one page. For example, if a website publisher charges $2.00 CPM, that means an advertiser must pay $2.00 for every 1,000 people to whom the ad is displayed.

Researchers tracking the cost of advertising of various sites have estimated that the CPM on Facebook was around $11.17 for 2017. So, in the case of Patricia A. London’s video that reached around 40 million people, an ad would need approximately $446,800 to be seen by a similar size audience through paid reach!

2. Engaging Videos Give You Top of Mind Awareness With Current and Potential Patients

A fun, shareable video from your practice can put your name and team in front of hundreds of thousands of people, including your current patients and ideal potential patients in your community. Video content is especially effective at helping people get to know you personally — and people like to do business with people they know.

Plus, creating short, simple videos with your team is just fun! It’s a great way to strengthen unity and practice culture.

3. High-Quality Video Content Creates Additional Opportunities to Reach More People

News media and other outlets are constantly monitoring social media for viral content they can feature — especially videos. Many of our clients’ video posts have been picked up by local news, dental blogs, and in the case of Patricia A. London, DDS, even Steve Harvey!

One of the most powerful elements of viral videos is that they continue to circulate and recirculate online, often for weeks. Unlike traditional mass advertising, viral videos gain momentum as they are shared by people within their trusted social networks. And when patients share your content with family and friends, they introduce your practice to the people most likely to become new patients.

Spark Your Practice’s Social Media Success Through a Viral Video

Everyone wants to go viral, but how? At the Dental Digital Marketing Conference this April in Las Vegas, you can learn how to leverage what makes YOUR practice unique and create engaging, shareable social media content that has higher chances of going viral. Register today by following the link below!

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Rescue a Peri-Implantitis of the fractured implant via Flap/detoxification/bone graft/CT graft

PreSx

Coronally positioned flap

defect debridement

Tetracycline detoxification

Air polishing

Removal of a fractured fragment

Fractured fragment

Bone graft

CT graft

Coronally positioned sutures

postSx 1 wk

postSx 2 wks

PostSx 4 wks

Rotated flap via Microsurgery kit for 2nd Sx implant exposure

EVERY Dentist Needs a Simple Practice Reviews Strategy — Here’s Why

Online reviews are taking an even more prominent role in how new patients find your dental practice. Survey results show that reviews must be recent and positive for consumers to respond — and you can obtain them with these simple practice reviews tips!

The SEO experts at BrightLocal recently published their Local Consumer Review Survey, shedding more light on how online reviews affect the growth of small businesses. Since 2010, this survey has tracked the dramatic rise of the influence of online reviews on a company’s visibility and credibility.

There are a few new statistics in the study that we think are of particular interest for dental practices working to build their online presence and acquire new patients:

• 97% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses
• 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
• Nearly 7 out of 10 consumers will write a review of a local business if asked

What does this mean for your practice’s digital marketing efforts? Now more than ever, your dental practice needs recent, positive reviews — and a simple practice reviews plan to obtain them. But also, the majority of your patients would be willing to write you a review if asked in the right way.

Take a moment to evaluate your practice’s current online reviews presence. Do you maintain full and complete Google, Facebook and Healthgrades business profiles? Was your most recent review on each service posted within the last three months? Are you setting team goals to obtain reviews from patients while they are still in the practice?

Whether you already have a strong base of reviews or none at all, a constant supply of substantial, positive reviews will help you stand out in local search results and attract new patients.

Here are 3 simple practice reviews strategies you can use to build your online presence and gain potential patients’ trust:

1. Make It Easy for People to Read and Write Reviews Where They Want

BrightLocal’s survey found that people researching local businesses are likely to use more than one online reviews service in their decision-making process. Start by creating profiles on the three most prominent online reviews services: Google My Business, Facebook and Healthgrades. Add your profile picture, address, hours, and other information that will make it easy for a patient to find you and leave a review, or for a potential patient to learn more and contact you.

2. Focus on the Patients Most Likely to Give You a Great Review

One of the quickest ways to burn out in your reviews effort is to tell your team “OK everyone, we need to get out there today and ask for lots of reviews!”

Instead, set your team up for success by pulling up the day’s schedule and reviewing who is coming in. Identify one or two of your patients who love your practice and you suspect would be happy to leave you a review. Make specific assignments on which team member will ask them for a review and have them report back on how it went.

3. Just Ask — and Be Transparent

You know how crucial honest feedback and reviews are for building your practice. Let patients know how much you rely on reviews to improve your service and find more great patients like them. Remember, if you’re not asking for reviews, chances are you’ll only get one when a patient is unhappy!

Building a Comprehensive, Simple Practice Reviews Strategy

These guidelines are just the tip of the iceberg. As more and more people turn to online reviews when deciding between local businesses (over 90 percent according to the survey), you need a simple practice reviews strategy to obtain more positive reviews and get them seen by the people most likely to become new patients.

My Social Practice can help! MSP Reviews makes it easy to get reviews from patients while they are still in your practice. Learn more by downloading our free reviews ebook below, and contact us for a free demo of MSP Reviews today!

 

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The 3 Things I’ve Learned About Dental Marketing You HAVE to Know

IN SEPTEMBER OF 2008 I attended an event in Las Vegas called Blogworld & New Media Expo. It was the second time this event was held, and social media’s popularity was just beginning to emerge. I remember truly sensing a revolution in the making, but little did I know what a paradigm shift it would bring to dental marketing.

Some of the people around me were tweeting. I had no idea what that was… and when I checked into it, frankly, I thought it was the dumbest thing I’d ever seen. “How on Earth could this be useful,” I thought.

I opened an account anyway (because I didn’t want to feel left out) and became approximately the 16 millionth registered user with this first tweet:

From that day I would be inspired, fueled, and consumed by this new media revolution — and in particular, its application to dental marketing — for nearly the next decade.

In preparation for a recent speaking opportunity I asked myself, “If a dentist asked you to list the three most important things you’ve learned about dental marketing, how would you reply?” As I worked to answer that question I distilled, and distilled. Here’s what I came up with…

1. Today, ALL Dental Marketing Is Digital Marketing

Dental marketing has changed forever. In the old days, consumers had limited choices, limited places to buy goods and services, limited messages to pay attention to, and they believed advertising. Not today.

People don’t pay attention to traditional advertising anymore. They “opt in” to the messages they want to receive. And according to a recent Nielsen study, 84% of smartphone and tablet owners use their devices as second-screens while watching TV. I’m one of them. I can’t remember the last time I watched TV without a second screen in my hands… Whether that was my laptop, iPad or smartphone. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I watched live TV and sat through the commercials. Maybe you’re the same way.

Your patients and prospective patients constantly move between the online and offline worlds. And social media has become DEEPLY embedded in this very fluid space.

Regardless of how someone first hears about your practice, marketing your practice almost immediately becomes digital and social. If someone recommends your practice over lunch, or receives your direct mail postcard, the first thing that happens is the smartphone comes out of the purse and your practice is checked out. Even when you make a treatment recommendation inside your practice, patients will use social media to ask their trusted friends about those recommendations—and about you.

A pediatric dentist and client of ours, Dr. Mitzi Hines, recently wrote us a note about this very thing. “We get new patients from social media, but that’s not the best part. There are lots of people out there who are looking at our Facebook page to find out what we’re ‘really like’ before they bring their son or daughter in for their first visit. Whether they hear about us from a referring dentist or from other advertising, we know almost everyone is ‘checking us out’ on Facebook.”

Which brings me to the second important thing I’ve learned about social media dental marketing…

2. Social Media Favors Small, Local Businesses — Like Your Dental Practice

Nike has 30 million Likes on their Facebook page. But typically when they post content the amount of interaction they get is proportionally low. When they recently posted about a half marathon, 684 people Liked the post and 70 people commented… Which at first glance seems pretty good, until you do the math. As a percentage of their fan base, very few people Liked the post and an even smaller percentage commented.

Contrast that with a dental practice example where the practice asked their fans to guess the date when their hygienist would deliver her baby. 21 people Liked the post and 68 people commented. Again, when you do the math, you begin to see the significant difference between the proportional level of interaction on big corporate pages vs. small business pages.

Small businesses — like your dental practice — are relationship based. Big corporations aren’t. And this brings me to the third thing I’ve learned:

3. Effective Dental Marketing Is About People, Not Media

Whoever started using the word “media” to describe social media really messed it all up for everyone and made it all very confusing. I understand what it means to be in business, and the importance of measuring the effectiveness of your marketing spend. But while big businesses earmark tens of millions of dollars crunching numbers in an effort to attribute some arbitrary dollar value to a fan, savvy small business owners seem to already “get it.” They intuitively understand the monetary value of having strengthened relationships with their customers… Especially given the tiny amount of monetary expenditure necessary to maintain and strengthen those relationships.

When you use social media as a stage for communicating your own unique practice story, through people, and through valued relationships, profound and unexplainable changes start to happen. For small businesses — like your dental practice — social media dental marketing provides a simple, systematic way to reinforce to your patients, members of your team, your community, and to YOU, that what you do each day matters. That dentistry isn’t just a commodity. That the way you practice dentistry each day makes a difference… Which in turn strengthens relationships, trust, loyalty, referrals, case acceptance and patient retention.

Effective dental marketing, especially on social media, now belongs to those dentists who care about other people, who are awake to the opportunity dental social media marketing provides, and who believe in their gut that better relationships matter. Embrace what this revolution can do for your practice. Embrace what this revolution can do for you personally.

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Our January Practice of the Month — Oak Ridge Dental Arts!

Congratulations to our January Practice of the Month — Oak Ridge Dental Arts!

Looking for inspiration on how to get your team members and patients more involved in social media? Look no further than Oak Ridge Dental Arts!

They use Social Signs, props, giveaways, and campaigns to create a fun practice environment that gets people involved and sharing. And when patients post, their friends and family see the great experience they had, introducing more new people to the practice!

But the most important thing they do to get patients to participate is this: they just ask! You may not fully believe it yet, but patients who love your practice want to help your business thrive! Two of the best ways they can do that are:

1. Snapping a photo at your practice and sharing it to their own social media accounts
2. Writing a review on Google, Facebook or Healthgrades

Because over 80 percent of adults are on Facebook, you should never assume someone doesn’t want to participate because they don’t seem like “the social media type.” You might be surprised by the patients who turn out to be your practice’s best advocates. But in order for them to spread the word, you have to present them with the opportunity to do so!

We reached out to the office manager for Oak Ridge Dental Arts, Leslie Burgin, for some insight on which social media tools have been most effective in helping them build relationships and attract new patients. Take something to apply in your own practice!

Q&A With Office Manager Leslie Burgin

(Responses edited for length and clarity.)

What has been the biggest surprise of social media marketing for you?

“We were surprised when My Social Practice featured our Boomerang video on your Facebook page! That inspired us to be more creative and do more videos in the practice. If we had to give one piece of advice to practices starting out on social media, we’d say share lots of photos and videos! Having fun props and signs to take photos with also helps get patients participating.”

How have your social media efforts benefited your practice the most?

“The number one benefit to our practice comes when patients share their experience at our practice through social media. This way, social media marketing gets our name out in a positive way to as many people as possible. Happy patients post something on Facebook from our practice, and all their friends and family see. This brings in new patients.”

What do you regularly do in the office to move your marketing efforts forward?

“Other than taking pictures and videos, we have had success with contests and giveaways, and asking patients to write us a review.”

What kind of feedback about your social media have you gotten from patients?

“Patients of all ages have fun snapping and sharing photos, and they love the signs and props that we get from My Social Practice. Our social media efforts help make the patient experience fun from beginning to end. Patients don’t see participating in our social media as advertising. They see it as having fun with friends.”

Leslie also mentioned that the hardest part of social media is finding the time to post something every day. “Our office is really busy when we have multiple doctors here,” she told us. “We get so caught up in staying on time and keeping our patients happy that it can be hard to focus on taking pics and videos to post.”

It’s true that it can be difficult to find the time to post something daily. But our easy-to-use Publisher app makes it simple! My Social Practice clients have access to the world’s largest library of dental-related social media content, with images and pre-written captions you can customize to fit your audience. Plus, you can schedule posts in advance to go out to your accounts when you choose! Get a free demo of the Publisher today!

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3 Dental Facebook Posts You Should Make This Week

“Why would anyone follow their dentist on Facebook?”

For practices approaching social media marketing for the first time, this is a question they often ask us. On the surface, teeth and oral hygiene might not seem like what people want to read about on social media. But the best strategies for creating engaging dental Facebook posts apply here just as much as anywhere else: make it relevant, personal, useful and fun!

When you provide content that makes your practice worth following, you introduce your team and culture to more potential patients, and you build relationships with current patients, helping you boost retention.

Here are three ideas for fun dental Facebook posts you can try this week:

1: Show Off a New Piece of Practice Equipment

Most people who visit the dentist have no idea what all the different machines and tools in the office are for. Create an interesting and educational dental Facebook post by briefly explaining how a piece of dental technology helps you better serve patients! Here’s an example from the practice of Dr. Greg Potempa:

2: Post a Healthy Hygiene Team Photo

We’ve seen that a great way to kickstart engagement with your dental Facebook posts is to include a photo of your team! It gives fans and potential patients a look into your practice culture and helps them connect with you on a personal level. Grab some props from around the office like toothbrushes, boxes of floss and tubes of toothpaste and snap a group photo. Tag your team members in the photo and upload it to Facebook! We love how the team at All Family Dental did it:

3: Create a Two-Minute Tour Video

According to a study by Colgate, as many as 30 to 40 million people in the USA alone avoid the dentist because of fear and anxiety. Show potential patients how welcoming and comfortable your practice is by taking them on a quick virtual tour! One of the best tools you have for your dental Facebook posts is Facebook Live on the Facebook smartphone app. With the app, you can easily create a live broadcast which will be automatically posted to your page as a video afterward! This one from Lifetime Smiles is a great example:

Being active on Facebook is one of the best ways to keep in touch and strengthen relationships with patients after they’ve walked out your door.

Your social media efforts should focus on providing value to patients — it could be by teaching them something new about hygiene, advising them of oral health dangers, or just simply making them smile! By getting creative with your team and considering patients’ needs, you can turn even the simplest dental Facebook post — like a reminder to brush and floss — into a showcase of your team and practice culture.

Tired of searching endlessly for something interesting to put on Facebook? My Social Practice clients get post ideas like this delivered to their inboxes every weekday morning, including post images, videos, links, and downloadable Social Signs! We make it easy to create a consistent feed of varied and shareable content that will make fans want to interact with you. Request a demo today!

 

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