Buying a practice? What should you look for? What pitfalls should you avoid, and how should you go about this process? Mark and Howie explain.

Podcast Highlights:

• What does the local market look like?
• What is your doctor:patient ratio?
• Is there a reason the practice is being sold?
• Criteria for moving
• Where to get demographic data
• Finding the top dental markets nearby
• The “near me” mistake
• What are you REALLY paying for?
• Goodwill and patient base
• What’s REALLY an active patient?
• What was the previous doctor doing for the last 5-8 years
• What does the team look like?
• Avoiding the “hostage situation”

Now that you have most of your marketing plan in order, how do you design your ads? We explore this concept in part 6 of our series, "Preparing for Next Year!"

Podcast Highlights

-Do you promote one thing, or multiple things at a time?
-Actual mailings vs. post cards
-The pitfalls of marketing price
-How to make effective radio spots
-Your marketable attributes
-How potential patients respond to design
-What color palettes should you use?
-Should you use more or less information?
-Price vs. benefits vs. one thing vs. many things
-How to avoid getting “shoppers”

How do you create enough patients to start doing the dentistry you love? We interview Dr. Kent Smith to find out what he did in his practice to make it happen!

Podcast Highlights

• The landscape of dentistry
• Focusing on general dentistry vs. niches
• The demographics where you will find the patients you want
• Asking "what else can I do for you?"
• Escaping the handpiece
• The importance of teaching
• How Dr. Smith was able to attract more Sleep Apnea patients
• Referrals
• Advertising dentistry without cheapening the perception of dentistry
• Attracting quality patients vs. shoppers

Now that you understand deployment planning, how will you time your campaigns? And more importantly, how will you track those campaigns and ensure that your phones are being handled properly?

Episode Highlights:

• Committing to tracking
• Online timing
• Offline timing
• Getting the most out of summer
• Getting the most out of end of use it or lose it
• Your marketing calendar
• Result tracking basics
• Phone monitoring tests to try out
• Calling back

We continue our series on how to prepare your marketing for the upcoming year. In this episode, we review risk management and lay out some deployment strategies.

Podcast Highlights:

• Budget misallocations
• Rotating services
• Deployment costs
• Avoiding the niche trap
• The biggest myth about capacity
• The numbers to look at when planning for capacity
• Maintaining predictable results
• Impressions

In part 2 of "Preparing for Next Year," we go over your assets and liabilities. What is helping? What is hurting? How do you tell?

Podcast Highlights:

• Assets you don't want to overlook
• Committing to listening to calls
• Amenities, public relations, meet the dentist
• Website checklist
• The three pillars of your marketing foundation
• A sample marketing budget

How do you make 2018 your year? With careful planning! In our next series, we walk you through the essentials for your practice's 2018 marketing plan.

Podcast highlights:

• What to do from October to December
• Why "getting bored" is the enemy
• The formula to find out how much you should spend on marketing
• Avoiding needless stress
• Should you raise or lower your budget?
• Are you at capacity? What is your definition of capacity?
• Having the right mindset going into the future
• Minimizing risk by diversifying your marketing
• What worked, what didn't, and how to tell
• Result tracking crash course
• Statistics vs. feelings

Sometimes, the truth hurts. In this episode of Dental Marketing Mastery, we interview Sandy Pardue of Classic Practice Resources about training your front desk, avoiding missed opportunities, customer retention, and more! 

Podcast Highlights:

• How dentists who invest in marketing can get more from the opportunities marketing creates
• The importance of a welcoming person on the phone
• How no phone training can mean death
• Live calling practices
• The importance of returning missed calls
• Patient retention: why patients quit
• Staff indifference
• How your leadership attitude affects staff
• Treatment and followup
• Not being afraid of facing truths
• Not degrading the customer

How do you redesign and rebuild your website? We interview Michael Barr about the subject.

Podcast Highlights:

• What can you add to your website?
• The Dental Warrior Blog: http://thedentalwarrior.com/
• What to look for
• What to ask about
• Creating unique and relevant content
• How long an upgrade takes
• Keeping organic rankings
• What has changed in the last 18 years
• The risks of getting too comfortable
• Long tail subjects
• Benefits outshine features
• Adding online reviews
• Using heatmaps

"I love dealing with insurance companies!" -- No one ever. How do you transition into being an FFS practice? Mark and Howie explain!

Podcast Highlights:

• What is the average age of a practice that starts the transition?
• How many new patients per month is "safe" before you start?
• How long does the average transition take?
• The dangers of going cold turkey on insurance
• The team-oriented approach
• How much of your revenue comes from insurance?
• Promoting your practice during and after the transition
• Which insurance companies to you get rid of first?
• Celebrating the small wins
• Targeting the right kind of patient
• Setting the right foundation of internal marketing, internet marketing, and SEO
• Where should you be promoting?
• Online scheduling and being convenient

What is the one thing every marketing company should do? Cross reference! In this episode of Dental Marketing Mastery, Mark and Howie explain how to source your new patients and get the most out of your combination of online and offline marketing metrics.

Podcast Highlights:

• What your reports tell you
• What your call tracking makes you believe
• What your front desk tells you
• What your patients tell your front desk
• How all of it is wrong
• Why all of it is wrong
• How to find out the truth and make it right
• Our ADA show special

In this episode of Dental Marketing Mastery, we talk about the best locations to set up your practice. This includes startups, dentists considering buying a practice, and dentists who are expanding.

Podcast Highlights:

• The ideal practice
• How to get demographic data
• How to find the best markets
• The three most important factors when determining location
• How to analyze a market area
• Avoiding this recipe for disaster
• Buying a new practice
• Asking WHY a practice is for sale
• Market consolidation: a valid marketing strategy
• The best time to open a new practice
• Doctor to patient ratio explained

What makes effective SEO? Why is it important? In this episode of Dental Marketing Mastery, we declutter the confusion behind SEO.

Podcast Highlights:

• The three main aspects of effective SEO
• Getting career-long return on your SEO
• Budgeting for SEO
• What is off-page SEO?
• Google algorithm changes
• On-page SEO basics
• The importance of content
• Combining social media with your SEO
• How can a dentist help his or her specialist?
• Creating websites for the dental consumer
• The split between dental content and content for your consumers
• Setting realistic expectations

We interview NPI Consultant, Lee Buzard, about his honest, no-nonsense approach to marketing dental practices. Lee has over 20 years of experience in dental marketing, including purchasing and owning multiple dental practices. He has walked in the same dental office ownership trenches that many of his clients have. He truly understands when dentists ask, "what should I do?"

Podcast Highlights:

• Dentist's most commonly asked questions
• Assets and liabilities
• Why throwing more money at a problem will not make it go away
• What goes into calculating a 100% customized marketing plan
• The importance of brutal honesty
• Asking the hard questions of your practice
• What can you expect from an advisor?
• Promoting in the right mediums
• Dentist to patient ratio

What makes a good video? That depends on what you're using it for, where it's at, and what type of video you are using. In this episode of Dental Marketing Mastery, we go into the best practices of dental marketing videos.

Podcast Highlights:

• The three types of video
• The importance of a script
• The makeup person
• Proper clothing for the camera
• How many videos is too many?
• How long should your video be?
• The meet the doctor/team video is the most viewed
• Building trust
• What NOT to do with your eyes
• The traditional video
• Where to place videos
• Reception room video best practices
• What makes good narration?
• Website video best practices
• Leveraging social media
• Animated video best practices
• Benefits of animated video
• Under-utilized mediums
• Videos for customers, not for dentists!

In this episode of Dental Marketing Mastery, we discuss marketable attributes that you may be overlooking. These attributes not only make you stand out from the crowd, but are also features that your potential new patients care about.

Podcast Highlights

• Being the family dentist in town
• Hobbies
• The big "about the dentist" mistake that most dentists make
• Should you REALLY advertise your continuing education (CE)?
• Being human
• Lectures, teaching, published works
• Being the teacher vs. the student
• Doctor street cred
• Location, location, location
• Creating familiarity
• Charity work
• Military service
• The alphabet behind your name -- should you put it there?
• Your meet the dentist page
• Testimonials and being a hometown dentist
• Utilizing social media to display these attributes

Emergencies! While some doctors do not like them, there are many reasons they should. We discuss in this episode of Dental Marketing Mastery.

Podcast Highlights:

• The macroeconomics of dentistry before and after 2008
• Cosmetic dentistry
• The drop in routine care
• The onslaught of emergencies due to missed care
• Why emergencies don't have to mess up your schedule
• How to make yourself available for emergencies
  • Internally
  • On your website
  • Emails
  • Texts
  • Reception room
  • The right dentists and operatives
  • Social media
  • Online scheduling

In this episode of Dental Marketing Mastery, we discuss how to help your marketing firm help you.

Podcast Highlights:

• Clients that have stayed with a company for years – what do they have in common
• Responsiveness
• Avoiding the waiting game
• Agreeing that the big picture involves a career-long proposal, not a one or two year proposal
• Doing multiple things correctly
• How the days of no website, minimal properties online and offline, and still get patients… are over!
• Websites
• Reviews
• Call Management
• Being honest in your own office and staff failures
• Knowing the responsibilities of the firm and the responsibilities of your office
• Being a good client
• What works vs. What looks "good"

In this episode of Dental Marketing Mastery, we discuss the importance of combining your online and offline marketing efforts.

Podcast Highlights:

• The problem with putting all of your eggs into one basket
• Offline advertising's effect on your online properties
• Over-allocating budget to a specific service you provide
• The expiration date on using PPC only
• Avoiding the "niche trap"
• Taking advantage of decreased competition in offline media
• Reallocating budget to drive more family patients
• Proper ad rotation strategies

In this episode of Dental Marketing Mastery, we discuss the differences between marketing a rural practice and an urban one. We also discuss what dentists should do if they are neither rural or urban, but more in between.

We also now have a mail bag! If you have a question that you want us to answer on our podcast, email josh@newpatientsinc.com, and we'll address your question on the podcast.

Podcast highlights:

• Geographic differences
• Media type differences
  • Internal marketing
  • Internet marketing
  • Direct mail
• What to do if you're in between rural and urban areas?
• Natural obstacles vs. man made obstacles
• Competing with other dentists in these settings
• Mediums available in rural that are not available in urban, and vice versa
• Understanding how all practices are unique
• Understanding the WHY of dental marketing

Video is one of the most underutilized mediums in Dental Marketing. So, what makes a good video? How should you use video, and what should your videos say?

Podcast Highlights:

• Types of videos
• What makes a good home page video?
• Establishing trust and respect
• Video placement
• Communicability
• Length
• What should your video say?
• Marketable attributes video
• Silent videos
• Where to use these videos
• Animated videos
• What to do if you aren't good in front of a camera
• Animated video length
• Video quality
• Quality scripting

What's this? It's the holiday season, and we are giving away four free gifts for your practice.

Here are the gifts:

1. [Book] Unlimited New Patients, Volume 3

• 211 pages, contains everything we've learned about marketing dentistry over the last 27 years.
• Can be found here: http://www.dentalwebcontent.com/npi_book_v3.html 
• Filled with practical, usable, deployable information.

2. [Score Card] Marketable Attributes Score Card

• A card for planning your marketing. Use this card to find out what your practice should be displaying in your marketing assets.
• This score card shows what patients actually care about, discovered 20 years of client results and millions of dollars of independent consumer research
• Can be found here: http://www.dentalwebcontent.com/marketable_attributes.html 

3. [7-Hour Video Series] New Patients Inc. Marketing Summit

• A 7 part, 7-hour series about marketing your dental practice.
• Get video series here: http://www.dentalwebcontent.com/marketing_summit.html 
• Is also a CE course, which can be taken for credits on www.dentaltown.com 
• Contains information from our book

4. [Marketing Plan] Have a Marketing Plan Created for You

• Get your FREE plan, created by one of our experienced advisors, here: http://newpatientsinc.com/dental_marketing_survey.html 
• Establish your new patient goals
• Includes radius analysis around your practice, looking for high-quality new patient targets
• A reasonable budget will be created
• Recommendations to make your practice more marketable
• Specific deployment instructions

Have you reflected on your marketing year? What plans do you have for the next year? In this episode, Mark and Howie discuss how to make a marketing plan that works, and how to stick to it.

Podcast Highlights:

• Assessing your marketable assets
• Assessing your website, text & email, appointment software
• Are your brochures and print material up to date?
• What are your liabilities?
• Which assets are working, and which are not?
• Setting a marketing goal
• Do you need to increase capacity or marketing?
• Setting a budget
• Budget allocation
• The fundamental channels you should be marketing in
• Sticking to the process
• Conserving resources

What is the niche trap? How can you avoid it? 

Podcast Highlights:

• Cosmetic Dentistry's past niche trap
• A budgeting error that can lead to the niche trap
• Spreading your message across your marketable attributes
• Radio spots
• Is reduced price a niche trap?
• The right messaging in your take-home pieces
• Breaking out of the niche trap with your existing ad pieces

In this episode of Dental Marketing Mastery, Mark and Howie discuss the changes that went forth for Google and how it handles reviews, and go further into depth about website and practice management software integration.