127: Marketing Digital in Today's world

Welcome to DSO Secrets. I know what it's like to be an entrepreneur in the dental industry. I've had my ups and downs, just like you. There's so much opportunity to be excited about, but so few resources to get answers. From here on DSO Secrets, we get you those answers so you can change the lives you're meant to bless and achieve your personal success.

When I was working as an associate right out of school, I never imagined I could own these many practices with this amount of support. So thank you.

You have helped build my marketing mind

to a whole new level.

You have this natural talent, this unique ability.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott. Today I have Ted Kozell, who's the chief Revenue officer for SMC National. And Ted, great to have you here. I have to tell you, it and marketing, like, if you said, what do you love? You know, more than just dentistry generally, it would be this topic. And I think really for marketing, what I love is it's at the heart of every business because without customers, you really don't need anything else. Yeah.

There is no business without them.

Yes, it is the breath of life. And so constantly improving. How to think about that piece. And I think we've seen and Gary Bird, owner, boss, so to speak, here has talked about this is marketing isn't just about getting the patients in the door. It could be about recruiting the doctors or staff and so forth. So there's a entire mindset that I want to pick your brain on and how SMC national really thinks about this. And of course, any secrets that we can steal, we always like those. So anyway, I'd love to start first. Where, where do you feel like we miss it the most in dentistry, having been in a lot of marketing?

Yeah, it's a great question and thank you for, for having me on. I think one of the biggest things I see is data not being actually data. You know, like you can report on, on any number. You can, you can, you can track just about anything with Google or with digital. But what is often missed is the connection between. Did it actually turn into something?

So it's truly like data. It's not really intelligence, so to speak. Right. That, that should be useful. Like two birds flew by. Right? It's like, okay, what do I do with that?

Yeah. It doesn't mean that you're in a forest. You can't tell that because two, two birds flew by. So it's trying to get a handle on making educated marketing decisions. Is it actually helping your business. And sometimes that can be really hard when you know the marketing channels you're using or the agency or the person who's in charge of marketing, you know, whatever that case, when they don't have either the tools or. Or don't even have the products in place to really make it successful for you, it's hard to make good decisions.

What's the ultimate data chain? Like, if you could wave a magic wand, what is the data path that you would love to know? Or at least some of them.

Yeah, no, absolutely. To me, that's an easy one because this is what I harp on with people all the time. What's your cost per lead? Meaning how much does it cost to have an actual conversation? Not a click, not a. Like I said, not all that fake stuff. How much does it cost to have a conversation?

Then the next piece, does that mean they, like, called in? Is that the conversation you're talking about? Okay.

Or if they filled out a form or talk through chat, something like that, but an actual lead number two, then what's your cost per acquisition? Because that's what it costs to get them to walk through the door. So you're not going to be 100% on the leads from lead to acquisition,

but the golden conversion number there right between the two.

Exactly. How do you shorten? How do you make that acquisition cost more in line with the lead cost? And then looking at things like phone conversion, you know, it doesn't matter how many leads you get if you don't answer the phone or they're butchering them at the front desk, it's very hard to grow the business. And you're going to be paying for more marketing than you need. Recare rate and then the actual lifetime value of the patient. And if you know those things, I think it becomes a lot more predictable to figure out that, like, I'm a business owner, I need X, it's going to deliver Y. And that's how you can make decisions moving forward.

All right, let's unpack those just a little bit. Some people already got. Exactly. And love what you said. Some were like, got a little lost in the jar again. So when we use the term lead. Right. You said, hey, that's not someone. Just how many clicks you got? It's something a little bit more of a relationship, right?

Yeah, more like this is a newer term, I think, kind of in the industry and people use different ones. Maybe opportunity is a better way of saying it. Like, what is your cost per opportunity? Meaning what does it cost to actually get in front of a human.

Now, would it be fair to say that the difference between a lead versus acquisition, if I was using dental terms, Acquisition, they made it onto the schedule.

Acquisition. In my world, the way we look at it is they actually came in the door. Like they walk through the door. Yeah.

All right, so you're going to count them as a lead from I filled out a form to I'm on the schedule, but once they walk in the door, they're a show patient.

Yeah.

They've got the acquisition. All right. So in a lot of ways, I can use different denominators, too. So I'm spending $1,000, right. Maybe I got 1,000 clicks. It was a dollar per click, maybe meaningless. So leads, hey, people actually called in, got on schedule, whatever it might be, they took action. That was the lead. 200 people did that. Okay, $1,000 divided by 200.

Your numbers going lower and lower as

you work through how many actually walked in the door, which has a lot to do. Why you started to focus on phones. Right. Because this is a place where a lot of that is lost is in that conversion.

Well, beyond that, the other thing that I see in the industry as a whole is there's a sort of a hidden trap in some of those numbers when it comes to phone conversion. Because often most marketing, the. Any way that people sort of slice it or sort of capture it, they're capturing the entirety of new patients. And so what's often in there is your referrals. And, man, you could hang up on a referral and they'll probably call you back and apologize. But, like, a marketing lead is going to be a little different. So when an office says they're converting at 80% on new patients, well, yeah, it's probably like 100% on the referrals and maybe at like 40 on the people that don't know who you are. And if you don't see that, that number gets blended together and you're potentially wasting a lot of money and resources and time.

Oh, wow. So we'll start talking about marketing channels. Another jargon, but a referral channel starting to break those up and saying, hey, you know, how much is from referrals and how much is. I mean, this is bringing real accountability to your marketing spend too, right?

Yeah. And frankly, I don't know how necessary that was pre Covid not to use, you know, the COVID as a. As a talking point like it. Like it has become for a lot of things, but it definitely has changed the referral base and the need for new patients. And it sort of created a different need for accountability for what's happening in your mark with your marketing dollars. And. And as terrible as Covid, you know, was, I think that's kind of a healthy thing that came out of. Out of that is. Is trying to understand what you have and what you don't have.

Yeah, there's a maturing that it's requiring us to go into that. Frankly, other industries have been using this terminology and tracking this stuff for a lot longer than we have.

All right.

And then you said, hey, you also have to look at the lifetime value of the patient. I'll come back to some of the other ones. But ultimately, if I'm going to make $300 off of someone, I can't be spending $800 to get them in the door. Right?

Yeah. I mean, it's pretty simple math on that. So once again, it goes back to, I think, ultimately understanding who the patient is that, you know, maybe you shouldn't be presenting all on four treatment with somebody who just met you. You know, as it's going to, it's going to create some problems in terms of converting them. So you have to kind of handle each patient type differently and maybe do a little more hand holding and take your time with a newer patient, especially when it comes from marketing.

Well, and I think this brings us to another set of jargon, which is the difference between marketing and sales. Or in health care, we call it marketing and treatment coordination. Right. And this is where marketing can get a little frustrated is, hey, we're getting the leads and, you know, acquisitions coming in the door is treatment coordination. Doing what they need to do is clinical capability there. Do we have alignment throughout the. The value chain? Right. Because the other problem you could have is patient wants all in fours. We just don't do them in this office. Right. So now we spend all this money to get this patient type in, and it's not aligned with clinical capability. So would you almost say you start with clinical capability, then out to treatment coordination, and that really informs your marketing strategy, Right?

Yeah. You know, it can be as simple as, you know, one of the things we also track is, you know, what is the average time to booking, which is an important one, because if you're looking for like, just like a cleaning, for example, like a new patient, that's that buying cycle is three to 30 minutes. You know, you're thinking about it, you're trying to find something, it fits into the schedule, you're making it work. And the sweet spot is, you know, 24 to 48 hours if you're booking people way far out. Like I like to use analogies, but this is like when I go on vacation, my wife and my three kids, we go to dinner, I walk into a restaurant, they tell me it's an hour long wait and I go, okay. And then what's the first thing I do when I step outside is look for a place that has less than an hour wait. So that's something to be considered. Now that's.

You always put your name on the schedule, Just your name on it?

Yeah. And then I'm a no show. And that's the same thing that happens in the office sometimes. So being able to accommodate patients, keeping open not only new patient blocks, but potentially new marketing patient blocks because once again, as a referral, you can treat them a little different. You know, my mom told me to call the office, I made the appointment, it's okay that it's six weeks out. I'm making a buying decision within three to 30 minutes. You want to try to make it as easy as possible and eliminate as much friction.

Now what do you think are common pitfalls then? I mean, is this number one, is just the data piece? Are there other things that, that dental practices just need to think through, like easy tick and tie stuff they should be doing?

Yeah. So I mean, Gary describes it, uses this statement, and I think it's pretty true, is that oftentimes, you know, we walk in as the marketing company because it's easy for people understand and you can bring on those patients. And it's not like there are necessarily cheaper leads or hidden leads. Like you know, in general, how much a lead is going to cost or an opportunity is going to cost. But it's, how can you, how can you shorten that acquisition. Acquisition cost. So that requires doing a little bit of digging and being able to kind of parse out your data a little better and understand what's happening. Just simple things like that, like trying to accommodate the booking, you know, trying to have, making sure you have an understanding of how your front desk is able to book calls. You know, what does that look like? Otherwise, heck, are you even answering calls? I think it's something like 30% of calls just go unanswered. Meaning like using your thousand dollar analogy, $300 is immediately out the window because you just didn't pick up the phone. So there's lots of tools, there's lots of things, but it's really like digging into the data. You know, like with, with multi office or group practice. Locations. The goal obviously should be you want to work on your business and not in your business. And this is one of those on your business things. These are the types of things you want to look at.

Well. And you have to think of it holistically. That's what I love that you keep pushing on is you can't just say, well, you buy this Google product and then it all works out. Right. It's really on understanding the patient journey, the patient experience. Because, man, you could have a thousand people calling in. And to your point, you're spending a lot of money to get those calls in. If you're not answering, if they have to wait six months, I mean, you just might as well just throw some dollars out the window, right?

Yeah. And the other problem you'll see is somebody built the website and then somebody is running leads to it. Everybody has someone to blame. The front desk says the leads are terrible. The lead company says, well, the website's not great. And the website company is like, we just built the website, it's not our problem. So the only person left holding the bag is the, is the person writing checks to three different companies.

Yeah. How do you think about website design today? You know, I notice you all are getting more into the videography. It seems like we're less and less interested in narratives and we all want to watch, you know, 10 second TikToks now. Right.

So yeah, I think anything that you can do to improve conversion should, should be taken a look at. You know, I don't think that video and photography are necessarily going to increase the quantity of visitors you have, you know, but what it is going to increase is your ability to convert or even as simple as beyond. Like if they don't watch the videos or if they're not looking at that. The second most visited page after a homepage is the about us. Because they either want to see who they're going to see or who did they just get off the phone with. So. And we all do it, we do it in other industries too. So if you take that expansion on, well, we're already kind of used to having headshots and photography and instead we're adding to it, being able to kind of expand in the storytelling and get an idea of what the experience and the culture and the feel of an office is. You know, those little changes help improve conversion.

I like how you called out the website that it doesn't do lead generation. Right. I mean it can help with some organic search options if done well, et cetera. But really you're going to drive people there and then it's going to act as this incredible business card to hopefully convert them over. Right?

Yeah, absolutely. Your website is a tool, a tool to convert, like that's what it's there for. So obviously you want to be able to show what you do and accreditations and be able to talk about, you know, the wonderful things you do through a blog and whatever pieces you have. But like, don't forget, ultimately it's a tool to help your business be successful

and it's good to call back all this cool technology. It's exactly what you said. All of us really just want a relationship. So we go to the About Us page and say, what's the human interaction going to be like? The more we can make that 3D, so to speak, real time videography versus, you know, pure narrative, the better. Right. So I love that if you're making

a decision between you and the guy down the street and I get a better impression of who you are, it stands to reason that you're going to probably get that conversion or you're more likely to if all things are equal.

All right, I'll ask you a hard one. I have a dollar. Do I spend it on social media or pay per click? And why?

I would say at this point it's still pay per click. And there's a specific reason why, because with the adwords side, you are, you're, you're buying your way into the country club to get in front of a group of people who are actively looking for what you're doing. Social media, I think has some great opportunities, particularly around brand building. And there's, there's lots that you can do with it and there's certain people that, it's absolutely people that specialize and do a great job in it. But in terms of bang for your buck, like you're, you're getting in front of people that are looking for what you're doing, which, which ultimately leads to kind of a, a good point as a whole, which is there's a lot of different pieces that ultimately lead to a conversion. Now, you know, and I'll give you an example of that. The pay per click. Let's say somebody clicks on your ad, they like what they see. What they'll often do is hit the back button, then Google the name of your practice, read your reviews and call that phone number. Was that a Google Ad conversion? No, but it was definitely a part of the process. So just that strict idea of like we're going to put $1,000 on pay per click. And $500 goes here, and this goes to SEO. It really, like, almost doesn't make sense anymore because there's this larger digital ecosystem with reviews and with social media, and you want to make sure you're doing all of it. And ultimately converting and what parts they touch or don't touch doesn't really matter as long as it's actually happening.

All right, if I'm interviewing an agency, how do I think about what I need internally versus what I should get from an agency? Because I think I'm sometimes confused by what my expectations should be.

Sure, sure. So I would say this is as great as I think SMC is. There are things that we will never be able to capture in an office. So understanding the culture, the field, being able to take photos of the Cinco de Mayo party and the Halloweens and the before and afters, all that stuff is really, really valuable and helps to build a brand, to get a good idea of how that practice functions. But to me, it's kind of like any other tool or company you'd be working with and that they specialize in something, and if they know what they're doing, it makes it easier. Like, as a homeowner, I'm allowed to pick the color of my roof, but I'm not the person that should be swinging the hammer. There's somebody that's a specialist at it. I know what I'm looking for. I know what I want, the end result. And if you go into relationship with internal or external marketing people and are both just kind of on the same page with what they're looking for, it makes it a lot easier to be accountable with what actual goals are.

It's awesome. So it's really. It's about teamwork, ultimately.

Yeah. It's great to have an internal resource because then from our side, we can do the marketing, the expertise, the things that we've done at lots of practices throughout the US over and over and over again. But then we have better assets than using stock again, because I have an agent in the field.

All right, any final thoughts? I think you've answered quite a few questions, and if you have more questions, you can put them there in the chat. Char Watson says, hi, Ted, by the way. And so, anyway, any other final thoughts or another secret you could share?

I think, and I sort of said this at the end here, but I think it's worth stating is making sure that everybody knows what the goals are. In my world, in the marketing world, goals have to be measurable. Like, yes, my goal is to be happy and my goal is to ultimately retire someday. But if you're not saying that you want X by this date or saying I need this many patients or, you know, making sure that the marketing company and you and however internal people you have as part of this, if there's not that level of accountability someone's going to be in end up being mad. And that, that gets you nowhere.

It's awesome. Ted, thank you so much. Again, I love marketing. It's the breath of life. If you have more questions for Ted, come over to our DSO Secrets Facebook page. And until next time, keep smiling.

Thank you for listening to DSO Secrets. Join our community on Facebook at DSO Secrets and get answers and resources to some of your most challenging questions. If you want to get a copy of the seven secrets of any DSO, go to our website at dsosecrets.com and we will get that emailed to you. Remember, don't go at this alone. Let us be your team while you build your team.