Welcome to Bite Size Dental Marketing, a podcast
where we talk to the most influential and brightest
minds in the dental industry. Our mission here
is very simple. We're out to create a community
for dentists, hygienists and dental enthusiasts.
where you can have access to the minds in dentistry
that are solving the problems that you are having
in your practice today. Now, whether that's dental
marketing or patient reactivation, treatment
acceptance, buying or selling a practice, or
even just where the future of dentistry is going
with all the technological advancements we're
seeing and the pace at which the industry is
moving, we want to create a place where you have
understanding. and have a roadmap on the small
steps that you can take to make a practice better
today so that you can feel it in your production
and the joy of the work you do tomorrow. Enjoy.
Welcome to Bite Size Dental Marketing. Today
we have Justin Strong. Justin is the founder
and CEO at Room 118. Been in the industry a long
time and I love a good origin story. Justin,
let's have it. How'd you end up starting a company
and what in the world got you into dental marketing?
The short version is it's an homage to my grandfather.
So my grandfather's named Roy. He was born in
1911. I'm in Utah. He was born here in Utah.
And he was born into poverty. When he was six,
I think seven years old, his father, who was
a miner, died in the mines and he became the
man of the house at six years old. Kind of went
through the Depression and just had a really,
really impoverished life as a child. And by the
time he died, he built this sort of small empire
here in Utah. Nothing grand, but he built two
hotels, several apartment houses, and a bunch
of other things. All self -taught. He was not
formally trained as an engineer or anything like
that, but he did a bunch of engineering projects.
And the centerpiece was a hotel called the Best
Western Rome Inn in Provo, Utah. It doesn't exist
anymore. They tore it down to do some other development.
But as a kid, myself and my cousins worked there.
That was sort of, you know, kind of a rite of
passage for a lot of the cousins was to come
in and work at this hotel, mowing lawns, doing
maintenance stuff and everything else. And in
the hotel, there was a converted room that was
room 118. It was formerly a guest room, but we
turned it in or my grandfather had turned it
into a workshop. And basically at the hotel,
if something was broken or if we needed to fix
something, we all went to room 118 and that's
where we fixed the problems. So room 118 is literally
an homage to that room at that hotel that my
grandfather built. That is a great story. When
you think about branding and its implications
in marketing and as you've gone through your
own company. What are the high points and where
do you see practices lose their way a bit? So
if you're a practice owner, trying to understand
what quote unquote good marketing is, is kind
of a first principle challenge. Because if you
don't know the answer to that, you're kind of
at the mercy of others that know more than you.
And hopefully their intentions are good. And
I think mostly they are. But you don't necessarily
know how to act on that information. So three
years ago, we decided to come up with. What we
wanted to be the single authority on dental marketing
when it came to data. So in 2023, we launched
the first version of what we called then the
Dental Digital Marketing Index. We've shortened
that to just the Dental Marketing Index today.
And at that time, we looked at a thousand dental
practices that were statistically representative
of the 50 large major metro markets in the U
.S. And we looked at anything we could observe.
So we looked at, you know, we went to their websites,
we cataloged what was the content, the structure,
the organization, the type of, you know, did
they have custom illustrations? Did they have,
you know, stock photography? Did they have videos?
All of that stuff. We ran it through a bunch
of tools to determine, you know, how good is
the website in terms of its performance? Is it
code heavy? We looked at their social, you know,
how big is their profile? How many followers
do they have? How often do they post? We looked
at their SEO performance. We looked at paid.
We looked at their referrals, their reputation,
all of that. And we came up with, at the time,
we were pretty proud of it. Nobody cared but
us. But we had this sample of about 4 .4 million
data points that represented those thousand practices.
So that gave us a chance to kind of crack open
that black box and just say, objectively, for
some practices or for most practices, this is
what marketing means. It's about 350. web visits
a month from search. It's a domain authority
of seven to eight. It's probably somewhere between
150 and 200 followers, things like that. And
today, the most recent version, we've gotten
a bit more sophisticated in the size of the sample
and the way that we're sampling. And we're marrying
that with something that we're calling the super
practice blueprint. And all that is, is a fancy
way of saying we've built some models that can
look at all of that data at scale. And then look
at an individual practice and just say, okay,
you have a practice in Des Moines, Iowa. Des
Moines, Iowa has this population. It has these
demographics. It has these growth characteristics,
so on and so forth. That maps to a certain demand
model in terms of you're going to have lots of
ortho or you're going to have lots of implants
or you're going to have a lot of GP or whatever
it is. And we can help you understand where your
practice sits today objectively. We can score
you on all these things and say, your practice
is doing great, or your practice needs some help,
or you're like right in the middle. And then
objectively say, if you want to increase your
performance by 5%, let's say you want to add
another patient a month on average, or you want
to add 50 patients a month on average. We can
help you understand, is that possible in your
local market? And then objectively, based on
the data, What would you have to do for that
to be true? So that's sort of a quick high level
of the index itself. And we thought that that
was a need in the industry because it doesn't
really exist, at least not in an accessible way
for practice owners and DSOs. I have two questions
to answer them in any way you want. Number one,
how did you approach the correlation and causation
problem that begins with that much data? So,
you know, you need... Uh, successful practices
need two to 300 visits from paid media. I think
he said, you know, is that, is the 200 to 300
visits drive the success of the practice or was
a successful practice of sort of capturing those
anyway, right? Yeah. And the second question
is, how are you tying it to like a P &L performance
or were you morally looking at marketing analytics,
if you will? I'll start with the second because
it's both easier and more difficult to explain,
so I'll try to get it out of the way. We've pulled
data from the ADA, from some of the individual
specialty organizations, and then from dental
economics and a few others to build pricing models
across the country. So we have a state -by -state
pricing model that basically says, on average,
there are these number of procedures for for
example, diagnostic and preventative care. There's
going to be this many in the state of Maryland
on average. There's going to be this many that
are restorative, this many that are prosto and
so on and so forth. And then we can look at the
survey data that says, well, in that state, they
tend to price high, low or in the middle. And
then we also look at the price elasticity in
that state to say the 50th percentile versus
the 90th percentile pricing has a big range or
a little range. All of that goes into a model
so we can say, well, the average cost of a procedure
of a certain type in the state is going to be
X number of dollars. And then the demographics
are going to have an impact on that. Is it an
affluent market? Is it an affordability -focused
market? Is there lots of public insurance? Is
there a lot of private insurance memberships?
All of that stuff. So we can look at that and
give us a baseline to say, well, this is what
we should be getting transactionally from a win.
We can look at information on if it's a GP. We
can look at the average life cycle of that patient
and that win to say, okay, they're going to make
this much on the procedure. They're going to
have a 65 % adoption rate for them to enter their
active patient pool. And then they'll continue
to make money for some number of time. If it's
a specialist, probably going to be more incidental
in terms of that. But that gives us our baseline
to say, well, this is what the result was. So
we can use that in your baseline ROI calculation.
When it comes to modeling the top of the funnel,
I think you're spot on. It's one of the biggest
challenges is, okay, let's say in a given market,
there is 10 searches, just to keep the math simple.
Let's say there's going to be 10 searches on
the term dentist near me. And let's say, and
this is something that we see pretty consistently
in this super practice model, one practice is
going to swallow up six of those 10 searches
on average. Another practice is going to swallow
up two. Another practice is going to swallow
up one. And the remaining small portion of that
is going to be parsed out among the next six
practices and so on and so forth. Well, how do
you know that those six searches that went to
that super practice, how do you know that they
did anything with it, right? How do you actually
understand that? That's your question on correlation.
We have to have an inference model because we
don't have, we can't crack inside each practice
and say, show us exactly what happened. And in
fact, Even if we had access to it, they probably
couldn't tell us exactly what happened because
they can have trouble doing attribution. Our
model basically does high -level correlation
on a top -of -funnel activity. We have an assumption
on conversions that basically says, okay, once
this engagement has occurred, if I clicked on
an ad, if I clicked on a search result, if I
clicked on paid placement on social, whatever
the source of engagement is, We then profile
those websites and say, okay, here's what we
do know about a website that has this kind of
content that performs in this way. The conversion
rates should be in this range. And so we do jump
and make an assumption on this amount of engagement
results in this amount of conversion, which should
then introduce the number of unqualified leads
that hit the practice. When you look at the six
points from the index, Which ones do you find
that dentists tend to do well in and which ones
are underrepresented? So really good question.
When we, in its current instance, the way we
sort of go about defining marketing, we say there's
a top of funnel. That's the first pillar. There's
a middle of funnel. That's the second pillar.
And then there's basically a sales portion, a
sales component. Practice by practice, we rarely
see anybody do well like on everything, right?
There's usually what we'll see is we'll see a
practice that maybe is really good at social.
And so they have worked hard to build up a large
following base on Facebook, Instagram, whatever
their platforms are that they're using. They're
posting regularly and the engagement from those
posts is consistent and well above average. That's
one example of something we see all the time.
But we rarely see that person also killing it
on like SEO, right? They're not driving necessarily
a proportional amount of performance when it
comes to something outside of that. But very
occasionally, and this is usually like a group
practice where you can tell they've thrown a
lot of resources at it. We will see some folks
that do well across the board on multiple things.
When I think through the website, the SEO, the
Google reviews, social engagement, paid ads,
And then, you know, the last one is, which ones
do you see they tend to over -index or spend
too much time on? Maybe because it's sexy. You
mentioned social right out of the gate, right?
Which ones do they, you know, oh, it may not
be interesting or they tend to under -index the
importance of it, right? I don't think this is
really to the fault of anybody. I think the absence
of good information makes it difficult to make
these decisions. But we see lots of money spent
on websites that we don't think does anything.
There's a case in point. There's a practice in
New Jersey that has, I mean, a horrendous looking
website. It is ugly. It's unpleasant to experience
this website. And it drives something like 16
,000 clicks a month on organic search because
they have found the way to hack whatever. in
their local search market with Google, they have
found the right combination of this is the content,
this is the way it's laid out. The engagement
on the content is good. Their authority is really,
really high. All of the stuff behind the scenes
is fantastic. But when you go to that website,
you're like, this is terrible. Then you go to
a website that, and there's one, when we profiled
this example in particular, we looked at the
few that were around it. Beautiful, beautiful,
full bleed video, custom everything, just, I
mean, rollover effects and just this lush marketing
experience on the website. And it was terrible
in terms of its SEO performance. And so I think
one of the things we see objectively is you probably
should spend the big, at least initially, the
biggest portion of your marketing budget, I would
argue, on your website for a whole host of reasons.
But people think that means it looks beautiful
and it looks in a certain way and all of that,
which matters to a point, but not to the exclusion
of there's certain, you know, it's like having
a balanced diet. There's a bunch of stuff they
need to have done that maybe they don't think
about. You mentioned, you know, defining dental
marketing in the absence of information makes
it hard. I find that, you know, as... As business
owners, we hear some anecdotal story about how
someone had success. And I love the one about
mailers. Like my buddy did mailers 10 years ago
and generated 287 new patients for, and you know,
I'm going to do mailers in my mail. That was
10 years ago. He was in El Paso, Texas. You're
not like, how are you having conversations around
this multi -channel attribution world? where
we really like bite -sized nuggets of, just give
me the thing that, Justin, just give me the thing
that works, like what should I do? How are you
having those conversations? I think by, that's
where the data is helpful because it's one of
the challenges, and this is part of why we wanted
to produce this index to begin with. One of the
challenges, you know, if I'm in that conversation
and I walk in cold and somebody says, well, I
heard somebody do this, Justin, why shouldn't
I do it? I had a client do this three weeks ago.
And I just said, I don't doubt that that person
had that success. But that does not necessarily
mean you will have that success on its own. When
we look at the data at scale, I'm going to pull
out mailers because there's not great statistically
representative examples. I love the story because
when you're dealing with a mailing company, the
only answer is more mailers. Right. It's saturation.
Of course. Why not? Why not? It didn't work the
first time. They're like, no, you need to spend
more money. Which, by the way, always the best
answer, didn't work, but we need to spend more
money. That's right. That's right. I think one
of the things, going back to this notion of a
super practice thing, if we plot all those thousand
practices on any dimension, And I'm going to
go back to SEO as an example, because it's one
that most people hear a lot and I think has efficacy.
If we look at all thousand practices, we plot
them on a chart, their monthly search traffic.
And it gets different when you talk about unbranded
versus branded and some of the other things.
But if we just kind of keep it simple, we'll
see a curve, not unexpectedly. On the left -hand
side at the one percentile cohort is the lowest
performance. And if we just then rank them in
terms of performance, we see a nice curve develop.
The nature of that curve is sort of like the
Pareto principle, a little bit on steroids. And
that curve is really flat until you get to about
60 to 70 percent, depending on the metric. And
then after 70 percent, it starts to climb. And
by 80 percent, it's getting near vertical. And
at 90 percent, it just goes off the chart. And
so what's happening is that, you know, you talk
about that one person that had that great experience
on mailers. They're that person on the end of
the chart that's going off into space. What we
then have to ask ourselves is, well, in your
market, is that even possible? And is it statistically
replicatable? Can we see the constituent components
that went into a program that tend to result
in that kind of performance? In some cases, we
had very loose correlations, and so we don't
make those recommendations. But in the case of
something like SEO... It's really clear, like
there's super high correlation between what we
call cumulative backlink authority, just the
sum total authority score of all the backlinks,
excluding toxicity and other things. The type
of content they have, the relationship of total
number of pages on the website to pages that
rank on SEO. We look at those metrics and we
can see a very strong correlation to the amount
of traffic they're going to drive. But to your
point about mailers as well. What about the local
market? Is there enough search even occurring
that if you capture 60 % or 70%, is it going
to drive whatever it was, the example you have
280 new patients or something like that? Our
approach is to scientifically look at that local
market and tell you, well, this is how much should
be coming every month in your local market. This
much should be coming from search. dive into
search. This is how much from organic, this is
how much from paid search, this is how much from
local search results going to maps and so on
and so forth. Same thing for paid display, same
thing for social, so on and so forth. And unfortunately,
I love the focus of the podcast where it's like,
well, let's keep this bite -sized. It's really
difficult. It's sort of like telling somebody,
just do this one thing and you'll have perfect
oral care. It's not quite that simple. There
are nuances to doing it well, but I think reducing
the complexity Your example of I had this one
person do this one thing well, that is the right
way to do it. Don't boil the ocean. That's the
other thing. Don't try to do all marketing all
at once at the same time and have reasonable
expectations. Do a few things well. Work with
your agency or whoever's working on your marketing
and do those few things well. Measure them. Get
the performance up high. And don't take on something
else until you have one thing sorted out. Would
you say the base of that is the website? I mean,
if you don't have a great website, can you have
great social without a great website? If you
have amazing reviews, is the website the nucleus
of this effort, in your opinion? Absolutely.
I mean, just empirically based on the data. I
mean, of the entire data set that we have now,
something like less than 1 % don't have a website.
There's some that just have social profiles.
There's some that just have GMB profiles, things
like that. Those are rare. But again, if we come
back to this notion of if you think about your
local market, all of the people that could become
your patients, let's again, to keep the math
simple, let's say there's 10 people that could
become patients. Well, statistically for a GP,
three of them are going to find you by search.
One of them will find you by a generalized display
ad. Three to four are going to find you by referrals.
And then, you know, one or two are going to find
you by what I would call legacy, like your mailers
or your bus reps or whatever people are doing.
If you don't have a website, almost 80 % of that,
maybe even more than that, basically disappears.
If you don't give them a destination to go to,
and you don't more specifically give the things
that are giving them that information, like Google,
a destination to go through, you're in a lot
of trouble. And it's not enough just to have
the awareness piece. It's also converting them
once they go to the website. So part of it is
having a website. that people can go to, a destination,
and it needs to be built well, it needs to have
landing pages and other things for you to do
testing, it needs to have all of that. It needs
to convert those people. And then the last thing
is, and this is something that I think is probably
not going to be top of mind for most practice
owners, it is your greatest source of analytics.
It is the nexus of anything else that you're
doing, if you've structured things well, I would
say most practices are doing themselves a disservice.
If they don't have a website that helps them
understand what works and what doesn't work.
Can you dig into that a little bit for me? If
like, how would I, if I'm a practice owner, how
would I understand the analytics? I mean, you
know, someone's throwing bounce rates and these
terms at me, right? What is it that I'm looking
for? The real rough statistical rule of thumb
we put out there for kind of what you want to
see on a website or just in marketing in general
is. Whatever the engagement rate is for the top
of funnel, so when I say top of funnel, again,
somebody that does a search, somebody that sees
something on a social post, whatever, those dynamics
have a lot of chaos about them. But once they
hit the engagement level, once they hit the website,
we kind of want to see a 3 -3 -3 ratio. We want
to have... Of the people that hit the website,
we want to have about a 3 % conversion rate across
the board. And when I say conversion rate, I'm
saying they have a phone call to your practice,
they complete a form, or ideally you have a dynamic
scheduler and they can schedule their own console
right there. Of those, those we generally consider
to be unqualified leads from a marketing standpoint.
They've expressed interest, but you have not
yet determined if they are actually a fit for
your services or the type of patient you want.
Probably they are, but maybe they're not. If
you have a high specialty practice like you do
in implants or something like that, you might
be very particular about who you want to see.
Once that happens, we want to see at least a
one -to -three ratio of folks turning into what
we consider qualified leads. We sell them what
they need and we want them as a patient. The
last angle is when you talk about case presentation,
outside of things like, you know, your run rate
preventative and diagnostic, but for your more
high dollar things like implants or prosto or
perio, we want to see a case acceptance rate
of about one in three as well. So on the website,
I would want to, I would, and Google Analytics
is a bit technical, I think for most folks, but.
However you choose to do this, I would want to
see of the folks that hit the website and have
a... However you choose to do this, I would want
to see of the folks that hit the website, a scheduler,
and then identify where I have a blockage or
where I have underperformance, and that's where
I would put my focus. You mentioned online scheduling,
which... Every dentist I've ever met thinks their
schedule is some unique flower that only they
can replicate. I mean, obviously we love online
scheduling. How do you see it progressing over
the next few years? And I mean, you said hopefully
they have online scheduling when you were talking
earlier. How are you integrating it in and where
are we going with it today? Because today I believe
most practices, The online schedulers really
request an appointment, and then the practice
has to call back and confirm, and there's a level
of overhead there that they dislike. I think
there's just a changing reality, and you can't
stop it. So 29 % of practices in our index have
a scheduler of some kind, and I would define
a scheduler as I can pick a time, not I request
a time. So that number is up from a few years
ago because I think it was about 17 or 18 percent.
There is a trend where more practices are having
online schedules. But you're absolutely right.
When I've talked to practice owners, I hear the
same thing. This idea of I want to control my
schedule, which is a totally I would want to
do the same thing. The problem is your patient
base, your prospective patient base isn't going
to tolerate that. This gets into a much deeper
conversation about some of the other trends data
that we've looked at. But in 2023, one of the
big takeaways of the report was something we
called the near me wave. And so we looked at
35 ,000 keyword search terms and indexed them
to, you know, this is this type of procedure,
this type of procedure. This is talking affordability.
This is talking convenience. The one that destroyed
everything was proximity based search near me.
Right. So we looked at dentist as a search term
since 2010. Then we looked at dentist near me.
In 2010, nobody was searching dentist near me.
Smartphones had just started to really become
a thing. And so you have this search term of
dentist getting like a million and a half hits
a month across the entire country. And today
it's like two million hits a month. Had this
slow, gradual increase. When you look at dentist
near me, has this increase, and then it's something
like three million hits a month now. It overtook
everything. It went from not being how we search
to the only way we search or the primary way
that we search. That speaks to a focus on convenience.
That speaks to, I am prioritizing convenience
probably over quality of care, to be perfectly
honest. A scheduler's part of that, right? The
scheduler's convenience. And if you take that
convenience away from them, they're just going
to move on to the next thing. And the last thing
I would say about that, if we go back and look
at data from 25 years ago, For a GP, I think
your average life cycle in time for most GPs
was 15 or 16 years for a patient, right? You
got a new patient, they stuck around for a while.
Today, there's a lot of chaos in the numbers
on this, but the number we see now is about 72
months. So that means this is happening more
often, which means the opportunity to find a
new dentist is happening more frequently than
it used to, which means this preference towards
convenience is actually going to magnify where
patients go. So if you're a practice that got
away with, I don't have a scheduler, even today,
you may be like, oh, it's fine. It's not a big
deal. But you're shedding patients that you don't
know. And the guy down the street from you that
does have a scheduler is taking up more of them
than you are yourself. It's really critical.
What are you seeing as the trends of why are
we changing dentists? Are we moving more? Are
we just impatient? Are we cycling through different
insurance plans more quickly? Do we just have
the comparison game of someone's going to a better
dentist? What's the story behind the rapid change?
We call this the Karen effect in the 2023 report.
All right. Basically, the barriers to selecting
a new dentist are falling down. It used to be
kind of a pain, right? Like 25 years ago, like
when I opened up the yellow pages. The paperwork
alone. Yeah. The paperwork alone is enough to
deter me. And so it's like, okay, I had a bad
experience, but it's not worth it. I'm not going
to do it, right? So it just didn't happen as
much. Today, it's like, I didn't like the wallpaper
and content of practice. So I'm going to walk
out and find a new practice. It's going to take
me 30 seconds to get. 25 options that are close
by. GMB, my business, is going to give me a proxy
for trust by looking at the value of their scores
and their reviews. It's just easier. And when
I talk about the Karen effect, all of the technologies
that have made things easier for us, I can buy
something on Amazon, it shows up tomorrow, all
of that stuff, it's just changed our behavior
as consumers. We're more demanding, we're less
tolerant of things we don't like, and those things
have made it so that we can make that change.
If for whatever reason, if I just want to make
a change with my dentist, it's just easier than
it's ever been. I've always struggled to, as
just a rank and file consumer, it is so difficult
to gauge. And I'm interested in your opinion
on this. I don't know that there is an industry
where you have these typically introverted business
owners being dentists. Right. They get into it
because it's the art and the blending of science
and the crafting of your hands. And then you're
a real business owner right first. And 10 or
15 years ago, I believe that if you were a great
clinician and an average business owner, you
ran a good operation. I think today. If you're
a great clinician and an average business owner,
you're probably a good employee for a DSO at
this point. Yes. What has happened? Is it just
we're just more complex? Is it the world's moving
faster? Because the stories of there's a dentist
out there that has a bad website with no reviews
and they're killing it is getting rarer and rarer.
And quickly. That rarer and rarer is happening
faster and faster. So many conversations around
this. I want my dentist to be a really good clinician,
first and foremost. We all do. We all do, right?
Like, I don't want that whoever, he or she, I
don't want them to be focused on, I'm the best
business manager on earth. No, I want them to
give me the best care possible. So I look at
that and I'm like, I'm really sympathetic to
this issue. And it used to be, again, going back,
you know, 25 years and in some cases longer,
some cases shorter, you hung a shingle out, you
had services we all needed. Just focus on giving
good care. And, you know, if you hang that shingle,
we will come. We will get there. That's just
not the world today. You brought up this notion
of consumer behavior, and I think you are spot
on. That behavior, like if you look at search
trends, search trends are blowing up. Massive
search volume. The population's not changing
that fast. It's behavior that's changing, and
it's changing radically. Today, I think the challenge
that a practice owner faces is, well, how do
I remain focused on being this really good clinician,
but not ignore the fact that I'm also running
a business and I can't pretend that there isn't
value to investing in that business? And I actually
think, you know, right or wrong, I was on another
podcast recently and we were talking about this
issue of. Is it good or bad that DSOs are on
the rise? You know, they continue to swallow
up more and more of the local practices. And
my thought is, I think it's a normal, healthy
thing. And I think like a lot of things, there'll
be some balance that's introduced in the market
at some point. But the DSOs are introducing scale
and sophistication that your local practices
can't necessarily compete with. I think the answer
to that is... There needs to be more tools and
resources that are, and I think this is the biggest
term, accessible to a practice owner. There's
really smart marketers out there. But if I don't
understand them or I don't like them or something,
you know, that's not going to help me. And I
don't need somebody that's really smart at marketing.
I just need somebody to solve this problem so
I can go back to being a good clinician. So I
think there is this tenuous relationship between
DSOs and the local practices that are actually
going to help both in the end. Yeah, it's not
a fun place to be when you're having to try to
feel like you have to pick between being a business
manager and a really good dentist. No, it's a
tough place to be. And you need no other data
point on how effective DSOs are becoming in marketing
in that when you looked at DSOs seven years ago,
they were hiring, I'll say their CMOs and their
leadership in marketing were people from dental,
which I think is great. That's fine. But now
they're bringing in Procter & Gamble alums. They're
bringing in these people from outside the market
because if you're in consumer packaged goods
or you're in some other form of industry, you
understand multi -chain attribution and you're
bringing a level of sophistication to marketing
that just didn't exist in dentistry. It's been
hanging a good website and, you know. I would
say not only did it not exist, but the economics
weren't there to support it, right? There's a
cost to doing that level of marketing. And you
talk about, you know, somebody like Procter &
Gamble, somebody that does, you know, massive
consumer products. They are their own ecosystem
in their own right, right? Like, you know, they
have more data on one product line than the whole
industry of dental has collectively, right? You
know, and so DSOs, I think, do bring that level
of resource focus because the economics start
to make sense. Personally, I don't want to live
in a world where it's all DSOs. I also don't
want to live in a world where they don't exist.
I do think that it's a competitive aspect that
is going to ultimately help everybody in the
end, but it's going to be a challenge to endure
it over the next several years. Well, I think
you go back to the… It's not the strongest that
survive or the fastest that survive. It's the
most adaptable to change. And the DSOs have raised
the bar on the quality of care that you need
to radiate. Now, I'm not saying you can't have
quality of care, but I want to get into video
content as we talk about this, but that's one
area that I find the dentists don't want to do.
No one enjoys being on video. But yet, saying,
telling me the technology you have, telling me
you have a cone beam is great, but so do I can
hit seven iron from cone beam to cone beam to
cone beam. Right. It doesn't differentiate you.
And what does that even mean to your prospective
patients anyway, right? Yeah. Yeah. You had a
quarter million dollars to burn. I don't know
what it means. Yeah. We've talked about DSOs.
We've talked about the changing market. We've
talked about, you know, the... marketing index.
Where do you see dental marketing evolving? How
do you see it growing over the next two to three
years with the consumer demand? I think that
in the same way that this has happened across
other industries where you have a very homogenous
SMB slice like dental. One of the things I like
about dental, one of the reasons the index is
even possible is we have 135 ,000 dental practices
in the U .S., 115 ,000 of them are GPs. They
have a lot of similarities in terms of their
needs and so on and so forth. When we look at
other, this is the same issue has been happening
to. broader healthcare for 25 years anyway, right?
A lot of your local doctor's offices have been
absorbed into much larger organizations. And
that trend, I mean, with private equity, that
goes into everything from car dealerships and
plumbing companies to all kinds of things. So
this trend that's happening in dental, I think
it's not a new thing. So we can kind of have
some learnings from that. I do think... I do
think the big changes that are going to come
is just we have to have the ability to manage
complexity. And to your point, that requires
adaptability. There's a lot of folks that don't,
not a lot of folks, I would throw myself into
this. I don't like change that I didn't instigate.
I don't like it when the world changes and I
didn't get my permission to do that. But that
is just going to happen. It's going to happen
faster and faster. And if your adaptability is
a muscle, you need to get comfortable. If you
want to run a practice, you need to get comfortable
with that. That's just a fact. Not having that
focus on adaptability and staying current on
what's happening is sort of like saying, I want
to be a dentist, but I really don't like teeth.
I'm just not going to – no, you have to do –
that's just something that's part of the deal.
And I think you hit on it. A lot of folks that
are really good clinicians that are okay at running
a practice, they're probably going to continue
to face this question of, do I sell my practice
to a larger organization? I think, though, the
blessing and the curse in all of this is there
are – when you look at technologies over time,
complexity comes up. And then the complexity
comes down. You have these really state -of -the
-art things that were built for very specific
things and very high -end uses, and then they
get consumerized. That's happening with dental
tools and marketing technologies more broadly.
The index itself is part of that. We're trying
to be a part of that conversation about reducing
complexity and giving tools to folks so they
can make good decisions. And I do think, though,
I mean, that your question also leads into like,
well, what are the other trends in the next five
to 10 years that really are going to hit practices?
And, you know, and I don't know if you want to
go there or not, but there's some big ones I
think that everybody kind of knows about, but
they do need some attention. Mobile, like, I
got to ask you a question. How many of the folks
that you talk to think that mobile is important
to their marketing? It would be hard for me to
give a number. They hear it and repeat it. I
don't believe they understand what mobile first
means or mobile. I think they're repeating words
like saying, I need to advertise on TikTok. I
think it's a similar, they'll say the words because
I think they're repeating something, but I don't
know that they really understand the impact of
mobile. So it's unlimited. Based on what you've
seen and what you observed with your own experiences,
how much traffic to a practice's website is mobile?
Oh, gosh. Near 100. 87, I'm going to guess. It's
on the lowest end samples we've seen, it's in
the mid 80s. And it's like 94, 95 % for most
practices. And so you talked about video earlier.
And I was on Costas' podcast a couple of years
ago on this, and he said something to the effect
of, well, I thought video was something that
Google liked. And I'm like, it depends. Optimize
video that's delivered crisply, quickly, and
is part of an experience. Yes, that increases
engagement time. That's time on site. Google
sees that. They're going to increase your authority
score. But if I had this big, beautiful panoramic
video that is now sliced into this tiny thing.
And 95 % of my traffic is going to get this really
suboptimal experience. Actually, video is bad.
And so when we talk about the future in industries
outside of dental, we've been shouting mobile
first for 15 years. And even those industries
struggle to really adhere to that. No question.
And I think it begins with when a developer starts
building a site, they're doing it on a 38 -inch
monitor. Yep. I almost feel like those dev environments
need to basically take away the ability to build
on anything but mobile and then create tools
to make that mobile experience extensible to
a desktop. It's just, I don't understand why
that's still an issue. So mobile isn't changing.
And you talked about making video for TikTok.
We're doing so much stuff on our phone that...
The old school approach was I'm going to build
a website that when somebody decides they want
to have dental services, they need help. They're
going to go to that website. I'm going to show
them what I do. They're going to click on something
and they're going to call us. They're going to
schedule whatever. That's not what's happening.
I'm on my phone. I see something on TikTok or
I see something on Instagram. I then cruise on
over to your website for five seconds, like what
I see, but I'm not in a position to want to do
something right then and there. So I'm going
to go back to what I was doing. And then at a
later date, I'm going to find you with a branded
search or something like that. Mobile is so important.
You just have to think about engaging with your
world as if the only window was that mobile device.
I think that's first and foremost. I would also
throw out that there is a change in SEO. We're
seeing this and our models are being updated
with this version of the DMI. Search is no longer
just search. And I think you can speak to this
probably better than I can. But if somebody does
a search for dentist near me, What do you see?
Oh, I mean, Google has rolled out new map packs.
There's sponsored. There's, you know, frequently
asked questions. There's also information sort
of suggestions. Yeah, the organic result is getting
pushed further down and down the page. Exactly,
exactly. So, like, I still, our research still
supports the notion that About 30 -ish percent,
it'll drop or increase based on population density
and a few other things. But basically about three
in 10 of your new patients probably found you
on search, but the experience on search is not
what it used to be. And so the idea that I need
to take this approach of what I did 10 years
ago, I have content that's engaging. I really
focus on my authority score for that content.
I really make sure that it's trusted and all
of that. nobody's scrolling down to it anymore.
It's all going to the map. And so most of that
30 % that's coming from search, if you drill
into that, a huge piece of that is never leaving
that map path experience, right? You're just
seeing these are all the dentists near me. I'm
going to make a quick decision based on how close
and the scores that I see. And maybe I won't
make a final decision. But I'm going to exclude
a whole bunch of stuff that maybe used to perform
really well on mobile. So we look at that and
we say, managing your GMB profile is now just
as important as managing your website to search
performance. And if you don't have a really good
GMB profile, you're doing yourself a disservice.
If you put money into your website, absolutely
make sure your GMB profile looks good. You've
got good reviews. You've got review solicitation.
The last one is, again, kind of obvious, but
it's AI. Before I say anything, I want your thoughts
on what do you think AI is going to do in the
next five to 10 years to this whole experience?
My belief is when it comes to raw marketing,
understanding your consumer is where we need
the most help. So in the next five years, I will
say that AI is probably going to make a good
marketing message more effective. in the channels
I can reach and, you know, the ability to generate
content and script out a video or consume a podcast
more quickly is where I would say it's going
to be. I think it's going to accelerate people
that have a good plan or a good understanding
of their consumer will make better use of it.
The people that don't will probably just replicate
a poor message over and over. Probably how I
would say a dental marketing. Yeah. I think I
agree with all that. The thing about AI that
I think is most interesting that will impact
dental is AI is, and I think this was always
the point of an LLM, of a large language model,
AI is going to be specific to you. it's going
to know you. It's going to know me. It's going
to know anybody that it's interacting with. It's
going to know your preferences, your fears. It's
going to know what food you like. It's going
to know, do you have sleep apnea? Like it's going
to know everything about you and it's never going
to require them for, if they have a question
on, I want to find a new dentist, I'll never
have to go to a website. I'll never have to look
at Google reviews. I'll never. I will trust that
AI, right or wrong, I will trust that AI in almost
everything that it's doing because it knows me
so well and I don't want the inconvenience of
having... To me, that's the long game here that
folks need to start to prepare for. In the same
way that your marketing was meant to ultimately
speak to consumers going through various channels,
we need to start thinking about how that marketing
builds authority and communicates to an AI platform.
Justin, from the story about Roy to hotels to
correlation causation, the 80 -20, man, we've
covered a lot of ground here. Thank you so much
for being on the show. I would love to have you
back and dig deeper into some of these topics.
Thank you so much for your time and for being
out there trying to make the digital dental world
a better place. I appreciate you taking the time
and hearing me talk about some of my passions.
So thank you, Eric. I appreciate it. It's been
great. And that was your bite of dental marketing
for the day. And the most important thing is
don't listen to the episode and do nothing. We
record these episodes so that you can take it
and make a real difference in your dental practice.
So take the advice we've given you. apply the
action, do what you need to do and make the difference
in your business. And if you need some help,
painfreedentalmarketing .com or listen to a couple
more of our episodes so that you know what you
need to do to put the best foot forward and make
that difference in your practice.