Building Patient Loyalty and Trust Is Essential To Practice Growth
According to a 2020 Gallup Trust in Honesty and Ethics poll, only 61% of Americans say that dentists’ honesty and ethical standards are high. No wonder people have such a hard time finding and choosing a dentist!
In this webinar, Blake Hadley, President of My Social Practice, and Jared Parente, CEO at Dental Warranty discuss strategies you can implement to build trust, peace-of-mind, and loyalty online and in your practice.
Webinar Presenters & Learning Objectives
Blake Hadley
President of My Social Practice
Blake is the President of My Social Practice, a digital marketing agency specializing in dental social media marketing. Blake is a renowned graphic designer winning many awards and also a brilliant social media marketer.
Blake lives in Holladay, Utah with his lovely wife and three children.
Jared Parente
CEO of Dental Warranty
Jared is the CEO of Dental Warranty, a company which provides protection plans on dental treatments. Jared has a several years of experience in marketing and sales. Dental Warranty is the leader in providing dental warranty’s in the industry.
Jared has been involved helping practices build trust, increase case acceptance, and grow.
Webinar Script
Blake Hadley:
All right. We’re going to go ahead and get started. Welcome everybody to our webinar tonight. It’s good to be here with you and it’s good to have Jared here with us. Jared, how are you doing?
Jared Perente:
Doing good. Doing good, Blake. Thanks for having me and hello to everybody.
Blake Hadley:
Yeah, hopefully, everybody can hear us okay. If you’re having any problems with the audio, please chat in. I know in the past we’ve had some issues with audio, so be sure if you can hear us, maybe send us a little chat to let us know things are streaming okay and you can hear us okay. Just a couple housekeeping items too, this will be recorded. So we will send this out to everybody, all the registrants afterwards, and we’ll also push it through social media and through our email list after, so you’ll have a chance to watch this again. You are on mute. All attendees are on mute, but feel free, like I mentioned, to chat in any questions you have. This is going to be really a discussion between Jared and I about this topic. So we would love to hear your feedback and any questions that you have for us and we will address those. We’ll watch very closely the questions as they come through so that we can try to get to those and help you out.
Blake Hadley:
All right. Well, let me just quickly introduce myself. I’m Blake Hadley. I am the president of My Social Practice. We have been in the dental industry for about 12 years now, working specifically with dental practices in digital marketing. We started primarily in social media marketing back in 2009, when everybody was trying to figure out how to use Facebook to market their dental practice. So we jumped on that and we were first to that space in helping dentists with content and ideas and how to grow their practice through social media. And then since then, we have expanded into helping practices with websites, SEO, reputation management, and kind of anything and digital marketing. So I’ve had the chance to speak to thousands of dentists over the years and help them with that. So that’s something I’m really passionate about. Jared, could you just introduce yourself quickly and tell us a little bit about Dental Warranty?
Jared Perente:
Sure. You bet. I’m Jared Parente, I’m the CEO of Dental Warranty. We’re a unique member of the crowd here in the industry being the only people that we do the scale that we do. And so what we provide to the space is a way to do protection plans on your dental treatment in a way where it’s a better experience all around and better outcome and benefits for your patients and the practice as well. And so it’s something that dentists have done in some capacity on their own for a long time. Every good provider stands behind the care that they provide. And we’ve found a unique and creative way to do it much better together. And so nationwide patients can know that whatever happens, wherever life takes them, whatever adventure that they go on, it’s going to be a positive outcome in the end.
Jared Perente:
And that’s something I think that every dentist wants to provide as part of the care and the excellent treatment that they give. And so I’ve been involved with medical practices of all kinds for quite a while. And dentistry has been something I’ve stuck around in for a long time, just because it’s so darn fascinating and challenging at the same time. So sticking in the trenches and trying to find more ways to help practices and dentists be more engaged with their patients to build trust and to make that relationship go better is something I’m driven by and passionate about as well.
Blake Hadley:
That’s awesome. And when we talked earlier, you said you’ve also have quite a big experience in marketing as well, that you’ve helped practices with that as well. And in the past you’ve helped other businesses, is that right?
Jared Perente:
Yeah. And [inaudible 00:04:25] all the way Fortune 5 down through your smallest of medical practice and different kinds of those. So again, the consumer element that’s at play, especially in dentistry, as opposed to other areas of medicine is another thing that’s really interesting. And I think we’ll get into quite a bit of that today.
Blake Hadley:
Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Jared and I have known each other for quite a bit of time. I feel like we’re always running into each other at different conferences and shows and through the Crown Council as resource partners. And so we’re excited to be able to… We’ve been wanting to do this for a while so this is exciting to be able to talk on this webinar. All right. So the topic that we have for this is how to build trust online and create loyal patients. We’re seeing, as we’ve talked to many dentists, especially now that there is this issue with trust and dentists need help establishing trust online and in practice with patients to have more case acceptance, get more new patients, and more loyal patients. A recent Gallop Pulse said that 61% of Americans say that dentists’ honesty and ethical standards are high.
Blake Hadley:
So it’s only 61%. And when I read that, I was really surprised that’s a number that we need to work on as an industry to raise so that we can build that trust, and with patients. So I don’t know, what are your thoughts, Jared? Why do you think that this is an issue? Is this just always kind of been an issue with the medical profession and dental profession or why do you think there’s maybe so much skepticism and a loss of trust right now?
Jared Perente:
Sure. I think I might choose to zoom out a little bit more because there’s a lot that’s at play. I mean, that’s a startling number, I think for anybody to hear if you’ve never seen anything like that, and there are others that are similar that are eyeopening and I would also throw into the mix related stats about just loyalty with businesses in general. I know Gartner came out with the research with studies a little while back about what drives loyalty and or disloyalty. And they got into the weeds as far as what exactly is it that makes a consumer more loyal or apt to choose you to do business with you. And it’s interesting what they come up with. It’s not what you would think.
Jared Perente:
And so as they broke open the different parts of that, there’s a huge focus on just not so much what you are doing as a business and you can liken us to your figure with a dentist and as a practice, not so much what you’re doing to drive them away but perhaps what is happening outside of your walls and what is being brought in and just that behavior and that mindset and the way that we’re doing business and interacting and transacting elsewhere is really putting the two at odds as far as how that goes down. And so I think a big point to spell out because we know how many upstanding, incredibly ethical.
Jared Perente:
The majority of folks in this business in dental practice are here for good and they want to treat and make their own patients’ lives better and contribute. And so certainly it doesn’t align with 61% and anyway, so I’ll kind of break open some of what that Gartner research talks about in terms of, but a little hint on it. It has to do with effort and how easy or hard for starters it is to interact. And just how smooth that process goes. And so in an Amazon economy of here and now, or yesterday, and how fast things are moving, I think that’s the starting point that really kind of separates the two.
Blake Hadley:
Yeah. Just the convenience and the way in which a consumer interacts with a company. If it’s easy to interact with a company if they don’t have to sit on the phone on hold forever. I mean, there’s all of these factors that come into that trust that’s built and the satisfaction of a consumer with a company and with a dentist, they want that process to be easy. And if the process is easy, they’re happy and they have more trust. I feel like that’s a good part.
Jared Perente:
Right. Right. So I’ll throw one thing out there just to be a little more specific about what drove all of that rant there. So what they found is that for every interaction with a business, that it has a four to one times impact to drive disloyalty with a business than it does loyalty. Nearly four to one times. It’s crazy. So I saw that and it’s that figure moved me as much as the 61%. And it’s just so anytime I share this, everyone’s like, “All right, what the heck are we doing? What are we doing wrong?” Right. What’s got to change? So yeah, it’s very, very interesting-
Blake Hadley:
So what’s maybe-
Jared Perente:
…. and maybe there are ways to tackle it.
Blake Hadley:
Yeah. So what’s maybe an example of that is that four to one with a dental practice where something might go wrong and that trust could be broken. Where could you see that happening?
Jared Perente:
For starters, I think it’s just making sure you have that human element at play. And scratching the surface those can be obvious differences in terms of how you operate your dental practice. I mean, the difference from answering the phone and answering as dental office versus a personal touch to a personal approach. And that’ll come from just plain caring at a person-to-person at a human level. And so easy for everyone out there to do a little bit of a litmus test there and say, “What camp are we in.” But then I think that I do see a huge, huge difference between the growth and success of practices who really commit to and dive into efforts like social media and how can we really keep a belly-to-belly human relationship in this whole process which is that’s your wheelhouse.
Blake Hadley:
Yeah. No, exactly. And yeah, that’s what we try to help Dentists do is be transparent, authentic, on social media so that, and everything from obviously what they do in the office is so important but also what they do online. And there are so many things that we can do to build that trust in the very beginning in the discovery phase of when someone is trying to find a new practice. I think one of the issues too I think there’s probably just the overall skepticism just everywhere of what is seen online and what they hear online. I think that’s part of this problem is even with the pandemic there was so much information out there even from medical professionals that all had different opinions. Like we didn’t know who to believe or what to believe.
Blake Hadley:
And I think that’s kind transferred over into the dental industry a little bit in that people don’t know if they can believe or they can trust medical professionals in a way, that could be a little bit of an issue. And then just overall what’s said on social media and what we see, and I was thinking even about this whole Oscar’s Will Smith and Chris Rock, right? When that happened, it’s like half the people on social media that I follow are saying that it was all staged and half of the people were saying it was real. And you don’t know who to trust or what to trust anymore, right?
Jared Perente:
Yes. And we had heard it all by Monday morning.
Blake Hadley:
Yeah, exactly. It was on the internet so fast before any further information was even on everybody had their opinion, everybody had… It was crazy, right? So I think that dentists have the ability to kind of control their message, have the ability to be authentic, be transparent, and use social proof as well online to guide people down that new patient journey. So, at first, I want to talk a little bit about Google because that’s kind of one of the biggest factors when it comes to building trust for new patients that are trying to find you. So what does somebody do a lot of times when they’re looking for a dentist, they’ll put into Google, dentist near me, right? That’s a very commonly searched phrase in dentist near me. And what shows up on that first page of dentist near me, there’s actually three sections that are important to know.
Blake Hadley:
The very top section is the PPC, paper click is what PPC stands for, paper click ads. And I don’t know if you’re like me. I usually skip over that whole section. A lot of people do. They’ve actually found that 10% of people actually trust the PPC ads at the very top of Google. Now I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do that as a dental practice that you shouldn’t maybe pay somebody to help you with some PPC ads because you can still get some clicks, but it’s important for you to know that a lot of people skip over that. And a lot of people just don’t trust that section because they know that the companies or the dentist with the big bucks, they’re the ones putting the ads there and that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the best option. So just something to be aware of.
Blake Hadley:
And then when you scroll down, if you scroll kind of down to the bottom of the first page, there’s the organic results. And what that means is basically if a dental practice maybe pays an SEO agency to put certain keywords in blog posts or on their website, or maybe has a really good PR campaign to have a lot of different websites blog about that practice, or there’s a lot of links that go to that practice. There’s a lot of SEO strategies that you can do but you’ll show up in those organic results. They’ve found that about 27% of people trust those organic results. So even if you show up first in that section, that kind of towards the bottom of that first page, it still doesn’t necessarily mean that some going to trust that you’re the best option, but the place that they found people trust the most is the middle section.
Blake Hadley:
And that’s where Google Maps. It’s your local listings that show up. They found that 68% of people trust that Google Maps results. And there’s a few reasons for that. First of all, people are looking for a dentist near them. That’s what they search, dentists near me. They want to see who’s the closest to where they live. And then obviously the second reason is reviews. This is where the reviews are. It’s your Google My Business listing. And this is what shows how many reviews you have and your average score of reviews. And that’s what people want to know. That’s what we call a social proof, right? People want to find out what other people think about you, how many people are writing reviews for your practice. And then what the average score is. I found it really interesting. I was reading an article about this and it said that people if your review score isn’t at least a 4.0, your average review score, that people don’t even, they kind of just skip over. If it has a three at the very beginning, they look for a different option.
Blake Hadley:
They’re like, “Nope, there’s a three there. I don’t feel good about this practice.” And then another thing that they found is if you have less than 40 reviews. So even if you have all five-star reviews but less than 40 of them, they also skip over your practice. They look for the practice that has more reviews than 40. So that’s just something to think about. You need to be sure you have over 40 reviews and you need to make sure that you have an over a 4.0 average. And this just means for the average, you just need to get more reviews. We used to say at my social practice, we used to advise practices to only ask the patients that you know will give you a positive review to leave you a review. So that is one strategy.
Blake Hadley:
But by doing that you may not get a lot of reviews and as many reviews and when a negative review comes up, it might bring down your average. So we have kind of changed our view on this. We suggest that really you ask everybody, you kind of have a automated service that asks everybody to leave you a review. This does mean you probably will get some negative reviews, but they’ll hopefully be drowned out by your positive reviews so you can have more reviews and then hopefully, unless you’re just a horrible dentist, hopefully, you’ll have a higher average rating, right? So that’s something to think about. Yeah.
Jared Perente:
Yeah. Can I throw something in real quick?
Blake Hadley:
Yes, please.
Jared Perente:
Since you guys are doing this day in and day out, have you guys come across or done any study into the difference between if you got 800 reviews and it’s 5.0 versus a solid number up and 4.7, 4.8. I think just back to that authenticity point, there’s something to be said here.
Blake Hadley:
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s interesting too because sometimes when it looks too perfect, it could be a negative. It feels like the practice either game the system or only it is actually good to get some negative reviews as long as you respond all those reviews. Sometimes it is good to have that 4.8, that 4.6, as long as you have a lot of them people understand that once in a while somebody comes in and they just, no matter what they have a bad experience, they are just have having a bad day or whatever, right? And people understand that and they’re more forgiving and they like to see that transparency and that authenticity for sure.
Jared Perente:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think there are many great relationships and there’s actually a lot of loyalty that can be born out of potentially tricky situations where you have the opportunity though, to go above and beyond and to correct something because look, I mean, life isn’t perfect and that goes for everything. And so we all know that as human beings. And so, especially if you’ve got somebody whose prospective patient who’s looking over your list of reviews and they’re able to see how you responded, and then again, most of the time they can read between the lines. Patients are smart, right? Yeah. They can tell when something was unreasonable on the other end or we’re just totally out of line as far as expectations and that you’ve done everything that any great practice and care provider would do.
Blake Hadley:
Oh, totally. It was interesting, Jared and I were talking a little bit, and even if somebody, sometimes even if it seems that someone has a great experience in your office, sometimes they’ll even leave you a negative review or something that even seems negative, right? And so you never really know what people are going to write on your page.
Jared Perente:
It’s Wild West. It looks like we’ve got somebody shot in here a chat.
Blake Hadley:
Yeah. She says, “How would you suggest handling the negative reviews when they don’t reflect your practice?” Yeah. I mean, this happens all the time. I think if you’re just professional in how you address them, be sure to address all negative reviews. It’s really bad if you don’t address a negative review because then it’s just left like that. And people do read the negative ones. I mean, I even go to businesses sometimes and I filter it so I see the negative reviews first so I can read those. You probably do that too. You want to see what’s really this business is all about but I also read the responses from the practice. And so as long as the practice is very professional about how they respond to it and they address the concern and don’t snap on that person and say, “Well, you’re wrong and I’m right.” That means a lot too and how they’re going to handle me as a patient if I don’t agree with something I think that professional way of addressing things is so important, so.
Jared Perente:
Absolutely. And then the only thing I’d add to that is you’ve got to find your own comfort level of exactly what kind of detail to include. There’s lots of things that play there and we don’t need to get into all of that but I think that generally if you’re courteous and inviting them to get back in touch and to work together and to talk it through, I think that’s some pretty solid guidance as what to put out there. So you don’t feel like you have to air all the laundry per se.
Blake Hadley:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very true. Something else I kind of wanted to address on this as far as this building trust, when someone Googles you or Googles dentist near me, we did a big research kind of study about how much reviews affected where somebody ranks in that Map section. And we found that the practices with the most reviews and the highest rank didn’t necessarily always rank at the very top of the Map section. And we kind of thought that that’s what we would find is if you have a lot of reviews and a lot of positive reviews, you would always kind of be at the top as the top suggested, but that’s not the case. Google factors in a lot of different things for that and there are some other things that play into what shows up first. And a big part of this is how you optimize your Google My Business account, your Google My Business listing.
Blake Hadley:
And there’s a lot of things that you can do if hopefully, you have admin access of your Google My Business listing, they have a backend that you can go in, you can add your services, you can add all of the locations around your practice that you service. You can do a whole bunch of things in there that will optimize that page. So it will show up higher in the Map section. And they found that if you can rank in those top three on that front page as one of the suggested practices, you will get, I think the top three gets something like 92% of the business and they get 45% of the clicks too. If you can be those top, it’s called the 3-Pack, the Google Maps 3-Pack just to be on that front page.
Blake Hadley:
So I would advise just for showing up at the top that builds trust. And so go into your Google My Business Account, optimize it, add as much as you can, everything that Google suggests you do, do it. Write a really and bio, add posts to your Google My Business. There’s things that we can do at My Social Practice too to help you with that. But that’s it’s kind of perception is reality, right? If you show up high people believe that “Oh, Google.” They trust Google. Google’s going to tell them what they need, right?
Jared Perente:
Right. Right. And a good way to think about that too. I mean, the two most important people in that equation, the mix being Google and your prospective patients are both just monster consumers of information. They maybe want information. So even the smallest stuff, just making sure your profiles are complete and some of the stuff may seem silly, or redundant, or unnecessary, but if you do it, that’s one step in the right direction in terms of boosting what everyone in that mix wants to see.
Blake Hadley:
Totally. Yep. And so this kind of brings us to your full online presence. People nowadays are going online looking at everything they can find about you before they pick up the phone to call you, right? They’re going to the Google My Business profile. They’re looking at all your photos there. They’re even finding that people aren’t necessarily even going to the website because websites now, even though you have to have a website it’s so important to have a website, but website is what you have created. It’s the perfect you, right? Of everything. So instead people are going to social media, they want to see the real you, they want to see what patients are posting about you.
Blake Hadley:
Social media feels more authentic. So it’s important that you have a really good social media presence. It’s important that what’s the top page on your website that gets visited the most out of any other page, you’re about page, right? They want to see the faces of your team members. They want to read about who you are. I have never gone to a service page and read about how a dentist does a dental implant. That’s, right?
Jared Perente:
No, that’s fascinating.
Blake Hadley:
I’ve never read that but I do want to know who the dentist is and what the team who they are and what they care about and how they treat their patients. That’s the experience. I want to understand more about the experience. I don’t really, even though it’s important, in that phase, I don’t really care as much about the technical dentistry that you might think that people care about, that people care more about that experience, right?
Jared Perente:
Absolutely. And it does. We talk about this all the time when it comes to why you need to think through the things that we encourage you think through as a practice because it’s hardly ever is about a clinical outcome per se. I mean, it’s all connected. Don’t get me wrong here. But thinking about that journey end-to-end and what it was like to go through that and the connection and the interaction and how smooth that was all outside of the technical specs trumps everything else for sure.
Blake Hadley:
Yeah. So as far as social media goes I get asked all the time too, “What type of things should I post on my social media accounts? What type of things will build trust? What type of things are people looking for? Should I focus on my followers, getting more followers on Instagram?” And I do believe that it is important to try to build your followers on Facebook and on Instagram. I think people look at that number no matter what, it’s just kind of human nature. We look at that number we say, “Oh, how many people like this person?” That’s that social proof type of thing. How many people follow this practice? So it is important that you work on that number, you start with your patients try to get them to follow you on Instagram, like you on Facebook. But then when it comes to content, creating authentic content, show your team, show your practice. We have over the years, we have pushed our practices to not focus so much on… When we first started social media we would help practices just kind of post graphics, right?
Jared Perente:
Something. [crosstalk 00:29:30].
Blake Hadley:
Yeah. It was like a graphic that was informational about dentistry, or a holiday, or whatever it might be. And graphics are still okay to post once in a while. It’s good to show you’re consistent. If you just throw up a graphic, it just kind of shows that you’re there, that you’re available, that someone is in charge of your social media accounts. You’re watching them at least, right? And I kind of see it as space fillers, right? But the most important type of content that you can be posting are authentic photos of your team, videos, show the charities you’re involved with, show how you contribute to the community, how you support local businesses, stop just talking about dentistry on your social media accounts, that’s not why the people are going to social media accounts necessarily. They just kind of want to see who you are and what you’re about.
Blake Hadley:
If you do talk about dentistry there’s kind of been this whole movement towards really educating patients but in a fun and interesting way. And that’s why we talk about TikTok a lot. And when I talk about TikTok, sometimes I get practices, people rolling their eyes at me like, “Oh my gosh, Why do you want me to do TikTok videos?” Right. “It’s just teenagers dancing and why would I ever make a TikTok video for my practice?” I don’t want you to think of it as a TikTok video and the stigma that comes with that, think of it as a short form educational piece of content where you can address maybe some of these FAQs in an interesting and fun way. So what we’re seeing practices do and dentists do is to talking about some of these common misconceptions in dentistry through a fun video pointing at different information or putting some fun music over the top but educating in a fun way. We’re seeing practices show treatment in a quick way.
Blake Hadley:
TikTok and Reels allow you to cut quickly to, or do like a timelapse video to show a longer treatment or procedure in a very short way. And you can put captions over the top and music so it makes it really interesting. So those type of videos are really, really powerful right now. And we’re really pushing our practices to focus on video content because it’s just doing so well on social media. And in the end, that’s why people go to social media is to be entertained. They want information and to be entertained. And that’s a perfect mix. And so when it comes to content, just be thinking about video and how you can use short-form video to build that trust as well. You don’t have to dance and be goofy that could maybe… If you’re too goofy or if it’s too weird that can maybe hurt a little bit of the trust. You want to be a little careful, right. But you can still have some fun with it and use it as a platform to educate, so.
Jared Perente:
Yes, absolutely. I think the only thing I would add and encourage is that you find your voice. I think that in order for you to be authentic and for it to be translated and received in a positive way that has high impact and does what you want it to do is to be sure you find your voice and it might take some time for you to get into that groove and just I laugh kind of thinking about when you started talking about the onset and your early days and what social media looked like then, and early adopters in different small businesses and in medical practices, dental practices, and it’s like, “Oh my gosh, this is a waste of time. I’m not going to get my patients here. They’re not where they’re looking for a dentist.”
Jared Perente:
And even to this day, I would say that I would agree with that for the most part except the fact that our lives are not siloed like that anymore, right? We’re all about engagement everywhere all the time, and that’s where they live. And so this is your opportunity to share who you are in a way that’s not about clinical treatment. You get to have your prospective patients get to know you and to hear you and to resonate with who you are. And that just brings a comfort level up to a totally different level that before now would’ve been extremely difficult or impossible to do. And so looking at it that way, it doesn’t have to be a lot, but just make sure it’s authentic you.
Blake Hadley:
Yes. Yeah. That’s probably we talk about finding your why first. You got to find your voice, you got to find why you’re on social media, what your purpose is, and then continue with that. One other thing I want to address really quickly in this discovery phase two before we jump into kind of building loyalty with your patients after they find you and after they schedule their appointment, is this idea of working with some influencers. I’ve talked about this a lot. Influencers is a really big part of social media and the reason why is because people trust what other people say more than what you say these days. So you can keep pushing your message as much as you want but that doesn’t necessarily mean that people will trust you. So working with influential people to have them promote you and talk about you is a better way to do that.
Blake Hadley:
Now, one thing I would think about is to start with your current patients that already believe in you and know you, and like you. And you’ll probably find that some of your current patients aren’t necessarily influencers, meaning they have hundreds and thousands of followers on social media but maybe they’re just kind of influencers in their own small space, meaning maybe they have a thousand followers, or maybe not even that, 1000 to 2000, whatever 500 followers or friends on social media that live locally in your area. It doesn’t really matter if you’re working with someone that has hundreds of thousands of followers and they’re all across the country, that will never come into your practice. But if there’s someone that’s just likable that you work with that has a little bit of a following, you could work with that person to encourage them to post on their social media accounts and talk about you and tag you with maybe a little bit of an incentive.
Blake Hadley:
Maybe you give them a little bit of a discount or on their treatment or whatever it might be in exchange for them talking about you online. So that’s where I would start. Think about your current patients, maybe ask your team and your next team huddle say who. Who are some of our patients that probably have a little bit of a following on social media that would be willing to talk about us and start there with these kind of microinfluencers? And that’s a incredible way to build trust. And we see it work really well with dental practices.
Jared Perente:
Nice. Blake, I love that advice. I think understanding that for a while but hearing you package it up that way and make it applicable and relevant for our audience is huge because that’s not super-obvious I think to a lot of dental teams but it’s super-powerful. I like how you spun that up.
Blake Hadley:
Yeah. My cousin lives in Arizona and she’s a photographer. She probably has maybe 2000 followers on her photography Instagram account. And she’s just a really likable person. Everybody that knows her just loves her. And the practice saw this and they didn’t think of her and she wasn’t a giant influencer that, she doesn’t label herself as an influencer, but they just said, “Hey we’d love to help you with…” She had some veneers done and said they gave her a discount and she did some posts. They captured kind of her reaction when she first saw her veneers which was really sincere and authentic. And she posted that and people believed her because she wasn’t trying to be like this influencer or people like, “Oh, she must get paid. She’s an actress.” Right. “She just acted like that because she’s getting paid.” They believe her because she didn’t have a huge following and she’s one of their friends. They knew her. And so that is just a lot more powerful for dentists to work with those type of people.
Blake Hadley:
Anyways, we have one more question from Denise. Would you consider followers more important than engagement? I would consider engagement more important than followers. Engagement meaning people liking, commenting, and sharing your posts because these are your true believers in you. These are your advocates, right? These are your ambassadors that love you and want to talk or want to comment and want to interact with you. Followers is still important because that kind of perception but people are buying followers and people are, I mean, accounts are buying fake followers just to build up that number. So engagement are your real fans that you want to focus on, so.
Jared Perente:
Yes, absolutely. So one thing comes to mind real quick before we move on and I’ve seen this whole paradigm just flip on its head. And there’s a ton of people out there that I know would counter me on this. And I think I know where they would go with that. And I agree with them in terms of just how much is going on in our lives. So from the standpoint of number and volume, when it comes to content, there’s something to be said about being there at the right time. And sometimes the only way to get there is volume. Constant, right? So there’s without going off on a tangent there, there is so much content today that it’s really, really easy just to be more writing on the wall and just to contribute to the noise.
Jared Perente:
So a lot of smart marketers today understand that while there’s an element to that timeliness and being there at the right time which can come through volume, you’re better off a little bit of a slower build, but more meaningful, authentic engagement and making it about that. I mean because after all that’s what everyone’s really about. You look at the old days of Google and it was all about volume and you could game that all day long and all of those algorithms are getting smarter to understand more about us as people. So signals and connections and things that can be less fabricated.
Blake Hadley:
It’s a great point. And Instagram and Facebook, they favor content that gets engagement meaning they don’t show things in a chronological order, so you can post all the time but the things that they believe that they can show the users what they really want to see, right? So then they base that off of engagement. So if something’s getting more engagement, they say, “Oh, this must be interesting content. Let’s show this at the top of the feed so that more people see it.” And so partly like Jared says, you need to come up with engaging content and if you can do that, then as you get more engagement, it will then show more people that content.
Blake Hadley:
So it favors you in a couple of different ways. All right. So that’s a little bit just about kind of that discovery phase of how to build trust in for new patients. Now let’s talk about the retention phase, how to build loyalty showing for more case acceptance, showing your patients that you really care when you talk about treatments, how to talk about it and Jared probably has maybe some more insight on this with the protection plans. I mean, this is a big part of building trust with treatment, right?
Jared Perente:
Yep. Absolutely. And again, there’s so many different things and elements that you can sprinkle in here, but at the core of that is authenticity. And one thing I’ll throw out there, sometimes when we talk to a practice or a dental team for the first time and they’re kind of absorbing what it is that we do, their first reaction could be, “We’re great practitioners. Our two treatment doesn’t fail or it doesn’t break. It doesn’t.” And I’ll find it good but there’s so much about that you truly cannot control. And there’s something that we’ve tapped into that bigger brands who know loyalty and people in and out have tapped into for a long, long time. And what that is is addressing the long-term experience with a product or a service earlier in the decision-making process.
Jared Perente:
So in the buying decision, how secure can we help our customers feel with what it’s going to be like after this first interaction. And what that’s going to be like and then finding creative ways to bundle in and provide more of that as part of the buying decision. And so bringing that back into dental treatment exactly what we seek to do is recognizing that our patients have extraordinary adventurous lives beyond our doors at the dental practice. And so being able to couple the excellent treatment that you provide without wherever you go, whatever may come type of kind of just warm blanket, patients love that, it has little to do with the quality and the standard of care. In fact, it has nothing to do with it. It has to do more with what we’re seeking and how we can make patients feel about the overall experience packaged with that treatment. And so [crosstalk 00:44:26]-
Blake Hadley:
That’s so interesting even the Amazon mentality, right? And even ordering anything online, taking it away from dentistry. The first thing that I look at when I’m about to order something online is what’s the return policy, right? I want to know how hard is this going to be to return, how much is it going to cost me to return or how difficult is it going to be? And so you’re right. People think about, “What’s my experience going to be later after I’ve received the product or the service or whatever? What if something goes wrong?” Or “What then?” People are thinking about that.
Jared Perente:
Right, right. And there’s a lot to be said about the things that they’re not voicing at least in that moment. There are a lot of unasked questions that you’d make no mistake it’s impacting the outcome and whether or not a certain patient will choose to accept and or buy into what you’re encouraging them to do you for their health and for their wellbeing. And so all of these things are at play and can make a big impact on the direction that it goes. So, yeah, that’s our world day in and day out and interestingly enough and so of course we’d invite and love to have any practice join in and reap the benefits and have happier patients, more acceptance, et cetera, et cetera.
Jared Perente:
But there’s so much actually that I love about the conversation here that we end up having great conversations and I’m happy whether or not you end up partnering with us to do that together because there’s a lot that you can do actually, even if you’re not partnered with our company to provide formal protection plan like that. And there’s a certain level of that assurance and those things that you can do and say that can get you at least a good part of the way there in terms of higher confidence and more acceptance upfront.
Blake Hadley:
What are maybe a few kind of tips as you’re talking with a patient and trying to get them to accept treatment, maybe what are a few things to think about? Meaning obviously you want to think about their financial situation and you want to think about this idea of protection plan and maybe what are a few of the ways to build that confidence. I’m trying to think if I’m sitting there in the chair and I’ve had the practice suggest a few things to me, I’m trying to think what would be the things that he or she would say that would kind of push me over the edge and make me feel better about it? I don’t know. Do you have any thoughts or tips on that?
Jared Perente:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Because we’re all only a piece of the puzzle here and there are some phenomenal consultants out there that will coach on some things that make all the difference and it starts a little before we even come into the mix with the protection plan, right? And so I’ll relay some of those things that you’ve got to get right. And you know, you raised a good point about the financial situation. I think what divides great practices and okay practices in terms of acceptance of care and that kind of thing is just a sheer confidence level and what it is that you are giving. What it is that you’re offering? If you are more concerned about the financial side of this than your patient is, it’s not going to work as well as you like and they’re not going to buy into, selling is a bad word in this but it’s all about what it is you’re selling.
Jared Perente:
You’re selling them good health benefits that are going to last in their lifetime. They can do things in their life better than they could before. I mean, we all know how much our oral health plays into our overall wellbeing, right? So if you believe that, sell that all day long. That is absolutely incredible. And what better of a thing could you sell somebody? So that’s making it as easy as possible. And so you can’t give too many reasons for them not to feel comfortable with what you’re providing and the care you’re going to provide early in the process otherwise, they’re not going to move with you there. And then there’s a lot of different strategy in terms of the way you present information and make sure that you pay attention to natural psychology and the way we make decisions. A lot of practices give too much you’ve obviously got to do your due process and you’ve got to ethically provide options but too many options without clear direction and reason for it, it just breeds one thing and that’s indecision for a starter.
Jared Perente:
So making sure you’re very clear in what it is you’re recommending and strongly recommend it. And then there’s a lot to be said about the way that you present and organize what’s on paper. How you present those options in the form of a treatment plan. And if you’re going to itemize it all out into every procedure, in every detail, or if you want to give it to your patients in easy-to-understand, easy to digest terms. And so a lot of you out there in practice will understand that as a non-itemized treatment plan or versus an itemized. And I realized we all know that if you’re an in-network practice with insurance, you’ve got to file and build a certain way. And there’s disclosure and there’s things that you want your patient to understand.
Jared Perente:
It’s certainly not about hiding anything about the treatment plan. But again, if you give anybody a long laundry list of details, they’re going to shop it and they’re going to want to know like, “Well, do I really need this? Do I really need that? Do I…” And all of a sudden the focus is no longer on. Your purpose as a good practitioner to get them good health and to get them where they need to go, where they want to go, it’s on nitpicky detail and things that are not about the outcome and help them get there. And so, yeah, you’re going to have your high detailed people that say, “Hey, yeah, I want to know, I want to see it.” And that’s fine. Give it to them. But certainly don’t do that before you find out that it’s someone who wants and needs that level of detail. So anyways, I’m diving into a lot there but those things are so, so important when it comes to the kind of impact you’re going to be able to have on your patients’ lives. They’re hinging, they’re pivotal moments for sure.
Blake Hadley:
Yeah. Yeah. I love those. Those are great tips and I think, yeah, as you talk about even the word plan, as you talk about treatment plan, protection plan, membership plan. I think whenever you can get someone on a plan that always will create some loyalty, right? Whether it’s if you can lay things out in a way that makes sense for the future. And I think that builds a lot of loyalty and a lot of trust and like, “Okay, I see where the doctor or the team wants to take me. I’m part of a plan. I’m part of this membership plan. I’m going to stick with them for a while to carry this out, right.” If they can lay that out in a clear way to me and that’s a lot of pressure on the team to be able to talk about it correctly and to educate about these things in a really good way. But it’s so important to try to get people on a plan for loyalty.
Blake Hadley:
Some of the other thoughts that I had just to keep a patient loyal to you and create a lifetime patient, there are some things that you can do with social media and with your online reputation that will help create that loyalty. If you’ve heard of Robert Cialdini, he’s a favorite famous psychologist that came up with the six principles of persuasion. Basically, he felt that if you could do there’s six ways to basically persuade anybody to do what you want them to do. And one of them talks about having, if you can get someone to commit to something small, then if they’ll commit to bigger things in the future. And so there’s a lot of that you can do to get people to commit to you in small ways, even taking a photo with someone, if you can ask somebody, “Hey, could you take a photo with me? We loved your visit today. We’d love to post about you on our social media accounts.” Of course, get HIPAA consent to do that. But taking a photo with someone means kind of a lot, right?
Blake Hadley:
Like, “Hey, you’re my friend. I want to show you off that you’re my friend to all of our followers.” And I think it makes people feel good to take that photo. If they agree to do it, that’s a small commitment you put them up on your social media accounts. They feel good. “Oh, I’m kind of part of this practice, right?” The small commitment of just following you on Instagram or Facebook that requires somebody to say, “Okay, I want to see more of your content. I want to follow you.” It’s like a little commitment, right? But again, it kind of it’s that opt-in into saying like, “Hey, we’re closer. We’re tighter, right?” We talked about this, leaving a review. That’s a huge commitment. If someone will take the time to leave you a review online, and then if you respond to that review, even if it’s negative or positive, that feels good to someone like, “Oh, I told them how much I like them. I told the world how much I like them. And they responded and they thanked me.
Blake Hadley:
I’m part of their group, right? They like me and I like them and I’m going to keep working with them in the future.” Something else that’s I’ve always thought is would be a good strategy for practices is the yearly birthday card it just isn’t enough anymore for dental practices. You can do so much more now to secure your friendship and your commitment by following them on social media and commenting on things that are happening in their life. They had a baby, you say, congratulations. Something happens it’s like it’s this commitment and this relationship that you’re building with your patients that will make them care so much more about you than that impersonal birthday card, right? So there’s things that you can do, these small commitments, like little things that psychologically make people feel like they’re more part of your practice and they’ll be loyal patients forever, hopefully, right?
Jared Perente:
That’s huge. I love that. We all know of it, we’ve experienced ourselves, right? Those little acts of sentiment, right? That means so much more even than some awesome, incredible material gifts. Just put those just deposits and that interest in you as a person that’ll definitely buy you bigger points where you can be a bigger part of their life and vice versa over time. So that’s huge. Love it.
Blake Hadley:
Yeah. It kind of keeps you top of mind and yeah. So that’s kind of all the thoughts we have. We’re kind of we ran out of time. I know we had a little bit of technical difficulties earlier but we are still kind of on the hour. If you have any other questions, feel free to chat them in. And we’ll kind of I’ll look for those for just a minute. Is there anything else, Jared, that you wanted to add to the conversation, or we kind of covered most of it?
Jared Perente:
Oh, we got into a lot and definitely some conversation starters. We might have to do part two here or even part three. So we’re not just, I know I’ve been on a few runs and so much of that I’d probably love to unpack and slow down and talk through and get feedback from the crowd and really dial up an awesome conversation. So let’s think about doing that. I think that it’s been a good hour.
Blake Hadley:
Yeah. Let’s do it again, for sure. There’s so many small things that yeah, I would love to expand on as well, but all right. Well, thanks, everybody for tuning in, and thanks so much, Jared, for being part of this and we will schedule something again soon.
Jared Perente:
Perfect. Thanks, Blake.
Blake Hadley:
All right.
Jared Perente:
Thanks, everybody. Take care.
Blake Hadley:
Okay. We’ll see. Yeah. Bye.
