#108: Claiming Your Market Part 3

#108: Claiming Your Market Part 3

How do you continue to claim your local market? How is your competition promoting? What markets have opened up? How do these markets respond to dental advertising? We discuss all of this and more in part 3 of claiming your market.

-Main competition -Recovering from the recession -How much did dentistry lose during the recession? -How did our clients beat the main dental market by 25%? -The market that opened up after the recession -What your competition will NOT be promoting -Budget allocation… again! -Being too busy -Fixing capacity for new patients -Different business models for dentistry -The impact of marketing and non-marketing -DSO practice ownership -DSO practice scaling -Which half of the market are you marketing to? -How will these markets respond to different advertising -How to avoid alienating the top half of the market -Acquiring your competition -Competing with specialists

Podcast Transcription:

Hello, and Welcome once again to the Dental Marketing Mastery series. This podcast is brought to you by DentalWebContent.com and New Patients Incorporated. I’m Howie Horrocks, the Founder of New Patients Incorporated, along with me once again, as my friend and partner and the President of New Patients Incorporated, Mark Dilatush.

Howie: Hello, everybody. Welcome once again to our podcast. We’re so happy to have you with us again, aren’t we, Mark?

Mark: We are Howie spent yesterday evening at a country music concert.

Howie: Oh, yeah,

Mark: it was beautiful. outside. It was in New Jersey in July. It was like 75. Humidity was like 30%.

Howie: Wow,

Mark: the sky was dark blue wasn’t you know, wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

Howie: Who was the headliner?

Mark: bright young.

Howie: Okay, you recognize some of us? I know you’re not a big country music fan. I like that music. I know.

Mark: I know. Anybody who really knows me knows that. That’s all I listened to. So that was fun. We did that last night. That was

Howie: awesome.

Mark: That was a fun way to spend an afternoon it was some drunk people there. But that’s to be expected.

Howie: Well, of course. All right. What we’re doing today is part three of our series about staking your claim to the, to the universe that you live in, operate in for so long as you have a dental practice in the same neighborhood. So that’s, that’s, those are your peeps, how you going to keep get them and find them and keep them? Right.

Mark: Right. So yeah, and part one and part two, we kind of took you back to some of the basics, your core staples, how they’ve changed, or in a lot of cases, how they’ve all stayed the same. umm and then we walked you through the recession? In other words, if you had a practice, and you were trying to stake your claim through the recession, what should you have done? And today, we’re going to take you out of the recession, because we’re out of the recession, and basically bring it all up to the current events is what should I be doing now?

Howie: Right,

Mark: And in part two, we discussed the core staples of Family Dentistry, we compare that to the heyday of cosmetic dentistry. And, you know, we, we explained some of the upsides and downsides. So now, it’s not enough just to say, Okay, go ahead and invert it. spend less time and energy and money on family and more time and money on niches. That’s it’s not enough just to say that. So what do we do as we get out of the recession? So let’s just take this from a pure, statistical standard point. So we know for sure that dentistry lost 18 $18 billion in its top line from its high point through the recession. That’s a lot of money. This is, you know, I mean, you may think of dentistry is a gigantic market, but it’s really about 120 billion dollar market, so you lose 18 billion of it, and

Howie: that’s gonna hurt.

Mark: It’s gonna go all the way down the food chain. Right,

Howie: a significant chunk of change.

Mark: Yes, yes. So, um, so during the recession, and it’s going to sound really self serving, but it’s not during the recession, our clients grew in aggregate. So how did they be the dental market? Let’s say by 25%, during the recession years, and we discussed last time main reason why is because we focused all their money on the core staples, family, family, family, family, family, family slamming a comic Con, my family, family, stay there door,

Howie: What about the family Mark?

Mark: Exactly. Okay, so. So what did we do with client money coming out? Great question, which is the subject of today. So the first thing that comes up after our post recession after a drop of $18 billion, it’s, it’s quite logical to assume a few people were ignoring their oral health. And it’s also safe to assume what happens to people’s mouth when they ignore them for let’s say, an extended period of time six to seven to eight years, maybe they were just conserving their money through the recession. And dentistry was one of the things they didn’t spend any money on. Okay. So what happens to teeth? What happens to gums? What happens after neglect? Bad things happen?

Howie: things, bad things.

Mark: Okay. So when bad things happen? Typically, what kind of a patient do you get? You get an emergency patient and or emergency patients motivated?

Howie: You met?

Mark: You betcha. Okay. So pulling. So pulling out of a recession? What did we do with some of our clients money, those who are willing, those who are equipped, those who were flexible enough in their scheduling, to do so on, we devoted quite a bit of room quite a bit of time, quite a bit of whatever, quite a bit of money to promoting them as an emergency. A choice if you if you’re having a dental emergency in their market, why wouldn’t you, you have a greater number of people who are needing emergencies, and you probably have a shrinking number of dentists, we’re promoting it. So that’s an opportunity for a marketing company. That’s the way we look at opportunities.

Howie: Okay.

Mark: The whole idea with a good marketing firm is to minimize your risk. Okay, so you won’t when you have more consumers and fewer competition, that normally not always, but normally lowers risk. Okay. So emergencies is one way to pull out actually a pretty, pretty fast. I’m not going to say easy, but I’m going to say pretty fast way to get relatively immediate results. Okay, so beyond recession, where are we going with our client money? Well, most of them, not all of them, but most of them want to want to promote at least a niche. Let me define niche. A niche is a singular dental service that the dentist likes or wants to like, definitely. And wants to do more up. And that could be it could be almost any could be sedation, could be implants,

Howie: Sleep apnea,

Mark: Sleep apnea, senior stuff. Could be almost anything. Really, right. Okay, so they, now here’s where we come in, we come in and we say, all right, don’t get all excited. Client. Okay, we’re still going to allocate, let’s say, 80% of your budget to the family thing. Because you’re still going to get those niche cases from the family market. We know that.

Howie: That’s Yeah, that’s basically where they come from.

Mark: Exactly. Okay. But the doctor wants to do more of their x, whatever. They like, you know, whatever dental service they really focused in on, you know, they live with them want to do more of those. So they want us to reach out to the market specifically to find more of those types of patients. So what do we normally do when we do that? Well, first we allocate the budget properly. I know everybody, everybody’s ever heard us speak or read what we’ve written or even our own staff is tired of us saying, okay, budgeted according, okay, budget it properly.

Howie: There they go again, talking about budgets,

Mark: Talking about budgets, right? Says budget? Well. That’s the way you control your costs. That’s the way the main way you control your risk, right? I’m sorry, if you don’t like the word budget, but that’s, that’s just the way it has to be. Okay. So you allocate your budget, let’s say it’s 18, 20 ,70, 30. And you begin, you slowly began to diversify the message out into the public in a singular fashion. Or it doesn’t necessarily have to be singular, I think probably one of the most popular ones that we’re doing now are basically it’s dentistry for seniors. Were because a blog that dentists will call us and say, Mark, I want to promote my practice for more implants. And we say I, that’s awesome. What are what real? What are the benefits of implants? Really? Okay, there’s, they’re multifaceted. There are all kinds of benefits for implants. And when you line them all up on a scorecard, there’s like six or seven reasons why dental implants could really help someone in need. And by the time you’re done writing all the reasons why they’re beneficial. Heck, you could fill up two or three web pages worth of information, or

Howie: Just gonna say you got a website right there on a mailer

Mark: Exactly.

Howie: But five radio spots.

Mark: Right, exactly. Right. So I mean, you have you know, implants, of course, but you have implants supported dentures, you have I mean, senior mailer, or senior promotion, in an ad, maybe to seniors in a retirement community. My goodness, there’s, there’s plenty of stuff to talk about. So you might want to look, because we’re out of the recession, we’re two and a half, three years now into the recovery. So and, and many of you, and we know this is true, many of you right now are actually what we call too busy. So, in other words, if I called your office right now, I can’t get an appointment in your office, if I want, let’s say, a Tuesday morning, early or a Thursday evening late.

Howie: Yeah,

Mark: I can’t get I can’t get an appointment I want as a new patient. So I’ll just move on.

Howie: Let’s explore that further. And just a few minutes, we’re gonna take a short break here and we’ll be right back. Don’t go away.

Hello, everybody. This is how Horrocks and along with me is Mark Dilatush president of new patients Incorporated.com How you doing Mark? Hey, how are you? How are you? This is the part of the podcast where we get to brag about our company. Yay. So sometimes it gets lost. And all these podcasts what new patients incorporated actually does. We have? I don’t know how many podcasts 7581 a week for well over a year. And all of you listen to these a half hour at a time and you might lose sight of what we do. So here’s the short answer. We do everything we’re talking about in these podcasts on behalf of our clients. Okay, we do the podcasts are there for our clients, of course just so they understand what the heck we’re doing. But also for the doctors who are do it yourselfers. If you’re not a do it yourselfer, and you want somebody want to do this for you, new patients calm, there’s an icon and the dead center at the top of our homepage where you can get a complimentary marketing plan, a series of questions will need to be completed. And once you complete that, we will analyze your market area, develop a marketing plan and get on the phone with you discuss all the sections of the marketing plan just to make sure you understand a couple of things, what you’re up against what your expectations should be, and what market how we would do if we owned your dental practice.

Howie: Okay, we’re back and we were just talking about now that we’re out of the recession, some problem that has cropped up that we’ve noticed is it’s tough for a new patient to get in.

Mark: Right, and we were we’re dovetailing that with what to do with your marketing budget after the recession, and we were talking about, um, you know, allocating 20, maybe 30% of your budget toward a niche, what will happen is that you’ll spend a little less money on the family side a little more money on the niche, and that’ll slow down the volume coming in. And this is particularly applicable to all the offices out there who are listening to this who are like booked out, when we have, I don’t know, I haven’t run in, I guess I maybe run into a couple of clients who aren’t booked out. But there’s a lot of dentists out there in dentistry land, at least in our corral of dentists who are, who have full books.

So slowing down the family promotion and focusing in on the niche promotion, it’s probably a pretty good time to do that, if you’re not going to expand capacity, you have to practice is no mark, this is the my one location, this is the number of opportunities I want. These are the office hours I want. My team loves me, everybody loves everything, I just want more impact patients. If that’s your scenario, and you’re booked out 6-7-8 days, and it’s really difficult to get in, then we have two steps.

Step one, we got to fix the capacity issue, we have to figure out some way Get openings for new patients. And step number two is start your niche advertising. Okay, and then never ever, ever give up on your family advertising ever. Okay, but you can start to put a little money into your niche advertising. Absolutely. There’s no reason why there’s no reason why it wouldn’t; I would start with emergencies.

But if you’re not set up for emergencies, then the senior side of things would be probably my next choice, although I’d have to go look into the spreadsheets for the stats on it. But my gut feeling is, is that’s where I’d go with that piece. Now. Coming out of the recession, there’s a couple of other things that are going on that I do need to make you aware of. That may or may not be a part of claiming staking your claim. We all know that the DS owes have accumulated their seed money, they’re buying practices, and they’re expanding their footprint in the US. We also know and again, this is not sometimes when we say stuff like this people take it the wrong way. We’re not for or against any business model in dentistry.

Howie: No, absolutely not. We just know.

Mark: We just know the impact of the marketing that they do, or the non-impact of the marketing that they do. Okay, so we know that there’s an influx of DSO practice ownership. And with DSS comes enemies of scale. And some of that scale was marketing. Now they have, you know, 10s of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars to promote practices throughout their network. And in most cases, well, 95% of the cases you won’t outspend them, the listeners to this podcast will not outspend them

Howie: know that that battles over you lost

Mark: yea you lost, right. Yeah. So when, when faced with something like that, you look at who they’re marketing to, and who would likely respond to their marketing. And if you really look at their marketing, without exception, is designed purposely to be very attractive to the bottom 51 and a half percent of the dental market in the US in that they always use one or multiple starbursts with deals in them, in order to get the phone to ring. This is also true with all of their online advertising. You don’t have to go very far to see what I’m talking about. Just gathered them, gather them in your home, and look at them at the end of a month. And you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.

Howie: It presents to the consumer that the top priority reason you should choose this is that we give you a better deal.

Mark: Right? Right. There’s nothing else that

Howie: That’s fine. Those that that’s a perfectly valid market segment. Go ahead, but that just know that that’s what’s going on.

Mark: Right. So as you stake your claim, as you’re pulling out of this recession, one way to stake your claim is and some of this is intellectual, some of its like emotional, like, you have to believe there’s a 48.2% of the marketplace that those people are alienated. You have to believe in your heart, that they’re 48.2% of the moms in the US will look at that type of a promotion from a healthcare provider and be turned off by it. Because it’s true. Okay, we’ve got hundreds of people who will tell you it’s true. Okay.

Howie: Yeah.

Mark: So, so you, as the dentist pulling out of this recession. staking your claim, you need to claim that 48.2 the competition the DSL is ignoring it. Actually, they’re actually fueling your part of that market. Yeah, alien being the targets, you could look at it like, you know, it’s an assistance

Howie: That kind of back handily helping you

Mark: Yes, there you go. Okay,

Howie: If you go, Hey, you’re going for the top end of the market? Well, the pricing incentives will drive those people to you. Here’s another,

Mark: And we’ll end with this staking your claim, this will be part three, this will be for this part in this series. It’s not the last podcast wherever we’re going to do. And it just be the last one of this series. There’s another, there’s actually two more, there’s two more other marketing possibilities that may exist in your marketplace that will really help you stake your claim as you pull out of this recession.

During the recession, some practices really, really, really hit hard times, those practices could be for sale in your market. Normally, the ones who hit the hardest times, or the DSS don’t want them. But it may be an acquisition target for you. If you’re in a really ultra competitive marketplace, and there is an older practice for sale with, you know, reasonable value and within the patient charts. It might be something viable that you look at and consider. So that’s one of them.

Another overlooked possibility to adding production to your top line and bottom line. There’s another dynamic that’s happening in dentistry right now. And it’s not going to stop, it’s going to continue, it’s actually good, it’s going to accelerate. Okay, and that is and again, before, before I go any further, the specialists listening to this podcast. Please understand that we love you and do great in life. And, you know, we believe patients are best treated in your specialist hands and please don’t read anything into what I’m about to say, Okay.

The business dynamics in dentistry is shifting. More and more and more and more specialists are coming to us asking us to promote their services direct to the consumer. Fewer and fewer dentists or general dentists are referring more and more and more general dentists are doing some of these procedures themselves. Or and here’s your opportunity or potential opportunity. They’re bringing the specialists in one day a week, maybe one day a month or two days a month or three days a month. They’re bringing them the specialists into their general practice to handle the specialty care needed by that specialist specifically for their patients.

Howie: Might be ortho maybe pedo

Mark: Sure

Howie: Oral Surgery, whatever.

Mark: Well, here, here’s we’re writing the update to you know, Unlimited New Patients Volume three, and it’s also valuable to be able to kind of predict, all right, what’s going to what may happen? Like, I think pedodontist are going to be just fine. Because if you lined up 100 dentists, 97 of them don’t want to work with kids. And that’s okay, so pedo is probably always going to have a spot. And they’ll always have you know, they’re always going to have that referral, and the referrals will come with a big smile.

Howie: Right?

Mark: And endodontist, periodontist, prosthodontist, orthodontist. Ortho just raised $4 million for TV ads, and ran them to try and convince dental consumers that it was better to get your teeth straightened by an orthodontist. If that doesn’t tell you, if that’s not the writing on the wall, okay, then you just don’t want to see it. All right. So why is this an opportunity for you?

Well, if you’re a GP, not, you know, you’re not normally open on Friday. And you have maybe you don’t do, maybe don’t place your own implants. You might want to have a periodontist come into your office once a week. Or maybe you have a nice young population. And you know what? I keep getting; I keep I’m sending out nine referrals for ortho cases a month. You might want to have your office is open on a Saturday morning and have an orthodontist to come in. I don’t know.

Howie: Yeah, share the wealth.

Mark: Exactly right. I think pedo and oral surgery; Oral Surgery more for political reasons, but I think pedo and oral surgery will arm will survive as their own edges. I think the rest of the ‘ontists are going to be coming into larger general practices with available time room and perhaps technology to create practices that are you know, multi specialty, larger general dental offices. Do not be surprised if you see more general dentists are more specialists who are going direct to consumer. Yeah, that shouldn’t be a surprise to any of you.

Howie: Now that’s coming more and more we see it right now. Well, ladies and gents, Thanks you. Thank you again for listening to us and we hope you tune in next time. Until then, have a good one.