Dentists Who Invest Podcast
Official Podcast of the Dentists Who Invest platform. Talking all things investing, money and finance with a dental spin. Have you ever wondered how you can grow your wealth and protect your hard earned money as a Dentist? We've got you covered. Featuring famous guests such as Andrew Craig, Edward Zuckerberg and Benyamin Ahmed we delve deep into EVERY aspect of finance to educate and empower ALL Dentists.
Dentists Who Invest Podcast
Why Can't I Get Enough Patients? with Clix Dental DWI-EP298
You can download your FREE report on how you can avoid financial mistakes as a dentist using the link just here >>> dentistswhoinvest.com/podcastreport
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Struggling to fill your appointment book? Join us as we crack the code on attracting more patients to your dental practice with marketing whizzes Joe and Myran from Clix Dental. They’ve taken the leap from general marketing to becoming specialists in the dental game, and they’re here to share pearls of wisdom from their hands-on experience in dental practices. You'll learn how to convert potential clients into loyal patients and deal with the particular difficulties that come with it, regardless of how long you've been in business or how new your clinic is.
We'll also dive into the magic of on-camera presence, showing how it can revolutionise patient interactions and strengthen your brand. Discover practical fixes for common problems like empty waiting rooms and no-shows, including the smart use of targeted ads and irresistible offers. Don't miss out on your reception team's crucial role in setting the tone for patient relationships—think empathetic communication, building trust, and ensuring everything runs smoothly from the first call to the final treatment plan. Tune in for a chat full of actionable strategies to supercharge your dental practice's growth and keep those patients returning.
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Disclaimer: All content on this channel is for education purposes only and does not constitute an investment recommendation or individual financial advice. For that, you should speak to a regulated, independent professional. The value of investments and the income from them can go down as well as up, so you may get back less than you invest. The views expressed on this channel may no longer be current. The information provided is not a personal recommendation for any particular investment. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and all tax rules may change in the future. If you are unsure about the suitability of an investment, you should speak to a regulated, independent professional.
Why don't I have enough patients is a question that perhaps a lot of dentists ask to themselves and have asked themselves over the years, and we're coming at this today from the associate's perspective, plus also the principal's perspective, because you want to touch both bases. Naturally, lots of people might have a lot of patients and they might be thinking to themselves okay, how can I get more of the patients that are open and warm to the types of treatment that I enjoy doing? In which case this podcast is also for you. I've got some marketing experts with me today. Their names are Joe and My, and this is, of course, the first time that we're welcoming them on the Dennis who Invests podcast. How are you guys today? Amazing.
Myran:I feel honoured. I feel honoured to be here.
Dr James:Oh, the honour is mine. The honour is mine to have you both here and to share your wisdom and expertise. I can assure you both Well, Joe, Myran, I know that we've got to know each other really well over the last few months, which is flipping awesome. Maybe it might be nice to have a little bit of an intro for the Dentists Who Invest podcast as to you guys and your background, sure, Well, yeah.
Joe:So thank you first of all, James, for having us on. It is a pleasure. So a little bit of background about Myran and I and our business, Clix Dental. So yeah, we started our business coming straight out. Myran and I we met at college actually when we were about 14 years old, so as soon as we finished our A-levels at 18, we kind of got out into the world and thought, ok, what do we do now? So we thought, ok, let's start some sort of business. So we got into the marketing world right In the beginning we were working with kind of all different clients.
Joe:We were working with really anyone, any business owner that we could get in front of and by chance really, we kind of fell into the dental market. Our first client was a dentist. Moving on from there we went on to actually work, both of us, within multiple different dental practices. So we're kind of working on reception teams, handling the marketing all of that side of things. So over the last six, nearly seven years now, we've really tried to master marketing for dental practices specifically. So it kind of brings you up to speed with where we're at now working with practices all across the country, generating them new patients, essentially.
Dr James:Do you know what? What a flipping story. And actually the number of business owners that their business comes about by serendipity. They just go out and experience and try lots of things and they're like, actually this is really helpful for this niche. What did you learn and observe when you guys were working in those dental practices? You talked about niche. What did you learn and observe when?
Myran:you guys were working in those dental practices you talked about. I think you know it was actually the point where we were working in-house, where I think we really honed in on our service, and I think it was that point where we, you know, we took a step back and assessed everything that was going on. You know the different factors, the hurdles where you know dentists were falling out, maybe even the reception team. You know the hurdles that they were falling at as well and I think once we were actually in a dental practice essentially living in a dental practice you know we had the opportunity to dissect all of these different things. I think that was probably I mean correct me if I'm wrong, joe but I think that was the key moment where, you know, our service really got enhanced.
Myran:And I think that's when we realized the specific things that dentists actually do need help with to to have a successful practice running.
Joe:I think I think, touching on that point, really what we learned was that in the beginning, we were just generating leads for different dental practices. Right, we're providing the leads and saying, like here's the leads, like, go convert them. But what we realized was that generating leads online is is something that is not crazy difficult to do, right? But really, where we saw the best results was when we started working on that process, from the lead being generated to them coming and sitting in the chair. Dental practice owners will know that you don't just want to generate any type of lead, right. So it's all about making sure that when that lead comes through, that they're nurtured and educated to the point. By the time they turn up at the dental practice, they have enough knowledge that they can make a decision on that day. So I think, yeah, that's one of the biggest takeaways we learned is building out the nurturing sequences and making sure that when patients come in, they can make a decision Flipping awesome.
Dr James:And you know, the thing about us, dennis, is we're so in our own practice that we don't even have context on our own situations. And you guys have observed multiple businesses and context is king. By the way, it's such a powerful thing, because how do you know how good you are in certain areas unless you know where the bar is or how everybody else is doing? It's so important, even though we don't necessarily always realize it. So you guys looked at multiple businesses. You presumably inspected and experienced multiple businesses. You presumably inspected and experienced multiple businesses. What did you notice different about dental practice whenever it came to the issues that they struggle with, whenever it comes to marketing? Was it like a lot of them had very few patients, or was it that the patients that came to them, they were not necessarily interested in the practice and the treatments that the practice provided, or the treatments that the practice would desire to provide more of, or was it both those things or something else?
Joe:I think any dental practice you go into are going to have their own list of problems, right? No two dental practices are the same. It also depends on what stage in that journey they are. I mean, like we work a lot, a lot now with squat practices, new startups. Their problems are completely different to a practice that has been around for 20, 25 years, right? So a new practice owner, their problems are all about kind of awareness, making people in the local area aware that they're there, aware of the services that they offer.
Joe:And for a new practice, a lot of the time, for an existing practice sorry, that might be around for a long time a lot of their issues might not necessarily be kind of generating new patients. It might be getting the most out of the patients that they have within the practice already, working on their systems, making sure that they can get the most out of their existing patient base. So, yeah, I think to answer that question, no two practices are the same. Everyone's going to have their, their own problems. So, yeah, that's really like one of our jobs is to come in and identify the bottlenecks of each practice and really trying to figure out what it is, um, and to anyone watching, I think it's a good exercise for them to really analyze their business from the top and see the places that they might be dropping the ball gotcha.
Dr James:And what about whenever it comes to the associates? Something similar.
Myran:Yeah, for sure, I mean with the associates. I think I mean what we find anyways is, you know the associates, they're extremely hungry because, let's say, they don't have their own practice right now, but they really want to sort of build up the cases and actually get that social proof out there. And I think you know one thing that we've seen as well with the associates that are doing the best are the ones that start as early as possible when it comes to, you know, capturing case studies, getting testimonials from their patients to actually build a brand. And once they've got that brand as essentially their portfolio, you can then leverage that moving forward. When it comes to, say, the point where you're opening up your own practice, you can have your own patient list, essentially, that you could take over to your new practice as well. So, for sure, like there's a, there's a lot of, there's a lot of things that associates need to be focusing on as well. That's, you know, slightly different principles, but yeah, these are kind of the things that they need to keep in mind as well.
Dr James:Do you know? Do you know what it's fascinating? Right? Because whenever I was working as an associate in 2020, something along those lines I remember distinctly thinking to myself and this was definitely a huge limiting belief. Looking back on this era and looking back on myself, I remember thinking to myself hey, there's no point in me building an Instagram following. Instagram is already saturated through a full of dentists. There's no point in doing that in the year 2020. Of course, that was total nonsense, because there's been so many people who've built followings since that era and since that time, what would you say to those people who still are limited by that thought or preconception in their head?
Joe:well, look, I think for a lot of people, right, look, we work with dentists all of the time people don't really like to get themselves out there. A lot like it's a big limiting belief that we see so many people have. They don't want to make videos or they're a bit lazy with their before and after pictures and I think, look, you can definitely do that. But I think it depends where you want to take your career, right, if you really want to be at the top of the field in terms whether that's an associate or a practice owners, I think simply just look at the top people right now. If you look at the top people in your field, look at what they're doing.
Joe:I don't think you're going to see any of the top dentists who don't have a good social media presence. They're not documenting their work, they're not putting themselves out there. So, look, I completely understand jumping in front of camera and doing that side of stuff. It's not necessarily what everyone wants to do. But if you can break that, I think the the benefit that that can give you, especially leveraged over time, compounding, compounding on top of each other, more before and after cases, more videos it cannot harm your career, right is? That's definitely not going to harm your career.
Joe:So I think, just look at the top people in the field, see what they're doing, and if you think that you're going to be that one case that's different, you might need to kind of re-evaluate and and really look at the reality of the situation yeah, you know what, not to not to steal the mic too much today.
Dr James:But I guess what I would say to that previous version of myself is I would say, James, let's say social media can boost your career by a thousand percent, right? Something along those lines. Let's, we're just pulling that number out of the air, although that can be done, right, zero times a thousand is always going to be zero. Yeah, so if you're literally not doing it at all, it's always going to be zero. But even if you're doing it to a degree, well, one times a thousand is a thousand, and blah, blah, and it stacks, and it stacks, and it stacks.
Dr James:And you can't claim to build the skill until you've actually practiced it, practiced it. And when I say practice it, what I mean is speaking on camera, because it is a skill in and of itself, right. And I would say, James, see that journey for the merits other than the result, the merits in that building the skill of speaking on camera, the merits and improving your confidence, the merits and improving your ability to articulate yourself whenever it comes to talking, and therefore bring that to your patient conversations. If you make it about the skills that you're enhancing, you're always winning, and that's what I would have said to that person.
Myran:For sure, and I think I mean that's something that we've actually heard as well from many dental clients. You know, because, like you said, at first a lot of dentists they're nervous to hook on camera. They're very picky about how they come across, right. But what a lot of dentists have said to us is that once I started to build that portfolio of content, not only did it help me build my brand, but it also helped within the practice with the psychology, with patients as well. I was finding my consultation process was getting a lot better because of the way I was more confident in front of camera, which allowed me to actually improve the confidence in my general day-to-day working life as well.
Joe:So it can help in so many different aspects of your, of your dentistry. I think one point to also make about content for dentists is you've got to think that for a lot of patients like dentists will know this that going to the dentist is not always a pleasant experience for people, right? So many people are absolutely terrified of going to the dentist. I mean, myron and I, we spent like the first half of our career just talking to our clients' leads right, and through that experience we learned so much about the patients and what their fears were, and so many people have had bad experiences in the past with dentists and that stops them from maybe going to see a dentist no-transcript, actually realize how important getting on camera is.
Dr James:I didn't actually think it was linked to me getting more patients or doing more of the dentistry that I enjoy. I thought that it was like some obscure thing that some people did and it had success for some people, but really it was quite rare or infrequent that that was the case. But now I see, is it's literally the first building block to everything that you want to do. It there's, it's, it's actually the very first and most important thing that you should do to so many other cool things, and I wish that I could go back and tell that to a previous version of myself.
Dr James:But anyway, let's drill down into some of the common issues that you see whenever it comes to dentists and their books. So in your experience, the classic one is they don't have enough patience right, or there's white space in the diary. Dentists hate that so much, but they don't always know how to fix it. In your experience, what are some solutions or remedies for dentists who feel that way? And I get that it varies based on the practice. Maybe if we keep it high level for the moment, yeah, yeah.
Joe:So I think the first thing right that you it's it's going to differ. If you're not running ads already, it's one thing for people who are running ads and it's one thing for people who aren't. If you're not running ads already right, you're not running ads already right, you're not running ads online. There's thousands of people in your local area who are looking for the treatments that you offer and they simply don't know about you. So if you're not running any ads, the first place to start is to start running ads and get your name out there. It's so simple now. You can literally target specific radius of the practice. You can can target certain interests, things like that, to get your message out there.
Joe:So the number one thing is the why you might have white space in your diary is not enough. People know about either you as a dentist or your practice. So that's the first thing is awareness. Now it's a different story for those people who might be running ads right now already and that they've still got white space. So the issue in that that case is um, they might be running ads right now already and that they've still got white space. So the issue in that that case is um, they might be. What we hear all the time is okay, I'm getting loads of leads, but they're not converting into consultations for me, so you've got to look at that situation there. So, okay, you're getting a lot of leads, but you're not actually converting a lot of them into the consultation, so that means that something is wrong in either your offering to patients or your back-end process once a lead has been generated. So I think it's about working on that system and seeing the areas where you can increase that conversion rate.
Myran:For sure, and I think, just to add to that as well, when it comes to the actual let's say, a dentist is running their ads right now I think some of the key factors that could be halting the performance of the campaign. I'll list them off. So the actual creative in itself, so, whether that's the image of the video, it needs to actually capture somebody's attention when they're scrolling through a feed. That's number one. Another thing is and this is one of the biggest ones the actual offer that you're promoting. Whether it is an offer that you're promoting or just a general brand awareness, you need to have some form of hook that's going to catch people's attention, that's going to want them to actually click the call to action, which is to give their details or to book directly into the diary.
Myran:So I think also having the right ad setup as well is key, because you could find that and this is something we've heard from a lot of dentists in the field is that you know, I started running my ads but I just didn't really get anything from it. I didn't really get bang for my buck from any of the money I put in. And, you know, once we actually dissected the ad account and saw the way that things were set up and everything like that, we realized okay, number one, you're not testing anything. You're just pushing out an ad, like one video, and that's it, with like one piece of copywriting, no testing, just hoping to god that that's going to work for you, whereas if you've not got anything to test with or play with, or any offers that you're testing or anything like that, how are you going to find your winning formula? So that's another point as well.
Dr James:I think the ad setup is key to the performance as well I I'm smiling because I look back on myself whenever I first did ads and I remember I did this course online just to learn how they work, a little bit about them and what happened was what did I do? Yeah, so I did that and then I put some ads on it and it got clicks but nobody. There was no actual, real leads coming through. Because it was to, it was to grow a list of emails that I had at the time. No actual leads came through, maybe maybe like one or two. Right, and you know what? I immediately started thinking to myself. I was like ads don't work for my market. It's so easy to learn the wrong lesson and I bet you guys have heard that a million times whereas, in reality, what's way? Yes, there is a very slim chance that that's possible, but what's way? More likely is it's down to the execution. Exactly, exactly that, and like just an example.
Joe:Just last week we had a call with a dentist and they jumped on the call and they said, okay, like I want to run ads, I want to market my business, but Facebook ads don't work for me. I've tried them before and, as Myron said, we looked at their account and saw what they were doing and it was just one ad that they put out to one audience. Like you can't expect to have one idea and think that that's the be all of an end all and that's going to work. Like you need to throw multiple things out and see what's sticking, particularly for your audience, your market, um. So yeah, I think that's that's. The main thing is having enough creatives and having enough variety amongst your advertising to see what truly works. Don't just make one thing, put it out, see if it works and if it doesn't, say okay this doesn't work for me that's.
Dr James:That's not how anything works right what about more traditional forms of marketing, let's say leaflets and think and newspaper ads and things along those lines? Do they still have a place in 2024?
Joe:100 like they, especially for new practices that are starting up. Um, I think a leaflet drop is fantastic. Look, we've done so many leaflet drops now. I think the problem with leaflet drops, as opposed to, maybe, digital advertising, is they're a lot harder to track, right it's a lot harder to track the return on investment.
Joe:But where you can actually combat that is if you set up a landing page, right, you set up a landing page separate from your website. You set up a landing page specifically for this flyer. So let's say, you put out a flyer for new patient consultations at your practice, right, you set up a custom landing page for that and on the flyer you have a QR code. So there's some information on the flyer. Someone can scan the QR code and then you can actually see if you've set up your landing page correctly with the tracking et cetera. You can actually see how many people have gone on the landing pages from the flyers. So that's actually a good way you can track the performance of your flyers. But to answer your question, a hundred percent, percent, like don't get me wrong I think there might be better forms of marketing than flyers, but I definitely think there's a place for them in 2024 and I think so.
Myran:Just to add to that as well, like to give you an example of of an actual case study that we that we ran recently like a flyer drop we did for a client we were promoting on there. On one side it was, I think, four mouth dental implants, so obviously a high ticket treatment, and on the other side, I believe, it was DenPlan. They wanted to increase their DenPlan numbers so that the value of the practice could increase, because their long-term goal was to actually sell the practice. So what we found was, you know, the QR code on the full mouth dental implant side, the amount of people that were scanning that and coming through and booking, you know, booking consultations, I think. When we, when we actually scraped back the data and found out exactly what had come from that, I believe it was like, I mean, I think it was around 60, 60k plus that just came from that flyer drop within the space of, I think, like maybe what? Two, two, three weeks maybe. It was crazy.
Joe:So honestly, yeah, that doesn't mean that you have to like print out tens and tens of thousands of flyers, like you have to identify it with your local area and I think flyer drops are specifically good for that. Short radius around the practice, right? I think that's really where you need to target with your flyers. Don't be dropping them all over the country. Get short radius to practice those people who might be in walking or a really short distance drive to the practice. They're the ones that you want to target with your flyers.
Dr James:Interesting. There we go. Wow, how about a newspaper ad with a QR code in it? Is that something that anybody's ever done before?
Joe:Honestly, we've never done that, it sounds like a good idea, James, you might have given us a
Dr James:good idea. Then there you go, zing, zing, welcome guys. All right, cool. Well, listen, anyway, it just popped in my head when you were talking there. Okay, cool. So here's the big thing, and here's the thing that a lot of people say about leads. Ok, brilliant, we got the leads, but how do we qualify them, or make sure that they're warm leads or they're right for what we want to sell, so to speak? How can Dennis do that better?
Myran:OK. So I think what that really comes down to is the actual lead nurturing process, and what that is is the lead follow up sequences that occur from the point of when they've signed up for an ad. So let's say you know, you've got to think. Let's say you're running an ad on Meta. It's disruptive marketing, right? It's not like if they go on Google and type in you know the treatment. It's disruptive. They're going to just be scrolling their feed and it's just going to pop up in front of them. So let's say ad, they've got a missing tooth. Oh wow, this works for me. They click it, fill out their details. What next? They'll just go about their day and forgot they've even done that.
Myran:Okay, now what a lot of dental practices don't have in place is that next step, which is the follow-up sequences from that. Because I promise you now that person that signed up for that ad 99% of the time is probably going to forget they signed up maybe the next day or the day after that. So if you have a sequence in place where you're not only reminding them they signed up for the ad because you don't want to seem pushy, what you want to do is come across like you're educating them and actually letting them know a bit more about. Okay, what are you going to experience when you do decide to come into the practice? What can your what? Let's say it's dental, dental implants. What does the dental implant process and journey actually look like for a patient at our practice? Specifically, why is our practice so good with dental implants? You know, so having a good sequence in place is is definitely really, really important for that post, I think I think qualifying is all about education.
Joe:That's really what it comes down to. When someone says, okay, I've got a bad quality of lead, what that means is that the lead doesn't know about them. So, as Myron said, it's about making sure that what is a qualified lead for us is someone A who knows about the dental practice, knows about the dentist they're going to see, knows about the treatment. Treatment has a rough idea of the costing side of things. So this is a topic within like dentists that we speak to is like they want them to be qualified on the pricing side of things, so they want the patient to know a rough idea of the cost. Now, I think patients should definitely have a rough idea of the costing, but I think a place where patients can get deterred is, let's say, a reception team.
Joe:Someone calls up right and they say, okay, how much are your dental implants?
Joe:And the receptionist might say, oh, how many do you need? And they'll say something like okay, I need five dental implants. If you just come straight out to the patient and say, okay, that's going to be around 13 or 14 000 pounds, they might just be like whoa, like that's that, that's too much, so you need to do it in a way where you give them an idea, you let them know that it's going to be a higher ticket, without trying to scare them off and say, look, you're going to come in and spend 30, 40 grand with us. Like you need to educate them in a way where they understand the range of the costs. But yeah, there's definitely techniques that your reception team should be using to get patients through the door Because, look, when someone actually comes to the practice, they sit in the chair and they get educated. They see the technology, they see the systems. They're much more likely to be more receptive to a higher ticket treatment plan as opposed to just hearing it over the phone after 20 seconds of speaking to someone.
Dr James:Do you know what's so interesting, right? Do you know, sometimes, if you listen to the staff in your own practice, communication is so important and it's probably a huge place that needs to be optimized in a lot of dental practices, because I swear, if you just listen to the front desk sometimes don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not diminishing people at the front desk running along those lines and naturally I can't. You know, I don't want to generalize, but a lot of time in my experience, the number of clangers that they drop and things that they say they just straight up put people off, like you know. When it comes to the price, like you know, that's you give, give, a range.
Dr James:A range is a better thing to give because you know let's say in that example that you just said and that probably does happen loads, right, you say to the patient how many crowns do you need, how many implants you need? This is going to be like five, right, they might just need one. Who the hell knows? Right, they're not dentists, they don't know this stuff. Yeah, so we're better off doing is giving them some sort of range and say, hey, it could be this, it could be this, chances are it's going to be closer to this number. However, we definitely need to have a little look around your mouth. I definitely think it's better to give them a range rather than just say it's going to be way lower than it actually is, because then they're just going to come to the practice and think it's going to be a certain number. That's kind of part of your qualifying process in and of itself.
Myran:But you see, that little thing that that we just said, a lot of people don't know. That's the thing. They don't know how to do that, so it's definitely worth mentioning on this podcast today, marin, I see you nodding. Yeah, no, for sure. I mean because you just got me thinking. Like you know, when we were working in-house at practices as well, we were realizing that, like you said, you know, the ball was being dropped and it wasn't even intentional because you've got to think a receptionist at your average dental practice, they're, they're not going to understand that. You know, the leads that come through online advertising is different to a lead that's calling the practice. The approach has to be different.
Dr James:The psychology has to be different every and sorry to barge in, but and it is worth mentioning our hearts go out to them right, because they're not dentists and they don't know this stuff with me yeah, yeah, for sure, 100.
Myran:So I mean, one thing that we found is that, especially the leads that sign up, say, to a meta ad or a google ad, is that they need to feel like they're being heard and it can't come across like it's a checklist, that the receptionist is just ticking off, that they've said this question and that question. It needs to come across like, okay, this person isn't here for my money, this person really does care about what I'm going through. They're asking me about my situation, how long I've felt like this, you know. They're asking me about how it's impacting my life. I feel like I'm being heard by a counselor, not even a dental receptionist, right, and I think once you have that mindset switch and a lot of the practices we worked in once they had that switch we saw that, you know, because they felt like they were being heard.
Joe:Yeah, that's one thing I'd say as well I think it's about really understanding what's important to the patient right, instead of just trying to. I think the mistake that a lot of people make is they'll go out and just start trying to like talk about what they do straight away. I think it's really important to understand what's important to the patient. For example, like this is what we train our team on in terms of like our lead handlers, and what we train reception teams on is asking the right questions to the patients to truly understand why they want this treatment. So, for example, dental implants like if you ask the question, so like what is it you're looking to get out of your dental implant treatment, and then they they're going to go on to talk about, okay, I want to be able to eat the foods that I'm no longer able to eat. Maybe they just want to smile with confidence again. So it's all about really understanding what's important to that patient and making sure that, like, you're presenting them the, you're presenting them the solution to that through the treatment.
Dr James:So it's not about the benefits of the treatment, it's about what the benefits of the treatment is for them you know, I love that and I again, I definitely want to steal the line, right, but there's a little interesting that somebody once said to me on that. So if you think about a dental crown, right, what technically is a dental crown? It's a millimeter shell of porcelain that sits on top of your tooth. It's a millimeter shell of porcelain that sits on top of your tooth. Yeah, how unappealing is that? Yeah, you know. You know, people are not going to be queuing up the door to get it from that description. Right, that's what it is.
Dr James:But people don't buy it because because of what it is. They buy it because of the outcome. Right, the outcome is going to enhance the smell or protect the tooth or protect the tooth, right, it just so happens that this is what it is. And I think, when it comes to the if we wanna use that term the not everybody likes selling process, well, I think people talk too much about the technicals and the specifics, what it literally is, rather than the outcome that the person wants. And as soon as you switch from that, watch your conversations flow so much nicer and people will be so much more engaged, guys. Obviously, there's lots of ways we can market our dental products, which is really cool, and you guys have seen some success stories on that front. You got any success stories you can share with us? People who were in this place and then they got to this place because they did xyz.
Joe:Curious to know yeah, sure, I mean, look we. So, for example, one of our clients who we actually worked in house for um, dr mark mark tangry, has a practice in in birmingham and so, yeah, I want to talk about on on this case like something new that we've introduced into his practice. So, before you could book directly in with the dentist, maybe for 150 pounds to go see the specialist or whatever it might be. But something that we've we've done this year really at this practice was we offered something new as a hook to patients to to come into the dental practice, which is a free tco consultation. Now a lot of dental practices have tcos.
Joe:You might not have a tco and this might not be relevant to you, but if you do, if you simply a lot of times for the dental, for patients, sorry, committing 150 pounds straight off the bat, they might not want to do that.
Joe:They don't understand the value of it yet. So we've started these new tco consultations and allow people to come in with a refundable deposit um into the practice and just have a conversation to start with. They have a conversation with the tco um, they talk through the, the options and through doing that we've been able to to generate this year like hundreds of thousands of pounds just based off the back of these free TCO consultations and allowing people that way to come in through that free consultation and then converting them into paid consultations off the back of those free consultations. But sometimes it's just good to get the patient in, make them feel heard and really understand what's important to them, to point them in the right direction with within the practice. So, yeah, we've been able to generate mark like 17 18 x returns on his ad spends this year and that technique we've seen and implemented in multiple practices since then, which has been super successful awesome and you know what I am a big believer.
Dr James:I like what you said just then because, just for clarity, you know, for context, I'm never on the dental practice. However, maybe I will do someday. What's the space? But you know what I'm. You know what I'm less of a fan of. I'm less of a fan of free appointments with a dentist. Free, free initial exams.
Dr James:I hate that ran because I used to do that. I used to do that in a practice that I was in and people would just turn up just the same many freebies they could get right and, uh, we used to charge. We used to charge, I think it was. It was free, right for the exam, but the small print was it was nine quid for an x-ray and you know the number of friggin arguments this nine quid actually caused and it was just like why, why didn't we just charge, like not even that much money, like I don't know 50.
Dr James:So some money, right that, so that there's, they show that they're serious. You have to come and see the dentist and then just include the x-rays in there. It would just save so much hassle in my opinion. But I didn't know that at the time because I had no context on the situation. So I definitely think you should charge for new appointments with a dentist, right, but free TCO appointments are really like that man, because you get them and you get them talking like, because this is the thing, at least you give them the option, right, you're like. Right, if you're committed and you know what you want, this is a new patient exam, right. However, if you feel like you just want more info, well, we've got the amazing tco is super informed on this stuff and they can walk you through your options. I love that.
Joe:It's really good yeah, like through working like as well I mean bobby bandel, he does this fantastically at his practice especially seeing a lot of like nervous and anxious patients is if you can have someone in that role of the tcoCO who's really got like a caring nature, nurturing nature, and they can just talk to the patients honestly it's on the patient side of things they really appreciate that. If, like, they don't feel like, okay, this practice is just trying to take my money, they feel like they're actually cared for and heard and honestly like, if you have the ability to offer those tco consultations and you can train your tco in the right way to manage those consultations, I think it's going to pay such dividends for your, for your dental practice flipping sweet.
Dr James:You know what, guys? I'm already excited for our next podcast, where we can just pick one of those marketing topics and really drill down into it, explore it in even more detail. But in the meantime, what I want to do is I want to thank you both for your time today, because, being flipping awesome, I've learned stuff as well. I'm sure the guests have too. Guys, if anybody wants to reach out to you off the back of anything that they've heard today on the Dentists Who Invest podcast, how are they best off doing that?
Myran:uh, go into our instagram, I think so @clixdental. , that will probably be the best place to to get in touch with us. Um, also, yeah, you can get in touch by email as well, contact . Um, yeah, you can get in touch with us there, I think yeah, go to our go to our instagram.
Joe:There's a link in our instagram where you can book in a call directly with with uh maran and I and just have a conversation. Look, whatever it is that you're experiencing marketing wise, infrastructure wise with within the back end of your marketing. We'd love to to help anyone out. So, yeah, please reach out to us on instagram. I'm actually going to upload some exclusive content with James as well that we filmed last time we were here, James, so, yeah, you can check that out there as well.
Dr James:Looking forward to that. That might have just done me out of a few leads then, because people are probably sick of hearing me on the podcast.
Myran:No, I'm joking.
Dr James:Hopefully that incentivized the deal. I hope, I hope. But yeah anyway, at Clix Dental on the gram, let's go.
Joe:Thank you so much Just a quick one Clix Dental is C-L-I-X as well good point, very good point.
Dr James:That is true, guys. Well listen. Thank you so much for coming along today. That was super fun, looking forward to the next episode. In the meantime, have a flipping smash on Thursday and we'll see each other thank you so much, guys.
Joe:Thank you for watching. Love it boys.
