Dental marketing consultant Ed O’ Keefe has been very successful in getting his clients to bring in so many new patients, and to have his clients accept his cases as well so fast for years now. In this article, you will be able to have great tips from Ed on how to become successful in the business of dental marketing. As a dental marketing consultant, he will help you to go away from the traditional ways of being “procedure-oriented”, and to be able to find a unique perspective on how to win patients in a different, more effective way. And as an effective consultant, he will also share a rather unique view of how to develop trust between the dental marketer and the patient to the reader.

You may ask a dental marketing consultant, “Well, I’m really not a marketer as such. I just want to sell or provide as much (with services like TMJ, Restorative Work, Implants, Cosmetics, Dentures, Whitening, etc.) And I understand that you have to go through all these “marketing” and “emotional connection” stuff and it spells too much work. Now, how do I make this one work without going through all these steps?”.

Ed, as a consultant, understand this kind of question very well. As individuals who are in the line of dental marketing, your goals are to get a ton of new patients buying and choosing your services as fast as possible. So how do you achieve these goals?

Develop Empathy!

First, the consultant would advise you to develop empathy with your patients. In dental marketing, this is perhaps the most important skill you will need to get people to totally trust you. In the dictionary, it is defined as “intellectual or imaginative apprehension of another’s condition or state of mind!”. Being empathic means that you have to have a complete understanding of the psychological state of mind of your prospect, and they sense it without you having to tell them! Always remember that the operating force here is the actual state of mind of your prospect, not what you want it to be, or think it should be! There is nothing more irrelevant on this planet than what you think someone else should be interested in! For example, we all believe very strongly that the services we provide can help most people solve many dental problems or enhance the quality of their look, teeth, confidence, etc. Things like: (1) Having a confident, beautiful smile;(2) Pain Free Dentistry;(3) Whiter, Straighter, Healthier Teeth;(4) Oral Cancer Prevention;(5) Ending Periodontal disease;(6) Raising Cavity Free Kids;(7) Ending the pain of a cavity;(8) Headache Relief;(9) Ending Facial and Oral Pain ; etc. Now most of us know that certain procedures will solve many of these problems, procedures like bridge, crown, vaneers, extractions, NTI, dentures, regular cleanings, basic oral hygiene, etc. Now you may ask, “Why is it so hard to convince people to go ahead with these procedures, when the procedures are so much better than the situations people find themselves in now?” The answer to this is simple; “Almost everyone outside of the dental profession pays little, if any, attention to dental health issues until they are forced to do so!” This answer would then lead you to the next tip.

Win Your Patient’s Confidence And Trust!

Now the consultant would like to tell you that in dental marketing, you should always find ways to win the confidence of your patients before they accept your cases or treatments. To make real money, which means doing a ton of high end procedures, keeping your hygienists and associates busy, you have to have a deep, empathetic connection into their heart! Take for example the scenario of going to bed with a member of the opposite sex. You would not just walk up to someone, and ask them to go to bed, starting to brag about how good you are in bed, how many members of the opposite sex you have slept with in the last ten years, and so on. Would anyone be likely to be persuaded unless he or she actually wanted to go to bed, after enough time had passed? Now, this example may seem a little bit outlandish to some. But when you look at it deeply, as you ask someone to get uppers and lowers or new dentures, aren’t you asking them to go to “dental bed” with you? So, we see here that winning the confidence and trust of your patients would be a best way to boost up your dental marketing status.

Present Solutions And No Selling!

And the consultant would also like to advise the dental marketer not to sell the procedures. Instead, you should present solutions, and the let the patients choose and accept the service and solution. Make it a point that none of your clients should sell a thing. Find out exactly what your patients want, and then give it to them. Now this may seem a bit awkward to people who have been following the procedure-oriented protocols of traditional, dental marketing. But it would be very effective to have the patients decide for themselves and accept your services, and not forcing them in anyway to do so.

Now, there might be no easy ways or magic formulas to be successful in dental marketing. But Ed, as a consultant would advise you to be patient (as it takes time for these tips to boost your skills in having good numbers of case acceptance) and follow these tips religiously.

In your dental marketing practice, the success of your business always has something to do with your dental practice management. Dental practice management consultant Ed O’ Keefe will share to you great tips on how to manage your dental practice. For the dental practice management consultant, you should always aim to have good management to gain more patients, and at the same time keep them in your side longer. In here, you will discover tips from the dental practice management consultant on how to have a good dental practice management in your business.

1st Tip: Make Use Of The Power Of The Internet

The first tip that the dental practice management consultant would give you is that you should make use of the power of the Internet. More and more people everyday go on-line, and it has become a part of their everyday activities. Having this fact in mind, what you do is create and build your own dental website. Build it in a way that it would increase the flow of people checking out your website (or your visitors). And these visitors are your potential patients. And the more visitors you have on your site, the higher the ranking of your page will be. If your site ranks higher in the search engine, then you can get people to find your own website without having to pay google, yahoo, etc for every click of the button. Also, make use of good keywords for your website. Use specific keywords (like dental, marketing, on-line, or any good keywords). This will enable you to dominate your area in the Internet, and you will be able to crush your competitors!

2nd Tip: Have A Good Staff In Your Practice

The second tip that the dental practice management consultant would give you is that you should have a staff that’s educated and trained enough to talk to every patient who express their own dental concerns. Take this for example.We promote Invisalign as a solution for patients who want to have straighter, more attractive teeth. So, I make sure that I have staff that’s trained enough to talk to every patient who express interest in having straighter, more attractive teeth, and educated enough to help ask people identify their problem. We ask the patient this question, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your smile?”; which then brings the patient to give various answers. Then we ask them, “What would make it a 10?”. We, as a dental team, listen intently to their answers. We take down notes and with this we can create a good package of information and regurgitate it back and sell the treatment. The staff also needs to know the important benefits of the solution: it’s invisible, removable and it allows more people to feel more confident. Having a staff that’s well-trained and educated enough can help you achieve more case acceptance in your practice.

3rd Tip: Present Your Solutions And No Selling Of Anything

The third tip that the dental practice management consultant would give you is not to sell any of your dental procedures to your patients. Make it a point that you don’t have to persuade your patients in anyway for them to accept what you have to offer them. Just present your solutions, and let the patients choose and accept the service. Find out exactly what your patients want. And when you find that out, you give it to them. Put in mind that it would be very effective to have the patients decide for themselves to accept your services, not forcing them in anyway to do so.

Keep in mind these three good tips from the dental practice management consultant as you go on with your dental practice. Remember, if you want to keep your business healthy, always maintain a good dental practice management!

In this article, dental practice management consultant Ed O’ Keefe will share to you something about case acceptance in your dental practice. The dental practice management consultant will also share to you the 80% – 20% rule that exists in the business of dental practice. And the dental practice management consultant will also share to you the way on how to increase your case acceptance in your practice. And this is something they focus specifically at their dental practice website!

Here’s what the dental practice management consultant will share to you about case acceptance:

What is case acceptance? Case acceptance is the process of getting your dental patients to accept the treatments or services that you offer them in your dental practice, be it in Sedation dentistry, Implant dentistry, Invisalign,Cosmetic dentistry, etc. As a dental practice management consultant, I always tell my clients that case acceptance is a lot easier when you have a constant flow of patients in your dental practice! In here, you are putting more and more people through your practice, and you’re still going to have that 80% – 20% rule that exists in the business (as a matter of fact, no matter what kind of practice you run or you’re into, you’re still going to get this kind of rule). So what is this rule? It means that out of the 100% people (they may be business owners, or sales reps, or people who need referral relationships) who you put on your mailing lists and send out some newsletters to them, 80% of them will never probably do, maybe they might send you one referral or just do anything with you. And the remaining 20% of these people are going to be your true champions; they are the ones who are going to create a strong relationship with you, and create your own automatic referrals! Everybody wants to have those 20% of people into their practice.

And I tell you, the hardest doctors that we consult with are the ones that say, “I only want the top 5% of them!”. Well, unless you want to spend ridiculous sums of money, just by targeting them and be that picky where you are going through every single patients, and doing that “good patient-bad patient, good patient-bad patient” routine, that’s going to be tough, I mean I myself can’t assume it. I always tell people this scenario like you can go out to a restaurant bar out there, or go to an outdoor steakhouse, and you’re going to be in a waiting area with 100 people, or maybe 200 people, maybe just 5 people; it doesn’t matter… the whole idea is you can’t just pick out the people with the most amount of money. Even if you try, and you think you could, but that’s only projection… and you just don’t know that. So, as a dental practice management consultant, I always tell my clients that what they need is this process where you just stick in people in a funnel, and the reality is you keep coming back to these people who will be spending more money in your dental practice than all the other people out there.

And as for increasing the case acceptance in their practice, what I tell my clients as a dental practice management consultant is to take care of their patient base… give the best service that you can give them and satisfy them whichever way possible, and what’s going to happen is that your patients will always accept the treatments that you offer them… and they will always pay, stay, and refer into your dental practice!

In this article, dental practice management consultant Ed O’ Keefe will share to you the three herds in your dental practice. The dental practice management consultant will give you the definition and importance of each herd in your practice. And this is something that the dental practice management consultant focus specifically at their dental practice website!

Here are the three herds that the dental practice management consultant will share to you:

The first herd in dental practice management is your patient base. This is considered as the most important asset within your dental practice. And it is because, for example, if your building or dental office burnt down today, and all of your technology and everything was burnt down and crumbled to the ground, as a solution, you could literally walk across the street, start up a shop the next day; and if you have a patient base, you will have appointments, you will have people coming in and you will also have revenue coming in. And with this, you will be able to start your dental practice once again! Now, another thing is, for example, if the doctor have any experience where he/she can no longer work, and if they got a patient base, they can bring in another doctor or someone else who can actually do the dentistry, and the doctor can actually be the master behind the scenes, or the business owner, and with this, they can still work! With these facts, you can see that the technology and the staff you can replace, but the one thing that’s the most difficult to replace is your actual patient base (that’s why you should consider it as the most important asset that you have in your dental practice). So, nurture and grow your patient base, as it is the “lifeline” of your dental practice!

The second herd in dental practice management are the people you currently have relationships with. They are your family, your friends, your alumni, or every single business owner that you participate and have relationships with. Now, one of the things we often overlook are the business owners. We’re just so aggressively spending a lot of money on external marketing (which is smart if you’re doing it correctly!). I like to tell people this fact: “Well, do you know business owners who already have their own herds?”. I emphasize this because if you can do a joint venture relationship, or referral relationship with a business owner, or co-op relationship, where they spend money and you organize it, and wherein you get a free advertising, you can have a ton of patients coming into your practice from other business owners! So, it is necessary to take care and nurture this herd as well in your dental practice.

The third herd in dental practice management are what we call the “interested but not ready herd”. In other words, they are what we call your “lead” in the business. For example, let’s look at a scenario in cosmetic dentistry, where you call on a cosmetic patient and ask him this question: “Are you embarrassed by your smile?”. Then you give him 2 options/choices – first, he can call directly to the office just to set up a consultation; and second, he can come in and get him to call toll free order message hot line number, or have him go to a website to get a frequency awareness report. Then as time goes on, that group of people who requested would build up in number. And over a year, you might have 3,000 people or 5,000 people who are on your list. The good thing about marketing with these people and getting a ton of leads of people who are interested is that we know that they’re really interested! That’s why they requested for a report, which means that they’re interested of whatever it is that you have to offer them! Then for your business, you can have headache sufferers; you can go and market to Implant patients; you can do Cosmetic Dentistry, etc! In here, you’ll be the one to decide on how you want to do it. That’s why it’s also important to take care of and nurture this herd in your dental practice.

In the world of internet dental marketing, you need to have good strategies in getting your website into the top rankings of Google, Yahoo, or in any other search engines in the World Wide Web. This is something that we focus specifically at our dental practice website! Now, how do you get your website on top of these search engines. For this, you may need an expert dental practice consultant. And for me, the man for the job is dental practice consultant Lloyd Irvin, whom I consider a master of internet dental marketing, and one of the best dental practice consultants there is!

Now, who is Lloyd Irvin? He’s just a regular guy, and his journey first started as a master of martial arts. He’s a world champion in martial arts (specifically in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu) and he has one of the best martial arts team in the country. But it came to a point that his school and business was struggling. Trying to figure out to make things better, he ran to a guy named Steven Oliver, who teaches people in martial arts how to make more money and run their businesses better. So, as he was learning more about marketing, sales, and business, he also learned about the Internet. He went for internet marketing specialized for the martial arts businesses and martial arts school. When he started seeing these opportunities on internet marketing, and how people are making more money in there.. this is something he just dove into. And from meeting Steven Oliver, his school drove extremely well into the top 5 schools in the country, and he owes it to all of what he learned in internet marketing. Now as he went into internet marketing, he also found a place in the industry of internet dental marketing… and became an expert dental practice consultant in the business.

I met Lloyd about ten months ago at a Dan Kennedy event, and I’ve heard a lot of good things about him. I had a couple of people who both within one week said “Ed, you gotta meet this guy Lloyd Irvin!”. And so I did. So I walked up to him in the hallway and introduced myself and we had a really short conversation. Then we parted ways, exchanged e-mails and that night I went online and I typed in “Lloyd Irvin”, and I felt like a complete idiot instantly. When his credentials popped up on the screen, I read that he is one of the first Americans to ever go to Brazil and beat a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt on Brazilian turf! He has a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Judo and Sambo. And to top all of it, he’s also a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Hall of Famer. So after that Dan Kennedy event, we spent two days together and we’ve been e-mailing back and forth. And on the second day over lunch, he started asking me questions… and here’s the thing: I didn’t know the answer into anything he was asking me! I’ll tell you that I, as a dental practice consultant, am the most studied person you’ll ever meet when it comes to internet marketing, and I didn’t know the answers to the simple things he was asking me that he was doing online. So, I had dedicated myself relentlessly to learn more and more about internet marketing and you’ll see it in my newsletters that I just keep talking about it because I was blind before and now I have like seen the light and I just can’t stop preaching about the stuff that he shares about doing things online.

So, like I’ve said earlier, dental practice consultant Lloyd Irvin is the best man for the job when it comes to internet marketing… especially in internet dental marketing! For your internet dental marketing, he will teach you stuff like SEO (or Search Engine Optimization), which if done correctly, can help you get your website into the top rankings of the search engines in the Internet. He can have your website climb to the top spots on the Internet within a matter of minutes. He will also teach you his magic formula, Traffic + Conversion = Cash, and this formula will help you get the biggest earnings that you can have in your dental practice. Plus, he’ll teach you more secrets for your internet dental marketing business that you’ll never find anywhere else! So, if you ever get to meet Lloyd Irvin, he is literally one of the most fascinating people that you’ll ever meet. If you should literally have the opportunity of listening to anything he says, you should take it as verbatim; you should take it as pure gold. He doesn’t talk a lot, so when he talks, it definitely means something. For me, Lloyd Irvin truly is a master of internet dental marketing… and he can be for you as well!