What Australian dentists really think about marketing

This week on Marketing Monday, Angus Pryor, the founder of Dental Profit System, will share with you what Australian dentists really think about marketing. What are the marketing tools that are most used by dentists?

Transcript: What Australian dentists really think about marketing 

Well hello entredentists, Angus Pryor, creator of the Dental Profit System and co-author of the Kindle crushing book, The Better Business Book, bringing you this week’s Marketing Monday, the weekly show designed to boost the marketing in your dental practice.

Now, toady, we’re gonna be talking about what Australian dentists really think about marketing. In that regard, I’ve got some data, fresh from the weekend. I spent the weekend at Dental Business Conference, we had a fantastic group in Sydney, we ended up with about 70 of us together. We had a lot of fun and learned a lot of stuff and we got some great feedback from the delegates.

One of the things that I did, I just couldn’t help myself, I wanted to give away some stuff to the delegates, so I asked them to complete a survey. I have here the survey results, as you can see from a whole bunch of Australian dentists. These dentists were actually from all around Australia, we had people traveling from everywhere, including a couple from New Zealand. I was really keen to know what dentists think about marketing, what’s important in their business.

To answer the first question, which is what do Aussie dentists really think about the role of marketing? This is the question I asked, I said, “How do you feel about the role of marketing in the dental industry and at your practice?” I’m just gonna read through some of the answers. “It’s the lifeblood of any practice. It’s more important than it ever has been. It’s very important. It’s very important and it needs to be applied. Important. Very important. Very important. Very crucial, probably underutilized. Necessary to stay afloat. Very important. Extremely important in a competitive world.”

I think you get the idea. This is not absolutely everyone, that’s just a sample of what was there, but it’s fair to say that Australian dentists at this event think that marketing’s really important. Now, maybe I’m not saying anything too profound there, but I guess my question to you is, as you’re watching this, what role has marketing got for you in your practice?

Because here’s a group of dentists from all around Australia, and you heard what their feedback was, it was very important. Now the other thing that I thought you might find interesting is I asked them, this group, what are they using now to market their practice? I’m gonna write up the result. I gave them a whole bunch of choices and then they can put other. So, drum roll, actually we did a few drum rolls in the weekend, it was quite a good fun. Hang on, here we go.

What do you reckon was the number one form of marketing that Aussie dentists are using? Here’s what the data showed. In equal first place, I’ve already done the drum roll, was Facebook marketing. That came in about at 50%, so about half of dentists who attended this event were doing Facebook marketing.

And the other one was AdWords.So that was 50%. That’s what half the people who were surveyed were using on their marketing for their business. Now the question that’s come from that as well, kind of budgetary spending on Facebook marketing … We didn’t ask them specifically, but I reckon I can answer pretty confidently. For Facebook versus AdWords, I tell you what our experience is. In terms of spending money, you’ve generally gotta spend a lot more on AdWords to get a result, particularity in dentistry.

I can’t speak out outside dentistry so much. So guys spend a lot more here to get a result, than you do with Facebook marketing. For the dentists that we are working with on Facebook marketing, you can get away with sort of a hundred bucks a week. With AdWords, I’d say you’d be wasting your time spending anything less than probably two, three hundred dollars a week, like a thousand dollar a month.

To be honest, we won’t even deal with a client. We’ll talk to you, but we’re not gonna represent you in AdWords if you’re spending less than a thousand dollars a month, cause you just don’t get the return.  My impression is that the main spin on Facebook marketing is a fair bit less than it is on AdWords.

I actually think at one level AdWords works better, because people have come looking for you, whereas on Facebook marketing you’ve gotta interrupt them. Anyway, we digress slightly. That was half the people surveyed, that’s what they were using. In, I guess, second place, or third place, depending on how you look at it, so that’s Search Engine Optimization, which is getting your unpaid Google listing up in the rankings. That was 45%.

Then finally, we had an equal in third place. I guess this is essentially first, second equal. That would be third, and the fourth and fifth.  What’s the other one? This one was a little bit of surprise to me. So letterbox drops and email. I can say for the people that were surveyed that was around 40%. There you have it. The people who completed the survey, it was on the weekend in Australia, Aussie dentists from all over Australia, they found that marketing was absolutely critical for their business. Everyone said, “Important, very important.” I suppose therefore my message to you is if you’re kind of not doing much in marketing and your business is not going well, maybe there’s a correlation.

In terms of what the people who were there, the marketing that they were doing, that’s the entire list. Facebook or AdWords, about half of them were doing it. SEO was 45%, that’s letterbox drops and email marketing was about 40%. I hope that helps. Now, what we’re gonna do for the next couple of weeks before Christmas, ’cause I’m gonna take a week or two off over Christmas, is I want to give you a bit of a top-down view of marketing. One of the things that I see quite a lot is that people tend to be a little bit scattergun. It’s kind of like, “Let’s do a bit of this, let’s do a bit of that, etc, etc.” What I wanna help you is get the basics right, and then all of this kind of tactics can sit underneath.

For next week we’ll be talking about how to get your business, how to get your practice to stand out from the competition, because if we learned anything on the weekend, that’s absolutely essential. All right, if you need help with anything relating to marketing get across to DentalProfitSystem.com, send us a message.

There’s also an opportunity there to book an appointment. To be honest with you, we’ve been doing so much stuff lately I would be surprised if you can find any available spots this side of Christmas, but you never know, give it a go. Otherwise, from me, Angus Pryor, singing off, next time see you on Marketing Monday.