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TNT Dental creates custom websites that are search optimized. They offer a variety of other services including videography, social media, and search optimization. They have over 1600 clients and have been in business for over 20 years. Time Kelley talks to us about how important it is to use the assets you purchased AKA the existing patient base and hitting internal marketing hard after purchasing a practice in a transition.
Let Tim know you saw the podcast!
Contact Tim: https://www.tntdental.com/contact-tnt-dental.html
(877) 317-4885
timk@tntdental.com
0:00 Intro Music
0:42 Topics & Introduction
3:09 TNT Dental & Tim Kelley
7:32 Biggest Challenges During Transition
11:34 Marketing to Inactive Patients
15:48 What Are the Assets in Marketing?
23:24 Rebranding Strategy
26:58 Internal Marketing vs External
SHOW HOST INFO:
As a dental buyer representative, Michael Dinsio helps dentists buy dental practices step-by-step. With over a decade of experience and more than 500 dental transactions, Michael is a key opinion leader in the dental industry. This program helps walk dentists through the process of becoming a dental practice owner via dental practice acquisitions. If you would like a free consult with Michael or would like to work with Michael in the future visit his webpage. https://www.nxlevelconsultants.com/buyer-representation.html
DENTAL UNSCRIPTED HAS A WEBSITE ! ! !
Find all the content from SEASON 1: "Start Up Unscripted"... as well as SEASON 2: "Dental Acquisition Unscripted", it's all here in one spot here 👉 https://www.dentalunscripted.com
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#dentalsharkweek #marketingadentalpractice #buyingadentalpractice #marketing #dentalpodcast
Intro Music by D Fine Us on https://artlist.io/song/15785/howling-at-the-moon
This podcast covers from START to FINISH How to Acquire a Dental Practice. Michael Dinsio, founder of Next Level Consultants has literally seen hundreds of deals as a banker in the industry & he has personally consulted hundreds of dentists as a Buyers Representative. Michael talks with GUEST SPEAKERS about Due Diligence, Legal, Demographics, and more... He invites experts to the show to help you avoid those headaches and heartbreaks. So start at the TOP w/ Episode 01 and work your way through the transition process. We break it down step by step in a true #UNSCRIPTED and genuine way.
00:00
Oh yeah, here we go practice acquisition. There are pitfalls throughout the entire process.
00:25
Acquisition Unscripted, the truth when buying and selling at dental practice.
00:36
And now your host, Michael Dinsio.
00:42
What's up guys. Here we go. Another episode. I'm getting tired, but I'm keeping it going. Shark Week 2023 dental acquisition unscripted. My name's Mike Dinsio, founder, co-founder of Next Level Consultants. And today we have a great episode, another great episode in the marketing arena. And we go through a different twist. That's what I love about Shark Week, different twists. So,
01:11
You're not going to hear the same thing over and over. You're going to hear from seven now we've added. We've added one last minute ad seven folks that specialize in marketing. All of them have a different approach. And I think there's a lot to learn from each and every one of them. go down the path today of internal marketing. So everybody's talked a lot about external through the program and through this week. This episode's focusing on internal marketing, which is the cheapest.
01:40
And the most effective, you bought a practice and now you're tapping into what you purchased. So you bought a practice, you have a bunch of patients. What are we saying to those patients? What's the message and how to reactivate inactive patients? So there's a strategy there.
02:02
talk a lot about like the assets of what you're purchasing, which includes so you know, all the social media and the websites and all the things the things that you purchased, how do you leverage that? And as a reminder, be following us on YouTube on our social media, which is dental unscripted. You know, check us out. There's all kinds of stuff going up there. And also go check us out on next level. I'm representing about 30
02:30
acquisitions a year, give or take across the country. I help you value the company. I help you with the due diligence. I help you with the closing. And we even have a team that credentials and we even have a, well, even better. have a bunch of coaches on standby to help you stabilize the practice once you take over and getting some help as a new owner and, really just making it the most successful transition possible. So a little.
02:57
Selfish plug for me. I don't do it very often. You guys know I don't, but that is it. I want to really thank you for listening. So let's go, Shark Week. All right, all right, guys. Welcome back. This is Mike D'Incio. You are listening to Dental Acquisition Unscripted. And as you know, if you've been following along, we are in the middle of Shark Week and you've gotten some great tips and tricks on marketing.
03:26
some amazing people that we have interviewed. And today we have a special guest, a friend. I know folks, always say friend, but Tim actually is a really, really good friend. So, and one of the guys that actually helped us get up and going. And I want to thank them officially on the show, but I've got Tim Kelly, the founder and owner of TNT Dental, one of the largest marketing dental firms in the country that I know of. And so,
03:55
It's a real treat to pick Tim's brain today. Tim, welcome to the show, my friend. Thank you, Michael. It's pleasure to be here. I'm honored to be on the shark week. It's one of my favorite weeks anyway. Shark week. It's super fun and we try to make it fun anyways. I mean, look, there's no hotter topic in practice ownership, whether you're doing startup or acquisition, than marketing. How the heck are we going to grow the practice?
04:24
Of course, for startups, you're going from scratch. But in my opinion, and in acquisitions, when you're approaching an acquisition deal, you have to think about how you're going to grow the practice because there's always going to be some attrition in what you're purchasing. so growth, whether it's picking up different services that the seller doesn't do, you do endo, they don't, you do implants, they don't, Invisalign, they don't. That's a way of growing your existing services.
04:54
But then of course, through marketing is also a way to grow the practice. And so that's what this whole week is about is how to grow a practice after an acquisition. let's just kind of get, oh, before we kind of get into my questions, Tim, tell me a little bit about you, the company, just give us the two minute, like what's up from TNT Dental. Yeah, a little bit about you guys. Well, so I'm a lot.
05:22
more gray haired and gray bearded than I was when we started the company. It's 23 years old now. And so that's hard for me to imagine. We started in spring of 2000. And the focus has always been on growing dental practices. And so that's all we've done. That's all of our clients started with myself. There was another Tim to Tim's that's the TNT. Yeah, not just not just explosive, but it was too.
05:48
Two Tims, two Tims. That's right. And that was our first creative splurge there. then, so it's grown steadily over the years, know, and Tim and Tim have stayed directly involved. We've got a third partner named Tom. All three of us are directly involved in the day to day, but we've got 110, 115 employees now, all based out of Dallas and customers all over the US, every state, Canada, and even have one in Ghana, Africa.
06:17
Ghana, Africa. We should get we should. That's It's its own show in itself. How to get SEO in Ghana, Africa. But not sure we're doing a good job of it. We built him a really great website. Well, folks, Tim and Tim TNT built my website and it's a beautiful website. And of course, we love it. But beautiful websites. Great company. Tim, how many clients? I have to brag on you a little bit. How many?
06:46
We've worked with probably a lot more than this, but we actively work with about 1600 every month. So, and it's a real, you know, sort of intense relationship kind of situation with most of them. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, 1600 takes the cake, I think from all the folks I interviewed this week, you guys take the cake. So that's so impressive. So impressive. So you guys know a little bit about marketing. Let's just...
07:14
to say the least. So let's get into it then, because this is in the spirit of knowledge. So here we are, we're looking at a practice. The question that I have today, the very first one, just to kind of get the juices flowing is, you know, what are some of the challenges that you see from a marketing perspective that a buyer has walking into a situation where an owner's owned for
07:41
you know, maybe years or maybe only a year, you know, and they, have some kind of marketing going and it's like, we're not quite sure what's going here. So they're walking into this transition. What are some of the things that you see on that you get yourself in a conversations with from a buyer's perspective? Yeah. It's often chaos really on the marketing side of it. Really it got, feels, even if it's not, feels like that to the, to the.
08:09
purchaser, it seems like. so one of the first things we try to do is say, okay, what do we have here? What's the situation? How many active patients do you have? What kind of marketing is in place at the moment? What kind of staff and team do you have? What are the relationships there? Cause all that impacts the marketing, right? Yeah, absolutely. You know, if there's going to be chaos internally there, then the last thing you want to do is launch some complex marketing plan.
08:38
You know, so a state of the union kind of thing is, okay, where are we today? What do we have in place? And so once we know that, we tend to focus initially on the current patient base. And I think we may be a little different, you know, than some on that. And I think the instinct for the doctor a lot of times is to, is to try to some outside quick. exactly. And so I spent a lot of my time saying, okay, look, no, let's,
09:08
internally for six months. Yeah. We don't want to do anything else, you know, and there's a lot of marketing that can be done internally. There's a lot of introductions to be done, a lot of relationships to form. There's a lot to do. Let's see. Let's feed off this, Tim, because, OK, this is my favorite thing about Shark Week, because you all you are great at your craft. You all have your strengths. You know, you know your craft. But then the twist and the approach and the strategy can oftentimes be very different. And
09:38
This is what I love because we're talking, you'd think you'd interview a bunch of marketing comes in, sale of same things. They're definitely not, which is totally cool. I love your idea here though. Let's run with this because that is what you purchased. You purchased the existing patients and you got to build a relationship with those patients. You invested, you got a loan and you want to maximize what you got first.
10:05
So how do you go about doing that with them? Like what, I love this. So it's like an internal marketing program is your focus on an acquisition, it sounds like. Absolutely. And the first thing I want to know is what is that patient base fully like? I want to do a snapshot with dental Intel or something to really understand, okay, how many active patients are there? And then just as importantly, how many sort of recently inactive patients? Because
10:34
you know, that's the lowest hanging fruit tree. If there's another 500 patients who don't have an appointment but have been into the practice, that's the first target I want to hit. And, you know, I want to communicate with all of those patients with eBLAST, with TACS, with in-person visits, of course. we can even geofence their home with branding to make sure that they have something new at the practice. It's a positive story, you know, it's good news.
11:02
So we broadcast that. Let's talk about that. You're speaking, you're at a consultant's heart now. I mean, we've had a lot of conversations over the years, Tim, about this exact thing. And we're big dental intel people. If you missed that episode, you need to rewind. I think it's on the startup unscripted side, folks. So if you're not listening to Startup Unscripted, which is the other podcast that focuses on startups,
11:28
We interviewed dental Intel. So if you're not familiar with dental Intel, get over on that episode. yeah. So what is that message then, Tim? I always, of course you want to hit the inactive patients because they're patients that need to get in. And oftentimes the sellers, they're run down, they're tired. That it's the whole reason why they're selling is they're just, the energy's gone or, and you know, they're not trying to knock it out of the park with production goals anymore, but you are now.
11:56
Right. And the, lowest hanging fruit is the patients that are already familiar with your team. So what, so you just said some things, email, text, geo-fencing, which is next level. Love that. Let's get into some of that stuff. So if you were going to like a approach, an inactive patient list that might be for a big practice could be as much as 400 patients sitting on an inactive list. You get that list and then your team does what? Like do you guys.
12:25
create like funnels? Like what's that look like? Yeah, we do. We create, um, we create a positive message story about the practice, everything you loved about the practice with all of this great new energy. Uh, sometimes we're bringing new services and there's just a whole, it's everything you love plus more. So we get that out through an E blast. We get it out through, if we can get some video, um, of the practice, we can do animated gifts or our texting.
12:53
which have a great response. then to your point there, we'll get the patient home addresses and we'll message them with ads at home and they can go to a landing page to learn the story of the new practice. And so, you know, we miss you, we want you back into the practice. And then, you know, that's the start of everything. And it's, again, if we can do it, it's selling doctor and buying doctor together, shaking hands in love, the old and the new together.
13:23
I was just going to ask, like, is that the message then? just curious. If possible. If you can do buyer and seller together and that's the message and all of that. That's important though. say this. The one thing you have to do is you have to match the marketing plan just in general should be dictated by the business plan of the practice. Now, some of these transitions, as you know,
13:50
know, selling doctors gone, selling doctor doesn't want to be involved. There may be any kind of circumstances, but where we have that option to tell the story together, it's a positive story to tell. is. think messaging is really, really key. As a buyer's agent or rep or whatever you want to call me, I'm not a broker. Don't call me a broker. I always get the, Mike, can you proofread the letter that's about to go out? And look, I'm not a
14:20
creative writer. I'm not a wizard of words. I'm just a guy that gets in a room like this and podcasts, right? And we have good conversation, but I think messaging is key and it evokes an experience or a feeling. And I feel like the more heartfelt it is and the more I like the ones that sellers hand chosen this doc, you know, you're in great hands. I've researched them. I love their work, whatever it is.
14:50
Uh, you guys get into some of that, sounds like, which is great. Absolutely. Yeah. We helped craft that whole thing and, and establishing that relationship with the current patient base, the recently inactive, uh, patients, all of that. And with the staff again, I can't say this enough. Yeah. You know, that's a, as you know, you're part of this every day, but that's such a critical piece. And to me, the, the patients and the staff is the most valuable part of what you're buying. And so, um,
15:18
it's really hard if you flubbed and you start losing, and that attrition starts to go up instead of down initially, it's really hard to replace them all with new patients. Well, isn't that interesting? Like, I think a lot of people are fixated when they walk into an acquisition and they're fixated on cashflow. I talk a lot of cashflow a lot. That's kind of where the valuation comes from. Just basic valuation methods is usually cashflow and that
15:46
that kind of stuff, but like the assets, the actual assets, the most valuable assets, what do you think those are? I'm thinking- Well, you know, to me, you, and look, this is your world much more than it is mine, but from my perspective, if you can't secure the relationship with those current patients and with the staff, then you've really just got some equipment.
16:14
You know, which could be found in a lot of places, right? You matter might not have a good deal on the equipment. And you know, our marketing plans for, for mature practices that are 10 or 15 years old and all with the same team, they all are the same in the sense that I want to get at least 50 % of that new patient flow coming from referrals from current patients. And you can't do that if you don't have the relationship with the current patients. And it can be higher than that, by the way, you know, as we all know,
16:44
super high quality, super low cost to acquire by comparison to other methods. So I want as many of those I can get. And in this situation where you're transitioning in, that's again, back to the same old story that that's the most important asset in my opinion. I agree. There's some digital assets too. Cause again, in our world, we're mostly digital in our approach. And so the
17:09
the website as part of the purchase, all the domain names that are associated with it, all of the sort of the digital footprint overall of the practice, which would include your social media, all of that kind of stuff. Even email accounts can sometimes be very important to work those out in that transition. Well, on the contract side, which I play around with a lot, that's all usually protected. Robert Montgomery and Alia Ramshin and some heavy hitters in legal
17:40
Uh, we're on the program folks, if you miss that, go check that out, those episodes out, but that's all in the contract. So yeah, you get the domain, you get all the things, but usually there's a time period and how, how long you can secure the name, keep the seller's name and use the seller's name. And so I think it's really interesting doing shark week on the acquisition side, because the easy one would be to do shark week on startups.
18:06
Lots of talk about there, but for acquisitions, it creates a little twist because you've got a timeframe thing going on. You also have a transition that you have to be sensitive to. got patients, you just said, you got to secure those relationships with those patients. So if you're too aggressive, if Tim and his team go in guns a blazing on existing patients, everybody be like, what the hell is going on? This new buyer is just blow it.
18:30
So there's all these like interesting dynamics going on. Then you got these assets that you just mentioned, social media, you got to get those passwords. That's always hard if you don't get those passwords and stuff post-closed. So anyways, there's a lot going on here. Let's go to the asset conversation. I love that you said in the beginning of this episode that like you have to do a state of the union. That's my favorite thing.
18:58
Because any company that just comes at you with sales and doesn't ask what the hell's going on here and what do we actually have, sifting through that, I love that you guys use dental Intel because you're actually rooting around trying to find that. So let's talk about the asset. So how does a TNT approach, this is an opportunity for you, Sal, sorry, but not really, but kind of like what's your approach then?
19:25
Like what are those services that you would probably attack to try to make the most impact? Forget the sales part. I'm just saying, what's the approach? What do you guys do digitally to help a buyer? Like you can help them with the website transition and all that. Yep. We help with, so we get that state of the union and we sort of say, where are all the assets? Who owns them? Who has control of them? How easy are they to access? And in what condition are they in? You know, we,
19:50
Again, to your point, there's so much change going on anyway. We don't necessarily want to just flip everything into a Now, again, there are business reasons sometimes where the branding is changing. There's, you know, there's legitimate reasons, but depending on why in the situation you want to understand it Big big picture generalizing. Yeah, you're looking at what holes there are, right? That's right. And then so we want to fill those in best we can and make sure that we have a complete digital footprint.
20:19
access to all of it, and then we can control the story on all of it. so that dental intel snapshot is extremely important because we probably have a good solid 10 numbers that we really want to know that will all inform the marketing, what tools are the right ones for this situation. And again, we want to focus them internally first, and then the external pieces
20:48
can start in the background, but they don't need to be interfering during that first six months. But we want them ready to go, you know, an ideal situation six months down the road, then you're ready to turn on whatever marketing that you want to do. Again, based on the business plan of the practice, how quickly do you want to grow? What are your plans? I love that. So now you got my ears dialed in on, okay, what are your 10 numbers, Tim?
21:16
You don't have to give me 10, but what are like, what are some things that you already said? Unscheduled patients inactive patients. That's obvious. What? That's a good one. What else are you inactive? I'd like to know the patient attrition number two. That's a great one to sort of say, okay, here's sort of the baseline of patient attrition. Everybody's got attrition, right? Yeah. Yes. You kind of want to know what, what state the union is for that so that you can track it and hopefully move it in a positive direction. Moving forward. Love that.
21:45
Ideally, we'd like to know how many new patients have been coming in and what are their sources. Love that. Sources. Good luck on that one. That's you. Yeah, really. Right. I mean, we have a lot of blanks in our sheet on that. Folks, sources, me and Tim are having a little inside joke here I'll share. So most front office people are not tagging sources for new patients. So when a new patient comes in, they're not tagging Google or tagging best friend referred us or
22:14
dentist up the row or though referred like they're not tagging or putting in sources in the brain. And so that's so important to do and with runoff is people don't pay attention to that. But go ahead. Sorry. was a little, no. And listen, it, and all of that, you know, very important. So if there is some marketing in place, how much are you spending on the marketing, you know, budget and what has been going on, what is going on and yeah.
22:40
And then there's some deeper ones too, average value of patient over time. But again, a lot of these on a transition are gonna be our baseline numbers so that we know what we are starting with. That we at minimum wanna maintain the good ones and improve everything ultimately, but there's some key ones in there for sure. I love it. I think that's awesome. So you guys are really taking a consultative approach to it, which is,
23:08
Which is really, really, really cool. That's awesome, Tim. So, let's talk about rebrand. I get a lot of deals where they are deals. Sorry, folks. I'm calling you guys deals. I got a lot of clients that want to attack this vision, right, that they have inside them. And that's very important. Can never lose that.
23:37
The problem is, is there's a clash with what you bought, right? And the other doctor has a brand or a vision and your vision's probably different. You know, that's the truth. And the team is very clear about the other owner's vision and you're coming in brand new. So you got to win them, win the team over. So do you advise folks, Tim, on to pause? Cause a lot of my job is to slow people down and say, Hey, look, like,
24:07
You bought Goodwill here. Let's, let's capture the Goodwill before we go too crazy on the new vision. Now, again, the thing about podcasting is bad because we generalize on this program because we're, you know, everybody's different. I hate the answer. Well, it depends. And then we don't get anywhere with it. Right. I'm talking about a doctor. I'll paint it. The doctor has been in business for a long time. Established practice teams been there a long time. Patients probably been there a long time. Right.
24:37
And then I've got a younger doc who has different skill sets, a lot more ambition, probably wants to bring in more technology, right? And wants to hit marketing hard and probably rebrand and take it to a DSO. That's hot right now. Let's talk about, you know, so like in a scenario like that, Tim, like, do you tell people to slow down? I mean, how's that? What's that look like? How fast can you change something like that?
25:05
Well, it depends. No, I'm just kidding. I think that, yeah, I think in general, as you described that, I'm telling people to slow down a little bit because look, under any circumstances, 80 % of your revenue is going to be coming from current patients. So the harder you hit that rebrand, that 180 degree shift, the more likely you are to jeopardize
25:32
80 % of your revenue from that practice. And so if you don't have the selling doctor on board with your vision and you are not connecting with the new patients, your attrition is going to be such that you're going to have the numbers to show a DSO to have the maximum value to flip it if you want to in the first place. So you got to slow down. And even if they're rebranding, and again, does depend to some degree on what they want to do.
26:02
I still like that six month runway of, let's sort of co-brand for a little bit, introduce the brand at that time. Let's preserve the goodwill, the connections, because all the relationships are with the staff and the selling doctor. And you got to earn those. Give yourself a little time to do that. Over a six month runway, ideally you're seeing most of the active patients within that window. I love it. On point, right where I thought you'd be, and I couldn't agree more.
26:32
Um, in the spirit of going, continuing to go down this, this, uh, existing patient and inactive active and inactive kind of approach, can we talk about internal marketing at a, at a, at a deeper level, another level, next level, little, little play on words here. Uh, corny, I know, sorry folks, but like I always get into conversations about
27:00
internal marketing and basically what you just said and how much more effective it is. I find that people get cheaper on that marketing and they're more willing to spend money, Tim, on a pay-per-click campaign instead of getting aggressive on an internal program. And that doesn't make sense to me. Can we change the narrative on this episode since you've talked so much about internal marketing?
27:30
Let's go deep on internal marketing for 10, 20, 10, 15 minutes. Yeah, I wish I wish I hope we can change the narrative. Let's do it. Let's do it right now. Let's do it. I have the same experience you do. I spend a tremendous amount of my time trying and some of it doesn't even make sense as a business owner, you might say from the outside, because I'm talking them into spending less money for what I think is going to be a more effective, you know, short and long term play. And we'll get to the PPC down the road.
27:59
the more important piece right now. And you're exactly right. think that for whatever reason, I'm not a psychologist here, but everyone wants to focus on these new patients and Google ads. And look, I sell a tremendous amount of Google ads. I love Google ads. It's the sexy part of marketing. I think it's fantastic. There are also the
28:23
about the most expensive way you can go out and acquire a patient, which doesn't mean they're wrong. It's maybe print might be more, but it's the only thing I don't even do that. So I, I won't do that, but I'm sure it's appropriate sometimes. But, you know, and then some of the patients aren't as high quality sometimes as, a referral. mean, look, referral checks, every box, you know, if I could get every one of my clients to refer one client and to get all of their,
28:52
the patients from referrals, I'd be thrilled. I'd be a smaller company. Your company would be over 3000 clients if one client referred to one person. That's right. mean, it's just, it's the right thing to do. It's the right quality of patient. You know, we do a, I have this slide that I love that has, you know, on the two different X and Y axis, I've got one that is quality of patient. The other one is expense, right? The cost of the patient. Yeah.
29:20
The quadrant that is the highest quality and lowest cost is referrals. And you know, PPC is down in the other one. It's on the other side. On the other spectrum. That's right. Tim, I look, I just had a conversation with my startup the other day and they're like, I think I want to do a $25 gift card for the new patient that comes in and a $50, you know, credit on someone's account for someone that refers. And I'm like, okay, but
29:49
You just committed to MVP mail. Who's a big, big fan of me, of us and we have them again, another episode, a mailing print, just a mailing campaign. Okay. I'm like, you just committed to $2,500 per drop on a mailing campaign of, you know, 20,000 postcards, whatever. And you might not get any clients back. The hope is what $300 patient acquisition like you.
30:18
Always say 200 and probably digital. So here we have like a $200 like egg and you're, you're, you're talking about $25 to, to the gift card for the new bit. Like why not do a hundred dollars? It's still, it's still cheap. It's so like, it's like, I want folks to think about like, uh, ROI here. Okay. Return on investment. That's what Tom was Tom, Tim.
30:47
was talking about on the spectrum is if, if you had to give every new patient a hundred dollar bill every time they walk into the door, right. Versus and not do any external marketing versus doing just external marketing and paying just that, like you will win on the a hundred dollar bill every time. I don't know if I described that really well, but I, I'm trying to make connections here with the audience. Does that make sense? Like, yeah.
31:16
So what do you guys suggest on internal referral programs? What's your suggestion there? Like, what do you see? What do you like? Um, you know, all of the, I like, I like the more personalized, the better, you know, I, I like the gift cards and all of that, but I also like it with a handwritten, uh, you know, sure. So the approach is more personal. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I like all of that. And you know, here's the interesting thing. If you, if your patient experience,
31:46
is is what it should be. And you care and you tell the patients and you you project that they they they get, know, they want to refer to you. You know, you'll get the referrals and you'll grow. And it's that that's the name of the game. Well, that's a whole like podcast in itself on patient experience. I folks, if you don't have that right now, we can't we can't solve that in 25, 30 minutes here. But I do know that
32:16
There was a statistic by the ADA not too long ago that said like 40 % of the population hasn't seen a dentist in 18 months or it was something like that. So a massive amount, call it 50%, whatever. I still believe that people need an incentive to come in. Back to that psychology, psychiatry, psychology that we don't have, maybe we need a...
32:44
call in a psychologist and join us on the call today. But like, I think you do need to incentivize folks that don't normally come into a dentist. You just need a reason to get up off the couch. Don't you agree? Oh, a hundred percent agree. And many of them in that category are probably only going to come in when they feel like they have an emergency. so, yeah, so I think incentives and the willingness to accept emergencies will tap that.
33:12
40 to 50 % you're talking about that don't ever come in. Yeah. Yeah. I just think any other ideas of, of internal programs that you saw that were super effective to him, like maybe it's not a gift card or a hundred dollar credit, but a new patient gifts, a lot of startups do like a really nice new patient gift. Just trying to spur.
33:37
All of those obvious things are good. think the communication and staying in front of them with simply good content and letting them know that you are aware of where they are in the process too. When we started this internal program that we do several years ago, I kind of predicted, this is why I don't always make decisions around here. I kind of predicted that there would be backlash from the patients that they would be, oh, my dentist is bothering me with these texts and.
34:05
things like that, the response was overwhelmingly positive. so the key is you've got to serve good content that's relevant to them, that makes sense to them. And you can segment your patient base and send certain messages to certain treatment plans that haven't been accepted yet. And there's all kinds of neat things you can do. And as long as the content's good, then the patients respond to it very, very well. And they particularly respond to the texting.
34:34
And so, you know, it's a we've themed them per quarter, you know, so we have a theme that's a messaging per quarter and, you know, for pet practices that have, let's just say, insurance based practices, you know, the use it or lose it fourth quarter is always a huge one. You know, and then like in the first quarter after, you know, a new you, new year, new you, you know, and you might promote
35:03
cosmetic whitening or any number of things like that. love it. Yeah. So as long as that content's good, it'll strengthen relationships and knock that attrition rate down. So any new one that you get and letting them, just letting them know that, and all these tools that are out there, I get asked this a lot, which tool gets me the most referrals? Which one of these follow-up tools should I have? And there's, I don't know, half a dozen great ones. all know them.
35:32
The tool, I'm kind of agnostic on that. If you're telling the patient, again, back to your point, listen to the podcast, if you do that patient experience right, and then you tell the patient that you care about them, they'll refer. It's so interesting what you just said. It's actually, wait, it's not interesting. It's so simply obvious, but people don't execute. They don't do it. It's so obvious. Have good content.
36:01
I don't feel like I think I, sorry, back up. feel like people are just kind of treating marketing, excuse me, like just a checklist or something that need to do. And if we just backed up and had some methodical approach, I have a methodical approach to what we're doing. Uh, I feel like you can get better results in general, but it's, I just feel like people are.
36:31
lazy and don't want to sit down and read and really think through a program that has high touch to the met with the messaging. And it sounds like that's what you guys are doing. I love it. think that's awesome. And that's refreshing and cool to hear that you're not just like leading with some, you know, oh, that website is totally outdated. We're going to do a new sexy website and
36:58
We're do all these things, but your approach is, Hey, you bought a practice. Let's maximize it. We do need to do that, but let's win the hearts and minds of the patient first. And then let's go have some fun with the sexy stuff. Uh, then yo fencing and all the things. It's all there. And look, I want to get to all of that, but you can't do enough of that to make up for the loss of that patient base that you just purchased.
37:28
So you've got to secure that first and you've got to have it prepared to be a part of the new patient process moving forward. You know, that's what you bought folks. You bought going all the way back to probably one of the first 10 minutes of the program here today is you bought patients. So if your playbook is to get into a practice and go buy more patients, you're just buying those for you. could do that.
37:55
at any practice. if you're like any investment, if you buy your you invested into a practice, it makes way more sense to to pay for enriching your asset. It's like buying a house and redoing the the wiring or adding a deck or putting a fresh paint on it. You're you're protecting the asset versus, you know,
38:24
who's running this program? I'm getting calls, getting phone calls while during my own program. The point is like protect the asset that you purchased before you go acquire more. Cause you just bought something for $500, a million dollars. So go do that. And in my experience, if you don't do that, if you do start with the heavy external marketing first, it's just about a one-to-one. Everyone you bring in, you'll be losing that you currently have.
38:53
And the ones cost so much more than the ones you already should be able to How much is a new patient acquisition in your mind? So, you said it earlier, the Google ad can be, you I'm happy with 150 to $250 acquisition costs for a Google ad. A referral patient can cost as little as 20, 25 bucks if you're actively heavily.
39:22
25. Almost nothing. And SEO kind of falls into that. But SEO is so slow. It's for patients next year, not this year. That's the other thing I love about that internal approach is immediate. It's immediate. are people who have a relationship with the practice, particularly the inactive ones that just don't have. There's a huge portion, even in practices that are running like a top, there's often a fair number of patients who don't have their next appointment. Absolutely. In of them. Absolutely.
39:52
100%. Um, I love it, Tim. Great episode because it's refreshing and different. And, uh, I enjoyed it. Tim last, last minute tidbits here or anything else you want to add before we, before we end another shark, uh, week episode, anything that you'd like to, don't feel necessary here, but anything you want to give or.
40:17
I'm going to put Tim's descriptions and all the things the way you can get a hold of him and the company below. And if you're not following us on YouTube, jump on and check us out. We're just two gray hair dudes that love Den-Olin. But I do have a bunch of things in the description below. Tim, anything else to add before we close this down? No, I would just say I'm so glad you're doing this. I love the fact that you're talking to multiple companies with multiple approaches because we've known from the beginning that we're not
40:47
always a match for everybody. But I'll tell you one thing, we're also not a great sales organization for ourselves. you're the sales person. Yeah, I'm kind of a sales guy, you know, so don't really have a sales team. But I'll tell you this for any of your listeners, viewers. And this is always true. I'm happy to if there's anything we can do to analyze or or give you our opinion or give you sort of the best state of the union we can.
41:14
There's no obligation for anything. I'll do that. And if it helps you and you have a marketing company already, fantastic. I, I'm happy to do that with anybody. We've, um, we're just proud to be a part of, of the mix and know that the ones that match up with us will, will connect with them, but I'm happy to help anybody, um, at no charge or obligation. greatest gift is time. I know how busy this man is, Tim. And, um, uh, I'm super busy and I know how.
41:42
That actually is a lot. Thanks for giving that because a good state of the union can pay dividends and it's free. So it's worth picking this man's brain. mean, he's working with 1600 other dental office. He's seen a lot. So use that, take advantage of that. Tim, thanks so much for being on the program, my friend. It's always a pleasure.
42:16
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