marketing

Best Super Bowl Commercial May Be ‘Matthew’s Day Off’ (video)

February 3, 2012 By Catherine Hughes Leave a Comment

Sometimes Super Bowl commercials can end up being more fun than than the actual game. Dentists, do you think this will be true of this year’s Super Bowl XLVI?

Mathew Broderick and Honda may be hoping so.

In 1986, director John Hughes debuted the American teen coming-of-age comedy film, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

It quickly became one of the top movies of 1986 and has since enjoyed a cult following.

This year Honda has enlisted actor Mathew Broderick for their Super Bowl XLVI commercial to promote the Honda CR-V. The Super bowl ad pokes fun at Broderick’s Ferris Bueller character by showing him faking the flu to skip work and spend the day enjoying the sites around Los Angeles.

Several classic details from the “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” movie are included in the commercial, such as the use of the song “Oh Yeah,” a valet calling for “Broderick. Broderick,” and a parking attendant taking Broderick’s Honda for a joy-ride.

Today’s Friday random video is the Super Bowl commercial, “Matthew’s Day Off“ –

What is your favorite Super Bowl commercial?

Filed Under: The Wealthy Dentist, Totally Irrelevant and Random Tagged With: dentist, dentists, friday random videos, Internet dental marketing, marketing, video marketing, viral videos

Dental Marketing May Have Helped Dentist Arrest Thieves

January 24, 2012 By Jim Du Molin Leave a Comment

It would seem a little dental marketing can even help reclaim stolen property.

Florida dentist Bill Strupp experienced a dentist’s worst nightmare: having thieves break into his dental practice to steal computers and dental equipment.

They also made off with Dr. Strupp’s sports memorabilia collection which included an official Heisman football, dozens of signed Yankee baseballs and three signed Yankee bats given to him by his friend and dental patient, George Steinbrenner.

He desperately wanted the stolen items returned.

So he decided to use some Internet dental marketing by placing an ad on Craigslist offering a reward for the return of the stolen property. Dr. Strupp must have written a great ad, because someone called offering to sell the sports memorabilia back to him.

That someone seemed like the thief.

The Tampa Bay Times reports that Strupp played along with the caller and promised not to call the police.

“Immediately, as soon as I hung up with him, I picked up the phone and called (Clearwater police) Detective Jonathan Walser,” Strupp told the Times.

In working with the police Dr. Stupp agreed to meet the caller in a local shopping mall to obtain the sports collection and his computers in exchange for $10,000. When the thieves approached Strupp to handover the stolen property, Clearwater police moved in and arrested the suspects.

A search warrant helped find more of Strupp’s missing dental practice items, but not all.

Strupp told the Times, “I’m just flabbergasted that anybody would be that stupid to try to sell something back to somebody after you stole it from them!”

Maybe it was the great Internet dental marketing he used to write that Craiglist ad.

For more on this story see: Dentist bites back: Craigslist ad leads to arrest of two in stolen property case

Filed Under: Dental Marketing, Dental News Tagged With: dental marketing, Dental News, dental practice management, dental theft, dentist, dentistry, dentists, marketing, theft

Yearly Dental Marketing Budgets and Marketing Trends

January 24, 2012 By Catherine Hughes 3 Comments

A recent dental survey revealed that the average yearly dental marketing budget for dental practices is $48,000. In this The Wealthy Dentist survey, we learned that for 9 out of 10 dentists, dental practice websites remain the top priority for marketing budget money in 2012.

6 out of 10 dentists also include Internet dental marketing in their annual budget, while 5 out of 10 allot a portion of the budget to internal referral programs.

Email newsletter marketing and Yellow Pages advertising remain in the dental marketing budget for 53% of the survey respondents, while 30% still include radio advertising and direct marketing.

Less than 10% factor TV advertising into their yearly dental marketing budget, reflecting a national trend towards developing a a media plan that does not include TV advertising.

dental marketing budget

“We hired a dental marketing firm and are getting better results. We think that marketing is the key to getting the number and type of patients you want. Return on investment is good,” said a Virginia dentist.

“We are very happy. Our marketing has shown consistent growth of over 100 new patients a month for the last 4 years. The newest being the low cost, proprietary CRM that we have implemented that is above and beyond anything I have been shown before,” said a general dentist.

Some dentists feel dental marketing costs are too expensive, with one pediatric dentist saying, “It’s too expensive. Everybody raises prices for dentists because they feel we have more $.”

On average, dentists employ eight different dental marketing tactics to achieve their marketing goals.

What dental marketing vectors are the most effective use of your yearly dental marketing budget? Let us know in the comments!

If you want more how-to advice to address the dental marketing challenges facing dentists today, sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Survey was conducted by The Wealthy Dentist.

Filed Under: Dental Marketing, The Wealthy Dentist Tagged With: dental marketing, Dental office marketing, Dental Patient Marketing, dental practice marketing, dentist, dentistry, dentists, Internet dental marketing, marketing

Why Your Dental Marketing Should Include Google Plus

January 24, 2012 By Jim Du Molin 5 Comments

If your dental marketing plan doesn’t include social media and a geo-targeted dental website yet, now is the time to do so if you want your dental patients to find you online.

Google has just announced that it is introducing three new features to connect Google+ search users to their social networking profiles when they search the web.

According to Google when a user is signed in with Google+, they will receive personal results and profiles of people they know or follow. They will also be able to expand expand their results by discovering people related to their search.

Included in search results will be Google+ profiles and pages, personal photos and posts, and items that have been shared with the search user on Google+. This will mean that whatever Google+ circles a user belongs to and interacts with will have an influence on the Google search results returned.

This marks the beginning of more personalized Google search results.

Also added is a People and Pages feature where Google matches search queries to posts on Google+ that are linked to compatible content. This means when someone writes about a subject on Google+, and people in their circles Google search that subject, the comments and links are displayed automatically on Google’s page one for the Google+ users.

Google has also added the ability to see shared topics by Google+ power users on the right sidebar of the search results page, offering search users the option to connect with them on Google+. All of these are reasons why you want to add Google+ to your dental marketing plan.

Google+ just hit sixty million users and is still in its infancy.

It is important for you to create a dental practice brand page on Google+, and become an active user. Begin asking your dental patients if they are on Google+ and consider offering some incentives for patients who add your practice to their circles.

Internet experts feel more businesses will now be forced get more involved in Internet marketing and hire established internet marketing companies to ensure that their business will be found on the Internet.

Internet dental practice website design has become a major dental marketing strategy for many of The Wealthy Dentist subscribers. How many new patients you obtain from your dental website is determined almost entirely by one factor: your website’s position on the major Internet search engines including Yahoo, MSN and Google.

The Wealthy Dentist is here to help you with the ever-increasing changes in dental marketing.

Filed Under: Dental Marketing, The Wealthy Dentist Tagged With: dental marketing, dental practice marketing, dentist, dentistry, dentists, geo-targeted search, Google, Google plus, Internet dental marketing, marketing

Dental Marketing with Smile Cards

January 17, 2012 By Melinda Spitek 1 Comment

Word-of-mouth dental marketing—the spoken word carries great weight.

The fact that one person believes something tends to convince another person that it must be true, else why would he/she have said it?

Strangely, word-of-mouth is the most neglected of all the forces at work in a dental marketing.

Word-of-mouth has probably destroyed more dental practices and, conversely, made more practices successful than all the other forces in the marketplace put together. Why isn’t it more researched/systematized/budgeted/planned for?

The principles of word-of-mouth advertising are particularly relevant to dentistry because patient referrals generate an estimated 68% of all new patients. Sound like something you’d like to try?

Here are the steps:

1. Ask! Patients are honored when you ask them to refer more people “just like them.” Use a Smile Card (referral card) to punctuate the request.

2. Track! Know who referred your new patient so you can thank them. A personal thank you card can get patients motivated to refer again.

3. Reward! The reward? A small amount gift card from a local merchant with a hand-written thank you note stimulates the recommender to do more of the same.

4. Winner! Have a contest to promote referral. When a new patient is referred by your patient with a Smile Card put that card with the name of the referrer in a “fishbowl” for a drawing. Once a quarter draw a winner who receives a gift card for say, $250 to a local mall. Make a big deal about the Smile Card drawing with a sign sporting the photo of the latest winner up in the office, on your website and in your newsletter. This is a win for the new patient, a win for the referrer and a win for you!

Dental marketing can be as simple as asking for a referral with a Smile Card when a procedure has pleased one of your patients—or sending out helpful reminders like a personal letter or a quarterly newsletter promoting your Smile Card drawing.

A little dental marketing can go a long way. Doing nothing—especially in times like these, can really deteriorate your practice.

Melinda Spitek is CEO of Hycomb Marketing Inc. Hycomb is an authority in marketing for dentists. Melinda has had plenty of hands-on experience as well, having worked 23 years in dental offices. For help with marketing, just call Hycomb at (800) 523-6961 or visit www.hycomb.com.