3 Tips to Get the Most Out of Your Dental Marketing Video [Guest Post]

Special thanks to our guest author, Jeremy Tuber, PCM®, for this blog post! Learn more about Jeremy and how to connect with him below. 

Whether you’ve hired a video production company or you’re filming your dental marketing video on with iPhone on a selfie stick, below are three insider’s tips that will help you connect with viewers watching your video and drive a higher percentage of them into becoming patients.

1. Practice makes perfect.

Prepping a filling or speaking in front of a camera are the same — practice does make perfect, and “winging it” is a bad, bad idea.

Whether you’ve been in practice for two months or twenty years, talking about yourself as a dentist and your practice is a completely different skill. Something is just different when a camera is rolling (and if you’re sitting in front of bright studio lights), and this often catches dentists off guard.

Avoid assuming that talking to a camera (even something as informal as a smartphone) is the same as talking to patients about dentistry. It’s not, so a little practice will go a long way.

If you’re working with a video production professional, ask them for the interview questions in advance. Review them, and consider practice delivering your answers in front of a mirror or family member. You don’t have to memorize how you’ll answer the interview questions. In fact, it’s detrimental if you try. Dentists who try memorizing their answers (or reading off cue cards during the interview), often appear stiff and lifeless on camera. Instead, focus on communicating overall concepts, ideas, and feelings that you want to cover on camera, rather than specific sentences you have to recite exactly. Consider investing 30-90 minutes preparing.

Focus on communicating overall concepts, ideas, and feelings that you want to cover on camera, rather than specific sentences you have to recite exactly.

2. Speak from your heart.

Speak from your heart and not your head.

Even though you’ve admirably invested in four years of dental school, performed countless dental surgical, and have become the very best clinician you can be, the brutal truth is, patients don’t care. Okay, they do care, but they unfairly assume that you’re a competent clinician (that’s what the DDS or DMD means, right?)

While it might be tempting to focus your dental practice marketing video on showcasing your clinical aptitude, the CE you’ve taken, and the recent comprehensive implant course you took from SPEER, patients either won’t care or won’t be able to appreciate the sacrifice you’ve made to make yourself a more adept doctor.

Here’s the secret about your dental practice marketing video: patients (like the rest of us) make buying/purchasing decisions on emotion rather than logic. Marketers and psychologists have known this for years. The truth is, “most of the time,” we do business with (or hire) people we perceive to know, like, and trust, and that includes which dentist we choose.

Patients (like the rest of us) make buying/purchasing decisions on emotion rather than logic.

Therefore, your video should focus more on emotion and less on facts/figures. For example, consider sharing why you became a dentist, why you love dentistry, and why you love helping patients and less on impressing viewers with the latest all-on-four weekend course you took. As famous TED talk speaker Simon Sinek advocates, “Start with the WHY to inspire action.” In your case, share the “Why” you became a dentist to inspire viewers watching your video to contact your office and schedule an appointment.

3. Speak directly to the viewer.

Speak to one person, and speak directly to them and not at them.

Your dental marketing video may be seen by hundreds or even thousands of people, so it might be tempting to address your viewers like a speaker in a dental meeting would. Don’t. Instead of saying, “Here at ABC Dental, our mission is to make sure that all patients have a pleasant experience,” try, “When you come into our dental practice, I want you to have a pleasant experience.” (Note, the first example is talking at someone; the second is talking to them). While your video may be seen by thousands, each view you receive is just one person watching—deciding if you’re the right dentist for them (and or their family). Just focus on talking with them — just. one. person.

This viewer (and potential patient) has real feelings, real fears, and real hopes and dreams, so treat them as such. While speaking on camera, try to imagine that you’re having an informal conversation with just one person—one patient— at a coffeehouse, and not as if your addressing attendees at a dental conference.

While speaking on camera, try to imagine that you’re having an informal conversation with just one person.

Avoid complicated jargon, clicnial terminology that patients won’t understand, and pretentious language that is thrown around a corporate boardroom, called “corporatese.” Consider using “I/me/we,” and, “you,” rather than speaking in third-person.

Wrap-Up

As you consider these three tips and how they can help you get the most out of your dental marketing video, just make sure you stay true to yourself and who you are as a person and a dentist.

“To thine own self be true.”

Don’t allow the aforementioned advice to radically shift how you come across to patients/potential patients—developing some alter-ego that you that only comes out when you’re on camera. After all, there’s nothing worse than people perceiving that you’re being fake or disingenuous.

So, if you are more of a formal clinician (perhaps less warm and fuzzy as it relates to patients), that’s okay. The focus of your video can still showcase your clinical aptitude, love for CE and exploration, and or the advanced technology in your practice.

That said, your dental marketing video is ultimately about showing patients that you are credible, trustworthy, amiable, experienced, and caring (while there are other admirable attributes, these are the ones patients are looking for the most). If you can establish these attributes, as well as create an emotional/human connection between yourself and the viewer, the more likely they’ll become a patient of your practice.

Be yourself and just talk to your video viewers as individuals, Doctor. You’ve got this.

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About the author:

Jeremy runs … This text opens a new tab …DDSvideo.com / DMDvideo.com, a video production company in Phoenix, Arizona. He has also worked as the Arizona Dental Association’s (AzDA) Communications Manager/Managing Editor of their monthly publication since 2010. Jeremy has interviewed a couple of hundred dentists and filmed close to a hundred dental videos in his career, including videos for the ADA, AzDA, Dentsply Sirona, and the Arizona School of Dentistry and Oral Health (ASDOH).

Get in touch: jeremy@ddsvideo.com | 480.331.7371