Roadside Live |17 min read

How to Get the Most Out of Your Dental Videos (and Avoid Costly Mistakes!) [VIDEO]

You know that videos are incredibly important to include in your dental marketing strategy.

But have you ever wondered how to get the most out of them?

We’ll answer that very question and more in this video!

Whitney and Jeremy Tuber – Communications Manager of the Arizona Dental Association opens in a new window and owner of DDSVIDEO.COM opens in a new window and DMDVIDEO.COM opens in a new window discuss:

  • Costly mistakes to avoid
  • When to hire a video production company and when to do DIY videos
  • Fair pricing for a dental practice video
  • What to look for when hiring a video production company
  • The most effective way a dental practice video can get patients to schedule an appointment

Whitney: Hey, everybody. Welcome to today’s Roadside Live. We are so excited to be with you today. And we have a very special guest, Jeremy Tuber. He is a videographer. He has filmed hundreds of dentists, and he is also the communications manager for the Arizona Dental Association opens in a new window. And he runs ddsvideo.com opens in a new window and dmdvideo.comopens in a new window.

Jeremy, welcome. Thank you for joining us today.

Jeremy: Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Whitney: We have so much exciting stuff to talk about today. Anyone who knows us here at Roadside knows that we recommend video as a part of your marketing strategy. We have been doing so for years, but really it is non-negotiable.

And so, I’m really excited to have this conversation with Jeremy about how to get the most out of your dental videos. We’re going to cover a lot of different aspects of this. So maybe we could dive right in, Jeremy. I would love to hear. When should a dental practice consider hiring a video production company versus doing, say DIY videos?

Jeremy: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think there are a lot of video professionals who argue that there is value to having everything shot professionally. And while I can understand that on some level, dentists, as we all know, are hit with expenses at every turn. So I actually recommend a combination of both.

And I think kind of a funny way to think about this is dating versus marriage. My wife is probably going to kill me for talking about this, but there really isn’t an interesting correlation between the two, and whether you want to hire a professional or do it DIY.

What I would recommend is that when you are shooting videos, you’re putting forth videos for potential patients:

These are people who you have not met before. They’ve never been in the practice before. It’s really important, just as you’re dating, that you have a polished, incredible image that really kind of puts your best foot forward, and a professional videographer — they are absolutely going to make sure that you look and sound like a rockstar. And if you’ve not been on camera before, that’s going to be especially important. Because again, these people have never seen you before. They’re going to try to make that decision whether or not they should schedule an appointment with your practice.

Conversely, on the other side, you’ve got videos targeting your current patient, your current patient base. These videos might be on social media. They could be a testimonial video or something like that. In that case, I might suggest busting out the sweatpants. And again, now we’re kind of going into the marriage portion of this analogy, if you will. You don’t necessarily need that pristine polished image.

What’s a little bit more important at that point is that you show appreciation to your current patient base and that authenticity.

So I would suggest a combination of the two in the latter.

If you’re going to do some of those DIY videos, what you may want to consider is hiring a videographer and actually working with the dental team and saying, here’s how you would light it, here’s how you might do a DIY with a microphone, and just trying to get the most out of those videos that they do with a DIY kind of an aspect. So it’s a combination of both.

Whitney: I love that. And if our website project manager, Lori, is watching today, she is going to be thrilled to hear everything that you just said, because she’s always recommending – when we have a brand new website project that starts – she’s always recommending that the practice consider getting a videographer in there for some really good videos for that new website.

So that was great. Now you’ve mentioned something that’s really important and that is that dentists are hit with expenses all over the place.

If a dentist is considering hiring a videographer, what is a fair price? What can they expect to be looking at?

Jeremy: Yeah, that’s a great question. In terms of fairness, we’ll get to that, but in terms of what they might be experiencing in terms of pricing, will depend upon what area of the country you’re in. Pricing in Los Angeles versus a small town in Mississippi is going to be very, very different.

But from having looked around a little bit, I think you’re going to find on the lower end very price-sensitive options, probably between $500 and $1000. And they can go all the way up to about $10,000. And I recognize that’s a pretty wide range, but I think pricing, like anything else, kind of falls along a bell curve.

So on the left side of that curve, you’re going to have $500 to $1500. Those are the super cost-effective options. Maybe something on Craigslist. You could find pricing around $5000 and above will be on the right side of the curve. And not to say that that’s any better or worse. When you’re on that side of the curve, you’re going to probably end up paying a premium for the skill, the knowledge, the advanced equipment, and the outstanding service at the videographer the video production team is provided.

I didn’t necessarily address what is going to be fair, but what I typically find is you’re going to be probably within the $2000 to $5000 range for a video professional who’s been in the business for a little while and has some pretty good gear. But one thing I might say to just kind of dovetail on that is just as a lot of the dentists will talk about to patients, you can find somebody to do an implant for a couple of hundred dollars (I hope they don’t), but you probably could.

Maybe there’s a value to that, but the problem is if the implant fails, if the video fails, it’s not what you want, you’re going to end up having to spend the time and the money to have it redone. And that’s something that we don’t want to do.

Overpaying is something that nobody wants to do, but at the same time, underpaying and then having to go back and redo the video is something we definitely want to avoid.

Whitney: Yeah, that’s such an important point.

So my next question actually goes right along with that. If a dentist is looking for a video production company, what are some of the things they should be looking for? What are the most important things to them?

Jeremy: Yeah, there are so many different types of videographers, and they each specialize in very different things.

The first thing that I would probably suggest is the quality of the video. Look at the work that’s been done before, and it could be dental. It may be non-dental, but when you look at just the overall quality of the presentation, the production value that you’re seeing is what you expect, because what you’ll never see is – you’re never going to see a massive jump. I shouldn’t say never, but most likely, you’re never going to see a massive jump in quality. So if you see work that you find is average work, but you’re expecting something that is going to be significantly better than that, it might be a little unrealistic.

So the first thing I would look for is the quality of the videos that are being produced. The second thing is just make sure that you’re working with somebody who really does take an interest in you, your team, and your practice. Dentistry, as we all know, is a very lucrative profession for vendors to get involved in.

So, and that’s both good and bad. But you do want to be very careful that you don’t end up working with a video production company or a video professional who just sees you as a number. They want to turn you in and out just as a dental mill might deal with a patient. So we want to be a little bit mindful of that.

You want to make absolutely sure that because you’re going to end up coordinating and collaborating with this person. You’re actually going to be sharing a good portion of your professional life, even maybe a little bit of your personal life with this person on camera. And that’s kind of an intimate experience with folks, and it can be very intimidating. So you definitely want to make sure that you feel comfortable with these people. 

Look for the quality of the videos that are being produced, and make sure that you’re working with somebody who really does take an interest in you, your team, and your practice.

Next, I probably would look at a guarantee, and the guarantee is kind of a funny thing. A lot of companies will offer something like, “We’ll keep working with you until we get it right.” And that in and of itself isn’t a bad guarantee, but the challenge with that is if we went back to dental and somebody said, “Look, I’ll place an implant for you, and I’ll continue to work with you until I’ve placed the implant correctly and it’s not failing anymore.”

At some point, the patient’s going to say, “You know what, doc, I really appreciate this, but we’ve tried to place this two or three times, and it’s just not working.” And at that point, the patient’s probably lost faith. And the same thing goes with videographers.

So what I would suggest doing is trying to find a videographer or video production company who offers a guarantee that if you’re not satisfied with the video or the service that they’ll actually refund 100% of your money.

If you can find a video production company that does specialize in dentistry, I think that’s a great bonus. It doesn’t have to be. But over the years, I’ve found that dental teams tend to be a little bit apprehensive with video production crews. But once they find out that the crew actually knows dentistry, their language, and kind of know their daily routine, they tend to relax a little bit. It’s nice, but that’s not always possible.

So those are the things I probably would look for in terms of trying to find the right video production company. And maybe one last thing very quickly, is to look for testimonials, look for verifiable substantive testimonials that you could find on Google My Business opens in a new window or elsewhere.

So those are the things I probably look for.

Whitney: Those are all fantastic. And that I love that last one that you threw in, too. I think that’s a really important part of choosing any business that you’re going to work with and invest with. Along all these lines, you know the big question is this: Anything that goes into a marketing strategy ultimately should result in more sales, right?

Jeremy: That is the goal, yeah.

Whitney:  That is the goal. We want to see return on investment for anything that we put into our strategy. So, what is the most effective way for a dental practice to achieve this? They’re investing in video. How can they make sure that this video results in patients scheduling?

Jeremy: Yeah, this, really, of all of the questions, is one of my favorites to answer.

And I typically will coach dentists on this because I think they often have a misconception here. And I definitely understand where they’re coming from. From a dentist’s standpoint, you’re talking about, not only an artist, but primarily a clinician, whether they’ve got a fellowship and an ICD opens in a new window, ACD opens in a new window or AGD opens in a new window, or they’ve gone to Spear opens in a new window, or the Pankey Institute opens in a new window, these are all wonderful accomplishments. And they deserve a lot of credit and respect for those things, but at the same time, patients really don’t understand that. They don’t understand those things more important. A lot of them, unfortunately, just don’t care.

So while those accomplishments really deserve a tremendous amount of credit, I typically don’t cover them as much in videos. It is vitally important that patients, after watching a video, feel that you are a respected and credible clinician. But going into detail about a fellowship in AGD opens in a new window or ACD opens in a new window or whatever it’s going to be – I would steer clear of that.

I remember a dentist in Oro Valley here in Arizona told me something I’ll never forget. He said, “Patients only care about two things: Are you nice? And do you hurt?” That’s certainly an oversimplification, and I get that.

But here’s the truth about all of these things:

If you’re able to establish a personal and emotional connection with a potential patient after they’ve seen clips of your team and your practice, and they say to themselves, “I feel like I know this dentist a little bit, and I know the team. I kind of feel like I know the practice. I feel like I like them, and more importantly, I feel like I can trust them.” Then there’s a really good chance they’ll end up scheduling an appointment with your practice. Outside of that, it’s very difficult to do.

Think about how we buy things. Marketers have known this for years and sometimes in dental school, it’s just not something that’s covered. But we all make buying decisions on emotion and justify it with logic. It’s absolutely crazy. You’ve got a clinician who has got all of these accolades and they’ve done all of this CE and in the end, the patient wants to know is are you nice and do you hurt?

So it’s a little bit backward. But the bottom line is if you can help patients feel comfortable coming into your practice, speaking with you, and they know that they’re going to be taken care of, and it’s not going to be a real pressured environment, and they feel like at the end of the watching your promotional video, they say, “I feel comfortable either going there or taking my family to this dental practice, or, them being my dental home.” I think there’s a good chance that you’re going to get the business.

“Patients only care about two things: Are you nice? And do you hurt?”

Whitney: Yeah. I love everything that you just said there. We could not agree more. And Angela, our Director of Client Services, she likes to joke that if a picture’s worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a thousand patients.

Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but we really know that video is just one of the absolute best ways to help build that trust that you were just talking about and help people make that decision to choose you over another dentist down the road. And you know, before the call, you and I were talking about, if there are, say, three websites of three direct competitors in an area, and one of those websites has a great video and that’s the first thing you see, that’s probably the dentist that’s going to get you.

Jeremy: Yeah, I think that’s a great point. We had talked about this before the call, but my background primarily is in design, and it’s in marketing. I’ve also done a lot of photography and a lot of writing.

I think that the photos and the content on the site are definitely helpful and can establish some amount of credibility. But it’s very difficult to convey emotion and that personal connection through text and photos. And that’s why video is so popular. And that’s why it’s so powerful and drawing patients in.

Whitney: Absolutely, I could not agree more.

So I understand that you actually have a special offer for everyone watching today. Could you tell us a little bit more about it?

Jeremy: Yeah. You know a lot of the work that we end up doing here is here in Arizona. I filmed outside of the state on a couple of occasions, and I recognize you have viewers from all over the country. I’d be more than happy to because I know that dentists are hit with expenses time and time again.

I’ve got an endodontist friend who jokes that the American pastime is not baseball, but it’s taking a dentist, flipping them over, shaking them as hard as you can and seeing what falls out of their wallet. So I definitely understand that in particular when you get into an area that is outside of what you typically do, and that’s going to be video for dentists.

This is completely new to a lot of them. And what I would offer to dentists whether they’re going to be within the geographic range that I would serve or not. I’m more than happy to work with them in terms of if they’ve got questions or if they want to bounce something off me, or if they’ve got some ideas, and if they just want to get some honest answers from somebody who really has nothing to gain.

I’m more than happy to do it, just as you guys do at Roadside, Whitney. I’ve been serving the dental profession for over ten years, and I want to make sure that the dentists make the right decision. If it’s hiring my team and me, I’m more than happy to do that if you’re just providing good advice so they don’t make the wrong decision, I’m more than happy to do that as well. So I’ll be more than happy to take on questions or offer advice, no charge at that. Whether they’re in Arizona, in my backyard. Or if they’re in Maine, doesn’t matter to me.

Whitney: That is such an awesome offer.

And I highly encourage everyone watching, if you have any questions about hiring or working with a video production company, please take advantage of Jeremy’s offer. You can reach him at ddsvideo.com opens in a new window as well as dmdvideo.com opens in a new window.

Jeremy, I just want to say thank you so much. We would love to have you back again to join us, to talk more aspects of video, because there’s so much that we didn’t even cover today, right?

Jeremy: Yeah, I definitely appreciate the time. This has been a lot of fun and you’re exactly right. There is a finite point where doctors go, “Okay, I get it. Let’s go ahead and do this.” But there is a little bit more to cover that we didn’t get to, but maybe that’s for another time.

Whitney: All right. We’ll get that on the calendar. Looking forward to it. Thank you everybody for joining us. Thank you again, Jeremy. Again, please get in touch with him at ddsvideo.com opens in a new window or dmdvideo.com opens in a new window and we will see you next time. Bye.

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