The Pro’s Guide to Profitable Marketing

Ever wondered how elite practices ensure their marketing turns into actual profit? This is your chance to get the playbook straight from the pros.

Shannon hopped on a video call with AADOM, and created a marketing strategy using real-life practice numbers.

Check out this 20-minute video and learn:

• How to translate numbers into a profitable marketing strategy
• Methods to find and plug revenue leaks fast
• Techniques that’ll marry marketing with your profits
• The step-by-step guide to crafting a system that guarantees ROI

This will change how you view marketing. You don’t want to miss out.

John: Happy Tuesday, AADOM Nation. Good to be back with you. It was such a pleasure to see all of you at conference. So, hopefully, you have refreshed. If I know all of you very well, you went back to your practices, implemented like 17 things, and you’re ready to go. So that’s why we’re here, right? We got a quick cast today.

Always excited to be with Shannon Mackey, CEO. I love that she deems herself also as the cheerleader of Roadside Dental Marketing. Shannon, how are you doing?

Shannon: I’m doing great, John. How are you?

John: I’m doing wonderfully. You’ve got a great presentation today. The Pros Guide to Profitable Marketing, connecting all the marketing that you’re doing, making sure that it’s effective.

So, like always, everybody show Shannon some love. Let her know where you’re watching from around the country. She’s got a great presentation. As soon as she’s done, I will come back on for any Q and A. We’ll have some discussion, and then we’ll go from there. So. Shannon, the floor is yours.

Shannon: Great, thank you, John. My team and I put this together because it’s the strongest conversation that we’ve been having with practices over the past year and a half. And that is, “I don’t even know what’s working in my marketing. Not even sure where all of my leads are coming from. I’m really unsure about metrics”.

And then, even with what you’re marketing, is it profitable for the practice? So, kind of thinking that way. Thinking about your practice, what is really working? What’s worked in the past? What’s working now is quite different over the past couple of years, with everybody coming out of COVID and the changes and shifts. The graphic that I’m sharing right now is interesting because it’s saying, “Elevate your vibe.” You know, good vibes only, that sort of thing.

We’ve heard it over and over again. But I think it’s now more important than ever to really think about yourself first, as an office manager and your team, because you guys serve. You’re of service so much, and we need to make sure that our everyday lives don’t get us down into this mid-orange [boredom, neutrality], yellow [frustration, irritation, overwhelm], green [worry and anger], and hopefully not blue [apathy and guilt] and black [shame and death]. You know the type of vibe.

But the reason I bring this up is because marketing is energy. Marketing is vibrations because we’re humans and we really vibe off of each other. So if we can check in on our vibration of ourselves, our team, and our practice, make sure it’s the most elevated or even where you want to go [with your vibrations]. Thinking about it, ‘I want to enjoy doing dentistry.’ [gratitude and appreciation].

I want to enjoy the patients coming into my practice. Because if you’re serving patients that you love, you’re going to love your job more. So, if we get those vibrations down and really understand our market, [asking] do we want to become more fee for service? Do we want to do more sleep [apnea treatment]? Or more dental implants—that sort of thing. Then we need to get to know our avatars and how we can get them to be high-vibing because they will be attracted to that content, to that messaging, so much more than stock images. Your competition, they’re not really thinking about that.

What they’re thinking is, I need 50 new butts in my seats. And if you’re like, Hey, let’s do hashtag marketing with love. And we want to serve our community. We want to become thought leaders. Then you’re going to gain so much quicker and you’re going to enjoy your job.

And your dentist is going to enjoy his job. So, what we’ve created is this Marketing Wheel of Fortune. So, we can kind of see on a scale of 1-10, how is our practice doing right now? How are we performing in these areas? To see, you know, I guess to make an honest evaluation to what should be our priority.

And why am I saying that? I’m saying that because marketing is expensive. It also can have the largest impact, but it’s also a big pain in the butt. It’s hard for dental practices and office managers to, you know, inculcate the right type of marketing and make sure it’s working. So the more that we’re thinking about it a little bit differently, a little bit more high level, it actually becomes easier.

Why do I say that, right? It’s like, okay, what’s the most important for my practice right now? Am I a startup that needs patients right now, or am I an established practice? And the doctor really wants to do high-ticket. Then really, when you’re scoring this Marketing Wheel of Fortune, that helps us see what we should concentrate on with our time and money in building the practice we love.

So, we kind of give this, and there’s a download that we can give everybody to analyze their own practice to see where you are from 0 to 10 on each one of these things and brand alignment. How are you guys doing at generating new interest, nurturing, and closing? Leveraging your relationship capital that you have right now is huge.

It’s a huge asset to the practice that the majority really aren’t taking advantage of. And we’ll talk a little bit about that bearing kind of the nurturing with leveraging. that relationship capital and how important it is to build a high-end culture. And what does that really mean? Can you add something new?

Maybe you’ve been doing the same things for a few years; let’s mix it up a little bit to, you know, really ignite some energy. Even in your team, to how they’re building that high-end culture. What they’re offering your patients for the patients going, “Oh my gosh, you have to see my doctor.”

So creating a referral system so your internal marketing gets stronger and then really connecting this with profitability, the revenues. And on what we’re seeing in that, we pulled off some hot seats for you guys to kind of take a look at what I’m talking about. Because I know that I’m very visual.

If we can kind of see what we’re talking about in each practice like, [you’ll be like] okay, I get it now. So that’s kind of what we did here. So here’s Brad Hylan, Hylan Dental Care in Cleveland, Ohio. And he has three locations right now. And his goal is to get 10 locations in the next three to five years.

Okay, that’s a big goal. Right? So we really need to create some systems and automation for him. But let’s see where he’s at right now. So you see how he has graded himself. Brand alignment is okay. He gave himself a six. Generating new interest, five. Well, he wants 100 new patients a month in each practice.

So if he’s not sure where he’s getting that new interest at five, that’s a problem, right? But then we also look at his leveraging relationship capital. I want you guys to pay attention to that low score because–and I’ll show you why–that has become our priority–building high-end culture. They’re pretty good at that, connecting revenue.

They’re gonna get dental intel, dental intelligence. They’re pretty good at knowing the numbers. So we used a dental intelligence snapshot to see what is the low-hanging fruit in the practice. Let’s do that first because if we do not plug the holes that they have in the practice right now, why in the heck are we going to say, ‘Hey, let’s build a pretty website and some social ads–and that’s what you need.

That’s what the majority of marketing agencies will say to these practices without looking at all of the assets that they have within the practice and the holes that they might have. So when you’re looking at his unscheduled treatment and inactive patients, he has $22 million worth of unscheduled treatment.

Now, I’m going to preface this by [saying] he has a legacy practice that’s been around for 25 years, his Cleveland office. That’s about $15 million that was sitting there and about $2 to $3 million in each of the other smaller practices that he was building up. But you see where he will start because we can give him a massive cash injection, and we love leveraging that relationship capital.

You want to do it right away. So within 90 days, we know that we can get 10-15%, possibly 20% back into the practice. And when we’re talking about an unscheduled treatment campaign, we are absolutely not talking about a Sally at the front desk going, “Hey, are you ready for your crown and root canal yet?” No way.

What we want to do is concentrate on nurturing that patient base by talking to them a little bit because the practice has been terrible about giving them good content, educational content. [Saying], Hey, we’re here. We love you, you know, waving videos, and you know, what about this? We love this sort of content–talking to them. Not just, “Hey, you’re due for a six-month recall.”

Why is that important right now?

COVID–[the] last three years. So I’m just going to say it, let me give you a hint. I’m just going to tell you it’s COVID. People are desperate for relationships, for nurturing, for connection more now than ever, you know. Covering up our faces and not smiling for that long really messed up a lot of people. And they also realized how important their own health was, and they’re taking accountability for that.

So by giving them an offer and doing marketing, psychology, and nurture sequences through email and texting is so important. It’s imperative. And it’s just done with Front Desk Assist. We don’t put a lot on the practice in doing this because they’re so busy. But we want to call them and follow up when there’s a little bit of interest, especially with texting.

So that was Brad’s situation in phase two, right after we found his numbers. So what’s going to be his phase three? It’s becoming a thought leader because he wants to do more big-ticket items. He has a more affluent area that he wants to tap into in his area, getting away from some insurance.

So, he wants to create more authentic videos, posting on social media, his website, and his funnels–[that] sort of thing. That’s kind of his phase three after talking to him a little bit. So, you kind of see how we are making a strategy before tactics. Looking at the profitability of where we can get his cash intake sooner, you know, rather than later, depending on his priorities.

And this is just one really good example of how we can strategize and look at that Marketing Wheel of Fortune. So just kind of to recap, going back over what we were talking about–look at that Wheel. We’re going to give you a free gift. I think my team put together something really cool. Request a free revenue opportunity report.

We’ve been part of the AADOM crowd for over seven years now. You know that we’re not salesy at all, that we really do want to be of service. So please, don’t be afraid to get your own opportunity report. Let us be of service to you so we can help you get your own strategy before tactics and look at what your priorities would be.

What holes do you have to plug up? Then really look at where your profitability is. Because if we can get your cash injections [up] and then look at say, ‘do you want high ticket, then you’re really going to see, ‘now my marketing is really working.’ One other thing I do want to mention before I hand it over to John again for our question and answer is having your marketing connected to, we call it a client relationship management software, a CRM, so we can see a whole pipeline of where our patients are coming in, is of the utmost importance.

Yeah, I could talk to you a little bit more about that, maybe on a different call. But if you guys want to get an opportunity report, we can share with you how you guys can see where all your profits are going or where you’re making your profits within your marketing. And having a brain of your marketing–that CRM–I would say it’s just been such a game changer for us and our clients, but that is kind of at a quick cast.

That’s what I’d like you to really think about, raising your energies higher to the whole ‘marketing with love.’ What kind of patients do we want to get in? Do we really know our patient avatar? What keeps them up at night? What do they love? What do they hate? How can we draw them in? Do we have content and videos and communicate with them either on our website or within a nurture email and texting sequences to ensure that we’re taking care of our precious babies and our patient list right now?

I’ll say, let me just give you a tip, to look at four years back when you’re looking at your [appointments], and that’s what we’ll help you do with this. But if you just wanna look at it, because people haven’t gotten in to [the practice] to get their dentistry done. We’re able to reactivate 20% of a list four years back.

It’s absolutely incredible how we nurture. And then the ones that don’t want to [come in] right away within the first 90 days, they’re warming up to get them in for their six-month [appointment]. So this has been super exciting, kind of a different way to think of marketing and profitability. We definitely want to make sure that the moves that you make in marketing are actually going to benefit you and you could see the profitability to the practice. Right away.

I guess that is it in a nutshell, John, what we’re excited to teach about. If anybody has any questions, I’d be happy to answer them.

John: Well, super informative and, like you mentioned, a lot of information in a quick cast. So much more to discuss. The one thing I wanted to ask you about while we have just a couple more minutes with you is, the momentum that a practice feels, Shannon, when they do finally marry their marketing with their revenue so that they can see, okay, we spent this money, we got that result–because as you know from your experience, it’s one of the hardest things I know from a marketing company [perpective]–when a practice commits to doing these things and doing them right, that they’re going to get results.

But until you connect those two and you actually feel what it feels like to see that we spent this money, we got this result, just any final thoughts on that, right?

Because that’s, that, to me, feels like the big moment in the practice where they see that, and then there’s no more questioning. You know the value of what you need to do from a marketing perspective.

Shannon: A hundred percent. That’s like, that’s where it’s brilliant. When we can look at where the assets are in the practice, we can say this is untapped, like you guys aren’t taking care of this. Let’s really nurture this and see. In small businesses, in dentistry, even though you’re a service provider it’s still a small business; this is known in all small businesses–it’s a little slow coming into dentistry–that we want to really nurture that list and use the CRM and not miss a moment.

Whether it’s the current list or even when you’re spending money on social ads, I would say profitability– when you‘re putting ads out there–you have to be so careful that it is profitable. Because It can really get away from you. The [marketing] companies can go, “Whoa, I gave you 50 leads,” and they [the practices] are like the practice that comes to me all the time and says, “I got two calls from it.” They got two patients and were okay patients, but where did the other 48 go? I’m like, “I feel you!”

That’s where a couple of years ago, we really dialed into this CRM, and we can show them through this pipeline. Okay, here’s your lead. They [lead] call for the call center, you help them, and they show.

Show them, you know, through this pipeline. Like, okay, here’s your lead. They call the call center. The call center helps them. Oh, they know showed. Let’s get them into a nurture sequence where we put little videos of the doctor going, “Oh, I’m so sorry you didn’t make it.” Helping them to reignite because no-shows are a big deal with social ads, right?

So you’re thinking of those little leaks and barriers. But then when you’re doing that, and we can say they [the lead] showed up and they got treatment, [the practice] is like, okay! Now we know these custom little video creatives and photos worked because we’re able to optimize these.

Stock images do not work. If you’re doing paid ads and spending $1,000, $2,000, $5,000 on paid ads, and they’re [other marketing firms] not asking you for custom content and creatives and to have someone come in–I mean, I’m at a practice right now in Houston, Texas on a swing in their treatment center doing creatives because they have five locations and they want their face out there–not stock images.

That’s of the utmost importance. So if you know of a videographer, if you do boomerangs, anything like that to show some sort of personality, that’s a game changer for profitability for paid ads. But I would say, holding that CRM close to your heart and really optimizing when you’re doing marketing.

And you know, the same thing is true with referral marketing. You can put a form on a referral page. You can add that either in your CRM or your website, and you can drive your patients to that with the offer and that they [lead] have to put in their email and phone number, helping them with the system.

So they know that the referral system is working. Internal marketing is huge for these guys. And for them to make it easy for the team, we’re doing something like getting our practices to do like a little tin of gum. It’s like 30 ways to share and connect, you know? Smile and put a QR code on there.

When they go there, there’s a little community announcement from the doctor talking about oral systemic health that anybody would like. And Hey, by the way, we would love to give you a $100 smile credit toward coming in If a friend or a family member shared this with you, and then they fill it out to get their $100.

Then they [the practice] say, “Okay, our team is doing good at referrals.” So, all the marketing that our practices are doing, if we set them up within a CRM and a system, we know social media is working. Our referral system’s working. This is what we’re getting from our website. This is what we’re getting from our lists when we’re doing campaigns. This is what we’re getting from social ads.

They have to know that because then they know where to put their money. And you can’t do that without a CRM. You just can’t.

John: Completely. Yeah. We had one question Shannon that I wanted to ask, which is, Should I target unaccepted treatment, I think on scheduled treatment, based on actual treatment.?

So what are your thoughts on marketing or targeting patients with that unscheduled treatment that they haven’t come in and done?

Shannon: Oh, that’s, I would say that’s first and foremost. You could either do unscheduled hygiene. Because after 18 months, you know, you can look at that. Is your hygienist, do they need to be busy?

A lot of times, they’re having a hard time with hygiene, so they’re wanting to go with the unscheduled treatment first. But that’s absolutely where I would start because it’s a cash injection. Let me just give you a couple of examples, like one-practitioner practice, a little bit smaller but focused on dental implants.

We ran his list to be a little bit more specialized, and we got almost $300,000 scheduled on his schedule within 90 days. Yeah, a two-location practice, almost $600,000 rescheduled back in because they were terrible at follow-up. They’re like, “Oh, yeah, we’re terrible.” But when you know; we would get him back in, the patients love them [and] know they wanted to do it, but if they’re not reminded, they forget. There are other priorities, like remodeling your bathroom, for Pete’s sake.

You know, things come up.

John: Awesome. No, I mean, it’s that, you know, you hear it all the time. It’s kind of a cliche statement, right? This low-hanging fruit, this treatment that’s in the practice. I remember being in the track in the practice and looking at unscheduled treatment, thinking to myself, I knew that the practice wanted to be able to get those patients back in, right?

Like you said, it’s not that they don’t want to, and it’s not that the patients don’t want to come in. It’s the day-to-day, right? It’s that people get busy. You know, before you know it, it’s Monday. It’s Friday. It’s the next week. And so these are great strategies for everybody; there are some resource links, right?

So the Roadside team put some links on all the comments. Whether you’re watching on YouTube, Facebook, or Linkedin, be sure to check those out. And, of course, the QR code that Shannon shared with that resource as well. So, Shannon, thank you so much. Always a pleasure to have you, always have great insight when you come on, Thanks for joining us, and thanks for watching everybody.

Shannon: Thanks, John.