Episode 740: Is It Time to Pivot Marketing Tactics? 

 If you find yourself falling short on getting your ideal patients or converting emergency visits, it might be time to switch marketing gears. In this episode, Tiff and Denae talk about what should go into thoughtful processes for marketing, when to know how to pivot, and how long you should wait to see if there are returns.

Episode resources:

Reach out to Tiff and Denae for a tracker spreadsheet: [email protected] 

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Transcript:

Tiffanie (00:01.531)

Denae, I'm so excited to podcast with you. We haven't done a ton of podcasts together, but I have fun with you. And I love you just presented at Think Tank Tuesday, I almost said Thursday, for us. It was one of your first L.A. team actual presentations. And I've always enjoyed listening to you speak. Like I got to watch you in person, in your practice, give your meeting. And I love the way you present yourself, but seeing you last night was really cool. And it made me really.

even more excited to podcast with you today, because I think you really just have like this genuine, thoughtful speaking process, and I really love it. So welcome, I'm so excited to do this with you. How are you today?

Denae Black (00:42.086)

I'm doing good too. I think I'm still on the high from last night with Think Tank. Yep. Yeah.

Tiffanie (00:46.643)

Yeah. It was so much fun. Good. Sweet. Well, I think you actually coming off of Think Tank, you have so much history and so much experience in just multifaceted situations. And I think I picked some topics for you specifically, I told you that before we got on here, because it was having to do with marketing. And I think marketing is pivotal, right, and building a solid practice and building your patient base, obviously. And I thought

Dana would actually, or Dana, sorry, Dana would actually have some incredible insight and thoughtful processes on some of this marketing. And my practice is constantly, we're pivoting marketing and kind of looking at what's working and what's not and changing tactics and really looking at where they are in the country and the state that they're in, like what their demographics are. But I wanted to pick your brain some. So today I really wanted to talk about how we just like pivot marketing tactics and

why? Like what are we trying to go after? We're looking for different results, but like when do we know how to pivot? All of those pieces. I really want to pick your brain on it. So open forum. Like what do you think about changing marketing tactics? Is there a time when it's too soon? When it's too late? Is there a time when you're like, yeah, this is how we know?

Denae Black (02:05.374)

Yeah, yeah. So I think the first step is always gonna come down to tracking, tracking to see where are your patients coming from, how are your patients hearing about you? So really having a system in place where one person in the office is responsible for tracking that and then actually setting time up in your calendar once a month to look at the tracking, like what are these numbers telling you about where your patients are hearing about you?

Tiffanie (02:10.65)

Yeah.

Denae Black (02:35.026)

And then trying to figure out from there what's actually working, what's not working. Marketing is not something that you can turn on overnight unless it's in insurance, right? If you're going in network with insurance, you're going to start to get a lot of patients in, but everything else related to marketing is going to take some time. So you really want to give it about six weeks until you start really seeing that return.

Tiffanie (02:35.196)

Mm-hmm.

Tiffanie (02:46.188)

Yeah.

Denae Black (03:01.806)

But from there tracking, like give it six weeks, if you're not seeing any kind of return, then you know it's time to pivot. It's time to do something different. Rather than throwing a bunch of money or throwing a bunch of energy at one specific thing, that's not working.

Tiffanie (03:18.327)

Yeah. And I think to clarify too, I think by pivoting marketing, we're talking about guys like pivoting the tactics of marketing that you're using, not saying within a month to two months, if you're not getting results moved to a different company, um, we're saying communicate with your marketing team, your marketing company, whether they're internal or external and pivot the tactics that you're using so that you get a different result. I think Danae, what this talks about really, or what you're, what you're talking about is really looking at the KPIs, the key performance indicators, which

I know all of our practices are tracking a ton of key performance indicators for us constantly. I know you and I, I think we're finally getting a lot of the girls on board, dental lighting ladies, I'm so glad you're here. I know you and I are old school and love like this simplistic Excel spreadsheet of just like pull the numbers from dental and teller wherever and put them on this tracker. So I love that about you specifically. Thank you for that. But are you using a similar tracker then?

And we're again, we're not talking about pivoting marketing companies, but pivoting the tactics that our marketing companies are using to get a different result. Is that what you're looking at as like an Excel spreadsheet kind of like, we're really looking at the new patients that came in and then really dialing in where they came from so that we know what we're getting. Perfect.

Denae Black (04:32.874)

Yes, yes. So I live and die by Excel spreadsheets. And what I always recommend is a manual tracker for new patients. You wanna be able to see how many new patients called the office, how many of these new patients actually converted into a new patient, how did they hear about the office? And here's one of the most important ones, did they reschedule for another appointment? So not only did your new patient come in, but...

Tiffanie (04:37.738)

I know.

Tiffanie (04:58.692)

Mm.

Denae Black (05:01.386)

was that marketing tactic creating a lifelong patience for you, or were they bringing in new patients that were never going to come back? So you want to add that with your tracker as well. And then when you can sit down once a month and analyze what is this tracker telling me? Where am I getting the best bang for my buck? And what marketing efforts am I doing that is actually generating lifelong patients?

Tiffanie (05:20.417)

Mm-hmm.

Tiffanie (05:30.611)

I love that. I love that you said that. Are they rescheduling for their for another appointment? So are they reappointing? I love that. I have a practice in Utah. They are so near and dear to my heart. I've worked with them for a few years now. And we've gone through a lot of different marketing tactics with them. And something that we noticed with a company that they were using is that they were getting new patients and the company's like you're getting new patients. We're like, okay, but his schedules just sucks. Like there's just nothing coming in. So I said,

dial in our tracking. And so we started tracking new patient comps, so 0150 versus new patient emergency, 0140 exams. And we found that within the marketing tactics that they were using, the SEO version online, right? They were getting majority, 80 to 90% were emergency, kind of like one stop shop, fix my tooth and I'm gone, patients. So.

while they were getting the new patients numbers that we wanted, their schedule wasn't filling. That was exactly why, because the marketing efforts we were doing were pulling patients to his practice, but they weren't pulling the patients that were staying. They were just pulling those emergency patients that hopefully will come back one day. We switched the tactics. That's where we're talking about you guys pivoting those tactics. With this practice, I dialed in and I said, we've got to change something in the Google ad.

words, right? So all of those different words that are hidden behind the scenes that people search Google for something and you populate because of this, they said something within those ad words isn't adding up to what we want. So we pulled back and we switched those ad words for this practice and immediately within the next four to six weeks, we saw a huge transition. Their new patient numbers went down, but guess what?

their new patient numbers of patients that were reappointing, staying with the practice and becoming that lifelong patient went up. And so it was kind of like, it was kind of like an exchange, right? So our numbers went down, but we were getting the right patients. So then we duplicated what we had done, changing our marking tactics in other areas, and now they're far surpassing those new patient goals every month. But it was because, Janay, like you said, really tracking all of those parameters. So.

Denae Black (07:35.69)

Mm-hmm.

Tiffanie (07:49.431)

when you said what, how many calls, the conversion rate, which is huge, you guys, because your marketing team and you are spending a lot of money on a marketing team and your marketing team is spending a lot of time analyzing and trying to get this dialed in to get the calls to your practice. So if you're, one, if you're not getting calls to your practice, they need to know so that they can change their tactics. Two, if you're getting the calls, but they're not converting, that's a you problem. That's a practice problem, not a marketing company problem.

So you've got to track the conversion or if they're not converting because I did have a practice that was getting all Medicaid calls and they don't take Medicaid. And so then you've got to change the tactics again. And then so where do they hear about it? And then are they reappointing? Those are all really huge things to track because now with Denae, they're able to make an educated choice and decision on what to change because I feel like, especially with marketing, it feels sometimes like we're just throwing spaghetti at a wall.

and waiting to see if it sticks. And then when it doesn't get the result, we change everything and we throw like more spaghetti. And it sounds like you're looking for a more dialed in purpose.

Denae Black (08:49.719)

Yep.

Denae Black (08:59.166)

Yeah, absolutely. You wanna make sure that your marketing is really marketing to your patient avatar. What does your ideal patient look like? And if you're not getting those ideal patients coming into the office, you know that you're not marketing to that ideal avatar. And so you wanna pivot that, and maybe it's the place that you're marketing, maybe it's the verbiage that you're using, but tracking it, consistently reviewing, what is that?

Tiffanie (09:01.105)

I love it.

Tiffanie (09:08.067)

Mm-hmm.

Tiffanie (09:23.402)

Mm-hmm.

Denae Black (09:27.862)

tracker telling you will help you understand like when is the right time to pivot and do I need to pivot based off where I'm marketing or what I'm marketing.

Tiffanie (09:38.427)

Hmm. I like that. I like that. Okay. That was fantastic. I feel like you gave so much valuable information and like a snippet, which was really great because I think this is something that we're all a little bit afraid of, because nobody really understands it. Sometimes I feel like honestly, marketing companies are like, well, we're gonna try it. So like, nobody really understands and truly knows what will work or won't work until we try it. So I think doctors shy away from marketing a lot.

just because of that unknown piece, or they hand all their cards over to a marketing team and never know how to know if they're getting the good results. And so then they're like, all of a sudden, I've had doctors that I've worked with that I've come on and they're like, I'm not seeing new patients, we got to fire the marketing company. And I'm like, wait, like, we're not don't fire anybody. Like, let's check the data first. And let's make sure at the end of the day, no matter what, whether it's a team member or company, if you're firing someone, you can say you've done everything you could.

to make that relationship work. So I definitely think these are great tactics and tips to really help be able to gauge that. So guys, as a wrap, make sure you're tracking it. So if you're looking at how and when to pivot the marketing tactics that you're using, you've gotta really dial in and track the tactics that you're using. So you've gotta have that KPI spreadsheet. And Danae mentioned tracking your calls. So how many new patient calls are you getting into the practice? Your conversion rate.

Within that, we'll backtrack. So tracking your calls and I would say tracking calls that are able to be scheduled and calls that are not able to be scheduled. So, and I do count Medicaid can be scheduled, but I would count like how many Medicaid patient calls are you getting, because I don't want that to be the high volume if you're not a Medicaid practice. So within your calls that you're getting, tracking what kind of calls, what kind of patients you're attracting, and then that conversion rate on those calls.

How did they hear about you? And then once those new patients come in, are they reappointing for another appointment within your practice? So dental treatment or re-care, whatever it is, are they coming back for something and are they now a lifelong patient? So action item is to create that tracker, reach out to us if you need help creating one. I just told you that Danai and I are like Excel sheet lovers. I'm not saying that we're masters and we know how to do all the formulas. I'm saying we love a good tracker and we can put one together for you.

Tiffanie (12:05.567)

If you need help with that, I'm sure that we both probably have something very similar. So number one is to create some sort of a tracker. Number two, look at it monthly, you guys. And I think even, Danae, maybe as they're onboarding a new marketing company, like maybe they're looking at it every week and really looking at how many calls did we get this week and looking. So you're looking at it weekly and then monthly. And then once you feel like you've got some good footing, definitely making sure you're always looking at it monthly. No.

Don't go any longer than that. So within that KPI, you're looking at trends, and you're really dialing in the pivot points. So what trends, what are your uptrends, what's working? And then what are your downtrends? What's not working in your practice within the marketing? And that's your pivot spot. Like if your SEO is not working, if you're pulling in a ton of patients that do not meet what your practice is there for, change your SEO words, change those ad words.

like I did with my practice in Utah and it worked really well guys. Within weeks, we had the right patients coming into the practice. Do those couple of things and I think you're really going to get a better sense and a feeling for what your marketing team is doing and what it means to have the right patient. Dene, do you have anything that I missed and I was trying to make notes, I tried to grab all your pieces because I thought they were brilliant. Is there anything in there that you feel like we need to add to their action items?

Denae Black (13:27.818)

I think the only thing I would add is don't be afraid of, or don't fall into the trap of, well, they only wanted a limited exam, so I didn't schedule an extra appointment. Really try as a team to convert that limited into a comprehensive exam, because there is a lot to be said about the patient experience. If the patient truly enjoyed their experience, they felt like they were heard, they felt like...

Tiffanie (13:38.98)

Yeah.

Denae Black (13:56.502)

you know, they found the right dental practice, it is possible to convert them to a comprehensive exam. So don't be afraid to convert those patients over to.

Tiffanie (14:02.887)

pressure.

I love that. That was brilliant. Good job. Good catch there. I love it. You guys, I hope you found this super valuable. I hope that you're able to take notes or if you're driving that when you get to where you're going, you listen back and take some notes. Build up that tracker. It's worth it, you guys, and your marketing company, if you're using an outsourced company, they also have reports and trends and things that they can send you. Typically, they're watching how many people are coming to your website, how many people are calling based on a certain number they put on there, all of those pieces. So communicate with them.

Get your tracker going, schedule your KPI meetings, and look for those trends guys. If you need anything at all, like always, reach out to us. Hello at the dentalatm.com. I told you we'd be happy to send you over some sort of an Excel spreadsheet. If you really want one, just reach out. We do respond. We are on the other side. It is one of our team members. Then as soon as it needs to go to a consultant, you do get a live consultant helping you out. Just let us know. If you haven't done so already, drop us a little five-star review down below. Let us know how you enjoyed.

Today's information, Denae's brilliant mind on the marketing pieces. I knew you'd have something incredible, so I really appreciate that. Denae, thank you so much for being here. And we'll catch you guys next time.