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037 The REAL Reason Your Dental Marketing Isn’t Working · My Dental Playbook

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think if we as dentists can get past the feature thing and just get to the bottom line, what's the goal of marketing?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's to drive new patients in your practice.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: If it doesn't do that, then it fails.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to another episode of My Dental Playbook.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your co-host, Gary Bird.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Along with my friend Dr.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Blake Hamblin, we're going to be diving deep into his office and how he's doubled his collections in just under 12 months.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: We're also going to be talking about his journey to a$10 million practice and what he needs to do to get there.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to see behind the curtain, and Dr.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Blake is amazing at sharing the hard details that you need to know so you can do the same too.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to grow, this is the show for you.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Stay tuned.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to another episode of My Dental Playbook.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your co-host, Gary Bird, along with my friend Dr.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Blake Hamblin.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: We're diving deep into his practice on his journey to get to$40 billion as a dental practice.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just playing.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we're, no, we, Dr.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Blake's awesome.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: He lets us dive into his practice, shares all the things that's working.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: His practice is absolutely crushing.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: He's like six X to his patients.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: He's more than doubled his practice over the last year.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of learning lessons there.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: And also make sure that you check out our sponsor.
• 1:07
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• 1:13
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• 1:17
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• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: So Dr.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Blake's always just like, I dare you to try it.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: I dare you to try it.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: So that's number one.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not working with cherry, we have special pricing down below.
• 1:30
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• 1:32
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• 1:35
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• 1:38
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• 1:40
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• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: And if you say, you know what, I don't, I don't want to do that, I don't like the group thing.
• 1:46
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• 1:52
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• 1:57
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• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: So let's jump into today's topic.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: This is going to be a really, really good one.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Blake gets a lot of questions because he does this podcast with me.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: So people call him and they're like, hey, uh I'm thinking about working with Gary, but what about this?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Or I'm thinking about spending more money on marketing.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: What about this?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: And Dr.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Blake is the king of do more marketing.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so he's he's kind of built a reputation of that.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: And he gets these interesting questions.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the questions that comes up all the time is, what about SEO?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of Dennis love SEO.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: And this is my personal opinion, and Dr.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Blake, you can tell me what you think.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: But I think Dennis love SEO because it's like this holy grail of I'm gonna spend a thousand dollars a month and get all the new patients that I want.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: But the problem is, is like that's not reality.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's some people out there that that's happened before, like it has happened, but it's not predictable.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's not something you can scale on.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so what what are your thoughts on this?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: This was your idea today to talk about this.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: So what I'm really interested to hear what you have to say.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just so interested in like the questions that will pop up because to me, to me, they're the same as when the patient who hasn't had their teeth cleaned in in four years comes in and the first thing they ask is how much is white?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's like, well, I know you want white teeth, but like the first step is clean your teeth and they'll naturally be white, right?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so I it's very, very rare that I get people and they're like, okay, how many new patients did you used to see, and how many do you see now?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And what was your budget?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And how did you get there?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's what's your SEO?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you rank in the mat pack?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, you don't even know what that means, dude.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and and I just respond because I I don't I don't know anything.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just like, I don't know.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: I I people ask, like, how much does SNC cost?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what do you mean?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I just tell them how many patients I want, and then we get those patients, right?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, it's just so fascinating to me the the confusion that dentists have because they they don't they don't want to rank in SEO, they don't want to rank in the Mat Pack, they want new patients.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: But they don't, but but the conversation never starts there.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I get thousands of DMs from dentists, and it's never or very rarely is it like, hey, I'm at 20 new patients, I want to get to 40.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's always like, hey, my I don't like my website, or hey, I my SEO is not good, or hey, they don't know about my SERP, like just all these random things.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: And to your point, it's it's almost like uh to be fair to dentists, it is confusing.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: So it's confusing because most of the marketing systems that are out there in dental and non-dental is that you're paying for activities.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: So when you go to a marketing company, you say, I want a website, the marketing company is gonna say yes because they need money, right?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: And they're gonna be like, sure, we'll build you a website.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's implied that you want new patients from that, but it's not explicit anywhere.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And you may or it may or may not work like that, right?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: There may be a hundred other things.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like as an example, I I do this all the time when people come in and ask, like, I want to rank number one.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, what's more important?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: New patients or SEO?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, new patients.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, you do realize you can rank and not get new patients, right?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like you could spend tens of thousands of dollars and rank and not get new patients.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: How so?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, like your Google reviews, how you answer the phones, uh competition, it might take us 10 years to get there.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like literally, it might, you know, in your market, it's it's so saturated.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's it's everybody's fighting for three little spots in all of Houston.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like you could spend$20,000 a month to rank and eventually get there, but what are you gonna do for the months now?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I I think uh we're so results focused that we change the dynamic of the mind, the mindset, so to speak.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And we I think we we do this every day in our practices, or at least the practices that are growing do this.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like we set a goal and then we reverse engineer how to do it.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: But we are so clueless and it's not our fault, and I'm in the same boat of like, how does marketing work?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like magic, right?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's like like some you pay this one company and they'll get you a lot of patience, but if you pay this other company, then you're gonna waste your money.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like it's not really that way.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's a there's a method and a madness to it.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what I've learned over the past year and a half, and having access to your brain, learning about how marketing works, and like now I feel like we could have a really good marketing conversation because I understand top to funnel, bottom of the funnel, how do things interact?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the more people are willing to dive into it, they'll learn.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: But knowing like what is the goal, you know, like we talk about this in our mastermind all the time, but a lot of times it's it's okay, well, I want to I want to do more invisalign.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, how are you gonna do more invisalign?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: We gotta start talking about it, you gotta start scanning every patient, you gotta start doing all these different things that lead to more Invisalign starts, right?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so that that's where I kind of get a chuckle when people call and they're like, uh, where do you where do you rank in the Map Pack?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't care.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I just care, is the phone ringing and are we converting them?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's a dentist, I think you you and I just worked on a pipeline, and we built a pipeline, and I'm like, dentists don't, from a marketing perspective, really think about pipelines, but from a clinical perspective, they do.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so think about think about doing a treatment plan where you're you're a really complicated one and you're staging it, right?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Clinically for you.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: And for you and other other uh people in your office to know here's what we're gonna do with this patient.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's hyper important that each step is followed precisely.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: So what happens to the clinician when one step is missing?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: The whole thing falls apart.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that's I think the part that dentists don't understand about marketing is that it's not magic at all.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's supply and demand.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And there's this demand for dentistry, it's out there, but the the um the supply breaks.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: It can break over and over and over again.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what are all the things that can go wrong with a complex dental treatment plan?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's infinite.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, everything.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like if we did a podcast on it, we would do it for hours.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: But the same thing's true for marketing.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: What are all the things that can go wrong that takes a person who's interested in dentistry to call your office?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Someone answers the phone, or they don't answer the phone, they go to voicemail, you do answer the phone, but your team doesn't know how to answer their questions.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: They do answer the phone, they try to schedule them, but your first available appointment for that particular thing that they're looking for is three weeks out, four weeks out.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: You get them in, but your team drops the ball on how to present the treatment.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's and then everything in between there that can go wrong can go wrong.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what this is how marketing doesn't work without that, because marketing in a business sense is a supportive role.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like a dental, a dental assistant.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: A dental assistant doesn't do the treatment, they don't produce, uh, they don't get the patient to say yes, but they're assisting, and they're important, right?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: If they mess it up, they then your tray's not set properly, it's gonna it's gonna mess up your flow, but they're they're assisting you in doing a good job.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Marketing is simply an assistant, and it only can perform if if everything else behind it, the assistant is only as good as their dentist, and marketing is only as good as your operations and your flow, your patient journey.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, as you were talking, I was also thinking about we in dentistry are we're we're sold on features every day.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you know, uh, you want your phone calls recorded, you can pay$2.99 for this.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: You want an AI voice agent, it's$2.99 for that.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like we get$2.99 to death in dentistry, and it's all like features.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like realistically, if Open Dental could do this, they should, like, come out and it does everything.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like it has the AI agent, it tracks the performance like your KPIs.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: It does like if if one thing just did everything, everyone would use it, but they don't.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so we live in a world where everything is add-ons.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's like feature, feature, feature.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then we uh we call our marketing company or we we we change to a new marketing company, and we're like the way they sold us was feature, feature, feature, right?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And and then we lose track of what marketing even is.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're like, oh, how's SEO?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And we're like, who cares?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want more patients?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: How many views did my video get?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right, exactly.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, who cares?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Did they convert?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Did they come in?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, then it didn't work.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it didn't work, yeah.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so like I think if if we as dentists can get past the feature thing and and just get to the bottom line, it's benefit.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what is the benefit?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: What's the goal of marketing?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's to drive new patients into your practice.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if it doesn't do that, then it fails.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't matter if you rank last on your map.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, exactly.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: So um the way that I've explained this that I think resonates with Dennis is that when a patient comes into your office, you don't sell features to them, you sell the benefit of what you're going to do.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're really good at communication and really good clinicians and their teams have figured out if someone comes in and they're in pain, or someone comes in and they don't like their smile, if you can articulate, hey, we can fix that.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: And here's how much it's gonna cost to fix that, and here's what how much time it's gonna take to fix it.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: What you don't do is you don't go in and start telling them what you learned in uh dental college about biology and the shades of the teeth and the you know the light and like all you know, and your your saliva, and it's you know, it's building like the the they or showing x-rays and going, see, can you see that there?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, dude, I see full I see that and seven other things that look just like that as a patient.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like just simply explain what the benefit is of and how how long it's gonna take and how much it's gonna cost.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then the reason I explain that is that the dentist, every interaction that you have from a business standpoint should be the same thing.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: How, what's the benefit?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: What's the outcome of this?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: And how does it work in currently what I'm working with?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Starting at the end.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's so good.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And and honestly, that could be another podcast is unfortunately there are dentists.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: That that's how they talk to patients.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they say, they talk about the chroma and the value of the tooth and this, that, and the other.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the patient, when they leave, they're so confused they don't even know where they where they were, right?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, we we're kings of that for sure.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know how you tell if if a patient's really confused?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when you travel to a foreign country and you walk up to somebody or and you and you go, this is the universal language for dude, I have no idea what you're saying, but I'm friendly, so don't stab me, right?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: This is when the patient gets away.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: The other reason if you ask any dentist that's not in any sort of coaching agreement, hey, what's your conversion?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how many people say yes to you?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: They'll they'll be like, probably like 90%.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, 100%, yeah.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 100%.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's because every patient sits there and nods their head.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Do you understand?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, Yep, I can't wait to leave.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I have no idea what's going on right now, just don't shoot me.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm good.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm friendly, I'm friendly.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's a universal, it's a universal language.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think uh I I I love the phone calls.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm happy to answer the phone calls.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I I wish that more dentists, and that's kind of why I wanted to talk about this.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: If if if we all got back to the basics and said, what is marketing supposed to do for us?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's supposed to drive new patients into our practice.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think the conversations that we would have with other marketing companies would change.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: The questions we would ask our current marketing would change.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh the clarity around what marketing does for our practice or could do would change.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I I want that for more people.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've seen in our mastermind people go from you know spending$2,000 a month to$8,000 a month and more than doubling their new patients.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: And their practice is quite literally literally a different practice now than it was six months ago.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: But your friend, your friend who's been he has a successful practice, and I don't know if he wants this public or not, so I'm not gonna say who it is, but he he's he has a successful practice.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: He's seeing you know 60 to 70 new patients, and he's just like, dude, I've worked with everybody, I've done everything that I can.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: I want to get to 100.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Should I do this?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: And you were like, dude, just go do it and spend the money and see what happens.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And he didn't get to his goal, but he was able to realize from the data, he's like, Oh, my it's my office.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a bottleneck.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're bottlenecked.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we fixed it, and he's like, Let's go! How much more money do you want?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: How much more money do you want?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, that's super fun because he's like, he's gonna, it's gonna, he has a great life already, but this is gonna like transform his family um in a big way.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And his freedom, like it allows him to create a practice that doesn't revolve around him, and I think a lot of dentists want that and they don't know how to get there, right?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and whether or not they're qualified to do so is a different conversation, but uh, I do think marketing is a big part of that.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so yeah, I I just I wanted to help dentists remember the point of marketing.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do we how do we get back to the basics?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope this podcast was helpful for that.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, man.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Great, great show.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for thanks for suggesting it.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: I I try not to bring these kind of I I feel like these are like those shows that are like super nerdy marketing, and I'm like, ah, no one wants to talk about that.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: But I appreciate you breaking it down from a dentist, uh, the dental perspective and uh and what's going on in the world.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you, my friend.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Peace.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: See you.