[00:00:00] We're going to talk about marketing for orthodontists and dentists in 2026. And the first thing I want to talk about is order and sequence. So I've talked to thousands of doctors at this point, and thousands more business owners. And I think the way that culture is programmed is we want everything now.
[00:00:23] And so naturally, I even fall into this, how do I get better prospective clients, in your case patients, today? And a lot of times those conversations end up turning into paid advertising. So a lot of people jump straight to ads. How can we run meta ads, Facebook and Instagram and Google ads? And that's great.
[00:00:45] But there is an order and sequence of doing that. And typically ads are not the first thing that you need to get right in order for your marketing to work. It's kind of like, when should a child first see an orthodontist? Age seven. Now, depending on what you believe with airways, maybe it's sooner. But the AEO states age seven, you know, and then there'll be an observation. And maybe then there's phase one treatment, phase two treatment.
[00:01:14] And even something like rubber bands. You know, I wore rubber bands. Those were introduced later in treatment. And so you know, in order to have success with patients, you have to have the treatment in the right order and sequence for the best results.
[00:01:31] The same goes true for marketing. And we're going to talk about this more. What I find is the practices who have the best brand in their community. Once you start to layer in digital, like meta ads and Google ads, it can work 10 times or 20 times better in terms of attracting volume of leads, better quality leads, getting people to show up to the practice.
[00:01:58] And so we're going to break that down today and talk about how could you put the best marketing plan in place for your practice. And we're probably going to break a lot of myths that you currently think, or maybe you're even on that path. And you're going to realize by watching this video that it's the wrong path. So you need to back up and shift gears.
[00:02:21] So let's talk about how patients find you. I don't think this is any surprise. 90% of patients search for a dentist, orthodontist, or insert whatever they're looking for online. 72% of those searches still begin on Google.
[00:02:40] Now, obviously, this is going to change as more people are using LLMs, chat GPT. Maybe some people use something like Yelp or some other, maybe it's perplexity. By and large, the majority is still using Google.
[00:02:57] And then 70% of the clicks that happen are on the top three results. And if you're on a phone, sometimes even desktop, we call that the map pack. What is at the top with the map, the website, the phone call, people are not looking past that.
[00:03:16] And so if you're not positioned to rank in one of the first three positions, then you're going to miss most of the traffic. So SEO is very important. And it's becoming more complex with AI as people are able to generate more content.
[00:03:34] Now, the caveat is search engines do not love content that is purely generated by AI because it doesn't sound like a real human. So there's frameworks. For instance, I could take this video that I'm recording right now and I could give it to AI and use my voice, my real results, my case studies, my stories, and then I can syndicate that content across multiple mediums leveraging AI.
[00:04:02] So that's how you want to create content and get content out with the SEO strategy. Just creating content straight from an LLM is typically not the way to go if you actually want to rank. So before people ever call you, before they interact with you, they are vetting you on the internet. On average, a patient researches for two weeks prior to actually engaging with you.
[00:04:31] Yes, we do have impulse buyers. Yes, we do have impulse buyers. Or yes, on Meta, again, to go back to ads, you could get in front of somebody right then. Or yes, some people do go to Google who maybe their dentist says, hey, it's time for Johnny to see an orthodontist. Maybe there's a Google search and a click to call right away.
[00:04:50] But if a mom is doing research or I want to be retreated and I'm doing research, I'm spending about two weeks doing research on maybe I want Invisalign or clear aligners this time around. And so who's answering my questions? Maybe it's some national sources. But then once I want to go see the orthodontist, how am I finding that orthodontist interacting with their brand? And what's the next step that I take?
[00:05:18] On average, a patient will interact with your brand between five to seven times before they actually take action. And then 76% of people judge credibility on how the website looks, feels, and functions.
[00:05:37] So for instance, you could tell the best story. But if there's not images, great photos of you and your team or videos of you talking about the new patient process to where a patient could get to know you, then you are missing out and you are losing patience. And ultimately, you want to take the information I'm giving you in this video and plug all the leaks in your bucket.
[00:06:01] Because I believe that most people are already sitting on hidden gaps or hidden opportunities, revenue generators. And if you just fix what you already have, you could be probably as busy as you want to be or at least understand the baseline, the true baseline you're at before you start to add things.
[00:06:23] So people are, in terms of video, people are taking in video in the masses with short form. Yes, we still watch things like Joe Rogan or long form videos.
[00:06:40] But I think with specifically things like implants or orthodontics, you know, brackets and or aligners, a lot of those videos are short form. Now, what you can do is you can record long form videos that can go on YouTube. You can optimize the thumbnail, the headline, the description, the tags of the video.
[00:07:09] And then you could take a tool like Opus and you could put your long form video in that. So you're gaining the benefit of SEO and ranking because YouTube's a search engine. Then with a tool like Opus, you're able to create these short form clips and post on YouTube with shorts, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. And what I see a lot of offices, dental, ortho, medical offices spending their time with is TikTok trending videos.
[00:07:38] Now, that's not a bad thing. And the reality is most of the people watching that when I go look is not people in your radius, your community. If a video on TikTok goes viral and it's trending, you're getting thousands of people viewing it who are never going to become a patient. And I see a lot of offices when I ask them, hey, what videos are you making? They're only pointing to these trending videos. I would reverse that.
[00:08:08] I would create videos that people are actually searching for in your community. So moms doing research, young adults doing research on retreatment or their smile aesthetics whitening. I would get in front of those people with YouTube and then I would use those videos to have short forms for my channels. And then if I wanted to, if I still had time to do more, then I would incorporate some of those fun trending TikTok videos because those do show personality.
[00:08:38] But largely, they're not bringing you patience in your community. So I want you to rethink that. Also, the YouTube videos that are long form, they can live on your website embedded. And then you could take an LLM and do something like FAQs below the video, which is really good for ranking. Years ago, follow-up looked completely different. In fact, for a dental or orthodontic practice, it wasn't even an email. It was maybe a phone call.
[00:09:08] There's something called the 5x6 method. And what that means is you need to call a prospective patient within five minutes. And you need to have a process in place to follow up at least six times. So on average, there's a 400% decrease in terms of contacting a patient. So your likelihood to contact the patient goes down 400 times if you don't call them within five minutes.
[00:09:33] And in terms of increasing that, there's a 70% increase in likelihood of contacting and qualifying if you follow up at least six times. That's where automation can come in now. Maybe there is a notification to your front desk to call a patient right away. Maybe there's another notification to call them within two hours. Maybe there's another notification or prompt to call them within 24 hours, so next business day.
[00:10:02] And then within that, there's some text messages going out after each call. And by the way, you should leave a voicemail, absolutely. Because all these things are breadcrumbs. They're connecting the dots. And so if you just hold up your phone today, how many red phone numbers do you have and missed calls? I already have six or seven for the day. And then how many of those left me a voicemail? How many of those sent me a text message? How many also sent me an email?
[00:10:31] If someone does all those things, I'm going to go, oh, that's that thing that I clicked on the other day. I ordered a Tempur-Pedic mattress. And so I had set to have a delivery and have them set it up. I forgot about it. And so there was this cadence. They were calling me. They were leaving voicemails. They were sending emails. They sent a text message. Oh, yeah. I've got to schedule that. And so then I was able to get it done.
[00:10:55] We are inundated in today's culture and society with spam text. I don't know how I get on all these people's lists. Lenders, politicians. There's text messages. There's emails. We've got Facebook. We've got Instagram. We've got TikTok. And so you have to do something to stand out in a very noisy world. There was a study done, I think it was by Microsoft, and it was published in Time magazine.
[00:11:23] And the study proved that humans have less of an attention span than goldfish. I think it's something like six or seven seconds. And so we forget what was that thing that we were doing or what did we just do because our neurons are short-circuiting. And even as you're listening to me right now, you may be thinking about other things or texting probably caught you. You're sending an email. You're checking your schedule. And so focus is at an all-time low.
[00:11:51] How do we bring that back up? We bring that priority back up and we place some urgency around it. That's how you're going to get people to take action. Now let's talk about the trap, which is ads before the foundation. This is what I talked about in the very first part of the video. The costliest mistake in this space is running paid ads before the foundation exists.
[00:12:17] So 30% to 40% of ad budget is estimated to be wasted on poor conversions when you jump ahead, when you try and layer this in too soon. You're building on a bad foundation. Nobody knows who you are, right? And so we've got to create brand equity, the foundation, the positioning in your community first. 77% of paid ads point to a homepage of a website.
[00:12:44] So a Google ad clicks to a homepage of a website. It's not even specific. So is the call to action right? Is the headline optimized right? There needs to be a dedicated landing page. So if I'm running a campaign right now and it's for $500 off braces or clear aligners, and maybe it's only for the month of July, right? It's like this July 4th special, 250 years celebration of our country. And I want to run this special.
[00:13:13] Well, the page needs to match that. Does the headline match? Do the colors match? If I'm doing something patriotic, do the graphics match? Is there a video? And then even with paid ads, people think these high produced videos or, you know, let's design these beautiful Canva graphics. A lot of times that stuff does not resonate because it looks too polished. If you think about content creators, they're walking around selfie style or they're taking a photo of something, right?
[00:13:42] And so how can we look organic and natural in our ads? There's this whole formula that you've probably been misguided on. And so there is a better way. But what I want you to know is if you're striking out with paid ads and you're saying, hey, these are bad leads. We can't get a hold of them. They won't respond or we can't get them to show up.
[00:14:06] You have jumped ahead and you do not have the right foundation, the right brand equity in your community. And we need to plan community outreach and a boots on the ground strategy. And in fact, I have a whole course and we can drop the link possibly in this video for community outreach. That's what you need to focus on first. Again, to go back to the order, there's brand. Then we're going to layer in findability, right? Because we're going to do all these things for SEO.
[00:14:36] So you can actually get in front of searches. And then there's amplification. Then how can we get out to the masses and run paid ads? And I call this the congruence effect. So the congruence effect is closing the gap between your clinical reality, how good you are. I've never talked to a doctor who thinks they're second or third best. They're number one. So you're excellent at your craft. You've gone to school for forever. You've done specialty residencies.
[00:15:05] How does your brand look? Because when I go look at people's brands, they do not resemble best in class. And we have to close that gap that everything has to be congruent. And that is the congruence effect. And so you've probably been to this hole in the wall, hot spot, only locals know about it restaurant, but it doesn't look that good. And then you see the beautiful restaurant that was just released with the Michelin chef.
[00:15:35] It's in the magazine and you go to it, but it may not be as good as that hole in the wall, right? And so when those two things collide, when you have the best food, the best hot spot, it's exclusive. And it's featured in the magazine and it looks beautiful. That is the restaurant that makes it and lasts the test of time. And that's what you want to be as a doctor, as a dentist, as an orthodontist.
[00:16:02] You have the best care and you need the best marketing and you owe it to yourself. You have a moral obligation. If you believe that you can offer the best treatment, you should come up with a strategy brand framework system in order to treat the most people. Because if you don't, who is, right? So let's talk about findability. So there's brand, there's findability, there's amplification, findability.
[00:16:31] So in terms of Google business profiles, you get 500% more phone calls if you have 100 images or more on your profile. On average, when we do a practice profit diagnosis, there's about 15 images. So how do you get a lot more images on your Google business profile so Google rewards you with showing in the map pack and getting more phone calls?
[00:16:57] 87% of prospective patients read reviews before choosing a provider. Now, Google rewards people who are continuing to get reviews. So if you have 500, but you stopped getting them, Google is going to reward the person who's got 120, but they're actively getting them today and they're responding to the reviews. And then a 4.9 star, you'd be surprised.
[00:17:25] It beats the five perfect score because it doesn't look perfect. It looks real and authentic. Every business I've ever met has had a crazy customer or patient. And so you're going to get dinged. It's going to happen. But know that that 4.9 star actually performs better because it's human. It's real. You get 93% more calls once you reach the three pack, that map pack.
[00:17:54] And so again, if you're not in the top three, you are missing out on tons of prospective patients. I talked about the five by six method. Now we're going to talk about the 72 hour rule. Once you start that amplification and you're getting more prospective patients from your website, from your meta ads or Google ads, if you do not get them into the practice within 72 hours, three days, your no show rate is going to double or triple.
[00:18:22] And so you have to create some slots within the schedule to be able to get those digital leads in quickly. Now ads make sense, right? We've gone through brand. We've gone through findability amplification. Now you add in the advertising.
[00:18:41] So a lead organically coming from SEO, coming from your website, coming from those YouTube videos could be about $30 if you were able to break down whatever it costs to create those assets, right? And you divided it across the patients you're getting. A paid lead could be six times higher. So it's the same patient, six times the cost.
[00:19:08] Now the good thing is, is would I pay $180 if I could keep scaling and getting more and more patients? Yes, I would, right? Because I could put $180 in and I could get about six grand out. Now I know that's not your profit. That is gross revenue, but it still makes a lot of sense. Where I'm going with this is people have not optimized organic and they're jumping ahead to paid. And I've said that several times now, but I can't emphasize it enough.
[00:19:38] So let's talk about now the advanced play. And this is from Chet Holmes. And he said, write down the most connected people and places in your own town and then go after them with discipline. Maybe it's local podcast or neighborhood groups or people with YouTube channels. Maybe it's the popular accounts on Facebook. Again, there's community groups on Facebook. So there's a big one out where I live in Buffalo Ridge.
[00:20:06] Other local businesses serving the same families or audience. Maybe for the aesthetic adult, it's the med spas, right? The people offering Botox or injectables or skin peels or facials or massages. Can I get in front of that audience? And are they going to be interested in a special around Invisalign? Probably.
[00:20:30] And so how do you come up with a strategy to get the most referrals from your sphere of influence? And how do you increase your sphere of influence and your trust in your local community? Something to think about. This is what I want to leave you with. If your best patient, they refer to good friend and that good friend went to the internet and googled you, how would they interact with your brand? Would the competitor come up first?
[00:20:57] Would they get to your website and they're not really impressed and the photos are old and there's no video? And the guy across the street has the most state-of-the-art website. The state-of-the-art photos and video. That is what I want you to think about. I want you to go online. I want you to search like a patient who doesn't know you. And I want you to research yourself against whoever else is ranking. And I want you to click through and experience the site. Read the copy. Look at the photos.
[00:21:27] Watch the videos. And would you choose you? And most doctors, when I give them this exercise, they say, you know what? I really need to improve on X, Y, and Z. It becomes quite obvious. So do that exercise and it will pay dividends. Thanks so much for watching.