Business
That’s from the Film, Logan Lucky, and yes...we are going become “one of those Facebook boys” and get to know “all the twitters” too!Welcome, you’re here at The Beacon, so glad you found us! Prepare to have your Blind Spots Illuminated!In this Podcast episode we are getting Social with an introduction and primer to Social Media Marketing for your Practice.To start… Social Media is hard to get right, but easy to get wrong.Everyday, users send 500 million tweets, make 4.5 million likes on Facebook, and upload 95 million photos and videos to Instagram. Social Media is a powerful influencer in today’s competitive Marketplace. Everyone is doing it, using it and viewing it; the largest to the smallest businesses, Governments and Politicians, superstar athletes and actors, your friends, neighbors, and patients too, and so do you! Your Practice Needs a voice here also, but where do you start? What do you do? The choices are so numerous you can be overcome with “analysis paralysis” and do nothing, or keep doing the same thing you’ve been doing with the same results.Let’s make this simple with a few Rules for you to follow…## Rule 1: Your Practice Social Media should be nothing like your Personal Social Media.I know what you are thinking now, “I’ve got this, this is easy!” I do my own posts on Facebook, can send “tweets” on Twitter and am great at composing and posting Instagram shots. I end up with lots of “likes” and “shares” too. You say to yourself, “I’ll just do the same for my office and Practice”, and you do. But let’s be honest here, have you ever thought, “I’m doing this Social Media stuff, but am just not seeing the results like I would like!”Let’s face it; you have overheard colleagues at dental meetings brag about how many Followers and Likes they have. When you get home, you go online and to check those numbers and confirm that you are way behind! Being the competitive dentist that you are you commit to growing your audience. You think, If a 1000 likes are great, 2000 must be better, so you post away; staff pics, staff lunches, your lunch, birthday parties, donuts, gifts, thank you cards, patient pictures, and Holiday Announcements to start. You post signs at the office, “Like us on Facebook,” “Follow us on Instagram and Twitter.” You sit back and wait for new patients to call, but nothing, zilch, nil, nada, zero. Your experiment just confirmed the next rule.## Rule 2: Awareness is NOT ActionThe hard fact is that creating Awareness will not result in Action. Your patients know they should floss every day, but they don’t. Heck, you know the same and do you? You also know Mt Everest is the highest mountain in the world, but do not plan on climbing it anytime soon.Seth Godin, today’s Marketing Mastermind says…“Action comes from tension, desire, and fear. Action is the hard part.”As a side note, I highly recommend Seth’s newest book, “This is Marketing” . I’ll post information on this book in the show notes, be sure to check them out.Just because you post frequently, and even if patients see your posts, they are still unlikely to take action that leads to an appointment in your office.Action results from:* Tension - the feeling of not wanting to miss out on something.* Desire - the urge for something different, something better.* Fear - one’s concern for the consequences or losses if action is not taken.So what should you do?## Rule 3: Don’t Buy a BoostLikes and Follows are Vanity Metrics. If you have dabbled with your Facebook page, you have probably noticed that your posts don’t seem to reach many of your followers. Your observations are correct! Only 1-5% of your Followers who “liked” your page will see your update, that is unless you pay for an ad, or boost your post. Sorry, it’s the way Facebook makes its money and is unlikely to change.Stated another way, if “likes” and “follows” are so valuable, how can they be so easily purchased? I googled “buy facebook likes” to prove this and here is what I found shopping online.I can buy 10,000 Facebook “followers” for $290, and the same number of “likes” for $460. With Twitter, 2,500 “followers” costs only $100 and 10,000 “likes” for $150. Instagram is even cheaper; 10,000 “followers” for $70 and the same number of “likes” for $70. If “likes” and “follows” can be purchased by the thousands, the real value of each one must be questioned.Paying to boost your post will rarely return a profit. How can that be? Let’s dig deeper and ask, what did you receive for your boost investment? Possibly a few more Likes, Shares and Follows? But Awareness is not Action (remember Rule 2). You need a positive ROI (return on investment). Alternatively, let’s ask what would happen if your favorite Social Media account was suddenly deleted, hacked, or blocked? Where all those Likes and Follows now? Can you find and reach them? If not, they are all gone, along with your investment! A dental practice runs on a constant flow of patients and cash. You need patients in the chair, not Likes, and Follows.The costs to grow your online community and audience through “likes,” “follows,” and “shares” is difficult to monetize for a small business like a dental practice. Big Brands like Porsche, Harley Davidson, and Yeti, to name just a few, have a different objective with Social Media. They want to build Brand recognition along with a community. The Brand becomes the object of their Marketing rather than its various products. Big Brands have lots of money and time; a dental practice does not; it needs patients in the chair, not Likes, and Follows.Your goal should be to move your followers to your website where you own the asset and control their experience. With compelling, unique, and exciting content on your website written for your customer, you can leverage the power of the internet to find those who want to hear your message and be served by you. Finding and mobilizing your audience to Action will take some Marketing Online using the tenets of Rule 4.## Rule 4: Follow your A, B, C, D StrategyMarketing online is organized around the concept of a purchase funnel. Different stages within the funnel describe the customer interactions. An essential purchase funnel includes the following steps;A. Acquisition - build Awareness and user interestB. Behavior - user engages with your businessC. Conversion - the user becomes a customerD. Data Analytics - what’s working and what’s notLet’s expand on each funnel step now:A. Acquisition tells how your users found you. Visitors can come from a wide range of channels such as organic search engines (SEO, Content Marketing), website referrals, paid search, and social networks (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram).B. Behavior reveals what your visitors do on your website and what actions they took.C. Conversion is when a user completes an action that you have defined as valuable to your business. A Conversion is your goal. A Conversion could be clicking a paid advertisement, viewing a video, downloading a brochure or promotional coupon, providing contact information, signing up for a newsletter, or calling you.D. Data analytics is used to assess the results of your business goals. What’s working, what’s not and adjust. Every interaction of your users with your website and their digital devices can be tracked and studied with Google Analytics.So, let’s get Social! Here is where Social Media, through precisely targeted Paid Advertising Campaigns, can find and connect you and your audience with a Call To Action. A Call To Action can be signing up for a newsletter, downloading a brochure or discount coupon, completing a form, or calling you. The effectiveness of this strategy depends on the content contained on your website, your home base for all web activity. Designing and deploying effective campaigns which include measurable goals and event tracking will likely require the input of a web developer. Creating engaging content and copy along with images and graphics that generate Value for your customers is best delegated to a content or marketing manager too.It is important to ask yourself… Are you being “anti”Social by annoying your customers?Today’s savvy customers are Value-driven, if they “smell” a sales pitch they will bounce off your site immediately. You must first create trust with the content on your website. Posts that are annoying, outdated, “cookie-cutter,” too numerous, too infrequent, too inconsistent, or lacking great content will all cause your potential customer to flee. Informing, educating, and providing answers to questions will improve the chances your visitors will take Action (rule 2 above) and become a customer. Remember, moving your customers to Action requires; tension for change, a desire for something different, or a solution for their fears. An added benefit is that all of these tactics will significantly enhance your SEO and improve your Google Search Rankings.I like to say:> “The fastest way to lose a customer is to waste their time!”> David Darab, DDS, MS, MBAThere is no “I” in Marketing, Seth Godin says repeatedly. Create your Social Media Messages and Campaigns to solve your customers wants, needs, and desires. Marketing Online allows pivoting your message quickly, guided by metrics from Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free website analytics service offered by Google that provides insights into how users find and use your website. With Google Analytics, you can track the ROI for your marketing campaigns. Dentists love data, and Google Analytics is full of data that shows how your campaigns are performing. Using tracking codes, tags and cookies on your Paid Advertising, Social Media Posts and Campaigns you can gather data from almost any platform or website enabling you to monitor and measure each stop on your viewers’ journey. If you are not familiar with Google Analytics, check it out now, I will have a link posted on the show notes for you too.Let’s now put this information to use and design a campaign. Dental Membership Plans are a popular topic for practices today. Your strategy is to promote your Dental Membership Plan to potential new patients. Your tactics will include paid advertising on Facebook, and Instagram combined with new content on your website, a downloadable flyer and a sign-up form. Your content/marketing manager or your web developer will need to help create the ads along with the flyer and sign-up form, adding the necessary tracking codes and tags too. The ads can contain a variety of call-to-action buttons; sign-up, subscribe, learn more, or download.After all that is done, it’s time to sit back and analyze the results with Google analytics. Which call-to-action created the most conversions, or completion of the requested Action? How many leads were captured or brochures downloaded by the website? How many views of the new web pages were there? How much time did visitors spend on your site? With this data in hand, you can consider increasing the budget for those tactics that converted and adjusting those that fell short.And now, a bonus strategy; Remarketing. Remarketing shows ads only to individuals who have previously visited one of your digital assets. Remarketing allows you to design a digital strategy where your message is always in front of your most interested viewers when they browse other websites or use their favorite social media sites (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter). The beauty here is that it requires no effort on the part of your viewers, website cookies provide the horsepower. In a time when everyone is busy and easily distracted, Remarketing is a great way to keep your message front of your viewers.To wrap this up let’s start with a quote from George S. Patton:> “If everyone is thinking the same, then someone isn’t thinking!”> George S. PattonSocial Media is just that; about being Social. If you desire to make it into “Revenue” Media, then you will need to add some new strategies and tactics to the mix. The possibilities and options here are too numerous to count. Social Media is a busy and chaotic space, and everyone wants your attention. To cut through all the noise and find those want to hear your message, you must have laser focus on your audience. It all starts by answering two questions:1. Who’s it for?2. What’s it for?Seems simple, but it’s not, or everyone would be doing it. Creating Value in all that you do is critical. It’s an exchange. You provide something your customer values, and in return, they will give you the Action you desire. Time and effort are necessary to achieve the results you want. Social Media Marketing is not a “set it and forget it” strategy. Finally, in all things business, understand your ROI; what did you receive in exchange for your investment? Done well, you can convert your viewer’s “clicks” into new patients in your chair.Go ahead and give it a try!Remember to always analyze your results and change your tactics if needed. That’s the beauty of Marketing Online.We hope that this information has created a few “Ah Ha” moments, or stimulated some additional questions you can direct to your advisers. Hopefully, you feel less intimidated with Social Media Advertising and Marketing Online.We welcome your inquiry here too at OmniStar Financial. Our Team here is experienced with implementing these Strategies and Tactics in Dental Practices. We welcome the chance to help you grow your practice. Our contact information can be found at our website https://www.omnistarfinancial.com/ . You will also find a link to sign up for our newsletter.Please share this podcast if you found it helpful, and leave a review on iTunes too. We welcome your feed back and suggestions for future podcast episodes. You can always find me, your host, david darab, at my twitter handle, @ddarab.Thank you so very much for tuning in and listening. We are very grateful for your time and attention and so very pleased to have you in our audience.David Darab, DDS, MS, MBA Google Analyticshttps://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1008015?hl=en This is Marketing, Seth Godinhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/0525540830?aaxitk=KK65HxpGLWkeP1MBXWVHxQ&pd_rd_i=0525540830&pf_rd_p=44fc3e0f-4b9e-4ed8-b33b-363a7257163d&hsa_cr_id=6679663100601&sb-ci-n=asinImage&sb-ci-v=https%3A%2F%2Fimages-na.ssl-images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FI%2F51UYILvuvtL.jpg&sb-ci-a=0525540830