Own Your Marketing Or Own Your Regret (E.261)

“You have no business spending thousands of dollars on external marketing when you have got revenue sitting right inside your practice.” – Sara Hansen

 

Brief Overview of the Episode

Marketing is not a logo, a flyer, or a Google Ads login. It is a system that touches every step of the patient journey.

Dr. Bruce Baird sits down with Phoenix Dental Agency’s Sara Hansen to expose why so many practices are sitting on 500,000 to 1 million dollars in existing revenue while chasing “more new patients.” They walk through internal marketing, net zero marketing, and the hard truth that throwing products at the problem will never replace a clear strategy.

From owning your building (internal marketing) to owning your block, neighborhood, and eventually your city, Sara and Bruce outline a staged approach that helps you grow production, drop team overhead, and attract patients who value comprehensive care.

What This Episode Reveals

• Why most offices are quietly sitting on up to a million dollars of untapped revenue in their existing patient base
• How a broken marketing mindset keeps doctors proud of “spending nothing on marketing” while profit silently erodes
• The difference between product based marketing and a true marketing system that evolves with your career
• How internal referrals, reviews, and re engagement consistently outperform cold external campaigns
• Why video and authentic imagery are now non negotiable if you want trust in the first 10 to 15 seconds
• How net zero marketing works so that increased marketing spend actually drives overhead down

What You’ll Learn

• How to think about marketing as a system, not a stack of unrelated products
• A practical framework for “owning” your building, block, neighborhood, and city with the right strategy at the right time
• The internal marketing levers that can add 35,000 to 100,000 dollars a month in revenue without heavy ad spend
• How to set a realistic 4 to 8 percent marketing budget that supports growth instead of starving it
• Ways to use authentic video and photography so patients feel like they already know you before they call

If This Sounds Familiar

• You feel constant pressure to “get more new patients” but production and profit are stuck
• Your schedule swings from chaos one week to holes the next, even with “healthy” new patient flow
• You are proud of spending almost nothing on marketing, but your team overhead keeps climbing
• You have paid for websites, ads, or mailers that never turned into consistent case acceptance
• Patients tell you they will “think about it” after a long consult, then quietly disappear
• You know you want higher value, comprehensive care cases, but do not see them often enough

Next Steps

• Listen to the full episode and audit your own marketing mindset as you go
• Identify how much unscheduled treatment and inactive patients are already sitting in your charts
• Decide what “owning your building” looks like in the next 90 days: internal referrals, reviews, and re engagement
• Set a clear marketing budget tied to a business problem you want to solve, not to “spend as little as possible”
• Share this episode with your leadership team and start mapping your marketing systems together
  

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TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:12] Dr. Bruce Baird: Hi, this is Dr. Bruce Beard with the Productive Dentist Podcast and I have a special guest today. Uh, we’re talking to Sarah Hansen. She is with the Phoenix Dental Agency. Sarah, thanks for joining.

[00:00:28] Sara Hansen : Yeah. Thank you. I love being here.

[00:00:32] Dr. Bruce Baird: Yeah. Well, I tell you what, we’ve got a lot to talk about, um, because marketing is probably.

[00:00:38] Dr. Bruce Baird: One of the most difficult businesses to be in because you can bring people to, to their doctors. You can bring ’em to ’em, but they don’t schedule because they may not have the people answering the phone or doing all these things, and so they blame you when it’s really not. Then marketing gets really confusing [00:01:00] because people think, well, if I just throw enough stuff up on the wall that it’s gonna work, but mm-hmm.

[00:01:06] Dr. Bruce Baird: External agency has a different, a different way of approaching. Tell, tell me a little bit. Yeah. Tell me

[00:01:13] Sara Hansen : a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. You’re, yeah, you’re exactly right. I think people often think about marketing. They think Google ads or they think about a website, and while. Yes, that is part of marketing. It’s actually just a product.

[00:01:26] Sara Hansen : So we differ from a lot of marketing companies because we really approach marketing as more of a strategy, a comprehensive strategy, really a marketing system. Within your practice, um, you know, marketing, when we talk about attraction strategies, what does that look like? Really the goal of marketing when we just think about attraction only is to get your phone to ring.

[00:01:50] Sara Hansen : But what we know about marketing is it does not stop there. The new patient journey continues through the entire new patient experience really, [00:02:00] until those patients continue to accept treatment and record their friends and family, that is the full marketing funnel. So while, yes, it’s important to get patients coming through your door, if they do not schedule appointments, now your cost of acquisition.

[00:02:16] Sara Hansen : Is really high and nothing has come from that. So again, it’s like when we talk about marketing, it’s not just about getting your phone ringing, it’s not just about having a website presence. It’s not, you know, it really is the full patient journey and what that looks like the entire way through the patient journey.

[00:02:32] Sara Hansen : But it is so much more comprehensive than that. I think that that is where doctors really get a little bit stuck sometimes, is really understanding a full marketing system and what that entails. And of course we know doctors aren’t gonna fully understand it, right? That’s why they have our support and other support of consultants, um, and agencies coming in.

[00:02:54] Sara Hansen : But really what we know is that. Doctors who fully take on [00:03:00] a full comprehensive marketing strategy and marketing system within their practice and then activate those marketing systems at the correct time within their practice, see substantial growth and value added to their practice, and they are like blown away by how successful they really can be when they activate marketing at the right times with the correct strategies.

[00:03:22] Sara Hansen : Sure,

[00:03:23] Dr. Bruce Baird: sure. You know, it’s, it kind of reminds me a little bit, you know, there’s a lot of dentists that would love to be a fee for service dentist that would love that. Yeah. They’re stuck, stuck in this insurance world and, and that really, yes. That really for many is their marketing strategy. It, it is a PPO sending me patients, but yes.

[00:03:43] Dr. Bruce Baird: Are they the patients that are gonna create the kind of business that I want to have, uh, for, for, mm-hmm. You know, and, and you may start out differently. That’s what you were saying. You sometimes you Yeah. With one strategy and that’s great, but that strategy has, yeah. Has to evolve. [00:04:00] And I know that myself personally, I really looked at the longer, at first, yeah, you just wanna have people in the door, but.

[00:04:08] Dr. Bruce Baird: But is that what you want? Five years into practice? 10 years, 20 years into practice, it changes. And as a dentist, as we become more comprehensive in our diagnosis and treatment planning, you know, there are dentists that that’s what they do. There’s also dentists that are the crown of the Month Club.

[00:04:24] Dr. Bruce Baird: There’s different stress. For both, you know, uh, I mean, you could to the Crown of the Month Club people, uh, specifically saying, Hey, you know, do you wanna have a crown made the same day? That’s one strategy. It’s gonna bring a crown of the month in. But then there’s also strategies that can, um, can initiate patience to say, wow.

[00:04:44] Dr. Bruce Baird: Uh, I, it’s branding. I mean, this office is yeah, is a comprehensive office. This office is. Not branded, it just is. I’m just taking people as they come. Tell me a little bit. One of the things that I’m really [00:05:00] excited about with Phoenix Marketing is the internal marketing strategy. Most people think marketing is external.

[00:05:07] Dr. Bruce Baird: We’re just gonna go out and we’re gonna bombard the neighborhood with flyers and all kinds of crap. That’s not what it is, but I mean, it can be. But uh, yeah, a little bit about this internal component. Yeah,

[00:05:21] Sara Hansen : yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, Bruce, I think you know some of these stats, because you and I have talked before, but I think most dentists would be shocked to know that.

[00:05:31] Sara Hansen : Offices are sitting on at least 500,000, but most are sitting on close to a million, if not more than a million dollars of revenue just sitting in their practice. And what happens is dentists get hyper-focused on, I need more new patients. I need more new patients to grow their practice. And what we’re finding is that they don’t.

[00:05:51] Sara Hansen : Well, yes, maybe having external strategies is important. Yes, we do that as well, but why are we [00:06:00] paying? For additional external strategies, when we have a million dollars of revenue sitting in our practice, it does not make sense, right? So, and what we know about those patients that are already in your practice is, you know, our practices get really chaotic and busy, and the patient will come through the new patient journey.

[00:06:20] Sara Hansen : Somehow they fall through the cracks. We know that if we don’t have, again, those marketing systems in our practice, which a lot of practices don’t, and it’s not that they don’t try or they don’t have them, but what we’re creating with a marketing system is those durable systems that remain through the practice no matter what team member is sitting in those seats.

[00:06:41] Sara Hansen : But what happens is those patients are just quietly disappearing. You know, if we don’t have something, some type of strategy where we’re constantly reaching out to them and what we know is that your team members who make phone calls last minute because, oh shoot, we have some holes in the schedule this week.

[00:06:57] Sara Hansen : That’s not effective. What, and that’s where the [00:07:00] doctors start to see that rollercoaster of, you know, crazy times and holes in the schedule. Crazy times and hole in the schedule. So what we try to do is when we’re maximizing the revenue that you already have sitting in that practice to where we’re moving the chaos from the practice, because we know that doctors to be.

[00:07:18] Sara Hansen : Profitable and create value in the practice. We have to remove the chaos, and then we’re tapping into what they already have. You know, when we talk about return on investment with marketing, we know that when it comes to cost of acquisition, your best return on investment will always come from internal referrals.

[00:07:37] Sara Hansen : However, most team members are afraid to ask. So it just never happens. So when we combine, you know, referrals, the reengagement campaigns, all that stuff, now all of a sudden we can grow a practice half a million dollars a year, and they have spent hardly anything on external [00:08:00] marketing and the doctors are blown away by.

[00:08:03] Sara Hansen : Wow. Okay. Sarah, how do we continue doing this? And then what’s great is, again, when we talk about activating now different marketing systems within the practice, now they’re bringing on an associate right now, they’re growing in a different way, and now we can activate different external campaigns. But until we have really tapped into that internal marketing.

[00:08:23] Sara Hansen : I always tell doctors, Hey, you have no business spend spending thousands of dollars on external marketing when you have got revenue sitting right inside your practice. Um, you know, it just, yeah. From a profitability standpoint, it does not make sense. So

[00:08:40] Dr. Bruce Baird: all of us, all of us have that. I mean, we’ve got of dollars sitting in our deal and in, in our office.

[00:08:45] Dr. Bruce Baird: And what, what’s frustrating? You know, but it’s not frustrating because we don’t, we don’t know it because, you know, as I was practicing and just going crazy during the day and everything else, we, we had a healthy new patient flow. Well, that’s, [00:09:00] yes, but what about a healthy new patient flow that was saying yes to treatment?

[00:09:05] Dr. Bruce Baird: Well, that’s a different conversation. That’s where we Exactly. That’s where we start working. That’s what PDA does. We work with the docs to, yep. To get patients to say yes. And, and we, we have financing. You know, we, we develop all these things, but it’s those folks that just, I spend 20 minutes with 30 minutes of my day, um, explaining to ’em, going through risk factors, going through all these things, and then they don’t schedule.

[00:09:31] Dr. Bruce Baird: And then I, I, I feel like not only have I spent money to get the patient in there for me to talk to, I’ve spent 30 Yeah. Time talking to them and now they disappear and without a strategy Yes. Back then, oh my gosh. Uh, we’re just wasting we’re good money after bad or bad money after good or whatever it is.

[00:09:50] Dr. Bruce Baird: Whatever the same is. But yes, I know that PDA really, you know, when, when I look at Phoenix Dental Agency, I mean yes. If [00:10:00] you’re looking for just a website and the cheapest website or the cheapest way to do direct mar, I mean, I’m gonna send out flyers. I’m looking at that. We’re more, Phoenix is more of a, of a agency that actually looks at the big picture and yes, strategically based on how long someone has been in practice and what they want to do.

[00:10:24] Dr. Bruce Baird: Tell me a little bit more about that and how you look at different and how that fig, how you figure that out. ’cause you guys aren’t,

[00:10:30] Sara Hansen : yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so first of all, we approach every practice and we say, Hey doctor, what business problem do you want marketing to solve? Right. We don’t just come into a practice and, and start saying, Hey, let’s run some Google ads and see what happens.

[00:10:48] Sara Hansen : I mean, what we know about every practice is there’s usually an end goal in mind for every doctor, you know, at the end of the day. All these dentists are entrepreneurs. They’re businessmen and women, [00:11:00] and so we wanna make sure that whatever marketing strategy that we put in place, that there are goals attached, that there’s a strategy attached, that we have a plan, and that it’s making sense as far as the business goes.

[00:11:12] Sara Hansen : So again, you know, we’re not just, you know. Putting ads up to what, you know, what is the strategy, what is the goal behind it? So that’s why really we focus on marketing systems and when is the right time to activate when we know that a doctor who’s been practicing two to three years needs something much different than a doctor who’s practicing 10 to 15 years.

[00:11:32] Sara Hansen : And so. Where we come into marketing is we don’t work with a doctor for six months to a year. Right. That really are not the doctors that we’re looking to work with. We’re looking to work with a doctor who says, Hey, I want to grow the best practice possible. I want my team to be high caliber team. I wanna have high caliber marketing and I want to attract high caliber patients.

[00:11:55] Sara Hansen : If a doctor is looking for patients that are just like wanting a new patient [00:12:00] special and go from doctor to doctor, we are not your marketing company, right? We are really looking for the doctor that says, I want those high end patients, or I want the patients that value treatment. You know, those are the doctors that we love working with because again.

[00:12:14] Sara Hansen : We are really big about having a full strategy. Hey, doctor, you know right now this is what we’re gonna work on with you because this is where your business is going. This is how we’re gonna get you to that next level. Once they hit that milestone, now it’s time to activate this part of your marketing strategy.

[00:12:30] Sara Hansen : Right? We work with them for six months, nine months, they hit those goals. Now it’s time to activate the next part. So with these doctors, again, your, your business is always evolving. It’s. Always changing. You’re needing things at different points. So really your marketing never stops. It just changes. And so that is really how we grow and change and evolve with the doctor and the practice with the needs of, you know, what they need.

[00:12:54] Sara Hansen : Um, again, it really is about understanding All of us come from the dental [00:13:00] industry, right? So we know, I mean, I was an office manager for many years, so I know what it’s like. Answering the phone, I know how important that very first phone call is. So again, we can run the greatest ads in the world, but if your team is not great on that first impression, then all of your marketing is not going to work.

[00:13:21] Sara Hansen : So again, it really is about understanding the full strategy, how your team comes in, training them properly. But our messaging is really important and we come from a place of authenticity. We are not the marketing company that’s gonna send you 200 leads and hope that five of them are the patients that you want, right?

[00:13:40] Sara Hansen : We are really about quality over quantity. We’re gonna send you 30 leads of high-end patients, the ones that you say, Hey Sarah, I really love to do sedation. I really love to change people’s lives. The patients that are terrified to come of the dentist. Come to the dentist. Those are the ones I want. And those are the patients that we find for you.

[00:13:59] Sara Hansen : [00:14:00] Um, you know, there’s so many different ways to market, but again, we have really. Set ourselves in the industry to be the marketing company that grows with the practice. That becomes one with the team. You know, we really want to be your partner. Um, and that’s why we look at all the different aspects of the practice.

[00:14:18] Sara Hansen : Um, so again, we’re not just. You know, a marketing company that does Google ads only, or just does websites only. We really are a comprehensive agency as well, because again, we know that the practice needs different things at different times. Um, and that’s where I think marketing becomes really, really fun.

[00:14:36] Sara Hansen : Um, I say that marketing is fun because again. What a doctor needs right out of school. You know, starting up a practice is much different than what they need 20 years in. And even as they’re getting ready to, you know, what’s their exit plan? How do we build the most value for their ebitda? Your marketing strategy looks much different at that point than it did, you know, two or three years in.

[00:14:57] Sara Hansen : So again, you’re always needing marketing. You just [00:15:00] need it in different ways, and that’s where we really partner with these doctors for the long term to say. Hey, let’s activate what you need at the right times. Um, and you know, you may not have to spend a lot, but you always need someone by your side saying, Hey, now’s the right time to do this.

[00:15:16] Sara Hansen : Now’s the right time to do that. You know, and that, and our doctors who have done that have been incredibly successful. Bruce, you can probably speak that a little bit when you kind of let someone like take the reins and say, okay, here’s what you need to do when you, you know, you kind of saw the success of that.

[00:15:34] Dr. Bruce Baird: I mean, there’s no question. Um, you know, dentistry is a, it can be a fickle friend because, you know, we don’t, we’re, we’re not trained in business. We’re not trained. Most of us, you know? Uh, yeah. Learn how to drill and fill and do all the things and maybe make beautiful veneers and do all that kind of stuff, but, or we go to seminars and we go to this stuff and we want to come home and we wanna all of a sudden have hundreds of patients [00:16:00] that need what you want to do, but you don’t know how to get them.

[00:16:03] Dr. Bruce Baird: And, and, you know, I, I’m curious, um, you know, price, you know, when we start talking about cost and, and how, how much, how often do you have. Dentists come to you? This is probably a loaded question. How, how often do you have dentists that come to you that actually know what their budget is for marketing? I mean, they go, okay, I’m gonna come in here and let, I’m gonna spend one or 2%.

[00:16:31] Dr. Bruce Baird: Because, is that, is that kind of a, is that unusual if somebody comes in actually that has a boat?

[00:16:38] Sara Hansen : Yeah. You know what’s interesting, Bruce, is most doctors come and say, how do I spend the least amount possible for marketing? Is really what they say. Um, you know, and sometimes they’ll pride themselves on, I offered spend anything for marketing, right?

[00:16:52] Sara Hansen : Which, yes, I mean, of course, you know, we don’t. That’s where again, tracking is really important. So, you know, [00:17:00]which is again, why we push internal marketing really hard, right? That’s why we are big believers on tapping into what you already have, um, who don’t have to spend a ton on external marketing.

[00:17:09] Sara Hansen : However, I. You know, Bruce, if I’m gonna say to you, Hey, I can get you a 30 to one return on investment, why would you not invest into your business, right? To make it more profitable and, and that sort of thing. So again, it’s not necessarily about trying to not spend as much, it’s about spending the right amount for your goals.

[00:17:31] Sara Hansen : What business problem is marketing solving. So we always recommend, you know, four to 8%. But again, it depends on where the practice is. You know, if you can be at 4% great as you’re trying to grow, maybe you’re trying to add a second location, maybe you’re bringing in two associates, of course you’re gonna want to push your budget more for 8%, right?

[00:17:50] Sara Hansen : So it really does just depend on the practice, but. What we know is if you invest in your business and you can get massive returns back [00:18:00] in your business, then you’re really not spending 8%, right? You’re, you’re actually getting far more back in your business than you’ve ever spent. So, you know, really it’s like, yes, maybe you’re spending it, but you’re really not.

[00:18:13] Sara Hansen : I mean, Bruce, you refer to that as what? Net zero marketing.

[00:18:17] Dr. Bruce Baird: One of their business doesn’t market. I mean, I mean, you right. Furniture store, they’re spending 15, 20, 20 5% of their budget so that they can sell, you know, sell items that they, they make a 6% margin on, you know, but Yeah. Yeah. Thing, the thing that I look at, and I’ve been a marketer, uh, yeah.

[00:18:37] Dr. Bruce Baird: I marketed my practice at 8% for 25 years, almost 30 years. And what I found in teaching and, and you know, at Productive Dentist Academy, one of the things that I found was every year the docs that were coming in, their percentage of team overhead kept going [00:19:00]higher, meaning back in the day. And, and even today, I will tell you, you should have a team overhead of 20%.

[00:19:09] Dr. Bruce Baird: Uh, people go, oh my gosh, 20%. I’m, I mean, we, it’s not unusual to see people at PDA that have a 31, 32, 30 3% team overhead. Yeah. That means everything you spend on your team, they’re spending 30%, 33% of their budget on team expenses. Now, they would say, how do I solve this, Bruce? Do I get rid of people? I go, no, you need to start producing more.

[00:19:34] Dr. Bruce Baird: You need to afford dentistry. You need to get more people to say yes, and you need to do more. You have plenty of people to help you. I know guys that have, um, you know, when I, when I. Retired our of clinically, our team overhead was 17.5%, but I was spending 8% in marketing. Now these, these, these groups or these [00:20:00] docs that have a 30% team overhead, they’re spending 1% and they’re wondering, why is my team overhead so high?

[00:20:07] Dr. Bruce Baird: It makes no sense business wise, I’m gonna only spend 1%, but I have to have these people and yeah. So it ends up causing, uh, it, it really is very non-profitable. I mean, so as we do net zero marketing, it’s, I spend 8%, but it drives my team overhead from say 28% or 29 down to 24. Yep. Well now it’s, yeah, it’s free marketing.

[00:20:37] Dr. Bruce Baird: So I think dentists get. They don’t understand that if I spend money here and the pie gets bigger, that this actually goes away. And so, yes, me and in, in my career, as I got more experienced in train wrecks, you know, I, I wanted to fix the full mouth. I wanted to do that, then that’s where our marketing dollars [00:21:00] began to be spent.

[00:21:00] Dr. Bruce Baird: Yeah. And our average new patient, this is hard for people to believe, but our average new patient was coming 50, 60, 70 miles away to our little office. Yes, cranberry, Texas. Why? Because we branded ourselves as being the place for that. So if you’re a high, but you’re still wondering how, how can we possibly make this happen?

[00:21:26] Dr. Bruce Baird: Um, you really have to understand though, those, the principle of net zero marketing, I, if I spend more, it actually drives all my other expenses, not just team overhead. It’s,

[00:21:37] Sara Hansen : yeah.

[00:21:38] Dr. Bruce Baird: It drives, you know, facility expense should be somewhere around three to 5%. But if all of a sudden that small productivity, guess what my, my facility expense just went from five to two and a half.

[00:21:49] Dr. Bruce Baird: Well, that’s two and a half. Yeah. To do something else with. So I think dentist gets stuck in this.

[00:21:54] Sara Hansen : Yes.

[00:21:55] Dr. Bruce Baird: In this, um, scarcity mentality, uh, when [00:22:00] you don’t wanna do that and, but I What I love, yeah. What I love about Phoenix and what they do is they’ll begin oftentimes in this internal marketing first. It’s not the most,

[00:22:11] Sara Hansen : yes,

[00:22:12] Dr. Bruce Baird: it’s not the most.

[00:22:14] Dr. Bruce Baird: Expensive. You’re gonna spend money, obviously, but you’re bringing in people you’ve already talked to. You’re bringing in people that you’ve already seen that just didn’t quite get on the schedule. So yes, now you’re actually putting some fuel on the fire. But then if the philosophy goes forward and says, okay, we’re gonna do this internal marketing.

[00:22:32] Dr. Bruce Baird: But once we see our growth in our, in our productivity, once we see our growth in our ebitda, I wanna commit to spending. Okay. I was it. 1% or 2%. Now I wanna go to five. I wanna see how that goes. I wanna go to, yeah, what I can tell, what I can tell Dennis, beyond the shadow of a doubt, you can spend 8%. And you’ll do better than if you’re spending two or three with Phoenix.

[00:22:56] Dr. Bruce Baird: And I will tell you that if you spend 10%, you still wouldn’t notice [00:23:00] the difference. If you spent 12%. Yeah. You would still just continue to grow, but all your other hard costs, your, your fixed costs would go down. Uh, and I use yes as as a fixed expense. So that’s one of the things Yeah. I love about Phoenix and one other things.

[00:23:15] Dr. Bruce Baird: Yeah. One of the things, do you guys look at, ’cause I know it always comes down. Yeah. Dentist, you know, oh, now I wanna spend as least amount as I can. You guys, how do convert that? And, and I do think having, having that, uh, internal marketing as a, an initial, let’s do this.

[00:23:34] Sara Hansen : Yeah. About, yeah, yeah, yeah. So our philosophy, you know, you can say is, uh, we really believe in marketing.

[00:23:42] Sara Hansen : We call it from the inside out. So we believe. Bruce you spoke to this is you didn’t start out by saying, Hey, I wanna attract people that drive two hours to see me. Right. You didn’t start out like that. So we talk about stair stepping into marketing. This is where you talk about when is the right time to activate [00:24:00] your system.

[00:24:00] Sara Hansen : Right? And this is why really marketing is a system. Marketing is not products. And again, no marketing companies talk about this and this is why, you know, I hear Doctor, they, they tell me every day. Sarah, my marketing wasn’t working. I was with a company. It wasn’t working. And the reason being because they were product based.

[00:24:19] Sara Hansen : You have to have a marketing system, which again, encapsulates so many different things. So when you feel like, Hey, my marketing is not working. I guarantee it’s because we’re not looking at the full picture. So we look at marketing first, we call it, you have to own your building, right? That is your internal marketing piece.

[00:24:39] Sara Hansen : Now, when I say to doctors, Hey, doctors, would you be surprised to know that in 60 days we could grow your practice? $90,000? I mean, they look at me like, there’s no way. I’m like, it’s true, right? Because again, when you tap into what you already have, we’re no longer marketing to strangers who don’t know you, that you have to build trust.

[00:24:58] Sara Hansen : It’s really hard to do that, [00:25:00] but we’re tapping into patients that have already seen you. They’ve already known you, they know your team. There was just something that was a disconnect, and oftentimes it’s not even you. It could be something in their own life, right? They just have to be reminded. That that treatment is important and it’s going to come in.

[00:25:16] Sara Hansen : So, I mean, we run campaigns all the time for multiple doctors and monthly we’re bringing in at least 35, $40,000 a month back on the books for these doctors. And the doctors aren’t doing anything to do it, right. They’re not. They’re spending such a little amount. So, I mean, we have doctors that we’re bringing in a hundred thousand dollars a month back in revenue, which is crazy.

[00:25:39] Sara Hansen : But again, that is the reality of internal marketing. So once you own your building, which is referrals, reviews, re-engagement, then we say, now you’re gonna move on to your block. You know? So that is What type of educational material do you have? What community events do you participate in? You know, what type of.[00:26:00]

[00:26:00] Sara Hansen : Email blast. Do you have, you know, that sort of thing. So again, we’re stair stepping into that bigger thing. Then we say that you own your neighborhood, right? Um, and what does that look like? So again, now maybe we start dabbling in, you know, bigger branding campaigns with Google and Facebook and that sort of thing.

[00:26:18] Sara Hansen : Then eventually you own your city and, and that is where you get to, which is Bruce, where you sat for a long time and authority marketing. But again, you can’t go from one to the other. And doctors oftentimes think, well, how do I get on tv? Or how do I do Hulu ads? Or how do I. You have no business doing that if you have not set the proper foundation first because it will not be successful.

[00:26:42] Sara Hansen : Right. It really does come with a specific set of a marketing strategy to get you there, because what happens is you go from zero to a hundred and you have nothing in the middle that like. Has gotten you gradually there to set up that marketing foundation. Um, and so again, you [00:27:00] really have to have this robust strategy of internal, external, and community all set up.

[00:27:05] Sara Hansen : But you have to have also. Those pieces in between to help support everything else that you’re doing. Um, and then once you can activate that authority marketing piece where patients are coming hours to see you because you are the person, right, that you have worked now for years to get that branding out.

[00:27:25] Sara Hansen : We’ve got video and photo content you have. Testimonials, you’ve got reviews, you’ve got all these things, right, that now supports you being the guy, um, that people come to see now that has like, it, it’s that perfect marketing system. So again, you know, that is where we kind of help guide these doctors through and if they trust the process, um, we have got doctors that have, again.

[00:27:53] Sara Hansen : You know, they have trusted the process and they, they come to us and they’re like, I, I could have not done it without [00:28:00]you. And again, they’ve done all the work, right? We have just simply been our guide through all of it of, Hey, let us show you how it’s done. Right. Um, and they’re retiring earlier. They’re cutting back days, right?

[00:28:12] Sara Hansen : Sooner than they thought. They’re more profitable than they ever thought that they could be. Um, you know, but again, it’s just about putting those pieces in the right spot and activating them when the time is right. So

[00:28:23] Dr. Bruce Baird: that, that, that was my opportunity, you know, over 35 years. But my last 14 years, I only worked Mondays and Tuesday Seas, but I was produ, double, triple, yes.

[00:28:35] Dr. Bruce Baird: Was producing on a full day work week. Why? Because I, I, I didn’t understand the system when I started 25 years ago. I just, that I, I had read some article about. All phone companies, they spend like, some ridiculously large percentage of their, of their budget was marketing and these phone. Now what are dentists [00:29:00] doing?

[00:29:00] Dr. Bruce Baird: We’re not doing anything. And so, and that, of course I came into dentistry in the early eighties when marketing was just kind of happening. But I be, yeah, I, and, and what did I do? I threw step against the wall for 15 years. But I was connected to that 8% and ’cause I come up with it, well, 8%, I just said, yeah, let’s do 8%.

[00:29:21] Dr. Bruce Baird: That was my number. I just said, let’s just do eight. And I, I did that 25 years as my business was at 50,000, that was 4,000. I’m not, when it grew to hundred thousand, now it’s 8,000 a month when it grew to two. Yep. Now I’m spending 16. The truth is at 500,000 a month. Is it possible to do that? Yes, it’s possible to do that in Grandberry, Texas.

[00:29:45] Dr. Bruce Baird: In a little small town, it’s possible to do a, have a $6 million practice, but guess what? Yeah, at $5 million, I’m spending 8%. I’m spending 40 grand a month on my marketing. Did I heal it? No. It’s part of my [00:30:00] budget, part of my commitment to, yes. One other thing I, I wanna share with, with our listeners, and we’ve got so many people that, that listen to the show, but is that, that allowed me to do the dentistry I wanted to do, not the dentistry that Yes.

[00:30:17] Dr. Bruce Baird: PPOs just sent me. I, fortunately, yes. Oh. But I wanted people, I wanted, if I had this skill of using the laser to treat periodontal disease, I wanted to get the word out to all the people that need it. Yes. As opposed just Yes. As opposed to just hoping somebody that needed gum surgery came to see. So, and, and I think people just do that.

[00:30:43] Dr. Bruce Baird: And so that’s the one thing I really love about the Phoenix, uh, you know, marketing agency. It is yeah. Part of a philosophy. It’s not a one and done. Yes. Yeah, people. And, and it’s really funny because dentists get pissed off at their [00:31:00] marketing companies. Oh yeah. I, I, three months, I usually got three months.

[00:31:04] Dr. Bruce Baird: I didn’t see any difference. Well, yeah, that’s ’cause you’re, that’s ’cause you’re a fricking idiot because, you know, bottom, you have a strategy in your own brain that is totally broken. You think that just because you spend 50 bucks, you’re gonna get 5,000 back. It doesn’t happen that way. But what happened?

[00:31:21] Dr. Bruce Baird: Yeah. You consistently do something. It’s kind of like when you wake up in the morning, you work out consistently every day.

[00:31:27] Sara Hansen : Yes.

[00:31:27] Dr. Bruce Baird: And you do do the work. Guess what? You notice it in your body. Yeah. You notice it. And how you, you notice it in your joints. You notice it throughout.

[00:31:36] Sara Hansen : Yeah.

[00:31:36] Dr. Bruce Baird: But if you just get up, I’m just gonna spend 50 bucks this month and I hope I get 500, it’s gonna happen.

[00:31:43] Dr. Bruce Baird: You’re, you’re in, you’ve, yeah. Go to Disneyland and have fun because Yeah, dentistry’s not Disneyland. DI dentistry has,

[00:31:51] Sara Hansen : well, y yeah, and you know, here’s what, here’s the other thing that I think. We’re all dental nerds, right? We can talk, [00:32:00]you know, deep dentistry, new technology, all that stuff all day long.

[00:32:04] Sara Hansen : But our patients have no idea what this stuff means. And so oftentimes, like I don’t think that dentists understand how crucial. The language and the messaging of marketing is like I, I see websites all the time that talk about dental procedures on their websites, and I’m like, you guys realize that you’ve lost a patient far before they even, I mean they go to your website and they’re like, see ya, I’m done.

[00:32:32] Sara Hansen : Because that means nothing to them. They know that you’re a dentist. What our patients need to feel is that emotional connection. And so we help, you know, doctors every day that come to us that are like, man, my website isn’t working. Or Ma’am, you know, things just aren’t working in my office. And I’m like, because they know nothing about you.

[00:32:51] Sara Hansen : And what’s crazy is like, we’re one of, I think, five agencies in the nation that actually have a full-time video team. [00:33:00] That focuses on dentistry only. And if I could tell a doctor one thing, it’s, well, okay, two things I tell ’em. Two things is I would say, one, you better start focusing on your internal marketing and have a strategy.

[00:33:13] Sara Hansen : Give me a call. I can help you with that. But the other thing is you better have authentic messaging on your website because you are losing patients before they even call your office. You know, they’re finding out about you. And if you have stock images at all on your website, if you do not have a video that is authentic to you where you’re saying, Hey, this is how I want my patients to feel before they even see you.

[00:33:37] Sara Hansen : They are not. You have to build trust within 10 seconds. Of your patients meeting you, otherwise they’re going to your competition because again, the competition is heavy out there, right? We know that. And the dentists who are investing in their business and in their practices, who are investing in messaging that is authentic.

[00:33:57] Sara Hansen : Again, we are very big about that. [00:34:00] Who are you outside of dentistry? How do you want patients to fill? What do you do besides implants? Yeah, you do implants, but so does every other dentist. What else? Right? What else is it? That’s the message that we focus on, and if your branding and messaging is not full of that, that messaging, like they’re going to your competition.

[00:34:20] Sara Hansen : So those are the two things I would tell doctors. Like give, give us a call. Like, you know, we can help you with that because it’s like. Get videos going, get, have your website full of that stuff. You know, have like even your team, I mean we’ve got team that are on social media all day long. They love videos.

[00:34:37] Sara Hansen : They’re on TikTok, right? Have your team filming videos like, you know, that makes a huge difference with patients because they have to feel something like we are very much now about, you know, that. I mean, you know, everything is fast, right? Like we go through drive-throughs, we have grocery delivery, we have prescription pickup.

[00:34:57] Sara Hansen : I mean, Amazon, it’s two days, [00:35:00] right? We get annoyed when we have to wait a week for stuff right now, right? So again, our patients are the same way. They’re not gonna be patient with scrolling through your website, reading paragraphs and paragraphs of verbiage about you. They want to know within 15 seconds who you are.

[00:35:15] Sara Hansen : And if they can’t fill something with you and can’t make a connection with your practice, they’re moving on. So again, it’s really important that your messaging is very much about your philosophy of care. Who you are, how you show up for patients, that is crucial. And if you don’t have videos and photos on your website, that represents that they’re moving on.

[00:35:36] Sara Hansen : So,

[00:35:37] Dr. Bruce Baird: you know what’s so funny is I’d have patients that would say to me, ’cause we, we had done video for 25 years and you know, and. Yeah. And they would say, oh doc, whatever you tell me, I just feel like I already know you. You know, they just, yes, I trust you. You know? And they, where’d they get that trust?

[00:35:57] Dr. Bruce Baird: Well, it came from, it came from authentic [00:36:00] videos of us. Yes. And showing real, real pictures and real stuff, real time stuff. So, good grief. What, I mean, we could talk about this for the next,

[00:36:12] Sara Hansen : I know, I feel like we need like a marketing series. Huh?

[00:36:16] Dr. Bruce Baird: You need to do that, Sarah. But I, I really, I really want to thank you for being with me this morning and, uh, the Phoenix Dental Agency.

[00:36:25] Dr. Bruce Baird: I mean, what an amazing group of committed people that. Understand the real deal in, in, yeah. It’s not a one and done, but it’s, we wanna, we wanna hold your hand and then we wanna raise your hand, uh, in celebration together because

[00:36:44] Sara Hansen : Yeah.

[00:36:45] Dr. Bruce Baird: Outta a one and done. And that’s what Yeah, we could ever get out and, and tell people, you know, people just don’t understand.

[00:36:53] Dr. Bruce Baird: I say, Dennis, we just don’t understand because we just never were trained in this. But you’ve given right. Ton of information today [00:37:00] to our, to our listeners and, uh, I like our next time that we get together, so, yes. Tell your friends, tell your friends about the Productive Dentist Podcast. Uh, you can now vote for the Productive Dentist Podcast and our other podcast at PDA.

[00:37:16] Dr. Bruce Baird: Um, we were fortunate enough to be the, the number one, I think two years ago and in the top 10 last year. Um, but we want to get back up there again this year. So, Sarah, thanks so much for your time this morning.

[00:37:28] Sara Hansen : You’re welcome. You’re welcome. Thank you. It was good to be here,