Brian King

I can’t even begin to tell you how often I hear that comment when meeting with dentists in regards to direct to consumer advertising to help fuel practice growth. They say this as though their marketplace is a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific and cold-hard facts don't apply.  While I do agree that no two markets are alike, I respectfully disagree that their market is so different that their practice cannot benefit from local advertising. Here's why:

48% of the US population, over 25 years of age, is missing one or more teeth. That’s a bold fact. 16% of the US population is missing 4+ teeth! Wow. Now we are on to something. These facts came from one of our clients, Nobel Biocare, who conducted one of the largest consumer dental surveys ever. So what does all this mean?

What this tells us is that, relative to the population in the market, there are a lot of people missing teeth. So then the next thing I typically hear is, “Well, they don’t have money and can’t afford to have their teeth fixed.” WRONG. The largest percentage of people missing 4+ teeth happen to fall in the higher socio-economic category(annual income of $100k-$149k/year).

So let’s get back to basics here. Why aren’t these people doing anything about their missing teeth? In most cases (43% of those people missing with incomes above $75k/year to be exact), are “not concerned” about their missing teeth. Ok, why not? Because the majority of these people are unaware of the health ramifications of not replacing their missing teeth. And how could they be? In most markets, nobody has educated theme about the long-term health benefits of dental implants outside of their office walls which is simply, insufficient. For example, a typical dental office in New York City has a network of approximately 4,000 patients. That’s less than 1/10^th of 1 percent of the people that reside in New York City. Therein lays the unrealized opportunity via local advertising.

There are a lot of people who need the services, could benefit from the services and can afford the services but simply don’t know about the services. Enter Balihoo, the low-barrier to entry local marketing automation solution for those loyal Nobel Biocare customers who realize that at the end of the day, their market isn’t THAT different.