Dental Marketing

Using Facebook for Local Advertising - Top Tips

Tuesday, April 26, 2011 by Shane Vaughan

As a local business, you're undoubtedly aware that Facebook continues to take the marketing world by storm. In fact, as of November, 2010, Facebook accounted for 23% of all display advertising sold in the U.S - WOW!

While there are varied marketing opportunities available on Facebook, I want to focus this particular post on display advertising - the ability to create and place ads within Facebook.

The first question to ask yourself is, "should I be advertising on Facebook at all?" In most cases, if you have the need to reach directly to consumers in defined geographic market, the answer is probably yes. There are many options to consider with your local internet marketing plan, but in general Facebook is a great option. We manage local internet marketing for many businesses and have seen great success recently with Facebook display ads. In particular, we've seen some great success in the dental implant marketing space helping local doctors get their message across via Facebook.

This post isn't meant to be a comprehensive guide to advertising on Facebook, but I wanted to pass along some simple "nuggets of wisdom" for those local businesses who are incorporating Facebook display ads into their local internet marketing strategy:

Facebook offers both Cost-Per-Click (CPC) and Cost-Per-Thousand (CPM) advertising options. If you have significant time to dedicate, and are spending a significant amount of money, CPM can often deliver lower-cost results. However, for lower budgets or a lower time investment, the CPC model requires a smaller time investment and can be much easier.
Create at least 5-10 ads. Facebook users are a fickle bunch, and you're never sure exactly what's going to encourage them to click on your ad. Create multiple ad versions and see what drives the clicks, the results will often surprise you.
When developing your target, err on the side of "too targeted" and expand your target based on results.
Change your ads frequently. Track your click-through-rate (CTR) and when you see an ad drop to about half of it's original CTR, pause it and create another. After a few months, you can reactivate the old ad and often will see the CTR increase back to it's previous level.
When creative your ads, use interesting images (ie not your logo). People like to see people, animals and the unexpected so give them a reason to click on your ad.
Copy is important and should be weighed just as heavily as the image. Say something interesting - ask a question - make an offer - give them a reason to click.
When setting-up your budget, you can choose daily or lifetime. I prefer to set a lifetime budget, then set a daily budget limit - it helps me get the amount of data I need on a regular basis to make good decisions.
Track your clicks from Facebook to your website and measure the results. You can use the Google URL Builder to create an easily-trackable URL.

Understanding these basics, and tracking the results on a daily basis, will help take you from Facebook "newbie" to "experienced" within a short period of time.

Vantage Dental Implant Center

Thursday, December 23, 2010 by Shane Vaughan

One of our dental marketing customers has recently opened a brand-new dental implant center in Denver, CO. Vantage Dental Implant Center opened in November and has been serving a steady stream of dental implant patients since.

They held a dental implant educational seminar in November, so we had the chance to meet their doctors and staff first-hand, and I can say I was extremely impressed. Their doctors include:

Check out their site if you're interested in learning about dental implants. You can find them at:

Vantage Dental Implant Center

1699 S. Colorado Blvd, Suite J, Denver, CO 80222
Seriously, if you're interested in Denver Dental Implants or denture replacement, get in touch with them for a free dental implant consultation ($700 value!).

Google Instant - An Instant Classic

Thursday, September 9, 2010 by Matt Borud

Yesterday Google announced Google Instant - their unbelievably cool search functionality that allows users to view results instantly by posting and refining links as the queries are literally typed. I'd like everyone to stop reading and go try it right now. Seriously.

One of the big initial questions yesterday surrounding Google Instant is how would it affect Adwords and Google's other online search and advertising mechanisms. Would SEO become irrelevant? Or perhaps even more relevant? How would impressions be measured if results were constantly changing? While many of these questions are still being answered and may not be fully realized for some time, there is no doubt Instant has changed the landscape of local internet marketing.

Many dental practices we meet with are interested in how they can better utilize Google and online search in their local advertising efforts. After all, online advertising is a staple of new media and what I believe to be the foundation for much of our future buying decisions. When a practice is considering local advertising and asks me, "Where should I start?" I usually reply by giving a rudimentary, beginner lesson on the benefits of Google Paid Search and localized online advertising. It's affordable for most practices, easier to track than most media and can provide an immediate and relevant market presence.

I see Google Instant as being a phenomenal innovation for local advertisers for a variety of reasons, none larger than it will deliver more relevant, better qualified traffic to your site. On more than one occasion over the past two days, I've found myself searching for information only to find—as I continued to type and viewed results—that I wasn't going in the right direction. Google Instant allowed me to immediately amend my search terms and arrive at a more desirable and/or relevant result without ever having to leave the page, hit "enter" or wait for returns to see where to go next. The result is that I found what I was actually looking for versus what I thought I wanted. The information that I ultimately arrived at may have begun on the second or third page of a typical Google search, but because of Instant, those results found their way to the top of my search.

Whether you're interested in local marketing ideas to promote dental implants, or perhaps a new co-op marketing direction, let Balihoo's team provide you with the technology and service expertise to better navigate through the types of local advertising changes Google Instant represents. Learn more about how we're revolutionizing local advertising similar to the way Google has revolutionized search.

Dental Implants - How Much is Quality of Life Worth to You?

Monday, August 16, 2010 by Betsie Richardson

Working on the local consumer advertising side of the dental implant industry, I understand the barrier of finding financially qualified leads. This procedure is still young, and consumers are simply uneducated on the cost parameters. Once they see the high out-of-pocket cost, they have to ask themselves how much they would pay to smile proudly again, eat apples and steak, speak confidently, and eliminate the stigma of dentures going in the sock drawer at night. What is the price tag on quality of life?

The New York Times posted a good article on this topic on July 29 - read it here.

As Lesley Alderman writes in this story, insurance typically only covers up to $1,500. When a single implant procedure runs $3,000 minimum and full-arch implants start at $20,000, you can imagine the sticker shock experience for a consumer who just wants to eat steak again.

Based on our experience, the best prospect-to-patient conversion rates in dental implant marketing happen as a result of public education seminars and our local media buying experts have given clients great results by recommending advertising in newspapers. It turns out to be a key medium for the target of this specific marketing campaign with these demographics (female in house, 55+, household income of $75,000+).

We worked with a dental implant center in Boise that ran their third public education seminar last night. They had 21 attendees, of whom 17 had missing teeth (the other 4 were supportive spouses). Not bad for two hours of the surgeons' evening! These were These attendees scheduled personal consultations on the spot, and when they walk into their appointments, they will have a solid understanding of the benefits and costs of available procedures.

If you are interested to learn how Balihoo's dental marketing arm can provide local marketing ideas to benefit your business, contact us: www.dentalmarketing.balihoo.com.

The Key to Successful Marketing

Monday, August 9, 2010 by Phil Bear

I recently read a great list (I'm a sucker for Top 10 Lists - just ask David Letterman) on marketing blunders from major global brands. The one that stuck with me above all the rest was this one from Pepsi Cola:

"Pepsi's 'Come alive with the Pepsi Generation' translated into 'Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave'" for its campaign in China.

Someone needs dental implants.

Now, according to Snopes.com, this entire story about Pepsi and their marketing blunder is undertermined. Whether this is true or not is completely irrelevant to this blog. (I got to put a picture of a zombie in my blog, so I win.)

What I took from this particular top ten list (some within the list are confirmed true) is that even major brands still do not have local advertising figured out. No matter how well these brands are globally recognized, they still make mistakes when it comes to individual markets (I'll give you that China is a prettty big market, but the point still stands).

What national brands need is Balihoo. We have created marketing software that integrates digital asset management with administration into a simple online co-op marketing solution. It truly is a solution that someone has to see to believe. Luckily for you, our dear readers, the crack marketing group here has recently put together a two minute(ish) flash demonstration that gives you a better understanding of how we are revolutionizing marketing on a local level.

You can check that out here:
http://balihoo.com/coop-marketing/coop-marketing-demo.html

If that doesn't peak your interest in our marketing solution, then you must be dead inside. Or undead on the outside.

Her shirt has a stain on it. How embarrassing!

New Advertising Services - We're Listening

Friday, July 30, 2010 by Betsie Richardson

When Nobel Biocare asked Balihoo to partner with them to provide local consumer advertising for their dental implant clinician clients, we jumped at the opportunity. We initially rolled out a subscription service that provides clinicians with a soup-to-nuts advertising campaign. We are excited to announce that we have added two new subscriptions to our service offerings. We have our clients to thank for communicating what they want, and we listened!

In the initial "Platinum" Subscription, we start by diving into the market to develop a cross-medium annual strategy with budget allocation, detailed tactics and demographic research. The service also includes a suite of creative material that includes TV, radio, print, direct mail, online, internet paid search - the full gamut. We load this material into our proprietary co-op marketing software where clinicians can customize it to their brand and objectives. Finally, we perform local media buying and post-buy analysis.

Having consulted with hundreds of dental implant clinicians over the past year, we have learned a lot about what they want in an advertising campaign. Importantly, we learned many clinicians are not ready to dive into a mass media advertising campaign, the cost barrier aside. They are simply not ready to see their name on TV or a billboard. This puts them in a defensive position with their GP referral base that they may not be ready to manage. They are, however, very comfortable with Internet marketing and hosting free patient education seminars through their local newspaper.

These learnings combined, we came up with the Gold and Silver Subscriptions.

Gold includes:

Print (newspaper & direct mail)
Online (Google AdWords bidding & E-mail)
Microsite (w/customizable offers that update immediately)
Media Buying
Account Management

Silver includes:

Online (Google AdWords bidding & E-mail)
Microsite (w/customizable offers that update immediately)

The Gold subscription includes material focused on marketing patient education seminars. Silver will eventually include microsites that market dental services other than implants (i.e. wisdom teeth, veneers, crowns and bridges, etc.) We will continue to deliver services as our clients ask for them and always welcome new ideas!
Are you a Nobel Biocare customer? Are you interested in local marketing ideas to grow your dental implant business? Go to www.dentalmarketing.balihoo.com to learn more or download our whitepaper here.

Local Marketing Honeymoon Stage

Thursday, July 22, 2010 by Brian King

I'm not married, but I know enough people who are to realize that the 'Honeymoon Stage' doesn't last forever. You know, that initial stage in the relationship where each other can do no wrong and life is pure bliss?

It's kind of like engaging with advertising for the first time. We work with a lot of dental professionals via our Balihoo Dental Marketing solutions. Advertising in that industry is a relatively new concept, so many of the people I meet with have never advertised direct to consumer before. It's always interesting for me to watch how the relationship develops over time. One of the hardest things to convey to someone new to advertising is: It takes time! So many new advertisers get excited up front(Honeymoon Stage) but quickly lose confidence when customers aren't knocking down the door after six weeks of advertising and decide to halt all advertising claiming it was ineffective and the cost of new patient acquisition was too much(Divorce). In the words of John Heywood, "Rome wasn't built in one day."

Nobody said local advertising was easy. In fact, it can be incredibly difficult. There is a reason why many well known companies have advertised ever since their inception and believe me, it's NOT because they like spending money. They do it because it works and because it is the lifeline for the continued business growth.

We just recently brought on board a new dental clinician that said to me, "Brian, lets be honest, six months is simply not enough time to see results. If we are going to do this, we want to do it the right way and we want to commit to it for at least a year, if not three." It was the most refreshing thing I have heard in a while and I can assure you that a killer case study will follow because with his mentality, energy and level of commitment, he will see results. Im excited and I know he is too.

The best part of the whole conversation to-date was the cover letter of a fax containing the signed contract. All it said was:

Let's Roll!

DMD, DDS and WWW?

Monday, June 21, 2010 by Brian King

Drinking coffee while flying on an airplane. That means nothing other than optimal blogging time.

TODAY'S TOPIC: Dentists and Websites

To those of you dental professionals who have a website, you are excused from reading on. This is directed to the tremendous percentage of dental professionals who do not have a functioning website. No more excuses. They stop here. With increasing competition in the marketplace, having a functioning website is critical to long-term practice growth and sustainability.

It always amazes me how many clinicians I meet who are 100 percent open to advertising externally yet do not have a functioning website. These same clinicians want their ads to tout their state-of-the-art in-office technology. Well docs, I have news for you all. The general public DOES NOT care about what you have in your office. Chances are the general public doesn’t even know what an i-Cat or a Cone Beam scanner is. They don’t care about what YOU can do, but they do care about what you can do for THEM. Consumers are very selfish in nature and rightfully so. Remember, they are paying YOU.

Let’s play out a brief scenario. Say a Balihoo employee (who does not work within the Nobel program) is looking for a good clinician to visit. Likely, they will ask around for a few recommendations from friends, family and co-workers. That Balihoo’er now might have the name of two clinicians, Dr. A and Dr. B, near their home. They head to Google to run a quick search for the names, because that is what people do these days, and find Dr. A online but Dr. B is nowhere to be found. Dr. A clearly has a well-optimized website because he shows up on the first page of the Google organic results (+1 point Dr. A). Furthermore, he shows up on the sponsored links section on the right hand side showing that he has a well optimized paid search campaign running (+1 point Dr. A).

Immediately, the Balihoo employee in search of a new dentist associates Dr. A with being up-to-date and in touch with modern technology regardless of the level of technology in Dr. A’s office. Dr. B might have twice number of space-age looking machines in his office but the simple fact that he was not online is enough to lose out on a new patient.

Now don’t take this as me saying that you need a Rolls Royce of websites. All you need is a functioning, decently optimized site and maybe some Pay-per-Click to drive traffic to the site. Easy enough. Think about it. It’s simple really. By getting a site, you will be miles ahead of the competition. Once you have your website up and running, it’s time for the next level. See Balihoo Dental Marketing.

Gaining Qualified Dental Implant Leads from Consumer Advertising

Monday, June 21, 2010 by Betsie Richardson

Being in the dental implant marketing space, we at Balihoo are often asked how to gain more qualified leads in local advertising. There are many consumer barriers to overcome with dental implant marketing. How much will this cost? Is it painful? Will it take a long time before I have functioning teeth?

These questions can be answered in a free-to-the-public education seminar. Now the doctor has the ability to speak in great detail to a captive audience of consumers, and they can ask questions in a comfortable setting where they are surrounded by people who also suffer from the discomfort of missing teeth.

Many dental clinicians - specialists in particular - run education seminars for general dentists to open a channel of patient referrals for dental implant procedures. These prospecting patients call the implant specialist's practice with a fairly knowledgeable understanding of the procedures available, obstacles and costs. The office staff is used to this "qualified" lead. Now try running a strong :30 second TV campaign like we do for many of our clients, and your staff is suddenly hit with an influx of prospecting consumers who have many questions about the exciting procedure they saw marketed while watching Oprah. Simply put, a :30 second TV spot cannot qualify a dental implant patient on its own.

In our integrated marketing plans, we often include such an education seminar in the annual strategy. The one medium that has proven most successful is...drum roll please...newspaper ROP. This "dying" medium is still highly read by our target demographic in most markets. My anecdotally-based theory is that consumers are value or event-shopping newspaper's advertisements. They can physically hold onto the paper, read your ad in detail and cut it out and post it on the fridge to remind them of the date.

One of our local clients held a patient education seminar last week. Running an integrated approach of newspaper, network TV and online advertising, they had a great turnout of 14 consumers. Nine of them scheduled personal consultations that evening. Needless to say, that client found their answer in seeking more qualified leads.

Download our white paper here to learn the three cardinal rules of dental marketing.

(Nobel Biocare taps into our local marketing automation software to provide a co-op advertising solution for their partner clinicians. Using our print ad builder, these clinicians tag their advertisements with their photos, logo and customize the messaging.)

What do moose and dental marketing have in common?

Thursday, May 27, 2010 by Brian King

Absolutely nothing. This blog is being written 2 cups of coffee deep, from seat 18C and while cruising at 31,000 feet somewhere over Canada as I return from a 4-day business trip in Anchorage, Alaska. Because of the unique nature of a business trip to Alaska, I felt that sharing a few things I observed, as they pertain to local advertising, would make for a somewhat intriguing blog. Here it goes:

*Anyone who thinks New York is the most expensive place in the country has not left the lower 48. Hawaii and Alaska take the cake. Evidence: Subway Sandwich Shops in Alaska do not have $5 foot longs. It’s actually $5 six inchers. However, local advertising space within Anchorage city limits is somewhat affordable and leads me to believe that it may be Alaska’s best kept bargain-buy relative to other cities of similar population.

*Cosmetic and dental implant dentistry marketing does not exist in Anchorage. Yet, 100% of the people I met with are becoming more and more receptive to the idea. This leads me to believe that the first ones to implement such external dental marketing (you know who you are) will capture the benefits of being a pioneer, or in the words of Wasilla’s hometown hero, Ms. Palin, the benefits of ‘going rouge’.

*Alaskan Amber is NOT the only good beer brewed in Alaska. Alaska has more unheard of micro breweries than any other state I have ever visited (Colorado excluded), yet not a single one of them promotes their brand or distributes out of the state of Alaska. Imagine the first one that does. Oh wait, one already did… Alaskan Brewing Company. It’s quite amazing that more don’t, considering they are some of the finest beers I have ever consumed (at $7/pint).

*225 moose have been hit by cars since January 1 on the major highway between Anchorage and Fairbanks. This has no correlation to advertising but more of an interesting fact and a number that I found to be quite alarming considering the sheer size of a Moose (I saw three of them near downtown).

*Due to the expansive nature of the Last Frontier, people will travel great distances for services, especially medical and dental. Add some relatively low cost, yet strategic local advertising to this notion and all of a sudden, a visionary clinician has the ability to capture a tremendous audience from a 500+ mile radius. This is a huge advantage considering clinicians in Manhattan have a difficult time drawing patients from a radius greater than 10 city blocks.

All-in-all, Alaska is an amazing place. The vast differences in business landscape that exist present exciting challenges and great opportunity across all industries. With Balihoo being a company that is setting forth on a mission to revolutionize local marketing, I am excited that we can apply that mission to the great state of Alaska. Time for another cup of coffee.

Facebook and Security: Does it REALLY matter?

Wednesday, May 26, 2010 by Matt Borud

As conferences filled with software engineers and developers saw, Facebook's recent f8 conference ended with a fervor of questions and controversy. Is user security protection at all a priority for Facebook? Does Mark Zuckerberg fundamentally (and mockingly) disagree with the idea of "privacy"? And does anyone, besides a few on the fringe, really even care?

As a college educated, tech-sector employed, target demographic, GEN Y Facebook user, I'd argue that when the chips are down no one really cares about their Facebook privacy as much as those in the TechCrunch/GigaOM sphere want you to believe. We've become so dependent on Facebook as our social lifeline and interaction vehicle that we're not going to be deterred by having to decipher a few (ok, ok a ridiculous amount) labyrinth-like privacy settings to hide your Mexico fishing trip pics from your wife so you can see what your 7th grade girlfriend is doing this weekend. Sure, we like to think when we delete a picture it's been removed from the annals of existence. And of course no one is entirely comfortable knowing that 3rd party marketers have access to the information we're conversing about over email and Facebook. But the reality is we're the ones that have agreed, whether implicitly or directly, to share that information.

We take web security for granted and really have no understanding of the measures in place to protect our information. As much as we pay lip service for better security options, we still pay our bills, buy and sell freely and analyze our finances all by entering our credit card, debit card and bank account information in countless sites across the internet without hesitation nearly every day. We still upload our pictures, update our status, and give our location data away on a daily - sometimes hourly - basis. And we're only going to continue to give more and more information away. We're used to third party ads littering our Gmail messages and spam messages with special offers from sites we've never visited. It's a part of the online experience we've allowed to happen. Pressing Facebook NOW to do more isn't going to change the direction we've already taken.

My friends and I used to joke when someone couldn't come up with a piece information they were looking for that if only there was a medium where information could be found, stored, and exchanged immediately. The internet has provided us with nearly all the world's information at our disposal in real time - so much so that it's difficult to remember what it was like to not know something without being able to pop open my laptop and look it up. Encyclopedias, I guess. It began with general information and has now taken off into our personal information and it's all because we've been more than willing to share nearly all aspects of our life online.

As someone at Balihoo who's tasked daily with providing small business owners (specifically those in the dental marketing industry) with local marketing ideas - how to use Facebook effectively is a topic that comes up often. Everyone is interested in leveraging local internet marketing to better reach their target demographic and connect with users in ways more traditional advertising doesn't allow. I've learned these kinds of concerns don't resonate with the causal Facebook user or advertiser. We're all interested in better connecting with our friends, patients, customers and interests, and regardless of privacy concerns, Facebook still allows you to do that better than any other service available.

ESPN The Storyteller

Monday, May 24, 2010 by Betsie Richardson

"It's not about elections, sanctions, proliferations, he-said, she-said, my land, your land, no man's land; it's not about the stock market, black market, orange alerts, green homes, hope, change, fear or loathing; it's not about Communism, Socialism or Capitalism, war or peace, love or hate...this is about the one month every four years when we all agree on one thing: 32 nations, one world watching; 2010 FIFA World Cup."

Watch ESPN's 2010 FIFA World Cup "United" television commercial here:

You know that moment when you find yourself lazily flipping channels on TV, lacking inspiration to settle on a program when you find yourself pause on a commercial. Something about it - the music, the vibrant imagery, the inspiration of the voice talent - grabs your attention. You want to be a part of that brand - buy their product, join their event, watch their program. Watching ESPN's "United" commercial for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, I felt goosebumps spread across my body. I was ready to buy tickets to South Africa just to stand outside the stadium.

In our dental marketing efforts with Nobel Biocare partner clinicians, we often talk about telling a story. Every advertiser has a story. Dental implants are no exception. The dental professionals with whom we work talk passionately about the life-changing effects of the fixed prosthetics they offer patients. We provide a number of creative themes that tell the story of renewed confidence, restored comfort and enjoyment of foods forbidden to denture-wearers, which all leads to feeling younger, feeling good about yourself and embracing age.

Sure, something like direct TV begs for infomercial-style product marketing. We all remember Billy Mays fondly as the infomercial king of such products as OxiClean and Liquid Diamond. Our dentist clients often ask about testimonial-style commercials or demonstrations of how dental implants are placed, however, we have had the best return on investment from our :30 second spots that tell a story. The consumer watches the TV and feels a connection - this doctor understands my issue and has a solution.

Do you run a dental implant practice and want to learn how to tell a story with your brand? Contact one of our consultants to learn about our local marketing ideas.

(Nobel Biocare taps into our local marketing automation software to provide a co-op advertising solution for their partner clinicians. Using our print ad builder, these clinicians tag their advertisements with their brand identity and customize the messaging.)

Stuff Marketing People Like

Friday, May 21, 2010 by Megan Heath

We're a pretty low-key group of folks here at Balihoo, and there's little in the day-to-day that causes contention. Among the would-be controversial elements in the office is my quasi-inflammatory desk calendar: Stuff White People Like.

If you haven't read this blog, you're missing out. If you think the content is more inappropriate than funny, you might consider lightening up. But I digress.

Inspired by my environment and a daily dose of SWPL, I've compiled the first unofficial list of Stuff Marketing People Like.

Jargon: If you hear someone at a party trying desperately to work the words "mechanicals," "reach and frequency," or "channel marketing" into a conversation, you can be confident that they're with an agency. If you hear them say "co-op marketing solution," "ad builder software," or "local marketing readiness," they're with Balihoo.

PowerPoint: With gifted designers and creative producers at their disposal, you'd expect marketing pros to have a better presentation format than PowerPoint. Check those expectations - we love us some branded slide decks.

Ridiculous Competitions: Mustache May... enough said.

Having Better Clients Than You: We're really blessed to work with innovative brands like Kohler, Specialized, and Chevron. That's not name dropping; I really mean it.

Being a Mac or a PC: It's not just about picking sides and talking trash. It's about having an identity: you're either a smart, efficient Account Manager or an edgy, nonchalant Creative Designer. The rest of the agency is slightly irrelevant, but encouraged to join the debate none the less.

Adult Beverages: Beer isn't just a drink, it's an attitude. We have plenty of both.

Big Budgets: You have a million dollars and an ambiguous goal? Please join me in front of my PC for a PowerPoint presentation on how I can triple your reach & frequency. Can I get you a beer?

Small Budgets: Big budgets are for kids and execs. A hardcore marketer loves a small budget, an awkward, disjointed market, and an impossible deadline. This is where heroes and ulcers are made.

Seeing Their Own Work: Back in my media buying days, I got a real kick out of seeing and hearing my clients' ads. And if you think that box under my desk is full of old betas and newspapers, well, you're right. Just dying to see some old dental commercials and smoothie ads? I thought you might be.

Logos: It's not vanity. But the metal is just shiny enough to see your own reflection among the many, many client icons.

Social Networking Butterflies

Monday, May 10, 2010 by Brian King

Yes... the little butterflies that can build and destroy your brand. An ever-increasing important component to retail marketing. Allow me to share a quick story, or novella if you will:

I happened to be in San Jose for business travel pertaining to Balihoo's Dental Marketing team, which is completely irrelevant to my story and more of a shameless product plug, when I experienced a perfect example of the power of these social networking butterflies.

It was a beautiful Thursday afternoon in downtown San Jose. A nice high pressure system had brought with it a cloudless spring evening with temperatures hovering around 21 degrees Celsius. The anemometer was showing a NE breeze of 5-7 knots. I decided to visit one of my favorite chain restaurants, and perhaps one that might benefit from implementing Balihoo's local marketing automation solution, commonly referred to as Gordon Biersch. Great beer, great food, great atmosphere... really just an all-around great place.

I was by myself (accepting applications for dates - all candidates may apply by commenting on this blog with appropriate contact information) so I decided to sit at the bar. I placed my order and then proceeded to read the newspaper on my handheld Blackberry device via my favorite CNBC app. I noticed the waitstaff continually peering over at me as though I was up to no good. While most who know me know that I only misbehave on weekends - but the waitstaff didn't know me, my intentions or lack thereof. After about 10-12 minutes from the time I placed my order, the Shift Supervisor came up to me and very politely said, "Sir, your food should be right up. We are a bit backed up in the kitchen but please accept our apologies for the delay."

I told her that it was absolutely no worry and went back to reading a CNBC feature story about flesh-eating vultures taking over an abandoned luxury Florida condo complex. Seeing as how I had hardly been waiting, I found her apology a bit peculiar and certainly unnecessary. After putting further thought into it, I put two and two together. To find the restaurant, I used the Bing app on my phone and searched for casual dining restaurants that had the best reviews and were located within .5 miles of my hotel. Just as easily as I found the restaurant from positive reviews, I could have been a social networking butterfly (or moth in the eyes of any restaurant chain marketing department) and write a bad Yelp or Bing review while I was waiting for my food. Wouldn't be the first time someone has done such a thing. For the record: the service was exceptional and I encourage all visiting San Jose to grab a burger and beer there.

Long story short, I'm not sure if restaurants are now training staff to be cognoscente of anyone using their Blackberry, Droid, or iPhone while sitting alone but I have to say that I was damn impressed with the supervisor's awareness of the situation. Kudos to her and the Gordon Biersch organization. Little did they know that I would now write this blog and not only compliment the great Hawaiian Kobe Burger with Garlic Fries, but the even better level of customer service that I experienced.

When building your brand, don't neglect the little things. Marketing goes far beyond the advertisements and promotions you run. It's the little things that add up and allow you to build an army of Social Networking Butterflies and not Social Networking Moths, the ones that you can never seem to swat and when you do, they leave a film of gray dust on your wall, err... I mean brand.

The Reverse Referral in Dental Marketing

Monday, May 10, 2010 by Betsie Richardson

Everyone knows the old adage, You scratch my back; I'll scratch yours. This colloquialism rings true for many of the dental specialists who engage with us in direct-to-consumer local advertising of dental implants. These specialists want to maintain their General Practioner (GP) referrals that have fueled a majority of their business over the years, but they fear advertising will appear to "skirt around" their GPs. What is the solution? I give you the reverse referral.

The reverse referral works such that a specialist begins marketing to the local consumer base through our integrated media plan. They begin drawing new patients from the local market who have not seen a general dentist in years and sometimes decades (typically due to dental phobia). These patients often have several missing teeth or are fully edentulous. They are therefore great candidates for the Nobel Biocare All-on-4 or related procedures. Our specialists then collaborate with GPs to send the patient to their practice for restoration of the fixed prosthetics. Everyone wins.

One such oral surgeon specialist who uses our local advertising platform held a dinner for his top 20 GP referrals to openly announce his advertising efforts and product launch marketing of the All-on-4 procedure. A few months passed when he sent an advertising-driven All-on-4 case to a GP in his building for restoration. This GP had never seen an All-on-4 case and was not well versed on the topic before the surgeon's dinner. This GP has since sent the oral surgeon four patients who accepted treatment for the All-on-4. You scratch my back; I'll scratch yours.

Download our white paper here to learn the three cardinal rules of dental marketing.

(Nobel Biocare taps into our local marketing automation software to provide a co-op advertising solution for their partner clinicians. Using our print ad builder, these clinicians tag their advertisements with their photos, logo and customize the messaging.)

Local Business Owners - Offer new products and services during a down economy?

Thursday, May 6, 2010 by Marcie Blagden-Ellison

With local business owners across the country struggling to stay afloat in this economy, many businesses are branching out by offering new services and products in the hope that it'll spur additional traffic and revenue. With Botox now being offered in dental offices and teeth whitening pitched in tanning bed salons, it seems that almost all industries are expanding their services.

This Wall Street Journal article, Time to Reset Your Business caught my eye because it argues that branching out to non-core offerings is the wrong thing for local businesses to do.

While I agree that offering new products or services doesn't make sense if: (A) It will require a substantial amount of both time and money that you don't have to spare or (B) You aren't adequately equipped to provide it as well as you provide your other, core services - I think it's important for local business owners to ALWAYS be open to the want and need of their local audience. Monitoring and responding to your local customers needs is what makes a local guy not only successful but a part of the community.

If adding a new service or product makes sense for you, the next step is to ensure that your local advertising and media planning strategy are aligned with your new offering. Consider the above example of a dental practice providing Botox services - their dental marketing plan should be revisited to ensure that their newly added service is utilized to reinforce the added convenience and value they offer to their patient base. By successfully and professionally marketing that they offer both valued services, the practice could very well increase repeat patient loyalty and recruit new patients.

Be the Change

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 by Brian King

I attended a great mini-seminar several weeks lead by David Cohen, CEO and Founder of TechStars, a mentorship-driven seed stage investment program. There was a great take-away message from the evening: 'Be the Change'. It got me thinking.

Such a simple statement with such a powerful meaning and one that so few actually follow. As creatures of habit, we tend to watch things progress down a path that may not be in the best interest of the greater good. I see people accept things the way they are far too often.

Working in an extremely dynamic start-up environment that caters to small businesses via local marketing automation, I am surrounded by a surprisingly large amount of complacency amongst our affiliate network. With a mission to 'revolutionize local marketing', we are constantly pushing business owners to shake things up. Try something new. Do something different. It's critical during these times. Some are receptive and some are not, but what is particularly interesting to me right now is that not everyone is struggling during this economic downturn.

Let's look at local advertising as it pertains to the cosmetic dental industry:

An industry that is typically fee-for-service and in most cases, one that provides elective surgical procedures that come with a rather high price tag. Many practices saw declines in total volume as high as 30 percent during the last several years. However, not everyone saw declines. In fact, some practices saw growth. How? Well, let me tell you.

As long as many clinicians can remember, external dental marketing has been considered HIGHLY taboo and frowned upon in the industry. With that said, a handful of visionary clinicians across the country have refused to accept things the way they are and have decided that while everyone sat back and complained, they are going to be the change. They began thinking outside of the box and started doing things differently by leveraging tactics, such as local advertising, that all others shied away from. I can speak with conviction when I say, they are seeing the benefits. I've met these people and we have had the privilege of helping many of them accomplish this success.

Look at it this way, when the house is cold, do you put more or less wood on the fire? Those that began implementing strategic local advertising have seen tremendous revenue growth, have further solidified their place in the market and are now on the lead edge of a dramatically shifting paradigm. The others that refused to change are now scrambling to play catch-up.

Be the change can be applied to so many facets of life. A struggling business, a stagnant career, a faltering marriage... the list goes on. If something is going on that you don't agree with, or find yourself complaining about on a daily basis, don't let it continue. Be the change. Visionary people all across the country are doing this every day. Are you one of them?

A blog about blogging dentists...

Monday, May 3, 2010 by Matt Borud

When most people outside of the tech sector, Gen Y or Millennials think of a blogger, the unfortunate image of a socially awkward Dungeons and Dragons aficionado planted in front of a computer screen with little more than Mountain Dew and Doritos as sustenance is the first thing to come to mind. However in recent years as "New Media" has taken greater hold and many blogs have gone from a journal-like hobby to a legitimate source for breaking news and ultimately revenue generation, the blogger has also become more mainstream and, dare I say, even cool.

At Balihoo, we help businesses better connect with local audiences through more relevant local advertising and marketing ideas. One of our finest clients, as a colleague so eloquently described last week, is Nobel Biocare and their network of dental healthcare providers. Nobel wanted to partner with Balihoo for our stable of marketing software tools and local advertising experience. One question that often comes up when speaking with Nobel practices is "how can my practice better leverage social media and local internet marketing?" Certainly a Facebook page and a Twitter account is a good (and free) place to start but as I've been paying more and more attention to the dental industry, and more specifically the dental implant community, it's becoming clearer and clearer that a practice blog is more imperative than ever.

One of the biggest challenges we run into when developing a local advertising and media buying strategy for a dental specialist is how do we effectively educate the consumer about dental implants and the accompanying procedures. The short answer is it's difficult to do in a 30-second TV spot, radio ad, billboard, or direct mailer. However, an up to date and relevant blog can provide those answers, unique to each practice, in one easy to access forum.

A dental blog gives your practice an opportunity to speak directly to the consumer in a controlled environment and tell them what's unique about your practice, your procedures, and overall experience. A quality and informative blog will ideally drive more traffic to your door by answering qualified consumers questions and spurring them to come in and meet with you.

There are a lot of questions surrounding a dental implant procedure. How much does it cost? Will my insurance cover it? What's the process like? Is it painful? Just as you would take great care to answer these questions with a patient in the chair, your blog will give you the same opportunity to speak to all those consumers looking to learn more before spending time on a consultation in your office. I suggest posting something relevant once a week. Be creative and involve everyone in the practice. Blog about changes or improvements to your office, interesting new procedures, successful patient experiences along with the more standard general information like insurance, FAQ's or procedural expectations.

Local marketing and advertising is all about connecting with nearby consumers in a unique and individualized fashion. It's about relating to their interests, communicating that you care about what's important to them, and treating each relationship with importance of the one-on-one interaction that it is. When looking for new and better local internet marketing ideas, a blog is a great way to make that connection and provide local consumers with the information they need to make an educated decision.

A Client with a Vision

Friday, April 30, 2010 by Brian King

One of Balihoo's clients is a manufacturer of dental implants known as Nobel Biocare. Noble is a pioneer in the industry and is continually looking to build upon its reputation by not only bringing the best products and technology to its customers but by introducing them to a variety of other tools intended to help their customer's succeed.

Nobel Biocare is the only company in the space to bring a dental marketing specialist to the table for their customers (dentists). What they found was that the paradigm for building a practice with sustainable growth was shifting dramatically from the traditional means of fostering a loyal referral base to more of a direct-to-consumer advertising approach.

Enter Balihoo.

Balihoo provides Nobel partner customers with enterprise class local marketing (utilizing local marketing automation) to help them grow their practices beyond the traditional means of fostering a large referral base. The results have been nothing shy of outstanding. Tremendous returns are taking place and excitement is generating as those dental professionals using Nobel products learn of this unique value-add that is exclusive to them.

It's a brilliant model that works and is something that all businesses with a salesforce and customers should consider. Step outside of the box of traditional sales and move to a model of consultative sales. Train your salesforce to move beyond the idea of a 'quick sale'. Get them to act as consultants instead of sales people. Provide them with the tools, training and resources to do this so that, in turn, they can provide the customers with an arsenal of tools that can be used to grow the business for years to come. Let's face it: at the end of the day, if they aren't growing, chances are... you aren't either.

Eco-Friendly is Great Dental Marketing

Friday, April 23, 2010 by Matt Borud

Like New Year resolutions and Festivus, Earth Day is a yearly opportunity to reconfirm our commitment to healthy causes and challenge ourselves to feats of eco strength and sustainability. With many business jumping on the "green" bandwagon, it's important to note all the advances the dental community has made in making practices more friendly to Mother Earth, and what it can do for your practices local marketing efforts.

There have been several significant "green" developments in recent years. Advances like mercury-free fillings and filtration systems, steam-based sterilization tools, and X-rays that use digital imagery technology to minimize toxic developing chemicals are all providing for a much healthier patient experience. This isn't limited to in-practice efforts either. Dental practices have the luxury of a captive audience when a patient is in the chair. Recommendations like turning off the water while you brush - some estimate we're losing 27 billion glasses of clean water EVERY DAY because we're leaving the water running - tend to stick better in the patient's mind than another green plug from elsewhere.

Not only are these changes great for the environment and patient health, they're a great way to advertise locally and differentiate your practice from your competitors. Successful local marketing is much more than fancy ad builder software or co-op advertising programs - its about finding new and different ways to connect with your patients and their interests. Eco friendly products and procedures translate to great local marketing ideas because more and more consumers are making buying decisions with green vendors in mind. Many consumers are looking for service providers who share their values, and when making green and sustainable business decisions, it's important to message them to the consumer through appropriate local marketing and advertising mechanisms and bring them in your door.