19 October 2022

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Dr. Chris Phelps: Marketing agencies have failed us Part 3

Dentistry expert talks about his new book, marketing, lost opportunities

Mary Guiden

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Dr. Chris Phelps recently sat down with Dentistry33 and discussed his new book, “The Complete Book on Dental Marketing,” now available through Edra Publishing. In the final part of the interview, Phelps talks about his success with parasite marketing and how to be an authority on dental issues in your community. 

If you missed the previous articles, Phelps discussed marketing as a series of small investments in part 2 of the interview. In the first part of the interview, he described the audiences he aims to reach with this new book. He also shared advice for dentists who have an entrepreneurial spirit.   

Q: What is one aspect of marketing from a dentist’s perspective that might surprise people?

A: Parasite marketing is a fun tactic. It’s a benefit for someone and not necessarily a benefit for you. 

An example would be referrals to specialist. Most of the time, we send patients to a specialist, and nothing comes back. These doctors do not typically send us new patients. 

I was doing sedation dentistry in my practice, and I found a list of 25 practices in my area that were not doing offering general dentistry under sedation. So, I approached them and created my own referral pad and system. I go through the details in my book on how we did this. 

I got two $17,000 patients in the first week when I started getting referrals from my colleagues. I stopped counting and I thought: Sometimes being a parasite is not a terrible thing. 

If it’s something nobody else wants to do and you offer that service, you’d be surprised how many dentists have a patient like that and don’t where to send them. That’s different than what you expect a general dentist to do from a marketing standpoint. 

Something that everyone should tap into is the use of technology. Be the authority. The rise of Facebook and these social communities, that’s what people do in a time of uncertainty. They look for real authorities, people to do them what to do. They don’t have time to be an expert in everything. If the experts don’t have an opinion or can’t come to consensus, they look to the crowd, they look to the masses for what they’re up to. If the masses are doing something different, there’s a pull for them to go in that direction. 

Facebook has now created an entire platform to know exactly what the masses are up to every second of the day. It’s unheralded in human history. One of the most popular ones today besides Facebook is Nextdoor, a nationwide neighborhood community platform. It’s neighbors talking to each other about what’s going on: the good, the bad and the ugly, who are you using for this, and what’s working out? 

When I got on Nextdoor, I would scroll once a day looking for dental questions. People were asking each other questions and they needed an expert. I saw the answers and sometimes people were just guessing to answer a question. 

I decided to get on there and give people useful content, blog and answer their questions. I wasn’t trying to sell them, and I didn’t say anything about my practice. But of course, they can see my name – Dr. Chris Phelps — and if they have Google, they can find me. 

I can’t diagnose anything, and I tell them that, but I tell them based on what I hear, here’s what it could be. I recommend you get this checked out and here’s why. 

I found out when I was educating and not selling, suddenly everyone in the community started looking to me as their expert. I started getting tagged when people posted dental questions. 

If I would ask a new patient: how did you hear about us, they’d say: I saw your comments on Nextdoor. I was appreciative of your advice, and you obviously know what you’re talking about, so that’s why I’m here. 

It's a simple thing you can do: Be the authority in your community. When you find opportunities to really give people educational information or content, don’t shy away from it, be the first to do it. 

Q: What else would you like to share?

A: We spent a lot of time talking about marketing and attracting new patients. But I can’t stress enough — the new book is not light on content — that dentists need to also consider the other side of the coin, lost opportunities. Are we answering the phones, are we making appointments and are the patients showing up for appointments?

Going back to that example when I was spending $36,000 a month on marketing, the reason that happened was because we did not answer 254 new patient calls every month. These calls came in from marketing sources. I had paid for the phone to ring and 254 times, we couldn’t pick it up. Of course, the prospective patients don’t leave a message, they’re on to the next doctor. If we did pick up the phone, we only made an appointment 24% of the time, with a 17% no-show rate. 

It’s hard to swallow the facts. It made me sick to see those numbers. But once I got past that, I turned it into: This is a problem I can solve.

We had to look at getting these leads in the door and how we were communicating with them. 

If they don’t come back for treatment, we have to pay more in marketing to replace them to hit our financial and practice goals. At the same time, even if we communicate with them properly and influence them, attrition is the silent killer. 

I talk with doctors all the time who say: I’m getting 25 to 30 new patients a month, but we didn’t grow this year. We have the same numbers if not a little less. What’s going on?

Whenever I hear that, I can tell them automatically that they’re losing more people than they’re bringing in. 

The book is a deep dive in the whole cycle: attraction, attendance, acceptance, attrition and what do you do in times of apprehension. If we drop the ball in any of those areas, it’s going to cost us more money in marketing to make up for the inefficiency.