One of the most beneficial ways to use this social feature is to feed your facebook posts right into it! The CONNECT widget stays on the left side of the website (known as “fixed”) regardless if someone scrolls up or down. It literally follows them!

Here’s 2 screenshots of it in action:

a) With the CONNECT option (on left side of screen) collapsed:




b) With the CONNECT option (on left side of screen) expanded:

2. Video Bar Testimonial Slider

This is a great way to increase the time spent on your website. Remember, the more time someone spends on your website, the greater the chance of them taking your call to action!

The video testimonials video bar needs to show up properly on mobile devices (iPhone, droid, galaxy, iPad mini, etc) as well as all desktop browsers and devices (mac, PC, laptops, etc).

Here’s an example of a video testimonial bar we built for a cosmetic dental practice in Texas:

3. Pictorial Services Buttons

If you’re using pictorial service buttons, and exposing all of your services in one place visually, then when someone lands on your services page they can be pleasantly surprised to see you offer so many other great services. Guess what that might spark? You guessed it, more work for you! Plus, you have to admit the page just flat out looks awesome…at least we think!

Here’s a services page we created that utilizes the pictorial service buttons feature:

4. Before/After Gallery Options

Get creative! Here’s one of my favorite ways to build a unique smile gallery that really captures the readers’ eye:

5. Show off credentials FAST!!

Want to instill comfort and credibility into a potential patients’ eyes? Ensure them they are on the website of a true professional with outstanding credentials from the biggest and best dental organizations that exist. “Best of” and “Top in class” are the most common I’ve seen. Here’s an example:

I talk more about this concept in: 13 Ways to Attract New Patients TODAY!

Did you know? By having Killer Shark as your outsourced web team, all of these great features and more are added to your website on a monthly basis…and you don’t get buried with bills! That’s one of the many great benefits of hiring Killer Shark as your one-stop dental website team…NOT to be confused as “just another vendor.”

Thanks for checking in…look forward to knowing your thoughts!

Front: (you can actually scan this from your phone)

Back: (you can actually scan this from your phone)

I also mention the QR code in 13 ways to attract new patients, so be sure to read that if you already haven’t. I’m confident you will pickup a few good nuggets to benefit your practice.

How are you currently using the QR code in your practice?

The QR code, or quick reader code, is the solution for tying print and digital together. You may have seen this code in an airport as you boarded your flight or in certain magazines, but either way it’s growing in popularity and it is a fantastic tool for dental practices.

Here’s why:

Your dental practice can now run a print ad in your local magazine or trade magazine and by having the QR code in that ad you can physically have the person scan it, taking them right to a designated landing page on your site. One reason why this is so effective: it can help formulate a positive opinion in the consumers mind almost immediately because that consumer can scan that QR code, check out your smile, and get hungry all in just a couple of seconds!

Another great use of the QR code is to have it on your business card. Now, you can place it on your card and just hope that people scan it and check out your website. But there are more creative ways that you can use it to help people move further along in the consumer purchase cycle. Here’s how I use it on my cards:

Front of card:

Back of card:

Another great example would be to have the person scan the QR code and that would take them directly into your cosmetic dentistry before and after photo page; and on your business card you can even have a tagline there saying, “Scan this code to check out some of our great work!”

The benefits are twofold. First off you might get people to actually buy from you. Second, you are going to stand out to that person, and chances are, they are going to remember you for a long time because your marketing is so unique.

2. Show your credentials on your website BIG TIME!

People want to hire the best dentist they can possibly afford, so show them you are THAT dentist! Here are some examples of websites we created that (we feel) really show off the doctor’s talents:

3. Review your reviews regularly!

You go to the web to buy a specific product. The product has 20 reviews and 7 of them are 1-star and so pathetic that you wonder how the company is in business. Do you buy the product?

Then, you find a company that has 50 reviews and most are very good. You see some scattered 3-stars, but you know in your mind that it’s impossible to please everyone. And you also know that if the company has 100% positive reviews they are probably cheating or paying for them. You buy, right?

How many reviews does your practice have? How many positive? How many negative?

True story: we started marketing a practice that had 9 reviews. All were 1-star except for a 3-star.

I won’t even tell you the rest of the story. But I want you to ponder these questions:

• How do you think their calls were?
• Do you think any consumer in their right mind would look at those reviews and actually go to that practice?

My point is that you need to stay on top of your reviews regularly. In my heart, I feel that the review service we offer at Killer Shark is one of the most crucial services to a dentist, as it alerts your practice every time a new review goes up on any one of the 100+ review websites across the web! If and when a negative review does come your way, you can immediately move to remedy it, which there are ethical ways of doing so that we teach our clients.

4. Commit this to memory:

My practice will be as good as my weakest employee.

News flash: Your dental practice is no different than any other business in the world!

You can’t out-perform the front office team member that just drove away the patient. You can’t out-work or make up for the front office team member that just missed out on signing up a new patient over the phone merely because she is “too busy” doing other things.

5. Encourage “check-ins” at your office.

Yelp, Foursquare or Facebook. Check-ins will help you in the following ways:

1. When someone checks in at your practice, their friends on that particular social network will see that check-in, and may be introduced to your practice for the first time!
2. Activity on your social networks is viewed as a very good thing with Google! The more activity you have, the more useful they see your content. Useful content gets served up in front of less useful content, meaning you stand the chance of higher search engine placement.
3. When someone checks in at your practice they can receive rewards such as a thank you gift. Guess what that increases? It can easily increase the chance of higher patient visit frequency. In that sense it would be like training a dog (please don’t take that literally!); whereas, the more rewards that are at stake, the greater the chance of continued good behavior!

6. Use stellar, not average, photos on your website.

Facebook and Pinterest are two incredibly powerful websites, and they excel at receiving so much traffic, but more importantly the amount of time that traffic spends on these sites! Why so? I feel it’s mostly because of the fascination to look at other peoples’ pictures. Not in a creepy way, either. Its just flat out fun to absorb a storyboard via detailed photography.

At Killer Shark we have all the data in the world to suggest that people stay on websites longer when there is super, high-end customized photography. What does that mean for you? Your practice needs to hire the best photographer you can possibly afford so you can satisfy this simple equation:

If > Great pictures, then > Increased time on site = Greater chance of person taking action (which, in this case is to call your office to schedule treatment), which amounts to more butts in chair (aka increased revenue for the practice!)

You can also think of it like this:

If you walk into Wal-Mart and only spend 1 minute there, you are most likely going to spend $0, or very little. But if you spend 20 minutes, you most likely spend $20 or more! What do you think Wal-Mart spends a huge portion of its R&D budget on? My guess would be to figure out ways to get people to spend as much time in the store as possible. That equation would look like this:

If > Time spent in store, then > Greater chance of spending, which equals MORE REVENUE (for Wal-Mart).

Here are some sample photos taken by Killer Shark’s staff photographer:

7. Use online specials.

Why use them? Increase the chance of a potential new patient calling your office.

How can that be? People are conditioned to search for specials, thanks to the big coupon companies! But, it’s not a bad thing at all–if you play your cards right.

Nobody is saying you have to give your services away. Think value-added. Here are a few ideas to leverage the coupon-searching segment on the web:

Remember the QR code concept from above? How about sending out a flyer or other print piece and linking the code over to your specials page to create incentives for a potential new patient to become a NEW PATIENT!

8. Create a USP.

Not to be confused with boring words just to go through the motions.

The unique selling proposition is a statement that completely separates you from your competition. A good example of a USP: “We are the only dental practice in Phoenix, Arizona to offer XYZ service!”

Dentists often confuse the unique selling proposition with the boring phrases such as, “We offer great customer satisfaction and have only the highest rated customer service.” Those words are all too often misused and the public has gotten smarter and smarter.

We all know that the company promises customer satisfaction. It is so often hit or miss. Huge companies that use customer service as their credo oftentimes have a disgruntled employee working the front counter. You walk to the counter to check in at the hotel, and if that person is having a bad day you automatically get the brunt of it.

So you look at the company and automatically you might stop eyeing the brand. When in fact it was just an isolated instance since that one person mistreated you, but he or she rooted for the whole company.

Now apply that to your dental practice. Think of how many isolated cases may be stopping patients from walking through your door.

9. Sell results NOT services.

Remember you are in the business of creating beautiful, healthy smiles for people. Not in the business of taking advantage of your medical license to act like a used car salesman.

Too often I see negative reviews online about dental practices and the most common bad review says something like this: “I’ve visited XYZ dental practice and it seemed like the biggest sales pitch. Everyone I talked to was trying to sell me on some service or another. And then when the dentist came in to see me, he/she tried selling me on a service that was 20x what I can possibly afford!”

The most effective approach to juggling these 2 balls at the same time is the question: “If cosmetic dentistry was 100% free, what would you change with your smile?” Then, once you understand the patients’ wish list items, you as a dentist and a professional need to learn how to determine the risk of NOT getting that procedure done! Sounds silly!

10. STOP copying your competitors because they might be doing it wrong!

This one happens across all markets with dentists every single day. I see one website copying information from another website, and it turns out that both websites are incorrect!

It’s okay to emulate certain ideas over ideologies but flat-out copying, whether it be pictures or text, can really put you in a sticky position. But there’s a whole other world out there that makes copying content a major no-no. That is the world of Google.

If you are copying content or pictures from one site to another you will become penalized, and with a lot of the new changes in Google you might even decrease the chances of getting your website indexed, which means it will stop showing up in search.

Now, even if you have a website that is not generating a lot of traffic or a lot of sales, imagine (whatever your numbers are) that they turned into zero. Not only do the numbers turn into zero, but you have two months until you can get your website back up and running. That’s a horrible position to be in, all just because somebody wanted to take a shortcut and copy content.

11. Give a 3-tiered incentive option for referrals.

At your dental office if you just give away one huge prize for the person who gets the most amount of referrals, you missed out on the huge percentage of your patients getting involved with the contest. The reason why is because a lot of people will feel that they can only bring one or two referrals to your practice, so they will automatically bring zero.

Yes, that’s right. Zero!

Now imagine having a referral program where you create incentives for every single referral. By that I mean you gave a small gift away for every single referral that walks through the door. Now you would have hundreds of patients sending you one or maybe two referrals.

Would you rather that scenario for having your patients bring in five, six, or seven referrals? When it comes to referrals I would bet that 9 out of 10 times you want a bigger army of people working for you because once in a while a few people from that army will have stellar months and can possibly bring you a bunch of patients!

Prizes that we have seen work: give away a $50 American Express gift card, or the option of a free $100 teeth whitening pen, or a $50 gift card for a really nice steakhouse in your local market.

Having these options gets people much more excited to get involved. It also opens doors for many more referrals because now when people send a referral, chances are they are going to like one of the three different options. Otherwise if you only gave one thing away and the referring patient didn’t like that particular thing, they may not even send you the referral because they are not interested in that gift.

12. STOP sending your best phone closer out to lunch during LUNCH!!

Yes, that’s right. Not a typo. When 90% of the world takes lunch, don’t send your best closer to lunch. It’s the time, typically, when other people call the office.

True story: Dentist calls us, says his phone call conversions are down. After looking over their calltracker data, we quickly noticed that phone calls during the hours of 11:00 am and 1:30 pm were being missed. Can you see where this is going? The short of it… the office was staffed LESS over lunch break, and in fact that’s when most of their calls were coming in.

One person can’t physically handle 3 calls at once. The result? Missed calls, missed opportunities, and missed revenues.

13. Spend money on training the team members who answer the office phone.

You rely on 50% or more of your revenues to come from the person answering the phone. Yet, you let just anyone answer the phone! Nonsense! You have to protect those phone calls like they are your life.

Sadly, I can provide 100 or more examples of making actual phone calls to offices (usually right after a dentist tells me they have high phone call conversion ratios), and asking relatively simple questions about treatment options. Picture perfect opportunities for the desk person to close the deal and get me on the treatment schedule! GONE! Guess where I am going next? Calling the next office!

Example:
John calls your practice with a condition that, as a dentist, you know merits dental implants. Possibly a $20K case. The person answering the phone drops the ball 9 out of 10 times! Don’t believe it? We offer calltracking data with phone recordings so you can listen to each and every phone call! The proof awaits you.

Moral of the story:
The person responsible for closing 80% of the practice’s revenue should be the highest paid and highest trained asset at your practice. Follow this rule, and notice your closing ratios start exploding!

Check out the Killer Shark reactive website design (aka Responsive Website Design) – hot off the press! You can expand it, contract it, or open it up on any platform or browser. And, it changes right in front of your eyes. As you are about to see, the mobile phone version compresses the main nav options into 1 button called MENU. When you open it on an iMac, the nav expands and all the options are available without having to click on MENU.

2. The Consumer Purchase Cycle Makes Calltracking VOID
John, a potential new patient, finds your website from an organic web search. However, chances are he is NOT going to pick up the phone and call immediately. If he connected with your team of doctors and likes what he saw on your website, he is going back out to Google and now typing in “Dr xyw REVIEWS” – and as a result lands on your Angies’ List account. According to Google, this happens 6.5 out of 10 times!! So, your calltracking shows Angie’s List producing all of the phone calls, but the truth is that because your website shows up in organic search results, John was able to find you FIRST by landing on your website. Chalk that phone call up to your Web Team, however, you probably chalk it up to Angie’s List! I guarantee you Angie’s List gets that credit every single time.

3. Either Ignorance to Understand, or Sheer Lack of Understanding How it All Works as ONE.
Certain websites promote users to “Visit our Angie’s List Reviews”. So, you are blatantly sending a consumer away from your website! This isn’t faulty, provided you have a strong presence on Angie’s List. Where it becomes faulty is by thinking Angie’s List should get the credit for that phone call! Can you see where this is going? They work JOINTLY, not separately.

Another example: You encourage people to view your Google Reviews, or even to write a NEW review for your practice. They started off by coming to your website, then because you asked them to leave, they do! Again, not faulty, but consider this next time you look at your calltracking numbers.

Another example: On your website, you ask people to “Like us on Facebook”. They found your website by searching “Phoenix AZ dentist” but then they leave to go and like your Facebook page. From Facebook, they call you to ask a bunch of questions and later end up signing up for treatment. As a dentist, you did your part by assigning a separate calltracking number to Facebook. What you didn’t do is give consideration to the fact that this particular example is happening every single day! It’s this example here that is my #1 reason for packing it in and bundling all your web initiatives together. Plus, with the newest NAP update to Google’s Algorithm it’s getting tougher and tougher to use multiple phone numbers for your practice.

My takeaway: Use the top 12 directories for 2 reasons:
1. Link value
Even if you don’t see calls, remember what we talked about above. Then, couple that with the fact that just by having a link from xyz directory it can be helping your website in organic rankings!
2. They are helping a bigger cause
Your web strategy shouldn’t be segmented. If your web team is crushing it for you, there will be traffic going in and out of your directories and it will be IMPOSSIBLE to track the true source.

Your thoughts?

For example, Patient Steve visits your practice once/year. He spends $300 each year. As a result of a brand new web marketing campaign that Patient Steve ends up seeing, he comes in to take advantage of your 20% off dental implants special. As a result, he visits the practice twice in one calendar year, opposed to once. Instead of just spending $300 that year, he spends $13,300. The revenue per patient for him that year has increased significantly! However, you most likely don’t credit your web team for the success.

Again, I am agreeing with the fact that you should focus on new patients, but when you judge the success of your web company, remember to focus on RPP (revenue per patient) and patient frequency, too. NOT just “Am I getting new patients?” but what is the spending pattern of each patient because of the efforts of my web team?

Many dentists do not realize the numerous advantages to owning and maintaining a dental blog. This is unfortunate, but our web marketing professionals want you to be aware of such advantages.

Here at Killer Shark Marketing, we believe that all dentists should have a blog on their website because dental blogs have the power to:

 

Increase SEO strategy opportunities.

• To improve your rankings in Google searches, you should be implementing an SEO strategy. Blogs present more opportunities to implement SEO initiatives, thereby increasing your web presence.
• Killer Shark Marketing successfully implements SEO strategies to get our clients ranking for hundreds of keywords. When we create blogs, we pay special attention to, not only educating potential patients, but also creating opportunities for SEO.

Educate patients and potential patients.

• Information is power; and providing information to potential patients puts them in the driver’s seat to make decisions about their oral health (and their family’s oral health, too).
• Blogging allows patients to access information in a timely manner, and in a way that he or she can relate to. Communicating with patients and potential patients is very important, and blogging is one outlet to do so.

Increase user engagement for a more positive experience with your website.

• Most dentist’s websites relay service-related details, contact information, and other basic information. This can get boring to some potential patients.
• Blogging gives dentists a way to creatively interact with patients and potential patients. Presenting dental-related information in different formats is one goal that can be achieved through successful, effective blogging.
• A reputable dental web marketing company can achieve this goal for you.

Increase the exposure of your website on the Internet.

• If your dental site is not easily found on the Internet, chances are that you’re losing quality patients who need dental care. We put your website in the hands of potential patients, especially since blogging increases your exposure on the Internet.
• Gaining a full web presence for our clients is one of our goals at Killer Shark, and blogging is one avenue that helps us achieve that goal.
• With the ever-increasing amount of people who perform daily, on-the-go searches using their smartphones, iPhones, and iPads, your web presence is a critical component to attracting more patients.

Build your reputation as a dentist.

• Patients want to choose a reputable dentist. If you have general, bland information on your site, you may not be effectively reaching out to potential patients.
• One way to build your reputation is by communicating with patients and potential patients via a blog. Dental blogging allows the dentist to be cast in a reputable, professional light. Giving patients statistics and useful information they need will help them make their decisions to go ahead with dental treatment.

And last of all, but certainly the most important: Blogging can turn into immediate money. One day (yes, one day and that’s not a typo!) after I wrote this blog post on Reactive Website Design, a client signed up with us immediately after watching the video! In one day, that turned out to be a 700% ROI, but the best part is that it will continue sending in qualified leads for years and years to come!

At Killer Shark Marketing we understand the concerns of running and growing a business, and one thing that you don’t have time for is spending hours on end searching for new leads online!

Imagine this Scenario:

What if you could hire a company that already has a proven local lead generation model in place that you could start taking advantage of today?

What if, in just 2-4 months, you could start seeing a steady stream of high-quality, targeted, exclusive leads coming into your business?

Do you see those companies who have websites everywhere in a Google search, and wonder, “How do they do it?”

At Killer Shark Marketing, We Are Online Lead Generation!

A shark is always moving forward. We are never stagnant, and are always looking for creative, outside-of-the-box ways to leverage the internet in order to generate new lead prospects for our clients.

High-quality website design, search engine optimization, and creative writing for dentists are just a few of the tools that we use in order to get your business to the top of the food chain online.

You know that people are looking for the products or services that you offer, so why not be there to give them exactly what they need? With proper SEO & online lead generation systems in place, your website(s) simply becomes the conduit between a consumer and the inevitable purchase/hiring decision.

Do you want a better way?

We didn’t invent SEO, we didn’t invent lead generation, we didn’t invent internet marketing; we just structured a model that has proven itself effective time and time again in multiple markets all across the country.

We have clients all across the United States, and you do not see that kind of growth (in just 2 years) without a model that is simply superior to everything else on the market. We do lead generation the right way, so contact us today to find out more!

These men are out there for two reasons:

1. To catch a lot of crab

2. To make a lot of money in the process

You see, the key to their success is using the right system to catch as many crab as possible. They don’t have time to waste on fishing methods that will not yield a high catch and bring them a nice paycheck. Instead of using small nets or fishing poles, they use massive crab pods (think of them as massive nets) in order to catch as many crab as possible, and thus make more money.

So, how does crab fishing relate to your dental internet marketing strategy?

At Killer Shark Marketing, we work with dentists around the country, and one thing that we see with 99% of our new clients is that their online marketing campaigns are set up in a way that severely limits the number of crab (in the case of a dental practice, new patients) that they can “catch”.

• The standard dental website marketing campaign revolves around the concept of identifying a small handful of keywords, and trying to optimize a website for those particular keyword phrases. While it sounds great on the surface, it falls short when it comes to real world application.
• We call this “standard SEO methodology” the small net approach. It revolves around identifying a small segment of the overall local market, and then going after that segment full throttle.
• Not only are you limiting yourself with regards to market penetration, but since every other dentist in your market is doing the same thing, the problem is compounded (due to increased levels of competition).

What We Do

We don’t believe in using small nets to do the job when bigger nets work so much better. This is why we aren’t a standard SEO company at all, and never will be. We cast a wide net and focus on your practice’s relationship with the internet, as opposed to getting you on page 1 of Google for a small handful of keyword phrases.

• We prefer to make your dental practice visible for hundreds of proven buyer keyword phrases on Google and around the web, so that you can get more new patients than other dentists in your market.
• We focus on creating an entire dental internet marketing campaign for you that works, not based on what everyone says you should be doing to grow your practice, but because we know what works to get new patients contacting you and coming through your doors on a consistent basis.
• If you were going fishing in a sea filled with the exact kind of fish (or crab) you wanted to catch, wouldn’t you want to cast the biggest net possible, and at the same time do so using a long-term sustainable model that will generate the results you are looking for?

This is what we do, and it is how we have helped multi-million dollar dental practices around the country bring more new patients into their practices via the web.

You’re already busy running your dental practice, so why not let a company with proven credentials run your internet marketing campaigns for you?