Themes discussed in this episode:

• Innovative approaches to digital marketing for dental practices
• The importance of understanding your audience’s perspective
• Leveraging emotional storytelling in marketing
• The power of visual content, specifically videos and smile reveals
• Balancing promotional and organic content for effective engagement

Episode Highlights 

00:08 – Introduction to Rev & Reach: Meet the hosts, Lori Jo Vest and Kylie Metcalfe, as they introduce the podcast and outline their vision of sharing effective digital marketing strategies.

01:06 – Unique marketing niche explored: Lori and Kylie discuss entering the unexpected world of full arch dental implants and how they successfully repositioned marketing strategies.

02:54 – Missteps and learning opportunities: Why traditional medical-focused imagery on social media often fails to resonate with potential patients.

06:12 – Audience-centric marketing: Highlighting the essence of focusing on the benefits of dental procedures to the audience rather than the technical process.
08:52 – The impact of smile reveals: How capturing genuine emotional reactions from patients leads to significant marketing success and an influx of leads.

13:17 – The necessity of promotional spend: Exploring the dynamic between paid promotions and organic content to achieve results in social media marketing.

16:28 – Transitioning from “before-and-after” to “after-before”: The team’s success in transforming traditional marketing content to engage audiences more authentically.

Top Quotes

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Transcript

00:08

LORI: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the first episode of Rev & Reach from PopSpeed Digital Marketing LLC. We are amping up our weekly series and we are going to be talking about ways to get ROI from your digital and social marketing efforts. There are so many ways you can do social.

I’m Lori Jo Vest and I’m here with Kylie Metcalfe.  I’m the founder of PopSpeed Digital Marketing, and Kylie is our first employee, I always say that, and we constantly spend all day, every day online, on social media, creating digital marketing, making things happen for our clients. And so what we want to do with Rev & Reach is share the stories that have helped us get there, tell you the insider secrets and tips on how you can get more results from your social media and digital marketing.

01:06

What we want to talk about in this episode is one specific case study. We have gotten involved in a specific category of marketing, and it’s really interesting, and it’s a little bit bizarre, wouldn’t you say, Kylie? Would you have ever thought that you’d be working on this type of social media?

KYLIE: No, absolutely not. Honestly,  it’s an industry or a niche, I guess, that has never even crossed my mind or crossed my neck of the woods in general. So when it fell into our lap a few years ago for the first time, it was kind of not, I don’t know what the word is, not like shell shock. Like, oh my gosh, what are we doing? But definitely a new way of thinking and very different than any client we’d worked with before.

LORI: Yeah. The actual category is full arch dental implants. And what those are is people who have a dental disease of some sort. Maybe they played hockey. Right? Don’t hockey players get hit? Or they’re elder, you know, they’re older, and they’ve had dentures for a while and they’re just tired of it. They’re called full arch dental implants. And they go—they’re very small, they mimic your regular teeth—but they go on implants that go in your jaw. And we have been working the category now for about two years, I believe.

And it’s been really interesting because we basically took the approach that they were using and turned it on its head, and now we’re getting results. So, Kylie, what did we see? Tell us. This is great story. Tell us what dentists like to see in their social media marketing. We love them.

2:54

KYLIE: It’s so funny. Yeah, we love them. We’ve had a blast working with all of our current and former clients in the space. It’s so funny to me though how across the board, all of our initial entries into these new clients are so… Very consistently what we see when we get a new client in the space on their existing social is very medically focused, imagery really. Whether it’s imagery or videos, you see a lot of before images, you know, before the patients have their new smile.

LORI: Which are sadly really, really icky. They’re really… oh, they’re awful.

KYLIE: Yeah, yeah, right? We see a lot of surgery, like in surgery photos. We see a lot of very technical machinery. We see a lot of X-ray photos. Very medical focused.

03:52

LORI: I’m going to stop you. I’m going to butt in here because there is one story that we have to tell where this doctor had actually taken like six to eight teeth out of the patient’s mouth and then took a picture of those removed teeth with the blood and the gore and put it on TikTok. And we were absolutely mortified because how afraid are most people of the dentist?

KYLIE: Right. 

Why are you afraid of the dentist? Because they might have to do things that will remove teeth and make you bleed. And it’s scary and it’s painful. And they loved it. They loved it. Right?

KYLIE: Yeah. And that’s the thing is when you are so—this is the case not just with this industry, but really in any industry too, that we find ourselves not having to combat in any way, but something just funny that happens across the board—when you are on the inside, the inner workings of a brand, you develop tunnel vision, of course, about what you find interesting, about what it is that you do every day.

If you are a dental surgeon, an oral surgeon, somebody that completes these full arch dental implant procedures, of course you go into this space because you are eager and fascinated by improving the aesthetics and the smiles and the livelihood of your patients. Right? And for dentists that means working with the inner workings of your patient’s mouth. Right? 

And for the rest of us, that’s not that cool. We don’t wanna see it. We’re grossed out by it. It freaks us out. It’s not something—when you lead with that on your social media marketing, in this space—it’s not something that is going to, you know, get somebody that maybe would benefit from full arch dental implants, to really jump at the opportunity. Right? 

Because when you see what the procedure looks like and what it takes to get there front and center while you’re scrolling on social media, your instant reaction is not, ‘Oh my gosh, yeah, I want this guy to pull out my teeth!’ Right? This is… nobody thinks that way. 

06:12

LORI: Nobody wants their teeth pulled out in the first place, so let’s not remind them that that may be required. And so basically when we first came into the space, what we saw was before and afters. Now when you do a slider and it’s a before and after, that means the before is always first.

It was horrifying. And then there’s these implants that go up into the jaw. Great, makes sense. But they would show the X rays and you’d see all these implants going into the jaws. And it was, to me, a little off putting. And I am not afraid of the dentist. I mean I’ve had dental work. Not a big deal. 

But for those who are a little antsy, it was very off putting and it was not something that a lot of us want to see when we’re scrolling through our social feeds. To see what’s Aunt Martha doing, you know, what’s she baking this week? Or you know, where’s my teenage granddaughter’s prom pictures or whatever. And so what we ended up doing was, we really looked at what we always do, which is focusing on the audience and the benefit to the audience. And so Kylie, what is the benefit to the audience for a full arch dental implant when it’s all done and all that bloody stuff is over?

07:29

KYLIE: Exactly. The benefit is a new smile, it’s increased confidence, it’s increased ability to chew in a safe and comfortable way. So not only are you getting a confidence boost with improved aesthetics for your smile and to show off your smile to the whole world and to let everybody know how happy you are, but you can eat your favorite foods again.

And it really- I think we’ve seen somebody say, oh my gosh, I used to love to chew ice and now I get to chew ice again. Because dental implants are what most emulates your, your real natural teeth. So it’s just across the board, it’s an increased quality of life that we see as the thing that patients get and want out of this procedure.

And it’s a pricey procedure. So it’s, you know, to take that leap,  for a patient you really need to see what your ROI is. Right? So as, you know, a marketing agency that’s come into this space, that’s kind of what we like to communicate to our new and prospective clients is that you’re not selling the machinery, you’re not selling X rays. We don’t want to confuse anybody and we certainly don’t want to scare anybody off. What we really want to do is show them what their after looks like and what parts of their life are going to be improved if they go ahead and choose, you know, to move forward with the procedure.

08:52

LORI: Right. And what we found, and this was the coolest thing, is we had one doctor at one practice shoot the smile reveal. When the patient saw their new smile for the very first time. And it was, you know, a kind of midlife male and he was just very soft and sweet. And you could tell he was just a gentle guy. And he’s looking at it and he’s like, oh wow. Oh wow! And then his family walked in behind him and they said, oh, it looks so great. And they had this little tiny, like little short little conversation. It was it 30 seconds, probably not. And it just went nuts. We got so many leads from it. 

So what did we do next? Now that’s what we ask for, repeatedly. And it works and it performs. And we just posted one last week that- Kylie, I just love this because  they sent us their raw video and then we cut it, and this woman, she’s probably in her 50s or 60s and she says, oh my God, I look so great. I look younger now, don’t I? And the doctor says, yes you do. And that was an amazing success story that for sharing on social is authentic and legitimate and proof of concept that these things really do make a lifetime, you know, make this huge difference in people’s lives. So what else have we learned? 

10:22

KYLIE: I think to build on what you just said Lori, too, that’s such a- I mean our favorite, favorite, favorite type of content to get from the practices that we work with are these smile reveals. And for some doctors, or some people in the space are less willing versus more willing to kind of put themselves in front of the camera or ask to film their patients. And we totally understand that. And in one example of one of the firms that we’re working with right now, we have one doctor that’s extremely willing and loves doing it and has those relationships with her patients. And that’s all we need. Right? 

We’re getting a few a month. And it works. And those are what we use for the bulk of our ads to um, generate leads. And it’s a great way of kind of exposing first off, the immediate instant joy that these patients get the first second that they’re seeing their new smile. Right? So you, in that case, are showing your audience, showing your prospective patients, future patients what their after could look like, how happy they’ll be the first time that they see their new teeth, what their life looks like in that moment and beyond. And the relationship that you’re going to continue to build with the doctor that, you know, in a lot of ways helped gift you that. Right? So it’s easy with a doctor that’s willing to do it. It’s quick when you have a patient that, you know, doesn’t mind. And we say it all the time, video is the best type of content across most of the channels right now.

LORI: Video is king. Yeah.

KYLIE: So yeah, exactly. So you really think about how many, you know, how many birds you’re killing with that one stone of focusing on that one really, really high performing content niche. And then as Lori said, we use these for our ads, these smile reveals, for our ads. And that’s something I think in this industry more than most of our clients, we’ve used Meta ads to build our lead gen on social and to, you know, get people added to our email list or really to have those prospects be contacted. Are you really interested? What does this look like? And we see fantastic results using social for legion in this industry.

LORI: Yep, it is, it is really interesting because what you’re asking is for someone to give you both their name, their phone number, their email address. And those, that email address and phone number are things that not a lot of us are willing to give up. So there’s got to be a really good reason for them to do that. 

13:17

Now the other thing that I want to just throw in here as kind of a bonus, we talked about how this one particular niche really discovering, testing and learning what content worked the best is what got us the ROI. But on top of that there was a promotional spend that’s absolutely a necessity on most social channels right now. There’s very few categories that can get away with organic, sales or social promotion. Most brands that we work with, we suggest that they have a significant ad spend. So they do have a significant ad spend, these particular implant clinics. And they also have a lot of patient engagement that allows them to even just take a happy smiling photo of the patient. Because a happy smiley photo with a testimonial overlay or you know, even a flip to the next for the testimonial graphic is going to perform better than anything else.

Those smiling faces. Social media is social. You will hear me say it over and over again. Smiling faces will always perform better than just about any other type of content. So I encourage you to use it. Your happy customers, your happy employees, you. If you’re the leader of the company,  put yourself out there. It’s worth it. It’s what people- you know, people do business with other people because they like to or they want to associate with them.

KYLIE: I think that, I think that you just summed it up so well. Like one thing that we say pretty much no matter the industry or the client sector that we’re speaking in, is that smiling faces work. It’s what everybody wants to see on social. It’s what they go there for. And if you look at our most successful pieces of content for this particular industry for dental implants, it’s these smile reveals which are so raw and so pure and very smiley. 

I mean, at the very least, very smiling. And then, you know, a couple of other things that we really look for are those UGC selfies, um, from, from patients that are still loving their new smile, which again, smiling faces, they’re very authentic, they’re very happy, they’re very joyful. And then with our before and afters, what we do now is after and befores. We lead with our after. Whether it’s a UGC photo that the client’s given us permission or the patient has given us permission to use, or it’s something, you know, more professionally done in the office.

And we put that alongside in a slider where the second slide is the before photo. In any case that you look at it, our best performing content is those smiling faces in their most authentic form. And we’ve taken out all of the machinery and all of the scary dental stuff where, you know, you’re reminded that there are needles that go in your mouth for the whole procedure and, you know, things like that.

So I think it’s so important to note that across the board in your social media marketing efforts that smiling faces are what people go to social media to see. And this is just, in my opinion, the best example of that.

16:28

LORI: Absolutely. And I’ll add one more thing that a lot of dentists in this space like to do is, you know when you go to the dentist and they take that thing and put it in your mouth and it stretches your mouth way out. They like to take before and after pictures of just the teeth, like just floating and it’s just, ooh, it’s so scary. Oh God. And so we try to at all costs- I don’t think we have any clients in that space right now that do that anymore, which is delightful. We don’t have any that do that anymore, so.

KYLIE: We’ve talked them all out of it. We’ve had plenty that want to do it and kind of hold on to it for a little bit, but we’ve got- we’ve managed to get everybody out of it. And I think that, I think that the results that our strategy gets in this space is really- we have the proof to back it up that it works. 

LORI: Absolutely. Absolutely. So take our advice. If you’re a full arch dental implant clinic, please, no more before and afters. After befores, and no more of those floating mouths. Because it’s really, it’s just not what your consumer is looking for. Always look for what your consumer is looking for. Not what you want to tell them, but what do they want to know. Right? 

17:37

So we’ll leave you with that and we’ll see you next week on Rev & Reach on YouTube. If you’re watching us on YouTube, please hit the subscribe button, give us a like. And if you’re listening on Spotify or any of the other podcast platforms, please do the same. Follow us. Hit that star button, give us a review and we’ll see you next week.