Branding

Storytelling & Getting Your Team on Board

by Dr. Jessica Emery | Aug 9, 2019 | Branding, Teambuilding

A big part of both branding and marketing is storytelling. Your practice has a unique story that makes it different from the dental practice three blocks over. You would never say that Coca-Cola and Pepsi are the same or Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts, right?

Because they tell such specific stories about their brands, the second you see that trademark red from a Coke can or walk past a Starbucks and get a whiff of that signature smell, you just know what brand you’re being exposed to.

Storytelling goes beyond just the colors you choose for your logo. It goes beyond a mission statement. The stories you tell contain your why, your culture, and your values.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. With a little bit of work upfront, you can get your team on board and pretty soon, everyone will be working together to tell the story of your practice. A strong story equals a strong brand, and a strong brand creates excited, loyal patients.

Let’s Get Started!

If you’ve never intentionally created stories for your brand, the first thing you’ll want to do is determine what it is your practice stands for.

When you think of TOMS shoes, you probably think of the “one for one” program they have. You probably can guess what Ben & Jerry’s values even without reading the “values” page on their website. Think about the things your practice holds dear. It doesn’t have to be about charity or politics or anything like that. Start by thinking about these four questions:

Your Purpose: Why do you exist in your community?
Your Vision: What does the future of your brand look like?
Your Mission: How are you going to create that future?
Your Values: Who are you and what do you hold in esteem?

Time to Bring in the Team!

Once you have given these questions some serious thought, you’re ready to pull in your team. Schedule a fun meeting (maybe something in the afternoon, when everyone is a little more creative and awake) and share your thoughts with the team.

Ask for their input. What do they honestly think about the purpose, vision, mission, and values of the practice? Allow them to speak freely without fear. This is where real growth comes from, and if your team feels heard, they’ll be MUCH more invested in the story of your practice.

At the end of the meeting, be sure to thank everyone for their feedback and ask them to each come up with one creative way to tell the story of your brand to current and future patients. Give them a due date, maybe at a follow-up meeting a week later.

Create Some Content

Now that your team is bringing their great ideas to the table, it’s time to create some content! Create videos of your team members sharing their own story, the story of the practice, or the story of a patient that experienced your values first-hand.

Create some social media content that specifically addresses your vision, mission, values, and purpose. Incorporate the keywords you brainstormed into your captions. Write a blog post centered around your brand’s story and share it on social media and in an email to your current and perspective patients.

When you involve your team and create a story about your practice that speaks on the larger purpose around the work you do, it will be easy to attract the right people to your practice. Make sure your story is clear, simple, and honest. You’ll be amazed at what this intentional act can do for your brand!

Promoting Your Dental Practice is as Easy as 1-2-3

by Dr. Jessica Emery | Jul 17, 2019 | Branding, instagram, Social Media

Promoting your dental practice on social media is not nearly as simple as it seems, is it? Sure, it’s easy for an artisan ice cream shop to get all the likes and comments in the world but a dentist? That’s a whole other story. It’s hard to get people excited about taking care of their teeth! In a world full of beautiful images and swoon-worthy content, is there any room for dentistry to shine? You bet there is!

If you have the right tools and tips, dental marketing is just as easy as marketing a delicious new ice cream flavor. Seriously! It’s something we know quite a bit about, so let’s dive into the three easy steps to promote your dental practice and find new patients!

#1 – Great Imagery

Hastily shot iPhone photos just don’t cut it on social media, especially on Instagram! Don’t panic, though. This doesn’t mean you have to hire a professional photographer to shoot your social media photos. Quality styled stock photography is an inexpensive way to get stunning images for a very reasonable price.

Styled stock photography allows you to access a large number of images in your preferred style and brand colors. Often, you will even find that the images are categorized by theme, tone, subject matter, and/or season. This makes it very easy to consistently post on your social media channels, attract people who love to look at beautiful images (basically, everyone) and make dentistry look appealing!

In case you didn’t know, we have a sister site that offers styled stock photography JUST for dentists! Head to SoireeStock.com to find out more!

#2 – Killer Captions

Whether you’re posting on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, your photo needs a compelling caption! But, you don’t want every single post to be the same “call us to set up an appointment” message. People will get bored pretty quickly! If you think about the brands you like to follow on social media, you’ll probably notice that they offer a lot more value in their posts beyond just their sales copy.

Mix things up by using fun song lyrics, quotes you like, ask questions, or share something more personal about yourself or your team. Remember, it’s social media. Keep things fun, and always remember: your followers would rather you post what’s on your mind instead of some boring thing a corporate marketing guru would suggest you post.

If caption writing REALLY isn’t your thing, don’t worry! We can help! The monthly bundles we offer over at SoireeStock.com include 30 caption templates that you can fill in (kind of like mad libs) to create custom captions that will get people talking!

#3 – Relevant Hashtags

Hashtag research can take quite a bit of time and effort. Because of this fact, it can be tempting to just add some common ones like #teeth and #smile to your post, but these are WAY too popular to be effective on their own. Because so many posts use these hashtags, your post will be buried immediately after you hit the publish button. Someone searching for those specific hashtags probably will never see your post.

The best strategy for hashtagging is to mix some more niche hashtags with some hashtags that are more broad. All hashtags need to be relevant to the work you do, or you’re not going to be successful at attracting the people who will ultimately become patients and brand ambassadors.

Our re-launched monthly bundles over at Soiree Stock include 30 targeted hashtag sets that you can copy and paste into your posts. Each set includes both niche and popular hashtags, and every hashtag relates to the caption and dental industry as a whole. This is a HUGE time-saver when it comes to promoting your dental practice!

Curious about using our social media bundles to make your dental marketing a breeze? We offer a free week over at SoireeStock.com. Just scroll all the way down to the bottom of the homepage!

Do Dentists Need a Personal Brand to Succeed?

by Dr. Jessica Emery | Jul 1, 2019 | Branding

According to Wikipedia, personal branding is, “the practice of marketing people and their careers as brands.” You probably know many people with personal brands: Seth Godin, Kylie Jenner, and of course, Oprah Winfrey.

Sometimes we get asked by dentists whether they need a personal brand in order to succeed. For most dentists, the answer to that question is going to be no, however there are always a few exceptions to any rule. If you’re running a more traditional dental practice (even if it’s a boutique or spa-like dental practice) you probably don’t need a personal brand, you just need to inject more of your personality into the brand you’re already building!

Making Your Brand More Personal

What do we mean by this? Your practice doesn’t have to become Dr. Jane Doe’s Dental Practice. It can still be ABC Dental Practice, but Dr. Jane Doe can (and should) play a more prominent role in the brand. After all, people connect with people, not businesses. The more you put your face on your website, social media feeds, and advertisements, the more people are going to connect with who and want to spend time with you.

This is quite different from building a personal brand. At the end of the day, you are still running a dental practice, and your messaging should all be centered around how your business helps people. Your marketing should still prominently feature lots of photos of your patients, your team, your office, and your work. But, it should also feature you.

Who Needs a Personal Brand?

Personal branding works for people who want to turn their name into a business “umbrella” with many different projects underneath it. For example, Oprah has a brand that is 100% her image. Underneath that brand umbrella she has a magazine, a television show, books, speaking engagements, etc. Rather than brand each project as its own thing, everything is branded as Oprah. This frees her up to do anything she wants in the future, and it makes all her projects seem super cohesive.

As a dentist, you want your business to become a household name, but you’re focusing on building your own name to that same degree. You may see some dentists do this, for example, celebrity dentists in places like LA or NYC. There are also some dentists who are educators or coaches, and they work with other dentists. For them, building a personal brand makes sense. However, if you’re running a practice and your main goal is to attract more patients, your focus will be on that and not so much on building a personal brand.

Where Should You Focus?

Branding is tough, and it’s just one more thing that you have to do on top of the VERY hard work you do day in and day out to keep your practice humming along. The best way to build your practice’s brand is to find a way to consistently speak to your ideal patients. Social media is perfect for this.

Invest in great photography of your practice, your team, and of course, yourself. Then, make sure to post everyday or at least three times a week and actually engage with your followers. Doing this will show that you care and that you are *the* place to be and the next time someone needs a new dentist, guess who they’ll think of? Yep, they’ll think of you!

If you need new headshots or want to do a full branded photoshoot, shoot us a message and let’s chat! We’d love to get you everything you need to make branding your practice a breeze.

Make Your Dental Blog Look Polished With Styled Stock Photography

by Dr. Jessica Emery | Jun 18, 2019 | Branding, Photography, Social Media

Blogging is a big part of dental marketing, but most dentists we talk to either haven’t blogged in a while, or they only post something when they think of it, usually quickly and without too much thought. However, a blog is a necessity when it comes to dental marketing, especially for SEO (you know, showing up high in the search results when someone searches “dentist near me” or something like that). Creating quality, consistent content that people will click on and share is super important.

Having a great dental blog not only attracts new potential patients to your website, but it can also shine a spotlight on your services. Blogs help build an immense amount of trust in you and the work you do. The more people find what they’re looking for on your blog, the more likely they’ll be to turn to you when they need help down the road or are ready to switch dentists.

Evergreen Content

One of the greatest things about a dental blog is how long-lasting they are. Once you hit post, those posts live in the world forever unless for some reason you decide to take them down. There’s no algorithm that will hide your blog posts or prevent people from finding them, and you can re-purpose them in so many ways: you can email them, post them on social media, turn them into an ebook… the possibilities are endless!

However, this also means you should be putting a lot of thought into not only the words you use, but also the imagery. According to social media marketing strategist Jeff Bullas, articles that contain images get 94% more total views. This is a staggering number, and it should be enough to convince even the biggest skeptic of the importance of including images in your blog posts!

Image Quality Matters

So, we all agree that blog imagery is important, but image quality is also crucial. Hastily shot iPhone photos just aren’t going to cut it. When you use grainy or low-res photos, it no longer matters how much research and thought went into writing your dental blog. That content isn’t going to be shared as much or even clicked on as often because of the poor imagery.

Don’t panic, though. This doesn’t mean you have to be a professional photographer or have super expensive equipment to have loyal followers or content that gets lots of shares and engagement. Many (and I mean many) business owners and bloggers turn to styled stock photography when they create their blog posts… and you can too!

Why Styled Stock Photography?

When we say styled stock photography, we’re not talking about your run-of-the-mill, often overly cheesy stock photography. You want to stay away from this kind of unnatural imagery, because you run the risk of devaluing all the hard work you put into researching and writing your blog post. That’s no good!

When you choose to use styled stock photography for your dental blog, you have so much more consistency and control over not only the tone of the post, but of your entire blog and image. Just like the rest of your branding, you want your blog to be fairly uniform. You don’t want images full of bright, neon colors in one blog, and then dark, muted tones on the next. When you go to share your blog posts on your social media feeds, everything will end up looking really disjointed.

Soiree Stock for Your Dental Blog!

Our sister company, Soiree Stock, was made with dentists in mind. Our styled stock photography allows you to find a large number of images in your preferred style. Often, you will even find that the images are categorized by theme, color, tone, and/or season. This makes it very easy to match the photography style to your brand, creating a cohesive look across all your platforms.

We have libraries full of dental-themed images that will work no matter what topic you’re covering in your blog post. We’d love for you to try it out for a month and see how much it changes your blogging process. Don’t stop there, though! These images are perfect for social media. Download as many as you want (you get unlimited downloads with your membership) and save them to your camera roll so you always have the perfect photo to post on social. It’s a much smaller investment than hiring an agency or even a contractor to do your social media. We think you’ll love how much easier it makes things, and how much time it saves you!

What Your Brand Colors Say About Your Dental Practice

by Dr. Jessica Emery | May 28, 2019 | Branding

How did you pick the colors in your logo, on your website, and in your signage? Was it just an instinct you had? Maybe you chose your favorite colors, or perhaps you even hired an agency to do your dental branding for you. Either way, your brand colors are communicating something to your patients and potential patients, whether you realize it or not. Most likely, they don’t even realize it… at least not consciously.

What are we talking about? Color psychology studies how colors can relate to human behavior. The theory is that every color has a meaning. Whether or not this is true can be argued, but it is kind of fun to explore what the various colors “mean” or communicate to people.

Let’s go through some of them and you can see what your brand colors may or may not be saying about your dental practice:

Blue

Blue often communicates peace, calm, and reliability. It’s also the most common answer when you ask people what their favorite color is! So many brands use blue because it’s a trustworthy color. Companies like the Gap, OralB, Facebook, and Ford all use blue prominently in their branding.

Yellow

Yellow is the color of sunshine. It’s a happy, optimistic color for many people, but in large doses, it can be overwhelming. It can also be difficult to read. Even though yellow is seen as a very positive color, it can agitate some people, so you want to be careful. Sprinkle it in but maybe don’t infuse too much of it in your branding.

Green

Green is great for brands that have to do with nature or money. It also brings up feelings of growth, good luck, fertility, and health. A lot of banks use green, as well as many health and fitness brands. Green is thought to be calming, which is why performers will sit in a green room before going on stage.

Red

Red captures people’s attention and is often associated with strong emotions like excitement, passion, energy, and even danger. The color red also has been rumored to encourage appetite, which is why you’ll see it used in fast food branding.

Orange

Orange is a fun color that communicates creativity and adventure. It’s a great option if you want to grab people’s attention, which is why you’ll see it used on street signs and in construction areas. Brands like Gatorade and The Home Depot use orange, possibly because it’s a more high energy color.

Purple

Purple is the color of royalty. It’s often seen as a magical, luxurious, and even powerful color. It’s often used to indicate when something is a premium product or service. It’s not a very common brand color because it’s the shortest frequency of wavelengths that is visible to the human eye, but brands like Hallmark and Cadbury utilize it prominently.

So, do you think there’s anything to color psychology? Do you think your colors are accurately representing your dental practice? We’d love to hear what you think! Join the conversation over on the Dental Soiree Instagram feed or our Facebook page.

What Does Starbucks Have to Do with Your Dental Marketing Strategy?

by Dr. Jessica Emery | Apr 27, 2019 | Branding

Who doesn’t love Starbucks? We are obsessed with their coffee, and so is everyone else on earth! USA Today reports that 4 million coffee drinks are ordered daily, and 60 million customers are served each week. On average, we visit the chain six times a month, though 20% of us are super loyal, and visit 16 times a month… you know who you are. 😉

Okay, so it’s clear we are all addicted to Starbucks. But what does that have to do with a dental marketing strategy? Well, because there’s a reason millions of us are paying a premium price for, well, bean water. Does Starbucks have better coffee than other coffee shops? Not necessarily. It’s the reputation they’ve build, the brand they’ve created, and the marketing they employ.

The Power of a Strong Brand

When you have a strong brand with a great reputation, people want to be associated with it. That’s step one, though it is a HUGE step that can take years and years to achieve. Once you have that captive, loyal audience, marketing becomes so much easier. You can create products, promotions, or messaging that appeals to your target customer (who you know, because they’ve been loyal to you for so long).

Often, that’s all it takes. If your idea is good and your content hits the mark, marketing is fairly easy. Of course, we all want to get to that point. Just like anything that’s difficult and time-intensive, it’s easiest to break the big goal down into little actionable steps.

The Four Elements of the Starbucks Experience

Circling back to Starbucks again (because as we said, we’re a tad addicted), they have found a way to create an experience we’re willing to go through some unpleasantness to experience. We’re willing to wait 5-10 minutes for our drink, and pay quite a bit more than McDonald’s or even Panera for our coffee. Why is that? Well, there are four elements that make the Starbucks experience amazing for customers:

Quality – Starbucks uses high-quality coffee beans and equipment so they can provide a consistent product time and time again.

Service – The baristas go through extensive training to be able to make everything on the menu and serve hundreds of customers an hour with a smile on their face!

Ambiance – There’s nothing like sitting in a Starbucks when you have some time to read or even to get some work done away from the office. It’s dimly lit, smells amazing, and has great decor. This isn’t your typical fast food lobby with flourescent lighting and vinyl booths.

Culture – People want to align themselves with the Starbucks culture, because they know their audience and their values. Whether it’s coffee trends, organic, sustainable ingredients, or environmental issues, the culture at Starbucks can sometimes be bigger than the product itself.

As a dental professional, you may find something to take away from the success of Starbucks. If people are willing to pay more and wait longer for coffee from a specific chain, why wouldn’t they go out of their way to visit one dentist over another, if that dentist had created a culture and a brand that resonated with them?

If you want to discuss how to go about creating a brand, or re-branding your practice to be more thoughtful and intentional, we’re your people! We have several different packages, and one of them is sure to fit your needs. You can reach us by filling out this form, and a member of our team will reach out. There’s never any obligation to chat, and hopefully we can help you find more clarity around building your dental brand!