Dental Soiree

Happy Holidays from the Dental Soiree Team!

by Dr. Jessica Emery | Dec 24, 2018 | Dental Soiree

Another year is in the books – we made it! We hope the year brought you so much happiness and growth, and that you’re walking away from 2018 with lots of perspective! The Dental Soiree team had a blast this year creating fun, engaging content for our clients and we hope you had a good time watching us do it! We’re so lucky to be able to play all day! What a fun job!

Looking Back on 2018

As you look back on the past year, we hope you had lots of successes and bright moments as you worked hard to grow your practice. It can sometimes feel like a slow process, but it’s the little wins and nuggets of knowledge that you pick up that lead to a big win later on!

Did you set goals for yourself at the beginning of the year? Take some time after the holidays to sit and reflect on those goals. Rather than simply checking to see whether you met the goals you set, consider the experiences and lessons you learned as you worked toward your goals. These will service you for a long time… as long as you take some time to reflect and honor them.

Now Start Looking Ahead

Similarly, after you spend some time thinking about what you wanted to accomplish for 2018, you’ll want to think of some marketing goals for your practice for 2019. Make sure they’re attainable, yet motivating. Additionally, make sure they’re specific so you can easily tell if you’ve met your goal at the end of next year. For example, you might want to increase your new patients by 15% in 2019. This is easy to measure and you can get really creative coming up with lots of new ways to reach your goal.

While we feel goal-setting is super important, we feel rest is even more important. The end of the year is usually a slower time for those of us in the dental industry, which means we can finally take a breath and maybe even a few days off. Don’t feel guilty about doing it – these kind things we do for ourselves are both necessary and critical to our success!

From our team to yours, we hope you have a safe and happy holiday season and that you take some time to reflect on the past and dream about the future. The Dental Soiree team will be here if you need some guidance on setting goals for the new year. We would love to help! You can reach us anytime by filling out this short form.

How a Dental Marketing Agency Can Change Everything

by Dr. Jessica Emery | Dec 3, 2018 | Branding, Dental Soiree

When it comes to hiring an agency to help with your digital marketing, you have a few choices. You can hire a local marketing agency, a digital marketing agency, or a dental marketing agency. What is a dental marketing agency? At Dental Soiree, we’re proud to call ourselves dental marketers and we using our first-hand knowledge of the dental industry to come up with creative content for your social media feeds!

A talented dental marketing agency can do wonders for your practice. They know exactly what it takes to stand out from the crowd and make patients (and future potential patients) eager to come through your doors — not always an easy thing to do considering how most people feel about visiting the dentist!

What Does a Dental Marketing Agency Do?

Dental marketing agencies offer a range of services, but for the most part, they will help you create and execute an online marketing strategy. They may help with content creation (to varying extents) and they may also handle posting content and engaging with followers. Some dental marketing agencies work more on strategy and provide you with a marketing plan and content calendar so you can execute it on your own.

We love creating content, especially creative branded photoshoots! We will storyboard, source props and locations, and tailor the photo session for your brand. You’ll end up with dozens and dozens of unique photos you can use on your social media feeds, website, and all your marketing assets to create a cohesive and fun brand!

Can’t I Just DIY My Dental Marketing?

Of course! There are so many resources out there when it comes to mastering digital marketing for your practice. However, most dental professionals we talk to are beyond busy and unfortunately, their marketing strategy often ends up on the back burner. It’s great to be busy, and it’s tempting to think that marketing doesn’t matter during these busy times — after all, you’re all booked up, right?

However, once those patients are all taken care of, you want to make sure you have more ready to go! That means a continuous marketing strategy, even during your busy times. A lot of dentists prefer to rely on a dental marketing agency to keep things running smoothly so they can focus on what they do best. If you have a team that can help, a dental marketing agency can be a great resource to get everything set up and on track so your team knows exactly what to do so you don’t spend money or time on things that won’t help you reach your goals.

The team here at Dental Soiree will help your dental practice transform and become everything you dreamed it could be. We can help you elevate your brand by showcasing what you do differently and by highlighting your fun personality with branded photoshoots and social strategies that stand out! Contact us to learn more about our services!

These TED Talks Will Inspire Your Dental Marketing

by Kari Perlewitz | Oct 8, 2018 | Dental Soiree, Productivity, Social Media

Marketing a dental practice is not easy. It’s not like you’re running a candy shop or an amusement park. Some people are afraid of the dentist, and for those that aren’t, it’s still not the first place they choose to visit. However, we know that in order to be profitable, we have to get people excited about coming to the dentist — and not just any dentist! We have to make our own dental practice seem the most fun, the most comfortable, and the friendliest place they could choose. That’s where good dental marketing comes in.

If you’re feeling stuck or need a little inspiration when it comes to your dental marketing strategy, check out these TED Talks:

The Little Risks You Can Take to Increase Your Luck

In this TED Talk, educator Tina Seelig shares three (easy) ways we can increase our luck in business. She says, “luck is rarely a lightning strike, isolated and dramatic — it’s much more like the wind, blowing constantly. Catching more of it is easy but not obvious.”

Growing your dental practice is all about taking calculated risks and not all risks are created equal. This talk may change the entire way you look at your professional career.

The Happy Secret to Better Work

Are you happy? It’s kind of a loaded question, but Shawn Achor presents his argument in this TED Talk that being truly happy leads us to do better, more productive work. He says, “75% of your job successes are predicted by your optimism levels, your social support, and your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of as a threat.”

So, can positive psychology help you grow your dental practice? According to Shawn, absolutely it can! Added bonus? He’s surprisingly funny for a researcher 😉

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

This TED Talk by Angela Lee Duckworth is one of the most popular of all time, and it’s not surprising once you sit down and watch it. In her speech, she talks about why IQ isn’t the only thing separating those of us who are successful and those of us who tend to struggle.

Grit is the key factor when it comes to defining who is the most successful. What is grit? It’s passion and perseverance for long-term goals. When it comes to marketing, this is important because some things take a long time and a lot of consistency before you see results. Do you have what it takes to see your goals through even when it takes a long time?

Good dental marketing comes down to sharing thoughts, ideas, and knowledge. Everything you put out into the world should have the goal of connecting with your current and future patients; you want them to see you as someone they can trust and turn to for help. Have these talks inspired you? If you have questions about marketing your practice, please feel free to contact the Dental Soiree team!

Three Apps That Will Help You Grow Your Dental Practice

by Kari Perlewitz | Oct 1, 2018 | Dental Soiree, Productivity, Technology

If you’re anything like the team here at Dental Soiree, you spend a good amount of time on your phone! There’s no way around it. These things run our lives… everything from our calendar to our banking account to our travel itinerary is on our smartphones. Being connected is important not just for staying in touch and on top of our busy lives. It’s also a great tool to help you grow your dental practice.

If you leverage the tech that’s already at your fingertips, you can spend less time trying to accomplish #allthethings and more time doing the few things that really are going to make a difference. At the beginning of 2018, there were 3.8 million apps in the Google Play store and 2 million apps in Apple’s app store. Rather than be overwhelmed by all these options, we encourage you to download the three apps we outline below for the ultimate productivity boost.

Evernote

If you can only download one app, you should definitely choose Evernote! If you’re like me, your mind is running a mile a minute and ideas are always flowing. Evernote is the best way to capture your lightning when it strikes. This app keeps all your thoughts in an organized, easily searchable platform.

The best features of Evernote come in the labeling and categorizing aspects. You can easily keep your blog ideas separate from your dinner party planning notes or your ongoing list of hot new places for drinks. Get started with Evernote for free and upgrade to Pro or Premium based on your needs.

Canva

Now that you’ve captured all your ideas with Evernote, it’s time to make them POP! Of course, we’re passionate about attention-grabbing images, and Canva makes it easy to create your own with simple drag-and-drop functionality. You can use your Canva graphics on social media, and even in your freebies, eBooks, or emails. It can be overwhelming at first, but start small and you’ll get the hang of it quickly.

Smart, stylish templates take the guesswork out of creating the perfect post, and with the numerous fonts available, you can choose the perfect look for your brand. You may be using Canva to increase your efficiency, but the true upside is not sacrificing style. All the handy options they provide allows you to remain consistent in content and message. I call that a huge win!

Buffer

Being consistently present on social media and in your potential patient’s feeds is vitally important. It can be time consuming, though. Buffer is a great option to manage all your social media accounts from one site. See who is locked on your thread, determine what type of posts get your target audience excited, and watch your followers grow.

When you want to show up online as an ever-present social media guru, Buffer is the app you need. You can schedule content so you’re showing up even when you’re spending time with your family or at the gym. Does your most recent blog post need some attention? Post it to all your accounts at once in Buffer!

At the end of the day, working to grow your dental practice and make sure it’s successful should be your number one goal. These apps help streamline and improve your efficiency so you can grow your dental practice without sacrificing your sanity.

One Super Fun Strategy to Find New Dental Patients

by Kari Perlewitz | Sep 17, 2018 | Dental Soiree, How To's, instagram, Social Media

Does it feel like you’re always trying to come up with new ways to attract new patients to your practice? It isn’t easy to convince someone to try a new dentist, and just waiting for them to come to you is out of the question. So how do you find new dental patients?

You’re already on social media, posting about your services, your team, and your passions. This is great, but in order to attract NEW people to your social feeds (people that aren’t already following you) it’s going to take a little creativity.

We have one super fun strategy that you can try to not only connect with your followers in a more meaningful way, but also attract new followers… people that will hopefully turn into new patients for your practice!

Go Live with a Scheduled Q&A Session

Chances are, you have a Facebook or Instagram page for your network marketing business, but when’s the last time you hit that “live” button and connected with your followers in real time? If the answer is “never” or “I can’t remember the last time I did that” it’s about time you scheduled a live Q&A session!

I know it can be intimidating to hit that “live” button — especially at first — but it is so important to show up on your social media pages and interact in real time with the people that have chosen to follow you. These are your current patients, potential future patients, and your true supporters. They’ll be the ones to tell others about what you’re up to and encourage people to follow along, so you definitely need to nurture this audience! Setting aside a half an hour to answer their questions and really connect is a great way to do it.

Leading Up to Going Live

In order for your Q&A to be successful, you’ll want to do a little pre-planning. Let people know you’ll be doing a live stream by posting about it a few days before hand… and again a day before and again the day of. Trust me, people will appreciate the reminders!

Ask your followers to leave their questions in the comments section of your posts so you have time to prepare. Encourage them to tag anyone who has been looking for a new dentist. This is a great way to grow your following and hopefully find new dental patients for your practice!

When the time comes to do your live Q&A, just be authentic and don’t turn it into a “sales pitch” for your practice. People are so quickly turned off anything that sounds salesy. Instead, be likable, engaging, and helpful. This will keep them coming back to your Instagram (and Facebook) posts, Stories, and live videos in the future.

Be sure to thank everyone for coming, answer questions as they come in during the live stream, and save your video so people who weren’t able to attend live can view it. On Instagram, you can save it as a story, and it can be viewed for 24 hours afterward. Make sure you let people know it’s there. Do a “thank you” post and/or story and let people know they can still watch it if they missed out. The more hype you build around it, the more excited people will be, and they’ll feel like they can’t NOT tune in.

Going live on Instagram or Facebook can be scary the first few times you do it, but once you get over that initial nervousness, it’s no big deal! Watch our Instagram page because in the coming weeks, we’ll be doing a super fun Instagram Live challenge that you can participate in if you need more inspiration or ideas!

How Content Creation Sessions Impact Your Dental Practice Marketing

by Kari Perlewitz | Sep 10, 2018 | Branding, Dental Soiree, Photography, Social Media

If I were to ask you what kind of content your dental practice marketing plan should include, “photos of myself” probably wouldn’t be the first thing out of your mouth. You might not even think it’s worth listing at all. So many dentists think marketing their practice has very little to do with who they are as a person. However, what may be missing from your marketing — and what could very well be standing in the way of the growth you want to see — is that personal touch.

People are drawn to the people they know, like, and trust. Because you can’t physically get out and meet every potential patient, social media is your primary way to do this! So, rather than thinking it’s a little vain to share a photo of yourself, think of it as a way to connect with other humans who want to know more about you. Content creation sessions are a great way to get tons of unique branded content you can use as part of your digital marketing strategy!

How Unique Branded Content Leads to More Conversions

Think about it; if you were to refer a friend to your doctor or chiropractor or fitness trainer, you wouldn’t just talk about their top-of-the-line equipment or their techniques. You would probably talk about how that person makes you feel, and what makes them different from other people you’ve seen in the past. You’d talk about the real human things about them that make them special.

Unique branded content helps highlight your personality, style, and approach to life and business. It is so important to included content like this into your overall dental practice marketing plan because without it, you’re just another business. When you showcase who you are as a person, people are going to take notice and start talking to you, getting to know you better, and listening to what else you have to say. It doesn’t take much to turn an Instagram scroller into an actual patient when you take the time to make a real connection.

So What Exactly is a Content Creation Session?

We specialize in completely customized content creation sessions, and we have a blast doing it. Our Socialite package is ideal for those wanting to really kickstart (or overhaul) their dental practice marketing. We’ll spend a full day together in Chicago, snapping photos in front of stunning murals and cool backdrops that we’ll scout and coordinate beforehand. We’ll go shopping for props that speak to your brand and personality, and our team of professional photographers and videographers will make sure you get the highest quality content possible. We even have professional hair and makeup artists on hand as well as a professional stylist to help you select the perfect outfits to wear!

We take the time to get to know you and your practice beforehand so we can prepare and come into the content creation session with specific goals that make sense for your marketing strategy. We’ll give you so many amazing content and advertising ideas, you’ll return to your dental practice feeling energized and eager to implement everything you’ve learned.

Every content creation session begins with a consultation call where you’ll get a chance to talk to Dr. Emery about your specific goals, and you can go over anything that’s been standing in your way when it comes to your dental practice marketing strategy. To set up a call and learn more about how a content creation session can benefit your practice, just shoot us a message!