E60: Podcast: Marketing insights with Erin Rosario
Hello and welcome to Ascent Dental Radio, a program dedicated to the balance between the clinical aspect of healthcare and the business of healthcare. And now, here’s your host, Dr. Kevin Coughlin.
Kevin: Welcome. This is Dr. Kevin Coughlin. You’re listening to Ascent Dental Solutions with a focus on education, development, training, and knowledge. I want to give special thanks to Mr. Doug Foresta and Mr. Dave Wolf who provide the producing of these podcasts. I also want to thank our sponsor, VOCO Dental Supply Company. It’s an international and worldwide company providing excellent support, training, and education for some of the world’s best dental supplies anywhere available for our restorative needs. With that said, we have a special guest today. Her name is Mrs. Erin Rosario. Erin, thank you so much for joining us help the dental community along with other businesses and how can we improve our marketing material and address our customers and patient base in the most efficient and effective manner.
Erin: Thank you so much for having me here.
Kevin:] You’re quite welcome. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your business and how you’re helping dentists all over the country and other businesses with your business.
Erin: My business is called Rose & Gold. We’re a digital marketing agency and we provide a full range of marketing services for clients, specifically logo and website development. We do a lot of brand identity and brand strategy. The biggest thing right now in today’s advertising world is social media, which is very important for people to be advertising there today ,so that’s a big key of what we do as well.
Kevin: Erin, with these SEOs, et cetera, et cetera, Yelp, Google, how do I get my company, and other dentists with their companies, get the best reviews besides just being great to your customer base or patient base? Once you’ve had an excellent customer experience or patient experience, how does that relate to improving our Google Reviews? What’s the most efficient and effective way to get the highest rankings?
Erin: In my opinion, to get the feedback from your customers would be to do some sort of email campaigns after their visits. There’s a lot of different systems that can be used. We particularly use constant contact with our clients in terms of setting up an account that stores emails and sending a wide variety of different email campaigns to them after their appointment. You’re fresh in their mind, that way when they open it, they’ll be amped to give the feedback of their appointment to you and those will get pushed to Google and Yelp depending on how it’s set up so that now, that review is out on the World Wide Web for others to see as well.
Kevin: What happens, Erin, with a negative review? The owner of the business, do they have any control? Whether it’s through constant contact or another social media, that review was less than ideal. Is there a way that the owners can prevent that from going out or controlling that message?
Erin: It depends on which network. Some, there are and some, there just aren’t. What we typically tell people, if it’s on Google, if you have a poor review, you need to find ten good customers to give you good reviews and it’ll boost you back up. Of course, no business is perfect. Typically, we like to recommend that you follow up with that negative review in a positive way so it shows that you are interacting and want to make that relationship better. If it’s unable to be brought down, that will publicly show that you’re willing to work with this customer and make them have a better experience the next time.
Kevin: For the listeners who aren’t aware of it, I’ve owned group practices since 1983. I had a patient base of close to forty thousand active patients with multiple locations here in Massachusetts. I cannot emphasize the importance with managed service organizations, higher competition, doctors that are more market savvy than some of our older dentists, in my opinion, the ability to team up with a firm such as Erin’s opens up a tremendous amount of possibilities. Can you explain for a small business, medium business, or large business, what you would expect to be a reasonable cost per month for services for companies such as yours, Erin?
Erin: Sure. We work with small businesses and very large businesses. What we typically do is in our first appointment, we’ll sit down and figure out the goals of that particular client and, whether using their marketing budget or using what they’re looking to have done, come up with a really customized package. Because every business is so different from each other, there’s always different needs so we really try to customize everybody. But I would say, typically, a range would be anywhere from $500 a month for a social media package. It could go up to $5,000 a month depending on what type of campaigns they want, whether it’s emails and blogging, media coordinating. There’s many other services we provide so you could really get in at a reasonable cost for the smaller business, or if it is a large business, it’s all relative in terms of the services that would be provided for the larger expense. But at the end of the day, hiring an agency like us tends to be less than hiring a marketing full-time staff with benefits and where we’re trained in everything that we do, we find that our clients have been very happy with our services on that we’ve provided them with.
Kevin: Erin, is there truth, at least in the dental field, that most dentists should earmark between 2% and 4% of their gross revenues to marketing? For example, a majority of dentists’ solo practices are usually right around that eight hundred thousand to $1 million a year in revenue. 4% would be roughly $40,000 earmarked for that. We’re roughly about $3100, $3,200 a month. Is there a rhyme or reason to that? Does that seem, in your experience, to be relatively accurate?
Erin: I think three is kind of the lowest in terms of gross revenue, 3%. But I really think it depends on what exactly they’re looking for in that type of revenue. I would say probably a little bit more expense would need to go into it just based on having a larger business and wanting to reach more people to grow. A smaller business can grow smaller but a larger business would particularly want to grow faster. It’s typically the way it works.
Kevin: My expertise is really in dentistry. I do think I have other business knowledge but as a general term, I always felt that to get a new patient into the practice, the cost of that practice ranges right around $200 to $250. For our listeners, each time you see a new patient, if you were to just assess the cost to get that new client or patient in the practice, that range is around $250 so I can’t emphasize to some of our newer dentists just starting their business how critical it is to not just focus in on getting new customers or new patients, but to maintain everything possible, the existing clientele. Because once you’ve obtained them, it is much more cost effective to maintain them and use their goodwill to generate your new patient base. Would you agree with that assessment or want to add anything to that?
Erin: No, I think that that’s absolutely correct. I think just in terms of the marketing side of that, that’s where social media really comes into play right now because that’s the place right now where people are engaging and kind of getting to know more of the personal side of businesses. People are shopping there first prior to searching online. I think that keys into it because the relationship-building can continue after the appointment on social media as they’re seeing things going on in the office and everything like that. We see that that really builds relationships even more so than just your appointment every six months or that kind of thing.
Kevin: Erin, can you take some time and discuss your company’s philosophy? Do you find it easier to just charge your clients a fixed monthly fee or do you feel that you look for a return on investment? What is generally your company’s philosophy?
Erin: Our company is set up so that we have monthly clients and then we also have clients that are on retainer in terms of if they want us to work four hours a month for them just to do miscellaneous tasks. We have a variety of different ways we set it up and it really depends on what the client is looking for. We try to really customize it to fit their needs. For instance, a social media package is a monthly thing and that would be every month consistently until they want to change that package or if they want to add something to it. Typically things like that are monthly. We also do a lot of graphic design and website development. Those, of course, are one-off, project-type based services.
Kevin: And based on your experience in the dental market, what would be an average fee that a client could expect to, let’s say, develop a logo?
Erin: The way we set it up is it’s typically anywhere from $800 to $1,500 but that would include a variety of edits and initial content, logo generation, so that you have an option of different choices that you can do. With that also comes all of the files. We provide the files that you can have put on a t shirt or up to the size of the billboard so you would never have to come back to us for any additional sizing or anything down the road. That’s typically for logo development, where it comes from, and then we’ll always bundle that in with a website. If a website development is part of the package, we’ll group that in with the website and make it more of a customized package.
Kevin: Well, I can tell you in full disclosure, I am familiar with Erin’s business. Their reputation is exceptional. Their service has been over the top and I have not heard any bad reviews. I can tell you that whether you use Erin’s company or a company similar to hers, I think it’s imperative in today’s market that we as dentists take our heads out of the dental operatory periodically, look what’s around us, know that big companies and corporations are constantly taking over and pushing the smaller mom and pop shops around. You have to be smarter, nimble, and you have to be able to beat them on service and care. My motto has always been better care, better service for better results and companies like Erin, I believe, can truly achieve this. Erin, can you tell our listeners what’s the best way for them to reach out and get additional information? How can they reach you? Give us your website, telephone number, and contact information.
Erin: Oh, sure. Our website is roseandgold.com. And they could contact me directly. It’s erin, E-R-I-N@roseandgold.com. Our phone is 413 224 3363.
Kevin: Erin, thank you so much. I know your business is growing in leaps and bounds. I know how busy you are. I appreciate you educating our dental listeners and also other business owner listeners. You’ve been listening to Ascent Dental Solutions with a focus on education, development, training, and knowledge. Our guest has been Mrs. Erin Rosario and her company is Rose & Gold. Today’s topic was the marketing of your practice and the crucial needs for it. I want to give special thanks again to VOCO Dental Supply Company and their expertise and support to the dental profession. Thanks for listening. I look forward to speaking to you in the near future. Enjoy your evening and enjoy your profession.
