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Reputation Management

Thinking About an Incentive Program for Your Office? Take a Look At These Stats!

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Read our infographic below for some thought-provoking statistics regarding incentive programs.

Whether or not you’ve used or are currently implementing any type of incentive program at your business, you’ve probably thought about whether or not one would be successful for your business performance.

While there is varying evidence on the success of incentive programs depending on the type that you use as well as the type of incentive you choose to use, it is ultimately up to you as the business leader to decide when, why and how to use incentives to your advantage.

Curious to learn more about incentives? Check out our infographic below.

11 Tips from Award-Winning Dentist Howard Farran and His Peers

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CallSource works with both major and niche industries. As a content writer, I make sure to stay up-to-date with these industry groups to provide relevant and compelling content to you, our readers.

One person that I’ve been following is Dentist Howard Farran, DDS, MBA. Dr. Farran has a long list of accolades, some being the founder of and CEO of Dentaltown.com, Orthotown.com, Hygienetown.com, TodaysDental.com, and author of #1 Amazon best-seller, “Uncomplicate Business.” Dr Farran is also an international lecturer as well as the host and founder of the podcast “Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran.”

In Incisal Edge magazine’s second annual “32 Most Influential People In Dentistry,” Dr. Farran was named number 5. Incisal Edge gave him the title of “The Connector,” which seems very relevant as Dr. Farran does connect many people together both in the dental community and a bit outside of it.

All of that being said, I’ve found Howard to be a very useful as well as entertaining person to follow on LinkedIn and other social media platforms to gain new insights into the dental industry and its trends.

I know that dental professionals are very busy people – and that’s why if you don’t already have the chance to follow Dr. Farran and listen to his podcast (which I highly recommend you do), I’ve gathered up some great tidbits from a few of his podcasts that I have shared with our dental audience here at CallSource.

Below is a round-up of great facts and expert advice from Dr. Howard Farran and his podcast guests.

Podcast Episode 1066: Generate Reviews with Leonard Tau, DMD, FAGD

In this episode, Howard and Leonard focus on the importance of online reviews for dentists.

Some Key Takeaways:

  • Google dominates online reviews
    • “I think the most important site, no matter what, 100% is Google. There’s no doubt in my mind that you have to dominate Google no matter where you are in the country because Google runs the world. Google runs the Internet. So if they don’t like you, they don’t trust you, they won’t show you online. And if they don’t show you, you’re invisible and if you’re invisible, people can’t find you.” – Leonard Tau
  • Online reviews should be the main focus before spending too much on marketing
    • “Well, I think that they need to focus their attention on making themselves credible and visible before they spend their money on marketing, and too many people throw too many dollars into paper click advertising, whether it’s on Facebook or Google, social media, display advertising, SEO without making themselves credible. And if you don’t have reviews online, no matter what you’re doing, you’re not going to be effective with your ROI.” – Leonard Tau
  • Online reviews are just as important as word-of-mouth, no matter where you are located
    • [Dentists] always say, “I’m a word-of-mouth practice. I don’t need reviews,” or “I’m in a small town and there’s no dentists. There’s only a couple of dentists in my town.” Well, what happens when that young guy comes into town who has a ton of social capital, has a ton of followers online and opens up two doors down from you and all of a sudden he takes a number of insurances and he pulls out some of your patients from your practice. You don’t have a lot of reviews. Then you have to react. I don’t want you to be reactive… Reviews are literally the foundation or the building block to doing other things online.” – Leonard Tau
  • You have to actually ask for reviews – you can’t just hope that patients will choose to go online and write you one
    • “The first thing, the most important thing you have to do is ask patients. You have to make it a culture in your office to ask patients to do it. If your patients aren’t doing it, and you’re not asking, you never going to get them.” – Leonard Tau

 

Podcast Episode 1047 Social Media Marketing for Dentists with Shannon Gilpin of Nonnahs Marketing

In this episode, Howard talks social marketing with Shannon Gilpin, owner of a social media marketing agency, about how dentists can use social media marketing to their advantage.

Some Key Takeaways:

  • Just because you own your own practice doesn’t mean that you should feel obligated to be able to “own” every aspect of your business on your own – it’s ok to have help in some areas
    • “The problem we dentists have is we went to school for eight years because we want to do surgery on teeth, we want to do root canals, fillings and crowns, and then you graduate and they tell you, “Oh, you got to own a business too.” And I’m like, “I don’t own a business. I’m a dentist. I do surgery and operatory all day.” But they can’t do their root canals, fillings and crowns if they don’t have patients.” – Howard Farran
  • Trust is very important to consumers when choosing a dentist – so make sure you have an active social media presence and online reviews to have great social proof
    • “People are scared to go to the dentist. We deal with that a lot, and they’re worried about costs and everything. So, when you see those reviews, those positive reviews that this is a trusted dentist, this dentist is going to treat me like family and take care of me, that’s important to them.” – Shannon Gilpin
  • A good, personal social media presence helps your branding
    • “You have to have photos, but then 70% of those photos with a human face that you recognize, get higher engagement rates. So, that’s what I like to do for branding photography, is go in and show the hygienists, show the dentist, in that way people become more familiar with them, more familiar with their brand and them as a person rather than just some stock dentist.” – Shannon Gilpin
  • Address your negative reviews with the reviewer – but don’t try to be too defensive or remove the review
    • “I would suggest never deleting the reviews because that shows up bad on your part. That shows that you’re hiding something. So, always reach out to them and make sure it’s visible and take care of it as much as you can, and once you’ve handled the situation, ask them to either update their review or change it, whatever it may be. But I would never delete it or try to hide it because that just shows that you’re not trustworthy.” – Shannon Gilpin

 

Podcast Episode 1043 Effective Dental Marketing with Ken Newhouse, DC

In this episode, Howard talks to marketing expert Ken Newhouse on how to earn more patients with effective marketing strategies.

Some Key Takeaways:

  • It may not come naturally, but dental professionals need to start measuring data in their offices
    • “I always tell everyone there is one business I would never go into; it would be helping dentists advertise themselves. I would never want to go into a dental marketing business, because the dentist doesn’t measure anything. If you go to any dentist and say, “How many people land on your website each month?” “I don’t know.” “How many of them convert?” “I don’t know.” “How many people called your dental office last month that was a new number that hasn’t called your office?” “I don’t know.” “How many of them did your receptionist convert to come in?” “I don’t know.” “How many treatment plan presentations did you present?” “I don’t know.” “How many of those did you convert?” “I don’t know.” “So, what do you think of that new marketing company?” “It didn’t do [anything].” – Howard Farran
  • There are a lot of areas to pay attention to for a successful marketing program – and it goes all the way from your website to your internal staff
    • [An effective dental marketing program is] “certainly multi-faceted, there are a lot of different components to a successful dental marketing program. . .Number one I would say, ‘It has to be multi-faceted, so number one I would say it has to be automated, and I can expand on that in just a second. Number two, you’ve got to have a website that can convert.’ Then lastly, you’ve got to have a sales staff including the dentists, I know most dentists don’t like to talk about money, and maybe they shouldn’t. That’s something I can’t answer, but the staff, if they understand how to use very persuasive communications, how to actually talk to people.” – Ken Newhouse
  • Incentives matter! (And if you need help coming up with an incentive plan for your office, download our Incentive Plan Checklist here!)
    • “Well, incentives matter.” – Howard Farran
    • Your staff sees you making money, they’re working harder, you’re seeing a lot more patients, and you’re making money, they’re not stupid, they know what you’re making, and bottom line, they’re bothered by the fact that they’re really working hard for you and not benefitting from it? I’ve had a couple people say to me, ‘Why should I pay them, I’m not going to give him any of my profit.’ They don’t understand that you’ll get the performance of your staff if they’re worth keeping will dramatically improve. . . If you have the right person in your office, they’re going to really work hard and they’re going to make you a lot more money, and your office is going to run a lot, lot better.” – Ken Newhouse

Hopefully just a few of these tidbits from some of Howard Farran’s podcast have been helpful to you – and you should definitely check in to listen on a more regular basis when you can.

Who else do you follow in the dental industry that you think your peers can benefit from? Let us know in the comments below!

CallSource’s Top 3 Book Recommendations to Help Any Business Leader Improve

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Check out our leader’s top book recommendations and start applying these concepts to your business.

Although CallSource is not a start-up company (in fact, we’ve been in business since 1991), we still adopt a start-up mentality in our office.

All employees are encouraged to evolve their skills and grow where needed for their career, and new ideas are welcomed with open arms.

Another important aspect of this mindset is continuous learning and growing as a company, and individuals. Because of that, CallSource encourages all leaders and employees to read and research on topics that will help them improve their business and career skills.

Many books have been purchased, loaned and borrowed in our office walls. Today we want to share some of our top favorites with you, as suggested from business leaders here at CallSource.

Below are our top 3 book recommendations for your reading pleasure.

The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt

“This is a business book that one can enjoy reading cover-to-cover. Very often, solving one problem can catalyze another. In story format, it teaches how to anticipate and solve operational issues and how to achieve ongoing improvement. While it is written about a manufacturing environment, it is very applicable to the efficient management of any business.”

– Elliot Leiboff, President and Co-Founder of CallSource

“Eli Goldratt’s The Goal reminds business leaders that every outcome is the result of a series of steps.

Outcomes cannot be controlled. But the efficiency and effectiveness of each process step can be managed. Identifying the inefficient step – the growth constraint – is a key initiative toward achieving the goal of client acquisition and growth.”

– Robert Gallander, VP of Advisory Services & Client Development

“This is one of the top 3 books that have impacted my professional life. We have used key components from this book in internal programs and in our advisory services. It is a great book to teach managers about the Theory of Constraint.”

– Tim Gomoll, Chief Revenue Officer

Influence Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini

“This is the best sales book I’ve read. This is a book that takes years of learning and distills it down to a few key usable applications. Influence is not really a sales book instead will help you to see why your mind says ‘yes.'”

– Tim Gomoll, Chief Revenue Officer

Traction by Gino Wickman

“I’ve used this book with a couple organizations over the past few years because of its focus on three main things: Vision, Traction and Healthy Leadership. The book outlines the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) and how to restructure, shape and move your business forward in key areas. Gino Wickman’s book Traction defines each as:

  • Vision—getting everyone in your organization 100% on the same page with where you’re going, and how you plan to get there
  • Traction®—instilling focus, discipline, and accountability throughout the company so that everyone executes on that vision—every day
  • Healthy—helping your leaders become a more cohesive, functional, healthy leadership team

They are simple concepts that when followed with discipline, consistency and accountability, any organization can find themselves sleeping better at night. It’s important to note that this isn’t a quick fix and requires long-term initiative focus, and doesn’t really have an endpoint. True leaders understand that fine-tuning a business is never ending as you should always be searching for ways to continuously improve and innovate.”

– Heather Desmarais, VP of Healthcare

Other honorable mentions that CallSource’s leadership has trained from over the years include:

“It’s not reading the book. It is taking the theoretical examples in these books, applying them to CallSource, and figuring out how we need to execute them in the real world,” our CFO Tim Gomoll says of the books listed above. “Several business leaders read books like these and try to apply the learning exactly the same way the author describes in their stories, when in reality every situation is unique and needs to be custom tailored to have any real impact on the business.”

Take a Hold of Your Online Reputation with CS Reviews

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This review platform makes your online reputation efforts take no effort at all.

Westlake Village, CA: CallSource, the inventors of call tracking, have always been able to evolve with clients’ needs and technological advances to deliver the most useful business products. That is why CallSource’s newest product, CS Reviews, focuses on aiding our clients in taking control of their online reviews.

The CS Review Platform is a suite of digital tools to help generate and respond to reviews on all major review sites across the web. With CS Reviews, you no longer have to go to each review site. CallSource aggregates all your reviews in a super easy to use dashboard. We also make it easy to request reviews from your clients.

CS Reviews helps you to generate reviews, listen to customers’ responses, and respond to their reviews.

Generate

  • Simple interface to request reviews from your clients
  • Better control by filtering unhappy comments
  • Easy to share good reviews and celebrate your successes

Listen

  • All your reviews in centralized dashboard, so you can hear what your clients are saying
  • Easy on-the-go access
  • Alerts to know what people are saying about you

Respond

  • Centralized dashboard to respond to all your reviews
  • Negative reviews are easily managed to improve your customer service
  • Don’t have time, we can respond to you!

Features include SMS (texting) capabilities, CallSource managed auto responses, and the ability to request your clients to leave a review that can be posted on various review sites. CS reviews monitors all online reviews for major websites, delivers daily email alerts and a suite of informational and performance reports.

CS Reviews is also fully white-labeled for clients and has educational tools and resources available online. The platform can integrate with your Management Software to fully automate the review request process. Also, review request templates can be copied into third party email campaign programs including Constant Contact®, MailChimp®, and Outlook.

Automated Response is included as well. This is a service that includes custom responses to customer’s online reviews. CallSource will automatically respond to all reviews generated through the platform.

These customized responses address the review and respond appropriately. They are NOT canned responses.

Want more information on CS Reviews? Contact a CallSource representative to learn more.

About CallSource
Own Every Lead

CallSource is the premier technology-enabled business performance system that optimizes our clients’ revenue, profit, and brand reputation. CallSource pioneered the call tracking industry and has become the leader in actionable analytics. CallSource delivers insights to solve, strategize, and implement solutions for our clients using their sales performance data.

For more information on CallSource, visit www.callsource.com.

It’s as Important as Ever for Your Dental Practice to Have an Online Review Presence to Gain New Patients

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Online reviews are vital to your dental practice if you want to continuously increase a new patient-base continuously.

A few years ago, I moved over 3,000 miles away – all the way across the country – from Connecticut to California.

As you do when you move somewhere new, I needed to find lots of new providers. There were many that I had to look for.

A new primary care physician.

A new hairstylist (hey, my old one was hard to beat).

A new dentist.

Obviously, there were more things that I needed to find than listed above – but let’s focus on the one that matters to you. Are new patients finding your dental practice?

Another question to pose: How do you think new patients search for and choose, a new dental provider?

There are probably a few main ways.

  • Who is listed on their insurance providers list.
  • Ask a friend for a referral (if you have friends – unlike me when I first moved to a new place where I knew no one)
  • Search the internet
  • See an advertisement

Of the above list, in this year of 2018, what do you think the first option most likely is for the majority of people nowadays?

dentist search bar

That’s right – with smartphones at our fingertips and computers in most of our homes, it is easy to search for anything that we need or want. Now how do you make sure that your practice shows up when someone is searching the web for a new dentist?

Perhaps the title of this article gave it away.

Online reviews.

If you conduct a Google search for “dentists near me” as I did (shown above), after the PPC ads placed at the top, your very first search result will be from the Google Local Pack. By clicking to view the list that Google provides, you will be presented with a slew of results. Along with those results, you will see each practice’s online review star rating and how many reviews they have each received.

And which do you think that consumers will pay more attention to? Those with higher reviews, of course.

google map with reviews

Look at all of these results that I received within a less than 10-mile radius here in Westlake Village, California. (And this is only page 1). The choice of who to pick isn’t obvious – it’s the online review presence and research on other patients’ happiness with service that will help me choose one. And this isn’t just an opinion – studies find that 74% of people trust local businesses more after reading positive online reviews.

Assignment time!

Open another tab in your browser and do the same search as I did above. Type in “dentist near me” or “dentist online reviews.” How many results did you receive? Do you see your practice as a top result?
If so, great job! Keep that momentum up.

If not, hopefully, it is a wake-up call that online reputation management needs to become a higher priority in your office. Grab our ultimate reputation management guide for dentists here.

Online reviews = free marketing

Sure, you can always spend more money on additional marketing tactics as well (which you should always use call tracking numbers for – see why call tracking is a must for your dental practice here!), but a great online review presence also works as a free marketing tactic.

When patients write a positive review for you, they are:

  1. Doing the work for you (and what’s easier than that!) to get your name out there
  2. Providing social proof for other consumers searching for a new dentist
  3. Aiding in future marketing efforts to back up your claims of being a great provider

Maybe you don’t have enough in your marketing budget at the moment to place online ads or send out direct mail – but you always can dedicate time to continuously earning online reviews to aid in your marketing and online presence.

But online reviews aren’t only for new patients

Sure, we are focusing here on how online reviews to aid in your new patient acquisition efforts, but that is not to say that they do not also help in current patient retention.

If patients are willing to leave you a good review, that demonstrates that they are happy with the service they are receiving. But do not expect only to receive gleaming, out-of-this-world approval.

With any negative or critical feedback, you can make an unhappy patient happy with the right response, and you can also address patient concerns within the office by making changes to internal procedures based on patient feedback.

Now what?

Convinced that online reviews are important for your business yet?

No?! Go check out our online reviews infographic chock-full of jaw-dropping stats, or any of our many articles focused on the topic of your reputation management.

Yes? Phew, thanks. You made me feel better about doing my job well. So now you know why online reviews are important for your dental practice – but how can you start earning more online reviews? We have you covered with some templates here!

Curious to learn even more? Great! Contact a CallSource representative today and learn about our online review platform and how it can help your business and your online review management goals.

It’s Time to Join Over 80% of Your Peers in the Healthcare Industry by Implementing Content Marketing at Your Office

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Don’t be left behind in the biggest marketing trend.

“Content Marketing” has been one of those buzzwords in the marketing community for a while now – but it’s no longer just something talked about, it’s becoming the way of marketing.

Consumers will do research on their own and need information before they’re willing to reach out to you – so you need to provide this content to them in order to win their business. It is the “new” way of marketing.

In fact, founder of Content Marketing Institute and father of content marketing, Joe Pulizzi, says that within 10 years, “content marketing will just be marketing.”

And according to recent statistics, it seems like we are already well on our way to this statement becoming true. Almost 83% of healthcare organizations use content marketing, according to a recent research study from True North Custom and Healthcare Insight.

The report is based on data from a 2017 Q4 study conducted among 53 healthcare marketing professionals such as market leaders like Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and many more healthcare organizations.

Read on for what we found to be some of the most interesting facts for you to know from this report.

Content marketing is becoming increasingly important and utilized in healthcare organizations.

In 2017, about 83% of healthcare professionals said their organization uses content marketing (compared to 69% the year before). 14% said they plan to employ content marketing this year – which means only 3% are left not using content marketing with no plans to start.

content-marketing-graph

Healthcare Insight & True North Custom, 2018

Close to 100% of survey respondents said that content marketing is a high or medium priority when compared to other marketing and communication initiatives.

content marketing priority

Healthcare Insight & True North Custom, 2018

A few content marketing goals and ways of measuring effectiveness stand out amongst the others.

A content strategy cannot be fully in place without having some goals in mind. Top goals for content marketing this past year are for brand awareness, patient loyalty, engagement, and lead generation.

Content Marketing Goals

Healthcare Insight & True North Custom, 2018

With goals set, how do you determine success in your content marketing? The metrics most used by other healthcare professionals are website traffic, call volume, and SEO ranking, followed closely by time spent on website.

Content Marketing Metrics

Healthcare Insight & True North Custom, 2018

Interested in adding call tracking to your business to know your true call volume by ad source?
Contact us now!

Ways of distributing content are somewhat the same as last year – but still evolving.

Four of the top five content marketing tactics are digital, with social media content far above the rest, followed by e-newsletters, videos, and blogs. Makes sense, right? The majority of consumers are coming online to digest content. Yet, print magazines round out the top five—and actually rose to #4 this time around after coming in at #7 among content marketing tactics in last year’s study.

Content Marketing Tactics

Healthcare Insight & True North Custom, 2018

Video is an up-and-coming way of distributing content – expect to see it more and more in future on social channels and websites.

Facebook still reigns supreme at 87% when it comes to the social media platforms distributing content, followed by YouTube at 74% and Twitter at 64%.

Social Media Platforms

Healthcare Insight & True North Custom, 2018

Content marketing budgets are increasing.

Budgets allocated for content marketing purposes have risen by 25% from last year, and are expected to keep increasing, yet the size of content marketing teams have stayed about the same with around 2-5 people.

Content Team Size

Healthcare Insight & True North Custom, 2018

Bottom Line: It’s time to start implementing content marketing in your healthcare organization (if you aren’t already).

Gone are the days of strictly word-of-mouth referrals or gaining business simply because your office falls within someone’s insurance plan or you are located conveniently close by. Patients are looking at other resources and gaining knowledge in more areas to make their decision on who to choose for their hearing specialist, dentist, or other healthcare need.