Who else is sick and tired of paying for marketing and advertising that fails miserably to move the needle and leaves you frustrated, confused, and ready to write off marketing altogether?
Enter…The Dental Marketing Secrets Podcast.
Our mission is to be the ultimate source for ideas and tactics to grow your dental and ortho practice, allow you to serve a more patients, and leave a greater impact.
Despite popular belief, marketing is not simply an ‘art’ that you are either born with or you are not. It is a science. You can create systems and campaigns that produce consistent, predictable results. But just like any scientific experiment, you need to test, test, TEST, to optimize your results to the greatest extent possible.
Why This Show…
In my experience working with doctors all over the country, I’ve seen a pattern: work hard to get into dental school, study until your blue in the face, become an excellent clinician, and then graduate and head out into the real world…with little or no experience running a business or understanding how to attract patients to your door!
In this show, you’ll discover what’s working right now to attract more of your ideal patients and set yourself up for massive long-term success. You are going to hear lessons from experts in different areas of marketing, solo episodes from me, case studies from my clients and others, as well as Q&A sessions to ensure that you receive answers to your questions.
My goal is to provide 2-3 tips each episode that you can take an apply right away to grow your practice.
In This Episode
In this first episode, I share my own personal journey and discovery of marketing and how it transformed my first business, doubling the # of referrals I received immediately, and developing an automated lead generation system that continually funneled qualified prospects to my door.
Since then, I have worked with doctors all over the map to help them create and implement marketing strategies that allow them to create a better practice and lifestyle for them and their team.
Let’s Get Rockin’ & Rollin’!
I am excited to start this journey with you. Thanks for listening to The Dental Marketing Secrets Podcast.
Full Transcript
Hello and welcome my friends to the very first edition of the Dental Marketing Secrets Podcast! My name is Mark Thackeray and I’ll be your host and I am so excited. This has been a long time coming. I’ve been thinking about this for a number of years and I am so eager to share my personal experiences with growing dental practices, both the successes and the failures as well as the ugly and I’m pumped to bring a variety of guests to the show so that they can also share what’s worked for them in their practices.
My goal for this podcast is to bring you actionable tips and tricks that you can apply immediately to grow your practice so that you can serve more patients and ultimately leave a greater impact. That’s what it’s all about.
Now, I know the question that you are probably asking yourself right now is who in the world is Mark Thackeray? So let me introduce myself and share a bit about my experience. I had been an entrepreneur and business owner for over 12 years. I have a wide variety of marketing experience from direct mail to email campaigns, Facebook ads, and it’s given me a comprehensive view of marketing as a whole.
I’m known as being a profit maximizer. I take existing campaigns and optimize them so that you can build your practice, make it more profitable, but also make it scalable and make it more predictable.
Some of the recent accomplishments, I wanted to share a few of these with clients that I have. These are fresh off the books. These have been awesome. So we had a grand opening event for a practice that resulted in over 200 people in attendance, over 30 new patients. With an ROI of 670%. You guys and those numbers keep getting better. We still have people coming in mentioning that they came to the event and those numbers will continue to improve.
There’s another practice brand new in the community. We’re looking to get their name out and recognition. So after some market research, understanding the neighborhoods, understanding the demographic of the people in that area, we created a campaign and it has been absolutely gangbusters. I’ve actually had, this has been exciting because it’s the record number of new patients. It’s a personal record for me of new patients that we’ve generated for this particular client resulting in 2,770% ROI! I had to do those numbers like three times because I wanted to make sure that was accurate, but it’s, it’s been insane you guys. It’s been so exciting and literally just gave this practice a huge head start. And what’s awesome is that these numbers will continue to grow and once you think about the longterm, the lifetime value of a patient as they return year over year or you know, five to seven years is kind of the average that I’ve been seeing. And that is tremendous. That ROI will continue to skyrocket.
I’m also been working with a DSO that has a few different locations and year over year growth in terms of new patients has been 28% while at the same time decreasing the cost of new patient acquisition by nearly 18%- it’s so exciting. This has resulted in 1.3 million additional production year over year. And again that is continual, those are patients that will stay on average from five to seven years, not to mention the referrals coming in from those patients as well. It’s staggering you guys. That is game changing. So very excited about that.
So I want to also wanted to share with you my own personal journey, my story, because you’re going to see it’s, it will, there will be so many parallels to the challenges that you’re facing. Everyone goes through those. No one is exempt. It’s not this easy road for some people and a crazy difficult road for others. No, it doesn’t happen that way. There’s so many things that we all need to go through to eventually find the success that we’re looking for.
So my personal story starts like this. I’ve always known that I was going to be an entrepreneur. I just knew, you know, you had that in my blood. I had that in my blood when I was young. I had various jobs when I was a kid. I was the one out in the street that would go to the store and I’d go buy candy at wholesale, you know? And then I’d go and set up a little shop on the street and go and sell candy to the neighborhood kids. That eventually turned into a baseball card shop or basketball cards, trading, selling, that sort of thing.
And then in high school I started an apparel company with my friends and we did silkscreened shirts and we did hats. We even learned how to crochet so that we could do hand knit beanies in the winter time and we’d take all these products and we’d go sell them to local snowboard and ski and skateboard shops across the state. And we had seven or eight shops that we’d sell to on a regular basis. And not that this one was particularly profitable is very time consuming, but it was really, it was so exciting and so fun. A
nd then in college, right as I was set to graduate, I started a photography business. Okay. So I had decided to just jump in. I didn’t have a ton of prior experience with photography. I took one class in college, a very basic, there was a film class and just a dark room, black and white, very basic rudimentary class. Like, you know, I’d spent some time taking photos. I had a decent SLR camera back in high school and my friends and I, right as we graduated, that was our graduation gift. We each got a camera and we went and took hundreds of photos, you know, for the next six months.
And then I left to serve a two year mission for my church and put away my camera. And I didn’t really think about it until the end of college.
But anyways, my wife and I were taking a trip back to Italy where I served my mission and I thought, okay, it’s time to upgrade to a digital camera. And I just just rekindled this, this passion that I had for photography.
So I started this photography business. And you know, when you get, you have this new idea, you’re really excited and you’re, you’re just gonna, you’re gonna make it work. Right? That’s, that’s the, that’s the mindset you have. You’re out there and you’re going to hustle until you reach, till you find success to you, create a successful business. And so that’s what I did, you know, I mean, I reached out to all my family and friends. I was, social media was, was around, it wasn’t, I wasn’t big into social media, so I was pushing it a little bit, but I didn’t, not very heavily. And then just going, you know, talking to did stuff on websites.
I did, I actually studied PR, public relations and advertising in college as my communication degree with my communication degree. And so I was applying all these things and wasn’t really having a ton of success with that. It was more the people that I knew and the connections. And so yeah, it started to grow and I was pretty thrilled about that.
And eventually it got to this point though, I really hit a plateau, you know? I mean I wasn’t getting any further along and my wife was still working at the time and we were still really scraping by. We were living paycheck to paycheck and I was getting discouraged, you know, quite honest. I honestly, I was worried, I was frustrated. I wasn’t making a, despite feeling like I was putting in the time, but on the outside here I am trying to act tough and no like I could totally do this. Things are going great. People ask me about my business and I say, yeah, I just did this shoot and it sounded great. It sounded like things were really clicking along, but the reality was deep down inside I was afraid. You know, I felt like I wasn’t measuring up, you know, that I was letting my wife down, my family down.
At times I felt like I wasn’t even worthy of the success, you know? I mean, I wasn’t good enough. You know, I started questioning my abilities here and it was, you know, and it wasn’t like I want it to be this tycoon. I didn’t want to be a billionaire. I just wanted to provide for my family, have some financial control and, and ultimately prove that I could do this, you know?
And so this continued along until we reached critical mass till we reached the breaking point. Honestly, there was, I still remember this day to my wife, I was working in my home office and my wife stopped me during the day and said, and she had that look right? I mean, she has, the way she looked at me and the tone of her voice instantly riveted me to the spot. I was rooted. You know, I couldn’t, it just really struck me when she said, she said we need to talk and we, we’ve had this discussion before, but the way she said it this time, she is like planting her flag in the ground. And I just knew that something was wrong.
And before when this happened, I kind of played it down, but this, this time I just, it really worried me, you know, and, and so I was worried about that the whole day.
Later that night we sit down and as we start talking, literally everything spilled out, you know, fears, emotions, frustrations, you know, sick and tired of scrambling to pay bills. And eventually it got to the point where she said, we can’t keep going on like this. Something has to change.
And we came to this conclusion that either need to make this work now and soon or I have to go look for a job. And that was really a difficult thing for me to swallow. I, I just was certain that I was born to be an entrepreneur. Like there was I, you know, and to think at all to even entertain the idea of going to work for someone else was, was just such a blow to my confidence. You know, that it was work. It was really playing on me too, that, Hey man, why in the world can I make this work? I see people all around me that are doing it and they’re having success at it. I’m not a total idiot, you know? I mean, I graduated college. I feel like I pick up on things fairly well. I’m putting in the time I’m doing my research. Why isn’t this working?
And right around that time, shortly after the discussion with my wife, I had a lunch with a friend who, who had his own business. He was a, he’s an e-commerce guy and he introduced me to these marketing experts, Joe Polish and Dean Jackson, and he’s telling me about all the things that he was learning that, Hey, this is actionable, real life examples. These are real life tactics that you can use. It’s not theory and he’s been using them to, to a great degree of success actually.
And as admittedly as he’s talking about it, I was, I was elsewhere. I was thinking, dude, I’ve tried everything. You know, I studied this stuff in college, not just didn’t think it would work. I’m like, no, this is not gonna work.
And so anyway, reluctantly I started to go through some of their materials and I didn’t get very far. You know, I, I had kind of written it off already. And so I got about halfway through this first section and I said, you know, I can’t do this. I’m doing something else. But eventually, maybe it was a week or two weeks later, I gave it another try and I was in a much better mindset. I was more open to receiving, these ideas. And as I got into them, man, things started to click, things started to resonate. It was so logical what they were saying. I still remember some of the key points that they were making. They struck certainly so deeply and it imprinted on me, what they were trying to say. You know, I mean it was so powerful.
I remember specifically that these guys talked about the fact that we get paid primarily on the value that we provide to the marketplace, it’s not the time that we spend. That was huge for me because, you know, I was thinking, I had this, this debate on, you know, pricing and, and timing and how much I usually based most things on time. But the reality of what they were telling me was, was radically different. It’s the value that you’re providing. You know, it’s not necessarily the time that goes into it, but it’s the value. It’s the benefits that you provide. It’s the desired outcome that you’re providing now. That’s what we get paid on.
They also talked about how if I provide more value, it better serves my clients and ultimately I get paid more, too. That was just, that was a revelation to me, you know, and went on to say that it’s your, it’s your ability to communicate the value that you provide. You know, your ability to articulate the benefits, those desired outcomes from a customers point of view. It’s not your view. I see this all the time with, with dentists, you know, it’s, it’s a challenge with, and even with physicians in general, a lot of times they want to talk in their technical jargon and their peer to peer communication to patients for example, just doesn’t work. Patients have no idea. They have no background of any of that stuff. And when you start talking to them, they tune out, you know?
So the trick is in your ability to define in plain English, to spell out for them, literally spell out what’s in it for THEM. And I ultimately realized that marketing is the engine of your business. I started to see that. And this was true in photography. There are so many incredible clinical dentists out there that do a tremendous job, but they still struggle month to month. Their business is failing month to month and that’s because they don’t have the ability to communicate the value that they’re providing.
So as I started to learn this information, I was, like I said, I got really absorbed. I was so pumped and so focused. I just consumed as much information as I could whenever I had free time. I was pouring over their information, their materials. I was working to apply that to my business. And almost immediately I started seeing results and things began to improve. The needle was moving in the right direction. I was so excited and I thought, this could be it, right? That was a thought. “This could be it.”
But then, and there’s always a ‘but’, but then I started doing too much because I was consuming so much information. I was being exposed to all these different ideas. I wanted to try all of those different ideas. I was doing this one and then I read about, Oh, I need to try this and then let me, I need to try this too. This was definitely work and I was spreading myself way too thin. I was completely fractured in my approach and I wasn’t able to realize the huge gains that were there for me had I just been focused and disciplined enough to follow a couple of key ideas.
And eventually, thankfully I recognized that I needed to focus on building an actual marketing process, some type of system that would consistently produce results. And once I did that, it worked. You guys, it worked. I created a system for generating referrals and I doubled the number of referrals I received, which that alone was a massive game changer for me. But I also created a lead generation system to continually funnel potential clients and fill my pipeline. No longer did I have to worry about, now I had a great last month, now what do I do? But I had a continual flow.
It wasn’t an, you know, it wasn’t a huge avalanche of clients. I’m not going to pretend that it was, but it was a, it was consistent enough that I had some predictability and eventually that grew and grew and grew, but more importantly, you guys, my wife no longer had to work. There was no more crying over how in the world to pay for these bills, those emotionally charged conversations we could finally do the, it was the little things to you guys. We could also finally feel good about eating out. Finally go on a family vacation. And then start to put money away for the future and even started some passive income streams.
Things were completely different and as I looked back on it all, it was interesting to realize that it’s not a matter of worthiness when it comes to success. Okay? It’s more of what I can do to serve my clients to a greater degree and then create a process that would support me in that, that would allow me to accomplish that time and time again. The other thing that really struck me as I was going back and reviewing all of this was that I discovered I had a huge passion for sharing what I’ve learned in order to help others achieve that same type of success, to get out of that funk, that rutt.
And that’s what I’m doing now. I love it. I love, I’m sure you could feel this, but I just, it gets me so excited to see the change because it’s not only a change in it for your practice, it is a change for your office or your team members or your family and for the families of all your team members and your patients. You guys, it is a win, win, win, win, win, win. I mean, it is just an elevated way to live cause it changes your whole lifestyle.
It hasn’t always been amazing after that. Once I put that in place, you know, challenges didn’t go away. Definitely hasn’t always been sunshine and rainbows. In fact, at the peak, the very climax of my photography business when things were just rocking, our third daughter was born with some serious health issues. So we have, we have four kids now. They’re all girls by way. So if you send me anything, send me something in pink please (ha ha).
But we knew that when she, when my wife was pregnant with Ruby, our third, she had some, she, there was a mass on the back of her neck. There were going to be some complications. They didn’t know what this was going to mean. They didn’t know if she would survive. It was likely gonna mean a lot of treatment and care and time at the hospital.
And so with a good deal of conversation and going back and forth, we decided eventually that it was better for me to phase out photography, which was hard, you know, because of how I had ramped it up. And now we’re way up here and I’m so pumped and I’m just, you know, I’m traveling all this time. People are flying me out coast to coast. I’m going out of the country for shoots and just having a really having a good time, but we decided it was best for our family, that I phased that out and I eventually decided that, Hey, I’m going to go into marketing creation and execution campaigns for businesses to help them achieve that same type of success. I knew that’s what I love to do too.
That was something that really stood out to me. I grew my business, the marketing aspect, and this has turned out to be a huge, huge blessing for us and for me because my daughter, eventually a couple of years after she was born, she was diagnosed with stage four cancer. There were dozens of tumors in her lungs and it just threw our world completely upside down and this allowed us to really allowed me to spend more time with her.
There was a point where our oncologist said, you know, we’ve tried some different things and at this point it’s probably best that you just spend time with your family, go make some memories. And we did a Make-A-Wish trip, which was phenomenal and it’s really, I kind of took a year off of work and that was a huge blessing.
And eventually I’m happy to report that now, you know, three years later after that, Ruby is doing amazing. We got put on this trial drug and it has worked fantastically well, actually melted away all of her tumors. That’s what our oncologist, that’s how he described it. It’s literally melting away all of her tumors and we are just elated. We never thought this day would come and here we are experiencing it and enjoying it and reveling in it. And it is so amazing. You guys we’re so grateful.
And actually like the drug company just came out and did a documentary. These guys from England came all the way over to here in Utah and came and filmed our family, did a documentary with, with us and Ruby and my wife is actually going, it’s taking Ruby back to a conference, their kind of company summit here in a few weeks to speak and share her story. And it’s just been an amazing journey.
Eventually I started working with different clients. I started to specialize in the dental industry after working with multiple dentists and love it. I absolutely love it and I’ve helped so dozens of different dentists grow their practice, boost their profitability, but like I said, more importantly, they’ve been able to change their lifestyle and gain predictability and consistency with their practice. It’s reduced the amount of stress that they experience on a day to day basis and ultimately they can treat and serve more patients and leave a greater impact, have a greater impact in their community.
I firmly believe you guys, that marketing is absolutely critical to a successful practice. You may have the most clinical experience out there. You may have the most exceptional service and care solutions that no other provider can out there can, but if you fail to communicate that, what you can do, all of those benefits from a patient’s point of view, it won’t matter you guys. It will not matter. That’s how important this messaging component is. You have to connect to patients on their level or they will not listen. Patients need to know what’s in it for them.
And that really is what marketing is all about. That’s the way I define marketing; It’s to help patients identify what they can expect if they come to visit you at your practice.
So that’s it for today, you guys. I hope you had some, some revelation, hopefully some, some words of encouragement, something that that spurred you to do something differently. I am pumped to continue the conversation.
You guys coming up…There will be real life examples and case studies. Like I mentioned, there’s a number of amazing interviews that dramatically change your business, so you don’t want to miss those.
If you have any comments, questions, or feedback, I would love to hear from you. Simply email me at my personal address. Yes, I’m old school. I’m simpleton that way, but just email me at my personal address. It’s Markthack@gmail.com I would love to hear from you.
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please leave a review for this podcast. That would be a tremendous help you guys. It helps other people, other dentists find value in what I’m doing.
But until next time, my friends make it a fantastic week and we will talk to you soon.
Did you enjoy this episode of the Dental Marketing Secrets Podcast? Head on over to iTunes to subscribe, rate and leave a review. And for more proven marketing strategies to grow your practice, visit practicerocket.net.
