Xaña Winans is the Founder and President of Golden Proportions Marketing; a full-service marketing and advertising agency, dedicated to helping high-level dental practices. She has over 23 years in dental marketing and she lectures nationally on the topic of successful dental marketing.
In this episode we discuss:
What do you feel has changed in Digital Marketing in the past few years?
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Our avenues for digital marketing are growing day by day, so that has been a significant demand from doctors as well as consumers who want to reach the doctors. That does not however preclude the fact that traditional marketing is still very valuable for pushing people to those online mediums, but if you don’t have an online presence, its like not having a phone number. That is a huge part of the shift that has been happening. A lot things have shifted in my observation. Search engine marketing has really moved from just an emphasis on website optimization, which is making sure that your site can be found on search engines. That is still critical, but google has continually changed the rules. The way that search is being conducted is very much more of kind of intelligent design. Its using artificial intelligence to predict the way that people are searching. If you’ve noticed when you type something in these days there is what we call predictive text where a variety of options for your answer come up, because there are a lot of other people searching for the same kind of question. Another shift t is the continual change in google local listings. We went from what is called the maps seven pack, which if you would type in a term such as raleigh cosmetic dentist you would get a list of seven local dentists. In the past fall of 2015 the options have shrunk to just three dentists. Reviews have also become mission critical. Google wants to reward the businesses that are treating their consumers the way that they want to be treated and thus getting reviews that reflect that. The quantity, frequency and the overall review aggregate score, has become a much larger part of online search.
Is it all about mobile nowadays? Is PC dead?
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Its not all about mobile but that is one of the search factors that google is emphasizing very heavily especially starting this spring. It does not mean that desktop is dead. We are constantly looking at how much traffic is coming from a desktop device, mobile device, and a tablet. Right now, it is running about 50/50. Desktop still has a fair amount of traffic because if you consider it in the dental industry specifically, most patients are doing their online searches while they are sitting at work. They might be doing it from their cellphones at home or in the evening but that is still only about half of the traffic
What do you think has changed about the impact of social media marketing?
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Social media is one of those animals that doctors really struggle with simply because it is exceedingly difficult to prove return on investment. Simply having interaction, followers and fans, does not turn into patients. Eventually we knew that Facebook and any social media platforms were going to have to monetize the product, they are completely free. There are over 1.4 billion free accounts on Facebook and someone has to pay for all the servers, upgrades, and technology. So what they have done, is create a model where the consumer is absolutely addicted to it, where they are checking their Facebook updates and their twitter feed 10x a day and so in order to monetize that product, they have basically made the advertisers invisible to it. Most recently, Facebook advertisers found that vast majority of their fans could not see their posts, because Facebook knew that once the consumers had become addicted to the product, the advertisers would need to reach them so now businesses have had to invest in boosting in order to make sure that their product is visible.
What do you feel like has changed when marketing to baby boomers?
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Baby boomers love to read and do research. One of the trends we have seen is the shift towards Google Display advertising. A lot of baby boomers have starting doing their homework before they decide who is going to be their practitioner. So for example they might be searching for a term “I have a gap between my front teeth, what kinds of things can be done to close it?” What happens is that they are not going to get a list of dentists in their area that can help them, instead they are directed to websites like blogs or WebMD that have articles on that subject. A lot of these types of sites are just like Facebook and are free so they have to monetize so they sell ad space on their website and are part of the Google Display Ad Network. And just like google ad words where you can very highly target exactly the radius and target that you want to reach this is an opportunity to put your brand out there. But what I love about Google Display ads is that it is visual and dentistry is a very visual medium. Its like a print ad but online. So someone is reading an ad about how to fix this problem that they have, and you can have a visual ad right next to the article that tells them that you are their solution to that problem. I also love the fact that Google display ads is cost-per-click and is so much cheaper than a normal google ad words click. I see clients with an average budget of about $500 dollars a month, are getting 3 to 500,000 impressions a month. Meaning that their ad has been seen that many times and they only spent $500. So that is incredible brand reinforcement that costs you nothing.
Where can a dentist go to learn a little more about this stuff and what Golden Proportions can do?
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For any of your listeners, I am willing to offer a completely free SEO analysis of their website. One of the most important things to me is making sure that our dentists are educated and that they understand what they are getting, because no matter who they are working with this is an entirely new language. So if we do an SEO analysis, we can walk you through and help you see what is actually going on with your site and where the opportunities for growth are. So whether you are with us or someone else, you’ll have a real solid idea of the performance of your site. So if you go to GoldenProportions.com/Passion, you will find all sorts of info about GPM and what we do but you will also see a form where you can submit to request a completely free SEO analysis. This typically runs about $500 so its a great value. Our account executives will run the analysis and get on the phone with you to describe exactly what is going on with your website and what can be done to enhance the performance.