James: 0:46
into this impromptu webinar between myself and Dr Jamil Turofdar. People may remember fans of the podcast will remember Dr Jamil because he did it out so fairly recently and the downloads for that thing were flipping off the chart and it was all about how you managed to acquire three dental practices by the age of oh no, no, no, no, no, sorry, sorry, I missed a misremembering, that it was two dental practices and in the process of acquiring a third still in your flipping twenties, which is some flipping achievement. So we’re gonna not talk about that today, even though I’m sure there’s a lot more to it and as tempting as it is. Anybody who wants to know more about that check out. Episode whatever. It was 100, I think it was like 103 or something, and you’ll see Jamil again. Jamil is here today. This is a spin-off episode from that original podcast where Jamil and I we kind of went off on a little bit of a tangent, didn’t we, jamil? We talked about marketing, we talked about all sorts. So we said afterwards let’s make a focused episode on how we can market our dental practices better, with the stated aim of getting 10 to 12 private patients a day, because that is another one of Jamil’s achievements at his dental practices. Anyway, jamil, that was quite the intro. How are you tonight?
Jamil: 2:04
I’m very well, I’m sorry, james, number one, I’ve cancelled on you a few times. I do apologize. I’m feeling the best. But yeah, thank you so much. I know the first podcast we went off tangent quite a bit. I think I was very, very nervous, to say the least. But I think we’ve had some notes before we started this and keep me on the street and narrow this time it’s cool.
James: 2:27
We both had fun. That was a main thing, but anyway. Anyway, how have you been?
Jamil: 2:31
I’m very well and I also really appreciate what you’ve done for me, james. It’s crazy. You put me on a map but I didn’t even know you even existed. And a lot of people have reached out to me. I also my support and advice, and I’m no guru. I try my best and thank you ever so much for all the kind comments I’ve got from everyone.
James: 2:52
You know what, mate? Can I just say one thing to you? You know who is the worst person at seeing our own brilliance, ourselves, right and that’s what I’ve seen in you, buddy. I really do, because there must be something to you to have done what you’ve done by 20 yet. But anyway, we said we weren’t going to talk about that. Today’s supposed to be about marketing, because there was a lot of lessons that came off the back of that last podcast about how you market your practice, so maybe it might be nice if we just jump straight in. And, by the way, I wanted to say as well, actually this is a Q&A session, so this is going live to the Denton Soon to us Facebook group as we speak. So anybody has any questions about how to market their dental practice, feel free to pop them in the chat and Jamil and I will do our best to get to every single one. Jamil, it might be nice if you just hit the ground running and maybe got us started on some cool ways that we can market our dental practice that are a little outside your box. Outside the box because you had a few cool lights at the box once last time so basically a number one disclaimer I think I should put out there.
Jamil: 3:57
I am not a marketing agency. We do all our marketing in-house and so I do it all in my free time. First thing. First I want to explain to dentists is that by doing marketing yourself you learn what works and what doesn’t work really quickly. You can adapt to change really quickly. You don’t have to pre-plan for things. So a bit about marketing anyway. As marketing as I see it, in my opinion, there’s three ways of marketing your dental practice. The first way would be by social media, the internet. Another way would be leaflets, newspaper, and the third way, which is in direct marketing, I would like to say, is by word of mouth. Now I know a lot of these dentists on this group will say word of mouth is the best. In my opinion it’s not. I think it’s the worst. It’s too slow, it doesn’t gain you enough traction. And also we I think we talked about this on the first episode people don’t really ask for recommendations anymore. What people tend to do is just google things and search them up and make their own informed decision about where they want to go. So what I’m going to do, I’m going to touch on internet marketing and also leaflets and so like. These are paper ads, let’s call them so there are. So if we split up internet marketing into so, you’ve got paper clicks, search engine optimization, paper clicks, search engine optimization, facebook, whatever them sort of adverts. And facebook in my area, I believe, works really well. I, my practice, is in and I wouldn’t say in a very affluent area, but I wouldn’t say it’s a very deprived area. Facebook is great because the demographic of facebook, in my opinion, is a lot more people that have do have money compared to instagram, and I’m not a huge fan of instagram marketing at all. I I think the market is way, way too competitive and to compete with some of the guys that around my area they’ve done extremely well and they’re on thousands, of thousands of followers. I will never, ever be able to compete with that and so, yeah, so we do do a lot of facebook ads and facebook is very, very smart in this day and age. It’s got to the level where you can almost run an ad and facebook itself will target the ideal audience for your and the ideal audience for your ad, and it’s so clever it’s unbelievable. I don’t even know how they’ve achieved it, but I’ve tried it myself, where I’ve set all the parameters demographics, male, female, age range, interests and I never have got as good results compared to what facebook’s normal algorithm can do. So they, like I said in the first podcast as well, these companies, want you to spend money with them. Their success, your success, means you will spend more money with them, so they want your ad to work as well, your ad to work as well as possible. Now I, in my opinion, I try and create beautiful looking ads. I really care about simplicity and there’s something about it. It’s just the elegance of an ad being really nicely presented. Not too much information catches the patient when they’re scrolling and it gives a really good description. And another thing we do really well as a practice we’re very quick at responding to enquiries. So all of our pcs at work have facebook business on them. So as soon as somebody sends an inquiry, somebody’s replying to them within five minutes. We’ve got to the level where we’ve got the replies really fast. Icon have you ever seen on pages, james? Have you ever seen your pages? No, no, no. So you get this badge on your facebook page. As I said, replies extremely fast also yes, yes yes, yes, I don’t like myself personally. I don’t forget. Create a good patient experience. When, when you send an automated response when somebody sends an inquiry, you’re, like some people, automate to say, oh, thank you for your message, we’ll be in touch with you straight away, that patient would have lost interest. I believe somebody picking a dental practice is a spontaneous event. It just it’s just a spur of the moment and and if you could reply quick enough, you’re more likely to get them through your door. So that’s my two pants about facebook. Try creating beautiful facebook ads. Another good way of doing it is using a company called Canva. I wouldn’t go and just making it on powerpoint or anything like that, or copying somebody else’s. Try and use Canva, and it’s a free software. I believe you could create beautiful, beautiful artwork on there. And but always remember, don’t put too much information on your pictures. The whole point of a picture is to entice the patient to read more about the text. So I see I obviously I’m a bit sad, james, to say the least. I study a lot of ads from all my competitors, okay, and I just sometimes I see that. And Another thing Patius hate. And another way your ad will fail is if you copy and paste somebody else’s ad and in my head I’ll give you an example. I was actually explaining this to somebody the other day you know when something is there and it’s always there, you go past it but you never notice it anymore. Yeah, okay, have you ever had that moment like you’ll realize something on the wall? You’ve gone past it a hundred times but you don’t notice it anymore. It’s because people are doing the same ads and I see in my area what, what companies are doing. They’re all using the same ad company, social media company. They have pumping out the same ad bits for every single practice. It becomes. It becomes so repetitive the patient almost skips through it because it doesn’t interest them. So always try and make uni content. I’m built a good Facebook following like. We don’t have the best. I think we got about 1,600 likes. I’m not likes, a followers or wherever they do on Facebook now. So try and create unique experiences. Please don’t put posts up about you should brush twice a day. I think everyone knows that they had should brush their teeth twice a day, not to smoke. That stuff is more likely to encourage somebody to unfollow your page because they think it’s more likely spam. Okay, you’re not creating content that is interesting, that would be interested to the general public. So that’s my two pence about Facebook Google ads. Google ads is a tricky one. So actually since at the end of your podcast actually, I’ve had a few people reach out to me asked about Google adwords on Invisalign and implants. Okay, I personally believe in this line. Invisalign on Google ads on Invisalign and implants is one of the most expensive things you can do, based on your area. You’re better off. You’ll get much more money ROI return on investment on just doing just advertising for emergencies and general dentistry. It’s a lot easier for somebody to go through a course of treatment with you and then six, seven, eight months down the line to say you know what you would actually really benefit from in business. Well, that gap you’re missing. Have you ever considered an implant? When I do, a lot of you, a lot of dentists listening to this, would have experienced this to where a patient comes in, you present them with them, let’s say, a five thousand pound treatment plan, because you don’t have that report straight away. They haven’t built that trust up with you straight away. It’s a lot harder for a patient to be convinced to go with you. But if you still have seen to that patient let’s say twice in a year, I’ve done loads of fill in scale and polish, blah, blah, blah and you tell them you know what you’d really benefit from an implant. It’s a lot easier. So Google ads, in my opinion, the best way to do it, it needs to be hyper focused, number one. So, unlike Facebook, I believe you should be able to tell Google what demographics you want. Obviously you don’t want to. You don’t want to advertise below 18 years old. I don’t even know if you can for Google ads, but, like you, have to think about where does most of my money come from, what age range? So that way you would get more written on investment. Another thing dentists do, which I’m bad at doing at the moment. I haven’t sorted out my Google ads myself and when somebody types in, I’ll give you an example and private dentures around my area or something like that, you’ll see some ad that’s come up for general dentistry. Some ads will come up for whitening If somebody’s got full, full denture.
James: 13:02
The last thing they worry about is whitening.
Jamil: 13:06
So what you can do on Google is do positive keywords and negative keywords and you could do each keyword if you want a broad spectrum or narrow spectrum, so you could do things like that. I I Personally think there’s a lot of money to be made on Google ad words. I don’t think dental practices in general do it good enough and nor do most marketing agency, even dental marketing agencies. I.
James: 13:34
Can I jump in right? Yeah, yeah, just literally for two seconds, right, because I see this no one cares about your dental practice as much as you do, right? You know, I feel that there’s this mentality where we can just hire someone else to do it and it’s done Right, and it’s done to a good start, and this presumption is done to a good standard. In reality, from what I’ve seen, it’s done to a tick box standard. So what they can say is, yes, we’ve done this right, but actually there’s a huge scope in terms of doing it well versus just doing it with me. And here’s the thing. Here’s what I’ve noticed as well. When you take the reins and just do this stuff yourself, it’s actually not that hard, right? You can figure it out in a few days. It’s really not.
Jamil: 14:12
Yeah, so I you.
James: 14:13
Google.
Jamil: 14:15
If you know, if you know how to use a computer, google, like I said on the first part, has Google wants you to do it. Like I said on the first part, has Google wants you to spend money with them. And so, in my opinion, I just watched so for how I learned how to do Google ad words. I just researched the like Google ads myself. I watched. We all have our long commute, or some of you might have a short commute. I’ve got a 40 minute commute every morning, so I try and listen about podcasts, about marketing itself, and just surprising the amount of information other people give to you for free. A podcast is literally you can go Spotify now, type in Google ads, a tutorial on Google ads. Somebody will sit there. A professional will sit there and tell you how to use Google ads. I think it’s amazing that we live in this day and age where information is so freely available. This, when has that ever been the case? And and what? I sorry we’re going a bit off topic. I’m giving you a little shout about podcast now is that you can learn so much from just from podcast. I’ll give you an example. Okay, I know this about marketing, but on a podcast. I was listening to a podcast the other day I think it was the founder for Pretto major or Costa one of them and basically they were talking about if he, somebody, looks like they’re having a bad day, give them a free coffee. Okay, from the back of that I was like hold on, people are struggling to pay an emergency fee for private dental treatment. I said you know what, every day, for a month we rolled out that we would give one patient emergency treatment free of charge every day. First come, first serve. Okay, some dental practices for us it doesn’t really matter. Okay, but it takes a lot. I said to you in the first podcast takes 10 minutes to get somebody out of pain. It doesn’t take long, but out of that, we had huge hits on that post organically. So those who don’t know, organically is like when people share, like groups and stuff in organic. In organic is when you usually pay for it. I think we had about 20,000 hits. That’s 20,000 free, that’s 20,000 free hits. So that’s like me putting a sign up in the town centre and 20,000 people walking past it and looking at my sign. For the sake of what? 20, 20, 15 minutes appointments, which is nothing, really, and surprisingly, not everyone, actually not every day was an emergency slot filled up by this free emergency. But we were quite strict as in they couldn’t be registered with us. There was first come, first serve basis. They had to call us up before 8 30. But we had huge uptake I think 8. Looking at stats, I think about 80% of people took that offer. So I think we did well. But, going off topic podcast, you can learn amazing things from amazing people. I’ve listened to some of your podcast and I have learned some of these people that you’ve had on the podcast are absolutely amazing. I think it’s phenomenal and I had soft to them. After listening to some of them podcasts I was like Blimey, I sound like a fool.
James: 17:28
Never, never, ever, ever. Well, can I just add to that for two seconds? Oh, actually, before I go off on my tangent, can I ask you, for the benefit of the listeners, can you name us one of those podcasts that you feel shared some really amazing, amazing market?
Jamil: 17:46
I’ve listened to so many of your podcasts I couldn’t tell you all of them. Every person you’ve had the podcast has given me a live ball moment and I was like, wow, that’s amazing. All of your latest one from Harry was very interesting.
James: 17:59
Oh, no, no, sorry just just to be clear. Oh no, I didn’t mean mine, you know. You know the way you were talking about marketing podcasts just a second ago.
Jamil: 18:07
Yeah, there’s loads of them and loads of them. But another problem I find with marketing podcasts myself is that some of them are a bit too basic for me. And I’m not saying I’m an expert, like there’s no middle ground. There’s like the basic stuff and there’s the expert stuff. I’m like I’m just in the middle. I know how to use Google ads, but if you just I presume everyone’s got Spotify or YouTube YouTube screen, you can just type it, teach me Google ad words or how can I do Google ads as well. So when we’re going off the tangent Google ads, you need to do not spend more, though. Don’t spend like don’t have a marketing budget, five pound a day, you’re not going to get anything. Okay, my marketing budget per practice is 100 pound a day. Okay, so that is a cost of marketing for about 2000 pound of practice, which which sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t. Once you get one one private we minimum get one private emergency a day from Google ads itself. Most likely, these pages turn into come back for regular checkups. We easily make our money back on a day to day basis, but 100 pound a day is what I feel is suitable for emergency general dentistry around the area. Hopefully one day you will become one of these practice or most of my cost per click, believe it or not. James actually goes on. People type in my practice name and click in my ad. People will type one of my practices and I would come up on the sponsored ad because obviously, yeah, I won my sponsored ad and they, they click it and I get charged for it, but it’s barely anything is like 14p, 15p. In my opinion, that creates a great patient experience because the first ad is your practice. They click a straight way, they’re onto your website, they got your phone number, blah, blah, blah. So in my opinion it creates a good patient experience. Some marketing experts will argue hold on, actually it’s not the best of ideas Because organically so, when you type into something into Google and it’s not in that sponsored bit, okay, the top like three or four, you’re going to be there anyway. But I might get three other practices that have sponsored and have listed and did advertisement for my keyword as a dental and then all of the other practices that come up, and so that’s why I think I do spend it. And for them they say is if, if I’m so wrong at doing it, apple do it and I presume Apple don’t need to spend money on Google ads, but they also do it, so they will. When you type in iPhone or anything like that, you’ll see you’ll get a sponsored post of whatever it is a sport advertisement at the top of Apple and then, organically, they’ll still come up highly on the search engine. So what we’re going off topic Marketing is not a hard thing to do about, especially Google ad words. Like I said, they want you to spend money. Just spend a bit of time, make hyper focused ads. So don’t try and advertise dentures to have 18 year old or 24 year old. Yeah, there might be some 18, 18 to 24 year olds wearing a denture, but but more likely they’re going to be a bit older. If we were better, if you were a betting man, that’s what you would do. So about that? Another thing is, a lot of dentists want want to spend five pounds or want to get 5000 pounds worth of treatment. Okay, that doesn’t happen. Whoever’s listening to this, it just doesn’t happen. And in my opinion, you’re better off and advertise for general. If you’re practice owner especially advertise for general dentistry. James, is it okay if I speak because I don’t know you? Some of your listeners will be practice owners and some of them will be associates. Am I right? Yeah, yeah, they’ll be a mix. Yeah, yeah, so I’ll go. So I’m talking this from a principle standpoint. Okay, so that’s what I’m telling the principal to do. Another thing that’s worked really well for me is YouTube ads. So I made a YouTube ad and it was great probably the best thing I’ve ever done. And I really care about unconscious market. Is this subconscious or unconscious market? One of them? No, it’s not unconscious, it’ll be subconscious, wouldn’t it? Subconscious marketing. So what I care about? I want to be the Coca-Cola of dentistry personally, okay, cool. So, coca-cola, don’t go and put a billboard up because they want you to buy more coax. Okay, they put a billboard up because, subconsciously, they want to embed into your head that when I go in your head, you’ve seen Coca-Cola. Next time you go to Tesco, you’re more likely to pick up a Coca-Cola. I’m fascinated by that level of marketing. In my opinion, somebody is always going to need a dentist, and if I could just get them to recognize my brand when they type in dentists near me and I appear at the top of Google ads, okay, straight away, subconsciously, they have built up a lot of trust into my brand straight away, although they’ve never used me, because they’ve seen my brand. Okay, they’ve heard about my brand. So I made a YouTube ad. I think it was 15 seconds. It was a YouTube video. It was cheaper as chips. We do about £30 a day on YouTube ads and we must get. I don’t know. The last time I checked I was getting about 20,000 hits per day views. I’m spending £30, what billboard can you get for £30? And 20,000 people are going to look at your billboard and I do this. I think no, I don’t do. I don’t do skippable ads. So I actually get charged for the full amount. But yeah, it’s good. I’ve got good stats on it. I think I spent about £5 a click. So for every day that ad is showing, I have 100,000 people. I’m getting six people clicking my video to check my website and pay for that. So that was a great way. So that summarizes Google ads. We summarized Facebook. I will get back to the associates. More associates should do. But let’s talk about search engine optimization. So marketing agents love search engine optimization. They’ll come and tell you they’ll sell it to you that oh, you spent £2,000 a month with us. We’ll get you on top for this. That and the other, search engine optimization again, is a bit like word of maths for me. Personally, I just think it’s too slow. Okay, it takes years. If you own a practice in London, good luck, and you’ll just put a new practice, good luck. Getting to number one, number two or number three in organic Google. It takes years to get to that. Google has really trusty website. You need to build up the key attributes H2 tags, h2, they all talk about H1, h2, h3 tags, like the secretive codes. So, personally, search engine optimization, yeah, I see the benefits of it. Personally, it’s just too slow For those who have used Google for a few years. One thing you will have would have noticed now Google have got really, really smart. Now they knew, in my opinion this is from my experience okay, so if you remember Google about five years ago, pre pandemic, if you remember the ads were in a separate box. I think they were in a yellow box. Do you recall them? Days, james? Yes, vaguely.
James: 25:45
I do mean yellow boxes. Yes, way back.
Jamil: 25:47
Yeah, they were in a like a little box and there was like three ads yeah, yes, yeah, so what I? So what now Google have done? They’ve got rid of that box and now when you type in like whatever you type in, type in any dental implants around me, you’ll see that there’s no difference between Google ads and an organic result. All it’s got is a small gray light gray text in advertisement or something like that, with an icon next to it. So you kind of they’ve kind of got rid of it Because they’re included in the feed now, right.
James: 26:20
Yeah, you can’t tell where they were at the side, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, they were not decided.
Jamil: 26:25
They were also at the top, but they were in a separate box. They knew these were ads. Okay, another thing whenever you set up Google ads, you’ll see these different types of ads. Whoever’s listening to this when you get into work, or however you’re listening to it later on, type in like dental implants around me. You’ll see there’ll be excellent ads, there’s be good ads and there’ll be poor ads. Excellent ads, in my opinion, occupy the most amount of space, so what they will have. When you research Google ads, you’ll learn about sightings, address, phone numbers. You’ll learn about how to make your title effective. The more you occupy of that space, the more likely somebody’s to click your click your ad, basically, and Google, in my opinion I think Google likely will more people click your ad, increases the revenue they generate and their cost per click, whatever it is. But they look at. They look at a percentage, I believe, and there is a percentage on Google ads where it looks at impression versus clicks. So I think they do care about that sort of stuff because obviously Google is not going to put your ads out there, if you know. If you add it so poor, nobody wants to click it. There’s a waste of their space because they don’t make money realistically. So that’s done. We’ve discussed by search and denomination. Now, if you’re an associate, in my opinion, go get a website design, advertise yourself, advertise for key treatments, build up a portfolio for yourself. Launch your own Google places. Don’t ever think, just because I’m a, I’m a dentist. I’m a dentist is my, is my principles responsibility to get me patients. Don’t ever think like that. Always try and go make your own website. I’m trying to Google ad words, but if you do ever want to become a practice owner in the future, you’ll be above the curve. You’ll be five step ahead of your competitor. For example, you’ll know about Google ad with, you’ll know about your website. You’ll know how how things work. But yeah, any questions for me, james?
James: 28:35
We have a few coming in the chat. I just wanted to say you’re doing a great job and there’s a ton of pearls there, so nice one on that. Interesting. Interesting what you said just then about how people just don’t know this stuff. I feel it’s a symptom of something called teeth tunnel vision. Right, teeth tunnel vision is where we have two blinkers on and we think like this, we think purely about teeth and what’s in front of us. Right, because we want to be the best clinician, right, you know? And oftentimes there’s these very helpful things that exist just laterally to the teeth tunnel vision, just a little bit outside of our perception. When we’re completely focused on teeth, they can actually amplify what we do in a day to day basis to a huge degree through just having a little bit of knowledge about these lateral fields. Right, like, yeah, because no one ever thinks about it. Because if you think about it, if we do all this, if we do the same things everybody else does, we’re going to get same results, right, whereas if we do things that are a little different and those things are valuable, we get different results. And, as well as that, we don’t just get linear returns from learning about these lateral things. They actually combine in a compounding fashion with me.
Jamil: 29:42
Yes, I agree.
James: 29:44
It’s actually literally, it’s basically just what it was basically part of what you’re saying, right, because you have taken it. I’m going to read between the lines here. You’ve taken it upon yourself to learn the absolute hell out of out of how ads work right, and that’s happened right and that’s why, like, and that’s that’s the currency these days. Attention is oil, right. Attention is more people who speak. Your dental practice is the more money you make, which is what we’re talking about. Yeah, questions. I’m going to go to the chat. There is a question that’s coming and it’s from my man, john Mahoney. John, how are you, my friend? It’s been a while since we’ve caught up. Hope you’re good. Buddy, john has asked what is it that you’re putting? Oh, it’s a good question. What is it you’re putting on your ads? Is it short term ortho slash, implant slash, oral health checks? Definitely not oral health checks. Is it, as we covered earlier, which which is giving you the best ROI? So let’s just home write it. And on what’s on those ads specifically? What sort?
Jamil: 30:46
of so. Are we talking about Google ads or Facebook ads?
James: 30:49
Hmm, it doesn’t actually say here, it just says ads. So here’s the thing. Okay, we’re oddly about the ads, but if you’ve noticed specific trends for specific ads on certain websites, then we can delve into that as well with me, yeah.
Jamil: 31:04
Yes, so we’ll just touch upon obviously. Thank you for the question.
James: 31:09
First we’ll touch on.
Jamil: 31:10
We’ll touch upon Facebook. The ads you should be running on Facebook that, in my opinion, work in busy line. You just have to spend so much money. You run an ad for about 500 pounds and you’ll get maybe two interests, three interests. In my opinion, you’re better off running ads saying we’re accepting new patients and nicely designed picture, and nicely designed picture with your examination fee including X-rays, blah, blah, blah. We’re accepting new patients. You could spend a, let’s say, 500 pounds of that and I can almost guarantee that you’ll get about 20 new patients from that If you put 500 pounds in. So your cost return on investment is crazy, because most of these patients will generate you about 500 pounds worth of work minimum. Another thing that worked for me is emergency, so just say so, I’ll tell you how much. Recharge recharge a hundred pounds for an emergency appointment that includes treatment and includes an x-ray. You might say we’re cheap, but I don’t feel like taking a piss out of patients that are in pain. Some dental practice charge 150 pounds for them to come and sit in your chair is absolutely ridiculous in my opinion. A hundred pounds is enough meat on the bone for everyone. Everyone gets to eat happy. That’s my little rant about dentistry overall. So I charge a simple one rate, a hundred pound one tooth. I take out our extra pay to, I’ll give you antibiotics, whatever you need, for that one tooth. You can make a simple poster about that and I guarantee somebody will see that poster and they’ll be like I’ll be suffering with toothache for three weeks and I can’t get a dentist. Okay, you run that. I put 500 pounds of that. I guarantee the aunties will be tagging their friends saying oh, go to this dentist only a hundred pounds. They’ll see to you and whenever they do message, see them the same days. The least we can do as a profession, in my opinion, put all your invisible eye patients to a side. The main reason we’re dentists is to help people get people out of pain. It’s one God-given gift that we have that not many people have. Sorry, I get very emotional about dental pain.
James: 33:14
Jamil, I want you to let it all out on this podcast. Thanks for the ride. I feel like we answered John’s question there. So you’re saying right, everybody just goes for the flipping gimme right, which is go for Invisalign, right. But actually, if we just take two seconds and be intelligent about it, if we can just get them to the exam, then we can sell them Invisalign at the exam, if that’s what we actually want to do. You know what I mean? Yeah, because if you’re going to go Invisalign, everyone’s doing the same thing, whereas if we change it and we mix it up and we think laterally, it has the same outcome in an indirect way, because you’re never about it, right?
Jamil: 33:54
But I believe Invisalign Invisalign has worked in my opinion. These are the guys who’ve done Invisalign extremely well in my opinion. Okay, some of the guys Apex, wherever they are top dogs, I call them all right Invisalign and everyone else that’s doing Invisalign. What they’re trying to do, in my opinion, they’re just trying to add to their NHS income, their private income, their NHS, and they’re just trying to upscale their private work. Basically, I don’t know how I feel about Invisalign itself. We don’t. I’ve never, ever. I’m like, if you, we get patients. So I’ve done my eighth Invisalign case now and these patients have begged me to do it. I don’t want to do it, you know, please, jamal, I know we want you to do it. We trust you. Flasa, all right, fine, I’ll do it for you. So I don’t know. I think there’s a lot more money, in my opinion, in general dentistry and a lot of people just put it to the side. So, yeah, in my opinion I’ve tried it and I’ve spent thousands of pounds on advertising on Facebook and Google Ads for Invisalign the cost, the return on investment, is just not there compared to general dentistry. So, if you’re going to advertise, advertise for general dentistry and for emergency appointments.
James: 35:09
Cool, cool, cool cool. Thank you for that. Someone’s just put something interesting in the comments here. 100 pound checkup or 100 pound emergency exam right, why not 99.99? Do you think that works?
Jamil: 35:24
And no, because we’ve become numb to it now. Yeah, Everyone does it. It worked once upon a time back in the 1500s, when they used to do it. Okay, Come on, let’s be a clean, simple practice. No, 99 pound just doesn’t do it for me. I like that 100 pound. If you call somebody 99 pound, what’s the difference between 100 pound? It doesn’t look better marketing wise. Maybe between 15,000, 16,000, maybe it makes a difference, you see right, Think about it, right.
James: 35:53
Actually, I think I’m with you, and here’s why right, Think about it. If it’s 99.9, what does that say 99.99? It says bargain. Right, the number comes to healthcare. We actually don’t want that, we want quality. We want that extra numeral, right, Don’t we? Because we’re like oh, for some reason, I actually associate that more with quality, which is actually what I want when it comes to that. Here’s the thing there’s no hard data on that. That’s just our instinct.
Jamil: 36:22
I just don’t. I think it’s tacky, in my opinion. Yeah, yeah.
James: 36:28
Wow, it’s tacky. That’s cool, it’s cool, that’s the thing. This is why it’s important that people say these things. Right, we can have these discussions, and that’s actually a good point right there. And, by the way, anybody listening, please don’t check us on the 1500s, because we’re just being officially the time that 99.99 became cool.
Jamil: 36:47
okay, we just made that up, we just made that up for clarity.
James: 36:52
But it was a long. I do get what you’re saying. It’s like it’s been around for a while.
Jamil: 36:56
Right, that’s what you’re saying, yeah, it just reminds me of a supermarket. Realistically, Because then if it’s that case, then when I’ve got a pair of easy extracts, I might as well just do buy one, get one free.
James: 37:06
Cool bro. Yeah, I like that Tony says. Tony would like to clarify and say he’s not that old, he’s not from the 1500s. I’m so sorry, tony. That’s cool, tony, apparently 97,. Someone else has jumped in and said 97 pounds is the new 99.99, 97. I have heard that about sevens. Actually, there’s something that sevens do to our psychology.
Jamil: 37:31
Yeah, but okay, last threat. So let me tell you what the problem I have as a principal. Okay, my team are the best. With that car, the machine, somebody will accidentally type the wrong figure 97 pounds and then think about how many pound coin changes you’re gonna have to have. So you can’t even keep five pound notes You’re gonna have to keep somebody pays you on the pound and cash. Think about you’re gonna go to the bank every other day getting pound coins from the bank. It’s just not worth it.
James: 37:58
That’s very practical, that is true. Yeah, cool. Yeah, I have heard the seven thing and it is true. It’s like you look at an eight and you look at a nine and there’s just some high, something less aggressive about a seven. And I have no idea why, but my psychology, my psych, there’s something in my brain that just says I’m warmer to a seven. And there’s gonna be some don’t say a seven, eight, nine and all of that stuff. That was a six, eight, seven and that doesn’t work because that would make seven threatening. Anyway, ignore me.
Jamil: 38:30
So I’ll tell you why. Okay, so I’ve told you on my first podcast I’m a huge fan of Michelin-star restaurants. So you’ll never see a Michelin-star restaurant so I’m not gonna do it. Have you ever seen that? 99 pound for a steak? It’s simple, it’s clear cut prices. You’re not there to bargain with anyone, it’s just. It is what it is. No, I don’t personally believe I’m gonna get more patients coming to me because I put 99 or 97, then I do 100. Keep it simple straight. One thing a patient will come to me if I tell them your appointment’s not gonna cost you for that measure, you’ll see appointment more than 100 pounds. That’s what will get me patients.
James: 39:05
Yeah, I love it. And here’s the thing. It’s all great discussion. So thank you everyone. People don’t talk about this stuff, right? People don’t talk about it. Tony said here’s something we can all agree on. Main thing is to be upfront with the cost and what it includes, etc. Question, question, question, right? So here’s something that obviously Tony’s just used the word price here. You know the way we’ve got these words price and cost, and then some people prefer to use the term investment whenever they’re speaking to the patient. Do you think that using salesy language is important on adverts or do you just, straight up, use comments? What is we would normally use to describe these things?
Jamil: 39:51
No, I say cost, I don’t think it’s an investment. All I say to my patients. I get loads of patients that come and say to me, look, there’s a 1500-pound treatment plan. I said, look, I’m not here to sell you a treatment plan. If you want it done by me, that’s what it’s going to cost you, right, and I don’t really mind if you don’t pick me as a dentist, and that’s fine. I said, just, you have to promise me one thing just get the work done, because you’ll appreciate, you’ll remember I usually say you’ll remember the short Asian chapter, one-sever team and you’ll thank me later on in life. And he was like and is that trust and honesty? Like everything we mentioned in our first podcast, how we don’t use the word from in any of our pricing. We have got a price for everything and my staff, every single one of my staff, knows my pricing inside out. There’s no from in our language and to or whatever they do. And some dentists hide their pricing and I think that’s absurd. You wouldn’t go to Tesco and there wouldn’t be no pricing. And then you pick up the milk, surprise, surprise, it’s 1.50. I don’t know why dentists do it. I don’t know why they’re not transparent. And another thing dentists also do. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it. I research a lot of dental practices. A lot of them will say Invisalign from £2,000. When have you last charged Invisalign patient £2,000? Invisalign, you don’t what you enticing, so you’re lying to the patient from the get-go. You’re being dishonest, in my opinion. So be clear cut, be fair and that’s it.
James: 41:21
Cool, bro. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on that. That’s awesome, and thank you for being real and authentic. That’s cool. And here’s the thing maybe not everyone feels that, and that’s also fine as well, because the whole point is that we’re able to have these discussions and, by the way, I don’t know if I actually mentioned this. Maybe I did at the start, I can’t remember, but we said the title of this podcast was Marketing. How to get 10 to 12 private patients a day, right. So with achievements come credibility, because all this stuff you’re saying is what allows your practice to achieve those numbers, which gives you the ability to be able to speak from a position as a credible source. Right, this does actually work, which is amazing.
Jamil: 42:08
Yeah. So if anyone wants to challenge me, I could show them stats and figures. But one some of the listeners if I quickly touch on my next thing about from newspaper. So everyone in this thing is just digital marketing. Okay, it’s great. Okay, yeah, it has. This swings around about is great. But a lot of dentists once upon a time a lot of dentists used to do newspaper ads, leaflet ads. Nobody does them anymore. Where’s the last time you see a dental practice and what you’re doing? I’m screwing myself in the process because I’m doing it at the moment, but you’re missing a huge trick here. So you know what I was telling you. If you want implant patients in business line, don’t put it in the newspaper. It’s never going to work. Implants work amazing in newspapers. So I’ve spent. I’ve spent. It must have been about. Do you mind to know? I spent about 350 pounds for a whole newspaper ad and anyone that’s going to advertise on the newspaper always advertise on the right hand side of the page. Don’t be tight and get half a page. Always get a full page. 350 pounds. And every time I put an ad seriously, jokes aside I’ve got two full arches of implants every time. And it’s crazy, the demographic that come. They’re a bit older, most of them are retired They’ll bring, they’ll cut out the newspaper and they’ll bring it to me and they said, look, I’ve seen you on the newspaper and I was like, have you googled me? They were like no, no, no, I don’t know how to use a phone. So we’ve got this huge gap where nobody’s touching into.
James: 43:46
But bro, like that’s so cool, because no one, I would have never thought of that. And yeah, exactly like you said, the people that need implants, not the generalised, that tend to be that demographic who read newspapers Right, that’s genius. Yeah, and do you know what? Another?
Jamil: 44:01
thing that happens, james, which is crazy in my opinion is that so when you’re retired, some of them go do the things that you’re going to do. Some of them go do these balls and they play these games and stuff. They’re really cute. If one of their friends complain, oh, my denture keeps falling out, can’t go eat in a meal, the other friend will cut out the newspaper and say, oh my God, jenny, you could really do with this. And they’ll go to Jenny and give it to Jenny. They’ll cut out and they’ll keep it. They’re in their pocket till the next time to see them. But that worked great. What hasn’t worked so great, in my opinion? Okay. So I got excited. Once upon a time I was like I want to see stats. Okay, so I was like you know what I’m going to. It was a late afternoon one day. I was like I’m fed up, I’m going to show people how it’s done. And this is where my arrogance got ahead of me. And this is when I realized that and actually I don’t know I’m not as good as I am I did a £10,000 leaf distribution ad for about 98,000 homes for implants, and so that started on Monday. I think I’ve got about four or five implant patients booked in, but that hasn’t worked out as well as I would have hoped it worked out. In my opinion, what I would have been better off doing is running a newspaper ad every day, rather than spend that 10,000, if that makes sense Because I would have got a lot more, actually could have run a newspaper ad every week. That’s 52 year, a bit more, a bit more than every week. But if you, please don’t be one of these people that runs the same ad. Remember, we talked about this at the beginning. Make sure it’s slightly different so it catches somebody’s eye. Whether it means that you just change the color of the background, just make it different, make it unique, make it different. So, yeah, that’s that Word of mouth. Yeah, I don’t know, dinosaurs believe in word of mouth, but I guess it does work. I’ll tell you how it does work. Somebody will recommend me, for example, say, oh yeah, my friend recommended you and then I went and researched you online and then they said, yeah, that’s why I picked you, but that was kind of a double. That was like you know, when you play Call of Duty and you kill, and then there’ll be like kill confirmed. That’s how you confirm a kill when you, when somebody recommends it, then they go like what they read online. So yeah, I think I don’t know what else I could talk about. Marketing, any questions?
James: 46:15
No, no, no. This is awesome. I’ve got some things that have popped into my head right, in fact, two really interesting ones, right? I know that we’re talking about all the things that you’ve used to success, right, and you literally just said one just now that didn’t go so well. How about if we were to just pick some of the ones that didn’t work and talk about those just for a little while, or quick fire and name them? So?
Jamil: 46:37
that people don’t make mistakes. So ear fresheners, another one. So we made custom ear fresheners With Faris Dettar, beautifully designed it. I thought, yes, this is great, it’s going to get me loads of patience. I don’t think it was that effective. Personally, I think I did it more for my ego, because when I drive, when I go into work and I see somebody ear freshener because nobody ever takes them down, I don’t know if you realize they’re freshness they always keep them there, and when I saw them, I think and my niece actually sent me a picture of what she was in McDonald’s and it just I don’t know, maybe that made me happy. It was cheap, though I think it was about I got about 500 ear fresheners for about 200 pound, a custom cut with our branding and stuff like that. So it was pennies on the dollar. I don’t know if that really worked. Another thing that I probably I don’t know if really worked, but I did for the goodness of my heart is we have I ever talked about this? We wrote our birthday cards for all of our patients.
James: 47:31
No, we haven’t. You haven’t mentioned that.
Jamil: 47:34
So this is a logistical nightmare. Anyone planning to do this? So I was sitting there, obviously on a Friday night, going excited. I was like I’m going to do more. So a chap called Lorde Leen on Instagram I don’t know some of you viewers might have heard of him. I remember seeing this snap on Instagram and he was like oh look, I got a birthday card from Rolls Royce. I was like I’m the Rolls Royce of dentistry, I’m going to do the same. So we’ve got. We must have had about 8,000 patients, okay, and I was like girls, we’re going to write out a birthday card for every single patient. So we got our ones branded as a forest dental, blah, blah, blah. And then I got when the nurses had nothing to do I’d write birthday cards, so they would sit there and we ran it for a year and logistically we wanted it to get there for the actual birthday and you don’t know what a nightmare. Bank holidays, christmas, easter all of them throw into the mix Weekend also froze things off. We did that. I’ve got a lot of actually presents from doing that, because a lot of people are the older demographic with nobody buys them a birthday card and they were like Jamil. It was so nice that you actually thought of us, but we didn’t do it. We didn’t get it printed inside. So, every single card, a patient, every patient got a card and it was like wow, they actually remembered my birthday and they actually hand-written me a card. And you always write it in blue pen, so they know it’s 100%, 100. Don’t write it in black.
James: 49:03
That’s cool, that’s a good tip, because then they know it’s authentic.
Jamil: 49:07
But yeah, I don’t know, that was an expensive marketing campaign that must have cost about maybe 10 to 12,000 pounds for a year. But I’d do it again Probably. If I had to give them this disciplinary, I probably would make a thousand cards for that. I think it was a nice thing to do once. If you do it every year, the patient’s kind of expected, and then you get a complaint if you don’t do it the next year, where was my birthday card this year? I got loads of pictures that say I never had a birthday card from my dentist. That’s amazing. Thank you so much. And I was like mate. We sent it to a thousand other people this week alone, so don’t worry about it.
James: 49:45
Yeah, I can see the logic and I can see the logic. I can also see how it can flip in snowball into this huge thing that we have to maintain. So I totally hear you. Probably best. It ended when it did by the signs of it. Let’s let’s we’ve got. We’re coming up to the 40, 50 minute mark. There’s some really obvious little pearls and gems I just want to dig into before we, before we could even, and the other one was right. Oh, here’s one. Here’s a really fun one and there’s actually a really good question that’s coming as well. So I think we can probably squeeze these two things, Okay. First one quickfire solutions to marketing that are outside the box, that will help lots of dental paxists that most people don’t even know they need or don’t even realize exist, that you find in this journey.
Jamil: 50:39
The number one it’s. So you’re talking about gems, doing it yourself, learning what works and what doesn’t work. Another thing is that you need to what hasn’t worked for me. Don’t do adverts for Valentine’s Day, christmas Day. Don’t do that stuff. It makes you tacky. Okay, we’re not a shop. What other things should have dentists do? I’ve mentioned this already, but if you want to be serious competitor, your Google reviews need to be top notch. Make sure you get them five-star. Anyone can have 4.8, 4.9. Doesn’t take a genius. Maintaining a five-stars is another level, in my opinion. Aim for that. What other things could they do to get patients Market spend money? You’ll find things that doesn’t work and what works and what doesn’t work very quickly. Within a week you’ll know. You’ll say to me Jamil, that works for me, that doesn’t work for me. And, by the way, guys, anyone wants to reach out to me? My Instagram handle is dentistjamil. I think you can just DM me if you’ve got any questions. I’ll answer them. I’ll help you as much as I can.
James: 51:36
Don’t worry, thank you so much. You know I can tell you’re an entrepreneur, jamil, because you’ve got like such high energy and you get really excited about this stuff. So I know that when you get a bit like me, when you get an idea, you’re like oh, we got to do it.
Jamil: 51:48
No, we got to do it right.
James: 51:50
And here’s the thing right. You know, when you do that stuff even, maybe, even if it doesn’t work out like eight out of 10 times, it’s those two out of 10 times that it does work out right, that it’s so flipping awesome, these little outside the box ideas, and maybe your hit ratio is more than that. I just made that note.
Jamil: 52:05
But you know what it is. I look for my lunch. I just look to pay for my lunch. Five pounds a day, that’s what I need for my lunch. So what I try and do if I do something and I can have a 10 pound lunch, I’m on to a winner winner chicken dinner. So that’s what I do. I care about the pounds. I’m not fixated on the money but I do care about the pounds, like if I feel like if I do this I can earn another. Let’s say, my company will turn over another 10,000 pound a year from me sitting there for an hour. In my opinion it becomes worth it. But some day just be like what is 10,000 pound in the grand scheme of things? I’ve never got to that level. Question.
James: 52:40
I know I like that, I like the energy. Final question that’s come in here how and why shouldn’t associate dentists advertise themselves instead of the practice doing it? Is it necessary, is it important? What do you think?
Jamil: 52:52
Yeah, it’s more important than anything. If somebody comes to me, wants a job for me and they’ve already got their own brand, they’ve already got their own patients, I am more likely to give them a more favorable rate, percentage wise, because they’re putting the patient. It’s free. It’s free patients, it’s free money for me. I’m on to a winner. So, yeah, you should. Whoever asked that question, you should build up your own website. You should build up your own brand. Please, don’t name it after yourself. Don’t be tacky. I’ve made that mistake, okay. Yeah, that’s another thing I did wrong. Don’t ever name a practice after yourself. It’s too tacky and it’s cringey when you have to do research on allowing to mold dental. That’s bad, that is. Don’t do that. Yeah, you should. As an associate. Yeah, I’m not saying go get a really expensive website designed by, let’s say, the one in the dental industry beginning with D I’m not sponsored by anyone but the one that begins with D and maybe don’t spread poor 5,000 birth.