The Story
What Changed in Hulse's Practice.
I've been practicing for about 21 years now. I've owned my own practice for about 13 years, and now we're probably 60 to 70% doing cosmetic and rehab work and maybe 30 to 40% general dentistry.
I think it was around COVID, 2019 or 2020, pretty early in Smile Virtual's start, and Dr. Harris sent me a personal video explaining it. I thought it was really good and what I was looking for. I've been using it for six years now, and it's been extremely helpful in my practice.
The bottom line is it saves everyone a lot of time. In time is money, both for myself and for the patients. No one wants to take off work. Also, we don't want to see people who don't know what things cost. Dentists in general are awkward about talking money. They shouldn't be, but they are. It's a lot easier to do it in a video.
It takes some time to do these videos, but it's way less time than wasting their time and your own time face-to-face. I've done literally thousands of virtual consults. Several thousand over the years.
Social media marketing works because a lot of it is they just get to see you a lot, but they also get to know you. That's where we are in this day and age, and why do they pick you from one doctor over another? Cosmetics has something to do with how things look, and that's why social media is particularly good for cosmetic dentistry. It's so visual.
I've doubled down on social media and posting more often, and really our call to action in every marketing piece is doing a virtual consult, because it's just a great screening tool. It's a screening and selling tool. You want to sell them what you can do.
Some people have looked at all my stuff and they know me, and this is just formality of what's specific to them. Other people maybe haven't done as much research, so they get to see some examples. But it's really our call to action for all of our marketing.
To me, if you have any type of niche practice, meaning you're selling anything specific that isn't the general dentist that does everything, this is a really good way of getting in front of the patient and selling it, saving everyone time and money. It's a no-brainer.
