Dental marketing report card: Village Green Dental

Joy Gendusa

For this report card, we examined the multichannel marketing of Jason Monroe, DDS, an Aurora, Illinois, dentist who is a client of mine. How did he fare? Read on to find out!

Direct mail: A

Village Green Dental mails postcards to specific zip codes and households with incomes of $50,000-plus in Aurora, Illinois. Dr. Monroe has been mailing postcards consistently since January 2016, following a big mailing of 26,000 postcards in December 2015 to kick-start the campaign. For consistency, he gets an A+!

The woman looking down draws your eye to the large headline—smart!

I’d love the phone number to be a bit bigger so it pops more. I have to squint to see it, and you don’t want to make people work to call you.

This clever graphic design element entices the recipient to turn the card over, where a number of incentives are waiting.

I love the smiling dentist! A lot of dentists I speak to mention that they “aren’t models,” so they don’t want to put themselves on the card. Big mistake! As a consumer, I don’t care what you look like, but I will like and trust you more if I can see your face, and that’s what matters.

I love this review testimonial! The quote bubble and star-rating grabs your attention and gives the practice instant credibility.

Of our successful dental campaigns, 62% feature two or more offers. The dotted lines convey that these are special offers, much like coupons.

Dr. Monroe on discounts: “People need a reason to trigger a change in their dental care, and finances are a huge trigger these days. When a new patient redeems an offer, it isn’t a loss on that service—it’s an opportunity to prove yourself and show this patient that any other dental care provider really isn’t even an option. And if we fail to do that, that’s on us.”

The green call to action area draws your attention to the bottom, though I’d love for the phone number to be bigger and bolder.

Online marketing: A+

Dr. Monroe’s online marketing is coordinated with his postcard campaign. That means the same people see a cohesive message in their mailboxes, on their Facebook feeds, and on millions of sites in the Google network. This is huge for amplifying reach and brand awareness. The best part is, it isn’t more work for him. We coordinate it with our Everywhere Small Business campaign program (postcardmania.com/dental-esb).

I see the special offer immediately on this one! It’s a great reminder for people thinking about getting an implant.

Showing a real picture of the dentist builds trust with prospective patients. And with these ads being seen 1,146,777 times online, you definitely want to instill trust.

I suggest adding color to make these ads more attention-grabbing. Most websites have a white background, so these colors might blend right in and not be noticed.

Website: B

Dr. Monroe’s site (villagegreendental.net) is vibrant and brimming with helpful information, but my main gripe is that there’s no lead-capture form! You need a form to capture as many leads as possible. I like to suggest an “ask the doctor” form for prospective patients.

Smiling people are a win for dental websites! This header rotates a few images, and they all feature big smiles.

The navigation menu has a few too many options, which can confuse prospective patients. Keep your menu items to seven or fewer as a best practice.

Scrolling down, there’s a lot of text—too much, too soon! I would line up the award icons right underneath the header, then include a small amount of welcome text, then the video, then more text, etc. The key is to keep people scrolling and on your site, and to make them like and trust you more and more until they contact you.

The “Make a Payment” button may scare away prospects still exploring. Let’s relocate this button to a page dedicated to current patients.

Prospects love to see real people! I would add smaller photos of all the dentists and just note that Dr. Adams is new. Dentistry is personal—people need to like and trust you!

The practice’s logo is near the bottom. Ideally, this should be located in the upper-left-hand corner on every page. Branding!

Reviews

Reviews are vital to getting a prospective patient from being a “maybe” to booking an appointment. And they want real reviews. Dr. Monroe’s reviews page is great—it seems as if reviews are being imported from another site unedited, like a live feed. It’s awesome and needs to be added to his homepage as a smaller version.

Village Green Dental is a review machine. They have 58 reviews on Google, 76 on Facebook, 22 on Yelp, and even more given to them directly from patients. And they are constantly generating more and more. I had to update those numbers twice while writing this article!