Orthotown March 2021 - 54

Part 1: Building patient and dentist referrals
To read the first installment of Casey Bull's series about marketing
an orthodontic practice in 2021, head to orthotown.com/magazine
and select the January/February 2021 issue.

Facebook Live events
The three main reasons a practice would
get started with Facebook Live events:
*	 Grow engagement and exposure.
Since COVID, face-to-face
engagement is limited, and social
media platforms give practices
the ability to engage with current,
former and prospective patients. 
*	 Beat the algorithm. Video is very
prominent in social media, and live
events give you the opportunity
to not only engage live but also
generate video that can then be
repurposed later.
*	 Competitor pressure. Competition
in the orthodontic market is
increasing and whether you're feeling
competitive pressure from a local
dentist, orthodontist, DTC provider
or other, Facebook Live events give
you an opportunity to capture the
attention of prospects who may
have ended up going with your
competitors. 
There are various approaches to Facebook Live events, and ultimately only
trial-and-error will determine what the
people in your area are most interested
in, but a good starting point is providing
the information that a new patient would
get in a new-patient consultation. This
should be done by the orthodontist and a
treatment coordinator.
Think of this as an opportunity for
shoppers or those still in the research
stage to have direct access to the doctor.
Sometimes people can feel intimidated
or slightly insecure in a dental practice or

54

talking with a doctor. But when you give
people the opportunity to converse behind
the safety of Facebook and a keyboard,
they will engage more openly and you can
turn that trust into a booked consultation. 
Be sure to keep the sessions short-
around 15 minutes. So if the above topic
would normally take you 45 minutes, then
break that up into three 15-minute sessions,
a week apart. 
Promotion of the Facebook Live event(s)
should come in multiple forms. All promotions should happen within a week of
the event and focus on email marketing
and social media. Paid advertising is not
recommended; I recommend ad spends be
reserved for lead generation. (I'll discuss
that more in a bit.)
*	 Send an email blast to any new
patient inquiry who never completed
a consultation, as well as to those
who are uncommitted to treatment,
one week ahead of the event and
again one hour before the event.
*	 Post to social media profiles
(organically) and ask your team
members to like, comment and
reshare. You can even share the
post to local Facebook mom groups
(and others).
For your first few Facebook Live events,
you do need to stack the deck in your favor
a bit, so select a few team members (and
rotate it every week to evenly disperse
responsibility) to bring five friends to attend
the event. This is to ensure that there is
some attendance at the event; everyone
does not need to be a real orthodontic
patient prospect.

And finally, have a giveaway-people
love social media giveaways-and offer a
prize like whitening treatment, a Visa gift
card or a tablet. 
This is more of a brand awareness
strategy, so metrics of success should be
live attendance and recording viewings.
You should also see new patient inquiries
increase over time as your brand awareness
increases (from a range of referral sources,
not Facebook Live specifically). This increase
is typically delayed by three to six months. 

Microinfluencer marketing
This type of strategy is so important
because data has proven that word of mouth
generates the best returns, and social media
influencer referrals are nearly as good as
the typical patient word-of-mouth referrals.
Also, Facebook's organic post reach for
small businesses is only 2-6% of your
audience, so these influencers will help
push your messages out for you.
First, identify whom you should partner
with-you need to find people your audience
will trust and will respect the opinion of.
You should be looking for these three things:
*	 Relevance. These influencers should
be sharing content and have a
following relevant to your business
and the market segment you want
to target.
*	 Relevant reach. The number of
people you can reach through the
influencer's follow base will only
bring value if it is a large, local
following. Microinfluencers typically
have 10,000-100,000 followers, but
can have more or less and still add
tremendous value.
*	 Resonance. The influencers must be
engaged with their audience in a way
that's valuable and relevant to your
brand. Do they reply to comments
and have two-way conversations
with their followers?

MARCH 2021 // orthotown.com

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2/25/21 11:45 AM
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Orthotown March 2021

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