My early morning run with CFO William Bowen-Davies and subsequent coffee with Marketing Manager Eloise O’Reilly were a fascinating insight into the background of and plans for this innovative dental partnership. You can read about their unique business model HERE;
Prediction: Dentex will grow to become a significant partnership for independent practitioners who have the years, the enthusiasm and the vision to stick around.
CEO and founder Tim Molony updated me as to the new terms of business that this well-establish site are now offering to members and the technical innovation they have in the pipeline;
Prediction: now that Tim has altered the subscription model to a “results only” basis, his membership will double in the short to medium term.
Always good to catch up with my client and friend Sandeep Kumar. I can remember when MiSmile was an idea in his head – now, with 50+ UK members, they are a force to be reckoned with in the Invisalign market and also used The Dentistry Show as a platform to announce their new collaboration with Philips on Zoom. Of interest to me was a good look at their two sister companies, Dominate Dental, who are offering digital marketing services and Dengro+, a unique CRM system designed specifically for dental practices and creating a sales pipeline system that, for once, all the team in your practice can understand and operate.
Prediction: MiSmile is already a force to be reckoned with, solving the problem that independents have in the external digital marketing landscape. With the technological innovations on the support side, increased member training and the new Philips collaboration, they are becoming a powerhouse in the marketplace.
Comment
What do all of these companies have in common? They are offering SCALE to the smaller independent, faced with corporate and retailer competition. By forming producer groups, the independents can pool their resources in a variety of ways. Expect to see more of this.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the valuable insights; always good to read your posts. The braces marketing network is a great initiative and no doubt it helps with new case acquisition. However, I’m wondering how scalable it is longer term? Presumably there are only so many participants “allowed” in a given area to avoid conflict of interest?
There are also other challenges. The way Google works i.e. localisation, means that local businesses will nearly always appear higher than marketing networks in organic search results, even with modest SEO. It’s then quite easy to top this out with a targeted AdWords campaign to compete with the networks own ads. Similarly with Facebook and simple re-marketing techniques.
The majority of web traffic is still organic (i.e. not paid) and often converts better. So local businesses can have a big advantage here too if they understand how “search” works and use it to their advantage.
The general public also know the main braces brands, so a lot of the product awareness is already out there. Only last night I was out with my partner and we overheard two young woman on the adjacent table talking about the pros and cons of 6MS, Invisalign and Cfast! For sure many are shopping around.
Local businesses also have the advantage of “personalisation” – and many people prefer to go direct and not use a “middle-man”.
So this type of network is a great “done for you” option but there are certainly cost-effective ways to meet (and beat) the level of returns being quoted. Granted that the dentist still needs some marketing assistance but the infrastructure can usually be implemented quite cost-effectively. As with most things, it’s “horses for courses”; some will prefer a hands-off approach and be prepared to pay more for it, others will try alternative routes in the quest for potentially better returns but with slightly more involvement.
It will be interesting to see how many similar services appear and how popular they will prove. It’s certainly fascinating to see the various different initiatives develop.
Thanks
Dave Jones
Hi Chris, great to meet you at the Dentistry Show.
In case your readers are looking for direct access to DenGro it’s available via https://www.dengro.com and includes access to our 3 month trial which runs til 1st September 2017.
Thanks,
Chris