Harnessing Ground Marketing for Sustainable Patient Growth

Dive into the world of ground marketing with our inaugural episode of the Ground Marketing Series, where I reveal its powerful impact in the dental industry!

Unlike traditional digital marketing strategies, ground marketing leverages face-to-face interactions to cultivate trust and boost brand awareness by meeting potential patients in their natural surroundings. This episode explores the psychological and behavioral triggers that underpin ground marketing's success, including the mere exposure effect, reciprocity principle, social proof, and emotional connection. These concepts are not just theoretical; I'm bringing them to life with compelling real-world examples, such as strategic daycare partnerships, corporate lunch and learns, and impactful community health fairs.

Tune in as I navigate through the tangible advantages of ground marketing, shedding light on how this approach consistently outperforms paid advertising in terms of cost-effectiveness and conversion rates. Ground marketing's sustainable practices pave the way for long-term growth, giving your dental practice a competitive edge. This episode is a treasure trove of insights that are not only actionable but designed to transform the way you think about patient engagement. Don't forget to tune in next week, where I'll delve deeper into the psychology that drives these successful ground strategies!

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

• The distinctive value of ground marketing in the dental sector.
• How face-to-face interactions enhance trust and brand awareness.
• Understanding the mere exposure effect and its application.
• Insights into the reciprocity principle in marketing practices.
• Utilizing social proof to strengthen marketing efforts.
• Building emotional connections with potential patients.
• Successful case studies of ground marketing initiatives.
• The cost advantages and high conversion rates of ground marketing.
• How ground marketing ensures long-term sustainability over paid ads.
• A preview of psychological aspects in marketing strategies.

Let's jumpstart your practice's growth by listening to today's episode!

‍

‍

Learn More About the Ground Marketing Course Here:

Website: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/the-ground-marketing-course-open-enrollment/

‍

Other Mentions and Links:

‍

Terms:

EDDM

PPC

‍

Marketing Tools:

Facebook Ads

Google Ads

‍

‍

For more helpful tips, strategies, ideas, and marketing advice, join my weekly newsletter here.

The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041

‍

Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)

‍

Michael: All right. So let's dive in to the first and foremost topic, which is introduction to ground marketing. We're going to get an overview of what ground marketing is and why it works. And then I'm going to give you real life examples of the success that ground marketing brings to a lot of our members. But I mainly want you to understand what ground marketing is.

So ground marketing. Is the practice of directly engaging with potential patients in their own environment, such as schools, gyms, coffee shops, and community events, and so forth, to create trust and increase brand awareness, unlike digital marketing, which relies on online advertising and social media ground marketing thrives on face to face interactions.

Relationship building and personal touch points that make businesses more approachable and trustworthy. It makes your practice, the go to practice in the community. It's approachable. They trust you. And there's a science behind ground marketing. Okay. It's not just, Hey, this is what a lot of us experience.

There's actually four specific things that ground marketing does now ground marketing leverages, several psychological and behavioral triggers. That make it uniquely effective. But the foremost are number one, the mere exposure effect. Now people develop a preference for things they see frequently. The more often potential patients encounter your brand and their daily lives, the more familiar and trustworthy you become so.

This also doesn't rule out any social media ads, any Facebook marketing, things like that, Google ads. It just helps as well. Just like ground marketing helps those types of marketing, mediums as well, it's touch points, but this touch point ground marketing.

It's insanely strong. It's a human to human interaction touch point. It's in their life in real time like in person. So this is an insanely strong touch point that often converts within just one touch point. So the mere exposure effect is one to reciprocity principle. When you give people something valuable for free.

For example, maybe something educational, free dental consultation, branded giveaways, things like that. Your time. They feel obligated to give back. And a lot of the times, it's done so by booking an appointment. And so, you're going to see a lot of the reciprocity principle. And ground marketing. It happens.

This is a beautiful principle that never ever fails. Never once in the history of history has anyone said, yes, I love that you're doing all this for me. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. No, I don't want anything of yours. Just help me out. That's it. Boom. It's not human. The reciprocity principle works and that is delved deep into ground marketing.

Three social proof. When people see others engaging and trusting your practice, they're more likely to do the same. So if more people like on social media, you start becoming popular on social media. They're like, Oh snap, people are following you. My friends are following you. My family's following you.

They go to you more than likely. The other person is also going to go to them too, right? The person who's talking. So social proof, same thing in ground marketing. When you're at events, when you're at lunch and learns, when you're at. specific locations and your booth or whatever is popping and more and more people are coming to you and everything like that, more and more people are talking about you in the community.

Social proof more in your community will go to you guaranteed. Social proof is huge So ground marketing does provide a lot of social proof. I'm just going to give you an example. If you're out at a school, or at a daycare and you're doing an event there and then you decide to post.

Pictures and things like that and tag some friends, tag some teachers. I mean, That's just creating a lot of social proof right there that not only are you a dentist in the community, are you an established practice in the community and you're helping out the community and you're helping out the children in the community now, but at the same time, other people are talking about you and how in that one event.

You did so much for the school, the daycare, the community, the children, all that stuff. And so that brings a lot of awareness, a lot of social proof, and it builds up a lot of credibility. And of course you get appointments and you get people coming into your practice. So that's number three and four, it builds an emotional connection.

So meeting someone in person, as we know, creates a stronger, more memorable impression than an online ad. And I'm going to take this out of context a little bit. For example. My wife and I, it was a long distance relationship. I'm from Texas. She's from California. And when we would date, right. I met her in person first, obviously.

And then after that we would email back in the day, it was more emailing and then, writing letters and then it became texting, that became like a huge thing. do you remember when you had to push like four, four times and then three to three and then two to two, just to like, you know, back then BRB, LOL, all that stuff was a lifesaver.

But anyways that was cool and all, but then when you saw each other in person, the emotional connection was a lot stronger. so same thing, right? A lot of the times they may see you on social media, they may see your ads, they may see all these things, but when they see you in person, the emotional connection is a lot stronger.

Same thing with concerts, events. That's why we have in person events when we go to a lot of these symposium or events or summits for our industry. But at the same time, concerts, same thing, right? You can listen to the band, you can listen to their album. As soon as it drops, you can be their biggest fan, but if you're never at a concert, are you that much of a fan, right?

But when you get there at the concert, you experience a whole different environment, a whole different vibe. When you get there at those events, for CE credits and stuff like that, you experience so much more, a stronger connection. So meeting someone in person, creates a stronger, more memorable impression.

And so that's huge when it comes to ground marketing. And that is probably the biggest thing is you want to create that connection with each person you meet while you're ground marketing. And it's powerful and there's a lot of real life examples of this, right? We have a lot of members in our ground marketing course who, give us examples on what they're doing. And honestly, they become extremely fantastic at ground marketing. And here's some real life success stories with ground marketing, right? There was a pediatric dental boom through daycare partnerships. Now the problem was pediatric dentists, they were struggling with low new patient numbers despite running social media ads, specifically Facebook ads. But the solution, instead of spending more on ads, they developed a ground marketing plan targeting daycare centers and pre K schools.

Now here was the execution. They offered free tooth talk sessions for kids, right? It was quick, fun brushing demos and so forth provided free emergency dental care for school injuries, right? Positioning them as a trusted expert. And they left signup sheets for parents at the front desk with an exclusive deal for their first visit.

Now the results were incredible. 42 percent of parents signed up for an appointment within 30 days. The practice gained 110 new patients in six months. And the cost, get this, the cost, 0 in ad spend, only time invested and personalized out in ground marketing. Case study number two, the Lunch and Learn Takeover.

This was a corporate partnership. The problem was general practice in a competitive urban market was struggling to attract and share patients. The solution, they shifted focus from online ads, Google ads, to direct engagement with local companies. Offering dental insurance benefits and a breakdown to help them understand more of the insurance.

And you're going to see that with corporations, especially employees from corporations. They just want to understand their insurance a lot more and a lot better. Now, the execution was we set up free lunch and learn sessions at companies, educating employees about maximizing their dental insurance benefits, offered a free whitening session or discounted, right?

For those who scheduled an appointment on the spot and then created a direct contact within the HR departments to become the go to practice for the employees. So a lot of the times the HR department wants to answer their questions, but they can't, they don't have all the knowledge. Especially when it comes to this, you do, or someone on your team does, and now you're the direct contact.

You can even mention, hey, we're the direct contact, even if they don't come to us. We just want to help you out when it comes to these benefits. And then boom, people will get sent your way immediately. Results, 18 scheduled appointments per session on average. I mean, This wasn't just a one time lunch and learn type of deal.

It was consistent. The practice added over 230 new patients in a year. Became the official dentist for three corporate offices, generating steady patient flow, they honed in and targeted corporation partnerships, right? Specifically corporations. And then number three was, community health fair domination.

And I love this one. This happens all the time, by the way, a startup, Practice with zero brand recognition needed new patients immediately, and they needed new patient momentum. The solution. Instead of expensive mailers, they partnered with local health fairs, setting up an interactive booth. So they offered specific things, right on the spot, oral healthcare screenings, fun, educational games.

They use specific giveaway, signup sheets. They captured emails and phone numbers for followups, for raffles and things like that. The results doing these health fairs, right? Which health fairs happen all the time in your community. Be a part of them, please. But the results were 97 patient leads in one weekend, 51 percent conversion rates to scheduled appointments.

And the cost for this, I mean, the booth and the materials and everything was just a one time thing, right? Once you get the table, the cloth, all the other fun stuff you want to get in later episodes, we'll discuss the necessities of what you need to get in your booth. All that was under 200 bucks for booth materials.

And it yielded over 30, 000 in revenue. Health fairs are extremely profitable, especially when it comes to new patients coming your way. So these are just a couple case studies of what some of the members in our ground marketing course have experienced. But I mean, there's many, many more experiences.

Facebook and ask what. Have you experienced with ground marketing? You'll see, or just type in ground marketing in any of these Facebook groups or, community forums, right for dentists and type in ground marketing, you'll see just exactly what these partnerships and health fairs and community events do for their practice and continue to do. So it's amazing. By implementing ground marketing practices can create trust, build stronger patient relationships, and see measurable growth without relying solely on expensive digital ads or billboards or EDDM or traditional marketing methods, right? Not to say that don't do all that stuff, but just see ground marketing as a strong, powerful arm in your marketing plan.

Now, ground marketing isn't just an alternative. Two digital marketing. It's a psychological driven human centric approach that leverages face to face interactions. It's building trust and community integration to drive business growth, right? It doesn't rely heavily on ads or passive outreach.

So I want you to keep that in mind. It's not about passive outreach. Ground marketing taps into real world engagement. You're forming lasting relationships that lead to higher conversion rates. Stronger loyalty and lower patient acquisition costs. It does require energy and effort and time. That is one thing.

Okay. It will require energy, effort, and time for you to go out there in your community and do these specific strategies. But ground marketing will always succeed, especially when you have those four things always in mind, right? The principle of reciprocity, the mere exposure effect, trust through personalization, right?

The emotional connection and then the power of social proof. These things are incredible, highly, highly, highly, integrated into ground marketing. as you're going to see, there's a lot of factors in this, right? I'm going to give you pros and cons on this. Why ground marketing works better than paid ads.

A lot of the times, trust building, ground marketing, right. it has high personal interactions. It creates deep trust and paid ads is low on that. On the trust building ads are often ignored or distrusted, right? How many ads have you ignored today? Probably a lot. You don't even keep count. But then how many people have you ignored who try to interact with you?

Maybe less than the ads, right? So especially if it's something that you need, the cost ground marketing is low. The only thing you need is time investment, but minimal spending, paid ads tie costly PPCs, right? Social media ads, mailers. That's high. So the cost is high on that. Ground marketing conversion rate is high, extremely high.

You get personal connections. You increase the likelihood of booking. And at the same time, you increase the likelihood of not just booking one person, but their family in that moment. When it comes to paid ads, it's low to medium, Ad click through doesn't guarantee conversions a lot of the time.

again, the cost is high and then the longevity of results. Ground marketing is sustainable. It has to be sustainable. I mean, They need to see you all the time. It's a relationship based marketing and it has long term value. Never stop ground marketing. Even once you're doing fantastic, you're doing amazing.

You're getting in as many new patients plus 10 every single month that you want. Continue to ground market. Maybe you can tone it down a little bit. But continue to ground market always, right? It's just good for the community. It's good for them to see you. And obviously at the same time, it's building stronger loyalty.

Now, when it comes to paid ads, longevity of results, ads stop working once the budget runs out. So as soon as your budget runs out, your ads. Won't be working. But ground marketing will always work, even if there is no budget there. So ground marketing is not just an alternative. Like I said, it's a fundamental shift in how your practice engages converts and retains customers.

It's a low cost, high impact and backed by human psychology. Okay. So that means it's not just the study of marketing. It's the study of humans and those two things, the study of marketing and the study of humans is what's implemented in ground marketing. That's why it works.

Real world interactions create stronger trust than any online ad ever could. So whether you're launching a new practice or you're looking to expand your patient base or solidify local dominance in your community, ground marketing should be a core strategy in your playbook. I hope you have a better view of what ground marketing is, and I'm excited to bring this series to the podcast.

next episode, we're going to be discussing the psychology behind ground marketing. And once you understand this, once you understand the formula, you can pass it on to whoever you're also teaching the formula to and ground marketing too.

But at the same time. Once you understand the psychology behind ground marketing, the principles, it will be a lot easier for you to do every single day, whether you're doing the specific strategy, or whether you're just engaging in your everyday life outside of your practice, you'll be able to start attracting new patients to your practice.

So I'm excited to discuss that with you in the next episode.