How Orthodontists Can Avoid Marketing Budget Wasters

Alison Werner
Welcome to the Orthodontic Products podcast. I’m your host Alison Warner. Today we have with us Tony Peniche from the orthodontic consulting firm Peniche and Associates. Tony is the Director of Innovation there and works with orthodontic practices to build marketing programs, to build the practices’ brand and helps them develop innovative ways to build their success. We’re going to talk about the biggest marketing budget wasters and how you can better spend your resources. Tony, thank you for joining me today.

Tony Peniche
Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Alison Werner
Great. So to get started, can you talk a little bit about how you got into the field of orthodontic consulting and marketing?

Tony Peniche
Yeah, so my mother is LeeAnn Peniche, the founder of Peniche and Associates, so I grew up in this environment. And, you know, I will admit, I didn’t really want to join the family business. I didn’t really actually understand what it was that she was doing. I knew she was consulting but didn’t understand the big picture. So after high school, I started building companies, building and selling companies. And fashion, food and beverage, did a lot of fashion photography as well. invented a few things. And then, about five years ago now, which is crazy that so much time has passed, I was asked to come in and help with a couple of clients for about six months. And then I was gonna go off and build another company. And then honestly, after about like, eight weeks, I really fell in love with it. I realized that actually, this fits my personality type really perfectly, because I like to build and sell and move on to the next thing. And basically, every week, I’m in a different client’s office around the country. And so every week, it’s like, new and fresh to me, and very creatively stimulating. So yeah, five years later, I’m still here. I am still building companies outside of Peniche and Associates. I can’t stop myself, but I’m really enjoying it.

Alison Werner
Okay, so can you talk a little bit more about what Peniche and Associates will do for a practice, when they’re hired on as a consultant?

Tony Peniche
Yeah, Peniche and Associates, we help with everything, whether you’re fresh out of college, and you’re looking to be an associate, or you’re looking to buy a practice, and then everything in between and all the way to transitioning out, whether it’s rebranding or just finding a buyer. And everything in between. So we help you. Our big claim to fame is our case acceptance process. The national average of case acceptance is roughly 53%. And our clients are averaging around 85%. Again, not fluff numbers, those are true case acceptance numbers. We also provide scripting, clinical systems, office management systems, you know, the proper systems to put in place to hire and fire, you know, how do you qualify, the right potential employees that you’re looking to hire. And sometimes we actually do that for you. We have 17 consultants, and most of them are pretty versatile. But then we have a handful of specialists as well. So we have a financial specialist, a computer systems and Patient Management Program specialist. I’m personally a marketing and branding specialist. So if you’re looking to increase new patient exams, or increase community awareness, that’s what I’m here for.

Alison Werner
So you’re the perfect person to talk about marketing and how people are potentially wasting their money. So what are the biggest marketing budget wasters? In your experience? This is our topic.

Tony Peniche
Yeah, I mean, that’s, it’s pretty broad. There’s a lot of different areas of marketing and branding. And so I think one of the biggest things if you don’t have proper checks and balances to figure out what your return on investment is, I mean, that’s the biggest one. So anytime you put something in, you need to figure out, like, is this a marketing program or a branding element, and if it’s a branding element, it’s going to be really difficult to track the return on investment there. But if it’s a marketing program, then there should be some sort of call to action and some way to track the return on investment. One of the biggest things that I see as far as wasting money goes is simply not having a dedicated marketing credit card. So whoever’s in charge of all the marketing needs to have their own dedicated credit card, your SEO, your Google ads, all of the products that you’re buying for, for deliveries to the dental offices, anything related to marketing needs to be done on that specific credit card. Because when I come into the offices, and I start auditing the expenses for marketing, you know, we find all kinds of weird stuff thrown in there, you know, like coffee for the staff break room, or paper towels or silly things like that, that, you know, whoever’s managing In the QuickBooks, they don’t, they’re like, I don’t know where to put this item. And so they just kind of chuck it into marketing, which is unfair to the marketing coordinator who’s trying to manage that budget, obviously. Okay. So definitely get a dedicated credit card that would help for sure. One of the probably biggest, most obvious money wasters that I see is from your branded swag and products, so sunglasses, hats, water bottles, things like that. I’m sure this doesn’t make me a lot of friends when I say this. But I don’t recommend ordering out of catalogs, if there’s a dental product catalog or ortho catalog, where you buy your staff shirts and buy your shoes and sunglasses and buy all this stuff through this catalog. There’s like five or six middlemen in there. And it’s marked way, way up. And usually, the suppliers of that catalog are actually buying it directly from the factories in China or overseas somewhere. And you can find them directly. So you can use alibaba.com. It’s not really meant for the general public. It’s meant for businesses, so there’s always minimums. Usually the minimums are, you might be able to find a minimum order of like 50 units. But oftentimes, it’s going to be a couple of 100. And it’s going to save you a ton of money. So something that normally retails for $38. Roughly, you’re probably going to get it for $2 or $3. And it’ll have your logo on it. I’m sure, for most people watching ,somewhere in their office right now. There’s somebody in that office, if not multiple people in the office that have those Stanley water bottles, or hydro flasks. They’re so popular right now, right? And those costs between $38 and $55. You can get limited edition ones for $200. You gotta remember, Stanley doesn’t manufacture those things. Stanley’s just putting their logo on someone else’s product that they got from Alibaba, you can actually go directly to Alibaba and order those for I think $3.50. And they will have your logo on it. And so that’s great, because they’re so popular right now, That’s a great gift giveaway.

Alison Werner
Can you go back to when you talked about how with marketing, you can have those checks and balances and really know if you’re getting your money’s worth with something. But with branding, it’s harder to do that. I think there’s some people who still don’t realize how important branding is. So can you talk a little bit about why even though you can’t always see your return on investment right away, or in hard numbers, there is still a benefit to it in the long term?

Tony Peniche
Yeah, with branding, it’s more about being top of mind. So it’s kind of like when you drive down the street and you see a billboard for McDonald’s, they’re not actually oftentimes expecting you to pull off the road and, and buy something right then and there. It’s just to keep it fresh in your mind. And so by having your logo on your products, or sponsoring some event, it’s just to remain relevant. So people remember that you exist. And then that way, when it does come time to pursue treatment, you’re the first one that they think of.

Alison Werner
We talked a little bit there about where practices are wasting the resources, what are better ways, in your opinion, to spend their marketing budget?

Tony Peniche
Try to do as many things as you can, yourself. I know, that’s hard. I know, everyone’s busy. But if you can dedicate a couple of hours and try to do it efficiently, which is really what I teach, you know, we teach a master Marketing Academy, and I tried to teach everyone to do everything themselves, but do it in a streamline efficient way. So it doesn’t take up too much of your time.

Alison Werner
What would be some of those things that they’re doing themselves then?

Tony Peniche
So some offices, in the waiting area, they’ll have a TV monitor, and they’ll be paying some company. I don’t know who but they’ll be paying some company a bunch of money to load the slideshow on there. And have those marketing bits rotating through. And that’s completely unnecessary. You can go to Canva and create slides yourself for free. It’s really easy. And then you save it as a PNG or a JPEG, save it on a thumb drive, and you stick a thumb drive in the back of the TV, and I think a lot of people don’t realize that pretty much all smart TVs, if it’s if the TV is, you know, let’s say eight years or newer, they all have USB ports on the back of it and you can just stick the USB port in there, hit play slideshow, hit repeat, and then it’s done and you don’t need to be paying anybody for that.

Alison Werner
I know in talking to you earlier, we talked about blending millennial and legacy marketing strategy. So I wanted to see if you could talk to our audience about this and what do you mean by millennial versus legacy marketing strategies?

Tony Peniche
Yeah, so millennial marketing is kind of all the newer stuff that everyone’s excited about, right? It really, oftentimes it involves technology or social media. And it’s not very personal. It’s more, you know, oftentimes you’re trying to use systems that are automated, and more efficient. But you kind of lose that human connection there. So I mean, it’s good. And it works. There’s a lot of systems within millennial marketing that work. But you can’t forget the human element. And so the legacy marketing programs are things that were developed in the 80s, and 90s, and early 2000s, that are more, more personal, more hands on and high touch, high feel, and those things are not going anywhere, those will last forever. So things like, you know, creating baskets, or gifts, and delivering those to the dental offices, or some sort of interpersonal engagement with your current patients and trying to motivate them to increase, you know, to refer you, their friends or family members as well. Those interpersonal relationships, we call those legacy. And like I said, those are things that aren’t going anywhere.

Alison Werner
And so really, it’s about blending the two to work in tandem, then.

Tony Peniche
Yeah, because I think everyone’s obsessed with the new. And don’t get me wrong, I am all about the new, I am. As my reputation precedes me, I’m a pretty innovative person, I’m always coming up with new ideas on a regular basis, I’m testing them and seeing what works and then pushing it out there. You know, if you copy one of my things that’s fine, I’m going to come up with a new idea tomorrow, it’s fine. But you can’t forget about the legacy programs. You don’t always need to have the newest, greatest thing. You really need to make sure that you master the things that work and that are going to be more timeless. Once you master those, then you can add on the new stuff. But I see people try to take shortcuts and they skip right past the interpersonal things. They think it’s inefficient to book a lunch with a dentist or to really build their relationships with the community. You can’t take shortcuts like that. So slow down, slow down and master the legacy programs.

Alison Werner
Do you find that some of the newer orthodontists coming into the field are resistant to the legacy stuff or is it across the board? Some people want to do one, not the other?

Tony Peniche
I don’t, I haven’t really seen them be resistant to it. But I do think that a lot of the newer doctors that are just coming out, they’re getting a lot of pressure and advice from people with an opinion, but maybe they don’t necessarily have all the experience. And so I would just caution them to seek out people that have the success that you want, and don’t take advice from people that just have an opinion, or an idea. And don’t take shortcuts to make sure that their relationships are really, really strong. You can’t skip that step.

Alison Werner
So I’m curious if there are any tools or technologies that you think practices should be using to help their businesses succeed as we talk about the kind of the new stuff?

Tony Peniche
Yeah, there’s quite a few things. So definitely Alibaba, like already mentioned earlier, get used to that. I know, it’s annoying. Keep in mind, it’s a 12 hour time difference. So if you say hi, and they say hi. And you say how are you? And they say good. That’s four days that you just wasted right there. So be really thorough in your communication. Understand that the samples are going to take at least a month to receive and then the full order is going to take another month or if not longer. So you’re talking about three or four months out. So you’ve got to be proactive. Another thing is, Apple Business Connect just launched this last year. And so everyone’s used to managing their Google Business Listing for Google Maps, but you gotta remember, like, over 90% of the population has an iPhone and Apple Maps is built in. Google Maps is not installed automatically. You have to manually install that. So a lot of people are using Apple Maps, so they might type in “braces near me”, or “Invisalign near me” and all that content that comes up, which isn’t a lot, to be honest. But the content that does come up and the businesses that are listed, it’s all pulling the information from Yelp. Or originally it was and so if you haven’t updated your Yelp in a long time, and yes, I know Yelp sucks, but you’re stuck with it. Apple wanted to be able to list your information and they wanted to have a review system because they weren’t allowed to use Google reviews. And so they decided to team up with Yelp. Anyways, this last year, Apple finally launched Apple Business Connect. And so now all the best stuff that’s on your Google Business Listing, you want to copy that and paste that over to your Apple Business Connect, and manage your own photos and get reviews and list your services and your descriptions and all that stuff. That’s really important that most people don’t know about right now.

Alison Werner
Yeah, definitely. That’s the first time I’ve heard of it and I didn’t realize the connection between Yelp and Apple. I’m curious for, if we could kind of go a little broader, for a practice that’s interested in working with a creative agency like Peniche and Associates, what is your advice to doctors vetting who to work with?

Tony Peniche
Vetting which consulting firms to work with?

Alison Werner
Well, to decide if it’s a good match? Or what kind of questions do you wish doctors would ask you, as you’re getting ready to decide whether to work together?

Tony Peniche
I think they need to have a really good understanding of what the protocol is going to be when we come into the office. Accountability, understanding that, at least for us, for Peniche and Associates, like we’re all about results, right? Our stats are important to us, just like your stats are important to your practice. And so we work really, really hard to do a lot of support calls and monitor all their data and make sure that we’re actually getting the results that they signed up for, that they paid for. And so they really need to understand that it’s important to have our back. And so if we’re talking to one of their employees, and the employee is pushing back or just resisting, the doctor needs to default to us and say, well, if Peniche and Associates said to do it, then we’re gonna go ahead and do it. And they need to have our back. And they need to understand that expectation. Sometimes doctors let their staff members walk all over them and make the final decision. And it’s not part of the original game plan, and you start taking out pieces. And now all of a sudden, the system doesn’t work. Because that employee, you know, for some reason had final say. That’s frustrating. I just want to make sure that the doctors ask those questions, understand that protocol, understand that they need to back us up. Because we’re going to be in the office for two days. And then for the next six months, we’re going to be doing support calls on a regular basis, and monitoring the numbers. So we’re not there. And they need to be that voice in the office.

Alison Werner
Definitely. Well, as we wrap up, as you’ve worked with clients in the last year, what are some of the key observations or takeaways that you’ve had about the practices you’ve interacted with?

Tony Peniche
There’s two that come to mind. One is the front desk, and then one is in the TC room. So at the front desk, I think some offices think that the youngest person with the least amount of experience should be managing the phones, and then maybe they’re gonna learn passively, and then maybe they’ll learn to do something else. And I think that’s kind of a disservice to yourself. Whoever’s answering the phone is the first point of contact for the patient, they need to be stellar. And so when you’re qualifying them and doing your personality test or interviewing them, you need to make sure that they can multitask really well, they can consume a lot of information really quickly, and be thorough and detailed. You know, if they’re taking notes from the phone call on a piece of paper, and then trying to upload that to the Patient Management System. Are they entering it all correctly? Are they just trying to go really fast because they’re just overwhelmed? And if they’re overwhelmed all the time, then maybe they’re not really qualified to actually be in that position. So it’s incredibly important to hire top talent to answer the phones and to be your scheduling coordinator. Don’t just go with the youngest least experienced person and put them up there. I mean, literally, like every dollar that you make comes through that phone line, right? So if you’re a million dollar practice or a $3 million practice, every single dollar came to that phone line through that person. That should be one of the most talented people in the office.

Tony Peniche
At least that’s been my observation. And then the other one is in the TC room.

Tony Peniche
We’ve just heard from a few people that the doctors struggle to get out of the room or they just really love their job and they love talking to the patients and sometimes they’re in there for way too long. And the treatment coordinator doesn’t know how to get them out of the room without coming across as pushy or rude in front of the patient thats sitting right there. So I kind of want to bring it back to an old school tactic that my stepdad used. My stepdad was an orthodontist as well. And so he had this system with a pager that he clipped onto his belt. And then when anybody in the clinic needed him, they would just push a button, and it would vibrate, and he would get the hint. So we actually found a new version where it looks like this. I found this on Amazon. And it looks like a watch, right? And then there’s a couple of these, you can have one in the clinic and then one in the TC room, maybe under the desk. So if the doctor is getting all chatty, you just push this button and this vibrates. And the doctors are like, oh, I need to get out of this room and exit out and it’ll save you time. And the patient doesn’t know what’s going on.

Alison Werner
Right. So it’s basically like a shock collar to train the doctor?

Tony Peniche
Yeah. And the doctors know that they’re taking too long in there. They know. They just get caught up in the moment, you know, and they start pulling books off the shelf and opening encyclopedias, and really trying to educate this person when they don’t need to go that far in depth.

Alison Werner
That’s ingenious. That’s a great suggestion. Well, Tony, thank you so much for talking with me today, I think it’s really been really helpful. If someone is interested in connecting with you, what’s the best way to reach out to you?

Tony Peniche
They can reach out to us by going to Penicheteam.com. They can definitely follow us on Instagram and Facebook as well. We’re constantly putting updates out there. And we’re pretty much like an open book. If you just need advice or need a referral source to a supplier or a service, reach out to us. We’re really transparent about things. We don’t take commissions from web developers or any of our suppliers, or anyone that we refer to really. And if we do, we’re straight up and honest about it. So if you want advice and you want a recommendation from us, it’s going to be non biased, and it’s going to be honest and understand that we’re not taking commission. We’re not paid to refer to anybody. That’s kind of an important detail to put out there.

Alison Werner
Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Tony Peniche
It was my pleasure.