Tim Reid is the host of Australia’s number one marketing show, Small Business Big Marketing. He is all about helping small business owners leverage their marketing efforts to have the biggest impacts. For dentists in particular, Tim’s special brand of “helpful marketing” is a simple, but effective way to rethink marketing from the perspective of being human and cultivating a connection with people.
In this episode we chat about:
- What is “helpful marketing”
- How to use helpful marketing in your day to day practice
- Setting your market channels
- Getting your message out there in the most effective way
- What Tim sees are the most common marketing mistakes small businesses and in particular dentists make and how to avoid them
- And many more marketing tips and tricks to take back to your practice.
Links
Small Business Big Marketing Podcast – Referral Marketing
Boomerang Effect Book http://smallbusinessbigmarketing.com/the-boomerang-effect/
Transcript
Jesse Green:
Ladies and gentlemen, today we are joined by Timbo Reid from Small Business, Big Marketing, the number one marketing and podcast in Australia and quite possibly the world. Tim, how it going mate, how’s things?
Tim Reid:
Jesse, all right man. I’ve got a bit of a sore molar.
Jesse Green:
A sore molar?
Tim Reid:
Yeah. I don’t know if there is anything you can work on there as we kind of what I can do as we speak?
Jesse Green:
I think we got an appointment for you at 2:30.
Tim Reid:
Yeah boom boom boom.
Jesse Green:
Boom boom boom and champagne.
Tim Reid:
Yeah, I love a dad joke.
Jesse Green:
Yeah mate a dad joke does go a long way and the list is endless let me tell you.
Tim Reid:
Goodness me but I’m well other than that.
Jesse Green:
Good to hear mate and look I’ve just got to say, I’m sitting here at my desk as I know you are too and I’m looking at this yellow book called the Boomerang Effect and I have to tell you I have read this cover to cover not once but twice my friend. It is absolutely fantastic. You must be chuffed.
Tim Reid:
Look, I am that is a book that I put out it’s probably I don’t know 2 months ago. It’s a marketing text. It’s written for small business owners in order to demystify what they consider to be a very dark art which is marketing and I’d like to think the Boomerang Effect shines a very bright light on the dark art by talking about a particular type of marketing which I call helpful but at the end of the day the Boomerang Effect is really simple. It’s about be helpful in your marketing so that people can make an informed decision often in your favour and that will return you more customers and make you more money simple.
Jesse Green:
The thing about this book that runs through this in really I suppose it’s a subtext but its in big bold type sub text if there is such a thing as big bold subtext is generosity. What I really love about this whole book you’ve put together it is I think compulsory reading for anyone in small business but the thing that’s coming through loudly and clearly as I’ve read it anyone is generosity. Be generous in your marketing. Why do you think that’s so important these days? Why is it that we’ve kind of comeback to this? I don’t think it’s ever gone away but why is it so important how do you reckon?
Tim Reid:
Jesse, let’s take a step back and go well before we talk about generosity and in particular, being helpful in your marketing let’s just look at it at being human. Like let’s all reflect for a moment like the pause button listeners and think about what did it feel like the last time you were helpful and the last time you were helped and it feels pretty good. It’s one of the reasons we’ve been put on this earth if you like is to be helpful and it’s just a good feeling. In fact, it releases and I’m talking to a doctor here, so I better get this right. It releases dopamine into the blood stream. Now doc listen here so does eating chocolate and having sex releases dopamine so helpful marketing which is what I’m talking about not only feels good. It tastes fantastic.
Jesse Green:
It’s better than sex.
Tim Reid:
That’s very subjective and I’m a married man and my wife is in the other room so that’s the premise of it like being helpful is a good thing. In marketing and in marketing where we are hit as consumers by so many pushy messages; buy soon, buy now, closing soon, do this, do that. It’s like imagine if you did the reverse of that as a business owner and shared your knowledge so that people looked at your business and gone pretty helpful. Now, I feel as now I can make a better decision. I trust this business. I’m familiar with this business because they’re sharing their opinions. They’re putting their face to it. Their name to it and all of a sudden, you’re marketing tact is on a different spin and I’ve been doing this for 7 years with the Small Business, Big Marketing Show because that’s helpful marketing.
Jesse Green:
It is absolutely helpful marketing.
Tim Reid:
It just amazes me what it’s done and I see it all the time in other businesses as well.
Jesse Green:
It’s actually really funny Tim and I just to digress slightly I’ve been stalking around the Internet now for I reckon quite a while and I think I know a lot about you. One of the things that’s attracted me to listen to your show kind of so regularly week in week out is the fact that every single episode there is gold. There is really marketing gold that comes out of it and it is genuinely really really helpful stuff and I first came across you. I’m just going back reaching into the archives here Calloundra and we were both at an event and you were podcasting live and I remember thinking this Tim Reid fella is a good bloc and he is just giving me some good stuff. There is no expectation here. There is no obligation. Just a good guy. I reckon as a result of that I’ve just been following your stuff forever. Mate from me to you thank you it’s great.
Tim Reid:
That’s interesting you say that so that Calloundra event that was I’m going to say 5 years ago, 6 years ago.
Jesse Green:
Yeah, I reckon.
Tim Reid:
Just so we get even more specific around this helpful marketing concept for your listeners Jesse is that what I’m saying is once you understand that you’re standing on a mountain of knowledge and in this case, dentists. Dentists know a lot about oral hygiene, about having a great smile, about all things to do with your mouth. I’m a being a bit naïve here but let’s say that. That dentist can either hold that knowledge close to their chest and wait till a patient or a client comes in and hands over some money or that dentist can go out and start to create helpful marketing and I know compliance will be an issue here because you guys are under some pretty tight restrictions but within the confines of that. The dentist can go out create a series of videos or podcasts or e-books or social media posts, or blog posts the list goes on. Sharing that knowledge how to maintain healthy gums, how to get your teeth white, how to prepare to go to the dentist, how to avoid being scared of the dentist.
Go and identify all the questions that your client have and start answering them via video and podcasts and all those channels that I talked about. Now, here is the thing right now listeners are going that kind of makes sense. I quite like the idea. Hopefully, they’re thinking that but aren’t I giving away all my IP? My intellectual property and my view is no you’re not. Because people buy from people so first and foremost I go to a dentist that I like because I like her. She’s gentle and she gets me and she understands my needs and all that. The other thing is in people buying from people I always use the analogy like watching Jamie Oliver’s cooking show on T.V for free doesn’t make you a celebrity chef right?
Jesse Green:
Yeah.
Tim Reid:
I’m not going to all of a sudden, I’m to going to be the next Jamie Oliver and what it actually does is I then want to go and go to his restaurant I want to buy DVDs, want to buy his cook book, I want to download his app. That being helpful encourages people to be drawn towards you but this is I talked about push marketing before. I am now talking about helpful pull marketing which is puling people towards you and what you’ll find as a dentist Jesse, is that over time if you commit to this, if you commit to creating the Boomerang Effect you will have patients coming to your practice and say hey doc, I really like that video you produced the other day. Hey, thanks for that blog post. It just happens.
Jesse Green:
It’s absolutely fantastic and one of the things going back to the humans being humans thing and I know you talked about the concept of best mates in your book. I sometimes call it an ideal patient every time and I think we’re kind of using different language for the same thing.
Tim Reid:
I think yep.
Jesse Green:
My take on that and I’m curious to get your perspective on that. Is it kind of going really got to know what some of these pain points are, what’s their challenges, what’s keeping them awake or not, what are their frustrations, all of these sorts of things and just doing a bit of research on that before you start creating a content just to go back a little bit there and I know we’re not talking about content. We’re talking about being helpful but what’s your thoughts around that particular comment?
Tim Reid:
Around understanding your ideal patient?
Jesse Green:
Yeah or your best mate.
Tim Reid:
It’s fundamental. How can you create, marketing is made up of 2 things Jesse; message and medium. Too many business owners go and race off and get the medium right first. “I’m going to get a website. I’m going to do video. I’m going to write a book.” That’s great but are going to say and I would argue figure out what you’re going to say first because that may influence what you say or how you say it and go about it that way. In order to figure out what you’re going to say what you need to do is to figure out who you’re going to say it to and that becomes your ideal patient and understanding their fears, what does success look like for them? What sure they scared of?
What problem do they have that you can fix and I don’t mean a sore tooth. I mean the problem they have is that they are absolutely petrified about going to the dentist. I saw a great example of some dentist marketing not recently quite a while back and I think it also exists on YouTube. This dentist did a – now what would you call it? It’s not a shop tour. Is it a practice?
Jesse Green:
Yeah yeah practice tour.
Tim Reid:
This dentist the first thing he saw is he welcomed you at the front door. Hello, I’m Doctor Jesse. Welcome to my practice and you walk in and then he says this is he reception area. This is where you will sit and that’s Jane over there. Wave Jane. Jane is our receptionist. She’ll greet you and she’ll get you to fill out one of those long forms and then we got some you can see some art work on the walls and come down here and these all the different rooms. Here is my room and this is the chair you will sit in when I work on you and what are you doing? A, he is getting us familiar with him. A, is he getting us familiar with the surrounds and he is just starting to kind of be helpful because overcoming that fear of going to the dentist so that’s just a classic example of helpful marketing. This video I saw had thousands and thousands of views and it was shot on I think probably an iPhone. It wasn’t like high end production so.
Jesse Green:
That’s fantastic. Seriously I don’t think there has ever been a better time to be able to market your business. Technology is making things so much easier. You just mentioned the iPhone. There was a time gone by where you had so much post production and so much overheads galore to produce 30 second teaser video of some sort and now you’ve just got an iPhone and a selfie stick and that’s great.
Tim Reid:
That’s it and production not perfection and start anyone listening to this start to create something helpful. My view would be go and list the top 10 questions that you’re asked as a dentist. Just go and list them then figure out. You already know the answers so no script required and then go what do you like to write, do you like to speak audio only, do you like to look down the barrel of a camera? Then pick up the iPhone if it’s audio or video then go and answer one of those question. I do this in my keynotes where I actually stop Jesse and I say okay I’ve just explained that whole concept of the frequently asked questions.
Identify the most frequently asked and pull your phone out. Team up with the person next to you and record each other answering it. Then we do a debrief and 2 things happen. Most people say that was nowhere near as scary as I thought it would be. I already knew the answer so I tripped over the odd word because I do that when I speak anyway and I can’t wait to do the next one.
Jesse Green:
Fantastic. Look that is absolute marketing gold right there and helpful marketing Tim.
Tim Reid:
There we go.
Jesse Green:
There we go right there. One of the things that I see happening all the time in marketing and I don’t know if this happens in other businesses or whether it’s unique to dentistry. I’d really love your opinion in this is fen times when I’m traveling around people kind of say what’s the next big thing should I be on Periscope, should I be on this or that and its almost like they’re looking for I hate to say it but like magic bullet or like some sort of silver bullet thing. Does that come up with you regularly in terms of the stuff you do and what would be your comment on that? My view is that there really is no magic bullet and it’s kind of doing the good stuff regularly but do you have a view on that?
Tim Reid:
Marketing in particular I don’t know about dentistry but marketing in particular, there is something new everyday. Thee is a new social media channel. There is a new phone. There is a new wider built website and that causes massive anxiety amongst business owners because they’re going what do I do? What next? I would imagine that in dentistry there is some fairly common long standing fundamentals to oral hygiene fair?
Jesse Green:
Yeah.
Tim Reid:
There is new stuff that comes along but it’s a shinny bring object and it attracts our attention ever so briefly then we realise that you know what? If I just did the fundamentals I’d be okay and marketing is the same Jesse. Marketing is the same. There is always going to be something new but the fundamentals of marketing, I get your message right first before you worry about where to put it. Get a website like you just need a good website. It is the hub of the hub and spoke model of your marketing which is website sits in the middle and everything you do around it social media, local paper ads, appearing at networking events, maybe writing a book whatever it is all points back with the or action of check this out on the website. Now, this is interesting because I would argue that so many business just all we want is people to knock on our door. Come into our practice. Make an appointment but dentistry is a high involvement purchase decision.
It’s expensive and it is personal so, therefore, it’s not like buying a chocolate bar so, therefore, we’re going to do our research and if you’ve got a good website. If you’ve got a Youtube channel or a podcast or a book or something that I can check you out on. Again, come back to the fundamentals. Understand who you’re speaking to. Have a great brand. Looking at dentistry, it’s just moving beyond helpful marketing for a minute Jesse, but just good branding and I don’t mean just a logo. There is a definition of a brand is it’s an indelible imprint. It’s a emotional attachment and why can’t a dentist have and it sounds superficial but why can’t a dentist have a beautiful looking logo that has an idea in it with great front, with great colours, that represent who they are? Why can’t that logo and look and feel then transcend into their signage, their website, their brochures, their interior design of their practice, their business card.
Like all of a sudden, when you do that you star to build a very strong visual brand and you want to learn from the masters look at what Apple or Nike do and they might be dentists listening going yeah but they got big budgets. Guess what? Doing what I just said actually doesn’t have to cost you a lot of money these days. There are online websites that allow you to crowd source design and you know come on Mister and Mrs. Dentists you got a bit of dough so go and throw 5 grand at a designer to get all your touch points in order.
Jesse Green:
Look, I’m really glad you touched on the point of touch points actually because touch points is something I speak about in my book and in my experience Tim, touch points are not all created equally but there are some are absolute key ones. I’m of the view that taking the time to really think about those touch points and choreograph to an extent the experience that someone’s going to have a given touch point is really good for a patient experience or client experience whatever language we use. Who do you see that does that well and what could we learn from them?
Tim Reid:
I will reference Apple and Nike because and I can reference them knowing that this is not about having big budgets or let’s define a touch point. A touch point is any point where someone comes into contact with your business and if you want to define it in another was it’s a moment of truth and the moment of truth is people don’t grab your business card and make a decision consciously but sub consciously and some more than others they will make a decision. Do I want to proceed with dealing with this business or not? When you have all your touch points, the great asset test is print some pages of your website, printout your business card, print out your brochures, printout your signage, print out all your touch points, blue tag them to a wall and if they look like they are all coming from the same song book then you are on brand.
If it looks like a dogs breakfast where you’ve got your receptionist to design the business card. You got your 16-year-old kid who is doing media at school to do the website you’ve scribbled up some signage and sent it off to the printer it’s just going to look stupid and people get that stuff. I do believe again, I always apologise this kind of branding discussion is a little bit superficial but it works and you look at what the big guys do. Let’s follow.
Jesse Green:
It really does work Tim and again one of the things that I constantly come across is that’s fine Jesse but tell me what I can do to fill my book tomorrow. I’m of the view and I know you are Tim because as I said I read your book cover to cover twice is that good marketing takes a bit of time and I think it’s an investment in time and effort and money but it pays massive dividends so for the guys who are sitting there thinking great Tim awesome. I’m going to go and build a brand and when I get a client to kind of pay me some money first. I still got to feed myself I’ll get to it so to the guys who are thinking awesome but fill the book now do you have any kind of commentary around that?
Tim Reid:
Yeah, one thing again with dentists I would argue that most dentists I see and I don’t go looking out for dentists but not many stand out. When they stand out I see them, so I’m going to mention one which I think it’s called the Smile Place or the Smile whatever it is they are owning a niche. They’re putting their hand up and saying we stand for something. I would argue correct me if I’m wrong but most dentists try to be everything to everyone. Maybe in order to fill your book starting real soon. Remind me to come back to fill your book tomorrow but if you want to start filing your book real soon get your message right around your niche. If your niche is I don’t know what your niches are if it’s smiling having an unreal smile is a niche.
Jesse Green:
It sure is.
Tim Reid:
That’s standing for something. Working with children is a niche. If you want to be known for the dentist that is just the gentlest dentist in the world then bring all your kids there then be known for that. If you are the dentist that wants to be known for I don’t know a bad breathe then be known for that but if you stand something it makes it very easy for you to create marketing messages and it makes it easy for your clients to refer you because they go, “Oh yeah yeah. That guy. All he does is kids under 10. He is unreal.” I think it’s not an immediate fix but it will help you craft very quickly very tight messages. In terms of filing your book tomorrow, I’m not sure that really exists.
Jesse Green:
I don’t think it does either mate to be honest.
Tim Reid:
I was going to say free board here but I’ll say free will it. Out them calling, strategic partnerships, a local chamber making offers to the member of the local chamber or striking a deal with the most popular real estate agent in the area because what do people do when they move to an area? They need a school, they need a dentist. They need a café. Where are they go to places that I need to go to ? I’ll have a symbiotic relationship with the real estate agent talks about you and you take about them. Brochures is in your waiting room. A welcome pack to new residents. These are the things that you can activate pretty quickly.
Jesse Green:
I think there is absolutely for anyone listening there is some absolute gems in all of that so for anyone who’s kind of going well I’m new to business. I’ve just opened my practice and I need to get some people through the door. All of the things that Tim’s just suggested that I’d really encourage you to double down on and get into but then quite rightly is Tim’s point that get your messaging right and think about what you’re going to stand for and then go out and communicate that and you’ll be in good stead. Again, one of the challenges that I said Tim as well is that quite often we talk about building an external team.
One of the things that I get challenged by is some business owners not necessarily and I’m going to sound a little bit hard here but not really manning up and taking ownership of their own marketing. Kind of going oh, my SEO guy does that or someone else but they are not really at cross at themselves and I’m of the view part of being a business owner is just frankly manning up and owning your marketing. Being responsible for you own lead or patient flow.
Tim Reid:
Look, I agree talks cheap. That’s easy to say. There’s dentists listening that are going, “Mate, I’m on my feet all day. I get home at night it’s a glass of wine and a Game of Thrones for me,” but and I get that. I don’t think it’s unrealistic some will think it is but my wish for all the dentists listening is that marketing becomes a hobby and what I mean by that see on The Small Business, Big Marketing Show I’ve interviewed as of today 310 successful small business owners that have done not only have a great story but also are doing something interesting with their marketing. That’s the criteria for being on my show, so one thing that I know for sure having spoken to that many and none of them use the word hobby but thy all talk about the marketing of their business as if it were a hobby anh when something it’s a hobby Jesse, its fun. Time disappears, you look forward to spending the net hour or 2 doing it and you’re happy through a bit of dough at it.
How do we make marketing a hobby? Do parts of your marketing that you enjoy. Go and smash out your first video. Go and write a blog post, write the first chapter of your book. Go to a networking event and ask for a minute to pitch your business and see what you get. Keep sharpening the sword on the things that you like, so that the things that you don’t like around your marketing. Maybe is the writing of copy, maybe it’s the social media, whatever it is find others to do it, and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Again, you can go to websites like Upwork and find people to do that kind of work or you can outsource to places like the Philippines which I’m very big on at the moment. In fact, I’m taking business owners there in June coming up so there are ways of doing thing that I’m one for like don’t be on the tools. As a dentist create helpful marketing, but get others to upload it to the website, to put it to Youtube to whatever is required that is technical in nature don’t you be doing it.
Jesse Green:
Completely great. I think use your time wisely for hire some best use and as you say make it as hobby and get rid of the bits that you don’t like. That’s absolutely wonderful advice. Hey mate, I know that you’ve got a really jam packed schedule so we want to squeeze out one or 2 things with you before we let you get on to your busy thing. A couple of things I’m interested to know of all the marketers and people that you’ve come across, see and we’ve spoken bout Nike and Apple so we’ll those alone for a second. Who are the people that inspire you most and people you kind of look up to and go, “Those guys do good stuff. I really like their stuff”?
Tim Reid:
It’s a great question and my answer is not going to be the Nike’s or the Apples of the world. It is the small business owners or even just the business owners that have the courage to have a crack with this marketing. Who are absolutely wiling to try new things knowing that may or may not work. I’ll give you recent examples like I’ve interviewed a guy who owns a couple of franchises of this chicken franchise in the States called Chick-fil-A. He has a strategy if he’s broken 2 Guinness work records in order to get coverage for his business, that’s his thing. He even does silly stuff like he heard in one of his franchises recently where one of his customer said I love chick Chick-fil-A so much I could marry it. The net think you know he’s rolled up to this guys work place and put on a fake wedding where the guy marries it. Like silly stuff.
I’ve got another guy who does referral marketing brilliants so he and dentists could use this. I think it’s the most simplest referral marketing strategy ever where what he does is he’s got his list of clients. He’s got all their postal addresses. He knows that Jenny loves labradoodles and he knows that Peter loves his grange and he captures this information and then when he assess an article on labradoodles in a magazine or when he sees a bottle of grange that is cheap or here might take a photo to of it. Actually I’ll take that photo around back. It’s generally he sees things in magazines. He rips out articles that he knows his clients will be interested in. Scribbles a little note on it. Puts it in a handwritten envelope and mails it to them. No business card. No nothing. Nothing.
Jesse Green:
Isn’t that great?
Tim Reid:
It’s great. The idea is actually a little bit more detailed and I’m happy to send you their link that you can put in the show notes of this episode Jesse, but just at that basic level it’s just as brilliantly simple idea.
Jesse Green:
It comes back to that point Tim humans being human. It’s just people wanting to help and going hey I know you’re interested in labradoodles. Have a check out of this.
Tim Reid:
I’ll give you another example one of my marketing heroes Melisa Maker. Now, Melisa is a house cleaner in Toronto. She doesn’t love cleaning but she realises the importance of cleaning. What she’s done over the years is gone an created a Youtube channel filled with videos about how to clean silver, how to clean with lemon, tips for cleaning your bathroom, tips for cleaning your iron and it just goes on and on and on.
Jesse Green:
I’ve watched quite a few of those videos mate.
Tim Reid:
Have you?
Jesse Green:
Yeah, I really have.
Tim Reid:
That’s just gold right there and now say that’s happening. I’ll finish with discussion around Melisa is helpful. Her cleaning business is going gangbusters. She is not considered the Martha Stuart of Canada. She has a celebrity profile. When I interviewed her about 3 years ago for the first time and she’s been on my show twice since. I said where are you Melissa? She said I’m the Youtube head office in New York. I said what re you doing there? She said I’m consulting Youtube have got me in to consult to their bigger brand clients about how to be helpful. What I know is that when you practice this concept that I talk about in the Boomerang Effect you’ll get more business. You will but what will also happen is that just other weird things happen Jesse. I call it the wowo effect.
The universe will deliver back to you what you put out there. For me, creating helpful marketing through my podcast. The initial intent was to get more clients for more marketing consultancy which I have now closed because speaking in conferences has overtaken the need to do marketing consultancy and my podcast is now cash flow positive through sponsorship. I get asked by media for opinions. I get invited onto podcasts like yours and what I know is just as you’re helpful in your marketing just other great things happen.
Jesse Green:
Hey mate that is absolutely wonderful device and mate just when you were talking about the big if someone was listening here and said I want to get a copy of this Boomerang Effect book can they get it from your website? Can they get it across to smallbusinessbigmarketing.com?
Tim Reid:
Go on mate. I’ll sign it. I’ll ship it but I would love you to do an audio. A little 30 second audio. I’ll always ask for people who buy my book and love it to then email me a little 30, 20 second audio testimonial. Include their website address on it and I’ll put it on my show.
Mate maybe just maybe there is a dentist conference organizer listening in. I think both of us should be speaking at the next dentist conference wherever it may be.
Jesse Green:
I would love to have a stage where we get to have a chat together. That would be enormous fun because I’ve seen you present plenty of times and it’s always a really good hoot and if anyone is listening to the show and wants to put that on. Count us in. We’ll be there.
Tim Reid:
I’m in.
Jesse Green:
All right mate have a good one.
Tim Reid:
Thank you Jesse.
Jesse Green:
Cheers Tim.
