Group Function: Closing the Loop with Michael Anderson and Laura Maly

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[00:01:05] [SPEAKER_03]: This is a production of the Very Dental Podcast Network.

[00:01:17] [SPEAKER_03]: First you take a group of very dental people.

[00:01:19] [SPEAKER_03]: Then you add some interesting topics and a few microphones.

[00:01:23] [SPEAKER_03]: Finally, add some laughs and collegial good cheer and you get the Group Function Podcast.

[00:01:28] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Group Function Podcast on the Very Dental Podcast Network.

[00:01:34] [SPEAKER_03]: This is Dr. Alan Mead, your host, joining me co-hosting.

[00:01:37] [SPEAKER_03]: They've been on the show before.

[00:01:39] [SPEAKER_03]: They're supporters of the network.

[00:01:41] [SPEAKER_03]: We have the co-founders of the wondrous agency, Michael Anderson and Laura Molley.

[00:01:45] [SPEAKER_03]: Laura and Michael, how are you doing?

[00:01:48] [SPEAKER_01]: We're doing great. Thanks for having us. Good to be here again.

[00:01:50] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's been a little while. We've all been kind of busy. I get that.

[00:01:55] [SPEAKER_01]: We got kids stuff and business stuff, just all sorts of things going on.

[00:02:01] [SPEAKER_03]: We're recording this right about the time when school has started all across the country.

[00:02:05] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's funny because you'll notice this as a parent that's had kids in school for a while.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_03]: Like when it ends, when summer starts, it's exciting.

[00:02:17] [SPEAKER_03]: The kids are all excited about it.

[00:02:19] [SPEAKER_03]: And you're sort of like, oh, wow, I have less time to myself because they're at school.

[00:02:24] [SPEAKER_03]: But what's interesting is this year and maybe every year, it snuck up on me.

[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_03]: I wasn't ready for it.

[00:02:30] [SPEAKER_03]: Like I definitely wasn't ready for it.

[00:02:32] [SPEAKER_03]: Like there's a lot of reasons for that in Michigan.

[00:02:34] [SPEAKER_03]: They start school much earlier now than they used to.

[00:02:37] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know. I don't know what's happening.

[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_03]: The summer is getting shorter or something like that. I'm not sure.

[00:02:41] [SPEAKER_02]: If you want to talk about not being ready for it, for us, this was our first foray going to school.

[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_02]: So we have our four-year-old Wilder who's going to—I don't know if it's TK, Pre-K.

[00:02:51] [SPEAKER_02]: There's all these new names now.

[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_02]: But basically the precursor to school.

[00:02:55] [SPEAKER_02]: And so we dropped him off for the first time.

[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_02]: And I'll say the best part of it, he was ready to go.

[00:03:00] [SPEAKER_02]: He was so excited.

[00:03:01] [SPEAKER_02]: He has a backpack.

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_02]: He had his lunch.

[00:03:03] [SPEAKER_02]: He had his water bottle.

[00:03:07] [SPEAKER_02]: He's super excited.

[00:03:08] [SPEAKER_02]: But I think for mom and dad, you just—you really feel time fly and things like that.

[00:03:15] [SPEAKER_03]: It's likely that that will become—he might become a little less excited over the years.

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe. Maybe not.

[00:03:20] [SPEAKER_03]: But I suspect—we had two guys that would have rather not gone back.

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_03]: But they're managing it just fine.

[00:03:26] [SPEAKER_03]: So that's good.

[00:03:27] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm waiting for him to realize that this is not just a one-to-two-week fun camp he's going to.

[00:03:33] [SPEAKER_02]: But in fact, he signed up for the next 12 years of his life.

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_02]: So I think that may be a brutal awakening when he puts that time frame together.

[00:03:40] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you don't have to—let him ease into that.

[00:03:42] [SPEAKER_03]: I think he'll get there soon enough.

[00:03:44] [SPEAKER_03]: That's for sure.

[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_03]: So one of the things that we have talked about in the past—you guys are marketers at heart.

[00:03:52] [SPEAKER_03]: You're marketers for dental offices.

[00:03:54] [SPEAKER_03]: And I mean you work with lots of varied clients doing a lot of different things.

[00:03:58] [SPEAKER_03]: And you're kind of a full-service marketing company.

[00:04:01] [SPEAKER_03]: And we have talked on the podcast before about how difficult it is to measure marketing.

[00:04:09] [SPEAKER_03]: Honestly, digital marketing is probably easier than a lot of things.

[00:04:13] [SPEAKER_03]: But the reality is a lot of dentists spend a lot of money on marketing and don't really know how well their marketing is doing.

[00:04:20] [SPEAKER_03]: Would you agree?

[00:04:21] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I'm not super off-base to say that, am I?

[00:04:24] [SPEAKER_01]: No, not at all.

[00:04:25] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think the thing that's interesting for us as marketers is like you look at Amazon, right?

[00:04:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Or any digital retailer or something like that.

[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_01]: You come to the site.

[00:04:36] [SPEAKER_01]: You put the thing in the basket.

[00:04:37] [SPEAKER_01]: You make the payment.

[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_01]: And that closed loop happens.

[00:04:41] [SPEAKER_01]: You know what happens to that purchase.

[00:04:43] [SPEAKER_01]: They know how it happened.

[00:04:44] [SPEAKER_01]: They know how you got there.

[00:04:45] [SPEAKER_01]: They know the search term you put in.

[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_01]: For dentistry, it's really not that way because of the fact that there's an EMR or Dentrix or Eagle.

[00:04:53] [SPEAKER_01]: You're open.

[00:04:53] [SPEAKER_01]: The best marketers have been able to do is say, well, I delivered you X number of phone calls.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And then you have to hope that the front desk has enough time and is capable enough to try and figure out who the new patients are and who you generated and then attach an ROI to that.

[00:05:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, that takes time.

[00:05:11] [SPEAKER_01]: That takes effort.

[00:05:12] [SPEAKER_01]: And frankly, it's very difficult to do when you have other things to do or you're working with teams.

[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_01]: I think the huge game changer for us here that is going to set us apart from the pack in the months to come is that we are going to have that closed loop.

[00:05:28] [SPEAKER_01]: We are going to be able to tell you, and it's going to lay bare the performance or not performance of a marketing campaign.

[00:05:35] [SPEAKER_03]: That's so huge because I'm going to dig into that in a second.

[00:05:39] [SPEAKER_03]: As I mentioned, I'm going to bitch a little bit because measurement online is one of the things where there's times when I think people spending the dollars and doing the lifting.

[00:05:54] [SPEAKER_03]: The measurement thing is a little sore.

[00:05:57] [SPEAKER_03]: Like, okay, you guys are going to be launching your podcast in the next little while.

[00:06:00] [SPEAKER_03]: And one of the things that as a new podcaster I did was I constantly looked at my day-to-day downloads.

[00:06:08] [SPEAKER_03]: I constantly did because I was so – I was keyed into, okay, who's listening or how we – and like what – the information that I get about the podcast is – there's so little information.

[00:06:20] [SPEAKER_03]: Like for one thing, a download – what is a download?

[00:06:24] [SPEAKER_03]: A download when I – I used to think someone downloaded the – it doesn't tell me if they listened to it.

[00:06:30] [SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't tell me anything.

[00:06:32] [SPEAKER_03]: It was download, and that was it.

[00:06:33] [SPEAKER_03]: And so that's – and that was about the best we had.

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Let's say I'm talking to a potential advertiser and I could brag about download numbers.

[00:06:40] [SPEAKER_03]: And that advertiser knows nothing about that number, and I know nothing about that number.

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_03]: It is the number that we get from the person we host with.

[00:06:49] [SPEAKER_03]: That's all that it is.

[00:06:50] [SPEAKER_03]: We don't know anything about the listener per se.

[00:06:54] [SPEAKER_03]: We don't know – and there's really – there probably is a lot of information there, but we're just not getting it.

[00:06:58] [SPEAKER_03]: And Apple tends to be – Apple has a lot of information.

[00:07:02] [SPEAKER_03]: They tend to be a little opaque about that.

[00:07:03] [SPEAKER_03]: But then last September, they changed – it was a software update for iOS basically.

[00:07:09] [SPEAKER_03]: And of course everyone in the United States is on iOS or – it's not true.

[00:07:13] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not.

[00:07:14] [SPEAKER_03]: But so many people have iPhones and stuff that it's kind of the 800-pound gorilla in the podcasting market.

[00:07:20] [SPEAKER_03]: So if you can imagine, Apple decides that – well, for one thing, I don't know what it was, if it was that they were –

[00:07:28] [SPEAKER_03]: if you downloaded something, you would download automatic downloads versus no automatic downloads or –

[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_03]: and they also don't display the back catalog.

[00:07:37] [SPEAKER_03]: So there were days where I would have – we'd have thousands of downloads,

[00:07:41] [SPEAKER_03]: and a bunch of the downloads were old stuff from years ago.

[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_03]: And so they just changed what a download is.

[00:07:47] [SPEAKER_03]: And all of a sudden, my numbers dropped.

[00:07:50] [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm not going to go into – because listeners have heard me complain about it for the last year.

[00:07:53] [SPEAKER_03]: It just absolutely gutted me because it's like – and my thing was like, what does that even mean anymore?

[00:07:58] [SPEAKER_03]: What does it mean?

[00:07:59] [SPEAKER_03]: So measurement is something that I'm sore about.

[00:08:02] [SPEAKER_03]: And measurement is something that a dentist in most cases – there's some dentists –

[00:08:07] [SPEAKER_03]: and you probably know clients that are more engaged and less engaged.

[00:08:10] [SPEAKER_03]: But some dentists are really into knowing all the numbers.

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_03]: Some aren't.

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_03]: But marketing, in my experience, in a lot of cases, the numbers have either been hollow,

[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_03]: it didn't really mean very much, or there weren't even really any numbers to go with.

[00:08:24] [SPEAKER_03]: In other words, the measurement of marketing has been tough.

[00:08:27] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, like I said, as electronic marketing, there's maybe more things to count.

[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_03]: It might be harder to know what's important or what's not.

[00:08:35] [SPEAKER_03]: But one of the things that – what's really funny is you have a ton of data in your software, in your office.

[00:08:44] [SPEAKER_03]: And up to this point, that was kind of a separate thing from a marketing campaign.

[00:08:48] [SPEAKER_03]: Michael, you're shaking – you're nodding your head, so I must be saying something right.

[00:08:51] [SPEAKER_03]: So tell me a little bit about that.

[00:08:53] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, it's funny.

[00:08:54] [SPEAKER_02]: If I go back to the earliest days of Wonders, this is a problem that has hung over our heads.

[00:08:58] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that if you're taking marketing seriously and you're curious, you come up with a campaign idea.

[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_02]: You spend some money on Google Ads or social media, or you have an SEO campaign.

[00:09:11] [SPEAKER_02]: And you start to get some what I would call softer metrics, right?

[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, we see website traffic increasing.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_02]: We see clicks on this ad.

[00:09:19] [SPEAKER_02]: We get all the way to a phone call.

[00:09:21] [SPEAKER_02]: You say, great, progress.

[00:09:23] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm feeling good.

[00:09:24] [SPEAKER_02]: But there's that curiosity of what is the impact we're having?

[00:09:27] [SPEAKER_02]: Is this working?

[00:09:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Because we all know everyone's probably done a marketing campaign at some point where they say,

[00:09:32] [SPEAKER_02]: hey, I got a lot of phone calls, but it was all Medicaid.

[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't the right type of phone call.

[00:09:35] [SPEAKER_02]: So we can't just clap from the sidelines and say, great, phone calls.

[00:09:39] [SPEAKER_02]: And so in the earliest days, what we would do is we would take a spreadsheet and we'd send it to the front desk.

[00:09:46] [SPEAKER_02]: And we'd say, can you please return this with the number of new patients you got and the phone number that they have?

[00:09:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Or give us something, yeah, where you think they came from.

[00:09:56] [SPEAKER_02]: And then there's kind of this manual work of trying to, first of all, 20% or less of our offices even opened that email.

[00:10:03] [SPEAKER_02]: And then the ones that would send it back, you're going back and forth and it's very hard.

[00:10:08] [SPEAKER_02]: And of course, what do they have written down?

[00:10:10] [SPEAKER_02]: I found you on the internet.

[00:10:13] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, well, is that Google organic?

[00:10:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Is it Google ads?

[00:10:17] [SPEAKER_02]: Is that social?

[00:10:17] [SPEAKER_02]: What does that mean?

[00:10:18] [SPEAKER_02]: And so it gets very, very hard.

[00:10:20] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think from that earliest point, we knew that we really wanted to get to a place of really because we're curious, because we want to improve campaigns where we could say we want real attribution.

[00:10:31] [SPEAKER_02]: And the only way we found to do that is this.

[00:10:34] [SPEAKER_02]: We offer a CRM for our clients where if you call a call tracking number, you fill out a form, you chat on a website, we log that information.

[00:10:44] [SPEAKER_02]: And then you check it through an integration against what's happening in the practice system.

[00:10:49] [SPEAKER_02]: So the idea here is that you get 100 phone calls from Google ads.

[00:10:53] [SPEAKER_02]: And then you look at each of those phone numbers and you call out to the practice and say, hey, do any of these phone numbers appear over there?

[00:11:00] [SPEAKER_02]: And it'll say, yeah, 25 of them do.

[00:11:03] [SPEAKER_02]: We know those are now patients that came from Google.

[00:11:06] [SPEAKER_02]: And we can then say not only did they come in, but here's what you produced.

[00:11:10] [SPEAKER_02]: And that is powerful because we go beyond saying, well, it's an internet lead.

[00:11:15] [SPEAKER_02]: I can say I know specifically what campaign.

[00:11:18] [SPEAKER_02]: It's a dental implant campaign.

[00:11:19] [SPEAKER_02]: And we generated this much in ROI.

[00:11:22] [SPEAKER_02]: I will make one more connection here because I think it's interesting.

[00:11:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Apple came in and kind of like swept your legs out from under you.

[00:11:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, totally.

[00:11:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe you're getting a more accurate picture today than you did in the past of downloads.

[00:11:35] [SPEAKER_02]: But you might not like it.

[00:11:37] [SPEAKER_02]: As we're one of the first agencies, I think the first agency in the country to rule this out.

[00:11:42] [SPEAKER_02]: As we've talked to the team, we've said many times, hey, guess what, guys?

[00:11:45] [SPEAKER_02]: As our practices integrate, we're going to show them probably some pictures that none of us like.

[00:11:51] [SPEAKER_02]: 100%.

[00:11:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Things were going better than they were.

[00:11:54] [SPEAKER_02]: And so it's an exciting time and a bit of a scary time because I think we're moving forward with radical honesty and insight to say what the heck is actually happening so that if campaigns aren't working, we stop them or adjust them.

[00:12:07] [SPEAKER_02]: And it's paving a much brighter future for marketing.

[00:12:11] [SPEAKER_03]: It is.

[00:12:11] [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, there's an ethical component here on some level.

[00:12:15] [SPEAKER_03]: And I've talked about this before where technically I don't know that marketing has an ethical code of conduct in the same way that a health care provider does.

[00:12:23] [SPEAKER_03]: But the reality is there's plenty of companies out there that are happy to take your money and tell you you're doing an awesome job.

[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_03]: But you don't know.

[00:12:31] [SPEAKER_03]: And honestly, as a dentist, I'm kind of busy treating patients and running the show if I can.

[00:12:37] [SPEAKER_03]: There are some dentists who are really keyed in, but most of us would probably just have to take your word and hope for the best.

[00:12:46] [SPEAKER_03]: So the reality is what you're saying is that you can actually – there's some objective information that you're going to get here that you weren't able to get before.

[00:12:56] [SPEAKER_03]: So subjectively, like you said, well, we got a lot of phone calls.

[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_03]: But the reality is you're connecting – if I'm hearing you correctly, because you're integrating with the practice management software, you're actually connecting the phone numbers that come in to the phone numbers that get put into the practice management software.

[00:13:15] [SPEAKER_03]: So in other words, that's a person that lands in your practice management software, and all of a sudden, you're able to track when that patient came in, what kind of treatment plan they had, all that stuff.

[00:13:26] [SPEAKER_03]: You're literally connecting the real world in your practice management software to this ether of your potential marketing, which is – I got to tell you, I can't imagine marketing places are going to want to do that.

[00:13:37] [SPEAKER_03]: That would be like Apple having to tell me who's listening to my podcast.

[00:13:42] [SPEAKER_03]: They don't want to do that.

[00:13:43] [SPEAKER_03]: That doesn't help me at all or them at all.

[00:13:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's a bit of a leap.

[00:13:48] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that for us, if you say, well, why do this?

[00:13:51] [SPEAKER_02]: If I look five years down the road, 10 years, 20 years down the road, and I ask myself, what's inevitably going to happen?

[00:13:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Data is king.

[00:14:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Automation is king.

[00:14:01] [SPEAKER_02]: And so the only way to do that is through this integration.

[00:14:04] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think there's going to be this awkward adolescent period of standing up where a lot of things that people assumed might not be true.

[00:14:11] [SPEAKER_02]: One of the big hopes we have is, yes, we're a marketing agency first.

[00:14:15] [SPEAKER_02]: But I really kind of can't imagine why every dentist, even if you've got a marketing agency you love, wouldn't say, hey, let's just start with this software here.

[00:14:26] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to keep the company I'm working on, my website, my SEO, my Google Ads.

[00:14:30] [SPEAKER_02]: I just need to know what the heck's happening, and they should want it too.

[00:14:33] [SPEAKER_02]: So one of the things we're excited about is continuing to move into software, providing a solution not just for our clients, but for anyone that's doing marketing that says, hey, I listened to that podcast, and I have no clue what the ROI for my marketing is.

[00:14:48] [SPEAKER_02]: And why don't I take that seriously?

[00:14:51] [SPEAKER_03]: This just got 10 times more interesting by you saying that.

[00:14:53] [SPEAKER_03]: So what you're saying is not only can Wunderist's results be judged, but any marketing that you're doing can be judged because you're connected.

[00:15:01] [SPEAKER_03]: That's interesting.

[00:15:02] [SPEAKER_03]: And you've just made, if marketing companies hated you before, I'm just saying, you may have given them another reason.

[00:15:11] [SPEAKER_03]: That's wild.

[00:15:12] [SPEAKER_03]: So the software is going to be able to – it's not just a Wunderist thing.

[00:15:14] [SPEAKER_03]: It's a marketing thing compared to – basically, it's the real world connecting to your PMS software.

[00:15:21] [SPEAKER_03]: And I don't know.

[00:15:23] [SPEAKER_03]: That's very interesting.

[00:15:24] [SPEAKER_03]: That's very interesting.

[00:15:24] [SPEAKER_03]: I didn't realize.

[00:15:25] [SPEAKER_03]: I thought it was just a Wunderist thing.

[00:15:26] [SPEAKER_03]: So it's not just a Wunderist thing.

[00:15:28] [SPEAKER_02]: No.

[00:15:28] [SPEAKER_02]: For me, this should be a staple for anyone doing marketing.

[00:15:31] [SPEAKER_02]: And hey, if we've missed someone out in the industry that's doing this, apologies.

[00:15:36] [SPEAKER_02]: You should be asking your marketing agencies, how do I track ROI?

[00:15:40] [SPEAKER_02]: And there's one key distinction.

[00:15:41] [SPEAKER_02]: There are agencies out there that will partner with dental intelligence or practice by numbers.

[00:15:47] [SPEAKER_02]: And the key difference here is you've got to think about that because they'll say, oh, we can show you numbers.

[00:15:51] [SPEAKER_02]: They're taking the numbers that your front desk collected and showing them right back to you.

[00:15:54] [SPEAKER_02]: So they're saying, oh, yeah, 20 people said they found you on the internet.

[00:15:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Was that Google Ads?

[00:16:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Was it SEO?

[00:16:02] [SPEAKER_02]: So what does that mean?

[00:16:04] [SPEAKER_02]: And so this is where I think it gets very confusing for dentists because they'll say, well, my marketing agency told me they do something like this.

[00:16:11] [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm here to say that unless it starts with a CRM and there's an integration from that point to your practice that checks back and forth, we're all still guessing.

[00:16:23] [SPEAKER_03]: They're guessing too.

[00:16:24] [SPEAKER_03]: That's the thing.

[00:16:24] [SPEAKER_03]: And I think probably a lot of marketing companies portray themselves as not guessing.

[00:16:30] [SPEAKER_03]: But the reality is it kind of is.

[00:16:32] [SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of what it is on some level.

[00:16:35] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's funny with all the technology that we have that there's still a fair amount of guessing.

[00:16:39] [SPEAKER_03]: And, of course, there's lots of strategies to get more information.

[00:16:42] [SPEAKER_03]: This is pretty fascinating though too.

[00:16:44] [SPEAKER_03]: So you had mentioned before we started recording some other things you could do with this integration that kind of allow sort of intra-practice marketing because of the information that you're gathering.

[00:16:57] [SPEAKER_03]: Tell me a little bit about that.

[00:16:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:17:00] [SPEAKER_01]: So I think one of the things is, you know, marketing agencies are traditionally thought of as outbound, right, for dentists specifically.

[00:17:07] [SPEAKER_01]: But the thing that this is going to allow us to do that nobody else can is we have the PMS access.

[00:17:14] [SPEAKER_01]: So that means we can also talk to your current patients once they're in the door.

[00:17:18] [SPEAKER_01]: And so when there is an outstanding treatment plan for Invisalign or when you recommend an implant to someone but they don't bite on the first conversation or the first consult, now we have the opportunity to within the PMS system or through our marketing with the access to the PMS system and the integration.

[00:17:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Say, hey, I see that outstanding Invisalign treatment plan in there and you were just going to wait six months until they came back to maybe mention it again if you had the guts to do that.

[00:17:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Why don't we take care of that and see if we can provide them some information, give them some value, show them some opportunities that they do need this in their life and let's close that deal before they wait six months to come back in and you have to have that need and need conversation.

[00:18:02] [SPEAKER_03]: That's interesting.

[00:18:03] [SPEAKER_03]: So when that works, how are you identifying that?

[00:18:08] [SPEAKER_03]: Is it like whoever your client works with goes over that on a regular basis or is this more like an AI thing where there's a software that's searching for these opportunities?

[00:18:22] [SPEAKER_03]: How does that work?

[00:18:24] [SPEAKER_02]: We live in this era today where I think everything is going to get put into an AI bucket.

[00:18:29] [SPEAKER_02]: If we don't understand how it's done, AI is probably doing it.

[00:18:32] [SPEAKER_02]: And really all it is, it's structured logic.

[00:18:34] [SPEAKER_02]: So the idea is that if you get a big data set and you can say, OK, I know that this patient came in on this date.

[00:18:42] [SPEAKER_02]: I can see that the treatment that was provided on that date and I see an outstanding treatment that has yet to be accepted.

[00:18:48] [SPEAKER_02]: We could create a logic that says let's let that treatment that's unaccepted go for two weeks.

[00:18:54] [SPEAKER_02]: And at that point, we will trigger a text message and an email.

[00:18:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Now, for anyone that owns a practice, some people might be sitting here saying, what are they talking about?

[00:19:02] [SPEAKER_02]: I have a patient communication platform.

[00:19:04] [SPEAKER_02]: It was something like that.

[00:19:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. Yeah, sure.

[00:19:07] [SPEAKER_02]: There's solutions out there that do this.

[00:19:09] [SPEAKER_02]: What we're excited about is really unifying software.

[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_02]: I think right now if you talk to most practices, they'll say I have my online scheduling software.

[00:19:18] [SPEAKER_02]: I've got my review management software.

[00:19:19] [SPEAKER_02]: I've got my patient communication software.

[00:19:22] [SPEAKER_02]: I've got my marketing agency CRM.

[00:19:23] [SPEAKER_02]: My front desk is pulling their hair out because I've got to have them log into something new.

[00:19:29] [SPEAKER_02]: None of them talk to each other.

[00:19:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, by the way, guess what?

[00:19:32] [SPEAKER_02]: All of those integrations, they cost money.

[00:19:35] [SPEAKER_02]: So you're paying for the same integrations.

[00:19:37] [SPEAKER_03]: It's the worst thing in the world when you look, you've got multiple swipes.

[00:19:40] [SPEAKER_03]: And then the other thing is the classic thing is a lot of these softwares duplicate what they're doing.

[00:19:46] [SPEAKER_03]: A lot of softwares will do something, but then they just so happen to have patient messaging.

[00:19:52] [SPEAKER_03]: So you've got multiple ways you could message a patient, but actually you're duplicating it.

[00:19:56] [SPEAKER_03]: It's wasteful.

[00:19:57] [SPEAKER_03]: And frankly, that inconsistency sucks.

[00:20:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Like I've got – that's a real thing.

[00:20:03] [SPEAKER_03]: We have multiple ways we could text patients, and frankly, it's not great because we don't necessarily – stuff can fall through the cracks.

[00:20:11] [SPEAKER_03]: That is – I think probably most dental offices that are using a lot of these things, they probably got sold different things from different places,

[00:20:19] [SPEAKER_03]: and they don't necessarily integrate very well.

[00:20:21] [SPEAKER_03]: That's a real thing.

[00:20:22] [SPEAKER_03]: So tell me, how does that – how does your product or how does what you're doing change that?

[00:20:27] [SPEAKER_02]: So the unique thing that we're bringing to this space is that all these other products out there either focus on one thing

[00:20:34] [SPEAKER_02]: or they all start with a patient walking through your door.

[00:20:39] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's the roadblock that we run into, right?

[00:20:42] [SPEAKER_02]: It's like obviously all practice is like, yeah, I need to communicate with my patient.

[00:20:45] [SPEAKER_02]: I need to do that.

[00:20:46] [SPEAKER_02]: But then what do they spend most of their time thinking about?

[00:20:49] [SPEAKER_02]: How do I get new patients?

[00:20:50] [SPEAKER_02]: And so for us, it's about extending that coverage to say we have a database that starts when they're a lead,

[00:20:57] [SPEAKER_02]: starts before they ever come into the practice, and it follows them all the way through their patient journey.

[00:21:04] [SPEAKER_02]: And the other critical thing that we found is that so many of the software platforms that exist in this space were created by software companies, of course.

[00:21:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.

[00:21:13] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that the kiss of death I've seen over and over again is a great software that is unsupported, right?

[00:21:19] [SPEAKER_02]: You get told something.

[00:21:20] [SPEAKER_02]: You said it does all these things, and it does.

[00:21:22] [SPEAKER_02]: It does, but then you bring it to your practice and you don't roll it out.

[00:21:26] [SPEAKER_02]: Our unique lens is that we are a people-first marketing agency, and what we're excited to bring to this space is software powered by people.

[00:21:36] [SPEAKER_02]: So one small example, if anyone's like, well, I know that I have software that will reengage someone if they have a treatment plan.

[00:21:43] [SPEAKER_02]: A marketing agency will come in and say, here's what we want you to do.

[00:21:46] [SPEAKER_02]: I want you to record a video on your phone, and it's going to say, hey, it's been two weeks since you're in the practice, and I'm still thinking about your case.

[00:21:54] [SPEAKER_02]: I really think we can do something amazing together.

[00:21:57] [SPEAKER_02]: I'd like to invite you to get started next week.

[00:22:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Now, that video can apply to anyone that got an Invisalign treatment plan.

[00:22:05] [SPEAKER_02]: We as the team take that video.

[00:22:07] [SPEAKER_02]: We put it in the software, and we ensure that it happens so a good idea becomes a reality as opposed to the software paradigm today.

[00:22:14] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe your software platform can do that, but you have no clue how to do it.

[00:22:18] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, and here's the thing.

[00:22:21] [SPEAKER_03]: Asking me or a team member where we're already doing a lot of stuff, giving us one more thing like that, well, guess what?

[00:22:28] [SPEAKER_03]: That's an easy thing to just say, I'm not going to get to that.

[00:22:31] [SPEAKER_03]: So if you've got a way, maybe recording the video, honestly, is probably the least of the thing with that.

[00:22:37] [SPEAKER_03]: But it's getting that video to the right people and asking an already spread thin team to try and do that makes me sort of laugh.

[00:22:45] [SPEAKER_03]: So what you're saying is you're going to be able to flag the people that need that, and then the software can get that to them.

[00:22:49] [SPEAKER_03]: That's interesting.

[00:22:50] [SPEAKER_03]: And that's like having another team member practically.

[00:22:54] [SPEAKER_03]: I like that.

[00:22:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think for me it comes down to the model we've had as a marketing agency is a people-first model.

[00:23:01] [SPEAKER_02]: You need to be able to pick the phone up and call someone and say, hey, I'm struggling to log in, or I don't understand how to claim my Google My Business listing,

[00:23:10] [SPEAKER_02]: or all this stuff that fits in between the gaps of marketing.

[00:23:14] [SPEAKER_02]: And with software, it's the same thing.

[00:23:16] [SPEAKER_02]: And we know this because we own another software company, your virtual console.

[00:23:20] [SPEAKER_02]: And I know if we just gave people, said, hey, here's the login, go for it, no one would ever use it.

[00:23:26] [SPEAKER_02]: Instead, we have to hold their hand and have a white glove set up for an hour and a half to make sure everything's done.

[00:23:32] [SPEAKER_02]: And so our experience in that space has really paved the way for the success we're seeing with this new integration.

[00:23:38] [SPEAKER_03]: It's honestly, it's almost soothing to me to hear that other people struggle with the execution on a lot of this stuff.

[00:23:46] [SPEAKER_03]: Like, you know, I have some amazing, great ideas like halfway through my commute or when I'm taking a shower in the morning or something like that.

[00:23:55] [SPEAKER_03]: But like getting it from the idea to the point where it's actually executing on a regular base, that's really hard.

[00:24:01] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's kind of outside my wheelhouse.

[00:24:04] [SPEAKER_03]: And it sounds like you guys are the ones that kind of do the heavy lifting on executing those things.

[00:24:08] [SPEAKER_03]: I love that. That's really cool.

[00:24:10] [SPEAKER_01]: We have a term here, polite persistence.

[00:24:12] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:24:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Or polite pester.

[00:24:14] [SPEAKER_01]: And so that is a forte, polite pester until we get what we need, until we make an action item actionable and get it back from you.

[00:24:21] [SPEAKER_01]: And then we'll continue to carry that.

[00:24:22] [SPEAKER_03]: And what's so funny about it is that we know that.

[00:24:24] [SPEAKER_03]: We know that it's stuff that needs to be done.

[00:24:26] [SPEAKER_03]: I just, like I said, it's frankly the fact that you that that term exists on your end makes me feel a little bit.

[00:24:32] [SPEAKER_03]: So I'm not the only guy that does that.

[00:24:34] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's like so and you know, and I think a lot of dentist practice owners listening to this would probably probably feel that too.

[00:24:41] [SPEAKER_03]: But I like that.

[00:24:43] [SPEAKER_03]: I like the whole I like the whole concept.

[00:24:45] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm just like so when you know you've got this and this is has this rolled out or is this rolling out?

[00:24:52] [SPEAKER_02]: It's rolling out.

[00:24:53] [SPEAKER_02]: So we integration has been completed.

[00:24:55] [SPEAKER_02]: We're able to see the R.O.I.

[00:24:58] [SPEAKER_02]: dashboard we talked about.

[00:24:59] [SPEAKER_02]: So number of leads patients come in, how much revenue has been generated and in the communication piece of it is also active.

[00:25:07] [SPEAKER_02]: In fact, the story I love to tell is the first client we ever did this with.

[00:25:12] [SPEAKER_02]: We actually made a mistake.

[00:25:13] [SPEAKER_02]: We pushed a communication via email and text by accident, and it went out a little more broadly than what we'd expected to reengage people to get them to schedule appointments.

[00:25:25] [SPEAKER_02]: And so we were bracing for impact.

[00:25:27] [SPEAKER_02]: We made this mistake.

[00:25:28] [SPEAKER_02]: We sent something early and we got a call from the client.

[00:25:33] [SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, oh, boy, here we go.

[00:25:34] [SPEAKER_02]: And he said, I don't know what you did, but we've had like 35 phone calls in our practice with people scheduling.

[00:25:41] [SPEAKER_02]: And we had to explain that we made this mistake.

[00:25:43] [SPEAKER_02]: He's like, well, you know, it's the best mistake I've ever seen.

[00:25:46] [SPEAKER_02]: The point I'm making here is that practices do not engage the existing patients they have nearly enough.

[00:25:53] [SPEAKER_02]: It's the biggest untapped opportunity they have.

[00:25:56] [SPEAKER_02]: And we're so excited to work with our clients and new clients to really just send that first email blast and have the phone start ringing.

[00:26:05] [SPEAKER_03]: That's really cool.

[00:26:06] [SPEAKER_03]: That's really cool.

[00:26:06] [SPEAKER_03]: So let's say someone's listening to this and goes, OK, this is interesting to me.

[00:26:10] [SPEAKER_03]: I'd love to put my brain around more what this looks like.

[00:26:15] [SPEAKER_03]: Do you guys have a way to if someone's interested in it, is there a way they could get a demo or someone could walk them through how it works and what they could expect?

[00:26:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. So you're always welcome to schedule time with us via our website.

[00:26:28] [SPEAKER_01]: It's right at the top or in the upper right hand corner.

[00:26:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Schedule time with Forrest, Garrett or Chris and they would love to walk you through what this would look like, explain it to you, show you demo accounts and walk you through what that process and onboarding would look like and pricing and the whole shebang.

[00:26:44] [SPEAKER_03]: That's cool. That's very cool.

[00:26:45] [SPEAKER_03]: And honestly, the Wondrous agency is really quite comfortable showing you all of their stuff and how things work.

[00:26:54] [SPEAKER_03]: They are kind of experts in explaining stuff via computer.

[00:26:58] [SPEAKER_03]: You don't have to fly to Southern California.

[00:27:00] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I suppose you're welcome to, but they can show it to you right in your office.

[00:27:05] [SPEAKER_03]: Basically, they can show it to you over lunch is what it comes down to if you've got interest that they're very good about that stuff.

[00:27:09] [SPEAKER_03]: So you guys should if this has interest to you and I suspect the funny thing is, is like this is the first I've really heard of this.

[00:27:15] [SPEAKER_03]: It makes a ton of sense. I suspect we'll be hearing more about it as we go forward.

[00:27:19] [SPEAKER_03]: What like what do you have any big future ideas?

[00:27:23] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, now that this is rolling out, are you finding things? Oh, geez.

[00:27:26] [SPEAKER_03]: We got to add this. We got to add this. What do you see coming in the future?

[00:27:28] [SPEAKER_02]: I think for me, the first push is getting the data set.

[00:27:32] [SPEAKER_02]: So we understanding the relationship between leads, patients coming in and then getting information that's important.

[00:27:41] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, does the patient have an appointment in the future?

[00:27:45] [SPEAKER_02]: What outstanding treatment is there?

[00:27:47] [SPEAKER_02]: And then taking all of that and being able to use AI to both analyze and more powerfully place people where they need to be in different communication drip sequences.

[00:28:01] [SPEAKER_02]: So I think that this is an amazing time to be a marketer because we have this great confluence of data and artificial intelligence.

[00:28:08] [SPEAKER_02]: And I'll give you one example. You know, call tracking has existed for a while and call transcripts have existed for a while.

[00:28:15] [SPEAKER_02]: But only in the past 12 months really have we seen this explosion of being able to take a call transcript and process it through AI and have an analysis of the call, a qualification of the call.

[00:28:31] [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, as a marketing agency, the other thing that right now all we're doing is we're saying, here's what you converted.

[00:28:37] [SPEAKER_02]: But I'd also like to say, here's the opportunity you missed.

[00:28:40] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think it would be cruel to just say you missed it.

[00:28:43] [SPEAKER_02]: You would say, and here's what you can do in the future.

[00:28:47] [SPEAKER_02]: And it would be quite expensive to pay a human being to do all that.

[00:28:50] [SPEAKER_02]: We know that there are literal institutes that have made their whole careers around this.

[00:28:54] [SPEAKER_02]: There are coaches that spend all of their time on it.

[00:28:56] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think the trend we will see in the next five years is that AI will increasingly be able to come in and be disruptive in identifying and coaching on calls for the teams that are at the front of the office.

[00:29:09] [SPEAKER_03]: That's wild. That's wild.

[00:29:11] [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, it's so funny because AI, you know, AI as a topic is such a, such a, you know, it depends on what news sources you have and all this stuff.

[00:29:20] [SPEAKER_03]: But the story is it's, they always talk about it as a big picture where this is like, this is like very specific usage that people are taking advantage of.

[00:29:29] [SPEAKER_03]: I kind of like this.

[00:29:30] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, being able to use this in a way that just makes you better at certain jobs and seeing things that human beings aren't necessarily that good at seeing at the time that it's happening.

[00:29:40] [SPEAKER_03]: I like that. That's interesting.

[00:29:42] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, man.

[00:29:43] [SPEAKER_03]: I feel like this is a pretty big deal.

[00:29:45] [SPEAKER_03]: I think we'll probably have lots of people asking questions about it.

[00:29:47] [SPEAKER_03]: So what we'll do is I'll put a bunch of links up in the show notes so people can check it out.

[00:29:52] [SPEAKER_03]: And if you guys have any questions or comments, I'll get you, I'll get you pointed over to the Wonders agency to have them answered.

[00:29:58] [SPEAKER_03]: And maybe after, maybe after a couple months, we should have you guys come back on again and just see how the rollout went and where, how things are going.

[00:30:05] [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe a couple of case studies or something like that.

[00:30:07] [SPEAKER_00]: I was just thinking it would be fun to present some more robust case studies.

[00:30:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:30:11] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean, clearly you're going to have, I mean, you're a marketing company, you collect data.

[00:30:14] [SPEAKER_03]: So I'm pretty sure that you'll have some, you'll have some case studies for us soon enough.

[00:30:17] [SPEAKER_03]: We should definitely do that.

[00:30:18] [SPEAKER_03]: But I really appreciate you guys being on.

[00:30:20] [SPEAKER_03]: This was fantastic.

[00:30:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having us.

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_01]: We always love seeing you.

[00:30:24] [SPEAKER_03]: It's good to see you.

[00:30:25] [SPEAKER_03]: And hopefully we'll see you guys maybe in the next year or so, something like that at meetings and such.

[00:30:31] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm actually planning on being at some of the bigger meetings.

[00:30:33] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if I went to the midwinter this year and found some of them.

[00:30:37] [SPEAKER_03]: I only went for a couple of days.

[00:30:39] [SPEAKER_03]: They have a giant podcasting booth now.

[00:30:42] [SPEAKER_03]: And I just parked it there for two days and recorded for two days straight.

[00:30:45] [SPEAKER_03]: It was fantastic.

[00:30:46] [SPEAKER_03]: If I don't do that again, I'm crazy because that's like, I mean, you could do a year's worth of content at a couple of these meetings.

[00:30:52] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not even kidding.

[00:30:53] [SPEAKER_03]: And so I'm definitely going to go there.

[00:30:55] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm hoping to go to greater New York and stuff.

[00:30:56] [SPEAKER_03]: So hopefully we're running to you guys at some of those places.

[00:30:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we're working on the 2025 calendar and we're just about to start our fall tour here in 2024.

[00:31:04] [SPEAKER_03]: So nice.

[00:31:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Lots to look forward to.

[00:31:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Lots of travel.

[00:31:07] [SPEAKER_03]: All right.

[00:31:07] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, very good.

[00:31:08] [SPEAKER_03]: We'll talk to you again very soon.

[00:31:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.

[00:31:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Have a great week.