Secure Dental-Parham Nabatian: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Secure Dental-Parham Nabatian: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
Good evening and good morning from wherever you're listening from today to Secure Dental Podcast. My name is Nazish Jafri, and today is very exciting. Again. Well, every episode is very exciting because I talk to people who are actually bringing real value results. They're in the trenches, they're working right now, and they're helping the industry grow forward in this day and age. Honestly, you know, it's kind of terrifying. When we started our Secure Dental was how to do the marketing. I was very cheap at that time. I thought patients would just come in, I'm going to open up an office and drill-and-fill dentistry. And patients would just flock in. But hey, this is not the case. It was not the case back in 2011. And it's not the case right now in this social media age. And, you know, you open up an office, and suddenly you're just thinking about clinical excellence that you're going to provide to the patient. But another caveat to this is thinking about branding and website, and how a total stranger who is scrolling on their phone decides whether to trust you with their teeth and their money or not. So, today we have the co-founder of DocSites, and I'm sure you're very familiar with DocSites. It's a very known company, and I'm talking to Parham Nabatian. His first client was actually his friend. He helped his childhood friend go from a single chair to 11 offices, and Parham helped him figure out how to get found online in this day and age, because there's so much noise in there. And since then, he and his team have helped thousands of practices build their website and web presence to bring them to the community they serve in. So, thank you so much for your time today. And let's start from your friend. What prompted you to help him?

Parham Nabatian:
Thank you so much for having me on. And yeah, him and I were good friends since second grade, and he went on his journey to become a dentist, right? And I went on my journey to, you know, learn media and all these things. And I wanted to start a marketing company, you know, and he's like, I'm opening up an office from scratch in a back corner of Vegas in an area that was not established yet, right? And he's like, I don't have much money. I'm like, I'm not making any money. So, whatever you have, just write me a check. And he literally wrote me at the time, you know, this is 17 years ago, $1,000 check. And he's like, do what you can, right? So, long story short, I was like, you need to be online. Obviously, at the time, you know, I'm 25. I'm doing everything online, right? And then he was like, all right, let's get my online presence rolling. And then my brother's friend, who's now my business partner for 17 years, we randomly ran into a birthday dinner, and he's like, I do SEO. And I'm like, okay, you know, this thousand dollars isn't going in my pocket now because let me pay him to do SEO. We got along so well. We worked well together that I was like, you want to do this? And my friend was really happy. And I was like, let's do SEO. And he loved the SEO. He was really happy it was growing. And he's like, he went to all the bigger names, like the bigger Yellow Pages. And at the time, there was these big corporate brands. And he's like, these are the proposals they're giving me. Can you do the same? And I was like, you know what? Their proposals are good. We could do like Google Ads at the time, more search engine optimization, because he was already doing well. But I'm like, you know what? We should also do videos. And he was like, I don't want to pay for videos. You know, as a young business owner, right? That's what you are when you run a dental practice, your overhead is so high. I'm like, okay, I'll drive down to you. You're in Vegas, I'll have a good time, and I'll bring another friend who does videography. We did the video. The video got a lot of views. We placed it on the home page, and he's like, oh my God, you were right. So, when he opened up his next offices, he's like, now it was like open check. He's like, whatever you want, do it. So, it's you said something that I love. You said two words, community and trust. I don't think that gets talked about in the marketing side. I hear the word branding a lot, which is great. But I think for dentistry, you are a community pillar. So, content, videos, answering questions becomes a big deal for people who are anxious to see a dentist.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
Absolutely. People want to know if you're a real person. At one time we were using like tons of stock photos and tons of stock clips from iStock and all those kinds of places and those animated videos. But I think we've moved a lot from that part. Even me as a consumer, if I'm looking for something, if a real person is doing it and I see that real person in the building, in the location, the trust builds. And we've also learned that like how you're saying, when you did the video, he of his own office, you saw the results. Patients want to see what is happening in there. Is it a real person? Who am I going to see? Is it the same person I see on the pictures and the videos that I'm going to see in there? And that's where you warm the market, isn't it?

Parham Nabatian:
Right, exactly. And then it's expanded now to reviews. Reviews are getting big. And then in terms of the person, not every dental office is the same, right? Some offices are going to focus more on being straightforward. Like you're going to come in here, you're going to get the work done right. I personally prefer to go to those offices myself. Some people want the concierge office. I'm here in LA, so some people want to sit in a chair and have lavender misted, right? So, if you're not taught like communicating what type of dentist you are and what type of environment for your practice that you have consistently, how are you going to find the patients that fit in your office too? Because you want those. You don't want to just have everyone walk in the door. Some offices do, you know, and that lends more towards, like, heavier advertising. But if you want to build an office where it's a lot of patient relationship-based, that's going to lend towards what we talked about before we recorded. This is a lot of personal building, community building, and well, we should talk about the AI search tools now. And something that's becoming bigger is the more people already know you in the community, the more the AI searches are going to push towards you because go ask the AI searches themselves because they'll answer it. We're seeing that, like, if you're getting recommended in Facebook community groups, my town is called Woodland Hills, right? So, there's these Facebook groups called Woodland Hills families, and someone will search who's a great dentist in my area, right? And 20 moms will reply, usually it's the moms like, you gotta go to this dentist. We're seeing that the AI searches are now recommending the people that are being recommended in those forums. So, it's coming back to everything. It used to be the forum, marketing, and the community groups. And like everything that was in person, you would go to your church or your synagogue or wherever. Someone would say, this is the dentist I love. It's now going on digitally. And then now the AI tools are using it. So, it just is coming back to over and over getting known in the community.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
Yeah. You said that so right. I think it kind of resonated with me as well. You're right. First, the moms are the ones who are on the forums, and they're the ones back then who was reading all those coupons and the mails and the postcards at that time, and making a decision on a postcard to bring their family to a dentist. Now they're going on these forums, and they're making a decision. They're asking a huge community of people, who should we go to when they're getting answers right away? And the AI is smart. It's just pulling at it from there.

Parham Nabatian:
Yeah.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
If you're not on there, you're losing it.

Parham Nabatian:
And I love that you've done postcards and you've tried a lot of different things. We talked about it because I get a lot of questions like what works, what doesn't work. And I always have to answer like, and it makes me feel like not right answering it like this. But I'm like, you have to try it all and get visible. And to the point that people start saying, wow, I've seen Dr. Jafri a bunch of times. Like I've seen her photo, I've seen her name. Let me go read her reviews. Okay, now it's six months later, and my cousin's wedding is in a year. And let me go fix the chipped tooth in the front, and let me call her. You know that I've already seen. And also, Google will start showing your stuff more to that person that already saw your name, you know, and people are using Google and ChatGPT, and they are recommending it that way, you know?

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
Yeah, it's like warming the market using all the analogies. There's no size-fits-all; maybe you do TV commercials because you're just, again, warming the market, that, you know, hey, you're spreading your message, you're spreading yourself a little bit wider, and you're in the community, top-of-mind awareness. When they have that wedding, they think about you because you're the first name comes up like tissue paper is not called tissue paper anymore. It's called Kleenex.

Parham Nabatian:
Exactly. Exactly.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
So brand.

Parham Nabatian:
And another thing is there's a reason why brands will run multiple Super Bowl commercials, right? Yes. You think like, okay, I ran it one time. It's costing me all this money, but they're doing it three times because they're like, oh, wow, Coke was on the during the commercial three times. Now I'm kind of craving a Coke, you know? And then the other thing is, let's talk about affordability, because I was a bootstrap business. Dental offices are heavy loaned businesses, right? You have your school loans, you know, being in the industry for so long. I've actually become friends with some, like, really renowned dentists, where we've sat and had dinners, and they've educated me. They're like, don't think because someone's doing 1.5 to 2 million production, they're like, that person has a loan for their laser. They have their school loan, they have their building loan, their this loan, like so. After all said and done, it's like the take-home is not like I can just spend all this money on marketing, right? Because we have to learn about how things operate. So, let's talk about affordability. And one thing that I think is really important is your community, and you being involved yourself from the beginning is going to be really affordable, right? So, like my cousin in LA, very saturated market, I would not. And I told him for years, I'm like, he went to NYU, by the way, just like you. Oh, and I told him for years, I'm like, please do not open up a dental office in LA. But if you do, here's what you should do. You got to be at a farmers market. You got to have it. It's cheap. It's like 700 bucks to have a table there. So, what happens if you're the dentist? You come in, you dress nice, you have flyers. He got ten patients from one day at a farmer's market. You're not getting that ROI. I mean, of course, it was his time on a Sunday. But you have time right now. You know, take a half clinic day off when you're building and do that, right? Table flyers, handouts. And there you go. He just got ten new patients. And guess what?

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
Nice.

Parham Nabatian:
Hundreds of other people in the area that walked by because you know it's busy in LA Farmer's Market. They have this flyer now. Maybe a handful of them in a year will become a patient, right? So, those are the things you have to do in the beginning to keep your affordability in the community. Then you could say, okay, now my cost per new patient at the beginning has to be $50 a new patient. Then you could go to like 150 to 200, right? Because you're now making more money, you're getting more referrals. You can spend more later. A few years later down the road. But in the beginning, you have to be like, every new patient has to cost this much. And I'll be honest with you, in most markets, the online cost per acquisition is not going to be good enough in the beginning. It's just not. It's the reality.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
Yeah. Because you're a new face. You're a new office. Why would they come in? Leave your own dentist. You've been going there for like, ten, 20 years. Why would they want to come to you? So, obviously, cost per acquisition becomes really, really high. So, let's say a new dentist who is an associate right now, and he is trying to open up a practice in downtown Chicago, and they're thinking of marketing. What would your thought process be like if you were interviewing him and you were giving him suggestions of where to start from?

Parham Nabatian:
I love this question because we do it all the time, and the first item I would tell them is, before you spend on ads. And again, there's some of my colleagues that I'm very close with that are denta, marketers. They're going to give a little bit of a different advice. But I would say, before you spend on ads, build up your content for the practice, right? Like, make personalized videos, take nice photography, right? Set up a really good website, get your reviews up. I would say start in network in a little bit, right, if some people don't, but start in network and do community marketing, right? Make sure your website is optimized. Don't overspend on SEO because it's a long-term investment. And in downtown Chicago, I mean, don't get gassed up by some of my colleagues, please. You're not going to rank on page one for like dentist downtown Chicago. There are people that are in their 50s and 60s that have been throwing tens of thousands of dollars a year. They've been paying to be on every news channel. They're getting those rankings right. But you will get stuff like dentists and the zip code. You'll start showing up like on the maps here and there, and you'll start. But your best bet is going to be content building. I do love social media, even though we're not a social media-focused company, because we like our clients to do it. Because my wife is 35, she makes all the decisions off TikTok. Honestly, like if we're traveling to a country, we're actually coming to Chicago because I'm going to do a talk next week, and I'm like, honey, like we need some backup restaurants because I can't get the reservations. And she went to TikTok for 20 minutes last night and wrote down where we should go. So, you're going to start showing up higher in the algorithm if you use TikTok, right? The other thing I would do is if you are going to do more restorative cases, learn how to do the photography and then be patient. You're not going to hit it out of the park in the first year. I'm going to give you a reality check. It's going to take you 3 to 5 years to do it. But if you follow this plan, you will do really well. And I do think doing some social media ads is important more than Google ads in the beginning. In my opinion, unless you're in network and you're going to do emergency. So, again, I would want to know like, are you good at like extractions and root canals? And will you answer your phone? Like one of my good friends, not the other one. He started in LA and he's become this renowned veneers dentist. Like he only does veneers now and he has an office on Rodeo Drive. He started a few blocks away, but his first two years, what he followed my strategy on cash flow was he only did emergencies really until he built up like his veneers cases to the point where he did. And then all of a sudden, like people started finding him on social. But the first two years was him answering his phone because he would do the call forwarding on the VoIP, and he lived near his office and he would drive and extract the tooth. Now he doesn't even do extractions, but that's what he did to pay off all the loans and build until he did his cases. So, I'm going on a tangent, but there's things that you have to do. You have to do cash flow.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
I don't think that's a tangent. That's actually a real life stories that you're saying, because I'll tell you what happens when I'm listening to, I gave a lecture in New York School of Dentistry yesterday, and I gave a lecture and my husband used to give a lecture in the leadership aspect for the D1's and the questions that were coming up their D1 students there. 14 days into the dental school. The questions that came up at the end was, what should I do to open up a practice? And what should I do to open up a practice like yours? Like multiple practices? I was like, hold your horses, hold your horses. You're only 14 days into dental school. You have to survive NYU. NYU is a very rigorous program. They teach amazing skills, but hold your horses. But I think what happens is they are so stuck in the social media area that everybody thinks that the minute you're going to get out, the first day in your job, you're going to get a $10,000 case of veneers and you're going to change lives like Dr Apa and all these Rosenthals and stuff like that. That doesn't happen. What you're saying is exactly right. You have to do some kind of emergency dentistry. You have to extract the tooth On a Saturday. When we opened up our practice, we had one patient come in after two weeks on a Saturday. He was a truck driver and we extracted his molar. Even though we were doing this kind of marketing, it takes time and patience to reach where they see the social media presence of other people.

Parham Nabatian:
Exactly. And like you said, like you brought up Apa. Not everyone's gonna walk in the door with $10,000, you know? And in fact, I'll.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
Build a reputation over time.

Parham Nabatian:
Yeah, exactly. You know, you brought him up. I want to say something, too. He also worked with a dentist who had a really established practice because I kind of I get a lot of calls, like, how do I become this was happening five, ten years ago. I would get so many calls, like, how do I become the next Apa? And the reality is your work has to match because people are shopping for cosmetics. So, if you brought it up, I'll answer that question. They're shopping for cosmetic and I'm going to use the word shopping even though it's life changing dentistry. They're shopping for it the way they buy a luxury car or like they pick their next luxury destination. It's very competitive. It's not like you're against five other dentists that could do veneers like that. You're against dozens. And they're spending hours scrolling through and looking at it on every social platform, you know? So, you have to get really good at it because if your work doesn't stand out. So, the thing is, you have to look at your practice like a business. And then this whole multiple practice thing is getting tricky to me because people are doing it. And then the second office is killing them, and they're paying for the second office with the first office.

Parham Nabatian:
That happened with you or no?

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. We were just as crazy as you know, I listened to these kids and I'm like, yeah, I was there at one time too. And we scaled back during COVID time because we kind of ran too fast and too thin instead of deep.

Parham Nabatian:
Exactly. And then nowadays, let me add something else with marketing. Our front-end marketing is becoming just like it used to be. Even I would say five years ago, actually, we used to be like 75% of the marketing pie. We're now like less. I don't even want to throw the number out anymore. But like, if you don't have good, like follow up systems, your staff isn't trained to be like in the hospitality mentality, right? And it's been great. I've been really involved in the office manager organizations in the last few years. And those offices are doing so well. And the dentists are investing a lot in the office managers being really good. So, like we're now one piece of the pie where like, if you're not answering the phone correctly. So, before you start thinking about like multiple offices and how do I become Appa? It's like you have to first think about a through Z. Like you have to think about how do I create great content? How do I build an office where I know my mission, my vision, and my why? I'll tell you personally, ten years ago, our business was like, kind of like at a crossroads where we're like, who are we? Are we a like a concierge marketing firm? Or are we like a front end, like template model that educates but then wants the dentist to do more hands on work with us? And we had to decide, you know, and if we didn't all three meet the three partners, we wouldn't be where we are today with close to 1100 dental practices using our platform, right? We'd be kind of like trying to fix a sinking ship consistently. So, you have to know yourself. Some people want to be these cosmetic dentists, but then later on they find out like, no, I don't want to sit and redo veneers case six times. You know, maybe six times is a harsh number. But you know, I get that feedback.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
That is a true number, right? I'm sure that's a true number. It's just that social media doesn't show that. It just shows that 32nd of the smile, it doesn't show when that lady comes back six times to get that one tooth fixed.

Parham Nabatian:
Oh, she didn't like the shade. Her mom said the shade wasn't good and now she's coming back, right? See, we went, we went up. So, you know. But then you have to know who you are is the first step, in my opinion. And then the second step is don't be scared to grow and expand, right? Like learn how to do clear aligners. Because even if you do ten cases a year, that production is going to add on, right? Some of your really happy patients that have done bread and butter treatment for three years. They're the ones you could say, hey, you know what? Like, let's get the smile aligned. And you know, for this price and now your production, right? So, learn, keep learning how to do clinical better. And then internally we're again, like the marketing has expanded to like, how are you greeting the staff? How's the parking at your office? Three years ago, I used to say, you know what, book online is tricky. Don't add book online nowadays, as a busy parent, I have a couple kids under four. I want to go book online, right? Then the next thing becomes, what's your follow up emails, right? Like you better learn the patient management system. Well, I have all these clients that sign up with like this tool, that tool, and they're paying like six, 700 a month. I don't know if you work with any particular ones, but and they don't use half the assets. And that's like, if you're not following up right after the appointment, if you're not following up with a proper email, you're not going to win someone back, you know?

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
Yeah. No, you're right. We just think that other people have a magic tool that the patient's going to come into the office and somebody else is responsible for it. But I think it is ultimately your own policies and, and stepwise process. Sometimes I feel like the dentist doesn't even know what you want or how it should be set up. We are just like, okay, spend the money and hey, front desk, it's your job to book the appointment and do the rest of the stuff. Whereas me, I'm going to just drill and fill. That's it. There are three touch points, but in reality, like you said, you warm the market. Then you have when they do call you, you have to have that kind of personality to talk to the patient, to make sure that they turn into a converted appointment. And when they do come in, they feel exactly the same way. How the video is. If the video is different because you just were actors in it, and now the patient comes to the office and it's rushed and somebody is not even greeting them, then they have two separate perspectives. They're like, okay, whatever your video was, was not true. And I see that a lot. And then they think the marketing agency is not doing it. We're not getting the ROI right.

Parham Nabatian:
And, you know, like they always ask me, what should I name my practice? And I always say, Apple could have been called orange. You still would have bought the iPhone, you know, so it's about that. And you're right. There are things that like we can do better, like marketing agencies, we can spend more time learning about what you should do, how to help you, right? Because, you know, I will say like, there's times where we could do better on like pushing a client to promote more cosmetics. They're good enough. They have enough work, right? But like it's been stuck in like emergency marketing, right? But now it's time to like, let's push your cosmetic work. Let's get you going on that. And you do want to work with a partner that's gonna help you do that. And I will tell some people that reach out to us, like for example, DocSites, we're not a social media agency, right? So, like, you have to be in a phase where you're ready to go, right? And there's different ways to do it. Some people are doing their social media themselves. Personally, I think the offices that learn how to do it themselves, they perform much better because they're not paying the agency fees so they could keep the overhead lower. And then from there, they can work more on like Google ads and postcards and things like that, but they're using organic social media to grow, you know?

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
You're right. I think to keep the overhead down. Your point, I like it is warm the market with your own content. Start building your own content now. So, I would tell the new business owner who is looking into opening a practice that maybe this is the time that you record your cases, that you record some valuable educational videos of your own selves, just take your phone and start doing it. Because even as a marketing agency like yours, you're going to build them a website. You need content. I don't think stock photos and stock clips are working anymore. So, even a marketing agency needs content from the dentist themselves. If you don't have the content they can't do or showcase you much.

Parham Nabatian:
Those days of stock imagery and new patient pages being empty and the doctor's bio being just, I graduated from NYU. Those days are over. And again, it's not going to bring you 100 new patients by fixing all of that, right? And it's just that we're all all of us businesses are in community businesses. We're all working on the margins, right? Like ten, 20% is a big deal, right? Every year you want to grow ten, 20%. And guess what? By the time you're 45, you know, like you start your practice at 30. By the time you're 45, you're now hitting the numbers that you had the vision for. You know, sometimes it's not going to be at 35. And some people do hit it at 35. I have a couple clients that are hitting their goals there.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
What would you say to this dentist? Like realistically, if he was to make a website, he has a name and now he's deciding to the website. And so, what is the best time? How far in advance should he get his website up and running before he actually opens?

Parham Nabatian:
I would say nowadays you want to go like 45 to 60 days. So, you get the website up. Maybe you could get a couple photos if an op is ready or something, right? Like that's a startup model. Then there's acquisitions where you kind of can't, you got to take over the other website, right? So, there's ways to approach that. That's really important. You want the letter from the previous dentist and why they chose you, right? So, I would always say 45 days. You want to get the phone number out there. If you're building a shopping center type of practice where like you want to put a sign up with a QR code so people can start booking appointments, you want to do some boost post on Facebook where like, hey, we're opening maybe a personal message. So, that would be the initial strategy on a startup type or where they're kind of like, or an acquisition where they're redoing the practice or making a new office. And then with the acquisition, you definitely there's a strategy for that too. You definitely want to make sure that it's not a shock to the current patient base, you know?

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
So, yeah, that's a smooth transition.

Parham Nabatian:
Exactly. Did you do acquisitions or did you always do?

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
We did both.

Parham Nabatian:
Right, right.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
We did both. But I was going to come to an acquisition. And a point came in my mind to see what you think about it. So, when we did acquisitions, we actually didn't take the name or didn't take the website. We brought Secure Dental over. So, it was a whole new entity and things like that. As a new business owner, when this new business owner is doing an acquisition, is it a good idea to keep their website because they had current patients? Or you just leave that website to just go to graveyard and you build your own with your own entity and name?

Parham Nabatian:
It's very dependent, right? If you're buying like a practice, that's like Dr. Jafri.com or, you know, Dr. Jafri dental office. Then you gotta obviously redo it. There's no questions. Keep the domain and make sure you forward the domain. Sometimes the ranking is already really good on that domain, right? So, like it's performing so well, it's already high up in the maps. And I always say, if you have a good Google maps, always acquire that and just change the name. So, it's very dependent on the website. You always want the domain name. So, if you are going to build a new one, you forward the old one. But if you are going to keep the site and it's good already performing well, you may want to change the name of the practice, but you keep the domain and no one will see. It's just dependent. And then, in general, I would say you definitely want to consider how they're doing already online. So, do that. The first thing, and many people don't know that you need to get all the digital assets in the transition even like, yeah, the email marketing stuff they use, like if they're using, let's say a weave or something of that nature, you want to make sure that that's a part of the acquisition and the data in there is usable for you.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
Yeah. And I think these are really, really good points because we're just thinking of tangible assets and all the equipment that we have, and we put that in the APA and things like that. And we totally forget about these things where there was data for all these years living in there and staying in there, which can be utilized by agencies like yours, you can actually hone on to it and utilize it, right?

Parham Nabatian:
Exactly. So, if you have the domain and Google Maps, those are two important things. We can now forward the site or build the new site on the domain, right? And then with the Google Maps, we can go rename it. So, you have, like, let's say, the office already has like 405 star reviews over the 20 years. You don't want to restart, just rename it. And now you're starting ahead.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
You're not reinventing the wheel. You're just utilizing it. And obviously, a lot of patients are the same people who might have seen that address tons of times or have been to the practice.

Parham Nabatian:
Exactly. And you definitely want to address that you took over the office in acquisition.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
Absolutely. And have the other old dentists introduce you as well along the way.

Parham Nabatian:
Exactly.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
Building a website, do you think right now a website is like a brochure or it's like a lead generation machine? What do you think about?

Parham Nabatian:
I think it's definitely a lead generation machine, because even though people are sometimes throwing it out there that a website's not important anymore. It's still like our average sites get like 300 to 400 visits. So, let's say if half of it, let's just throw out random numbers, right? Because no one knows the exact number, let's just say half of it is actually interested members, right? Other half are vendors trying to sell you. They went to the website whatever. So, the other half is interested. If that site you said something from the beginning, like you have 30 seconds to convert them, right? If that website isn't working to convert the person, then you're losing because you're not going to get out of the 150, you're not going to get more than 10%. 20% is the rule like booking an appointment. So, you better make sure that you're fine-tuned for that 15 to 20%, you know?

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
Yeah. Correct. So, it is a very important and I think it's an important plus. I feel like if you're doing your social by yourself, you're starting off and you're half content to do that. We do have the budget to go with a really good regenerating style website to start you off with.

Parham Nabatian:
Exactly.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
A good bio. And how important is the bio and the Google words that you use in that bio for this new dentist to put in what they're putting their bio in? Do you think they should be using certain words that are picked up?

Parham Nabatian:
Yeah. So, for the bio, the important thing is that it's a top-five-visited page, typically on a dental site. So, it's not getting like 500 visits, but like it is in the 50 to 100. Like I pick my daughter's dentist based off her bio. I didn't have a referral here. So, the reality is you have to have messaging about what your vision for the practice is, what kind of expertise you want to bring in if you're doing advanced dentistry, like in terms of like implant dentistry, maybe you want to talk about your knowledge in that, right? So, in terms of the bio two, I would always recommend having photos. So, you want to have photos, you want to have maybe a video of you talking about the vision for your practice. And Google owns YouTube. So, in terms of showing up higher, that also helps you, too. In terms of the website being optimized. Like the keywords have to mention, you know, dentists near me, they have to say dentists in the city, right? And the metadata. So, that is important. You do want to mention your city, the location you're in. And, and I always say like, start the first couple sentences with the vision for your practice and what the patients should expect not, hey, I, graduated from New York, NYU, you know.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
Yeah. That's some really good stuff from that. Is there anything else that comes to mind that can help this dentist?

Parham Nabatian:
I would say pick a company that is going to be responsive and get updates for you, right? So, nowadays there's companies like ours where you can pay a monthly 79 a month fee. We do all the updates right for you. So, sometimes you need that to start like just someone that's going to get you rolling, do all the updates. You don't want to spend $20,000 for the year doing a full campaign or whatever to an agency, because then you have to pay for ads or whatever, right? So, find that company, that person and work with them for the first couple years. Make sure ask them, hey, if I get you updates, how soon will you get it for me, right? Are you available to talk every three months? You don't want to be talking to your agency every month, because we're going to just show you reports and you're going to either know you're getting new patients or not, right? It's funny, a lot of the 50 and older dentists that call us, they're like, they actually outright say, please don't do a monthly meeting or report. Like, I don't want that, right? But with the younger dentists, you want to know that if you want to talk every three months, give me some new ideas. What we did that was really cool is we now send a monthly newsletter to all our clients and we actually tell you, here's things you should be doing, like FAQs got really hot last year. So, and I'll be honest, they don't do like only a few do it out of like the thousand people we send it to. But we'll send like an email saying, like, you got to start getting us FAQs for your practice. And we'll give them examples like, do you do same day appointments? I have people that do same appointment in crowns. So, like, we'll ask them in the email, like, are you doing anything that like makes it more convenient for a patient and people, you know, you're so busy running a team and a staff and doing the dentistry, you miss out on that. But be on top of that. I will say that's really important. And when you interview agencies, know that you may be someone like my friend that opened up his first office. That's like, I do want to do a lot of ads, right? And I do want to he didn't want to do videos, but he wanted to spend tons on ads and bring people in. And this is the tricky part. He had the whole like $50 cleaning and exam, right? Which is like, you have to be set up for that, right? I don't know how you did it because you have nine offices, some of the multi-office. That's how it is. You bring in a lot of people and your associates have to filter who the right fits are, right? If you are that type and that's your vision. Build your office that way and work with an agency that knows how to do that. Ask them what ad campaigns have you ran? Then you have some agencies that I really like, but they push the dentists that are not that model. They're like, hey, you can get 100 new patients, but run a free exam. And then the dentist does it three months in and they're like, I hate dentistry. And it's like, yeah, because you're running a free exam and half the people coming in your door are people you don't even want to say hi to. You don't want to do dentistry on them, you know?

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
Yeah. Or sometimes it looks like you have a full schedule, but they don't show up. That's the worse. And it looks like the marketing is working because the appointments are being made with online booking and stuff. When you do these different couponing style marketing, but you're set up, but the patients don't show up. So, you have a very high no show rate.

Parham Nabatian:
Exactly. And then it's now the marketing agency's fault. But you have to spend time getting to know, what am I going to run my operations internally? And then who's going to be the marketing company that matches it, right? So, learn each model and then say, hey, you know what? Like this model is more of a like, I'm going to hire a local videographer. I'm going to do community marketing, and then I'll pay doc sites a low fee because we're more affordable on the affordable end. Like our SEO starts at 3.99 a month. I'll pay them a lower fee, but I'm not going to rely on a heavy SEO campaign. Or like our ads campaigns are more like straightforward. They're not like a big retargeting. And those companies charge way more than we do, right? So, I want like a straightforward ad campaign where it's going to be more like less clicks, less visits, but we're going to be much more targeted. And I show them when they talk to me. So, it comes down to talk to agencies, talk to the people that aren't selling. They're more educating you, and then go to the talks and learn what you can do.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
Parhan, you said a lot of things that usually I don't see, I don't hear on the social media, especially for younger dentists. I think the way you said it was like absolutely no fluff. You gave a lot of good tips. One of them, I actually resonated with it too. When you were saying about the online booking, and I wrote it down for myself as well, but I really appreciate you giving like practical tips and advice that you've seen in the market and also that be aware of what you want to do, just like how you are aware and your agency is aware of what exactly what you are. You're not like everything. We do everything and get confused and get the client confused. You're very focused on what exactly you know, and that is very important. Just like a dentist. Are you going to do the coupons? Are you going to do the free ones or are you going to be like that niche dentist? Know what you have to do and what you want to do. So, you don't get confused.

Parham Nabatian:
And the first three years you're going to do things that are not as fun and not what you want to do, right? You got to do it. And that's how you learn. And school is one side of it, but there's the school of hard knocks, and that's walking into an office with employees and payroll and overhead. And that's where you're going to learn like the operational side and having someone like you. Yeah, exactly. I mean, we did it too. Having someone like you, myself, they could reach out to, we're all here to help. Like they can set up a meeting with me for free. They should talk to people and not feel like they have to buy. None of us should be forcing anyone to buy. We should be showing you how it works and then you pick who you want to buy from, you know?

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
Correct, yeah. Who you want to buy from and what is your niche? What do you want to sell and how do you want to present to your community? So, how can the listener reach you? So, I can see the dark sides at the back. So, that's a very, very good. Yeah, I'm sure people had a lot of time to write it down and look you up.

Parham Nabatian:
So if you go to docsites.com, fill out our chat or form and just mention my name in there. Parham. I always get directed to anyone who mentions my name. That's one thing we've done here. We've kept it where if someone wants to speak to us specifically, we do it. So, that's the best way. You know, I could get you a calendar link too, if you want to have that for your community, if they want to talk. And then parham@docsites.com is always good too.

Dr. Nazish Jafri:
All right. That's amazing. Perfect. Thank you so much for actually no fluff tips and conversations. You didn't make it sound hard. You made it sound very easy for somebody to actually have a few steps that they can actually start today. So, there's dentist who is buying another office right now, and he's still an associate. He can do all these things right now to start some content for themselves. And if you're an associate on the fence about ownership, I would love to see if you can share this podcast with somebody who is about to take this kind of a leap for their next stage in practice ownership. And then thank you Parham again for your time. Until next time, keep building, keep learning, and I'll see you in the next podcast. Thank you so much. Appreciate your time.

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