Maximize Your Screen Time by Colin Receveur

by Colin Receveur

Orthodontist videos and patient testimonial videos are arguably the most powerful arguments to convince your prospects to choose you to solve their orthodontic problems. Video enhances engagement, lends credibility and provides a sense of connection that the written word often struggles to convey.

Today, 90 percent of all internet traffic is video. YouTube reports that on any given day, more than 175 million Americans watch videos online, and research reports that younger people prefer watching short videos over reading articles.

Today's orthodontic prospects expect video, but the incredible amount of video available poses a challenge. More than 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Your videos need to be outstanding to garner the attention you need to help grow your practice.

Based on the thousands of videos we've created for our dentist clients, here's what you need to know to produce ones that attract and help convert prospects into patients.

Quality counts
You're an advanced-degree professional offering highly technical services to improve your patients' oral health. Your doctor videos and your testimonial videos need to demonstrate the same care and quality of results that you provide for your patients.

That means you should never display any of the following:

• "Hallway" or treatment chair videos
• Handheld smartphone videos
• Videos with cluttered backgrounds and/or extraneous noises
• Videos with poor lighting and poor sound quality
• Videos that talk down to your prospects or over their heads
• Badly edited videos
• Long, boring videos that don't engage the viewer.

You don't have to spend a fortune on video recording and editing equipment to produce quality videos. Something on the level of a GoPro camera with a directional microphone and a tripod will meet most orthodontists' needs. Select the location for your video shoots carefully, ensuring that it offers adequate lighting, a quiet environment and a background that isn't distracting.

Scripting doesn't work
For your videos to be credible, you and your patients must be authentic. Few people are naturals at reading a script or trying to recite memorized lines, and that likely includes you and your patients. It might be tempting to try to script your videos, but the result is almost always awkward, uncomfortable and unbelievable.

Rather than trying to have a predetermined script, lay out some simple talking points—reminders of the main areas to cover, and how those areas can flow from one to another. Recalling a few points while on camera is far easier than trying to recall line after line of a script, and with the freedom to speak naturally about the talking points, everyone will appear more credible to your prospects.

One other consideration: Even professional on-camera talent often requires multiple takes. Be prepared to spend some time on each video; patience is your friend when it comes to getting good results. Even so, you may not get a single take that you'd want to put online—people ramble, digress and speak in incomplete sentences far more often than you might think. Consider investing in a reasonably good editing system and putting in the time and effort to learn to use it well.

The best videos are about results
The majority of your prospects don't want to know the details of orthodontic procedures, and a great many of them don't want to know even the broad outlines. Almost none want to see close-up shots of diseased teeth, precancerous lesions or dry sockets.

They do want to know that their concerns will be addressed and that their lives will improve as a result.

For your doctor videos, emphasize the benefits your patients receive from having a procedure done—pain relief, a confident smile, clearer speech, improved aesthetics. You can also emphasize the experience your prospects should expect while in your practice.

Every dental practice needs a certain number of "Gee, the team and Dr.X are so wonderful" videos. But your prospects with specific needs want to hear how patients with similar problems benefited from your efforts and how their lives were bettered. Those condition-specific testimonials will go much further toward attracting new patients to your practice.

Go pro or go home
If you have a passion for video, and you've always fancied yourself as a writer, director and editor, you'll likely find a great deal of satisfaction in arranging, conducting and editing your own video shoots. However, you won't make a single dime while indulging your Hollywood side. Orthodontists make money by seeing patients and solving their crooked teeth or bite issue. Your testimonial videos—if not your own videos—will almost certainly be shot during office hours, and you can't treat patients while you're directing a video shoot with multiple takes and anxious "talent." At best, effective doctor and patient testimonial videos get you more patients to make money on. That's why this is one area where the vast majority of orthodontists will do better to outsource their videos to professionals. The upfront cost may seem high, depending on the video production company you choose. But you only have to think about your average case value and how many new patients you need to recoup that expense and begin making more money. Good video will always pay for itself.

Colin Receveur, a nationally recognized dental marketing expert and speaker, is the author of several best-selling books on internet marketing, most recently The Four Horsemen of Dentistry: Survival Strategies for the Private Dental Practice Under Siege. Receveur's company, SmartBox, helps more than 550 dentists on three continents get more and better patients. Email: colin@smartboxwebmarketing.com