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AUDIO - HSP #250 - Charles Crawford
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VIDEO - HSP #250 - Charles Crawford
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• How to track all your new patients properly with dynamic call tracking.
• The common SEO mistakes that are LOSING you money every day & how to fix them.
• Black-hat vs White-hat SEO tricks
• What Google doesn’t want you to know about Yelp & Youtube.
• How to get more Google+ reviews and dominate your competitors.
• How to capitalize on the fact that over 50% of traffic is from mobile devices.
Charles Crawford is the co-founder Crawford and O’Brien, one of the fastest growing dental marketing agencies in America. Since 2010 Crawford and O’Brien has ranked hundreds of websites and videos on Google. After helping his first dental client make 5 figures per month in increased revenue Charles has been helping dentists dominate their local markets on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Facebook ever since. Charles has been mentored by millionaires and some of the highest level players in the internet marketing world. From researching Google’s algorithm updates to testing new SEO methods, Charles will leave you with some great tactics (some you may have never heard of) that will help you acquire new patients at a surprisingly low cost.
Charles Crawford
1-844-243-9808
charles@crawfordandobrien.com
Howard: It is a huge honor for me today, to be interviewing Charles Crawford, who does something that didn't even exist when I got out of school in '87. I got out of school, there were no computers, no cell phone, none of that stuff, and now the whole world is SEO, internet marketing, the whole 9 yards. What do we need to know? Every dentist wants more new patients and now, half the internet traffic is on a cellphone and there's 3800 dentists in the Phoenix Valley. Someone's searching for dentist. What can you do to their website so that more people land on your dentist's website?
Charles : Exactly. It's a great question. There's a few things. There's a lot. I would say, Google+ reviews should be the first thing you start hammering. It's kind of an overlooked thing. You've all heard Google+ reviews are great, get some of those. Honestly, if you'd take a look. Let's say you got 100 Google+ reviews, you would dominate your city. The probability that you would rank in the top 3 local positions is almost won. There's no way Google could not rank you, because you have 100 reviews and your competitors only have like 10. I would say, that's the first thing that you should really get a system for, is asking your patients for Google+ reviews. The next thing that you can really do to your website to help rank it higher is, make sure you have unique content.
A lot of website companies actually just copy and paste the same content, like the same words from other clients that they build websites for, and that's bad because why would Google want to rank your website if it has the same exact content as someone else? That's important. Then, one thing that will really differentiate you and help you rank higher is to actually shoot unique videos of each service. You should do a 30 second video of each service you provide and be like, "Hey, this is Howard Farran. Really quick, I've got a model of a dental implant here. This is one of the best things in the dental industry in the past 30 years, and here's why." Then, just a quick 300 second video. Bam. Now you can upload it to YouTube and that can help rank on Google if someone searches dental implants Phoenix and you can embed it on your website and that helps your website for SEO. Basically, in two short words, I would say, Google+ reviews and content. That would really set you apart.
Howard: I'm going to back up. The problem with thousands of viewers, they're all at different levels of understanding.
Charles : Yeah.
Howard: What is a Google+. You keep saying +, what's the difference between Google, and Google+?
Charles : Ah, if you notice, you have a Google, my business is what they changed the name to. It used to be Google Places, and then in 2013, they changed the name to Google+ local. You create a Google+ business page, and that is what your page is. Your probably thinking of the same thing. A Google review is the same thing as a Google+ review. It's just Google+ is a little more specific, since it's actually a Google+ business page that somebody's leaving a review on.
Howard: How have you been successful in getting dentist's clients to get more Google+ reviews.
Charles : Pretty successful. There's a few tools I recommend. Actually, I can just say them right now. The 5 star review system is really good, and BirdEye. Those would be me top two picks. That's actually a good question. Let me clarify. What these tools do is, they send your patients directly to your Google+ page to leave a review. Now, what a lot of companies like Lighthouse or Demand Force often do is, they send those same patients to their own internal system to get a review, but that's not that good, because you can't have, Demand Force can't publish reviews straight to Google. Google shut that off in 2012. Therefore, the best thing you can do is send patients directly to your Google+ page, and that's a big mistake that dentists are thinking.
They're like, "Oh, Charles, I'm fine. I've got the man force." I'm like, "No, you're not, because they're not actually sending them to Google, if they're just sending them to Demandforce.com/whatever url they set up for you.
Howard: 5 star review system, what is that, an app, a software? You said BirdEye, walk us through that.
Charles : Exactly. You could go to bestlocalreviews.com. That's where the 5 star review is located. It's actually just a web app, which means it's on a website and you would literally just go, create an account, log in, and what you do is, you literally just email or text your patients when they're at your office. You can be like, "Hey Sally, did you enjoy it? Great. Yes. Can you leave a review? Yes. What's your email?" Then your staff can email them and there will be a link. When they click it, it goes straight to your Google+ page and now they can leave a review, or you can send a text. I would actually recommend, because most people have smartphones and prefer that over email. Then, bam, you can hit the link in the text message and it can go straight to Google+. That's basically the same thing with BirdEye. Then, they just help you manage it and know how many reviews your getting, how many people you requested, that way you can sort of stay on top of it all.
Howard: You're saying that building up your Google+ reviews would be the number one most important thing to increase your search engine optimization?
Charles : Yes. Yeah, I would say that.
Howard: Now, I've noticed that all the young kids like you also talk about Yelp and all the old farts like me never use Yelp. Again, every time I go to watch a Bears on a Cardinals game with a bunch of old, fat, bald dentist, none of them use yelp. Where does Yelp place on this as important as Google+ for dentistry. You hear of Yelp with restaurants, but is Yelp really a dentist thing?
Charles : It is. It's not as important as Google+, but it's still very important. Here's a reason. If you've noticed-. You've probably noticed, this isn't just search results, but if you Google 'dentists in Phoenix', or dentists in any city, usually there'll be at least one or two listings of Yelp ranking on Google. Google ranks Yelp listings because they know people love it and it's a high authority site. Therefore, you should get your Yelp posting ranked because you're going to get traffic from that. There's actually some tricks that we do for SEO. We can drive links to a dentist's Yelp listing to actually make it rank higher on Google, which is a little trick. It's important.
Howard: What about advertising? I know you can give money to Yelp. You can advertise on Yelp. Is that something you recommend. Is that good, or is that original?
Charles : I would not recommend Yelp advertising. Sorry Yelp if you're listening to this, but frankly, I have a bunch of dental clients and literally none of them have said it worked. I've only heard bad things from Yelp. I think it's just because of their model. They're selling you on impressions. They're like, "We'll get you 20,000 impressions a month and it's like, "Impressions don't matter." The only thing that matters is real traffic or calls, that's what matters. They're sort of trying to oversell their product. I don't think their ads are really that good and people don't really use them that well for dentists.
Howard: It's kind of funny. It reminds me of the 94 2000 stock run, where Nasdaq went from 1200 to 5800, then popped like a balloon. All those companies, you'd say, "Well how much money do you make?" They go, "We have a million likes on our Facebook page?" You're like, "How much money do you make?" They say, "We're signing up 50 new customers an hour." It's like, "How much money do you make?" These companies were worth a billion dollars and had never made a penny, then the same dumb ass was shocked when the stock price came down.
Charles : Yeah, exactly.
Howard: Something should be worth a billion dollars that had never made a penny? Having your metrics scorecard in real[inaudible 00:09:21] and you're saying the real metric is who's calling your dough office?
Charles : Yeah. Exactly, that's actually the most important thing.
Howard: How do you recommend measuring that?
Charles : Yes. Are you familiar with dynamic call tracking?
Howard: Yes.
Charles : Beautiful. That is the best source to track your calls.
Howard: Explain that to the viewers.
Charles : Exactly, it's dynamic. You're all probably familiar with call tracking which is just, you have a different phone number and that forwards to your real number and that's how you can track how many people call this tracking number, but dynamic is, we buy a pool of 10 phone numbers and then we install some code on your website. Then, at any given time, based on the source of where the user is coming from, a different phone number will swap out. I use this example. Imagine one person came to your website at 2:30 from Google, from Google AdWords, then one person came from Google Organic, then one person came from Yelp. You've got 3 people on your website at the same exact time. Let's say it's like 2:30 pm. They would all see different phone numbers. Think about that. Basically, you have a phone number in your pool for Google AdWords, for Google local, for Google Organic. You have a phone number for Yelp. You have a phone number for Facebook. You basically buy a phone number, a tracking phone number for each possible source of traffic that you could get and then we have those in those pool.
The traffic software basically knows based on the code we installed in your site when to swap them out and bam, that's history. Then, all the calls get recorded and then, it's really cool.
Howard: All the calls, the actual conversation gets recorded, or the call history?
Charles : Yep. You could chose both. We prefer-. You should record because then you can do quality assurance on your staff and make sure they're on top of their game.
Howard: Well, humans, it's all about transparency with humans. They do things in their bathroom that they wouldn't do at the dinner table. The bottom line is, once we start taping our staff's phone calls, they just all raise their game. They say, in theft prevention that at a convenience store, if you put a camera above the cash register and tell all your employees. The camera doesn't even have to be on, and the stealing plummets because they're all like, there's a camera above me.
Charles : Yup. That's amazing.
Howard: This dynamic, what's the website on this dynamic call tracking?
Charles : There's a couple I recommend. I would say the top call tracking companies are [Callrail 00:12:14] and calltrackingmetrics.com.
Howard: You said dynamic. Dynamic call tracking is just a concept?
Charles : Yeah. A lot of really good call tracking companies will do dynamic. That's kind of their niche.
Howard: Is dynamic a product, a brand, a software?
Charles : It is a type of call tracking. You would have to choose. For example, if you went to callrail.com-.
Howard: CallRail, c-a-l-l-r-a-i-l.com
Charles : Exactly.
Howard: What was the other one?
Charles : Trigonometrical. You would go to those websites, then choose, "Yeah, I want dynamic call tracking and I want to buy a pool of 10 phone numbers." Then they walk you through a step. They give you the code to install, which you should actually have whoever your web guy is doing all this stuff so you don't have to. That's basically the process.
Howard: Okay, how much does something like that cost? How hard is it? Is this something they can do themselves, or something you'd have to set up for them?
Charles : I would recommend it's something we set up for them just because it's complex and you don't want to spend 3 hours trying to tinker around with this.
Howard: The reason you don't want to spend 3 hours, if you're a dentist, if you spent 3 hours doing fillings, crowns and root canals, you'd make several thousand.
Charles : Exactly.
Howard: Same reason I don't mow my yard is because the time it takes me to mow my yard, I could have done a crown, plus I don't own a lawnmower.
Charles : Exactly.
Howard: How do people contact you?
Charles : Yes, there's a few ways. Our website is crawfordandobrien.com.
Howard: You're Charles Crawford.
Charles : Exactly, I'm Charles.
Howard: The other guy's better, because I'm 100% Irish. He's O'Brien. He has to be Irish. Crawfordandobrien.com. You're Charles Crawford.
Charles : Exactly.
Howard: Your email is charles@crawfordandobrien.com.
Charles : Exactly. You nailed-.
Howard: Then, your partner is-?
Charles : Mike@crawfordandobrien.com.
Howard: Just Mike, M-i-k-e?
Charles : Exactly.
Howard: Okay, if they wanted you to do this for them, what kind of fee is that? Is it a menu, or is it a flat rate for a dental office? How do you handle your dentists?
Charles : Yep, exactly. We charge $300 a month for call tracking. What we do is, we actually listen to the recordings and then we send a report to our clients every month. That's why clients love it, because we don't just record the calls and then send them a list of 200 calls to go through. We literally pay someone to listen to all the calls and they score them. They'd be like, "This was a conversion from us, or this was a conversion that wasn't from us, but they knew your staff and it was a referral." We score all the calls and send them to the client and then they can quickly look at an Excel sheet of, all the green ones are highlighted from us. Yellow is them, and it's really easy to see. That's why.
Howard: You're not grading the call on the quality of the conversation?
Charles : No.
Howard: Whether she's closing to get them in, the schedule and get this person here? You're scoring them on whether they came from their advertising.
Charles : Yes. Plus, we actually score calls that are lost conversions, so like you were kind of saying. If the staff member messes up and it's just bad communication and she loses the new patient from bad communication, then we'll score that as red, so that we know. "Hey, you had 20 missed calls and 7 calls that came through actually were lost conversions because your staff was like, 'No, we're busy today. Sorry.'"
Howard: They can click that Excel spreadsheet and go hear the actual conversation?
Charles : Exactly.
Howard: Wow.
Charles : Which is great because literally all of our clients have at least some internal problem with phone. Some people will be like, "Yeah, Charles, I train my staff. They're so good." I listen to some recordings and I'm like, "Dr Smith, you might want to listen to this one."
Howard: Even if they're good. I have a lady for me, who I'm thinking about right now. I don't want to list names. I don't want it getting back to Dawn, and somebody asked her if we do Invisalign. Someway she got it into her head that we stopped doing that. The docs are all looking at each other like, "Wow." Just getting back to that, and the dentist has got his head in the middle of a patient's mouth doing the root canal and he has zero idea of what the hell's going on in the front and that's the most important person, but a dentist thinks they're the most important person because they're the doctor. They're doing the root canal. If you build it, they will come. That lady up front is absolutely the most important person in the entire office, as far as impacting your revenue.
Charles : Yeah.
Howard: Oh my God. That is amazing. For $300 a month, what are you going to do for them? What's your full packages? If some dentist just said, "Hey Charles, I want more new patients. I want to grow my dental office from $75,000 a month to $100,000 a month, or $100,000 to $200,000, what would you charge them? What would you do? What would be the deluxe menu from Crawford and Obrien?
Charles : Yes, exactly. Okay. We basically analyse the area and we look at competitors and what they're spending on Google AdWords and then we look at the total demand. We can see from Google, Google's keyword tool. There's also another tool that you might want to write down that's called SEMrush.com. I like this one because it's free and really easy to use, but anyway, we can see how many people search keywords like 'dentist in Phoenix'. That's almost 2,000 searches a month. You can see all the keywords and then we can calculate how much traffic we can get from that, from doing Google AdWords, from doing SEO and ranking you organically. Only 15% of traffic on any keyword will go to Google ads. It's actually over 85% will go to organic and local because people click ads less and less every year. That's why SEO is becoming more and more important every year is because less people click ads and more people just go straight to local. Local's 30% of the traffic. Organic's 30% of the traffic, so if you rank number one on local and organic, you're getting 60% of the traffic plus AdWords, now you're getting 70% of the traffic for any given keyword.
That's why Google is so important plus, Bing is actually increasing market shares. Bing is over 20% of the search engine market. That's because Apple and Microsoft are trying to team up against Google. Bing has less cost per click. Basically, to answer your question, I would analyze the area, calculate how much they could be spending. I'd be like, "Dr. Smith, two of your competitors are spending $3-5,000 a month on Google AdWords. I would recommend spending something similar, then we'll just outrank them with our strategies." I'd calculate it on the competition. Maybe there's 50 other competitors in the city who I think are paying SEO companies. It's really competitive. That's going to be at least $2,000 a month SEO to compete in that sort of city. Then, there's other strategies like retargeting, which is showing ads to people who have previously visited your website. That will hook them back in to come back to your website. The overall simple campaign, I would say is pay per click and SEO, are our top two services just because that's the bread and butter of getting patient's from the internet, is search engines. Pay per click, SEO, then to get a little more advanced, you can do retargeting to try and re-hook people in.
Howard: Explain again retargeting. I think that flew over a lot of people's heads.
Charles : Yes, okay. You've probably noticed that a lot of the most common websites you visit, if you leave those websites and go to ESPN, or any other random websites, you've probably seen ads for that website following you around as you continue browsing. That's retargeting basically. When you come to a website, actually like Crawford and Obrien. We do retargeting. If you come to our website, you now just got pixeled. When you leave, you're going to see our ads basically wherever you go. That's retargeting.
Howard: Is that what they call leaving a cookie?
Charles : Exactly.
Howard: If I go to Crawford and O'Brian, I leave a cookie. Explain a cookie.
Charles : Yeah, it's basically code that gets put in your browser. Now your browser history remembers where you're going and then that history connects with ad networks that do retargeting. They'll be like, "Ah ha, okay. He's going to ESPN. Let's show him an ad, because that's in our network." It's basically, think of it as being in your browser. I think that's the best way to describe it. If you clear your cache in your browser, that would delete all your cookies and then no retargeting would follow you. Does that make a little more sense?
Howard: Only married men delete their cookies, right? I think, I'm a bachelor. I don't delete my cookies. Doesn't that help my search? Let's say I'm a dentist and I'm on my [deal 00:22:17] and I'm trying to find a dentist and his name's Charles Crawford and he's in England, when I type in the word 'Charles', it's already queuing me up choices that have DDS at the end of the name, or BDS. I love Google, because, Oh my God. I wasn't looking for Charles Goodyear. I wasn't looking for a history book. Google basically knows, if I get on my search bar, I'm looking for some damn dentist somewhere.
Charles : Yep.
Howard: Some dental, dentist, it's all dentistry and I just love that. Then, if I ever clear out my cache, then that goes away.
Charles : Yep, exactly. I don't clear my cache much either.
Howard: You must be single.
Charles : I am.
Howard: See, only married men. How long have you been doing this? I don't mean that insulting because what you're doing didn't even exist 5 years ago. How long have you been doing this?
Charles : Actually 5 years. It's funny you said that.
Howard: I mean, well the smart phone didn't even come out 'til 2008.
Charles : Yeah.
Howard: You started in 2010. Go back to what you said about Apple and Microsoft teaming up against Google, because one thing I hate about my iPhone is, if I use Google's-, or the iPhone web browser Safari, that's just-. I hate that. I actually have the Google app, or the Google Chrome app on my iPhone. Is Bing now going to be on the iPhone?
Charles : I don't know that exactly. Basically, you've probably noticed or people listening to this can kind of confirm that a lot of the Microsoft devices, they'll either use Bing as their default browser, or like you're saying, Apple uses Safari as its default browser, whereas they used to use Google, just because they don't want to give Google more and more traffic. That's one of the best ways to siphon off that traffic is to have the default browser on any device be whatever you want it to be, which is not Google. They want it to be Bing or Safari. That's basically all the point was there. It's just Bing is slowly growing.
Howard: Bing is slowly growing, huh?
Charles : Which is good because a lot of older people are on Bing, frankly. I actually talk about this because I speak a lot at different conferences and what not. A cost per click is usually around a fourth of what Google is. Imagine a keyword like 'dental implants Phoenix'. That's probably at least $20 a click on Google AdWords, but you could probably get that click for $6 on Bing and it's the same traffic. It's actually, the majority of people who use Bing are over age 50, and those are the types of people who would actually need a dental implant. The target demographic of the people using Bing are actually perfect for dentists, plus the cost per click is lower. It's a nice little trick because very few competitors are on Bing. They're all on Google, Google, Google. Google's great. You want to be on Google too, but you can siphon 20% of the market from Bing without anyone knowing.
Howard: Huh? That is interesting. Do you think dentists-? Let me go back. What are the common SEO mistakes that are losing you money every day and how do you fix them?
Charles : Yep. Like I was saying about duplicate content, that's a huge mistake that a lot of dentists don't even know is happening. Here's a website you should write down is copyscape.com. If you scan your website on copyscape you can actually see if it's duplicate content or not. I would do that right after you're done listening to this. Go check out your website, because if you have duplicate content, that's a huge SEO mistake. Think about it. Why would Google want to rank you, if your content is the same as 1,000 other websites. That's a huge SEO mistake. Another SEO mistake is trying to put too many keywords into content if you do write it yourself, or if you have your web company do it. It's funny. A lot of guys still try and put keywords in the content multiple times and Google knows what you're trying to do. I would only put your keywords in once or twice and that's it. If you try and over do it, that'll actually hurt your SEO, because Google knows, this guy's trying to spam keywords into his content to rank higher and they're actually going to rank you lower.
Howard: When you make a post on Google+, if you have too many hashtags, will that hurt your SEO?
Charles : No, I think you're fine there. Hashtags are different. I was meaning keywords in your actual content.
Howard: Explain. If you're writing an example and you just keep-. Say you're writing a blog, is that the most content you're talking about, is the blog?
Charles : Yeah, blogs or internal pages. Blog is a good example.
Howard: Blogs or internal pages. Most dentists buy a website from a company that specializes in dentist's websites and everyone you buy from, there's 3, 4, 500, 1,000 other guys with the same website. Is that a bad idea?
Charles : Exactly.
Howard: What do you recommend? Do you recommend that a dentist should just write their own website from scratch?
Charles : Actually, I would say dentists shouldn't really do that unless they love it. It's not really worth the time.
Howard: I meant, should they hire someone to build them a unique website from scratch?
Charles : Exactly. It should be unique, custom and 100% unique content from good copywriters. That should be how it's done. Otherwise, you're probably getting generic content.
Howard: How often should you be adding content and YouTube videos to your website?
Charles : Yeah, that's a good question. I would recommend blogging at least once a month, but I would set up a system where you get at least a couple patient testimonials every week. An image of someone and a video, you can shoot that stuff with our smartphone and instantly upload it to YouTube from your smartphone, or you could send it to some video guy to edit.
Howard: If I did a patient testimonial on my iPhone and then I saved that to YouTube, that's not on my website, but does that help my website SEO. I mean, it's on YouTube, it's not on my dental office. My dental website is todaysdental.com. If I shoot a video and put it on YouTube, does that help my todaysdental.com SEO?
Charles : Not really, you would then have to embed the video that you uploaded to your website and then that's what really helps it.
Howard: How would a dentist know how to do that? Would you have to have your website developer do that, right?
Charles : Yeah, exactly.
Howard: How many clients? Are most of your clients Arizona, or are they all around the United States?
Charles : You know, it's actually mostly around the United States, not that many in Arizona.
Howard: You say you lecture a lot?
Charles : A little bit. I spoke at the Dental success summit with Mark [Hossis 00:29:37]. You know Mark, right?
Howard: Sure, he's up in Prescott.
Charles : Exactly. Prescott in Chino Valley.
Howard: He's a machine.
Charles : He is a machine, I love him.
Howard: Why did you put your Porcelain dental down, we put up 350 courses. They've been viewed over half a million times. We got 205,000 registered dentists on Dental Town. Since you're in Tempe, which is where-, I went to Arizona State University. You're only 10 minutes from my dental office. I'm at the corner of 48th and Elliot and then Dental Town is just right at the street. You can even come down there and shoot it there.
Charles : Yeah, wow. Now you're talking. Let's do it.
Howard: If you put that course up on Dental Town, you'd be generating a bunch of leads. I'll give you a piece of advice.
Charles : Yeah.
Howard: You'll go in there and you'll think that, you'll just tell them what you can't-. You'll just try to tell them what you can do, so they hire you. That's not how dentists work. If you tell a dentist exactly how you do it, so he can do it himself, then he understands and believes you. It's like going to a restaurant. I know how to cook a steak, I just don't want to. I want to go to a restaurant and they order from a menu. The dental consultants that go out there and explain it to you so that if you were motivated and wanted to do it by yourself, you could watch a course and do it all by yourself. For a dentist, at the end of the day wants a broken tooth. They want to fix a toothache. We want to- We're firemen that want to put out a fire. We're police that want to catch a bad guy. We don't want to do all the other crap, you know what I mean?
Charles : Yeah. I feel ya.
Howard: You put up a course and explain, this is exactly what I'm going to do. This is what you could do yourself. You could do this on callrail and just explain the whole thing. In fact, you know who's probably going to watch this video, he'll probably watch it for 10 minutes, then he's going to make his office manager watch it and tell her to hire that kid.
Charles : Exactly.
Howard: I know how my homies think. I've been in this for 28 years.
Charles : Thank you, I love it.
Howard: You should come down. Who do you know that could build them their own unique website? Let's say they've had a-. Most of them went to a convention 5-10 years ago. They paid someone a couple of thousand dollars. They've got a website. They haven't looked at it. They haven't even gone to it in 5 years. Do you create a website from scratch for them?
Charles : Exactly, yep.
Howard: You do that also?
Charles : Yep, we do custom design and development.
Howard: How much do you charge for that?
Charles : Exactly. Usually it's around $4,000ish, but if you sign up for services with us, which is what we really push, because the website without traffic is useless. We discount it, so usually around $3,000. It's usually like $3,000 if you're doing services and then whatever services you choose.
Howard: You've been doing this 5 years? When you take over a client that had their website in a can and then you design him a new one and for the services, how much is the dentist paying you monthly? What was the down, and what was the monthly fee if somebody says, "I want you to increase my business 25%. I want to grow this thing digitally."
Charles : Yeah, so it'd be like a $3,000 website and then whatever services they choose. Let's say, I can give you some generic numbers. On average, most of our SEO packages are usually between $1,000 a month and $2,000 a month and then for pay per click, usually we'll just charge. We base it on man hours and how much time we actually have to invest in optimizing your campaign based on the budget. Let's say you're spending $5,000 a month and you're getting 50 new patients from that and we would just charge like a $500 a month management, optimization fee for our time to go in and add new keywords, change the ads. There's so much pay per click details, it's crazy. If you add all that up together, a lot of dentists are paying us around $3,000 per month or more, $3,000-5,000 a month is where a lot of them fall plus ad spend. The total budget for a dentist would be at least $3-10,000 a month is like our sweet spot, if that makes any sense.
Howard: A lot of that $3-10,000 is buying ad words.
Charles : Exactly.
Howard: How much is going to you? For your average client, what are they giving you a month, and how much is going to you and how much is going to buy advertising on AdWords?
Charles : Exactly. It's pretty close to half and half. If someone's budget is $7,000, let's say. It's probably $3,000 going to us for SEO, call tracking and recording, and optimization of their ads and then $4,000 is going to actual Ad Spend. I think that's a good example.
Howard: Is your average client a general dentist, or one of the 9 specialties, [endodontist 00:34:33], periodontist, orthodontist, oral surgeons?
Charles : Most of them are general dentists, although a lot of our clients, we like clients who want to really scale and push it and get more new patients. A lot of our clients have multiple locations, or they want to scale to hiring an associate so they can automate and grow. Most of them are general dentistry. Most aren't specialists. The math there is simply that we can market more services for more keywords. If you're a general dentist who does implants and you do braces, I mean, now we can bid on keywords for dental implants, braces, root canals, a huge list. That's going to get you way more traffic than if you just did one thing.
Howard: What are your customers telling you what percent increase of actual new patient bodies? Are they tracking it more new patient bodies, or dental office total revenue? What metrics are you getting most feedback from your clients?
Charles : The main metric is the new patients.
Howard: What is your average client reporting back to you on their change in new patients?
Charles : Oh, yeah. I mean, a lot of them. I'll actually use my dad as an example. We took him over a couple of years ago.
Howard: Your dad's a dentist?
Charles : Yes, exactly.
Howard: I did not know that. Here in town?
Charles : No, actually in [Kenosha 00:35:57], Wisconsin.
Howard: Kenosha, Wisconsin. That's sounds like something you eat with mustard on it. Is that a bratwurst?
Charles : No.
Howard: Your dad's a dentist in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Charles : Exactly, he's actually been to your seminars.
Howard: Oh, really?
Charles : Yeah, he like them.
Howard: It's twisted. He likes me, so he has a twisted sense of humor. You either love or hate my humor, there's no in between. You either send me an email saying, "You should be shot, or you crack me up." What's your dad's name?
Charles : Exactly. Pat Crawford is his name.
Howard: Pat Crawford. What did you do for dad?
Charles : Yes. If you Google Kenosha dentists, you'll see him up at the top. He has over 50 Google+ reviews, and we've helped him rank number one. That was basically our process. We took him over from a company called Televox and we built him a new website and designed it. We ranked him on the first page of Google in the first two weeks, and then he was ranking number one within like 6 months.
Howard: How many people live in Kenosha?
Charles : 100,000.
Howard: If you're in a small town of 100,000 with a name like Kenosha, or Wichita, it's a lot easier than Phoenix.
Charles : Oh yeah, Phoenix is way harder than Kenosha for sure. I know we did Google AdWords. We took that over from Yellow Pages. They were charging him like $1500 a month and we came in and did the same thing, doubled his traffic and cut the cost per click in half. Basically, at the end of the day, we were making him at least an extra $15,000 a month from our services in actual revenue, which is pretty sexy. Basically, what he's paying us for now, he's getting like 20 new patients a month.
Howard: How many kids did Dad have?
Charles : 2, just me and a brother.
Howard: What does your brother do?
Charles : He does real estate actually.
Howard: None of you want to follow dad into root canals, huh? You didn't like blood and pus on teeth?
Charles : It just didn't make sense.
Howard: How did you get into this?
Charles : It's funny. I went to a seminar in high school. Me and my brother were both into real estate investing and because of that, I learned about this other seminar in internet marketing. I was like, "Hmm, sounds interesting. I'll go to it." I'm glad I did. That day changed my life. I went to the seminar and it was on eCommerce marketing, which actually my partner and I own a big eCommerce company. It's like the number one seller of acne treatment on Amazon, which is crazy, but anyway. I went to this seminar and I just loved it. I was like, "Wow. You can drop ship products from anywhere in the world and sell on the internet and bid on keywords with Google AdWords. I was just like, "I love it. It's super automated. My customers can be-. I don't have to manually perform a service. I just sell them something online." I just loved it, automated, fun, cool, everything exciting and now is the time to dominate the internet. 2010 was quite a bit different than it is now. I made my decision then, I was like, "I'm going to be an internet marketing for the rest of my life."
Howard: What's changed from 2010 to 2015?
Charles : Mostly on the SEO side, I would say, and social. For example, Google's algorithm has changed a lot since 2010. In 2010, you could just go use some software to get you 10,000 back links and you would outrank everyone within two days. That's how SEO used to work. That was amazing. That's why it was such a big deal between white hats and black hat SEO people, because black hats could just crush everyone and then Google caught on, changed their algorithm and shut them all down in 2012. That was basically the main difference.
Howard: Explain what a black hat versus a white hat SEO trick is?
Charles : Black hat is basically, I would define that as, you're doing something that is specifically against Google's terms of service.
Howard: That's black hat?
Charles : Exactly. To try and beat their algorithm in a bad way that Google doesn't want. A white hat would be, you actually write really good content. You share it on social media. A bunch of people love it and share it and that's how you organically get links and social signals and all that stuff. Then you rank, because you're actually good instead of having really bad content and driving a bunch of links to it that aren't good links to try and rank it higher. That's gaming the system.
Howard: Black hat is gaming the system.
Charles : Exactly.
Howard: Huh? Interesting. What Google doesn't want you to know about Yelp and YouTube?
Charles : What they don't want you to know is that those are actually-. Because those are authority sites, authority sites are really easy to rank on Google. That's what, I kind of mentioned it a little before. By actually driving good links to your Yelp listing, you can actually rank it higher on Google just because it's an authority site. Same with YouTube videos. That's actually how we rank YouTube videos on Google.
Howard: Explain what an authority site is. Last I heard-. What does Google say now, there's 300 million websites. Last I saw, the population in the United States and the population of the websites in the world were the same. They were both about 330 million. Is that the latest amount?
Charles : I think the amount of websites would be way more than the population. That was probably a-.
Howard: I mean for the globe. The United States is 5% of the world. 330 million out of 7 billion people, but on the entire planet, there was the same. I just noticed there was the same number of websites on the planet as there were people in the United States.
Charles : Okay.
Howard: Is that about the same? If those 300 million websites, what is an authority website?
Charles : Yeah, a good website is alexa.com. They rate how much traffic you get to your website.
Howard: Alexa, a-l-e-x-a.com.
Charles : Exactly. You can see your own website and see how they rate you. An example would be Google, is the number one most popular website in the world, Facebook, then it's like YouTube, then it's [Baidu 00:42:19] the Chinese search engine, it keeps going. Amazon, actually Amazon.com is number 3. They have more traffic than Google, but that's another story. Why is that another story?
Howard: You're saying Amazon has more traffic than Google?
Charles : Yeah, they're dominating the world.
Howard: Really?
Charles : It's technically really close, but they have more buyers and better traffic, that's why.
Howard: Higher quality?
Charles : Yeah, exactly. Everyone who goes on Amazon, buys stuff. Whereas, Google, they kind of do information, then they'll probably go to Amazon and buy something.
Howard: I've got to plug my book on Amazon. You got to go to Amazon under Books, Uncomplicate. Come over and I'll give you an autographed copy of my book.
Charles : Ah, beautiful.
Howard: Uncomplicate business, how to manage people, time, and money on Amazon.
Charles : Love it.
Howard: I've been on the number one selling book under dental for 3 weeks now.
Charles : Wow, beautiful. That's awesome.
Howard: The book is good and the price of it, but continue. What was the Chinese website you said?
Charles : Oh, Baidu. That's their search engine.
Howard: Baidu?
Charles : Basically, an authority site would be anything that would put an authority site in the top 1,000 alexa. Basically Yelp is like a top 20 most popular website in America. YouTube is in the top 10. Those are authority sites because they're getting a hundred million traffic a month. They're huge authorities, and so Google knows that and they're going to rank them. That's why it's smart, as a dentist to piggyback off YouTube's traffic and rank a video for best dental implants Phoenix, or whatever the video is, rank it on YouTube, and when you rank number one on YouTube, usually Google takes that first video and ranks it on Google. Now, you're ranking on YouTube and Google just from a simple YouTube video that you made. Same for Yelp, you can get a bunch of Yelp reviews and that will really help you rank on Google, but now you're getting a bunch of traffic from Yelp because Yelp gets a lot of traffic from Google.
While a bunch of people aren't going to use Yelp's mobile app to try and find a dentist. A bunch of people will find Yelp by Googling dentists in Phoenix, clicking on Yelp and then Howard Farran, there he is. I'm going to check him out, give him a call. Bam. Now you're getting traffic from Yelp, YouTube, Google, Google AdWords, Google Organic, Google Local and now, if you actually Google best dentist in Kenosha, you'll see I ranked my dad for like 5 positions. He has AdWords, local, a video and it's just a couple of other things. He basically just dominates because you can rank other things besides a website. You can rank videos. That's what an authority is, and that's why it's really easy.
Howard: Some dentists keep saying on Dental Town that if you create your own Wikipedia page for yourself as a person, because you know. If you go to Wikipedia and type in somebody famous, there's a Wikipedia page. If you do that, that will increase your SEO, true, false?
Charles : If there is a link from Wikipedia to your website, then that would help. I think that would inherently help just because Google would actually be able to know your brand better. Oh, Howard Farran, bam, he's on Wikipedia. He's on Wikipedia, so that actually helps you a little. I would say, yes. Either way, with the link, that would really help you. Without a link, that would just slightly help you.
Howard: Do you have a contact for my listeners of anybody who specializes in creating Wikipedia pages for individuals?
Charles : It's funny. We don't create Wikipedia pages, but we've gotten links from Wikipedia. There's a trick. You can edit the citations in a Wikipedia article and actually put in your own website. It's a little bit more complex, but that's basically the concept. We can get links from Wikipedia. I don't.
Howard: I only got you. We're 3/4 done and we haven't even mentioned the billion dollar Facebook gorilla. You've been talking a lot about Google+ reviews, website, unique content, YouTube videos. Are you going to build your dental office on Facebook, or not really?
Charles : Not really. Facebook is good for Facebook ads and retargeting. I'd say the biggest mistake dentists are making on Facebook is to try and get a bunch of likes. Think about this, less than 5% of what you post in your Facebook page is actually going to hit your followers. If you've got 1,000 people liking you, what's 5%, like 50? That's not that much. The probability that they would even see it at the right time is lower, so now you're talking about getting 10 eyeballs on each post. That's not really that sexy, whereas with Facebook ads, you could drill it down to be getting 20 cent clicks if you're doing it right and actually get 1-2,000 clicks a month and get targeted traffic. We've been able to convert patients for $35 on Facebook ads from having a good offer and bidding right.
Howard: $35 on a Facebook ad is going to get them to click on your dental office website?
Charles : Oh, I meant actually acquiring a patient for $35.
Howard: You're talking about getting a butt in the chair?
Charles : Exactly, which is why that's-
Howard: For $35? 1 in 100 dentists-. I hope I'm not offending Fred, I think that's about $100 a month per head.
Charles : Or more.
Howard: Is it more? I've used it since '87.
Charles : It would actually depend on the city.
Howard: I've heard the Google ad clicks in Manhattan are just off the charts.
Charles : Yeah.
Howard: Compared to Tulsa, Oklahoma. In fact, I read that the most expensive ad click in the universe is for a personal injury attorney in Manhattan.
Charles : Yeah, that's right.
Howard: If you see one of those, every time you click it, it costs that person $1200.
Charles : Yeah, that and mesothelioma, which is a rare disease that attorneys could win like a million dollar case for. They bid high.
Howard: That's from a asbestos. I'll tell you what's so embarrassing. Tell your dad. I'm so damn old. When we were in dental school, we used to line our crucibles with a asbestos, pure asbestos and then cook it in an oven at 500 degrees for an hour, pull it out and it was glowing red then quench it in water. I'm like, Oh my God. If as asbestos causes problems, I wonder if there's any longitudinal studies on how many dentists got mesothelioma. It's really not your Facebook page that's going to get you new patients, it's Facebook ads, whether or not you even have a Facebook account.
Charles : You do need a Facebook page in order to run ads in the news feed. You do need a page. It's not the page itself that's getting traffic, it's the Facebook ads that's gaining the traffic.
Howard: I want you to put on, your dad and me are dentists and you're closer to being normal than either of us, I do think it's hard for a dentist to think like a patient. Walk us dentists through, what is a patient thinking when they pick up their iPhone and are looking for dentists. Are they really searching, "I need braces." What is their thought process? Do you ever put yourself in their shoes? How are they thinking? How do they think?
Charles : Here's a great point. I'm glad you brought that up. A few years ago, the keyword 'dentist near me' basically had no searches. No one searched that, but now, thanks to smartphones, one of the fastest rising keywords in every city is, 'dentist near me'. People just search dentist near me. Google, they know that Google will bring them local results that are near them. People are thinking location. I'm not going to search 'dentist'. That's way too generic. I'm going to search, 'dentist near me' because I know Google will show me results within 5 miles and that way I don't have to drive for 2 hours. Then, I can check the local results. The psychology is instant gratification. 'dentist near me', bam. I'm going to look at the top three guys, quick, I'll give this guy a call. "Hey, can I get in today? Great, yes. Cool. Bam." I would say the younger consumer, a 70 year old grandma isn't really going to do that. A grandma would be on Bing and come to your website and research implants for 30 minutes, then decide. Then pick up the phone and call. I think that's the change overall.
Howard: Are you able to go in the backdoor and see what the searches are that contain dentist? Does Google allow you to see the actual word searches to what people are?
Charles : Yep, exactly.
Howard: How do you see? Can you see that for a certain zip code? I'm in 85044 in Ahwatukee. Is there a way to see what the good people of Ahwatukee were typing in their search bar?
Charles : Yes.
Howard: How do you do that?
Charles : To get super advanced, like what you're saying ...
Howard: On a further note, can you find out what my four boys are searching for in my house, just out of morbid curiosity? I'm just kidding. Ryan's sitting there innocently. How do you figure out what the normal patients are searching for in your zip code?
Charles : Yes. The Google AdWords keyword tool. That is how you would find that. You can just go to Google and search Google keyword tool and they should bring it up. I think they recently made it public about a year ago. You actually had to actually have an AdWords account to even access it. You can go in. You can select your location as Ahwatukee, then you can put in-. There's a few options, but you can just put in a bunch of dentist keywords and then they will give you suggestions and what other people are searching, plus they'll tell you how many people are searching for the keywords you put in. You could put in dental implants and be like, "Wow, 572 people a month search that keyword." Then there'll be suggestions. "Wow, people are actually looking for best dental implants and that gets searched 600 times a month." You can see any keyword you want. Any keyword you want, you can see suggestions that Google gives you. It's pretty amazing.
Howard: Does your brother live down here in Phoenix too?
Charles : Yeah.
Howard: You both left Kenosha to go to ASU?
Charles : Exactly, you got it.
Howard: That's where I went. That's where a lot of-. They're always from west of the Mississippi River. They're always from Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota. They come down here for ASU. The point I'm making is, on the searches. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, but everybody in my area, if you say, where do you live, they say Ahwatukee. What do you call that phenomena? I've never met anyone in Ahwatukee and you say, "Where do you live?" They'll say Ahwatukee, or Tukee. They never say Phoenix. When you're writing your search engine key words in a big metropolis, it'd be better to mention your neighborhood then your city, is that right, or is that a false assumption on my part?
Charles : In many cases, yes. The real [inaudible 00:54:44] would be from an SEO standpoint. Is your actual address Phoenix, or is it Ahwatukee?
Howard: Well, there is no such thing as Ahwatukee. It's just Phoenix, Arizona 85044.
Charles : It's just the name of the-. I get it.
Howard: They just call it Ahwatukee. The reason that is, is in Phoenix, Arizona was all north of the South Mountains. There's the largest park in the United States, within the city limits is South Mount park. It goes from 48th street to 51st avenue. Everything north of that was Phoenix. South of Phoenix, was this little bitty sliver. It was this little city called Ahwatukee. 20 years ago, it got annexed into Phoenix. 20 years later, all the people that live here, which is about 80,000 all call it Ahwatukee. The address is Phoenix, Arizona 85044.
Charles : Yep. From an SEO standpoint, because your address is Phoenix, but people know it as Ahwatukee, I would actually just put in both. I'd be like, "Make sure that all the directory citations you get, like Yelp and Super pages, Yellow pages. Make sure those actually have your address, but then, in your content you could actually put in Ahwatukee keywords just to make sure.
Howard: Okay, I only got 4 minutes left. You'll have to rattle off like a machine gun. We never mentioned Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Worth your time, worth your money, or just noise?
Charles : Right now, I would say no. What's on the horizon, Pinterest 8 months ago opened up their ad platform and I've been able to get 3 cent, 3 and 5 cent clicks for the targeted users on Pinterest. It's like the Wild West. It's like Google AdWords 10 years ago. Potentially, because 80% of all the people on Pinterest are females who spend money. It might actually be worth doing Pinterest ads to drive traffic to your practice. We're experimenting with that.
Howard: You could target Pinterest ads just for people who live in Ahwatukee?
Charles : Yeah.
Howard: It's by zip code then?
Charles : Exactly, it's like Google. You pick what location you want.
Howard: That's why Dental Town has a Pinterest account because it was all males when me and your dad got out of school, now half the graduating class is females and back in Pinterest's earlier days, it was 95% women. I think it's slowly been getting more males, but at first, when I first started my Pinterest account, I never saw a male that was on there for the first year or two. I love searching. I'm going to piss off all the women dentist out there, but it's so funny because every woman's Pinterest account is the same thing. It's a hundred pictures of different exercise and abs and workout, then a hundred different desserts, and chocolates and cupcakes. It's just desserts and ab crunches.
Charles : Exactly.
Howard: Two equal an opposite thing. That is so funny. What about Twitter? Twitter's huge.
Charles : It's tricky. Most of the guys on Twitter are marketers, so I wouldn't play around with Twitter as a dentist. It's like the 80/20 rule. Focus on the few things that are really going to drive results instead of trying to be everywhere, then you don't really do it right and then you're failing everywhere. I would just focus.
Howard: We are out of time so my last question is, I'm going to ask you to do something that you should never ever do? Predict the future. What do you think's going to change in all this digital stuff? What's the next big thing? What's coming down the pipeline? Put on your Steve Jobs hat and predict the future.
Charles : Yeah, there's a lot of specific things like more and more people talk into their phones, that's actually one thing we do for SEO is make sure we use phrases, really long phrases that people actually say as keywords in our anchor text. Mobile will continue to grow. More people will talk into their phones. Facebook will continue. I know some people said Facebook would be dead by now. I didn't agree with them, and I think that will continue to grow. You know, it's funny. I don't think there's going to be a lot of super paradigm shifts yet. If you look at the past 15 years of the internet, it's all just been iterations on, let's just get a little bit better and change a little bit. There hasn't been any paradigm shifts.
Howard: Slow evolution, instead of a major revolution?
Charles : Yeah, so I don't really see any super, major revolutions.
Howard: One of the big revolutions dentists are asking about is Apple now started a wristwatch phone. First it was your cellphone, then it married the internet. Now you have a smartphone. Do you think that Apple wristwatch is going to have anything to do with anything you're talking about in the next year or two?
Charles : Not really. Even if someone's on their watch and they're like, "Hey, I need a dentist near me right now." I'm in pain. You're still going to come up on Google, or whatever the search engine is.
Howard: The reason I ask that is because when they came out with the smart phone, the big monster companies like match.com, and eharmony and all that didn't even realize that the smartphone had that GPS technology and it' was Tinder who said, "Wait a minute. There's GPS." Tinder just exploded while Match was completely asleep at the wheel and eharmony and all that stuff. I was just wondering, is there something in the phone like the GPS technology, some different technology that you think will be a game changer that's not in the smart phone, or not really? There's no different technology in the Apple watch.
Charles : Not really, no. Exactly.
Howard: Hey dude. Do you know the Facebook Dentist Connection? Did your dad tell you what's special about Facebook?
Charles : No.
Howard: You know who the founder is?
Charles : Mark Zuckerberg.
Howard: You know who his dad is?
Charles : Your patient? j
Howard: No, he's a dentist named Ed Zuckerberg.
Charles : Ah, okay.
Howard: He would seriously thank all the dentists on Dental Town, like Facebook more than the average person just because they know Mark Zuckerberg's dad is a dentist. Ed is a great guy. What's funny about Ed is, I asked him to build an online CD course for Dental Town. He did a podcast with me and he has a lot of great information about Facebook. You should send that YouTube. You should watch that and send it to your dad.
Charles : Yeah.
Howard: I said, "Ed, why don't you build a course on how to grow your practice on Facebook?" He said, "It'd be extinct every 6 months." He said, "It's just moving too fast." Hey dude, I think you're adorable, I think you're smart. I think it's so interesting all these new times. If you want to grow your practice, what number do they call? Do you want them to email you, call you, go to your website?
Charles : Yeah, actually, go to our website and you can submit-.
Howard: Crawfordandobrien.com.
Charles : Exactly and it's o-b-r-i-e-n.com. Some people think it's an A, but it's an E. Just go there and you can submit the little free strategy session thing and that goes to me and my team and we'll get in touch with you. I think that would be the easiest way.
Howard: What if they want to email you?
Charles : Yes, then, charles@crawfordandobrien.com. That goes directly to me.
Howard: Do you take phone calls, or would you rather not give out your phone number?
Charles : Yeah, I'd rather not just because it might blow up.
Howard: Well, hey dude. Thank you so much for your time. This is a huge exciting thing. I know, when anybody asks me what I want for Christmas each year, I just tell them more new patients. We like targeted because at the end of the day, I like toothaches. Some people like cosmetics. Some people like kids under 3, whatever. We can't do our job until guys like you deliver patients to our front door. Thank you for helping dentists get new patients.
Charles : Yeah, you're welcome.
Howard: All right, buddy. Thank you very much.
Charles : Alrighty, see ya'.