Q&A about Dental Media
What we do and how we do it
It’s great to see dentists starting to ask all the right questions of their web marketing partners. With lots of useful, easily accessible information available, it’s now relatively straightforward for business owners to compile a list of pertinent questions to ask of potential suppliers, so ensuring that they receive the right services at sensible costs.
Here are some recent questions asked of the team at Dental Media and the answers we gave. Hopefully this will provide a little more insight about us and also provide a set of typical questions you may wish to ask when seeking out a new supplier.
Q – can you tell me a little more about the history of Dental Media and how your reputation developed?
A – we started designing dental websites in 2000, over 13 years ago for one or two local clients. These websites were instrumental in helping those businesses grow significantly as people began to use the internet in earnest to search for services. We were fortunate enough that the dentists concerned were active in the training communities, e.g. The Eastman Dental Institute in London and recommended us there. This led to us designing websites for some fairly prominent dentists and specialists including Basil Mizrahi and other ‘celebrity’ dentists in and around Harley Street. We now have 5 or 6 clients in that area. From there, our business progressed to the point where we now represent several hundred dental professionals across the UK and some overseas, from small village practices through to large multi-location businesses.
Q – what percentage of your work actually comes via word-of-mouth recommendation?
A – actually at least 60%. I think we all know that personal recommendation is always the best and we are proud of the fact that the majority of our work comes this way. We do gain work through internet searches but we are fortunate enough that we don’t have to pursue this aggressively.
Q – you seem to offer more than your competitors at lower prices? How do you achieve this?
A – this is simply down to maintaining a low cost infrastructure. We run a small but highly professional team with low overheads. We don’t have to charge massive fees to cover our own costs. Simple really. We are proud of what we do and our reputation for offering excellent services with great value.
Q – your competitors tend to push clients into paying monthly fees but you don’t – why is this?
A – we need to look at cost and quality here. From the cost perspective, what we know from the numerous clients who have migrated across to Dental Media, is that they were dissatisfied about paying large monthly bills, sometimes hundreds of pounds, and actually getting very little for it. What we know from our model is that we can provide better maintenance services using a pay-as-you-go model and with considerably lower cost. This is very easy to demonstrate. I’d just take you back to thinking about why suppliers with large infrastructure costs would be so keen to get you hooked on monthly bills?
Q – are you up-to-speed with latest design trends?
A – I think this is something else that differentiates our services. The world of dental web design is actually quite competitive and you need to find new ways to stay ahead; this is something we’ve always strived for. Several years ago we were the first company to move to website design that was fully W3C standards compliant and now we also lead the way with responsive design for websites that are optimised for all viewing platforms. Of course we will continue to look for new ways to help differentiate our services and also help to keep our clients a few steps ahead as well.
Q – you have a good reputation for ethical search marketing – what does that mean exactly?
A – as a company we don’t just build websites for our clients and then walk away. A large part of our business is the ongoing promotion of websites to help them appear prominently in the search engines e.g. Google. These days, this is a highly focused task that needs a great deal of experience and time; knowing which techniques work and which should be avoided. We can demonstrate lots of cases where we have achieved prominent and sustainable search rankings for our clients. We also provide a service which helps dentists who’s websites have received Google penalties following poor SEO delivered by other design companies.
Q – are your websites compliant with the requirements of the GDC and ICO?
A – although it’s a core part of our business, we don’t just build websites. We also train dental teams and are active in various dental communities. As such we have to stay very close to what is happening in the world of dentistry including the standards our clients are asked to meet. As such we take a proactive approach to ensuring that all of our new websites are standards compliant.
Q – I also need a logo and stationery designed; can you help with this? It’s easier for me to deal with one supplier.
A – Yes, we also provide logo and stationery design alongside other services such as photography and practice video. In fact we look after the complete range of marketing services for dentists.
Q – where will Dental Media go from here?
A – our business has grown quickly, particularly over the last three years. The key focus now will be to scale up sustainably whilst maintaining the quality and personal service on which our reputation is built.
Thank you for reading a little bit more about us and hopefully the questions posed above will help you when you are researching your own dental marketing provider.