Videos are a powerful tool to build trust with your potential patients and dentistry is all about trust. When your testimonials capture what people are really like and give your viewer authenticity, they can trust you.

It’s no good sticking a camera in front of a patient and expecting to get a great video out of it. There’s a lot of prep that goes on behind the scenes…

Here are some of our top tips:

SELECT YOUR SUBJECTS

• First of all think about the treatments you want your videos to promote, the higher value treatments like dental implants and orthodontics are the ones that people spend more time shopping around for so should be at the top of your list.
• Select completed case studies – the results are in so you can show before and after and the patient is likely to have positive stories to relay about their experience following transformation.
• Choosing more complicated cases can really showcase the range of skills and options available at the practice – one video can also be relevant across more than one treatment page.
• If a patient has a really interesting back-story for example an unusual job, that can add interest to the video and helps the story to stick in the viewer’s mind.
• Select a range of ages, sexes and ethnicities that reflect your practice demographics as these will be represented on your site and help to reinforce your brand voice.

RECRUITING PATIENTS

Your team may find it hard to recruit willing patients to supply testimonials for your dental practice. While it’s all well and good asking patients that you’re more familiar with or who have been long standing patients; if all they’ve ever seen you for is regular check ups there’s not going to be a lot of interest for the viewer. 

Here are some tips to help:

1. Compliment the patient on their attitude towards the treatment/ the success of the treatment. Make them feel special because you are proud to have helped them achieve a great outcome.
2. Suggest that by targeting other people with a similar problem they’ll be helping others in the same situation.
3. Emphasise the timeframe (ie it won’t take long, approx 45 mins).
4. Don’t go on for too long, make it quick, and say thank you.

Top tip is for the clinician to ask the patient at the end of the treatment. It’s the magical moment of gratitude, and works well when combined with the referral request: “Are you happy with your treatment? We are trying to grow the practice so we can invest in better facilities for our patients — if you have a friend or relation that needs help I will personally look after them; also, I’d really like to showcase your amazing results, would you mind if my video person interviewed you about your treatment experience?

You can also play the long game and add a section to your new patient questionnaire whereby the patient can say whether they’d be happy to be videoed for a testimonial – that way you should always have a list of patients that you can confidently call on.

PREP, PREP, PREP

Things will get busy on the day and to avoid unnecessary flapping around it’s best to pre-plan as much as you can.

Brief your team, your videographer, your director, your photographer and your patients so everyone is aware of their roles and requirements.

Consider closing the practice for the day so you have access to all areas for shooting incidental footage/imagery and staff can be available – it’s useful to designate staff to various roles such as managing patients or acting as location manager etc. (It’s also a good time to kill two birds with one stone and get consistent professional head-shots of your team for your website, so make sure all staff turn up on the day, even if it’s only for 10 minutes).

Patient preparation:

• Call the patient to politely remind them a day or two before the shoot – it’s also a good time to allay any last minute nerves.
• Patients may be concerned about what you want them to say so reassure them that there are no expectations – the video will be shot as an informal chat and you’re just looking for their honest experience.
• Consider asking them to bring a photo of themselves before treatment that they’re happy to show on camera.
• Ask patients to avoid wearing clothes with stripes for improved film outcome.
• You could even ask patients to wear bright clothes if your brand voice is colourful and fun so your videos reflect and reinforce your branding.

Practice preparation:

• Fresh flowers, at least two bunches, with vases
• Catering for guests — ideally a green room with refreshments like water, fruit, nuts, tea and coffee
• A small gift by way of a thank you — a bottle of wine or gift voucher is usual
• Various chairs and coffee tables so a set can be created
• A quiet room to do the interviewing in
• Make sure the practice has a good clean and declutter, as various areas of the practice will be filmed on the day
• Check that there’s nothing distracting in the background of the interview set such as a light switch or fire extinguisher.
• Have one surgery available throughout the day for additional filming, with minimal equipment on the surfaces
• Have staff wearing clean uniforms 

On the day you will need:

• Running order – provide copies of the scheduled patient times for reception, the videographer, photographer and any staff helping out.
• Short patient bios – for the director as a starting point for conversation
• Most importantly! Letters of permission – have copies printed out for the patient to sign upon arrival and assign someone the role to make sure they’re completed and filed.

DON’T USE A SCRIPT

We’ve found that having pre-prepared answers is a hindrance unless you are a professional speaker/actor. People lose their authenticity and get stuck trying to give the model answer otherwise. Viewers want to see you, the dentist, being yourself, and they want to see your patients describing their real experiences. Patients always give positive and original material in our experience, and often it’s extremely flattering to our clients — far more generous than they expected.

IT’S ALL IN THE EDITING

The aim is to provide your future patients with a realistic insight into all treatment types you provide at the practice. Research has shown that the best way to achieve this is for real patients to tell the story of their treatment on video. Ideally each video produced will have been shot for around 15 minutes with only actually up to 2 minutes being ultimately used following the edit – so it really doesn’t matter if the patient makes mistakes, the important thing is to keep the interview style relaxed and conversational.

• Ask your videographer to take incidental footage at the practice that can be used to link edited sections of the interview.
• Provide them with your brandbook and logo files so they can match your branding.
• It’s worth having subtitles added for viewers on mobile devices that might want to watch with the sound off (over 60% of searches are now on mobile).
• And remember to add a clear CTA (call to action) to your video

Get in touch to find out how we can help you with planning and shooting testimonial videos at your dental practice. If you’ve decided to go it alone we can help with editing. If you would like examples of the running order, short patient bios and letter of permission, just let us know and we’d be happy to share them with you.