By Luc Wade, Management Consultant at Hive Business

For a dental practice owner, creating a compelling story about your world is always going to be a bit awkward because you deal in tangibles, facts and low risks. Those are boring — what can move your potential patients is feelings. Imagine if you could stir in them inspiration and excitement about the life affirming power that your boring tangibles actually represent. And do it all in 120 seconds. Wouldn’t that be the elixir of dental marketing, guaranteed to drive up revenue?

You can and it would, but the perception that professional video is too expensive puts a lot of practices off. Video takes time to shoot and edit, and even longer if there is a story board. Most of the time practices make do with poorly framed and badly lit unedited videos shot on mobile phones. It’s a box ticking exercise and they’re happy with that.

But ticking the box cannot produce an emotional reaction in your potential patients. You need remarkable content, and you can get it if you are willing to make a moderate investment, enough to put a production team in your practice for a day. Here’s a secret: did you know that every single person in your practice — and more importantly every single patient — can tell the most heart rending, humourous and tragic story you have ever heard?

Why? They are all equally conflicted, beautiful and tragic human beings — you just need to ask them about it in the right way. Show interest and encourage them to reveal their vulnerabilities and you get to the heart of what makes dentistry magical: the story about self belief, self confidence and strength winning out over anxiety, fear and self-loathing. If that sounds a bit strong you haven’t seen a good dental video — you should be seeing tears and laughter, all edited right down to a slick 120 seconds.

You will need an experienced video team because only they can get the emotional material you require. This isn’t scripted, it’s instinctual, based on being able to very quickly establish trust and rapport, and to pick up the right cues from the interviewee. To create space for this to happen the shoot has to be structured and managed professionally.

With social media platforms now increasingly being used for paid advertising, video is becoming an even more important feature of internet time. Where both video and text are available on the same page, 72% of people would rather use video to find out about a product or service. If you create video content that your specific audience identifies with, 83% would consider sharing it with their friends.

So if you are going to be making video content and, let’s face it, you are (see more stats on why below), why not make it really good?

• 45% of people watch more than an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos a week
• Views on branded video content increased 258% on Facebook and 99% on YouTube as of June 2017 (Tubular Insights)
• Video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80% or more (EyeView)

As a powerful brand-building tool professional videos have something to add, something significant. Give us a call if you’d like to book a video day or view our latest videos on our YouTube channel.