Dental Lab Lead Generation With Inbound Marketing

By David H. Khalili

Founder of DentalLabSupport.com

Inbound marketing offers many opportunities to generate quality leads for dental labs. This technique represents an entirely different way of getting your dental lab's name out, at an economical cost. It has brought a different prospective to advertising. One author called it a shift from "rented attention" to "owned attention." The traditional outbound marketer would try to attract attention to a product by buying advertising, contacting mailing lists and waiting for the buyer to show interest. Buying advertising is like renting attention. The advertiser pays for the eyes of potential buyers, but the buying choices are completely beyond the advertiser's control.

The internet now provides an interactive opportunity. The inbound marketer offers some value added content that draws in prospective buyers who have a qualifying interest in a particular service or product. Once a viewer has decided to enter the site, the marketer owns his or her attention. The potential buyer now enters the outer rim of what inbound marketers call, the "marketing funnel."

At this stage, the buyer is given a series of choices, graduated levels of "calls to action" which call for greater and greater commitment to eventual purchase. At each stage in the process, there are opportunities to call for more contact information about a potential buyer as he or she chooses to receive more information and to move further along toward a buying decision.

Inbound marketing is essentially an automated version of proven "features and benefits" sales technique.

• Prospects qualify themselves by entering the informational content on the web site.
• Prospects' choices and directions within the site identify their needs.
• The site presents the features of products or services of interest to the client, and present those that have the requisite benefits.
• The site offers opportunities to close, repeating trial closes at intervals.
• The website meets objections with information about the benefits that meet those objections.
• The calls to action at the bottom of the marketing funnel add payment options to complete closing of the sale.

Marketing and sales are, of course, at the core of success for a dental lab. Nothing matters more. But finding sales is the most challenging part of a new business. Customers and clients have to get to know that your business exists and you have to have a chance to demonstrate your product and your expertise in delivering it.

Some kind of advertising is essential. However, conventional advertising takes money and that may be the very thing you do not want to risk, or don't have to risk. The internet and social media have supplied the means for you to turn the knowledge and expertise you gained from opening your business into a way of establishing your business in the community.

Establishing a presence in the community will take time and effort, but it need not require much money. As a small business owner, you have expertise that, in itself, has value. You can give out information and advice that many people will find valuable.

Make a website which features some of your interesting and factual material along with a catalog of your products and services. Make sure the site includes some way to order or contact you. Eventually, you will want to develop a full inbound marketing campaign. However, this simple start will get you on the road.

DentalLabSupport.com has the tools to help your dental lab grow and prosper. Please contact us to learn more. 

DLS Sponsors:  

GuideMia.com - Implant Treatment Planning and Surgical Guide Solutions

Dental Lab Tips & Tools For Converting More Prospects To Customers

By David H. Khalili

Founder of DentalLabSupport.com

Let's start at the beginning. Let's identify what a real prospect is. When you open a landing page, you will get tire kickers just like any sales establishment online or brick and mortar. If someone walks into your store, say hooray, but that isn't necessarily a prospect. It could be just a person who is curious or even, sometimes, who likes to create needs in themselves.

A true prospect is a person who has a genuine interest in your dental lab and what you are selling. It is a person whose final passage down the sales funnel will depend on product-related decisions. Prospects will get much farther down into the sales funnel than tire kickers. They will make action choices that move close to the closing choice point.

Many Dental Labs are already generating as many prospects as they need. The problem is that too many leave the sales funnel at the late stages before they commit themselves to buying. The inbound marketing problem is not to attract more leads but to convert more to sales.

Even if you get prospective customers into your sales funnel doesn't mean they will automatically buy what you have to offer. We advocate inbound marketing. The methods work but they are not magic. There are many commonly used tips & tools to convert more prospects to customers. Sometimes the sales funnel needs a little boost to turn a nibble into a bite.  Many prospects enter a conflict which makes them vacillate between two alternatives or a conflict pitting the product negatives against the product positives.

1. Ask for the sale in a short follow-up email or phone contact. Simply ask your prospect if he or she is ready to get started. For a certain percentage of prospects, this will tip the conflict scale toward a yes.

 2. After the prospect has left your sales funnel, you can send a "no communication" deadline. These deadlines are "fish or cut bait" statements. It may say something like this: 

"We have not heard from you in 30 days. While this will be our final communication, feel free to contact us in the future if you wish to move forward."

Receiving this kind of statement sometimes gets the attention of a reticent prospect. If nothing happens at least you will not waste any more time and energy on a dead-end.

3. You can also send an e-mail asking a motivating question raises the stakes by asking for active renewal of the contact. You may say something like this:

"If has been over a month since we heard from you. Have you had a chance to go over the specifications for our product and make a decision?

4. You can answer objectives by adding a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section on your website. Source the most often asked questions in consultation with your sales and marketing team. Send the prospect an e-mail with a link to your FAQ, asking if this information is helpful.

5. Offer a gift or discount as an incentive to tip the scale in favor of a sale. It doesn't have to be a large discount or anything really valuable. The attention and the offer may be enough to move your prospect into the buyer column.

6. A quick follow-up e-mail or phone call, personally asking a prospect if there are any additional questions or concerns, is often enough to bring a lapsed prospect back into the sales column. Many inbound marketers find that quick follow-up phone contacts (within the first 48 to 72 hours of the contact) is the key to many prospect to customer conversions. In many cases, quick phone contact works, but contacts delayed longer than two days do not.

7. Often information is the key. Many marketers believe that buyers are not interested in reading a lot of text about their products. The fact is that most serious prospects want as much information as they can get and need the information to make an informed sales decision. What many prospects are afraid of is marching into the unknown with their investment. They need reassurance, and in-depth information may be exactly what could trigger the buying choice.

DentalLabSupport.com specializes in the tools to help businesses grow and prosper. Please contact us to learn more.

Dental Lab Support Sponsors:

GuideMia.com - Turn-key Solution For Implant Treatment Planning & Surgical Guides.