When someone learns that Pharmaden has expanded beyond just supplements to now offer dental marketing, one of their first questions is inevitably: How did a supplement company get into dental marketing? Well…the president of Pharmaden is a practicing dentist and here is what he has to say…
Pharmaden has grown over the years, but why branch out into dental marketing?
Dr. Schefdore, “When I owned 3 dental offices we did every sort of marketing imaginable. Some of it worked well but most of it was a flop. The school of hard knocks did teach me a lot about marketing though. When I purchased Pharmaden in 2004, I began speaking with dentists on a large scale. I realized the best offices were not corporate but fee for service, like mine. They put their patients first. Corporate dental offices don’t seem to care enough about their patients to look into a supplement option even if it is proven to reduce bleeding, plaque, and pocket depth. And the problem full fee practices face is attracting patients looking for quality, not the best price. I knew if I wanted Pharmaden to continue growing I needed to help quality minded, fee for service dentists succeed – like ones who use our supplements.
About the same time that I had this realization my daughter, Allie, graduated top of her class from Fisher College of Business at Ohio State. Since Allie’s interest is marketing she agreed to develop strategies to help dentists attract more patients to their office using proven techniques. While I help offices with scripts and a new protocol to improve oral and systemic health, Allie works on improving their bottom line.”
How can you specifically help independent dentists?
Dr. Schefdore, “Dentists know dentistry — not marketing. Between my experiences with dental marketing and Allie’s business knowledge we’ve developed marketing strategies to help independent offices attract the kind of patients they’d like to see. We use my office as a guinea pig for these strategies until they are proven to work – and then offer them to others.“
How are you able to continually get such good results?
Dr. Schefdore, “Constant education and changing with the times – for so long I dominated getting more patients with newspaper inserts but for the first time, the internet is bypassing those numbers. Just like a dentist takes CE courses, Allie is constantly educating herself and team on new strategies to help dental offices. She is a part of a mastermind group that works together, constantly testing out new strategies for dental marketing and sharing what works and doesn’t. The things she has learned and taught other marketers is beyond anything I could comprehend.
Because we’re selective about who we work with, we are able to customize our marketing campaigns to the needs of each individual office. We create campaigns that reflect what makes each practice unique — from the treatments offered to the office vibe. The only way for corporate marketing practices to handle such volume is to take shortcuts. They paint their clients with a broad brush, use templated content, and all but ignore online reputations. That’s not us. We chose this niche because we’re passionate about helping reputable dentists reach the right people — not just for the sake of growing their business, but also for improving the oral and overall health of their patients. When we’re all looking out for patients, not just a tooth, everybody wins.”
