Morgul Marketing

    Making a St. Louis dental practice sound like it is from here

    Two people meet in this metro and place each other inside a minute. The high school, the parish, the municipality, which side of the county line. A dental page that cannot answer those questions reads as being from nowhere in particular, and one that answers them wrongly gets corrected in the comments by somebody being helpful. The buildings add constraints of their own, since a practice here usually sits inside solid brick that decides where the light falls and whether a phone works at all in the back. What follows is the local part of a St. Louis social plan: how people place you, what the building allows, what an address does not say, and the one reference that crosses the county line.

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    Where did you go to high school decides who trusts the person on camera

    The oldest question in this city is a real signal, and a practice from anywhere else cannot borrow the answer.

    People here place each other by school, parish and municipality within about a minute of meeting. A team member who grew up in Florissant or went to school near Kirkwood carries a kind of local standing that a credential does not.

    So let staff say where they are from when you introduce them on camera. It sounds like nothing and does more work than a paragraph about continuing education.

    Let the people who moved here say that instead of reaching for a local answer. Somebody who arrived from Chicago or Kansas City has no school to name, and the honest version, where they came from and why they stayed, holds up better than a borrowed one.

    What fails is a face claiming a place it does not know. Somebody always asks the follow up question, and here they ask it in the comments where everyone can read the pause before the answer.

    Solid brick decides where the light is and where the phone works

    A century of brick construction is the region's signature, and it sets the two things a phone needs most.

    Windows in these buildings are deep set and there are fewer of them than a newer office would have, so usable daylight sits in a narrow band near the front and moves across the day. Find the hour it lands in the room you want, and film then.

    Masonry and plaster do not treat a phone signal kindly. Test the back of the building before you plan anything live, because the operatory is usually the room farthest from the street and the bars on the screen are not a promise.

    So record rather than broadcast. A clip filmed in the back and uploaded from the front desk is one that will not stall halfway through in front of an audience.

    The brick itself is worth showing. A storefront on The Hill, a converted four family in Tower Grove, tuckpointed courses on a wall behind somebody's shoulder: all of it reads as this city to anybody who lives here, and none of it can be licensed by a competitor.

    A Kirkwood mailing address does not mean a household lives in Kirkwood

    Much of St. Louis County is unincorporated, so an address, a municipality and a school district can give three different answers for one family.

    Mail goes to a post office name. A household can carry that name on every envelope and live outside the municipality it belongs to, paying a different set of taxes and voting in different elections.

    So use what people call themselves rather than what the envelope says. Somebody in unincorporated county will name a school district, a parish or the nearest municipality, and every one of those makes a better caption than a mailing address.

    The City of St. Louis is a separate government from St. Louis County, and locals treat the two as different places rather than as a technicality. Saying you serve St. Louis when your door is in Brentwood reads as vague to everybody on either side of the line.

    Get it wrong in a caption and somebody will tell you. Get it right and nobody notices, which is exactly the result you want from a caption.

    Forest Park is the one address the whole metro shares

    Almost nothing here reads the same in Florissant and in Webster Groves, and the short list of things that do is worth spending carefully.

    The region pays for a handful of institutions together, across the city and county line, which is why walking into them costs nothing and why everybody here calls them theirs. Forest Park and what sits inside it, a Muny season, a home opener downtown.

    Content pegged to those crosses a border that nothing else crosses. A team photograph at the Zoo on a Saturday, or a note that you are closing early for the opener, lands the same way in Florissant as it does in Webster Groves.

    Post as a household that lives here rather than as a sponsor of something you have not sponsored. An organization's name, logo and marks are theirs to grant, and a promotion is where borrowing them stops being harmless.

    Keep it rare. One shared reference now and then reads as somebody who lives in this region. A feed built out of them reads as a page with nothing local of its own.

    The parts of this that would be the same for a practice in any city, from who to put in front of the camera to how to judge the effort, sit.

    Questions we get

    Our dentist moved here from out of state. Does the local angle still work?
    It works better if he says so. People here ask where you are from within a minute, and a straight answer, where he trained and why he settled in this metro, survives the follow up question that a vague one does not. Let the staff who did grow up here name their schools, and let the newcomer talk about the neighborhood he chose. What fails is a page that sounds like it is from everywhere, which is what happens when nobody is allowed to say anything specific.
    Our operatory is at the back of a brick storefront and everything we film looks dim.
    Move toward the front and film earlier. Deep window openings give a narrow band of good light that moves through the day, so spend ten minutes finding the hour it reaches the room you want to use. If the front room is the only usable one, film it before opening or on a closed morning with the operatory door shut behind you. One soft light bounced off the ceiling fixes the rest, and it is cheaper than any camera.
    Our office is in the city and most of our patients drive in from the county. What should a caption name?
    Name the places they would name themselves, and answer the drive. Somebody coming from Kirkwood or Brentwood wants to know the route, where to leave the car and how long they will be inside. The caption that only says St. Louis reads as belonging to neither the city nor any suburb in it, which is the one result worth avoiding when your patients cross a line to reach you.
    We have been here two generations and people assume we are not taking anyone new.
    Say that you are, more often than feels necessary. In a metro where households stay in the same municipality for decades and a practice can be the one somebody's parents used, being long established reads as a closed book rather than as a recommendation. One plain line in the profile and a post every few weeks naming which appointments are actually open undoes an assumption that no amount of warm team photography will touch.
    A patient posted a photo of our building and tagged us. Can we repost it?
    Ask first. The photograph belongs to whoever took it, and permission to be tagged is not permission to publish. If anybody is identifiable in the frame you need their agreement as well, and a screenshot of a review is still somebody's words attached to their name. A short message asking to share it is usually answered in minutes and settles all of it.

    Rules that affect your marketing

    Patient information is protected, which constrains ordinary marketing mechanics: analytics, call recording, remarketing audiences and reviews all touch it. Advertising is also governed by the state dental board, and before-and-after imagery and specialty descriptions carry specific requirements. Anything published here should have a compliance read from the practice's own counsel.

    Written by KC Thompson, Morgul Marketing. Updated .

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