Morgul Marketing

    West Palm Beach, FL

    Social media for a practice whose patients leave in May

    A dental practice in Palm Beach County runs on a calendar most marketing advice has never met. Chairs are full from late fall through spring, then part of the patient book gets on a plane and reads your posts from somewhere cooler. Social media still works here, and the shape of it is different. A good number of your patients keep a second dentist in another state, the only months you can film anybody are the months you have no time to film, and cosmetic demand arrives against dates already written into somebody's diary. What follows is what to publish for a reader who cannot sit in your chair until November, and when in the year to shoot it.

    Your patient has a dentist in another state, and that is the content

    A seasonal patient is sharing their mouth between two practices in two states, and almost nobody publishes anything useful about how that arrangement works.

    Somebody who spends the warm months up north has a hygienist there and a hygienist here, two sets of radiographs and two treatment plans that have never met each other.

    The arrangement produces a set of questions nobody answers on camera. Who should do which cleaning, how records move between two offices, whether a crown started somewhere else in April can be seated in Palm Beach County in November.

    Answer them plainly and you become the practice that understands the arrangement rather than the one that acts insulted by it. Patients here are used to being made to feel disloyal for having a dentist in two places, and they notice when somebody stops doing that.

    Say what you need from the other office and when to ask for it. A patient who requests their records in September walks into your chair in November with the work already scoped instead of spending the first visit on paperwork.

    Film while the patients are still in the county

    The only stretch when there is anything worth recording, and anybody present to consent to it, runs from late fall through spring.

    Everything worth filming happens while the chairs are full. Real cases, a busy waiting room, a hygienist with three families in a row who all know each other, a dentist who has something to say because he has just done the thing he is describing.

    Then it stops. In July there is little to film and few people to film with, which is exactly when a practice that publishes only what happened this week goes quiet and stays quiet.

    Consent is the harder half of it. A photo release chased in June reaches somebody in Michigan who has stopped thinking about your office, so the signature has to happen in the chair, on the day, while the patient is still in the county. What a release needs to cover is worth confirming with your own counsel.

    Write down the questions people ask you between January and April as well. Those are the same questions the same households will have in July, when there is nobody in your waiting room to ask you anything.

    The season carries an events calendar, and it moves cosmetic work

    Winter here brings a run of galas, weddings and the equestrian season out in Wellington, and cosmetic demand clusters around dates people already have in their diaries.

    Whitening, bonding and short cosmetic cases get bought against an event rather than against a promotion. The post that works is the one landing while somebody is thinking about a photograph they are going to be in.

    Lead times are therefore the message. Say plainly how long a case takes, so a patient looking at a date in February can work out whether December is already late.

    The same logic runs the other way in spring. Patients leaving in April want the crown seated before the flight, and a reminder in early March is what books that chair.

    None of this requires naming an event or a venue. Say the season, say the timeline, and let the reader match it to whatever is in their own calendar.

    Write for the reader who cannot book until November

    The person you most want in the schedule is reading from another state, months before they are able to do anything about it.

    A patient who spends the summer up north is not going to call you in June. What they can do is read, and the most useful thing you can hand them is judgment about what can wait and what cannot.

    So publish the explanations you would have given in the chair. Why a chipped filling can wait a few weeks and why swelling cannot, what a night guard actually does, what to do about a crown that came loose at a family barbecue in Ohio.

    It protects the opening weeks of the season too. A returning patient who has been half worried about a tooth since March books in the first week back rather than the fourth, which matters more than it sounds when the season is short.

    Everything about a practice feed that has nothing to do with Palm Beach County, from who should front the camera to how often to publish and how to tell whether it worked, is set out in our wider guidance on dental social media.

    Questions we actually get

    The office is quiet all summer anyway. Why would we post then?
    Because the people you want in November are reading in July. A seasonal patient who has spent the summer watching you explain things books in the first week back rather than getting around to it. The summer is also when you finally have time to publish, which is why the filming has to happen while patients are here and the posting can happen once they have gone.
    The office is quiet enough in summer that we have thought about closing for a fortnight.
    Close if you want to, and say so in April rather than in July. The households you most need to hear it are gone by the time you would normally announce anything, and a returning patient who called in August and got nothing remembers that in November. Then treat the fortnight as the filming block, because it is the only stretch of the year when everybody at the practice has an hour and nobody is waiting in the front room.
    Our patients keep a dentist up north. Should we really publish about that?
    Yes, and it is the least contested subject in this county. Explain who should do which cleaning, how to have records sent down before the season starts, and what can be finished here if work was started somewhere else in the spring. Treating a second dentist as normal rather than as a slight is unusual enough that patients remember which practice did it.
    A patient wants whitening before an event in February. When should that content run?
    Well before anybody thinks they need it. Publish the lead times in the fall, so somebody looking at a February date can work out that December is already late for anything involving a lab. The same reminder belongs in early March for patients trying to finish treatment before they fly out in April.
    Should we name the galas and the equestrian season in Wellington?
    Say the season, not the event. Naming a specific gala, venue or competition you have no connection to implies an association you do not have, and event organizers are entitled to their own names and marks. Describing the stretch of the year and the timeline gets you the same reader without borrowing anybody's brand.

    What is different here

    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.

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