New Year's Resolution - Get to the Dentist in 2012

Dr. Charles Martin of the Richmond Smile Center in Richmond, Virginia offers some good advice in the following news release about why you should make 2012 the year that you decide to get something done about your dental health. The benefits are not just cosmetic -- they can improve your breath and your smile. Due North Marketing Communications created this release for Dr. Martin and distributed it today. Read on to learn more about the benefits of improving your smile.

THREE GREAT REASONS TO VISIT YOUR DENTIST IN 2012

Improve your teeth and reap

social, professional and health benefits

RICHMOND, Virginia – For people whose last dental appointment is only a dim memory, there are three great reasons to make a resolution now to visit their dentist in 2012, according to Dr. Charles W. Martin of the Richmond Smile Center. They include:

• a better smile,

• better breath, and

• better health.

“Typically we get a lot of calls at the first of the year from people who say ‘This is the year I’m going to do something about my teeth’,” says Dr. Martin. “What most of them are talking about is improving the appearance of their teeth and their smile. What they don’t realize are the physical health benefits that also go along with good dental health.

The good news is that today’s dentistry can result in smile improvement almost immediately. So what should the savvy dental consumer – even one who hasn’t been to a dental office in years – expect when he or she finally makes that appointment?

Patients who haven’t seen a dentist in a long time should plan to discuss their dental history and the kind of treatment they’re seeking. Then they’re ready for a complete dental workup, diagnosis and treatment plan.

“When a patient who has neglected their teeth comes in, we first do an interview to find out exactly what has brought them to our office,” Dr. Martin says. “Typically there’s an impending event like a reunion, a wedding or a graduation where they want to look their best or they’re newly single and are self-conscious about meeting people. It usually takes a significant life event for people to take a good look at their teeth and decide it’s time to take action. It can also be a dental problem that brings people to a dentist – a toothache, broken tooth, swelling in the mouth or bad breath that can’t be controlled with over the counter treatments.”

In a diagnostic visit, a patient should expect their dentist and hygienist to do a clinical exam that includes not just a look in the mouth, but x-rays, photographs, molds of the teeth and a record of their bite. The dentist should also check for gum disease and oral cancer. During a first visit they may take the patient’s blood pressure along with a complete medical history. The importance of this exam is to assess where a patient is right now and what treatments will help them meet their dental health goals.

The importance of a smile is known and accepted for those in the public eye such as political candidates, but it’s equally important for teachers, students, customer service employees, retail clerks… just about anyone in any profession can enhance their approachability and appearance with an attractive smile.

“Think about the people you meet who never smile,” says Dr. Martin. “How do they make you feel? Typically people who are unhappy with the way their teeth look will keep a stern look on their face. They may put a hand over their mouth before speaking or look away from you when they talk. What’s even sadder are the people I see who have, for some time, refused to leave their home because of the appearance of their teeth.

“Ironically health issues aren’t usually what finally drive the reluctant patient to the dentist’s office, but frequently people find that getting their teeth taken care of properly they are able to reach other goals like losing weight because they can now chew firmer foods and eat a healthier, lower calorie diet,” says Dr. Martin. “Gum disease has been linked to many serious illnesses like diabetes, stroke and heart attack – even cancer. Getting a patient’s mouth healthy can help them improve their physical health.

“Many people are blind to how their teeth really look until something in their life causes them to take a close look at their appearance,” Dr. Martin adds. “Maybe they’ve lost out on a big promotion at work or have lost a job and need to go job hunting and want to look their best. Often for these patients, a bad dental experience in the past has frightened them away from the dental chair. Whatever the reason, visiting a dentist’s office for a complete diagnosis and treatment plan can improve more than just your smile.”

Dr. Charles W. Martin is the founder of the Richmond Smile Center, a technologically advanced dental practice that delivers dental implant surgery, dental sedation, cosmetic dentistry and complex care dentistry. The center is renowned for its smile makeovers. Dr. Martin, a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University School of Dentistry, is a Master in the Academy of General Dentistry, Diplomate of the American Board of Oral Implantology/Implant Dentistry and has taught at Georgetown University and the Medical College of Virginia. He is also the author of Don’t Sugar Coat It: The Story of Diabetes and Dentistry, Are Your Teeth Killing You and This Won’t Hurt a Bit! The Smart Consumer’s Guide to Dentistry. For more information about The Richmond Smile Center, visit his website at http://www.richmondsmilecenter.com.

Three Marketing Responses To Changes In Google Places

It's been a little over a week since Google reworked its Places pages where small businesses can get some free marketing exposure, and initial reactions were catastrophic.

Is A Google Places Listing Still Worth Doing?
Oh, yeah. In fact, our small businesses clients are still going strong on Google Places listings. We still recommend it as a fundamental part of your online marketing infrastructure.

Yes, it has changed. Some of the details about your business that used to be there are gone. But the fact is that its most important contribution to your marketing is still in place. It's a free listing on the search engine that still gets more than 60 percent of all search traffic.

If you have taken advantage of all the elements of your listing you still do very well in local search. And for most small business marketing, that's the main point.

How Do Google's Changes Affect My Online Marketing?
I don't think they'll change a thing. So far it appears to be just a cosmetic redesign. I even buy part of Google's assurances that it's only aimed at making it easier for searchers to use.

There's still a lot of speculation in our business about what these changes may mean for your business. Some think you should continue to stay the course. I tend to agree. Other comments suggest that some of our colleagues think these changes are leading up to a new way for Google to monetize business listings. I agree with those who think that isn't likely to happen in Google Places but in Google + business listings instead.

Use It Or Lose It
Take the opportunity or miss the opportunity - that's the bottom line. The latest data I've seen shows that only 11 percent of businesses have claimed a Google Places listing.

Claiming your listing doesn't guarantee that you'll be more visible in search results but it does give you a chance to guarantee that your business categories and contact information, as well as your location, is accurate. Plus you're able to upload photos that - these days - are probably worth more than a thousand words.

Some Examples
Let's take a couple of our clients. One, a lone ranger who's all by himself in his business and competes in a very crowded service specialty, wasn't even on the map. He still doesn't have a web site. But since we claimed a Google Places listing for him he's consistently among the top returns in local search.

Another is a larger business, also in a very competitive service niche. They have a web site but it wasn't optimized, and they hadn't claimed their Places listing. Now they're mixing it up with their main competitors at the top of the local search packs, much more visible and prominent.

The recent Places changes didn't hurt them a bit.

Three Marketing Responses
If you've already taken full advantage of all the options in Google Places listings you probably don't need to do anything. But if you haven't here are some of thing things that will improve a listing.

• If you haven't added photos, add them as soon as possible. It amazes me how many businesses don't take advantage of this feature. Photos differentiate you immediately, especially if your competition hasn't mustered the wherewithal.
• Even better - add some YouTube videos. If a photo is worth a thousand words, one researcher recently calculated, a video is worth 80,000 words.
• Encourage clients to post a review on your Places page. One of the changes is that Google dropped third-party reviews. At the same time they made it easier to leave a review on Places pages. If you're doing your job right you'll get good reviews, and there's nothing better than a testimonial from a satisfied customer.

Remember The 4 Ps Of Marketing?
Product, place, promotion and price - right? So where does Google Places fit in? It's one element of promotion. But only one.

Google Places can be an important part of any small business's online infrastructure. It shouldn't be out there all by itself as your only platform for online marketing. Consider every useful channel that can add to an overall online presence - Facebook, YouTube, a blog, a photo gallery. And optimize your web site.

Three Ways to Minimize for Mobile

Early in 2014 more people will access the web on mobile devices than on desktops, according to a Morgan Stanley internet analyst. The HubSpot blog recently touched on mobile browsing implications for marketers, and it's a challenging set of considerations.

All About Simplicity
While there's the promise of increased ecommerce opportunity there's also the learning curve of making your site functional for mobile users. The watchword is simplicity.

There's limited bandwidth and limited space. Plus, who wants to wade through screen after screen? Worse yet, access a site that's designed on a five-column grid and you'll have a great time expanding and scrolling to try to get where you want to go.

Our Top Three Considerations
Building our mobile site focused on minimalism and ease of use:

• Simple design
• The most basic level of navigation possible
• Very little use of text. No one wants to read transitional screens or blocks of text. Just get me there, especially when I'm mobile.
  

Why Is This Important?
Already half of all mobile phone users rely on their on-the-go web access to look for information that helps them make purchase decisions. Getting them there quickly and easily will be increasingly critical to competing in the marketplace, which is now both online and mobile.

Tips On Upgrading To A 3G MicroCell

If AT&T offers you a free 3G MicroCell, grab it. Once it's installed you will, indeed, have five bars all the time. It may seem odd to focus on 3G at a time when several providers claim to offer 4G but if you're in a pocket that has marginal coverage - like our office is - a solid signal at any speed makes a huge night-and-day difference.

This also struck us as a great anedcote about a marketing program that starts out with a nice free offer but turns into a trying customer experience.

With the microcell we no longer worry that when we're on the phone with a client and we turn our head we'll drop the call. Chances are we won't miss many more incoming calls on our mobile phones, either. That was particularly vexing especially when you suddenly got a notice that you had a new voicemail and the phone hadn't even rung.

The Hard Way
Now that it's installed we love it. That's not to say your install is going to come off without a hitch. Ours took more than six hours, at least half a dozen transfers among AT&T tech support people and a router reset. The absolute worst part was that most of the AT&T staffers didn't seem to know much at all about the install process and they were too eager to dump us off on some other poor techie in another department. The clincher came after a serial transfer from wireless to dsl to customer service, etc. when one guy tried to upsell us to AT&T's TV service. Yes, it was enterprising but it wasn't at all relevant to our immediate need.

The Easy Way
Well, easier is probably more accurate. After faithfully following the instructions in the Getting Started Guide and the User Manual we still weren't any closer to having a working microcell. In fact, as soon as we connected the thing it somehow reset something in our router and knocked out our internet connectivity. After we diagnosed the problem, reset the router and connected the microcell in what seemed the most direct way it worked just fine.

The thing AT&T leaves out of its manuals is key. Here's how we'd do it if we had it to do over:

1. Complete the online activation and wait for step 2.
2. Don't lift a finger until you get a text message from AT&T offering you a complimentary Quick Start. That's their service where a tech support person stays on the phone with you until the microcell is successfully installed. The regular price is $50, and these people seem to know their stuff so it's worth the wait.

That's what the manual doesn't tell you - that you'll get a free Quick Start consultation. And the text message didn't hit our mobile until the install had already failed. By that time we were more than two hours into it and plenty frustrated.

Another issue is that a lot of the advice that both the manuals and the wireless tech support people give you is to go online for helpful troubleshooting techniques. Problem is if the install procedure whacks your router, like it did ours only we hadn't figured that out yet, you can't access the procedures because you can't connect. The wireless tech support person we had on the phone actually laughed at the irony. It wasn't quite so humorous on our end.

Gotta Be A Better Way
We give the unit an A+ for performance. Now we're all 3G all the time. It's strong, it's fast and we love it.

We give AT&T an F for its technical manuals and tech support. The customer experience during the install process is terrible. They just don't get it.

Unless you hook up with the Quick Start people. They know their stuff, they'll stick with you and not palm you off on some other tech support department that doesn't know what to do, either. They'll also call you back after the install to make sure it's working.

Hey, AT&T - Here's A Freebie
The question is - why doesn't AT&T tell you about Quick Start right up front? From a marketing perspective it makes little sense to hide it and spring it as a surprise after you complete the online activation. Our suggestion - AT&T needs to splatter Quick Start all over everything that reaches the consumer at every step in the process, from the initial offer to the handoff when you pick up the unit at the retail store to the manuals to the online activation.

Sure, the text message is a great idea. Or would be, if you got it in time to make a difference.

Bing Sting Raises Trust, Credibility Issues

Small business owners who are eager to bump up their online presence frequently ask us if they ought to get listed on Bing. Until the last couple of months we said sure - do Google first and then, yeah, do Bing. We saw some numbers showing that Bing's share of search is growing and combined with their deal to power Yahoo search it could add up to nearly a third of all search activity. But after Google's Bing Sting we're rethinking that.

Bing put up a good fight and tried to spin opinion its way. Still, its clickstream argument never really rang true. And there's some compelling evidence that it's more spin than substance.

Google Makes Compelling Case

Matt Cutts' recent post shows how MSIE8 uses 'Suggested Sites' as a euphemism for 'send Bing your Google clickstream'. There's no apparent disclosure and it may sound to the casual user like a good idea. Cutts also shows side-by-side screen shots of Google's sting searches and Bing's results. Many of the Bing searches are identical and others seem too close to be a coincidence. It's surprising that the sting hasn't caused more of an uproar.

The question is one of credibility as well as one of substance. If you get the same results once removed why not stick with the real deal? And if a business slyly prompts a user to provide clickstream data from a competitor's product so both services appear to be on the same plane . . . well, doesn't that seem a little weak?

Would you recommend a business that operates that way?

Mobile Video Hot for Small Business

Mobile video viewership is up 43 percent this year, according to Nielsen. Who ever thought video would be so hot on smartphones?

Google recently did a survey that showed that 75 percent of mobile viewers prefer to watch video on their smartphone rather than a laptop, desktop or tv.

That's a lot of iPhones, Androids and Blackberries that people are using to watch video.

Smartphones are currently somewhere between 20 - 30 percent of the total cell phone market, depending on whose data you read. And that proportion is likely to grow very quickly.

A Great Channel For Small Business

Here's what's interesting for small business: You probably don't need to invest in a smartphone app in order to take advantage of the burgeoning mobile market. You can probably accomplish the same communications goals by uploading videos to YouTube that your clients and potential customers can access via their smartphone's video app.

In fact, this may even be a better approach. After all, how many small businesses need the interactivity that characterizes the most popular and most useful mobile apps? So why go to that expense?

Video, on the other hand, is relatively cheap and fast. And every business can use it for testimonials, demonstrations and other messages that showcase your products and services.

YouTube's growth is already nearly exponential. But as more people step up to smartphones and start watching more video via mobile, it's going to explode.

Want to go mobile right now? Do it with YouTube.

Google Gets Up Close & Local

Google just changed the way it searches for anything local, and if you've got a small business that depends on local customers this is a huge development. If you haven't used Google Places you should start. If you have, take another look to make sure your'e doing everything you can to get a leg up on the competition.

In general, here's the gist of the new approach which is now called Google Place Search - and here's the article from the Google blog. If Google senses that a web search is about anything tied to a particular geographic area it returns listings specific to that location. You won't see something from far flung locales that might be sort of connected to the search term and you won't see those aggregated pages of results for similar terms that show you every storefront on the web. You also won't see other web publishers who banked on jumping to the top of search results via a high page rank.

It's all about local. Which is terrific. It's more convenient for shoppers who are actively looking for a product or service in their own back yard. And it's great for local businesses because chances are you're going to be right up front.

Listings in Google Places are free. You can list your business in up to five categories of products and services, and you can add lots of details about what you sell or do. Add photos and videos, even coupons. It's hard to beat.

We've done this for a number of clients and they've experienced great results in search. It could work for you, too, and we'll be happy to help.