MMM [Startups] The Art of Self-Made Success: DIY Strategies for Your Startup

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Show Notes

Hey guys, welcome to this week's Monday Morning Marketing episode! On today's episode we're sitting down with the brilliant Dr. Pejman Moghbeli, who unveils an ingenious array of marketing strategies that have been propelling his startup to success. Dr. Moghbeli delves into the intricacies of crafting personalized connections through Facebook, website, and Messenger ads. We also cover the essentials for your Google My Business profiles, call tracking techniques, and the art of impactful mailers. As the episode unfolds, Dr. Moghbeli also imparts invaluable insights into the realm of DIY approaches for thriving as a startup owner.

Whether you're an aspiring practice owner or a seasoned business enthusiast, listen to Dr. Moghbeli's startup journey to boost your marketing game!

You can reach out to Pejman Moghbeli here:

Website: https://risingsmilesdentistry.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pejman.moghbeli

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thegame2388/

Other Mentions and Links:

Google My Business

Google Keyword Planner

Flex

Facebook Ads

Fiverr

Alibaba

CallRail

Google Local Services

Dr. Deangelo Webster

Open Dental

For more helpful tips, strategies, ideas, and marketing advice:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedentalmarketer/


The Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/


Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041

Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)

Michael: Hey Paige. So talk to us about your startup. what advice would you give us suggestions or methods that will actually help us with our startup

Pejman: process? So in my case, uh, I opened late February. I didn't know when I was gonna open because I didn't know when I was gonna get my c o, but.

If I had to go back in time, I would've probably started marketing maybe a month before which I'm doing right now anyway, so I'll just tell you what I'm doing right now and I would've just kind of backtracked it a month earlier and done the same exact stuff.

Mm-hmm. for one, Facebook marketing, I do all my own Facebook marketing, so I run ads, campaign ads. I have one ad that's running Basically I have five photos. I have one of me with the staff. I have one with the assistants holding a little whitening thing.

I have me and, a patient shaking hands. I have another one, um, with me and my IT guy who's been a total lifesaver in this journey of mine. holding hands and for each blurb. I don't talk about dentistry, so I kind of say, Hey, this is, you know, Dan, my IT guy, you know, he's super nice and he doesn't like going to the dentist, but he's helping me out and call us if you need anything.

I don't advertise free whitening. I don't do any of that stuff. Um, the guy with me holding his hand, shaking his hand, um, kind of the same thing. Um, it doesn't look like an ad per se, um, which works. Uh, and then the best performing ad is the one where, My assistants went business to business, holding our brochures, shaking hands, and taking a selfie that way.

And once you put these ads out, you can put your own blurb into each different one, and then Facebook will allocate your daily budget to the best performing ad. And by far, my best performing ad is the one I just said, is the one where the assistants are shaking hands, um, with a bunch of business owners saying, Hey, we're a small business.

You know, we know it's important to help each other out and come visit us if you want. Here's our number and website. So Facebook allocates like 80% of my daily budget to that ad alone, which is, it's getting the most clicks, awareness, engagement, all that stuff. there's ads where they'll click it and they'll, it'll go to my website and that's it.

On the website, there's a book now button and the phone number, which is all being tracked. one set of ads with five of those pictures. The other set of ads is it goes directly to the scheduling website, which is flex in my case. Um, it goes directly to that. No website goes directly to that, and they can Facebook.

And the third ad is Facebook Messenger ads. And when they reply to those ads to any of the following, five, I just, or the five photos. It opens up a Facebook Messenger conversation with me. I have it automated, so when they reply, my blurb says, Hey, this is us. What demo needs do you have question mark.

They'll respond, I need a tooth pulled. I'll say, do you have insurance? They'll say, yes, and then it's all automated. They don't, no, they're talking to a robot for the first couple lines, and then I jump in to get more. Detailed information. And then I used to also do a fourth type ad ad, which was leads, which is, they click on it and all it says is, okay, great, you wanna be a patient?

What's your name and number? That's all we want from you, and we'll call you and we'll figure everything out. I got very few leads and the ones I did get every time we called them, they didn't pick up it went to voicemail, or they never showed. So without a doubt, I would say The website

Michael: ads, the scheduling

Pejman: ad, and the messenger ads all worked.

Michael: Gotcha. Uhhuh. So that's like the first thing you'd say. You'd backtrack, right? You're like, I'm gonna start pushing that. Yeah. I would do all this. I would do all this

Pejman: one month before I opened. I, I

Michael: wish

Pejman: I would've done it, but in my case, since I didn't know when I was gonna open because I had a c o issue, I didn't know when I was gonna open.

I didn't know when I was gonna hire. So maybe a month before. another thing I tried, and this was kind of so-so was instead of going through these companies, To get mailers at, you know, 40 cents a mailer, postage included. I said, you know what, I'm just gonna go to fiverr.com. I'm gonna get some person to design my postcard.

I had her use one of these images that I just talked about. Put 'em in the ad. Say put our membership logo, tracking phone number, website map, make it look nice and glossy. She sent me a P D F, both sides and my bio on the other page and you know, a little blurb there. She made it I think eight and a half by 11.

So I took up that P D F I went to Alibaba and then I found a bunch of these, um, Chinese, uh, postcard makers and I got a few that could do it for like 3 cents to print it. But then shipping was a pain because it takes a month from, go from Hong Kong, China to, you know, from Shanghai to mm-hmm. Phoenix. but all in all, it was $700 for 20,000 postcards.

Wow. So I got 20,000 postcards is a. I have a nice contact at Alibaba, so I trusted her. I paid it. It's all like verified and authenticated. Everything's legit. So yeah, the cards came from the design I made from the other lady. I had 20,000 cards here, but now the only thing I can't cheap out on is the actual postage.

I can't mm-hmm. Manipulate that. So then every week I would take 5,000 of these cards to PS them in the, and they would also bundle 'em in hundreds for, um, every day, every door direct mail. I would pick the routes, you know, income, whatever, whatever I would go to. And I would also have a tracking number there.

And then I would go to u ss p s with a cart of 5,000, which is, it wasn't too bad, but it was hot, so I had to like carry it. And then, yeah, and then every, every week I would hit 5,000, uh, addresses a week. I could either do 20,000 at once. You know, one, one person 20,000 times where I can be the same person four times in a month.

I did it that way and I got maybe like five, six patients that way, which is not great, which in my opinion was not a success. Now all in all, it ended up being like 21 cents a card, which is the absolute cheapest you can make it, and this is was amazing quality. Maybe I'll. Maybe I'll change up a few things, but I can't change postage.

Postage is still like $900 for 5,000? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Cards every week. So that's like $4,000 for 20,000 postcards. Did it work? Not really.

Michael: Gotcha. So the postcard, you wouldn't, you wouldn't hit again. Or maybe like down the line, you're like, yeah, maybe down the line. Down the line. I can't make the postage.

The postage

Pejman: is the, expensive part.

Michael: The

Pejman: Alibaba on the design, that was super cheap. Shipping was cheap, but it's the postage I can't change. Yeah, but that, that, because the postage right now is, if you just go right now, it's 18 cents. Plus the cost of printing plus all that is like another three 4 cents and that's 22 cents a cart, which is as cheap as you can almost make it.

then I did Google ads and I had someone run 'em for a couple months, you know, people searching for terms and ad word. Google keyword planner, excluding certain words like Medicaid and putting certain other words, filling out the description, headline, all that phone number being tracked.

I use CallRail for tracking almost everything. CallRail. I use it for website, tracking, Google my business page tracking, Google ad tracking, Facebook tracking, postcard tracking. that's like. 10 bucks a month there. That's not, it's not a big deal. I also use Google Local Services ads.

They just figured this out a couple months ago where, as of January you can advertise with Google Local Services. So basically what this is, is you search dentists near me, and the first thing that pops up at the top, it

Michael: says like, Google Verify dentists, and this is above the ad. This is above all the other

Pejman: sponsored ads.

It's like, it's literally the first thing you'll ever see. So if you type like Plumber near me, you'll see at the very top. So I, but those are $110 every time someone calls. And you have to be kind of tricky with like, exclude certain insurances or Medicaid or whatever that you don't accept Leads that aren't there. And every time it's a nonsense lead, I get my money back. So it's actually kind of nice. but I've had people say, Hey, I just saw you. And they're like, oh, I saw you on the little thing. And the Google local services goes above sponsored as it goes above, even the map pack on the Google, it goes way up there.

It's, it's literally the first thing. and they just started that for dentistry in, January. And then just verifying your Google My Business page, optimizing it, filling it out. With nice keywords, nice map photos, updating with Google postings, optimizing it, and there's nothing else you can do. And anyone that says you can do more is full of it.

and then you can put like a tracking number there. and then yeah, Facebook, Google, Google Ads. I would've done all this, but a month before I opened it.

Michael: So basically like all this right here, You, you learned it on like the Facebook marketing. You did it, you learned it on your own, or did somebody help you or what?

Pejman: I did it on my own. Um, I also watched, I'm sure you guys know Dr. DeAngelo Webster. He had he has his own like startup. He's like my, mentor, you can say. Um, he doesn't walk me through it, but he has a class and I, he only has it where his goes to the website. and that's it.

You can customize an audience. You can make a lookalike audience. You can, mm-hmm. Basically, I can take my patient list. I can say, Hey, Facebook, only market to people who look like this. Not physically look, but who are demographically like this person and Facebook will automatically target.

women above this and income on that and searching this and their behavior, and only on the mobile feed, not on desktop. Nobody really is on the desktop or only between this hour and this hour. So

Michael: I did it

Pejman: I had Facebook take my existing patient list and I said, make a 1% lookalike audience, which is what that means is.

And I'll say, within a 10 miles it'll say, pick the 1% of people.

Michael: Who look the

Pejman: most, like the list I provided make a identical 1% copy of

Michael: this. And so these are highly targeted people who look just like my patient list. Not only that, the 1% of my patient list the 1% of the people who've already interacted

Pejman: with my Facebook already

Michael: called me, get me more people who look like these people.

Mm-hmm. And then I put

Pejman: all the, all of them in the ads. So all the Messenger ads and the click ads and the website ads are all 1%. It is not just, oh, here's 10 miles, hit everybody. I used to only target women, because men don't really, aren't very engaged in their healthcare. Mm-hmm. So I, I thought it was a waste of dollar

Michael: to do that.

Pejman: I still think it's a waste of dollar to do that. However, with the 1% it's so targeted that I think it overcomes even that obstacle. So right now Facebook is determining. Who those best people are. I have no idea if it's hitting only women or men or you know, above 25 moms or you know, whatever. So I did Instagram.

Instagram I wasn't a fan of. It's too young. Even with the 1%. I said, just forget, let's just do Facebook only. So right now I do a thousand dollars a month of Facebook ads, another like 1500 in Google ads, and that's it.

Michael: And so how many new patients are you getting right now? A month. Uh, may. I had 25. June

Pejman: I had 25.

and again, I'm, I'm a startup, so yeah. And then July I have like, I have no idea. I could start, I just, I dunno, maybe 15 or something.

Michael: Yeah, no, no, it's good man. It's good, especially if your budget's like, you know what I mean? We're just honing in on, on Facebook and you're getting the patients you want, right?

Pejman: yeah. You know, p p o and cash and even the ones who don't have insurance, I kind of, uh, navigate them towards our, uh, membership plan and, kind of that stuff. And it's just, it's the way you present. It matters more than, if you confuse them with too much information, it's not gonna work.

So on the Facebook, I say, we have a membership, you get 25% off, you get two free cleanings and blah, blah, blah. And then they say, how much is it? Okay, whatever. And then I book 'em. And I also use a remote software. I remote in. from my house or from my cell phone to our open dental, and I'll put 'em in then like five minutes and then that's it.

And that's it. And then how many people are on your team?

Michael: Just me and two assistants. Okay. Do they do that too? Like if they need it, do they know how to do all that or No,

Pejman: they know how to, once they call the office, they know how to do that. But if it's outside office hours, I do all that.

Michael: Oh, okay. Gotcha, gotcha.

Pejman: Like the messenger stuff is all me. And everything else, uh, they can do it when they're at the office.

Michael: Oh, nice man. Awesome. So then any other piece of advice you'd like to give or suggestions to our listeners?

Pejman: Um, yeah, learn to do it yourself because only you care about it as much as you do. Nobody else cares more than you do and don't fall for.

scare tactics from, people who don't have your best interest or are charging some ludicrous amount of money. Or just do it yourself. Learn it yourself. Go in a corner, watch some YouTube videos, ask questions. If you have any questions, you know, ask me. I learned it all my own. I also, you know, don't have that much, obligations in life.

So I do have a lot of time. It's a startup. I have a lot of time and I tweak everything. Every, I almost, I put a new picture in the ads every week. I say, oh, let's try this ad, or let's try that ad. Let, let me take away the ads that are wasting money and let me give all the budget to the good ads. And lemme take a photo of the whitening thing and maybe this will turn into an ad.

Lemme take a photo of this patient. I always tweak, I always look at it week to week. Which ads are doing well, what's the cost per click, cost per conversion, all that stuff.

Michael: Nice. Awesome. Paige, Matt, I appreciate your time and if anyone has further questions you can definitely find 'em on the dental market or society Facebook group or where can they reach out to you directly?

Facebook.

Pejman: they can message me or Instagram or just anywhere on social media. It's Okay.

Michael: Awesome man. So guys, that's gonna be in the show notes below. Hey man, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for this time and we will talk to you soon. Thank you.

Pejman: Thank you so much.