Congratulations to our Practice Of The Month!

This month, we’re proud to share with you the story of Dr. Blake Kingsbury and his family dental practice in Gastonia, NC.

We’re going to talk about how they were able to master the concept of comprehensive dental marketing to become one of our most successful clients.

Dr. Kingsbury came on board with Firegang in the summer of 2017 after research what marketing company might be the right fit and because the DEO recommended it to him.

Success “By The Numbers”

“Do your research. Listen to this interview and more of them, read reviews...but then pick these guys. Be willing to part with whatever it costs a month, it’s absolutely worth it.” - Blake Kingsbury, DDS

Established in 2000, Gastonia Family Dentistry is a large practice with 3 doctors and more than 15 staff members, including hygienists, assistants, patient coordinators and schedulers.

“My philosophy is that you can always be busier. Even if you’re at capacity, you just create more space, hire someone else. I never stop growing.”

After more than a decade in the dental field, Dr. Kingsbury has worked with many different marketing companies, so we were curious about his perception of Firegang and how our comprehensive dental marketing strategy became the right fit for his dental practice.

“Without going into specific numbers, we’re a large office, and we have increased our collections by 27% in the last year.”

“We’ve worked with many other [marketing] companies over the years. And the customer service with you has been ridiculous. Jenna [our Client Success Manager] is completely insane...in a good way!”

One of the ways Gastonia Family Dentistry is able to attract the new clients they need is by making the most of their reputation through online reviews.

The practice has over 900 reviews on Google resulting in a 4.9 star rating!

Having this high amount of positive reviews also helps their practice rank higher in Google searches and on Google Maps, making sure patients in their area can find their practice easily.

But Dr. Kingsbury and his team aren’t just satisfied getting their phones ringing. They want those potential new patients booked.

They have been been active participants in ongoing call and lead to new patient conversion training and do everything Firegang recommends to ensure their staff is taking our advice and employing it when speaking with patients on the phone and in the office.

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Dr. Kingsbury and his team at Gastonia Family Dentistry take their patient feedback seriously. For example, potential new patients were consistently asking for earlier appointment times on the phones.

Instead of risking losing all of those patients, Dr. Kingsbury opened up his schedule to begin accepting patients at 7am. New patient numbers increased even more after he made that change and the practice just keeps growing.

One of the most recent changes Gastonia Family Dentistry made was to offer “special offers” or discounts and advertise them on their website and through their PPC ad campaigns. When we first launched their new website they started with a special for Invisalign® and dental implants, seeing moderate success.

However, their CSM suggested they try to better appeal to a larger demographic in their area and they agreed to launch a general “new patient” special and an emergency appointment discount.

These new specials started increasing the conversion rate on the practice’s PPC ad campaigns both on Google Ads and Facebook. The ads were starting to land in front of patients the practice hadn’t been able to reach before, resulting in a new, growing patient base for them.

Q&A With Dr. Blake Kingsbury, Gastonia Family Dentistry

What drew you to Firegang?

I started doing research and found your company, but then I also knew the other co-founder, Jake. It was a combination of those two. Finding it [Firegang] and then hearing someone else reinforce it.

Jake suggested you guys - I was with the DEO at the time, plus I had already found you organically, so that was all I needed to hear.

What has your experience with Firegang been like?

So, we’ve worked with many other [marketing] companies over the years. And the customer service with you has been ridiculous. Jenna [our Client Success Manager] is completely insane...in a good way!

She is on top of it, you can tell she cares. She’s got a lot of energy, she sends emails when she says she’s going to send emails, she gets back to us when she says she’s going to get back to us. And the effort she puts into what we request as far as analytics go or anything else, it’s insane.

For example, we wanted to help our schedulers have better communication skills and she was listening to and taking notes on every single scheduler for every call. Now we’re actually tracking every call and she was willing to help us out with that. Every suggestion she’s made has been awesome.

So that’s the first thing we saw. But yeah, you all helped us redesign and make a really good website and we’ve started to see a lot more patients. Our staff is much better on the phones and it’s been awesome.

What about your new patient volume? Have you seen an increase?

We’ve got a lot of Google reviews, which is great, so we were getting a fair amount of traffic.

My philosophy is that you can always be busier. Even if you’re at capacity, you just create more space, hire someone else. I never stop growing.

It took some time, but once we got everything right with our website, with our Google Ads, with how people were talking on the phones - we hit our [production] number and far exceeded it.

Have you experienced success with a partnership mindset at Firegang?

Yeah, I mean, so many dentists hire experts and then they think they’re the expert instead. So you’ve got to get docs to check their egos at the door, right?

“We’re [Firegang] the experts, let us do our jobs. Implement the changes we want to implement and without actually legally guaranteeing success, we’ll guarantee your success.”

I'm a little different, in that I know I’m not an expert in these areas [marketing], I am an expert in very specific areas of dentistry. I’m not even an expert in managing a dental practice and I’m definitely not an expert at schedules. We’ve got people to do all that. I’m an expert when it comes to what I do with our patients.

So whenever we hire a marketing company, we do exactly what they say.  And everything you all have said to do has really really helped us.

For the doctor that is shopping around, thinking about who to choose or trust for dental marketing, what message would you put out there for them?

Do your research. Listen to this interview and more of them, read reviews...but then pick these guys.

Do yourself a favor and then get out of the way.

Do exactly what they say to do - spend the money they say to spend on AdWords, spend the money they say to spend on Instagram ads and Facebook ads, read the analytics, be willing to part with whatever it costs a month, it’s absolutely worth it.

Without going into specific numbers, we’re a large office, and we have increased our collections by 27% in the last year. A fair amount of it is the number of new patients we have and a lot of that is because of you guys.

Thank you for your kind words, Dr. Kingsbury, we really appreciate your partnership. One of the things that we really look for when we’re bringing clients on (and we’ve learned this the hard way in some cases) is for those practices that will follow the direction and expertise we share and execute it in their practices because they’ll get the success out of comprehensive dental marketing for years to come.

Gastonia Family Dentistry is a great example of the exact type of partnership we look for in our clients and we look forward to seeing your practice continue to grow!