Brian Hunter and Shad Treadaway of tinyRHINO share their expertise on behavioural science and the role it can play in accelerating new patient growth
Social Media Marketing 101 has been one of my top subjects for courses, lectures and articles for 10 years. So, you can imagine my excitement in introducing the next generation of experts on the topic: Brian Hunter and Shad Treadaway, founders of The RHINO Group, Inc., the parent company of tinyRHINO. Brian and Shad bring their vast marketing experience and business expertise to the dental community. Their behavioural science and consumer-first approach helps to grow dental practices exponentially.
LS: What does tinyRHINO do for dental practices and is there a story behind the unusual name?
BH: tinyRHINO helps grow dental practices by attracting new patients using social media marketing, while equipping the practice to increase treatment acceptance rates. We take a behavioural science-based approach to ethical persuasion.
ST: And yes, there’s a story behind the name tinyRHINO. First, it evokes curiosity. As a marketing principle, simply pausing to ask about our name is equal to five marketing touches. Second, scientists attribute rhinos’ evolutionary survival to their ability to mount a focused charge at high speed when confronting a challenge.
LS: When marketing, what should dental practices do differently?
ST: Many practices rely almost exclusively on “gathering” patients seeking treatment. This stems from conventional advice that your website is the most important way to get new patients. What typically follows is heavy investment in SEO and Google Ads, and periodically tossing in dental mailers. Now, I’m not suggesting these methods are null and void. They can be effective, but they appeal only to the person who is searching for a dentist.
We advise dental practices to become hunters versus simply gathering, and the happiest hunting ground for new patients is social media.
BH: A huge, missed opportunity is the failure to recognize there’s an important sales element involved in converting new patients who respond to an ad. We may not typically think of patients as “buying” dentistry, but patients are consumers. They’re weighing your treatment recommendation against other uses of their dollars.
LS: What kind of results do your clients generate with this new hunting vs gathering approach?
ST: Our first platform, the Dental Patient Multiplier, was developed to attract new general dentistry patients into a 6-month recall relationship. The entire workflow was built using the science of influence. As soon as our clients turned on our system, they saw immediate results.
One of our most successful general dentistry clients picked up 57 patients in their first month at an 1,800% return on investment. We have sent that client over 1,000 new patients in the last 2.5 years. Of course, every practice and geographic region is different, but getting 15 to 25 new patients per month has proved to be very achievable.
LS: You’ve designed a solution specifically for implants. What’s is unique about this??
BH: We are more excited about our new Implant Patient Multiplier than anything we have ever built because it means dental surgeons and specialists can now go direct-to-consumer through social media marketing while maintaining their dentist referral network.
More and more GPs are beginning to place implants. In response, we created the Implant Patient Multiplier, which is more advanced. On the front end, we provide the right kind of social media ads and do the media buying for the practice. On the back end, we create sophisticated scripts, workflows and training.
ST: Our doctors have been very excited by their results. We’ve seen numerous practices realize $30,000 to $60,000 of new case revenue per month with our system.
Visit tinyrhinomarketing.com for information.
