You may even have a name that comes to mind when you ask yourself the question “Who is THE dentist- THE go-to guy- in my market?” How did that dentist gain the consumer top-of-mind awareness and get where they are today? Many dentists come to marketing companies and say “I want to do exactly what this guy is doing,” but they fall short. Why is that?!

Today on Marketing Chairside, Jonathan talks with Aaron Gravit about how to leverage the many tactics in the marketing world to achieve a well-known brand in your area.

Topics covered include:

All of these from the perspective of DENTAL marketing because that’s all we talk about on Marketing Chairside.

Transcription of Episode

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

(silence). Hello. Welcome to Marketing Chairside, where we talk about marketing issues that can get you more new patients and make you more money, so you can stop wasting time and money on marketing that doesn’t work. I’m joined today by Aaron Gravit. Hey Aaron, how are you doing?

Aaron Gravit:

How you doing? Good. I’m glad to be here.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

So I hear all the time dentists saying, “Hey, there’s this guy in New York and he is just amazing and I want to be him. I want to have his Instagram following and his website and his logo, do everything just like that.” And then they’ll want just a website or in your case because you shoot video, they’ll say, “Make me a video so I can be “that guy”.” But there are some problems with that approach, right Aaron?

Aaron Gravit:

Yeah, “that guy” didn’t become “that guy” overnight, it takes a lot of time. It could take years to get to that point. Consistency and patience is key. And you don’t necessarily want to think “one project at a time”, you got to think two years, three years, four or five years at a time, how can we capitalize on what you’re shooting and what you’re creating? But at the end of the day it’s about your brand. You can’t approach the video as just a video, it’s not like that anymore. You have to be brand-focused and brand-oriented and then create the content that’s needed for marketing.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

Okay. [crosstalk 00:01:40]. And so I’m going to put my Dr. Fashbaugh I don’t know anything about marketing hat on. So a brand, you mean a logo, right? That’s just the smiley face next to my name or something?

Aaron Gravit:

No. A logo is part of your brand, but your brand is so much more. It’s not just your logo, it’s not your color schemes, it’s not the fancy sign or graphics that you have, it’s the whole thing. It’s everything from your logo identity to your patient experienced, some videos or social media content, ad campaigns, it’s how you answer your phones, it’s what you wear, it’s their whole experience. And it’s not necessarily how you see yourself, it’s how your patients and other people see you. It’s how they remember you. It’s that feeling they get when they hear your name or the practice name or where do I need to go for four on fours?

Aaron Gravit:

When you come to mind and they’ve got a really great image of who that is, that’s what you want to go for branding. That’s branding, it’s has nothing to do with how you see yourself, is how everybody else sees you. And that’s a process and there are so many moving parts that you are going to be way too overwhelmed if you try to tackle it yourself. You need to put together a team, a creative team, a branding team merged with the marketing team to create those assets for you.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

Right.

Aaron Gravit:

In that manner.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

And we’ve tagged teamed on a few clients together. And I love how our work goes in tandem. I mean, you certainly know what you’re talking about when it comes to the branding piece. You’ve been shooting video and working graphics since 1999, I think? Got started in New York City.

Aaron Gravit:

Yeah, worked professionally since 1999.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

Yeah, professionally. I mean, yeah, I was a kid running around with a video camera too, for sure. But you were working with Red Bull and MTV and ESPN, I think you said. And a bunch of big name brands.

Aaron Gravit:

I did, I actually… I’ve been an Animation Director on a movie for SYFY channel. You can actually find me on that, IMDb.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

And then you started working with some small businesses and have been working with dentists since 2008. And I’ve like I said had the privilege to work with some of the dentists that you work with and you do amazing stuff, man.

Aaron Gravit:

Oh, I appreciate it. I appreciate it and-

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

But it’s not just the video shoot that gets it done, right. It’s this process that you’re talking about.

Aaron Gravit:

It’s planning ahead.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

And I think a lot of dentists think of it as a one-time event, but then they’re just a couple short years later they realize, “Well, shoot, I shot this video with an associate I don’t have anymore.” And, “Oh man, my office looks so dated now in those videos.” And then they just shuffle it further and further into the background and they dread the thought of having to do all that over again. But they need mindset change, right?

Aaron Gravit:

It’s a huge mindset change, because without a new mindset you can’t have new results. I mean, you’ll end up just doing the exact same thing over and over again or you won’t do anything, because it’s so daunting and you have way too many things on your plate, you’ll just never get to it. And by that point you were late, you’re late to the game. If you know that you’ve got something going on next or at the end of the year and you go, “Well I’ll just wait until the end of the year to do it.” Well, that’s too late. You should need all this time, you need those months or the year prior to prepare and get all the assets you need for that launch. And if you’re not thinking at least a year ahead, you are late to the game. You’ll never be the dentist that you want to be if you are waiting till the last minute to achieve what you want achieve.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

Well, and I mean, I guess that’s the starting point, right, is figuring out what do I really want to achieve? Because you can be the dentist in your market or you can be someone who’s in the background and just catching what comes your way and you could be fine. But I mean, the dominant practices that you and I love working with, they’ve got a bigger picture than that.

Aaron Gravit:

Yeah, no, that’s a much bigger picture. I mean, you can do the one-offs all day long, but the one-offs aren’t going to create a brand or build a brand, because you’re going to create content all these years, but what happens if you want to sell the practice? At some point you want to retire, well, it should be a destination. The brand should be about the practice and about this is the place to go. So when you sell it to somebody else, it’s instant. The worst case scenario is not that you can’t brand the dentist, the worst is when you have got three partners and they all want their name in the logo. It gets complicated and then the brand suffers and then next thing you know you’re no longer… You’re $3 million a year down the opposite direction.

Aaron Gravit:

And you’re sitting there going how am I supposed to… I just took this brand over, but you messed it up by adding all this other stuff, you didn’t be consistent. It gets complicated, it’s like starting over again. So I can help you with that. You don’t have to worry about all that kind of stuff. We approach everything long-term, so you’re going to create a video and I’m like well, don’t just get one video, get a dozen, get several a month, get one a week. And if you plan it out, it’s actually cost effective if you do it correctly. What you shot last month you can use again. Those assets that you shot and you created months ago, even last year, you can add into new content this year. And every time you create new content, your commercial and your marketing gets more interesting. It’s going to attract more people as you move forward. It’s a little overwhelming in the beginning, but it does… As long as you’re consistent, it will pay off in the long run.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

Well, and if you work with someone who knows what they’re doing and has done it before, they’ll know the questions to ask, they’ll know how to organize the shoot, they’ll know how to interface with your marketing people. And so, I mean, I think that’s the great thing about your programs, Aaron, is how you take the lead on it and really make it easy for the dentist. I mean, obviously there is an investment to be made financially and in your head committing to launching an actual professional brand, not just whatever was on my letter head slapping it on a logo or I mean, on the website. And so, I think there’s that commitment and then there’s the creative process. But the part that I just know that every dentist wants, but they just don’t really realize what’s involved in getting there is that you’ve got this engagement. There are people that just love what you do and you’ve got a following in your market and it’s achievable.

Aaron Gravit:

It is achievable, it requires the right mindset. And if you don’t value what needs to get done and you’d rather go buy a 500,000 dollar yacht and just sit there because that’s where you put your values. Well, then you’re just not going to end up… You may get there, but it may take longer. And it’s just not where you would need to be focused on. You need to be able to create the content over a long period of time and you start… You can do it in sections, but you need to do it in strategic planned out sections so things don’t overlap and you don’t waste your money, because if you’re just doing “one project at a time”, but I can’t reuse old content, give you an example-

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

There’s our 10 minute warning. So we’re going to have to wrap it up. Here I go. I got to figure out how to make the man stop screaming.

Aaron Gravit:

I got ten seconds.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

Yeah. Well, you can have 10 seconds, but we can’t go on 10 more minutes, that’s for sure.

Aaron Gravit:

All right.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

I’ve just got this in place so that we don’t lose our audience. But yeah, I think you solve a lot of problems for your clients in terms of giving them a voice, helping them use their patients for their voice. And so what you guys, you the viewer, need to do next is go to product13.com, right Aaron?

Aaron Gravit:

Yep.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

And that’s product and then the number 13.com.

Aaron Gravit:

The number 13.com.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

And reach out to Aaron. And he can talk to you about what video looks like in your practice. He’s got a ton of ideas that go way beyond video, it’s graphics, it’s motion graphics. You’ve got this thing called a Graphics Toolbox, right, you call that?

Aaron Gravit:

Yep, it’s Graphics Toolbox.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

Graphics Toolbox and I can tell you from my team’s perspective is just such a breath of fresh air to design a website that has this.

Aaron Gravit:

You create it once, you create it every three to five years.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

It’s amazing. And then certainly go to and sign up for one of our marketing or social media packages or both if you really want to do it right and be “THE Guy” or “THE Gal” in your market. The one, two punch that you get when you do these things right, it makes you really unstoppable. If you take a shortcut and just use a guy who just bought a camera and doesn’t really know what they’re doing, your video is going to be unprofessional. You’re not going to be in love with it, or you’re not going to want to repeatedly share the content on your social media and that video is going to get stale before you know it. And you’re not going to have a plan for how you replace it. So that’s why I wanted to have you on the show today, Aaron. Again, it’s Aaron with Product 13. Thanks for being on Marketing Chairside.

Aaron Gravit:

No problem. I was looking forward to it. It was good seeing you again.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

It’s been a blast. Every time we get together, well, we usually have good food and good drinks with us too.

Aaron Gravit:

There’s usually a little crunch or boil involved.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

But we solve so many problems. It’s amazing. So you, the viewer, please like, subscribe, share this video content with your team and would love to help you out. But if you could help us out by liking and subscribing. And then also, if you want your website to be evaluated, do me a favor and either send me an email on Product 13. Well, you can send Aaron an email, he’ll evaluate your video.

Aaron Gravit:

I’ll follow you [inaudible 00:12:56] again.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

Yeah. Send me an email with and ask me to evaluate your website and I’ll do it right on the show. Thanks. (silence).