I kept pecking away at writing our new dental marketing book during February and March. I’ve written other books before, but never with such a strategic intent and known audience. I know that this book will help many dentists get to an ‘Aha!’ moment in their business and dental marketing strategy at large. That gives me a sense of urgency as I write. I’m taking a break to update you on where things stand with some thoughts and activities.

Length- How long should this dental marketing strategy book be???

I don’t exactly have a target length for the book, but I want it to be longer than 50,000 words. That works out to be about a 5-hour long audiobook. I read most of my books by listening to them. I’m busy and would rather learn and escape via a book while I drive, mow the lawn, build a project in the shop, etc. than listen to music. Funny: about the only time I do listen to music is when I’m writing.

I hope that dental professionals of similar preferences will enjoy listening to this book. I want to make sure that it’s a meaty value for their money. I want dentists across the country to improve their dental practices while they jog, ride in an airplane, or are on the river fishing.

Of course, all of this applies to the paper-based copy of this marketing book (maybe not the jogging or fishing). I don’t want it to be a flimsy little book that gets lost on the shelf or mistaken for an oversized brochure. I want it to be a well-organized, info-packed, soup-to-nuts marketing plan for dental practices.

I see it as something that dentists, office managers, and the like can crack open when they have questions and compare it to what their marketing people tell them. If it’s too short, it won’t have enough usable information, and then it’s not worth anyone’s time.

Currently, the book is just shy of 16,000 words (roughly 60 pages). To hit the minimum goal of 50,000 words, I will write at least 70,000 words with the plan of editing out at least 20% of what I wrote. I would rather end up with 30,000 helpful words than even 50,000 words of fluff.

This sucker’s gonna be good.

A Title Change and A Change-Back

To be completely transparent, this page of the website exists to start pulling some traction with Google for ‘dental marketing book’ in its organic results. We only have a handful of people who know that this book is happening, but the list is growing. Still, if you’re going to put up a page of content on your website, you want it to look good and make sense.

To that end, I was forced to come up with a title for the book and even some cover art. Otherwise, the page would look super generic and spammy.

Brainstorming ideas, I came up with the title, Stop Hitting Yourself, because, within the broader audience of dentists who need marketing help, I want to help dentists who are their own worst enemy when it comes to dental marketing strategy. The hits just keep coming…because they just keep doing it to themselves. I want to break the cycle for them. The picture of someone hitting themselves on the cover also seemed like it could have a thumb-stopping effect on social media.

So, I paid someone to whip up a cover image and ran with it. Then I ran the title past a few people, and they kind of didn’t get it. It didn’t smack of dental marketing to them. I started brainstorming other ideas and came up with Doctor, Market Thyself. My team members liked that better than Stop Hitting Yourself. We put together a very nice little temporary cover for that, and I changed the title on the website and in my latest draft.

Then, I thought, ‘Hm, I wonder if anyone else has written a book called that?’ Answer: yes. Yes, they have. I haven’t read any of those books and don’t plan to do so- especially not before I finish editing my dental marketing strategy book because I don’t want their ideas, even accidentally, to make it into my book. Unfortunately, this makes this title less attractive to me.

So, we’ve reverted the title back to Stop Hitting Yourself for the time being. Who knows, maybe we’ll settle on a hybrid: Doctor, Stop Hitting Thyself. ;)

Let me know what you think of the working title.

Always Creating More Content

I’ve also kept up on my blogging schedule and in recording Marketing Chairside episodes:

Challenge: Complete Your Dental Office’s Online Patient Forms Using Your Phone

Dentists Ask Dental SEO and Longtail Keywords

Get More Local Traffic from your Dental Blog in 2022

Best Practices for TMJ and Sleep Dentists

Don’t Hire Your Kids for Your Dental Social Media Management

TMJ Marketing for Dentists who Rock

I could stop all of this and keep plowing on the book, but I want to keep the company’s blog and social media hopping for now. Hopefully, the above content will keep your marketing gears turning until Stop Hitting Thyself, or whatever I end up calling the dental marketing strategy book, comes out.