After sending out a promotion for GKIC’s Info-Summit, I was asked, as I often am, “What about market saturation; are there already too many information marketers?”
Of all the markets, there are more info-marketers in the dentist niche than in any other. Just off the top of my head, there’s Dr. Tom Orent, Dr. Robert Willis, Woody Oakes, Greg Stanley, Jerry Jones, Mike Massotto, Dr. Chris Griffin, Dr. James McAnally and Dr. Charlie Martin, each running thriving info-marketing businesses. Then there’s Jay Geier, who serves both chiropractic and dentistry, and he’s a major force within both niches.
With all these info-marketers serving dentists, isn’t the market saturated? I can safely say no. I’ve had the opportunity to work with three additional info-marketers who are either launching new info-businesses or are expanding within the dentistry niche.
John Cotton has provided excellent coaching services to dentists throughout Alabama and the surrounding states. His flagship course teaches dentists how they can prevent open appointments on the calendar, a huge revenue killer.
If you think about it, dental appointments are more perishable than fruit at the grocery store. If a patient doesn’t show up for his 9 a.m. appointment, you can rebook the patient into the future, but that opportunity to generate revenue at 9 a.m. is gone forever. You can’t double up at 10 a.m. to make up the revenue because you can’t fit more than one patient into the chair.
John’s coaching allows dentists to reduce the number of open appointments, drastically increasing their revenue without adding chairs, hiring additional staff or spending more money on marketing. Throughout John’s consulting day, we worked together to package his coaching program into a series of training videos he offers dentists. By packaging his program into a video series, John is able to leverage his strategies into a course he can create once and sell many times. In addition, he’s able to promote his course nationwide rather than only within driving distance for his one-on-one coaching services.
In addition to John Cotton, I’m also working with Dr. Darold Opp to market to family dentists. Dr. Opp visited me for a two-day consult to help build out his information marketing business from scratch. He also chose to take advantage of monthly support, and this month he’s launching his first info-marketing business.
For the last six years, Dr. Opp has held a patient appreciation event in his hometown of Aberdeen, South Dakota. “Patient appreciation event” doesn’t do this thing justice. I had the opportunity to visit Aberdeen to participate in Dr. Opp’s event. It’s huge. Almost 5,000 people (800+ families) enjoyed Dr. Opp’s three-hour celebration. The costumed characters, inflatable bounce houses, silly games and kid-friendly entertainment from the stage led the local newspaper to dub Dr. Opp’s event “The Disneyland of Aberdeen.”
While Dr. Opp created the event to give back to the community and show appreciation to his patients, it has become a patient generating machine. In 2013, Dr. Opp generated 230 new patients with annual revenue of $206,116, all trackable to his event. That’s stacked on top of the 172 new patients he generated in 2012 and the 147 he generated in 2011.
Dr. Opp revealed his new coaching/area exclusive licensing program at Jerry Jones’s Dental Office IMPOSSIBLE event. Dr. Opp showed family dentists how they can make their name synonymous with families in their community, how they can generate great publicity for their practice and how they can generate a year’s worth of new patients in one afternoon by hosting a “Dr. Opp scale” patient appreciation event for their community.
Finally, Dr. Jeffrey Anzalone has come to me for two consulting days on two separate occasions. Plus, I’ve had the pleasure of working with him through monthly coaching to help him launch his info-marketing business.
Dr. Anzalone discovered an underserved niche within the dentistry niche. We teach info-marketers to search for subniches all the time, and Dr. Anzalone’s success shows us why this strategy is so important. Most dental marketing focuses on family dentists, and that makes sense because there are so many of them. Dr. Anzalone’s program, however, teaches specialists such as periodontists, orthodontists and oral surgeons how to create a new patient generating referral program with local family doctors.
It’s a fascinating and much-needed program since most of these specialists’ patient referral strategies are little more than dropping off donuts at dental offices a few times a year. These specialists, who went to school for 12 years or more, are hustling for referrals like a salesperson instead of like the professionals they are. Dr. Anzalone’s program focuses on what family dentists want: more patients. Dr. Anzalone shows the local dental specialist how to help local family dentists get more patients for themselves. The program establishes the dental specialist as the marketing guru within his or her community.
During our consulting days, Dr. Anzalone and I were able to break down everything he did to double the revenue within his practice into four key “levers.” Dr. Anzalone hows dental specialists how to double their practice within a few short months using his four key levers. Best of all, they can stop being that sales guy who goes door-to-door to dental offices hustling for referrals.
Even with as many info-marketers as there are within the dentistry niche, there are still underserved subniches and unique ideas that can be brought to the market by ambitious marketers who want to help people and create great info-marketing businesses. The key is to make sure your offering is unique and structured to attract customers within your particular niche.
What do you think? Do you think the info-marketing world is wide open or already saturated? Scroll down to the bottom of the page to leave me a comment. I read every comment and reply when appropriate.
Best wishes,

3 Comments on “Are there too many info-marketers?”
Rob,
This article and your last newsletter are spot on. There is always room for great marketing and great marketers like you. Keep up the great work.
Hi Robert,
The American Association of Independent Periodontists is picking up steam. Numbers are good. I’ve hired an associate to do the surgery. Not only does that help my back. but I get more time to devote to the AAIP. We are doing a trial one day seminar for periodontists and staff next month, in addition to doing an intro seminar at the Perio meeting in Orlando. We’ll gain more members for our twice monthly teleseminars. And, assuming that we will be successful in Atlanta, we are planning on a cross country program early next year.
Thanks for all of your help.
Lee
That’s terrific. I’m so glad to hear it. Keep up the good work and I’m excited to hear how you grow! Best wishes.