E1.22 | Turning Post-Pandemic Patients Into Influencers

Richie Guerzon: Everyone, today's guest is Davin Bickford. Davin currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer for Wild Smiles Braces and has been with their team since 2006 when he became their second full-time employee. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Baylor University where he focused on economics and real estate at Hankamer School of Business. His skills and marketing management, market planning and entrepreneurship have helped lead Wild Smiles to be the number one selected appliance for early treatment patients and offices offering their products. We’re excited he's here to share some of his marketing insight with us Davin. Welcome to the show.

Davin Bickford: Hey Richie, thanks for having me.

Richie Guerzon: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think we have a lot to cover today. You have a good bit of information so we're going to try to get it out of you to help everyone.

Davin Bickford: Hopefully we can help. BBefore we get started, let me just say, you know, I really think what you guys have been doing in this time is awesome. And anything that can give you know doctors and their team information to be prepared coming out of this. So, you guys have done a great job.

Richie Guerzon: Yeah, we absolutely believe that Doctors can make their brand stronger make their team stronger during this kind of retrospective period and come out strong. So, how did you get started in Orthodontics?

Davin Bickford: Well, so kind of a happenstance type story, you know, you can tell from my bio. I'm an econ number cruncher guy and I met a guy named Clarke Stephens and Clarke Stephens is an orthodontist in Omaha, Nebraska and he had come up with this idea of braces with shapes and was working on getting them into the market and shared that with me and I just, you know, I'm kind of an entrepreneurial spirit kind of a guy and so I just thought well that's you know, that's a great idea. And so then after a few conversations, I was going to go into banking.

Richie Guerzon: Oh, yeah. Yeah natural for that degree. Right?

Davin Bickford: Well, you know, this was back when right after college and so I was you know, why not go and see and so here we are 14 years later.

Richie Guerzon: Wow, hear that right. So how did you get started in marketing, how did the pivot happen there?

Davin Bickford: Oh, yeah, so, you know coming out like I said entrepreneurial spirit kind of inside. So, the marketing focus has always been something that I kind of gravitated towards and so when you come on as you know, as an early employee on an essentially a start-up. Everybody's doing everything and so we started, you know needing help with marketing internally and so just started working that process.

Richie Guerzon: That makes sense. All right. So, with all that knowledge when your opinion what do you think the overall markets going to look like coming out of covid?

Davin Bickford: Yeah. Yeah. So, coming out of covid like, you know, like everybody probably agrees that this is something that we've never really gone through before, certainly as an industry. So, the quick answer is you know, I don't think anybody really knows. However, you know, I've tried to educate myself. I've been talking with people, super smart people all around the industry, in different industries and general consensus as it pertains to Orthodontics seems to be that, you know, obviously all the most of the orthodontist are going to make it through and come back and are going to survive and are going to thrive. In the long term, especially. The question then becomes is what is the patient pool look like. So, thanks that I've been talking to that the patient pool look like. Everybody I have talked to thinks the patient pool is probably going to be a little smaller. Some of the adults that are doing some of their you know, cosmetic type treatment that are going to say Hey, you know what until I get my finances in order until I'm back to work until X, you know, I'm going to hold off on my treatment but what everybody also thinks is that you know kids that need treatment parents are probably going to prioritize their finances and their spending to at least get you know, the kids that need treatment, they're going to get them treated.

Richie Guerzon: So, if the kids are the priority and I think the focus of what we're talking about are influencers. Let's talk about what your definition of an influencer is and kind of tie that together.

Davin Bickford: Yeah. Well, so, you know the dictionary describes an influencer as someone who has the capacity to have an effect on the behavior of someone or something. So really the way that we look at influencers is that everybody from day one all the way through has the ability to influence and can be an influencer. And so, we really need to hone in to the patients that we have in our practice, their parents, and their spheres of influence and really see how we can you know, get those patients to start to have an effect on the people in their sphere of influence.

Richie Guerzon: All right, so patients are influencers. I mean, why is it so important to view them as influencers?

Davin Bickford: To view patients as influencers? Well, so I think a lot of times we think about influencers as you know, these celebrities.

Richie Guerzon: Yeah, absolutely. That's what I think of.

Davin Bickford: Yeah, and so they're getting you know some cases they're getting may be paid to be an influencer. We're getting some sort of, you know product promotion deal or something, but at the end of the day influencers, that truly are authentic, they have to they have to have some buy-in into the experience that that they're talking about. And so, if we want patients to influence people for our practice, we need to give them an experience that they can have buy-in and they can have a voice in and then they can then turn around and take that voice and send it out into their spheres of influence.

Richie Guerzon: So, the better the experience the more bought in they are, the more authentic maybe their influence is going to be, the more powerful that influence will be on their friends maybe?

Davin Bickford: Not only the better the experience but the more tailored to their personality, to their view of the world. So, you want to have a consistent experience, an experience of excellence but you also want to have flexibility in that to make sure that each individual person coming into your practice is having a unique experience.

Richie Guerzon: Unique, so very personalized very unique. Okay?

Davin Bickford: Yeah, so I actually that makes me think of I was I've been watching your show on and off throughout this throughout this and you got had a guy named Eric on earlier. Hmm quoted from somewhere I missed the reference but it was a quote that consumers are 10 times more likely to share a unique or personalized experience.

Richie Guerzon: Absolutely.

Davin Bickford: And so, the more unique and the more personalized the experience the more likely that you're going to turn every patient into an influencer for your practice.

Richie Guerzon: Yeah, I think the whole industry seems to be going, you know toward in that direction of custom braces, Invisalign made specifically for you. There's a lot of these solutions that are very custom. Soon, everyone will have a custom shirt, you know custom pants. Why would we get clothes that aren’t fitting our body exactly if that's possible.

Davin Bickford: Well, but so in so many areas, you know, I would say that this idea of customer personalization is everywhere in our society. I mean, I think of a car buying experience, the vast majority of people who go in to buy a car they buy a car based on features and benefits not technical specificity. So, the same is true with a lot of other purchasing behavior among consumers is you know, as it pertains to Orthodontics they're coming in with this baseline thought that their experience from a treatment outcome is going to be very similar from one orthodontist to the other, because they have no ability to think through what that looks like because they don't you know, they don't have the vast knowledge that the orthodontist and the team and all of us in the industry know. You know, they want a great smile. So, what they're buying is features benefits and experience.

Richie Guerzon: So, if we got these influencers, how would you think they increase Word of Mouth marketing? What are they doing to do that?

Davin Bickford: Yeah, well so from a very practical standpoint, you know, let's take the kids first because I think kids are not often looked at as influencers from a practice level there thinking.

Richie Guerzon: You're probably right about that, absolutely,

Davin Bickford: You know kids, so I have a ten-year-old and I have a seven-year-old and I have because of the covid stuff been able to watch them interact with their friends much more than normal. In the short amount of time I see them interacting with their friends and having influence. They're talking about their experiences. They're talking about braces. They're talking about school. They're talking about what kind of bike they have. And so, if you give your patients something going back to what we said earlier, if you give them this unique experience that they're going to talk about it. And so, that's just good old-fashioned word of mouth. Now kids also have influence on their parents.

Richie Guerzon: Probably a lot more than we realized.

Davin Bickford: I think a lot more. You know, the kid might not have influence on their parents whether or not they're going to get braces, but they can certainly have influence on where they feel most comfortable, which orthodontist they feel most comfortable with and I know just my own family, you know my wife or myself when we’re with our kids and we're making a decision that involves them as much as possible we're asking them how they're feeling about it. And what do they think about this and trying to get their feedback and so they certainly have an influence on us.

Richie Guerzon: So, you think that changing behaviors increase the shopping of Ortho practices and that’s one reason that's increased over the years?

Davin Bickford: Yeah. Yeah, so shopping, you know, I don't have any statistics that I can cite on hand. But I do know that over the past five years. We've seen the amount of people shopping for their orthodontist has increased significantly. And so, you know even just a few years ago five years ago, you know that they were in with the dentist the dentist said, hey, you know, I think it's time for Johnny to get braces and here's an orthodontist I recommend. Well parents go to the orthodontist. They get set up. Well now okay. The dentist says Johnny needs braces. But what does Mom do she probably still gets a referral from the dentist? Yeah. She also Google's orthodontist in my community and she also goes on Facebook and does a poll of her friends. Hey who's got kids in braces? Where do you go and they share in their recommendations the reasons why they go. So, you know, we did that too and when we when our ten year old went in for braces a couple of years ago and you know, the things that we saw from people coming back was they weren't sharing technical stuff. They were sharing. We love this practice because X and it had to do with things that had to do with with features and benefits.

Richie Guerzon: Yeah, I bet that's a big revelation a lot of people because we probably think of it as all these specifications. I mean actually, how I buy a car but then again my dad has been a mechanic for 30 years. So, I view the way I view the whole process is very different than the mainstream. I think you're very right about that.

Davin Bickford: Right? So, with the orthodontist that we work with, you know, they're there the mechanic right? They know all the inner workings of the orthodontic practice and the treatment modalities and all of that the average consumer doesn't have that knowledge. And so, you know when we take a step back and really work with our clients to help take a step back and say hey, you know, what does it look like from someone who knows very little about Orthodontics? And what terms are they using? What are, how can we turn around and speak to their experience here?

Richie Guerzon: Absolutely. Yeah. I advise that even when you're doing keyword research, if you're going to do your own search engine optimization. It's so important to try to go look through the eyes of your potential customer, the potential patient because they're using their words are not using your words, you know, they're asking questions from their point of view cetera. You have to get into that person's head. You want to really be successful with the marketing campaign.

Davin Bickford: Yeah, I mean you got you guys obviously know, you know better than anybody in terms of all the different ways that you can communicate with patients and the best ways to do it. You know, when we really encourage our doctors to think about themselves and the parents and the kids and in a couple different ways. First of all, if we're honest, and we're saying okay patient care and patient experiences is a must, you know, having a good experience having a good treatment outcome. The goal of the orthodontist is to increase case acceptance. They want to have more patience for the most part, more patients starting in their practice. So, they're coming at it from that point of view. Mom is coming or dad is coming from the point of view of we want to have we want our kid to have good treatment and we want it to be enjoyable for them. We want it to be fun for them. We want them to come out of this better. So, they're worried about their kid and how they're how their kid is going to be treated both on a personal level and on the orthodontic level, but then the kid and the kid often gets left out of the conversation. Kid is coming to it as they just want to be part of the experience. They want have a voice they want to okay, I don't get a choice. Mom's gonna make me get braces but I want some say in something. We really encourage our clients to come to it from that point of view not only in their office, but in their marketing, I think that goes a long way in helping them, you know see it from the other perspective.

Richie Guerzon: Okay. So why would you say patients talk about doctor, team members, treatment outside of the office? What’s driving them to do that? Just yes, that great experience? It's like in their head, they have that equity, they're kind of invested?

Davin Bickford: Right. Yeah, so here's the deal. People talk about your practice outside of your practice for two main reasons. They want to complain, or they had an exceedingly good experience or a better-than-expected experience or a better-than-expected treatment outcome.

Richie Guerzon: Yeah, so it's if it's exactly as expected nothing happens right?

Davin Bickford: So they go in. They meet him everybody's nice. They have some coffee in the waiting room. They go in the doctor comes in spend a few minutes with them. Tell them about the treatment they get you know, they get the braces on they leave. As expected experience. Something that people are not probably for the most part going to talk about in great detail outside of their immediate family. You give someone an experience that they enjoy and those patients are like wildfire. So, the why I mean, why do we want to focus on patients as influencers or why do we want to focus on that is number one. It doesn't cost anything it cost you whatever it costs to make the experience great. Which in most cases is very very little, just personal touch.

Richie Guerzon: So this could really reduce your patient acquisition costs, this technique, this strategy.

Davin Bickford: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, one thing that that so Cain Watters is a company that operates in the orthodontic industry and they do they provide services to orthodontist on a financial level. They offer a lot of different things, but they came out with some numbers within the last couple of years that said, okay. So, if your practice is a million and a half dollars or more in revenue, your patient acquisition cost is 18% lower than a smaller practice. The average cost of acquiring a new patient is about $90 interesting according to their numbers. Yeah, we take that and we say hey, why was the big practice why were there patient Acquisitions costs lower by 18 percent? Well, Cain Watters said that it's because those practices have a larger patient base. Yeah, and have more word-of-mouth referrals which decreases patient acquisition cost.

Richie Guerzon: Oh, yeah word of mouth is always the most powerful driver of new patients, of course

Davin Bickford: Well and I think about so sometimes doctors that we work with have a hard time understanding how word of mouth is as powerful as it is, I don't know if you see that with your clients.

Richie Guerzon: But yeah, I can see it's hard to measure so, you know, it's kind of out there. It feels abstract, ethereal.

Davin Bickford: Yeah, why don't we look at our so if you look at industry data from put out by the AAO and and AJODO the journal the clinical Journal they provide vendors with a report every year of where doctors get their information from and what is the most credible source. By far is another doctor and that's Word of Mouth. So, I we use that example with our clients a lot just to say. Hey, you know, it's true in your experience with your practice. So, it's absolutely true with your patients and their experience.

Richie Guerzon: Yeah, that's a great way to tie a great experience to word-of-mouth increased patient acquisition costs. I mean when you can do that, you really see the value of it right there.

Davin Bickford: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, then the question is well, how can I practice that's less than a million and a half in revenue one of the smaller practices. How can they decrease their equity patient acquisition cost? Well focus on the experience offer things into practice that patients want to talk about and an offer this experience and you increase your word of mouth decrease customer acquisition cost and you close the gap but as a small practice.

Richie Guerzon: Okay. Yeah. So, let's talk about really that moment when someone's just a lead their potential patient to a start. What do you think of the kind of messaging that's needed to get them over the fence to become a start?

Davin Bickford: Yeah, so, you know it goes back to kind of what we were talking about earlier with, you know, the difference between features and benefits and the difference between technical conversation. I mean, there is some level of technical conversation. Don't get me wrong. Yeah, it has to happen in the new patient appointment, but they are buying features benefits and experiences. And so it starts with them walking through the door and someone saying something nice to them. Hey Welcome to our practice first with someone using their name. It starts with the practice being a comfortable environment to you know to be in and then that new patient appointment is oftentimes a Make It or Break It

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Time and tying in things and a communication and communicating your services in a way that patients easily understand both at the kid level and at the parent level.

Richie Guerzon: And that's so difficult. We often will set up email automations for the doctors that reiterate the very points that they went over in that first meeting because we know that as soon as someone gets glazed over the rest, whatever you said after that is done like they didn't hear it. Didn't enter the brain.

Davin Bickford: I go home, you know, I'll have a conversation. I'm let's say my wife knows I'm going to have this conversation. So, I'll get home and she'll say well how did that conversation go and I'll say well, oh my gosh, I don't know. I don't know. You gotta keep reiterating the information absolutely and they need to see it. You know, they say the average person needs to see something seven times before they're aware of it. Right?

Richie Guerzon: That's yeah advertising 101, right

Davin Bickford: And then you get you get into. Okay. Well, what does it take to get someone to act? Well, they have to see the information at least 15 times. So, you know, how do you do that in the patient's language over and over again?

Richie Guerzon: Yeah, it is challenging we communicate with them all different ways, the ways that they care about you know. So, how would you say someone modalities and appliances can ultimately influence our decision to start?

Davin Bickford: Yeah, well, so the modalities of treatment really influence the Doctor Who is best able to communicate the reason for the modality or the idea behind the treatment in a way that the patient can easily understand mmm to the extent that they can do that well, the doctor wins that doctor will win the patient. Also, if you can have the ability to offer you brought up appliances, so there are from our perspective. There are four categories of a plant offerings in general in terms of bonded bracket appliances. So, you have traditional metal braces still by Far and Away the most used product in the industry. Then you have clear braces. And then you have the category of designer braces, which is where we fit in races. And then you have clear aligners. It's important for practices to know that those categories speak to a different segment of the market. You want to make sure you're offering appliances and you're promoting those appliances on your website and your social media platforms in all forms of marketing that you're promoting those through the different constituents in your community that you want to bring in as a client.

Richie Guerzon: Yeah, they're all going to have different messaging pertaining to these different people our buyer personas. It's not just demographic. It's where do they get their information? What do they care about their pains? They’re goals Etc?

Davin Bickford: Right, right. So, then you set up those buyer personas and then you say OK. Well these buyer personas get this information from TikTok or from social media in general. Let's say or you know, whatever different platforms well, not only do you have to market on those platforms. They have to make sure that what you're communicating on those platforms is speaking effectively to the people that are using those platforms. For example, you're not going to advertise wild Smiles braces in a newspaper. Yeah, probably not hitting the right target. Yeah, TikTok Instagram, you know Twitter Facebook. You're hitting the moms the kids. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah snapchats excetera that makes sense endless we could go on and we get up have an hour talking about just the social media platforms.

Richie Guerzon: And it's yeah keeps changing constantly over and over again every day. All right. So, why do you think that you have to focus your campaigns on these key differentiators? Let's talk about differentiators. Why is that important for a practice?

Davin Bickford: Well, so, what differentiates an orthodontic practice is again the features and the benefits and the experience because for the most part yeah consumers come in with the expectation if we're setting expectations that they're going to get a good treatment outcome. So, things that you can use to speak to consumers in their language is really what is differentiating you so, you know, the one example that people hear all the time is, you know offering coffee in the office. You know, five years ago, not everybody offered coffee in their office or they just offered a coffee pot but you know, we have customers that offer a they have a barista on staff.

Richie Guerzon: Yeah?! Well, I haven't heard that. What!

Davin Bickford: And so, you know, one of their one of their you know, one of their front desk people is a barista.

Richie Guerzon: Yeah, but that's a great idea.

Davin Bickford: So, when they're dual function, but when you know, they keep the the they got the expresso. I mean, it looks like a Starbucks in there. You know, so so now, you know, maybe in some communities that doesn't differentiate you anymore. So, you got to get so now they got to have the Barista and make it look like Starbucks different shade. But so those are the kinds of things that we really encourage our clients to look at and the doctors that we work with to look at as differentiators

Richie Guerzon: and it's important that whatever they are the customer values them their perception that has to be perception of value from the customers point of view. If they don't have that then it's pointless.

Davin Bickford: We have to remember so we've got a good friend of mine. Also an orthodontist Neil Kravitz out in out in Chantilly, Virginia. He used to give a presentation. That would say young is better than old near is better than far and girls are better than boys. Now, you want to attract a female patient. That's young and lives near your practice ideally because that patient profile will talk about their experience on a totally different level than anybody else. And so, to get to your point about, you know, it has to be a value. So, you need to be really focusing in on these patient personas that you have and what kind of practice do you want to have what kind of patient base Do you want to build and make sure that you're speaking the language of the of those patients because we have to remember 75% of orthodontic patients are kids and a hundred percent of orthodontists are not kids, right? So, we need to make sure that as adults as professionals that were taking a step back and saying, okay, what does my patient profile and what kind of patient profile benefits my practice the best, you know, where am I going to get the most new patient acquisition?

Richie Guerzon: That makes sense, of course and a lot of I think a lot of practice aren't even sure what their differentiate these might be right now or they might think you know, they might say it's something but do they really are they really invested in it? If customer service is their differentiator, what are they doing to make sure actually is Growing Experience of the patient.

Davin Bickford: Well, and I'm glad you brought that up Richie because that's one thing that we talk to our clients about a lot is you know nothing can destroy a business faster than saying you have great customer service or a great experience or X and set the expectation up here customer comes in has a subpar experience probably because you've inflated. Yeah that that is not good for your business. So, if you're going to do things you have to deliver you have to.

Richie Guerzon: I mean, especially in the world of Google reviews, Facebook reviews, yelp. I mean one bad mouth and all of a sudden your patients are cut in half and don't know why. So, obviously Wild Smiles is a cool differentiator. What is it? Describe it to everyone if they haven't heard of you.

Davin Bickford: Yeah, so Wild Smiles is pretty simple to explain actually. I mean we take a traditional mini twin orthodontic bracket. Yeah works exactly the same as most if not all orthodontic brackets that are mini twins, you know, it's a technology that has been around for a long time and we've just taken the pad and instead of a square shape pad we put a different shape on it. And then we offer that in only six brackets per patient. So a lot of patients that use Wild Smiles are you know, a lot of doctors use Wild Smiles on early treatment patients. So, they're only bonding them on four teeth. So, the implementation into a practice is super simple and it doesn't change anything about you know, the treatment outcome. It doesn't change anything about the way that the doctor practices we offer it in prescriptions and Slot sizes that the doctor uses plug ours in on those 6414 gotcha.

Richie Guerzon: So it really serves as a differentiator and more than one way of prize if it's a product but also the customer experience is changing. Let's talk about that a little bit. Why, how does it function of both?

Davin Bickford: Right. Yeah. So, the differentiator I think is fairly self-explanatory. You know, it's something that if we're looking at those four buckets of Appliance offerings, you know, Wild Smiles ticks one of those buckets and so from a differentiate ER not everybody has all four buckets hmm different offer all four buckets that are speaking to the entirety of the market. From an experience standpoint going back to you know, the voice that gets lost in a lot of the conversation about you know, the way of practice it's an experience is the voice of the kid. I mean it's in there but they don't spend a lot of time they spend from my experience in the customers. We work with they spend more time thinking about the viewpoint of the mom then they do the point of the kid when it comes to offerings and stuff like this and so those go back to the kid and you know, what they want is they just want to voice in The Experience. They just want to feel part of the treatment and so Wild Smiles is something that they can come in that they have to have braces because Mom's telling them but it speaks to their experience and you better believe that a kid comes in and can choose heart stars footballs. You know, they can choose a form different sports teams that they might follow that's an experience that that kid is going to talk about.

Richie Guerzon: Yeah. So from the kids point of view that's like a huge benefit

Davin Bickford: and like I said watching my girls in this in this title block down when you know, we're social distancing, but we're seeing you know, friends and standing from across the street and that kind of stuff and they're telling their telling them so I can just imagine on the playground at school when they're less than 6 feet apart, you know. So this is definitely a piece of pie that you have to focus on.

Richie Guerzon: And it lets them have some self expression too, which is nice for a kid, you know, they it's a customized experience. We were talking about personalized experience,

Davin Bickford: right? I mean in in almost every industry that we interacted as consumers there is an opportunity for personalization and customization and I want to also point out the difference between personalization and customization. So, customization is making something that fits you only. Like a custom shirt is going to. I'm going to take my measurements and I'm going to have a tailor make a shirt that fits my measurements perfectly, that's customization. Personalization is offering something that people can identify with. It's good and so Wild Smiles is not a custom bracket, it's a personalized bracket where we're allowing a patient to have a unique experience based on what they like, so if they play soccer they get soccer balls if they play football then get footballs.

Richie Guerzon: So, what is the best clinical application for Wild Smiles if someone's interested?

Davin Bickford: Yeah, so the quick answer is you know any patient that's getting braces can get Wild Smiles. I mean it fits into the treatment modality that's most used by doctors, which is bonded mini twin brackets. Okay that said, the best clinical application is an early treatment phase one situation where you're bonding you're doing some easy alignment, but it's less about it's an easy case or an easy alignment or whatever on the technical side. It's more about because that patient is going to go out and they're going to talk about their experience. That patient is going to be excited rather than frustrated with what their experience they're going to tell their parents and then the parents will, you know will also follow suit in talking about that.

Richie Guerzon: Yeah, that makes sense. Are there any other benefits for the doctor will using this using wild Smalls?

Davin Bickford: Yeah, so, you know tons of benefits for our the practice to meet the obvious one is what we've been talking about a little bit here is the patient experience side of lose but the benefit to the doctor is we offer in a couple different slot sizes and different prescriptions. So, it's easy to implement. You know bracket price there's not a price difference in any large way. You know, when you look at the average of all the all the treatments out there, you know, the price per bracket is, you know, it's not an increase in cost. We did a study a few years ago and found that the average orthodontist that we work with spends more on their coffee bar in a year than they do on implementing Wild Smiles.

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Richie Guerzon: The coffee bar ha ha ha.

Davin Bickford: So, you know, there's a number of different levels, you know, another benefit would be that you know, it doesn't add any time. I mean when the doctor gets to the chair to bond the brackets often times the brackets are already laid out on a tray Forum. No different with wild Smiles you just you know, you just have your teen lay them out and you're ready to bond.

Richie Guerzon: So, I heard there's something new going on that's coming. Once you talk about that a little bit.

Davin Bickford: Yeah. Yeah, so this has been years in the making and we're really excited about it because of the experience piece that we talked about. Yeah, right. So what we have coming this summer is we have an exclusive partnership with Disney to make braces and other products. I'm not at Liberty to talking in a lot of detail about what's coming because we do have some more announcements coming as we get closer to the summer. Yeah. Also, you know trying to evaluate exactly where things are with covid and making sure that you know where there were really responding to the market and meeting them where they're at because we know that doctors are going to come out of this and their heads are going to be and how do I how do I organize my practice. We'll be sharing more information. But what's really cool and what I am most excited about the Disney partnership is the experience piece. We're going to we're going to be able to allow orthodontist to bring this Disney Experience to the patient level in their practice.

Richie Guerzon: Yeah, that's huge.

Davin Bickford: Where where'd you gotta go to a Disney park spend thousands of dollars to go to on vacation to get the Disney Experience now in Orthodontics doctors are going to be off able to offer this Disney Experience and we're offering not just brackets. There's gonna be other items other products that are going to hold to immerse the patient that wants the Disney Experience. There will be immersed in that throughout their entire time in treatment, which is really really cool.

Richie Guerzon: Yeah. It's all about a differentiator being able to just tie your practice at all to the Disney brand. I mean anything that you can tie to Disney brand is going to help elevate its perception.

Davin Bickford: It works very very much like our College Brands, you know in communities or in States where there's a practice that you know, where there's a big college team there to the extent that they can you know offer things that tie in with that brand it’s beneficial hugely beneficial to their practice. And so, the same is true with Disney, you know on a much larger scale because that's an international brand we in preparation for it, Disney shared some numbers that they have. They have 100% brand recognition in the United States and Canada.

Richie Guerzon: Of course, that makes sense I would imagine how amazing that statistic is.
Davin Bickford: I mean you go into Walmart or Target and go down the toy aisle and half of it is Disney products.

Richie Guerzon: A kid can't be more than six months old and know what it is

Davin Bickford: I've seen like those little Mobile's that you put on your baby's crib. Yeah, you know, they have one with all the Disney characters. So, that's day one they get indoctrinated.

Richie Guerzon: All right, so if a doctor wants to get started, what is it look like how did they get started?

Davin Bickford: Yeah, so we try to make it super simple with Wild Smiles. So, what I would just suggest is I don't typically do this Richie. Typically, you know, you can go to our website and get information there fill out some form of early. But but I would say for your for your audience, I'm just going to give you my email and my phone number and so I would just say that you email me Davin which is D-a-v-i-n @ wild smiles braces.com. They can also if email is too old school and you prefer, you know, texting you can call or text me and my number they'll go direct to me. No switchboards. No, nothing. You can just get direct me. It's 402-677-3311.

Richie Guerzon: So if someone's ready to go. They're doing it. What is the onboarding look like? What does the process look like?

Davin Bickford: So again, we're really big on making sure that the experience is intact. So not just at the customer level but at the doctoral level, yeah. So, what we want to do is we want to get on a conversation with you get on a phone call. We want to learn about your practice. We want to learn about where you're at what your needs are how Wild Smiles can help in your perfect situation your specific situation, and then we're going to work you as the doctor and some of your key team members the treatment coordinator may be the lead clinical person. We're going to lead them through some training sounds a little more formal than maybe it actually is but video instruction and a team call to help them understand how to integrate Wild Smiles we help with some scripting and some ideas on the best practices. So, we really want to make sure that everybody is offering this this baseline experience.

Richie Guerzon: Yeah, but you how even help Mark with marketing the product to right?

Davin Bickford: Yeah, absolutely. So, we have a team of people that create content and with all this Disney stuff that's coming out part of what we'll be announcing is we're taking that marketing piece to another level in terms of the support that we're going to offer our clients. And so, we help with of course in office stuff, but also social media website web pages and content because you know doctors are always looking for content that they can put out there and so we try to help them with that.

Richie Guerzon: And I can say a few of our clients use your product and it was very helpful to have that marketing help even if you're working with an agency like us because you know, you guys know what messaging works you have all the imagery so we can put it on make the campaign so much easier to make a campaign you have the content to do so though that definitely looks made a big difference for us,

Davin Bickford: Yeah. Well good. I'm glad I mean that's our whole goal is we want to make it as streamlined as possible and we want because at the end of the day, you know, we're focused on those things that we talked about with the doctors for that. I talked about earlier the doctor wants to increase patients.
So that's from the doctor perspective. That's what we're trying to help them do. We're also trying to communicate to the parent and the kid on the level that they can and help the doctor communicate that

Richie Guerzon: Absolutely. great experiences real differentiators. I think it's a win. Well Davin, thank you so much for your time. It was really informative had a good time.

Davin Bickford: Absolutely. I appreciate you guys having me on thank you so much.

Richie Guerzon: All right, well take it easy. Stay safe out there.

Davin Bickford: Bye-bye.