Social Media Branding for the Little Guy: A True Story of a Dental Office
Let’s talk about branding "for the little guy." You know, the rest of us who can’t afford Super Bowl ads
For the sake of simplicity, let’s focus on one aspect: Facebook covers for your business page.
Why not Instagram? “Why not x, y, z? Are you saying that x, y, z isn’t important?” No, this is not what I’m saying. It’s a real-life example. It’s not meant to be an encyclopedic entry on branding, OK? OK.
So, our client, Kilgore Dental Care (KDC), has been doing this “revolutionary” thing where they change their Facebook covers regularly, to coordinate with holidays and other memorable occasions.
The covers, created by our award-winning designers, are not random, made by your Fiverr crowd. They take the basics of KDC brand and subtly incorporate recognizable elements of the holiday/special occasion.
They kept doing it consistently for over a year. No biggie…
Did KDC phones start ringing and a long line of people snaked around their building trying to get an appointment with the dentist? Of course not!
If that’s how you approach branding, you don’t understand it; you don’t understand the long game and the compound effect.
By the way—a little bit of a back story. When KDC approached us, they said from the get-go that they don’t want a “typical” dental office website. No white and blue colors, no stock images of people smiling so hard they look they’re about to fall out of the chair. (Anyone who has been a patient at a dental office knows this is not how it works. You open big and shut up, for the most part, anyway. But I digress.)
Naturally, every other marketing asset followed the rule of being unique.
So, here’s what happened. People in their market started recognizing their brand. They were getting compliments on their Facebook presence. Their followers were excited to find out what will come next.
Good for them, you might say. Show me the money. I can’t eat compliments or pay my bills with them. (I wish we could!)
Guess what—every time KDC does a promotion or a giveaway, they always get tons of engagement. They get consistent traffic to their website from their social media. When they choose to run ads, they instantly get recognized in their local market. The above translates in real referrals and real customers.
Rumor has it, some of the players in the local market even tried to copy their style and their approach. Now, that’s a real, albeit unintended, compliment!
In all fairness, KDC doesn’t even use their FB account to its full potential. They are, after all, a relatively small dental office with limited resources. But they don’t even need it. They have secured their place in the local market by simply paying attention to branding.
If anyone is still looking for me to spell out the moral of the story, it’s this: yes, branding can be complex, overwhelming, and expensive; but you can take small steps and watch them compound over time.
