Protect Yourself
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How To Protect Yourself
From the Internet “Gurus”
Unfortunately, the primary focus of most Web and Marketing “experts” is to…
…make a quick buck from dentists’ lack of understanding about how Marketing and the Internet truly work.
If you don’t believe me, go ahead and ask them SPECIFICALLY how that site they’re trying to sell you will earn you money. They’ll almost certainly try to distract you from what really matters — the process of building your profitable online presence — with some of these “red herrings”…
[Just like a magician uses misdirection to get you to focus on something else, so you don’t notice what’s REALLY going on… It’s a classic magician’s trick.]
Before you can discover precisely how to ensure your dental website becomes profitable, you first need to protect yourself from these “sneaky” sales tactics:
Sneaky Sales Tactic #1:
“Dreams of ‘Instant’ Internet Riches”
Webmasters and Internet “gurus” will attempt to excite your imagination (and “greed glands”) with a handful of carefully selected online “success” stories — and imply that the Web will somehow, effortlessly, generate similar results for your dental practice.
They focus on the dazzling end result… but conveniently fail to mention the critical step-by-step processes which enabled those practices to:
- drive traffic to their dental websites;
- convert that traffic into paying customers.
Yes, success stories and case studies can be extremely useful — but only if you can realistically implement those same success strategies in your dental practice.
Sneaky Sales Tactic #2:
“Submitting Your Website to the Search Engines”
In an attempt to gloss over Sales Tactic #1, virtually all webmasters and webhosting services advertise they will “submit your dental website to all of the major search engines”; in fact, some will even claim they’ll submit to thousands of the search engines and directories. What they don’t tell you, is that your site will end up being listed somewhere beyond page 5,608,369 of Google’s (or Yahoo’s, or MSN’s) search results — which obviously no person will EVER find.
The truth is, getting free traffic from the search engines demands a clear strategy… requires time and dedication… and entails somewhat of a learning curve. (To evaluate whether it would be worthwhile for you to pursue this traffic strategy, check out the rest of this website…)
Sneaky Sales Tactic #3:
“Free Advertising”
Many web-designers and webhosts may offer you some kind of free advertising, perhaps in the form of banner ads, “guaranteed” traffic, etc. Unfortunately, there are simply far too many ways to “fleece” the unwary person with these traffic strategies, to even begin listing them all here.
Here are just a few of the scams:
- spider-bots that register “hits” to your site;
- pop-up pages that instantly get blocked by pop-up software;
- simply disappearing with your money.
Unless you have reason to trust the person who’s recommending them, don’t hold any high expectations from these “free” advertising offers. Bottom line, you won’t make any dental appointments or profits from these “free” traffic sources.
Sales Tactic #4:
“100 Gazillion MB of Bandwidth”
For some websites, having large amounts of bandwidth is important. However, if you don’t have any traffic, you’ll never take advantage of all this bandwidth. The hosting companies recognize this fact, and that’s why they can advertise it — they know 99.9% of their clients won’t ever get anywhere near those limits.
Sales Tactic #5:
“100% Website Uptime Guarantee”
No question, reliable website uptime is vitally important… But just like the previous point, it’s completely meaningless, if you don’t have any traffic. ‘Nough said.
Sales Tactic #6:
“Free Domain Name(s)”
You can get domain names for under $10 per year (I’ll show you your best options, as well as the many hidden pitfalls). Nor does your domain name need to be registered by your webhost. Don’t base a decision that’s absolutely critical to your online success, on such a small amount of money.
Sales Tactic #7:
“Low Price”
Choosing a webhost purely on price is unquestionably foolish: there are so many factors to consider. Sure, you can find a hosting company for as little as $2.99 per month. However, this will NOT likely be the best value hosting option for you.
In summary: Make sure you evaluate all the factors, before you entrust your website’s success to just any webhost and/or “guru” webmaster.
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