Case Study – Bayou City Smiles Dental, Internet Marketing

With a lot of competition in the area, brand awareness key for local dentist

• Bayou City Smiles started with TheWebPageSite.com (TWS) in 2013
• Dr. Marcus de Guzman wanted to establish a presence in a competitive area
• New website streamlined communication and focused on customer needs

There are a number of dentists in the Greater Heights area, so when Dr. Marcus de Guzman opened his practice, Bayou City Smiles, in the area he knew he’d need to find a way to stand out.

Five years ago, Dr. de Guzman consulted with Edward Ferguson and signed on with his new company to redesign their office website. TheWebPageSite has been on retainer since then to do website updates, as well as handle their online marketing and advertising and other social media tasks.

Office manager Chelsea Flack is now TWS’ primary contact to make sure everyone is on the same page to grow their brand awareness and their business.

Making sure the tool is useful

The primary purpose of any website is to make sure that it meets the needs of the people who use it. The original site for Bayou City Smiles was broken and their existing service wasn’t doing anything to fix it.

“The goal of the website was to not get in the way of providing great customer service,” Ferguson says. “It needed to allow patients to request appointments quickly. Unlike many of its competitors at the time, the new site was designed to be mobile-friendly. Patients could literally request communication and a call back within 20 seconds or less.”

While many dentist websites focus on the business, the site for Bayou City Smiles focused on the customer.
“Their design really allowed them to stand out and book quickly,” Ferguson says.

Flack notes that because the relationship with the dentist and patient is an important one in terms of care and mutual trust, one of the most visited parts of their website is the Bio page for the staff.

“We look at the marketing stats together monthly,” Ferguson says. “We know exactly what the customers are looking for and how they arrive at the website. Because we know that people look at the team images the most, we can justify the budget to hire professional photographers and ensure that the bios are up to date.”

“They like to see who is taking care of them,” Flack adds. “We want to let patients see who we are.”

Another often visited page describes the type of services that Bayou City Smiles offers.

For Flack, a technical grasp of web programming isn’t the important thing – she wants to make sure that their site stays fresh and updated and that they are maintaining their brand awareness in the community. Bayou City Smiles is opening up a second location and that will require some new content.

“I think the website is great,” Flack says. “I visit it to see what’s changing. I look at the competition too.”

Hands-on service

Flack said that one of the best things about working with TWS is the flow of communication and the ease with which she can request updates to the site. There is a client portal for all website clients to streamline the process.

Over time, TWS has added multiple patient capture points on the website, including the Feedback Form and Feedback icon to track and fix technical issues. There is also chat functionality.

“Customers typically seek out a means to rectify an issue before going to Yelp or Google, so we wanted to give them several,” Ferguson says. “Many competitors still don’t grasp this concept and don’t have systems in place to communicate effectively.”

The value for Bayou City Smiles is that TWS cares to understand both their brand and their business. We understand that if a website is down they are missing out on new patients – and according to the American Dental Association, a new patient is worth approximately $15,000 over 7 to 10 years.

TWS also understands that Bayou City Smiles clients are loyal and love to see what’s happening within the office. So throughout the year we update content on the website and social media with onsite pictures and video.
“Edward always seems to know what we need,” Flack says.