My wife and I recently completed a renovation project of a master bathroom. We shopped online for towels and bath mats, and after visiting many websites we eventually found just what we were searching for. Amazingly enough – for the next 30 to 45 days – there would be an ad for bath towels on the right-hand side of my computer screen. The same thing happened when I was shopping online for a Patriots Super Bowl T shirt. I visited the NFL website, but couldn’t decide on a purchase. Sure enough, I’m still seeing ads for Patriots gear pop up on my computer.

The experience I describe is a form of advertising and marketing called re-targeting. A tracking code is embedded in the footer of a website. The code creates a list of people that visit the site. Re-targeting vendors like AdRoll are able to display ads to your potential customers virtually anywhere that they go online. Studies show that retargeting ads get an average of 10 times the click throughs as other ads.  Plus every time that potential customer sees your ads, your brand gains recognition.

Re-targeting can work beautifully for a dental practice. Imagine someone lands on a page of your website that talks about whitening. They found your site through SEO or Facebook. This person is already interested in what you have to offer. You can now follow them around the web for the next 90 days with ads that talk about the benefits of whiter teeth. Creating these ads takes considerable coordination.  But if done well, it is a terrific opportunity to promote your dental office to people who have already come to your site.

You can run similar campaigns for popular services like implants, adult orthodontics, and same day crowns.  Each campaign needs a series of five different sized ads because the ad space allotted is different depending on which website the ad is showing on. This is very sophisticated advertising, and you need to hire someone with the proper expertise.  If you have any interest in learning more about re-targeting, I would strongly endorse my talented friend Heather LoGrippo of Expose Yourself PR. She charges a one-time fee of $250 to create the five ads and then $500/month to manage and monitor the campaign. Heather has a lot of experience with this technique. You can call her at 617-957-3868.

A common observation over the years in my role as a coach to dentists is that they are very reluctant to change. Change, of course, is always difficult. The status quo is so much more comfortable. But this risk averse, playing it safe mentality, eventually becomes paralyzing. Growth is difficult to impossible to achieve with this mindset. Consider these examples.

• Dentists are reluctant or embarrassed to talk to their patients about money. How can you expect the patient to buy something from you when they don’t know the approximate price? Making the financial arrangements and coordinating insurance benefits is a job for your financial coordinator. But the dentist’s job is to confidently sell the case.

• Dentists are reluctant to leave low-paying PPO networks for fear their patients will leave the practice. This paranoia and lack of confidence and insecurity is often unfounded. A large majority of patients will stay because they love you and your staff and the quality of your work and the excellent customer service experience.

•Dentists are reluctant to fire underperforming employees – those troublemakers who suck the energy out of the rest of the staff. With proper documentation and up-to-date HR protocols, dentists need not be fearful of an improper firing lawsuit.

•Dentists often have difficulty being the leader of their team – knowing how to draw the fine line between being a friend and being the boss. Setting boundaries, setting expectations, and knowing how to consistently communicate the vision for the practice are challenges you should welcome.

I recently read a great book called Reach: A New Strategy to Help You Step Outside Your Comfort Zone, Rise to the Challenge, and Build Confidence. It is authored by Andrew Molinsky, a professor at the Brandeis International Business School. The book lays out a step-by-step process to help you overcome these feelings of inadequacy that so many of us experience. Molinsky recounts with numerous real-world examples the fact that “successful people are not inherently different from anyone else; they’ve just found their own way to rise to the challenge they face.”

This is a quick read with action steps that you can implement immediately. As your New Year resolutions start to fade, reading Reach could be just the jump start you need. Click here to buy your copy.