The Reviews are In

© Michael Brown – Fotolia.com

3M ESPE has a fairly substantial amount of traffic to its website and overall customers have a high rate of satisfaction in their experience with it. Of course, we never stop tweaking things to make them better, so throughout 2011 the company spent a good deal of time updating the site – to give it a cleaner look, make it easier to search and compare, etc.  One interesting little tidbit that we added is the ability to implement ratings and reviews of our products right on the site (if you’ve ever spent any time on Best Buy or Amazon, you know exactly what I’m talking about).  It’s an interesting little experiment that we’re trying, and I guess it’s a vote of confidence in ourselves and in the quality of our products that we take this step. We want customers to go online to our site and tell us what they think of our products in an effort to make them even better! We hope you take time to check out this new feature and give us your thoughts on all the ‘must-have’ 3M ESPE products in your toolbag.

Lighting a ‘Fire’

Photo credit: Diego Cervo

The Kindle Fire has quickly become Amazon.com’s best-selling product of all time!  At the same time that this new tablet was flying out the door, online spending for the holiday’s reached new highs. According to market research firm ComScore, between Nov. 1, 2011 and Dec. 26, 2011, consumers spent $35.3 billion online. This is 15% more than consumers spent online in the same time period in 2010. I would imagine that many of you were involved in this online extravaganza (I know I certainly was), so what drives you to buy online? Is it the convenience? The ability to compare products? Being able to wear sweats and a Tee shirt  while completing the holiday gift list?

What is it that makes so many of us shun the brick-and-mortar retail locations in favor of online purchases? Lines? Pesky salespeople (or other customers)? Lack of selection?  Describe your ideal on-line shopping experience. What gets your online purchasing ‘fire’ started?

Social Hour

Social media. What do you think of when you see those two words?

Those two words have changed much of how our society communicates with one another. If we only look at Facebook, just one of a myriad of social media outlets online today, the company reports it garners 800 million active users, 50% of whom log in every day. That’s a lot of consumers.  And, it’s a lot of professionals, too.  We have a 3M ESPE Facebook page and we have a very steady flow of traffic viewing our content and interacting with us, as well. Of course, these are dental professionals, which is our target audience.

Are you targeting potential patients on Facebook? Would you gain referrals if your patients “like” you?  Have you mapped out an overall online marketing strategy that includes social media? According to The Media Audit (Oct. 2010), one third of US consumers spend >3 hours online every day.  If you’re not planning for this you might be missing a potentially huge opportunity.  And nobody “likes” that.

The Most Unlikely Places

Back in 2003 I was on vacation in the South of France with my family.  We’re at the beach and my kids start playing with some other kids, so the Dad of these children and I start chatting. He goes right into the ‘what do you do for a living?’ conversation (a pet peeve of mine) and I explain that I work at 3M in the marketing function.  Well, that was all he needed to proceed with talking my ear off about all that he and his company could do for me, yada, yada, yada. So I come back from the vacation and find an invitation to something called LinkedIn in my e-mail from this same guy. So, I accept his invitation and move on with life.

Skip ahead to 2007/2008 when LinkedIn became mainstream and I still have my one contact – the ‘what do you do for a living?’ guy; however, now I start to realize that this website might actually have some utility, so I start on a quest to see how many people I know (I’m at 518 and counting).  Every person who is connected to me I’ve either met in person or have had some sort of phone/e-mail communication with over the years (so I’m not padding my numbers!). How many people do you know?  Do you use LinkedIn? 

According to Hubspot’s State of Inbound Marketing Report 2011, LinkedIn outperforms Facebook and Twitter for generating the most conversions (i.e., acquiring a customer through this channel) for business-to-business companies.  Does it work for business-to-consumer, too?  Is it a tool you’re considering for your practice?

Happy Thanksgiving

I’d like to wish a very happy Thanksgiving to you, my readers. We’ve surpassed the 18-month mark and the interaction here continues to grow and prosper. Thank you for your comments and insights; I certainly do appreciate and enjoy the interaction. 

I know 3M ESPE is also thankful for our loyal customers. We truly appreciate your business. 

My best wishes to you and your families for a happy and safe Thanksgiving.

What’s Your Story?

“Not long ago, one of my long-standing friends lost his job. He had always been self-conscience about his smile, but had never done anything about it because he made his kids’ teeth a priority. But now that he was looking for a new job, and after several months without success, I offered to help him with his smile…”

And so begins a great story from Dr. John Weston about the power of dentistry. We’re all involved in a very exciting industry/profession that can really make a difference in people’s lives. Do you have a story to share?

Stat: 21% of survey respondents said that reading a blog helped them decide on a product/service. Source: Jupiter Research, October 2008

Pa$$woRd Pr0tEcTED!!

How many passwords do you have in your life right now? There’s one to login to your computer, another for accessing iTunes, another for accessing your bank, another for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter – and so on and so forth.  I personally get crazy mad having to remember all these passwords, so you write them down and then you have a list of your passwords floating out there, which basically defeats the purpose of having passwords in the first place. 

Now, I understand the importance of having this information secure, so I’m not advocating less security.  And, to be honest, I had the importance of these pesky passwords stamped into my brain by an article I read online not too long ago (undoubtedly after inputting my subscription password). In the article, they mention just how quickly a hacker can break down your encryption if you use a simple password structure – in this instance it was “moose44”.  Apparently, this would take a hacking software less than a second to crack. Now, if you change that password to “moose44!.!.!.!” it now will take approximately 200,000 centuries! 

Perhaps this doesn’t pertain to dentistry, but it might just save some of your important documents from the hands of a hacker. How secure is your password system? Check out this online calculator and test out how long your chosen words would last under scrutiny.  G00d 1ucK!>!

Speaking of Smartphones

I receive a lot of USB devices in my line of work.  Everyone has A LOT of information for me to review and they feel the need to put it all on a USB Flash Drive for me to keep.  Of course, when I actually need one of these little  devils I can never find one! Enter the FileMagnet app which allows your smartphone to function like a USB drive.  You also can wirelessly copy files from your PC or Mac to your mobile.  Brilliant!

Mobile Commerce

I think we all have a general understanding that for years online commerce has been very common in many people’s everyday lives.  Sites like eBay and Amazon have tremendous amounts of traffic and transactions that have made purchasing items via computer mainstream. Fast forward to 2011, where more smartphones were shipped than PCs for the first time ever, and it makes me ask the question: will mobile commerce explode in the coming years? According to Nielsen, 1 in 2 cell phone users will have a smartphone by Christmas of 2011, so there is clearly a large audience capable of purchasing in this way; however, if you take a look at some companies like eBay and Amazon, you see that mobile is not taking off quite so quickly when it comes to actually purchasing items (although, apparently eBay sells 3-4 Ferrari’s each month via their mobile app). Is this just normal slow market penetration, or are consumers more wary of mobile commerce?  How about in your own life?  Are you using that iPhone or Android to actually pull the trigger on a purchase? Or is the PC at home a more trusted shopping cart?

Group Effort

As a company, we pride ourselves on being in touch with dental professionals – continually asking for their insights into everything from products to industry trends. During some of these past sessions we spent considerable time obtaining reactions to our own ideas about dental adhesives, all leading up to a recent launch of a real game-changing adhesive that we’re calling Scotchbond™ Universal Adhesive. With as much input as we received from practicing dentists, we think we have a real winner here!  

Now, I know that writing about products in this space hasn’t exactly set off a firestorm of commentary in the past (the last product blog made me feel a bit like the ringmaster of a cricket circus), but sometimes something is so unique, so special, that you just have to share.  This new adhesive is one of these items.  It is a completely new class of adhesive – a single bottle adhesive that is both total- and self-etch. And, it gets even better.  But don’t just take my word for it (unless you really want to).  Dr. John Burgess has a fair amount of positive things to say about this adhesive in an interview we recently conducted with him, and I believe you’ll see more and more dental professionals discussing this groundbreaking idea as it hits the market.

If you’d like a free sample, post a comment here and I’ll be sure to send some your way. And if you’ve used it, tell me about your experience.