Costco Connection - September 2012

The
of business
face(book)
small business
Business tips from Facebook’s granddad

DDS. About 20 percent of his new patients learn about the practice through Facebook.

Zuckerberg says the value of gaining a new patient who is a friend of a satisfied patient cannot be overstated. “I don’t need to sell them” on the dental practice, he says. “Their friend has already sold them for me.”

IMAGEZOO/STEVEN LAIT

By Andrea Downing Peck

WHO BETTER TO be an early adopter of Facebook than Dr. Edward Zuckerberg, father of the Father of Facebook? However, the elder Zuckerberg was leading-edge long before the advent of social media. He has been setting a standard for high-tech dentistry in his Dobbs Ferry, New York, practice for nearly 30 years.

Today, the father of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg teaches other dentists how to use the social media networking site to promote their practices, but his advice also resonates with architects, tax accountants, lawyers and other professionals who need to replace old-school advertising methods with 21st-century marketing.

Zuckerberg says small-business professionals first must recognize that smartphones and the Internet age are making advertising in a telephone directory obsolete.

“The average person is not looking for a
business in traditional ways,” explains the
58-year-old Costco member. “People who are
looking for services, be it a dentist, a lawyer,
an appliance store, anything, are not going to
the Yellow Pages.”
Zuckerberg eliminated all phone direc-
tory advertising for his dental practice this
year, trading it in for “a ton of social media
advertising.” In the process, he sliced his
advertising spending from roughly $10,000 a
year to about $2,400.

Likeable Media ( www.likeable.com) CEO Dave Kerpen, whose Facebook marketing solution for small business, Likeable Local, is

Dr. Edward Zuckerberg

expanding in 2013 to include physicians, vet-
erinarians, lawyers, accountants and other
professionals, describes Facebook business
pages as the “world’s biggest cocktail party.”
“Word-of-mouth marketing always has
been the best form of marketing for profes-
sionals,” says Kerpen, a Costco member.
“Today people don’t have time to chat in town
squares and they have less time to chat at
cocktail parties. Now the world’s biggest cock-
tail party is social media and Facebook.”

Don’t be shy

While Facebook business pages are free, it does take know-how to attract subscribers who must “like” your page in order to become a fan of the business. Zuckerberg says businesses should not be shy about soliciting fans. Signs posted in Zuckerberg’s dental office request that patients “like us” on Facebook, and his staff routinely asks patients to become fans. In addition, every piece of mail leaving Zuckerberg’s office lists his website and Facebook page addresses.

Zuckerberg, who collaborates with Likeable Dentists, created his Facebook business page in 2008 and now has more than 3,000 fans. He says businesses need to provide their Facebook fans with valuable information and special offers to create ongoing interest. His page typically includes breaking medical and oral health news, dental-related facts and humor, and updates about the high-tech dental services he provides.

He says Facebook’s advantage over traditional marketing is that the networking site provides “trusted referrals.” His Facebook advertising targets “friends of connections,” meaning the ads run on Facebook pages of people whose friends have “liked” his dental practice on Facebook. When these potential new patients see the ad, they also view a “thumbs up” logo that lists their friend as someone who “likes” Edward Zuckerberg,

Long-time tech fan

Not surprisingly, Zuckerberg’s interest in social media and technology has deep roots. He was among the first dentists to computerize his office, adding an IBM system in 1984, the year Mark was born. Since then, he has remained a pioneer, wiring his home office and practice for networking in

1995 and being an early adopter of new dental technology.

While Zuckerberg has accounts on LinkedIn as well as Twitter, he remains partial to Facebook’s marketing reach.

“I chose Facebook not only because it is
my son’s company,” he says. “If you look at the
sheer numbers, they are approaching 1 billion
users on Facebook and only 100 million users
on Twitter.”
Twitter’s popularity with celebrities also
makes the platform less appealing to
Zuckerberg, whose goal is to use social media
to enhance his relationship with patients.
Despite his ties to Facebook’s famous CEO,
Zuckerberg says no one is clamoring to know
the minute details of his life.

“I don’t think the people in my network look up to the lifestyle I have or that I am doing so much stuff they need to know when I brush my teeth,” he says with a laugh. C