Advantage Dental Uses Yext to Facilitate Smooth Reopenings Across the Country

Advantage Dental Oral Health Centers isn't your standard chain of dental practices — it's an organization that holds its mission-based focus of serving low income patients at the forefront of all it does. Advantage is a system of 85 practices — in six states in different regions of the country that operate under different brands — which focuses on serving Medicaid patients, particularly in underserved populations or rural areas where getting access to full service dental care remains a challenge.

"Our mission is, 'to improve the overall health of all,'" says Fred Menko, Vice President of Marketing at Advantage Dental. "And we live out that mission all the time. Since we're working at home right now, we're putting together hygiene kits with a toothbrush, floss, and some instructions on how to take care of your teeth — just like what you'd get when you go to the dentist — and we're delivering them. I have a box of hygiene kits here at home, and at some point I'm going to go out and deliver them to a local mission. Healthcare is always a good thing to provide, but we do it for people who really, really need it. That makes it even more rewarding."

Whether patients have a sore tooth, are managing diabetes, or are planning for their child's first cleaning, they typically start with a Google search — usually performing unbranded searches for Medicaid dentists, or asking branded questions about Advantage Dental practices near them. But maintaining accurate information online for every practice wasn't easy, especially since many are located in rural areas that are particularly vulnerable to bad weather and natural disasters.

With the Yext platform, Menko's team can update information about each practice across search experiences. So when a forest fire in the western U.S. forced one location to close, they were able to quickly change its listings to reflect that, keeping patients informed and saving them from travelling all the way to a closed practice in dangerous conditions.

And with Yext Search, the revolutionary site search solution that understands natural language and provides rich search results, Advantage is now able to provide patients with clear, direct answers right on its own website — which has proven particularly helpful in getting patients the information they need about how dental appointments are handled in the age of COVID-19.

"We can't plan ahead for unexpected crises — like fires, snow storms, hurricanes, or a pandemic," says Menko. "But the ability to open and close practices quickly, and manage that information all in one place, has been a huge efficiency for us. When I got here 18 months ago, if we'd had to close a practice for something like COVID, it would have taken us hours to go to every profile, for every location, and change it — and then go change it on our website as well. Now with Yext we can do it in a matter of minutes."

Yext Search also lets Menko and his team see what questions patients are asking on the Advantage website. This gives them insight into what important questions aren't currently being answered, and makes it easy to add answers to those new questions. As businesses around the country have been allowed to reopen their doors in accordance with local public health guidelines, Advantage has made it easy for patients to find out what procedures are currently available in their area.

Search has also revealed potential new business opportunities. "There are markets where we don't do a lot of wisdom teeth, for example, but there's a lot of search volume for wisdom teeth in those areas," Menko explains. "So thanks to Search, we could have conversations about how we might change services that we offer, because the demand seems pretty high."

Within six weeks of launching Yext Search (late August 2020 – early October 2020), Advantage Dental experienced a 27.5% site search click-through rate. Some of the top searches that resulted in FAQ clicks include: "forms," "pay bills," "insurance," "make emergency appointment," "new patient paperwork," and "How much for a tooth being extracted?" This indicates that patients are finding answers to their most pressing questions via online self-service, instead of resorting to a much more costly and time-consuming phone call.

In the month of September 2020 alone, Advantage drove $8,132 in conversion value through Search, an annualized value of $97,500. After making the search bar on its website more prominent, Advantage also saw search volume increase by 7.1x in just one month.

Menko speaks highly of the team members he's worked with at Yext. "Working with the folks at Yext, going back to the beginning, has always been a positive experience," he says. "They're good listeners, and I find that it's always a personalized, friendly conversation. I feel confident that Yext is working hard to align with our needs and to help us accomplish our goals."