This weekend, many of us will be heading to Los Angeles for the annual AAO conference.

The goal is to hear amazing speakers and discover new innovations that can help them grow their businesses and serve their patients better. It’s also a great time to, for us, to catch up with friends in the industry! The conference has quite a bit to offer. I love that part of the AAO.

However, as I think back on this time every year, another phenomenon clearly stands out to me. During the AAO, our team receive lots of questions from orthodontists about SEO and social media. We’ll get messages about online marketing strategy or texts about supposed changes to Google or Facebook that are going to make their lives miserable. From the outside looking in, the AAO seems like a time when everything is designed to terrify orthodontists about the state of the industry… and then in turn, sell them a solution.

In fact, just yesterday, I witnessed two different pundits (both 3rd parties with strong financial stakes in selling services) in the orthodontic community claimed that Facebook was implementing major changes that would make it impossible for practices to compete, and another claimed that Google was now introducing algorithms specifically aimed at punishing orthodontist – both objectively false statements.

For the ClearPG teams, it’s so rampant, that we call this weekend “Fear Season ™”

Fear Season ™

We all know that fear is an extremely powerful marketing tool. From my perspective, pedaling fear sounds like this: “Don’t let your competitor get this product before you!” or “You’re not ranking well for {insert obscure keyword here}. Better hire us!” or “This product will take your practice to the next level!” We see fear-mongering like this all the time in orthodontics, but there’s no doubt it’s most prevalent during the AAO.

We know you guys hear it too. We’re mostly on the outside looking in at your industry, and we’re even exhausted by the tone, so we can’t imagine how it feels to all of you!

A Hopeful Perspective

As a company, ClearPG has gone to great lengths to make sure that our messaging is hopeful and truthful. It’s our belief that the absolute, unabashed truth about you and your practice stands out in a special way. People crave honesty. It’s why we focus on relationships and not transactions. It’s why relationships and experiences will always be your best sales tool.

For us, it’s always been about partnering with practices that are making the orthodontic profession better, moving it forward, pushing the boundaries of what great patient care should look like — all while constantly proving how much true service means to them. We are proud and honored to partner with every single one of our clients.

So on the eve of the AAO, I thought I would send out a quick message about how we at ClearPG believe that the orthodontic industry is one of the greatest gigs on the planet – but it’s also one of the most unnecessarily fearful industries we’ve ever worked in. Orthodontics is about relationships. It’s about legitimately helping people. In many ways, it’s about providing hope! It’s anything but fearful.

As the AAO progresses, and you hear some speakers talk about existential threats and some vendors sell solutions to problems that they quite possibly exaggerated (or made up altogether), it’s our hope that the perspective of how awesome the industry is and how honored and lucky we should all be to be a part of it would prevail over any feelings of anxiety or fear.

Let’s all enjoy the weekend as we get to celebrate an amazing industry! We can’t wait to see you there!