Level the Playing Field

Social media is not only a great tool for connecting already-established laboratories to their clients; it has also helped new laboratories build their business from the ground up. Mike Dominguez, CDT, is the owner of Kymata Dental Arts, a very young company that is flourishing despite the challenging economic landscape. Dominguez opened his laboratory in 2009, at the height of the recession, and has used social media to level the playing field between him and the large, corporate laboratories. “We are only three years old,” says Dominguez. “We don’t have the status or the money to compete with the marketing efforts of established boutique labs and huge corporate labs, but social media is free.” Dominguez has used Kymata’s Facebook to connect with clients and peers, and his ever-growing client base is often first exposed to his work through his social-media pages. “Once, a client and I were working on a case. We nailed it on the first try and it looked great. I took a picture and posted it to my Facebook page, and then the dentist saw the picture and posted it to his own page. His friends saw it and they started contacting me about doing their cases, and when those went well and pictures wound up online, their friends started asking about me. It created a cascading event that lead to a lot more work for me and my lab,” describes Dominguez.

Social media provides a free advertising opportunity for new, small companies like Kymata that do exceptional work, but do not have the means to advertise on the same level as a larger corporate laboratory that has been on the radar for decades. “Social media has given Kymata an affordable way to manage our message, while putting us right at our clients’ fingertips. I feel like because of social media, Kymata had the opportunity to become relevant a lot sooner than we would have been without it, especially considering the current economic environment,” summates Dominguez.