On this episode of the Cornerman Podcast, Mike Bark is joined by Brian Meehan, President & Owner of Celtic, Inc. Celtic is a full-service integrated marketing communication agency based in Milwaukee, WI. Mike and Brian discuss branding in relation to your dental practice and how the pandemic has caused businesses to reposition themselves when it comes to marketing.

What is Celtic? Give us a rundown of what you do and your history.

We are a full-service marketing communication agency. Down in the Third Ward in Milwaukee. We have a variety of services, we do branding, advertising, public relations, social media, digital and some other things. So we're an integrated firm. Some clients utilize all those services, other clients may just come to us and say, we need a website, or we need you to support our social media. So we do everything from full campaigns to project work.

Where does the name Celtic come from?

We go by the Americanized version of Celtic and why we're called that is because Celtic is a language. It's an ancient language. And it's a language that brought tribes throughout Europe together. And we just thought that was kind of a cool story for an ad agency that brings all these stakeholders together, and to create customers and to create a brand. So that's kind of how we came up with, with our name. We do work in a variety of categories. We don't just work in the medical industry, we work in travel, tourism, food and beverage, financial services, active lifestyle and health care is one of the areas that we work in. We've been fortunate to work with a lot of great brands that people probably are familiar with, but like EdVest, which is the state of Wisconsin's 529 College Savings Plan. That's one of our long-standing customers. We work with Summerfest. We work with Educators Credit Union, we work with George Webb restaurants, people always love that one. That's my kids’ favorite restaurant. So we work in a lot of different areas. One of those is health care products and health care services. So we do work with some dental firms and some other health care services.

Do you think there's specific branding or certain things people should be doing now within the pandemic or shifting what their marketing messages are?

When the pandemic hit back in March, a lot of practices shut down. They were forced to shut down. The thing that we were encouraging at that point was, you may not be open for business, but there's still value in being out there not going dark. Stay on your patients to let them know about all of the safety protocols that you're putting in place and all the efforts that you're putting forth to get the business reopened. So I did see some practices where there were no statements on their website and they weren't engaged in social media. I thought that was a missed opportunity because you don't want to go dark in a pandemic, you don't want people to think, “Well, they must not be in business anymore.” Some dentists did one thing that was great. They shared stories. There’s a lot of humanity to that. Stories like, “You know what, this is a scary time. We don't know how this is going to impact the world, we don't know how it's going to impact our practice. But we want to let you know that we are going to be here, we're going to follow CDC guidelines, we're going to do whatever it takes to put your safety first.” So I think the ones that got out there quick and were proactive in their communication won at the end of the day. So now it's almost been a year, which is crazy, to think about, most are back open. What I see is there's a great opportunity, and there's backfill with existing patients. A lot of patients that were on that six-month rotation coming in, and maybe extended it to a year haven't scheduled that appointment. So what I'm encouraging dentists to do is to be proactive in their outreach to existing customers and let them know that you’re open. Here are all the safety precautions and health precautions we put in place, we want to welcome you back. Let's get an appointment scheduled. So how do you do that? Do that through social media, do that through email, do that through your website and your blog. Those are just really simple ways, low-cost ways, to stay in touch with existing customers.

Find more information at http://www.bullmoosefinancial.com/ or call (414) 759-9629.

To learn more about Celtic, Inc. visit their website at https://celticinc.com/