Trade and
Regional Media
Trade publications are a vital avenue to the oral health care audience. Earning coverage in these outlets has become increasingly difficult as more and more publications turn to pay-for-play models, tying media coverage directly to advertising spend. While limited, there is still space for earned media editorial coverage in dentistry. Leaning into educational themes and providing active clinical/procedural insights for the audience rather than steering toward product conversations is key to having submissions selected.
Dr. Susan McMahon is a renowned cosmetic dentist who represents Ultradent on the global continuing education lecturing circuit, known in the industry as a Key Opinion Leader (KOL). She was scheduled to lecture at an Ultradent event on how social media is negatively impacting how people see their smiles and, as a result, the unnecessary dental work they want done. I interviewed her for a blog about the subject and it performed so well that we turned it into an article for Dentistry Today, the cover story for their May 2022 issue:
Continuing my partnership with Dr. McMahon, we authored a piece on an inspiring group of women helping each other grow in the dental industry:
Commissioning case studies and getting them placed in dental magazines is the most effective way to show the clinical capabilities of products without being advertorial. Ultradent KOL Dr. Ed Kusek has been instrumental in advancing soft tissue laser dentistry and we partnered to author and place several articles on the subject:
I once again partnered with Dr. McMahon to help spread the word on more uses for Ultradent’s soft tissue laser as part of a larger marketing effort to expand awareness among clinicians about different procedures for these types of lasers:
An article I commissioned with Ultradent KOL Dr. Robert Lowe and pitched to Dentistry Today was selected as a cover story in early 2022:
Developing a relationship with the team at Dental Product Shopper led to dozens of product-focused articles highlighting Ultradent brands. I leveraged this relationship to detail some of our higher value products like curing lights and diode lasers, where in-depth analysis is often key in the buying process:
One of the most vital relationships I developed in the dental industry is with Dr. Joshua Austin, author of the Pearls for Your Practice column in Dental Economics. His audience puts a lot of value in his insights and getting mentioned in Dr. Austin’s column will regularly get noticed and brought up to me more than coverage in any other trade publication:
Ultradent overhauled its manufacturing operations in the early 2020s, implementing an intelligent manufacturing execution system (MES). Basically, everything went from handwritten to digital. That’s a massive undertaking when you’ve used pen and paper for four decades. I pitched our story to Today’s Medical Developments and they did an in-depth piece that turned into a cover story in the Spring of 2022:
When you spend millions of dollars on a new facility because you’re growing so fast, you usually want to tell people about it. However, dentists don’t always care if you have a couple hundred thousand new feet of space for plastic molding. But the plastics industry does. I reached out to Plastics Technologies and they covered the opening of Ultradent’s facility in 2023:
Ultradent opened Canyon Labs, a materials testing lab, at a time when the company was deepening relationships with lawmakers. We hosted Senator Burgess Owens at HQ and earned some coverage from a regional publication:
While a lot of the world was shutting down during COVID, Ultradent was booming and needed extra help. We reached out to FOX13 and they ran a story about our job openings:
The 2020s have been a decade of progress for Ultradent’s manufacturing capabilities, noted in this Utah Business Journal cover story from April 2024, specifically highlighting advancements in automation: