Dr. Gloria Roberts and Dr. Mina Sung of Grace Dental
in Kansas City, Kansas

Grace Dental, like many other practices, had traditionally relied on word-of-mouth referrals for all of their new patient growth. However, as the industry continued its dramatic shift over the last several years, word-of-mouth alone was no longer sufficient. The office then attempted multiple postcard advertising campaigns. But those failed to produce any results. Realizing this wasn’t an issue they could solve on their own, we partnered together to create a customized marketing plan for long-term growth that focused on all elements of marketing, not just one-off advertising campaigns.

After just four months of working together, we grew Grace Dental’s number of new patients from 30 to 80 per month. That’s growth of over 265%!</u?

Of course, it’s one thing to usher in a bunch of ‘one and done’ or ‘discount chasing’ new patients. However, we were also heavily focused on the quality of patient coming into the practice as it was imperative to ensure these results would last well into the future given an upcoming transition in practice ownership. And with an 80% treatment acceptance rate, and a 92% new patient retention rate,, we accomplished our goal of growing the patient base in a high-quality and long-lasting manner.

On top of that, we accomplished this high level of growth with $0 of advertising spend! In the past, Grace Dental felt they had to spend money on advertising to attract new patients. That’s just simply not the case… for any practice! Marketing agencies lead dentists to believe this because they take huge profit margins on those advertising campaigns. But there are, in actuality, far more cost-effective ways to grow a practice. And that’s just what we did at Grace Dental.

We focused on a range of broader low-cost marketing activities including improved lead conversion, online review generation, patient referral attainment, website optimization, and search engine optimization. All of these efforts were geared towards long-term sustainable growth (as opposed to paid advertising… which stops producing results as soon as the money stops flowing into it).

Grace Dental eventually reached the point of 100% capacity and no longer had room to accept higher volumes of new patients. That’s a great spot to be in. And an even better one, when you’re not investing any money to maintain it because you have a comprehensive and sustainable marketing strategy securely in place!

Dr. Larry Dougherty and Rolling Oaks Dental
in Garden Ridge, Texas

Dr. Dougherty and Rolling Oaks Dental share a common storyline with many fee-for-service practices when it comes to the struggles they’ve encountered in marketing and new patient growth. As Dr. Dougherty transitioned from an insurance-based practice to a fee-for-service based practice, his new patient volumes and growth quickly dissipated. Naturally, he gravitated towards various advertising initiatives to reverse the trend and reinvigorate the practice with growth. Various efforts included digital advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), and door-to-door mailing campaigns.

Unfortunately, the typical issues that plague the dental marketing industry became huge barriers for Rolling Oaks’ growth. $6000 per month was being spent across various advertising initiatives, yet was not only producing minimal results, but actually delivering a negative return on investment for the practice (i.e., meaning Dr. Dougherty was spending more on advertising than Rolling Oaks was earning in production from those few new patients who did come into the practice). He was simply losing money to advertise! Despite this, his advertising agency continued to push the same model (as they were taking their cut to manage the campaigns). In addition, through some unscrupulous SEO tactics, another agency ended up getting the Rolling Oaks’ website penalized with Google, which absolutely tanked their organic search traffic and further inhibited new patient growth.

That’s when Dr. Dougherty and I began partnering together. We made some wholesale changes to the marketing strategy, including replacement of the advertising and web providers, and within 6 months, we saw a 30% increase in new patient growth!

In addition to growing the patient base, we also accomplished this in a highly profitable manner. Through analyzing the various advertising campaigns and reallocating the budget around to new campaigns, we reduced total advertising investment by 37% (cutting over $2200 in spend per month), and also increased the total advertising return on investment all the way up to 5.6!

How did we drive these results? In addition to the above-mentioned reset on all advertising campaigns, as well as a change in web provider, we focused heavily on improved lead conversion (e.g., call handling, follow-up, virtual consultations, and treatment acceptance), increased online review generation, an expanded social media footprint, and a revamped patient referral system.

Dr. Dougherty’s practice now has a comprehensive marketing strategy in place, which covers all facets of new patient conversion, and Rolling Oaks Dental is poised for continued growth as a fee-for-service only provider!

Dr. Haissam Dahan of Ottawa TMJ & Sleep Apnea Clinic 
in Ottawa, Ontario

Dr. Dahan is a general dentist with an exclusive focus in TMJ & Sleep Apnea Management. His credentials are simply outstanding and he is a leading expert in his field of care.

He grew a hugely successful TMJ clinic from scratch. Yet found it much more difficult to attract qualified Sleep Apnea candidates to his practice given the level of education and number of steps involved in the process along with the dynamics of Canadian health insurance which heavily incentivized traditional sleep apnea treatment via CPAP. Simply put it is a challenge to find quality patients who are willing to pay 100% of treatment costs for a sleep appliance when CPAP treatment is fully covered by insurance.

Exacerbating this challenge the marketing agencies that Dr. Dahan had hired over the years to help him grow this service line did not fully grasp the nuances of messaging to these unique case types. They applied the same generic cookie-cutter advertising approaches they would have to any other general dentistry new patient and of course it failed spectacularly. In the process it ended up costing Dr. Dahan several thousand dollars each month in ad spend not to mention a load of stress on top that yielded virtually nothing in terms of results. Most of the few cases that were coming into the practice were a result of physician referrals from relationships that Dr. Dahan had already crafted himself. Growth was non-existent!

When I began partnering with Dr. Dahan the clinic was only converting an average of less than 4 new sleep apnea appliances per month. However, with the efforts we put into place in just four months, we multiplied that rate by nearly 5x! The quantity and quality of leads had drastically improved and the clinic was closing cases at a much higher rate than ever before.

To achieve this quick turnaround and rapid growth ascension we focused our efforts into four primary categories. And while this approach is specific to a sleep apnea clinic, the general principals of testing various marketing hypothesis and initiatives, religiously tracking and analyzing results, and constantly adjusting and optimizing the strategy is how any practice (general dentistry or specialty based) should approach new patient marketing.

First, we created an online sales funnel driven by a digital ad campaign which put leads into our carefully scripted education and conversion process. Given the amount of pre-screening required, we only directed leads to contact our office once they had been vetted and pre-qualified for treatment (e.g., understood their treatment options, had completed a sleep test, and agreed to pay out of pocket). This greatly eased the strains of growth on the front desk team and allowed them to continue focusing on delivering excellent patient care, including to those new patient consults who passed the vetting process.

Second, we created a wide network of local physicians, sleep doctors, and executive health clinic owners who saw patients for issues related to sleep disorders. We held educational events and sent out regular communications sharing the latest in sleep dentistry medicine research so that they would feel comfortable referring over their patients who had failed the traditional sleep apnea approach and were thus ready and qualified for sleep appliance therapy.

Third, we leveraged our existing patient base who had successfully completed sleep treatment to share their stories and provide referrals to our clinic. Building out our online review profile was certainly a key component of this effort and we successfully increased our five-star patient reviews on Google by over 35%!

Finally, to support all of the above and the resulting increase in lead generation, we spent significant efforts training the team on how to most appropriately handle incoming new patient leads and how to most effectively convert them into scheduled sleep appliance consultations.

What I’ve enjoyed most about working with Dr. Dahan and his team is seeing their buy-in and commitment to the plan. What we asked of them was a lot. And it wasn’t easy. But it was well structured and we constantly sought and incorporated their feedback into the marketing plan to continuously improve the results and ensure this level of rapid growth was sustainable for the office and team!

Dr. Robert Ferrera of Ferrera Dental Care
in Tampa, Florida

Over the past decade, the level of competition in Dr. Ferrera’s area of Tampa had drastically increased. A rising number of dentists moving into the market had made new patient attraction more and more difficult. And, to make matters worse, corporate dentistry had established a strong and growing position. Financial pressures from decreasing insurance reimbursement rates, and a general softening of demand for dental services, was heavily weighing on the bottom line of Dr. Ferrera’s practice.

Dr. Ferrera had engaged several different marketing providers, over the years, in hopes of turning the situation around. However, these companies were more interested in selling him marketing products, as opposed to real business solutions. As a result, the practice’s profitability continued to stagnant, and actually even decline, year over year.

However, after working together for just a few short months, we have been able to successfully increase Dr. Ferrera’s number of new patients from 18 to 30 per month. That’s growth of over 65%!

But it hasn’t just been a function of re-directing or even adding more marketing costs with a whole new host of products. In fact, we’ve actually lowered Dr. Ferrera’s marketing spend by 76% from $4,127 to just $1,005 per month! Now that’s achieving more with less! And it’s another great example of how most dental marketing companies out there are more focused on selling their pre-packaged products than in actually driving true client success.

Beyond increasing the number of new patients and lowering marketing costs, we’ve also had a major impact on the quality and profitability of new patients coming into the practice. Broken appointments have been reduced by 50%. Initial new patient appointment production is up 11%. New patient retention rates are up to 93% from 74%. And, most impactful of all, treatment acceptance per new patient has increased an incredible 98%! That represents a doubling of new patient value to the practice.

How did we drive these results? By completely resetting Dr. Ferrera’s marketing strategy to focus investment into only those initiatives that would truly drive results. We revamped his online presence to generate an increase in the number of leads contacting his office. And, we also ensured he had a highly trained team and the right internal processes to convert those leads into profitable, long-term patients.

Dr. Ferrera’s practice continues to grow….and grow in the right way! And he is now well positioned for continued success in the highly competitive Tampa market!

Dr. Jeremy Chin and Perfect Smiles Orthodontics
in Perth, Australia

As the owner of a specialty practice, Dr. Jeremy Chin was facing pressure from seemingly all sides. Competitive pressures across the orthodontics industry were leading to lower prices, and thus lower margins. Financial pressures across Western Australia were drastically impacting consumer ability and willingness to pay for treatment. And all of this was being further exacerbated by a seismic industry shift in the form of ‘direct-to-consumer’ smiles.

Dr. Chin had tried several different marketing solutions, across varying providers, to alleviate these pressures. However, nearly all of them failed to produce any materially measurable results and his practice growth remained stagnant at best.

However, after just three months of working together, we grew Dr. Chin’s number of new patients from an average of 18 to a new practice record of 35. That’s growth of 94%!

But it wasn’t a function of just spending more money on external advertising to generate a growing number of new leads. Instead we focused on increasing the impact we were having with the number of leads already being generated. And, in the process, we were also able to increase Dr. Chin’s consult to new patient conversion rate from 48% up to 67%!

How did we drive these results? First, we analyzed the current marketing data available to understand where there was hidden opportunity to generate increased organic traffic to Dr. Chin’s website, as well as to ensure this traffic was converting into calls and appointment requests at a higher rate. Second, we developed new digital ads aimed more directly at high-quality leads, and supported them with customized campaign landing pages, to increase click to call conversions. Third, we doubled down hard on ensuring Dr. Chin’s team was addressing these new leads as effectively as possible and getting them scheduled for consultations. And, finally, we put new policies, processes and performance tracking systems in place to increase treatment acceptance and new patient starts.

Dr. Chin’s practice is not only continuing to produce record breaking numbers, but we’re building out a full marketing system that will ensure continued growth, and sustained results, well into the future, even as the orthodontics industry continues to evolve and increase in competitiveness.

Dr. Ami Barakat and Villanova Dental Studio
in Ottawa, Ontario

Dr. Barakat’s story is similar to many dentists out there who have grown frustrated over time with a lack of results from their marketing companies. Although managing a highly successful, multi-site practice, Dr. Barakat’s new patient growth had hit a near standstill. Despite his strong commitment to marketing, and his aggressive investment towards growth, new patient volume was only increasing a modest 5% year over year. Far from the levels necessary to support a high-functioning, growth-oriented practice located in a highly competitive market.

Dr. Barakat had hired multiple providers to help drive new patient growth via digital marketing and advertising campaigns. And while these companies claimed success month after month with their reporting showing big numbers in terms of impressions, clicks and calls, there was never material growth in the only metric that really mattered at the end of the day – that, of course, being the number of actual new patients.

When I was brought in to help Villanova Dental Studio grow its new patient volume, it was clear that we needed to take a deep look at the online marketing and advertising campaigns to understand why they were underperforming so greatly. In doing so, we dissected every campaign in full detail to understand what was really coming into the practice in terms of lead generation. Despite claims by the marketing providers that tons of leads were being generated each month, we found that only 1 in every 15 leads was actually becoming a new patient (and the issue was not in the Villanova team’s ability to convert leads to new patients – as they were converting nearly 90% of the quality leads they were receiving!). Clearly, the challenge was that the digital campaigns, despite substantial monthly budgets, were not producing enough quality leads.

However, after closely analyzing the data, we were able to find pockets within those campaigns that were actually yielding positive results. We also looked for new areas of digital advertising growth to invest in by reallocating marketing dollars away from campaigns that were previously not producing. After just a few weeks, the results from these changes were staggering. We increased growth via digital marketing from an average of 33 to 83 new patients per month. That’s an increase of more than 150%!

But the results went far beyond just increasing the sheer volume of new patients to the practice. In the process of identifying underperforming campaigns and reallocating advertising budget, we were also able to decrease Dr. Barakat’s total advertising spend by over 35% as well.

And further, the quality of new patients coming into the practice drastically increased, as new patient production increased by a factor of more than 10x, going from $4,000 to over $40,000!

Now, of course, much of these results were also correlated with efforts we put into foundational marketing as part of the engagement as well. In order for external advertising campaigns to ultimately be successful, there needs to be a solid marketing program and execution plan in place to support. As part of this foundational marketing, we focused on website and search engine optimization, expanding the patient referral program, building out the practice’s online review profile, enhancing the in-house membership plan, growing the office’s social media presence, and implementing virtual consultation technology.

Perhaps the best part of this story though, is that nearly all of this growth took place right in the midst of Villanova Dental Studio re-opening its doors on the heels of the COVID-pandemic outbreak. This was a time when growth was very much needed. And as a result of the efforts we put into building a high-functioning marketing program, Villanova Dental Studio has been able to ensure its schedule remains fully booked out for weeks on end given the surge in new patient growth.

Dr. James Otten and James Otten Dentistry
in Lawrence, Kansas

In an industry where standards of care are being dictated more and more by insurance companies, Dr. James Otten set out to uphold the principles he believes in, and ensure a commitment to the highest levels of care for his patients. Having just brought in a new associate dentist, Dr. Otten was in need of fast growth. Yet, quickly growing a fee-for-service only practice can present some unique challenges.

His team had tried all different kinds of marketing activities – including digital advertising, community events, radio ads, in-house promotions, print ads, professional networking events, and more. Still the growth was inconsistent and non-sustaining.

However, after just three months of working together, we grew Dr. Otten’s number of new patients from 14 to 31 per month. That’s growth of over 120%!

But it wasn’t just about growing for growth’s sake. It was about bringing in the right types of patients. Those who were committed to their oral, and overall, health. Those who were looking for the highest level of quality from, and a trusted relationship with, their dental care provider. And those who would remain life-long patients within the practice, and serve as referrals for other like-minded individuals. In fact, we actually also increased the quality rating of new patients by 22% in the process!

In addition to successfully growing Dr. Otten’s practice, we actually lowered his monthly marketing spend in the process by 38%! Bringing it down from over $2,900 to under $1,800 per month. And it wasn’t just the dollar savings that made a huge impact. We also significantly reduced the amount of time and effort required to bring new patients into the practice. The number of active marketing campaigns was reduced from 18 to 6! And the number of hours directly dedicated to marketing events each month decreased from more than 35 to less than 5! Proving that often times, less activity, if properly focused, can actually yield better results.

How did we drive these results? By completely resetting his marketing strategy and investment. We took the time to analyze and understand what was working well, what needed to be changed, and what wasn’t working at all. We focused on ensuring that the marketing campaigns we were running were successfully bringing in quality leads. And that his team was ready to receive those leads and successfully convert them into new patients.

Dr. Otten’s practice is continuing to grow, and doing so in the right way. Meaning he’s able to bring in the types of patients he wants to work with, and deliver the quality of care that they deserve!

Dr. Timothy Shen and Trinity Family Dentistry
in La Mesa, California

Dr. Shen and Trinity Family Dentistry is a prime example of why I got into this industry. Before we started working together, Dr. Shen had bounced around from marketing agency to marketing agency. Stuck in long-term contracts. Spending thousands and thousands of dollars per month. But, never getting the results he needed, much less was promised, from those agencies in return.

However, after just three months of working together, we grew Dr. Shen’s number of new patients from 21 to 36 per month. That’s growth of over 70%!

But it wasn’t just about getting a bunch of ‘one and done’ or ‘discount chasing’ new patients through the door. It was about building a high-quality patient base and ensuring sustainable practice growth. It’s about growing the right way. And with new patient retention at 94% and production per new patient increasing by 20%, we’ve done just that!

On top of that, we actually lowered Dr. Shen’s monthly marketing spend in the process by 65%! Bringing it down from over $5,600 to just $2,000 per month.

How did we drive these results? By completely resetting his marketing strategy and investment. We took the time to analyze and understand what was working well, what needed to be changed, and what wasn’t working at all. We then re-directed his marketing investment accordingly – with an eye on lowering his expenses and increasing his results. We focused on ensuring he had a strong online presence and that his practice was effectively converting those new leads into lifelong patients.

Dr. Shen’s practice has continued to grow and his marketing strategy has him positioned for long-term, sustainable success!

“I had been working with various marketing agencies over the past five years, and wished I had found Kent from the start. He has definitely produced the results that we set out to achieve, unlike other marketing agencies that failed time after time. It is truly his personal touch, expertise, and insights that have propelled our practice to the next level. His character, honesty, and dedication are rare among the dental marketing field, and we are glad to have him on our team! I’m positive that he will do the same for your practice.” – Dr. Timothy Shen