How Much Marketing Does Your Dental Practice Actually Need to Succeed?

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Intro: You are now listening to another episode of the Insurance Untangled podcast, where we explore the various challenges faced by dental practices due to their reliance on insurance. Join us in this podcast as we dive deep into the issues surrounding dental insurance dependence and offer practical solutions and strategies to help you take control of your practice’s financial future.

Ben Tuinei: Welcome to another exciting episode of the Insurance Untangled podcast. My name is Ben Tuinei, one of the hosts of this podcast. And y’all know that we’ve created this podcast for you—to help you untangle yourselves from the, uh, the mess of dealing with insurance companies. So, uh, we talk about all kinds of things—from marketing to insurance to the general business of dentistry. And today we have another great marketing episode that I’m gonna be doing with my friend Naren. How are you?

Naren Arulrajah: Doing great, Ben. Really appreciate this, uh, conversation. I think, uh, it’s a great topic: how much marketing do you actually need?

Ben Tuinei: Yeah, I– I– I love this. And I guess I’ll start, uh, with that question in terms of, uh, that being a question: how– how much marketing does a dental practice actually need to be successful?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, I think that’s a great question, and I think, um, I know a lot of practice owners are asking that question. Um, now, experts say a successful practice that’s growing two digits—meaning 10% or more—would spend around 5%. That’s the studies that I have seen from experts. Now, you don’t have to spend 5%; you could spend 15%. I know practices that spend 15%, and then I know many of our clients who spend 2%.

So I think it’s– the question may be a little… I– I know we have to allocate a certain portion of our revenue to marketing to;

(a) get new clients or new patients,

and

(b) to replace the ones we are losing, right?

Because people move, uh, or you know, all the dentistry is done for them and they don’t have any dental work. So for those reasons—just to replace the people who are moving or who don’t really need significant dentistry anymore, or to just grow your practice—you need marketing, right?

Naren Arulrajah: So I think that benchmark of 5% is a good benchmark. I know most successful practices that I know of spend, you know, 5% or so. But over time, you can also reduce it. Like, I– I have clients who spend less than 1% on marketing, and I think that’s because of the strategies they use. Some strategies are more effective than others.

For example, the four top strategies that I can think of—obviously all within digital—and the reason I’m picking on digital is because, you know, 95% of new patients today find a dentist through digital. Very few—less than 5%—actually use, you know, newspapers and radios and TV today to find a dentist.

So if– so let’s assume 95% is the full market. Within that market, you have four options:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Google Ads

Social Media

Celebrity Marketing

Naren Arulrajah: So in other words, you are somebody famous and you have tens of thousands of followers, and when you post something, you get thousands of people looking at it. So let’s call it, you know, organic social media or celebrity—or celebrity or, you know, influencer marketing.

And then last but not least, it’s social media ads. So two types of ads: either on Google Ads, which is SEO ads, or social media ads. Uh, and then, uh, organic social media or, um, you know, um, uh, SEO.

So anyway, now, if I were to just compare Google Ads versus Google SEO: Google Ads, for example, are at least five times more expensive than SEO. And the reason for that is, with SEO, people trust it, right? When you rank, they go to Google to find out what Google thinks, not to see the ads.

Naren Arulrajah: So when they click on an ad, they don’t trust the ad. So the average person coming through an ad will only give you 15 uh, seconds, versus the average person who clicks on an organic listing will give you 90 seconds. So if you have a SEO driven campaign where most of your patients are coming from a SEO, your cost of acquiring those patients would be one fifth. Now, a SEO does take time, that’s the catch, right? It takes at least an year and a lot of, um, you know, work in that year for you to get to that top 5%. But once you’re in that top 5%, it’s much, much, much easier to, um, you know, get a significant advantage in terms of cost. You know, I have clients, you know, who get 60 patients, 50 patients, and many of them are spending less than 1% of their revenues in terms of marketing, right?

Naren Arulrajah: So that’s a wonderful place to be. Versus– I also know other clients, when they come to us, for them to get the same 60 patients, they’re spending 4% of their revenue, 5% of their revenue—some even as high as 7% of their revenue.

So, um, now a lot of doctors give up and say, "You know what? I can never reduce my marketing costs." So they end up spending 5%, 7%, even 10% of revenue. Now, if you’re in that boat, you should really listen carefully, because I think if you base your marketing on SEO, you can, over time, cut down that cost and save tens of thousands of dollars—or even hundreds of thousands of dollars—over time.

Because, you know, imagine instead of spending $7,000, you’re spending $1,500. You know, in a year, that’s a savings of more than $60,000. So it can make a massive difference in the amount of money you spend.

Ben Tuinei: No, that’s awesome, Naren. So it’s interesting to see the cost difference from that perspective. What about, um, you know, the difference between SEO and other types of marketing, like paid ads, from a quality patient perspective? Is there a difference?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, so SEO is– is kind of like, you know, it is kind of like the person who gets into dental school and then the person who doesn’t, right? Usually the person who gets into dental school is working harder, studying harder when they were students—high school, university, etc.—and the person who doesn’t get into, you know, dental or, you know, any other kind of medical school and become a doctor, they’re– they’re not maybe working as hard.

So usually, SEO is slow and hard, but very, very, very beneficial. Like, I mean, imagine the five-to-one advantage, you know, year after year after year—meaning in terms of your cost is one-fifth the cost of somebody else relying on paid ads.

And the problem with paid ads is also, I think, there’s a lot of no-shows. Like, people—when they click on an ad—they’re not really committed, they’re not really serious.

Naren Arulrajah: Uh, so even if they book an appointment, they won’t show up. The other thing is conversion rate. So we have run tests—same team handling paid ads versus SEO-driven patients—and their conversion rate on SEO would be twice as good as paid ads.

Why? Paid ads—people are clicking with doubt, so you have to be even better on the phone to convince them. Even landing pages, right? The bar is so different. So if you have a landing page that is not spectacular, with cases and, you know, compelling videos from the doctor, it’s hard to convert that patient through a paid ad. Versus with SEO, it’s easier, because they trust you and they believe in you. And therefore, even if you don’t have as many cases as you would for paid ads, you would still convert.

So the bar gets higher, the costs get higher with paid ads than SEO. But obviously, if that’s the only choice for many, many people, they still do it—because they are not good at SEO.

Naren Arulrajah: They don’t know how to rank and dominate Google for hundreds of keywords. So, you know what, they bite the bullet. It’s still cheaper than PPO because think about it, right?

PPO patients—if the patient is, you know, if you’re making $1,000 from the patient, you have to do $1,700 worth of dentistry. So pretty much the cost of that PPO patient is $700, right? Seventeen hundred minus the thousand you got paid. And now, every year that patient is with you, you’re giving that PPO company $700. So it’s not even like a one-time $700—it’s a lifelong $700 annual cost to you.

So that means you have to do, you know, double the dentistry or 70% more dentistry. And those things cannot be sustainable over the long term. You know, your profits go down, the hours go up, you get sick—it just creates this negative cycle.

So yeah, I would still recommend ads compared to Google– you know, PPO plans. But definitely, compared to SEO, it is more expensive.

Ben Tuinei: There you go. Yeah, I think, um, that– that’s really good, solid information for listeners to kind of figure out and consider what they wanna do with their marketing programs.

Um, next question I have for you, Naren, is: Why do I need a clear marketing strategy to succeed? Does it– does it even matter in terms of having like a well-thought-out and clear strategy compared to just picking something and going with it? You know, like, you know, a fast selection of marketing strategy just to see what sticks. Is there a method to the madness with a– a better and clear marketing strategy that leads to more success?

Naren Arulrajah: Great question. You know, and, um, fortunately or unfortunately, we don’t do dentistry on mannequins or robots. We do it on patients, right? Patients are human beings, just like you and me.

Uh, you know, the difference between us and a machine is we are not very, uh– like, a machine is driven by a set of instructions. You know, if this happens, it’ll do that, right? Like, you know, you write a program: if this happens, do that. I studied computer science, so I know a little thing or two about how to get machines to work.

Humans are not like that. We are very unpredictable. Everyone is different. Um, but generally, we– we, uh, follow certain habits just because it makes our life easier.

For example, today, nobody chooses a practice without reading your Google reviews. Studies are showing 80 to 90% of patients will read your Google reviews, see how many stars you have, see how many reviews you have, and maybe even read some of your recent reviews before choosing your office.

Naren Arulrajah: So these are habits that we have. So you want to understand the habits that influence how we go about buying something. And then, once you understand it, you want to make sure that those habits are working in your favor.

So for example, if the last step is me reading Google Reviews and you don’t have enough five-star reviews, and you don’t have new reviews coming in, you need to work on it. You need to make it an action item.

Again, I talked about saving money, working smart—obviously, the ones who are doing these things will get a much better result than the ones who are not. Is that making sense?

Ben Tuinei: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Naren Arulrajah: Um, and another example could be, you know, landing pages, right? Imagine going to a landing page that has a lot of cases and full-face pictures, and one that doesn’t. Which one do you think is going to convert better? You know, two people may have the same number of visitors going to that page from search engine optimization. One has good pictures, and the other doesn’t. Who’s going to convert better? The one with the better pictures.

So these are little things you can do to drive up and increase results. And that’s all part of a comprehensive marketing strategy—you know:

How should I do my SEO?

How should I design my landing pages?

What should I do with my reviews?

How should I handle my phone calls?

These are the components of that patient journey.

Naren Arulrajah: And then you want to make sure you are optimizing each part—’cause if any part is broken or weak, you won’t get as many people going to the next step.

For example, if, you know, a thousand people land on a page but there are no cases, while somebody else has the same thousand visitors land on a page that has wonderful cases, they’re going to convert more new patients from the better landing page than the one who doesn’t have a compelling page. You know what I mean?

So, you know, we as owners can pretend like, "We don’t want to know these things, it’s too complicated," and ignore it. But if you do ignore it, you will suffer—because then other marketing companies will take us for a ride. They won’t work on these things, so things don’t get better, and you’re always struggling.

So, you know—anyway, these are all things that I think we should learn and we should master.

Ben Tuinei: That’s wonderful, Naren. You know, I always think about, um, this whole concept of getting to that point of having a very successful marketing program work for you. You know, the idea, uh, now in my mind is the metrics—you know, what you’re tracking, figuring out whether that thing worked or not. So what metrics should I track to define successful marketing efforts? What should I look at?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, I think, uh, on the SEO front, I would look at:

How many people see me on Google every month.

Our clients, you know, over time, are seen tens of thousands of times every month on Google. When I say Google, it includes:

Google Maps (also called Local SEO)

Regular SEO (standard Google search results)

I might also look at how many keywords are ranking on page one (the top 10 results of Google).

That number should be at least 100 or more. We have clients who are ranking for 600 to 700 keywords.

On the landing pages, I think I would use my eyes to evaluate:

Do they have compelling case studies?

Do they include short, user-friendly, easy-to-understand videos featuring the doctor or caregiver?

Naren Arulrajah: Now, for the phone experience, I would track:

Conversion rate[/skipto] – what percentage of your new patient calls are actually booking appointments?

Because again, if that piece is weak, you’ll experience leakage.

The problem with leakage is that your marketing costs go up.

Let’s say your phone team only converts 35% of calls—

You now need three times as many leads to get the same number of new patients.

Your marketing cost just tripled.

But if you fix that—now your marketing will work three times better for you.

So instead of getting 10 new patients, you might now get 30 with the same budget.

Of course, nobody gets 100%, but imagine going from 35% to 70%—

Now you’ve doubled your results:

Instead of 10 new patients, you’re getting 20 for the same cost.

If your issue is with landing pages, fixing them will again result in more conversions.

But here’s the thing—this is hard for humans, right?

We often set a target and say,

"Okay, I’m getting 10 now, but I want 40 tomorrow."

That doesn’t happen unless you’re willing to throw 4x the budget at it.

And if you’re not optimized, throwing 4x the money is—honestly—wasteful.

Optimization is about incremental improvement:

Going from 35% → 40% → 45% → 50%…

You have to be patient, and you have to track these metrics to see if they’re improving over time.

Ben Tuinei: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. You know, I heard a quote years ago that when we track things—when we measure our performance—naturally, we tend to see improvements, right? Compared to not tracking things, where we’re kind of blindly going about our day-to-day without knowing where we need to make those improvements, you know? So I love what you just said there.

Last question I have for you is: How do I know if my marketing efforts are in alignment with the goals that I’ve set for my practice?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, I think the goals I would set revolve around improvement. So, for example, if I’m getting—let’s pick a number—15 new patients, I would say, “Okay, within six months, I want that number to grow.”

Now, if I want to grow faster, I have to throw more money at ads, because ads can be turned on quickly. SEO, on the other hand, will take time, right?

So I would create a plan that’s linked to both my objectives and my timeline. And I would also base that plan on gradual improvement. I’d look at the key areas of the marketing funnel:

Landing pages

Phone experience

SEO performance overall

Because to me, every piece of the funnel should work together to give you maximum results.

Naren Arulrajah: So it should be both a combination of knowing what you want and then spending accordingly. For example, if you’re getting 10 patients now, and you want to quickly get to 20—and all 10 are currently coming from ads—one easy way to double it is to double your marketing budget. You can just double your ad spend and likely double the results.

But in parallel, I would also work on improving each part of the funnel:

So we convert more leads

We get more people from the landing pages

And ultimately, every dollar works harder for us

That way, instead of being a practice spending 7%–8% on marketing, you could become a practice spending only 2%.

Now imagine: saving 6% on a $1 million practice—that’s $60,000 a year. Multiply that by 10 years? That’s $600,000 that goes straight to your bottom line.

So I’d say:

Be economical and careful with your money

But at the same time, be strategic and proactive enough to spend what it takes to get the results you want.

Ben Tuinei: Love it. Love it, Naren. You know, for our listeners—if you want to get your marketing strategy aligned with your goals and to be as successful as you want it to be, I highly recommend taking advantage of the Marketing Strategy Meeting that Naren and his team offer.

It’s actually a pretty solid marketing review for your practice, and they create a really great plan that helps you understand what marketing can look like for you in the future.

To take advantage of that, check out insuranceuntangled.com/msm —MSM stands for Marketing Strategy Meeting.

Naren, thank you again today. It’s always great picking your brain about these marketing concepts. I always learn something new, and of course, it’s just—just amazing to watch you kind of dissect these ideas and piece them together in a way we can all understand.

So, thank you, Naren, and I want to thank our listeners for joining us again today on another amazing episode of the Insurance Untangled Podcast.

If you liked today’s episode, don’t forget to share this with your friends on social media and give us some likes or reviews as well. That helps other doctors find our content.

Don’t forget to check out insuranceuntangled.com for future webinars and episodes that might relate to you—you never know!

But until we meet again, folks, just want to wish all of y’all the best of success. Take care now.