The Hidden Dangers of Doing The Wrong Kind of Marketing

Intro: Are you looking to grow your dental practice and attract top-tier new patients? Discover the potential of digital marketing with a personalized strategy session. Join Lila Stone, the marketing director at Ekwa, for an exclusive 90-minute consultation. Lila and her team will dedicate six hours before your meeting to create a customized marketing plan specifically for your practice. This valuable opportunity is free of charge and comes with no commitments. Visit www.insuranceuntangled.org/msm  to schedule your meeting with Lila today. You’ll also receive a free analysis report so you can start transforming your practice through the power of digital marketing.

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 amazing episode of the Insurance Untangled podcast. My name is Ben, and I’m one of the co-hosts on this podcast. As you all know, this is for you. We develop topics, concepts, themes, and content surrounding this whole idea of untangling ourselves from the mess of dealing with insurance. For today, we have a very fun conversation, and I’m going to have that with my co-host, Naren Arulrajah, Naren, how are you, my friend?

Naren Arulrajah: I’m doing great, Ben. You’re going to have a really good conversation about the hidden dangers of doing the wrong kind of marketing, so I’m really looking forward to it, Ben.

Ben Tuinei: Oh, I love this, and it’s one of those topics that I actually personally like, because when you talk about building a business, the whole concept of building it is contingent upon marketing yourself—having customers to buy your product, you know? So this is really fun, looking forward to it.

So welcome, everybody, to today’s episode. We’re going to talk about something that I think many dentists don’t even know, or maybe even realize, is hurting their practice. It boils down to this concept of testing things, right? Test, test, test, test, test.

The wrong kind of marketing, if gone untested and implemented repeatedly… A lot of dentists try to save money by doing things themselves, as an example, or having a team member handle it within the practice. At first it feels safe, but when you look at it from a long-term perspective, a lot of times that budget goes wasted.

Ben Tuinei: And a lot of times, you build a momentum of marketing that hurts you, you know? And it’s very, very hard to fix those things.

So, Naren, you’ve helped dentists for, gosh, nearly two decades. And, you know, in terms of career-wise, a lot longer than that, in terms of your mindset. What do you see happening when a dentist tries to DIY, or do-it-yourself kind of marketing? What’s the real risk when dentists take on marketing themselves or handle it in-house with someone in the office that may or may not be the most proficient marketing person to do something like this?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, great question, Ben. And I think this is a really poignant and really important question, and I’d like to take people back to how they became a dentist in the first place. Did they just wing it, or did they talk to others before them who have done something?

For example, if I am working on the DAT entrance exam, I would study, look at the past papers. I would talk to others who have done well. I would even talk to people who got into the universities I want to get into. I would find out what their scores are. I might find a few friends from my circle to find out how did they study—did they go to a particular tutor? Did they do practice exams?

In other words, no point reinventing the wheel when that same thing has happened again and again.

Naren Arulrajah: Now, I think the mistake business owners make, especially dentists, is that they are accidental business owners. In other words, when you ask a person who one day wants to become a dentist, “Hey, what is your dream?” nobody says, “I want to be the best business owner ever.” They say, “I want to be the best dentist. I want to make a difference in the lives of children.”

So, accidentally, they become business owners, and they forget some of the things that made them successful—being thoughtful, doing research, figuring out the right way to do something, and then making sure it gets done.

And part of it is the day-to-day pressures, like you have to pay bills, and you’re not making enough money, and employee issues. So when you have a lot of this stress going on, people, I think, lose their objectivity. So a lot of times, they DIY.

Naren Arulrajah: So, for example, they go to a conference and somebody says, "Oh, I have 20,000 followers and I post on social media every day." Okay, let me post on social media every day. But what they don’t realize is the nuances and how long it’s going to take.

So, I mean, just to do simple math—if I spend 10 hours as a new dentist trying to do this every week, and my time is worth $500, that’s $5,000 a week that I could have earned doing dentistry that I’m instead using trying to be a marketing person, right? And in a month, that’s $20,000.

Now, yes, it’ll work, but it’ll take you three years. Are you willing to put $20,000 worth of your time every month for three years for you to become that influencer? If you are, and you go in with your eyes wide open, more power to you—do it.

Naren Arulrajah: But a lot of people don’t go in with their eyes wide open. It’s like, you know you have to actually do well in your DAT, but that alone is not enough. You have to do well in your GPA, you have to do well in the interviews, you have to do well in so many things before you even get invited into that dental school, right?

So I do think people, a lot of times, don’t go deep and figure things out. Now, the good news is, just like if you really wanted—becoming a dentist is not a big deal. If it was a big deal, you wouldn’t have become a dentist. You were able to crack it, right?

So in other words, this marketing puzzle, the game of marketing strategy, is a crackable problem. Of course, you need to understand how to think about things.

Naren Arulrajah: You need to understand what you should do, what you should delegate, who you should delegate to, and then how you manage those people. So these are all things you need to understand. I really think going back to basics—thinking through how do I succeed in marketing, what’s important, what’s not, how do I do it in a way where it’s still profitable—is key.

If I’m going to spend $20,000 of my own time every month being a marketer, is it worth it? Is it really that important where I need to give up $20,000 worth of production and be the marketing person? So these are good questions to ask.

Ben Tuinei: Yeah, absolutely. And I’m hung up on this whole do-it-yourself kind of thing. Quick story—15 years ago, I bought this one-terabyte drive and I carried it with me everywhere because it was like, I need to have all my important stuff with me. Naturally, it was, "Oh, I’m going to store all of our family photos on this. Oh, now I’m going to put all of our personal stuff on this business one-terabyte drive."

And you know what happened there? I did that because I was like, "Oh yeah, there’s so much space on this thing. I’m only using 3% of it for business, and there’s like 97% going unused." So at one point, the drive malfunctioned, and I started a DIY myself. I went to YouTube to try to problem-solve it.

Ben Tuinei: And I’m thinking in my mind, why don’t you just send this off to somebody that knows how to fix this? But I was like, "Oh, I don’t have any appointments right now, but I need to be busy." Busyness is synonymous with productivity—which is totally false, by the way.

And here’s why. I did it, and I ruined it. All I did was I opened it and I closed it. Then I plugged it in and thought, "You know what? I don’t think what I’m doing is going to help." I took it to a professional, and you know what they said to me? They said, "We opened it, and we could tell that you already opened it because we found dust particles on it. And you don’t know this, Ben, but a single dust particle is like taking a 300-pound boulder and sitting it gently on your house."

Is your house going to survive?

Ben Tuinei: No. So I lost all those memories. Jeez. You know, I know I should’ve paid the small fee.

So that kind of brings—it inspires me to think about a question regarding, you know, a lot of times dentists—and I say that part about being busy is not necessarily synonymous with being productive—a lot of times for the reason that I should, right? So dentists often say, “At least I’m doing something, rather than doing nothing.”

What’s a hidden cost of the damage that could happen when marketing isn’t done the right way?

Naren Arulrajah: You bring up an excellent point, and I really, really love that story you just shared with us, Ben, because that kind of summarizes what happens in the life of 90% of practice owners when it comes to dentistry. They’re winging it. They go wing it left today, and tomorrow they go to another conference and that guy says wing it right. And now they’re winging it right.

Seventy years later, their marketing sucks—meaning it’s not attracting the right patients. They continue to depend on PPO plans to bring in new patients, and then they just keep going in circles, right? I mean, that’s the worst thing you can do, and it’s unfortunate.

I do think the 10% that do well, they don’t wing it. They take the time to understand how to do it. Like in this case, really realizing that, hey, you need to go to an expert.

Naren Arulrajah: You don’t have a PhD in recovering hard disks. That’s not what you have done for the last 10,000 hours. But there’s one guy who runs the store—that’s all he does. He probably has done 10,000 hours’ worth of recovering disks. So he probably knows a few things that you don’t know—that you don’t even know you don’t know, right?

So this is where the danger shows up. Doing something does not mean you are doing what works. The example you shared was perfect, Ben. When marketing is random, the practice has leaks that are invisible—like, you don’t see it, just like that dust you didn’t see and didn’t realize. That’s the invisible stuff that kills you. It’s not the things that are obvious and jump out at you—it’s the things you don’t know you don’t know.

So, for example, a slow website—meaning a website that doesn’t load fast—loses patients before they even call.

Naren Arulrajah: Imagine that person goes to use this slow website on a mobile phone and they’re annoyed. How many of us have been annoyed? What do we do? We stop going to that website. We just go back to the next thing on our result, and we click on it.

Now Google realizes it’s a slow website. Why would Google send somebody to a slow website, right? Because now you’re going to blame Google because the website was not optimized for speed.

And the mistake—wrong ads bring the wrong patients. Like, you know, “steal this special,” “offer this,” “offer that.” And then you wonder, how come everybody keeps asking for discounts? And none of these people who ask for discounts end up becoming loyal patients. Because they came for the discount. They didn’t come because you are the best. They didn’t come because you treat them like family—all the things they care about, right? All the things that are important to you.

They’re only looking for the discount. They got the discount, they got their job done, and they never come back.

I’m sure many of us have heard of, you know, those coupon sites or the discount sites. What is that famous one that went out of business where you get half off or whatever? But anyways, Groupon.

Ben Tuinei: Groupon.

Naren Arulrajah: Groupon, exactly. Exactly, right? Because those people are only there for the deal. They’re not there to get to know you or like you or trust you. So once they get the deal, they’re never coming back.

Ben Tuinei: Yeah.

Naren Arulrajah: So I think you have to stop making these mistakes because what people do to hurt themselves is ten times more than the things they do to help themselves. Anytime something hurts, you stop doing it. But the thing is, you don’t know it’s hurting you because you’re not an expert.

So I would say take a step back, understand what proper marketing is, and just do it—nothing else, nothing more. Just like what is the best way to get into that dental school of your choice? Just understand it, do your research, and then follow the playbook that hundreds of other people have followed to get into that dental school. Same thing here, right? Do what works, understand what marketing is, and then do the things that matter.

Ben Tuinei: Yeah. You said something that kind of reminded me of an old book that I read when I was in college. It’s called Leadership and Self-Deception. And it’s really cool. At the very beginning of the book—and you have to read this from the perspective of, “Hey, I want to learn. I’m not going to be offended by what they say”—and here’s why:

At the very beginning of the book, it equates leaders to infants, to babies. And you know, when the baby backs up—because all they can do is scooch back—and then when they hit a wall, what happens? They cry, because they can’t make any more progress. They can’t see what’s behind them.

And a lot of times—I mean, I deal with this quite a bit—when we’re busy and we think that things are going good, then you start to discover, “Holy smokes, we built momentum with this one thing that is actually hurting us.” We didn’t realize that that one thing is not good for our business.

And so you said that poor marketing can really hurt a practice’s reputation. And I know that firsthand. I know that to be true from personal experience. So do you mind kind of elaborating on that for our dentist listeners who might be thinking, “What does that really mean in the world of a dental practice?”

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. I mean, going back to the basics, right? What is marketing? It’s about helping your ideal patients find you—meaning they need to know you exist, like you, and then finally trust you. And then the phone rings. You have to make a good first impression, and they become your clients. That’s it.

First, they have to find you. Like, are your ideal patients finding you? For example, if you’re looking at Invisalign and I am Googling “Invisalign,” I’m typing “Invisalign near me,” “Invisalign dentist,” “Chicago Invisalign dentist,” “zip code Invisalign,” whatever it is—are you showing up? Again, are you showing up organically?

Because the problem with ads is they know you paid for it. So they don’t trust you the minute they click on it. So it’s almost like they’re clicking with doubt, as opposed to—you show up organically, you’re crushing it.

Naren Arulrajah: So, you know, you can say, “Oh, I’m doing marketing, I’m doing marketing, I’m doing marketing,” and “I want to grow my Invisalign business.” But if nobody can find you when they look for Invisalign, they’re not going to find you. It’s like you are wasting your time. You’re going in circles right now.

Like, when I go to that page, do you have cases that show me you’ve helped other people just like me—maybe with a similar crooked tooth, or maybe even someone my age, or maybe even someone my skin color? Because now I’m like, “Oh man, I really wanted to do this. I know it’s a big investment. I don’t have a lot of money, but giving that $10,000 or $5,000 to this person who has done so many cases—oh, and by the way, I saw a video of him explaining all of this, and he’s so down to earth, so easy to talk to…”

Naren Arulrajah: I really think he can help me, right? And finally, trust me—like the reviews. What are the reviews saying? Do you have only three reviews or 300 reviews? Do you keep getting new reviews? Are they paragraph reviews or just one-word reviews?

So if you don’t do marketing right—if you don’t, you know… I think not doing these things, to me, is poor marketing—you will obviously fail.

For example, you don’t show up on Google. The first impression when I go to your Invisalign page, even if you do show up, is dismal. I don’t see videos that make me like you. I don’t see cases. And then the trust piece, right? I don’t see those reviews. So what do I do? I go to the next person who checks all these criteria.

Naren Arulrajah: I find them on Google. I like them. I trust them. And I’m going to call that office.

So you can sit here and spend thousands and thousands of dollars and hours and hours quote-unquote “working” on your Invisalign marketing, but it goes nowhere because you haven’t understood the fundamentals of marketing, and you haven’t continued to work on it—just like you did on that DAT, just like you did on your GPA, just like you did on that interview prep that helped you become a dentist.

So go back to what made you successful. You are in the top 1% for a reason—in terms of education, in terms of social status, maybe even in the top five or 10% in financial status. So there was a playbook you used. You took the time to understand how to play the game—and you played it.

And marketing is no different. Understand how to play the game, and then play it.

Ben Tuinei: Yeah, and play it very well. And I think one thing I’ll add to that is that it’s important to collaborate with professionals—like people that are in the industry as a full-time job. And it’s mostly because there’s this whole concept of evolution in every aspect of life. You know, things change, concepts change.

Back in the day, when I started dentistry, we did a lot of free stuff—free cleanings, exams, and X-rays—not knowing that four years of doing that, we were like, “Why do we have so many patients that don’t want to pay their bills? They’re entitled.” Like, “Oh, it’s because we are attracting people that want free stuff.”

So what about recovery then? When you talk about recovery from a marketing concept—where you finally, finally discovered that, hey, this is actually not good for us—how hard is it to fix marketing once it’s gone down the wrong direction for a certain period, like for a while? How do you reverse that?

Naren Arulrajah: Great, great, great question, right? Fixing bad marketing is harder than starting the right way. Google remembers bad SEO, right? All the bad things you did—perhaps you had duplicate content, you were getting links from the bad neighborhoods. Google thinks you’re spamming or trying to cheat the system. These are all what they call black hat.

The more bad marketing you do, the more of a hole you have to dig out of. Even ad platforms remember poor targeting, and they keep sending you the wrong kind of patients even after you try to change. Patients remember things too. They’re like, “Oh, this is the website I went to that took a minute to load,” and they’re thinking, “Forget it. They don’t even know how to have a website that works in 2025. How are they going to take care of me as a patient in 2025?”

Naren Arulrajah: They remember that. They remember those things. They go to your Google review page and see you haven’t had a single lovely five-star review in the last two months. They remember that.

So when marketing is done without forethought, without strategy, you’re not only starting from zero when trying to recover—you’re more likely starting from negative. Like -100, -200, depending on how deep a hole you’ve dug.

Now the good news is, I’ve seen practices—actually, 95% of the clients we take on—have crappy marketing. They’re not dominating Google. They don’t have ten or more Google reviews a month. They’re depending on ads, or they’re depending on PPO plans. So trust me, you’re in good company. A lot of people suck when it comes to exceptional marketing.

But in our experience, even when you start in a hole, we can turn things around and get you into the top 5% within the first year—first 12 months.

Naren Arulrajah: Now, it’s going to take 600 hours worth of work. We have 14 teams of experts who work together to do everything properly. Once you do things properly for one year—day after day, week after week, month after month—our clients rank for 100 or more keywords. Our clients are getting tons of new patient phone calls, which, again, we track.

So I’ve seen practices bounce back consistently. And the worst case is typically one year for you to go from the bottom of the pile to the top 5% of digital marketing.

And of course, the first thing we do is we redo everything. We start by building a website that throws away all the junk and starts fresh. We do everything by the book. Even though it’s a lot of work, even though it takes 200 hours to build a website that Google loves—we just do it.

Naren Arulrajah: There’s no way to cheat or find shortcuts or do trial and error. There’s a right way—just do the right thing.

And of course, Google keeps changing. So what used to be the right thing may not be the right thing now. Especially with AI, there have been some massive changes Google has brought on. So we’ve updated everything we do to make sure in 2025 what we do works.

But once you specialize in something and you really get good at it—just like you’re an amazing dentist, let’s say who’s good at veneers—you can find those companies who are really, really good at SEO, really, really good at making that phone ring, and just stick with them.

Ben Tuinei: Yeah, absolutely. It’s kind of one of those things—like if you equate it to sports, like the National Football League, as an example—a lot of times teams make adjustments at halftime so they can try to win the game during the next 30 minutes that they’re going to play.

And you want to look at your practice the same way. Make those adjustments once you start to identify what’s not working.

So if a dentist is listening to this right now, Naren, and feels that marketing for them isn’t really going the way they want it to go—what do you recommend for next steps for them?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, the best step is to get clarity, right? See, I find—having been an entrepreneur now for almost 20 years, 18 years since I started Ekwa—I find 90% of my problems get solved the minute I switch the plan that was getting me lost and get a plan that gives me a clear path to success.

So, you know, the story I love to share is the story that Stephen Covey talked about in his book. There’s this one guy, he ends up in New York, he gets off the plane. In those days, there used to be maps. He had a map that said “New York,” and he’s trying to drive around New York, trying to navigate—but unfortunately, the map was actually a map of Chicago, even though the title said New York.

So yeah, there’s First Street and Second Street and, you know, blah, blah, blah—so it kind of feels like it’s working, but it’s not. He’s driving around, driving around, completely lost. Four hours later, he’s so frustrated. The first thing he had to do was realize he had the wrong map.

The minute he got the right map—oh man—he stops by a shop and is like, “Am I right?” And they’re like, “No, no, no. This map doesn’t make any sense. Here’s the correct map.” He spends $2 or $3 in those days and buys the right map, and everything started getting clear, right?

So same way—you need the right map.

Naren Arulrajah: One of the things I strongly recommend you do is book what we call a Marketing Strategy Meeting, where you can look at things from the perspective of the right strategy for marketing. You know—am I ranking? Am I showing up? Are people finding me?

That’s step number one.

The Marketing Strategy Meeting we do at Ekwa is no cost—it’s a $900 value—and we spend six hours looking at you and your competition. Are you ranking or not versus your competition? And, of course, what’s the root cause?

If you’re ranking, you can keep doing more of that. Or, if you’re not, it’s kind of like: If you got into a university, what are the three or four reasons you got in—so you can now share that with your friend who’s also trying to get in. Or if you didn’t get in, what do you need to fix so you can get in, right?

What is the root cause, regardless of where you are, so you can fix it—especially if it needs to be fixed—so you can start getting into the top 5% when it comes to digital marketing.

And that’s what the Marketing Strategy Meeting is. It’s both a report card and a game plan. Within 12 months, like I alluded to, we’ve been able to take anyone—regardless of how bad their day one is—and turn things around.

Now, the link to that is insuranceuntangled.com/msm,  so get that free gift. That’s where I would start.

What do you think? I know you’ve personally done this Marketing Strategy Meeting and you’ve encouraged clients to do it. What’s your feedback? What are some of the things you benefited from having this analysis, Ben?

Ben Tuinei: Oh gosh, yeah. Hands down, one of the best things that you can do if your marketing is not working—or if you’re doing marketing right now and it’s working, but maybe there could be something better. It’s worth a peek.

Because we talk about this concept of marketing where you want to test things—test, test, test, test, test. And you’ve been doing the testing for 17, 18 years—for two decades.

When it comes to SEO, the consistent feedback I get is: “Holy smokes, this is great,” and then, “Wow, did it work!” once implemented the correct way.

So when I look at it from the perspective of a marketing concept that not everybody is doing correctly—in fact, the vast majority of doctors aren’t—they’re not even on the map for SEO, right?

But those that are, they are dominating the industry. They’re the ones that are booked out eight to ten months. They have a big problem hiring enough people fast enough, right?

So no, I think, Naren, what you mentioned here in terms of eliminating the guessing game—especially avoiding the do-it-yourself kind of activities in a way that marketing has to be done right—otherwise, if you do it wrong, there’s so much unwinding of bad habits, bad messaging, bad reviews.

So yeah, do the Marketing Strategy Meeting—insuranceuntangled.com/msm —to take advantage of it, mainly because I see wonderful, positive things coming out of it. That’s worth your time.

Any final thoughts there, Naren, as we wrap up today’s episode?

Naren Arulrajah: No, I really enjoyed this. I hope you got some value from it. So, going back to the theme of our episode or the topic—The Hidden Dangers of Doing the Wrong Kind of Marketing—I hope, if there’s one thing you get out of this, it’s: stop doing the wrong things.

You’re going to be so much better off, because the wrong things waste your time, waste your money, and keep you going in circles. You were struggling six months ago or six years ago—and you’re still struggling. So stop digging that grave. Start climbing out of it.

Start by getting clarity. That’s why I think having a proper strategy and a proper plan—based on your situation today—becomes important. So I think that link, insuranceuntangled.com/msm —just book it, share it with your friends, and I’d love to help you.

Ben Tuinei: Wonderful, Naren. Loved today’s episode. I think this was an amazing episode.

And I want to take a minute to thank our listeners for joining us again on another amazing episode of the Insurance Untangled podcast. If you like this episode, like it! Give us some love on social media—that’s how other people will find our content, is if you help review us, and hopefully those are positive reviews.

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Take care now.