Ep. 169: Top Dental Marketing Trends for 2025 with Dan Brown
In this episode, Dan Brown joins Jeff to discuss the exciting dental marketing trends to watch for in 2025. As technology continues to evolve and patient expectations shift, staying ahead of the curve is essential for the success of your practice. Jeff and Dan will explore how these trends can help you attract and retain patients more effectively. Tune in as we discuss emerging strategies, the role of social media and video, the power of data analytics, and what your practice can do to stand out in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Dan Brown – dan@blumbergdigital.com
Blumberg Digital November 2024 Content Scripts – https://www.mgeonline.com/seo-video-scripts/
Blumberg Digital Reactivation - Text Marketing - Blumberg Digital
DDS Success (coupon code MGE269) - https://ddssuccess.com/
ABCs Seminars- https://www.mgeonline.com/mge-communication-and-sales-seminars/
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Questions From This Episode
How much has Google Ads cost per click actually increased for dental keywords?
Substantially. Before 2019, a top position for a search like dentist near me might run 12 to 14 dollars a click. Today that same position can run as high as 30 dollars, and dental implant searches have been seen as high as 90 dollars a click. If your ad budget hasn't grown alongside that, you're simply getting far fewer clicks for the same spend, not a weaker campaign.
What's an explainer video, and how is it different from a typical testimonial video?
A testimonial or practice tour video is polished, professionally produced, and often expensive to shoot. An explainer video is the doctor answering real, commonly searched patient questions, what is a dental implant, what's the difference between clear aligners and braces, in plain, conversational language, recorded simply on a phone with a basic mic and tripod. It's original content from a credentialed authority, which is exactly what search engines and AI reward, and it builds a sense of familiarity with prospective patients before they ever walk in.
Why do explainer videos help with SEO specifically?
Search engines can distinguish AI generated or templated content from genuine original material, and a five to twelve minute video easily produces a thousand or more words of authentic, doctor-spoken content once transcribed onto the website page. That volume of original, authoritative content is exactly what search engines reward with higher rankings, especially in medical and health related fields where demonstrated authority carries extra weight.
How aggressively should a practice follow up on a new patient lead that didn't convert?
More aggressively than most offices are comfortable with. A reasonable protocol is calling, texting, and emailing the same day a lead comes in, twice on day one, then daily for about a week, tapering to every other day, continuing for a full 21 days, and shifting to a monthly email after that until the person opts out. Most practices give up after one or two attempts and quietly waste money on leads that were never truly dead, just unanswered.
Should Google Ad clicks go to a practice's regular homepage?
No. Sending a click for a specific service, like a cosmetic or implant search, to a general homepage with dozens of unrelated offerings confuses the visitor and drives up your bounce rate, which then hurts the campaign's performance. A dedicated landing page that matches exactly what the person searched for and clicked on converts far better and keeps the visitor's attention focused on what they were actually looking for.
Episode Transcript
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Jeff: With the new year just around the corner, you've probably at least considered a few things you'd like to change, add, or do differently in your practice. What about your marketing? If there's one word to describe how to maintain effectiveness in marketing, it's change. Marketing changes, marketing gets tired, marketing loses effectiveness. Channels that used to work can stop working, and channels that stopped working can come back around again. So heading into the new year, what changes should you actually be making, and what are the newest trends worth staying on top of?
Jeff: That's what we're covering this week: important marketing trends for 2025. My name is Jeff Blumberg, and I'm your host, and joining me is our resident marketing expert, senior consultant here at MGE, and partner at Blumberg Digital, Dan Brown. If you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, you already know Dan, he's who our clients talk to for any marketing issue, this is what he does around the clock. Dan, welcome to the show.
Dan: Thank you, sir.
Jeff: Before we dive in, one thing worth saying upfront: if you're already doing something that's working, postcards getting you 25 or 30 new patients a month with great ROI, don't change it just because something new is trendy.
Dan: Exactly, if it isn't broken, don't fix it. But we were talking earlier, and if you look at how much has shifted in the marketing landscape just from before COVID to now, it's genuinely massive.
Jeff: So you came in with three specific things you wanted to cover. What are they?
Dan: First and at the top of the list is Google Ads, more dentists are using it, which is generally a good thing, it's a solid first channel if you're just getting started, but there have been some major shifts there. Second is something that's really gained traction, more doctors doing video, but specifically explainer videos, which we'll get into. And third, and certainly not least, is follow up: what you actually do when a lead comes in, a referral, a contact form, a name and number, and how consistently you chase it. There's a real gap between what most practices do and what actually works, and once clients close that gap, they see a real shift in return on investment.
Jeff: Let's start with Google Ads. What's changed?
Dan: Whether it's Google raising prices simply because they can, more competition, or some combination, cost per click has gone up significantly. When you search dentist near me and see the sponsored results at the top, whoever's ad you click on pays for that click.
Jeff: So if it's 10 dollars a click, that's 10 dollars out of their pocket the moment I click it.
Dan: Right, and yes, some people do try to run up costs on competitors by clicking repeatedly, which is unethical, and Google eventually catches on and flags that kind of behavior.
Jeff: So how much has the actual price gone up, and over what timeframe?
Dan: Take that same example, dentist near me. Before COVID, back in 2019, the top position might run 12 to 14 dollars a click, second position maybe 8 or 9 dollars, third position around 7. Today we're seeing as high as 30 dollars for the top position, and that varies by local competition, but it's a massive shift.
Jeff: That's a big jump from what I was picturing.
Dan: And when you look at dental implant searches specifically, which makes sense since it's high value treatment, we've seen clicks as high as 90 dollars.
Jeff: Ninety dollars for a single click?
Dan: Ninety dollars. Invisalign is expensive too, and it's become something of a grand prize keyword in dental marketing. I'm not anti-Invisalign, I did it myself and was happy with the results, but most doctors are paying around a 36 percent lab fee on it. If I were building an Invisalign patient base, I'd lean on it growing organically in the practice rather than paying heavily to advertise for it directly, given how much of that margin already goes to the lab fee.
Dan: That actually ties into our next point on video and SEO, since even with rising ad costs, about seven out of ten searchers still won't click a paid ad at all. So do we still recommend Google Ads to clients? Absolutely, especially before they're fully optimized and ranking organically. And even once they reach the top organically, we don't tell them to stop running ads, we tell them to keep going, since paid and organic accomplish different things and paid still captures real volume.
Jeff: So there's more competition now too, it's a more crowded space.
Dan: Much more, and Google's standards have gotten stricter, which mostly pushed out less experienced operators, not necessarily a bad thing, but it does make self-managing your own ads harder. Google's automated smart ads are really more spray and pray than smart, and a lot of practices burn through budget trying to avoid a management fee, then conclude Google Ads just doesn't work, when really it was never given a fair, properly managed shot.
Jeff: For someone listening who's already running Google Ads and has seen results drop off, it might not be that their ads got worse, it might just be that their budget didn't keep pace with rising click costs.
Dan: Exactly right. If you were getting 150 clicks a month on a 1,500 dollar budget at 10 dollars a click, and the price doubles, that same budget now gets you far fewer clicks. People need to actually check their current cost per click rather than assuming the channel stopped working.
Jeff: Any theory on why Google raised prices this much? Inflation, or something else?
Dan: Honestly, I think largely because they can. It's hard to point to a specific rising cost on their end that justifies increases of this scale, we're talking double, triple, sometimes quadruple. Employment costs have gone up for them like everyone else, sure, but not proportional to this. Combine that with more practices correctly investing in this channel, which means more competing bids in any given market, and prices climb accordingly.
Jeff: What if someone says they're spending 500 or 1,000 dollars a month on Google Ads?
Dan: Honestly, that's likely not enough to make a real dent given current costs, that's often just wasted spend at that level. You need real budget commitment and a strategist who can extract maximum value per click. And critically, don't send that click straight to your general homepage. Google penalizes that pattern, and visitors hate it too, someone clicks a cosmetic dentistry ad and lands on a page listing thirty different services including extractions, they feel lost and leave almost immediately, which is called a bounce. High bounce rates hurt your campaign performance directly. A good strategist routes that click to either a click-to-call or a landing page specifically matching what they searched for, cosmetic click, cosmetic landing page.
Jeff: Shameless plug time, you all do manage Google Ads at Blumberg Digital, we'll put your email on the episode page, Dan@blumbergdigital.com. If someone already has a provider and wonders if they should switch to you, what's your approach?
Dan: We always start with a free audit before anyone switches anything. Sometimes we find a provider is actually getting great results, and we'll tell the client, don't touch that, just increase budget here or tighten your ad hours to your actual business hours so you're not paying for clicks nobody's there to answer. Sometimes the real issue isn't the ads at all, it's conversion once the call comes in.
Jeff: So point one: Google Ads, and the price increases have been dramatic and easy to miss if you're not actively tracking cost per click. Now point two, the explainer video concept, which I found genuinely interesting.
Dan: A lot of practices have moved into video, testimonial videos, practice tours, a full production crew flown in for a few thousand dollars, and we do offer that kind of shoot too. But what's actually gaining the most traction right now is the explainer video specifically. Think about big-ticket treatment, veneers, implants, Invisalign, full arch cases, that's real money, sometimes comparable to the cost of a car.
Dan: Think like a consumer for a second. What's your personal threshold where you stop impulse buying and start actually researching? Everyone has that number. Once someone's considering implants or clear aligners, they're doing research, and that research happens online, so you need a presence there, and not just a polished commercial, you need to be answering the actual questions people are searching.
Dan: This ties directly into SEO, search engine optimization, ranking organically rather than through paid placement. Google's criteria determine who shows up first, second, third, or on page two, and content quality is central to that. It has to be genuinely original. At Blumberg Digital we build original content rather than reusing templated website copy with minor swaps, which a lot of companies still do, essentially the same site repeated across clients with small variations.
Jeff: Could someone just have AI write that content instead?
Dan: Google can detect AI-generated or clearly templated content. Writing a genuinely original 1,200-plus word article on dental implants takes real time, and even a good copywriter can only rephrase the same core information so many times before it starts blending together, and often they lean on AI too.
Dan: So what we do instead is send clients the most commonly searched questions on Google around implants, emergencies, extractions, the major search categories, and have someone in the practice, a spouse, office manager, or treatment coordinator, hold up a phone on a basic tripod with a small clip-on microphone.
Jeff: So just a phone, no professional gear.
Dan: A phone, a 20 to 30 dollar tripod, and a Bluetooth mic in that same price range that works well the vast majority of the time, though I'd personally spend 150 to 250 dollars for a genuinely reliable mic, since nothing's worse than losing audio at the end of a five-minute take. Even at the budget end, compare this to 20 years ago when you'd be shooting on a camcorder with terrible audio. Now you've got 4K video on a phone with clean audio for under 200 dollars total.
Jeff: So the office manager or spouse reads off common patient questions, and the doctor answers?
Dan: Right, we call them interview scripts, not scripts for the doctor to read, just prompts for the interviewer. For implants, a typical question is, what are dental implants and how do they work? The doctor just answers naturally, the way they'd explain it to a real patient for probably the tenth time that month. No clinical jargon, no explaining that a tooth might super erupt without immediately clarifying what that actually means in plain terms.
Dan: We usually angle the camera slightly off to the side so the doctor is talking to the person holding the phone rather than staring into a lens, which helps them relax and sound natural, nodding along like an actual patient would.
Jeff: So walk me through this, we've gone through a full list of questions, I've answered them all, what do we end up with?
Dan: People expect a five-minute video, but it usually runs eight to twelve minutes. The average person speaks around 250 words a minute, so do the math, that's easily a couple thousand words of genuinely original spoken content, no two doctors answer the same set of questions identically, even asking ten different doctors the same script produces meaningfully different, authentic answers. And it comes from a validated authority, the doctor themselves, which matters enormously for SEO in medical and health fields specifically, Google places extra weight on content connected to a credentialed authority in those spaces.
Dan: From there, we do light editing, removing slip-ups, filler words, long pauses, keeping the actual question intact within the answer where possible since that context matters. Then the doctor uploads it to their own YouTube channel, which is free and simple to set up, and we embed it on the relevant page of their website.
Jeff: And then you transcribe it too?
Dan: We transcribe and code the full text onto that same webpage, so it becomes substantial original written content search engines can index directly, not thin, sparse copy.
Jeff: So if I have an implant page on my site, you embed the video there and populate the page with my own actual words, transcribed.
Dan: Exactly, you're populating your own website with your own authentic language, which is powerful for SEO on its own, but the more powerful effect is what happens with the actual visitor. Most people multitask while watching, and they start forming a genuine impression of the doctor as a real, approachable authority, not some intimidating, distant figure. A lot of patients carry real anxiety, bad past experiences, fear of drills or needles, embarrassment about neglecting care, and seeing a doctor speak naturally and warmly on video starts breaking that down before they've even called.
Jeff: And then they actually call, having already formed a connection.
Dan: Right, and it's genuinely interesting how often people feel a little starstruck meeting someone in person after seeing them on video first, even though it's not like the doctor is some celebrity. It creates real familiarity.
Jeff: We see that here too, people who've watched me on DDS Success sometimes come up at events wanting to say hello, it happens more than you'd think.
Dan: Same effect. It's not celebrity, it's familiarity, and that translates directly into patients walking into the practice already comfortable.
Jeff: The applications here seem huge too, beyond just the website. It's on YouTube where people search directly, and you could cut it into TikTok clips, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts.
Dan: Exactly, and most of our doctors don't have the time or expertise to handle that repurposing themselves, so we manage that piece for them. But the one thing nobody else can do is answer as the doctor, that has to come from them specifically.
Jeff: What kind of overall effect are you seeing once practices fully roll this out?
Dan: The SEO impact is substantial. A five-minute video easily produces a thousand-plus words of genuinely original content, and you just keep producing them across every common topic, implants, Invisalign versus traditional braces, endodontics, whatever patients regularly ask about. Doctors, assistants, or treatment coordinators can simply track what questions come up in the operatory over a week or two, and that becomes your entire content list.
Dan: Beyond SEO, the bigger impact is the personal connection. A beautifully designed website with stock photography can look great but feel completely impersonal. This makes the experience genuinely personal. Some doctors worry about stumbling over a word or two on camera, and honestly, that's a good thing, it makes them feel like a real person at a real practice rather than a polished actor, and that authenticity is exactly what people respond to.
Jeff: And you've actually got a downloadable script for this, the implant one specifically.
Dan: That's right, we'll include it as a free download on the episode page, the implant interview script so people can create their own version right away. My only advice: have fun with it, treat the phone and lens like they're an actual patient sitting across from you, not a camera.
Jeff: Great, that's point two. Point three is follow up, which when you first mentioned it, I had to sit with it for a second, but it's genuinely one of those things where, compared to how other industries handle leads, dental practices just don't do it well. A new patient call that didn't convert, or someone who scheduled and no-showed, often just gets dropped entirely.
Dan: That sums it up perfectly. What we've found working with clients is that consistent follow up, calling, texting, and emailing, occasionally draws pushback, someone gets annoyed and says stop contacting me, this is harassment, and that one squeaky-wheel complaint ends up shaping the whole office's policy going forward. It's incredibly common. Our clients tend to be genuinely kind people who don't want to upset anyone, so one upset patient complaining about text reminders is often enough to get the whole reminder system shut down entirely.
Jeff: Let's clarify the actual scenario. Say someone calls in about implants or veneers, planning to call back to schedule, and I never hear from them again. I've got their name, number, and chief complaint from the intake. What should I actually be doing with that?
Dan: We call that a lead, and realistically, when you call back, it's often from a number they don't recognize, and most people will ignore an unknown call by default. So the approach is: call, and if it goes to voicemail, leave one, positioned as medical outreach rather than sales, something like, this is Dan calling from ABC Family Dentistry, the doctor asked me to follow up with you about your inquiry, we'd love to help. Then follow with a text message, and an email if you have that address.
Jeff: So say the lead came in at 6:30 the evening before, after the office closed. The next morning, that's a call, voicemail, text, and email, all at once?
Dan: Correct, that's day one, morning. Then we do it again that same afternoon.
Jeff: What does the average practice typically do instead?
Dan: Usually one attempt sometime the next day or two, maybe a follow up email, maybe a text, and if there's no response after that, they consider the lead dead, despite having spent real money, often several hundred dollars, to generate that actual phone call in the first place, not just a click, an actual reach.
Jeff: So you're recommending call, text, and email in the morning, then again in the afternoon, on day one alone.
Dan: Yes. Then we repeat that cadence on day two. By day three and four, we typically scale back to once a day. Even without weekend office hours, we'll still send an outreach attempt on Friday. Ultimately you're looking for one of two outcomes: either the person tells you directly to stop contacting them, which is a perfectly fine outcome, or they respond and you get a real conversation going.
Dan: One of the best signals, oddly enough, is someone getting mildly annoyed and asking you to stop calling. When that happens, the right response is warmth, not defensiveness: of course, we just care about people having healthy teeth and gums for the long run, and wanted to make sure you're taken care of somewhere, whether that's with us or elsewhere. Then simply ask what they originally reached out about and offer to connect them right then. If they say take me off the list entirely, you do exactly that, and move on to the next lead.
Jeff: This mirrors basically every other retail or e-commerce experience, you buy one thing online and get emailed constantly afterward.
Dan: Constantly, and most of us just let those emails keep coming even if we don't engage with them, we don't always unsubscribe. But there's a common, inaccurate belief in healthcare specifically that consistent outreach equals harassment. It really isn't, if someone reached out asking about a new patient special, they generally expect and even want a business to follow up seriously on that interest, that's a very different scenario than unsolicited daily contact for no reason.
Jeff: It's worth noting, corporate dental groups have actually gotten quite good at exactly this, lead management and follow up specifically.
Dan: They really have, their call centers are excellent, calm, persistent, and genuinely well trained, we're just calling to make sure you get taken care of, when's a better time to reach you, apologies for the repeat calls. That consistency is a real structural advantage, since it's happening in a dedicated setting, not competing against someone simultaneously checking out a patient at the front desk while the phone rings.
Jeff: That's a completely different environment than a single front desk person juggling five things at once.
Dan: Completely different, and I'll say this: clients who've gone through DDS Success's phone skills training and the ABC Communication and Sales Seminars are miles ahead of clients who haven't, because they genuinely understand how to navigate these conversations well. But the core lesson for everyone is simple: you're never going to make every single person happy, and that's fine. If someone's upset, apologize sincerely, remove them from your list immediately, and move on to the next lead, all while remembering you're ultimately helping people live healthier lives.
Jeff: Worth mentioning, there's a full phone skills course on DDS Success, our online training platform, along with a complete marketing course from Dan, I'll link both on the episode page. Phone skills specifically is essential training for literally anyone on your team who answers the phone.
Dan: Genuinely can't overstate that one.
Jeff: And the MGE Communication and Sales Seminars, where Dan and I both speak, along with several of our more advanced clients, Doctors Philomin, Salvatore, Barskar, and Rushi, who've all been guests on this podcast before. Average client sees roughly a 288,000 dollar revenue increase from that seminar. It teaches you how to get patients to genuinely want the treatment they need. Bringing key patient-facing staff along, or having them live stream it if they can't attend in person, makes a real difference in how comfortable and low-stress the whole office feels afterward.
Jeff: If someone takes away just one thing from this follow up discussion, what would you want it to be?
Dan: That they need an actual defined follow up protocol, and it depends somewhat on lead type, but for a standard Google Ads lead, say someone interested in a new patient special who called before office hours and couldn't schedule immediately: twice a day for the first week or so, then once a day the following week, tapering to every other day. We generally run this for a full 21 days, then shift to a monthly email indefinitely after that. Practically speaking, they'll keep hearing from us until they either convert or explicitly opt out.
Jeff: I like that framing.
Dan: And I'd add one more piece: ownership of this has to be assigned to one specific person. A responsibility that belongs to everyone in the office tends to belong to no one in practice. Others can assist, but there needs to be one person, typically a dedicated new patient coordinator, who owns making sure this actually happens consistently.
Jeff: That makes sense. So to recap the three big things: Google Ads, and the pricing shifts are real and easy to miss if you're not tracking cost per click directly, reach out to Dan for a free account audit, link on the episode page. Explainer videos, genuinely compelling approach for both SEO and building real patient rapport before that first visit. And follow up, an aggressive, clearly owned protocol that most practices are quietly underinvesting in.
Dan: The landscape is getting more competitive across the board, but these are all approachable, doable things that can meaningfully elevate whatever marketing you're already running, even just strengthening your referral pipeline, while building your reputation with both Google and your own patient base.
Jeff: This was great, Dan, thank you so much for coming on. Folks, that's everything for this week. Links for all of this, including Dan's downloadable implant interview script, DDS Success, the Communication and Sales Seminars, the MGE New Patient Workshop where Dan is the primary speaker, and Dan's email for that free Google Ads audit, will all be on the episode webpage. Have a great week, and we'll see you at the next episode.