Ep. 23: The Top 5 Ways to Market Your Dental Practice
Dentistry is a competitive business and marketing is a must, but where do you start? What types of marketing are actually getting results nowadays? In this episode, MGE’s Marketing Director Adam Mortimer joins Jeff to discuss the top five ways to market your dental practice.
Topics:
1:31 – Why you don’t want to rely on just one source of new patients
5:56 – How a good word-of-mouth referral campaign drastically reduces your cost-per-new-patient
8:07 – Why online reviews and testimonials are even more important than you thought they are
15:15 – All about Google and your business
27:36 – How to use social media strategically to get results
34:28 – Does direct mail still work?
Links:
Download the Call Log - https://www.mgeonline.com/np-call-log
The New Patient Workshop - https://www.newpatients.net
Learn more about MGE - https://www.mgeonline.com
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Have a question for Jeff?
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What are the top 5 ways to market a dental practice?
Word of mouth referrals, online reviews, Google (both your business profile and paid ads), social media (organic posting and paid ads), and direct mail. All five work best together rather than relying heavily on just one, since patients typically need to see a practice multiple times across different channels before actually reaching out.
Why should word of mouth referrals be treated as the foundation of all other marketing?
Because every other marketing channel effectively supplements it, and referrals dramatically lower your real cost per new patient. If a campaign costs 200 dollars per new patient and each of those patients refers just one more person, the effective cost per patient drops to 100 dollars. The key is being genuinely proactive about asking for referrals, not assuming it's happening just because staff were told to do it once.
Why does mailing or advertising outside your immediate local radius usually waste money?
Because local businesses typically draw 80 to 90 percent of their patients from within a three to four mile radius, regardless of how appealing a farther neighborhood might seem. Pulling actual patient zip code data from your practice software shows exactly where your real patients come from, and concentrating budget there, rather than chasing a seemingly more affluent area further out, produces a far better return.
What should you actually track to know if a paid marketing campaign like Google Ads is working?
Total spend, cost per click, and cost per phone call at minimum, all of which platforms like Google provide directly through built-in analytics and call tracking. Ideally that gets paired with your own new patient log tracking where each patient actually came from and whether they became a paying patient, giving a genuine return on investment figure rather than just a raw click count.
What's the difference between an informational website and a marketing website, and why does it matter?
An informational site, like the DMV, is built to fully answer every question so the visitor never needs to call or come in. A marketing site is built to do the opposite, giving enough information to build trust while actively encouraging the visitor to pick up the phone or book an appointment. A dental website modeled after the first approach, heavy on credentials and light on a visible new patient offer, quietly works against its own purpose.
Episode Transcript
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Jeff: It's not difficult to run a successful dental practice if you know what you're doing, but dentistry is a competitive business, so chances are you're marketing in some way, it's become a genuine necessity. Dental marketing is one of the most searched practice management topics out there, and also one of the most complained about, my marketing didn't work, I wasted a bunch of money, and so on.
Jeff: This week we're covering the top five ways to market your dental practice, and I'm joined by Adam Mortimer, MGE's marketing director since 2009. If you've ever seen a piece of MGE marketing, a mailer, a landing page, a Facebook ad, Adam's had a hand in it. He's also worked directly with a lot of our clients debugging or building out their own marketing. Adam, you're all set?
Adam: I'm here.
Jeff: Great, and I'm Jeff Blumberg, your host. Before we get into the five, you wanted to give a quick overview first.
Adam: Right, the goal here is giving people real options, since a lot of practices either haven't done much marketing or aren't sure where to start. But just as important, I want to stress variety, since being completely reliant on one single source of new patients is a real risk.
Jeff: I've seen that play out plenty of times, a practice gets most of its new patients from one source, and then that source dries up and they're scrambling. I've seen offices located right next to a major employer where staff just naturally became patients, until an insurance change cut that off entirely.
Adam: And the reverse risk exists too, one channel working so well you over-invest in it. We run a lot of Facebook ads, and Facebook's algorithm has locked my administrator account two or three times now, no real explanation given, and for a week or two I simply can't manage active campaigns. We've built in redundancy with multiple people who can access it, but it's a good example of why depending on just one channel is risky, even a channel that's working great.
Jeff: So that's the case for variety. What's number one?
Adam: One more quick point first, part of why multiple channels matter is that people often need to see your practice five, ten, even fifteen times before they actually respond. Someone sees your postcard, then sees you on Facebook, then notices your signage driving by, then a friend mentions you, then they check your website and reviews. Those touches compound into something bigger than any single campaign could produce alone.
Jeff: That makes sense. Okay, so number one.
Adam: Word of mouth referrals. You actually covered this in detail a few episodes back with Sabri, how to effectively ask for and generate referrals, worth a full listen on its own. I'm putting it at number one because it's really the exception to the variety rule, it's genuinely the foundation everything else supplements, rather than one channel among equals.
Adam: It also dramatically lowers your real cost per new patient. Say you spend 1,000 dollars on Google ads and get five new patients, that's 200 dollars per patient. If each of those five refers just one more person, your effective cost per patient drops to 100 dollars. People don't always think about referrals that way, they think of them as free, but really they're a direct multiplier on the ROI of everything else you're already spending on.
Adam: The key is being genuinely proactive about asking, not just telling staff once and assuming it's happening. It needs the same level of consistent follow-up you'd give any paid campaign, are we actually asking, are we actually tracking it, the same intentionality you'd apply to making sure a mailer went out or an ad is still running.
Jeff: Good point, that follow-through gap is real. Number two?
Adam: Online reviews. I'll keep this focused since we've touched on it elsewhere, but reviews genuinely grease the wheels on everything else you're doing, they make you more believable regardless of how someone found you in the first place, an ad, a friend, social media, whatever. Most people check reviews before ever walking in. It also has direct SEO value, a strong volume of reviews tends to push your visibility up.
Jeff: From a consumer psychology angle, when I see something with a perfect five star rating and a suspiciously large number of reviews, that's an immediate red flag, feels manufactured. A product with, say, 150 to 200 reviews and a 4.8 feels far more legitimate, since nobody realistically pleases everyone. I'll actually read the negative reviews specifically, is this a real, substantive complaint, or clearly a troll with nothing to do with the actual product or service. I also check when a bad review was posted, an old complaint followed by a strong recent track record actually reads as reassuring.
Adam: That's exactly the kind of consumer-perspective thinking that makes marketing work well, genuinely putting yourself in the shoes of the person you're marketing to rather than just your own instincts. Apply that same lens to your own reviews: a few older negative ones followed by consistently strong recent ones is a healthy, believable pattern, not something to be anxious about.
Jeff: So don't panic over an occasional bad review, and don't feel pressure to somehow maintain a flawless five star record either.
Adam: Right, and how you respond to a negative review matters too, briefly acknowledging an issue and noting it's been addressed reads well to anyone reading later. Dental practices have a real added complication here though, HIPAA. You can't discuss any specifics of a patient's visit in a public response, which makes responding well a genuine balancing act.
Jeff: We actually had someone from Planet HIPAA speak specifically about this at a past owners' conference, responding to healthcare reviews correctly is its own specialized skill. We've touched on it in a video, and it's part of what's covered at the New Patient Workshop.
Jeff: Number three?
Adam: Google, and there's genuinely a lot packed into this one. First, your Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business. Google creates this listing automatically whether you've claimed it or not, it's what shows your map pin, reviews, photos, and hours. Definitely claim it if you haven't.
Adam: Load it up with genuine, frequent reviews and photos, photos specifically carry real SEO value and also shape a visitor's first impression. And I'd steer away from sterile shots of an empty, beautiful reception desk, show real energy, smiling staff, a team event, happy patients with a signed release, obviously. People increasingly check photos before ever booking, they want a feel for the actual vibe of the place, not just proof the chairs look nice.
Jeff: Does posting frequency itself actually affect visibility, or is that more of an assumption?
Adam: It's genuinely true. Google's whole product is search quality, so an actively updated profile, regular reviews, regular new photos, signals to Google that real activity and real engagement are happening, which makes them more likely to surface you. Spreading updates out over time, rather than one big upload followed by months of nothing, matters more than most people assume.
Jeff: How often would you say, realistically? Weekly?
Adam: Multiple times a month is a reasonable target, doesn't need to be weekly without fail, but consistent cadence over time beats a single large burst.
Jeff: And should that mix professional photography with more casual, day-to-day social content, or keep them separate?
Adam: Mix it all in there, professional shots of the office alongside the more candid, human moments you'd post on Instagram or Facebook. Both add something different.
Adam: Beyond the Business Profile, there's Google Ads specifically, the paid listings that show up when someone searches dentist near me. Costs have risen substantially in recent years, along with just about everything else, and competition has genuinely intensified. It still works, but it increasingly requires real strategy, which usually means working with someone who genuinely knows what they're doing rather than running it purely on autopilot.
Jeff: When you've sat down with newer clients struggling with paid ads, beyond the ad creative itself or a weak landing page, what are the more basic mistakes you tend to find?
Adam: A really common one: every dentist seems to want to be the dentist for the next town over, assuming the grass is greener a few miles away. But local businesses statistically draw 80 to 90 percent of their patients from a three to four mile radius. I'd rather concentrate budget and effort within that real radius than spread thin chasing a farther area that sounds appealing but rarely delivers proportional results.
Jeff: So for Google specifically, that means concentrating spend and bid frequency within that real three mile radius rather than trying to cover a much wider area.
Adam: Exactly, and a practical way to find that radius precisely: pull your active patient list from your practice software sorted by zip code. If you're spending heavily to market toward a zip code that's produced almost no actual patients, redirect that spend toward the zip codes where your real patients already are, across Google, Facebook, and mail alike.
Adam: There's also a more technical layer around keyword targeting, the exact search terms someone uses. Broad terms like dentist or dentist near me are the most competitive and expensive. A skilled ads manager finds less obvious keyword combinations that cost less per click while still reaching the right people.
Jeff: What share of clients would you say are self-managing their Google pay-per-click versus outsourcing it?
Adam: Very few self-manage at this point, most outsource it. Google has made self-service easier over the years, which can be a reasonable way to test the waters before committing to an agency, but you'll generally get a stronger return working with someone genuinely skilled at optimizing the full campaign rather than letting it run untouched.
Jeff: For someone outsourcing this, how do they actually know if it's working?
Adam: This is where pay-per-click has a real advantage over organic SEO, SEO can take many months to show results, which is exactly where people tend to give up too early, sometimes right before it would have started working. PPC gives you immediate, detailed analytics, total spend, cost per click, cost per phone call, some platforms even offer click-to-call tracking directly in the ad. Ideally you pair that with your own tracking internally, where did this patient actually come from, did they book, did they become a paying patient, giving you a genuine return on investment figure, not just a raw click count.
Jeff: Number four?
Adam: Social media, which splits into two pieces: organic posting and paid ads. On organic posting, the landscape has shifted a lot, businesses used to get real organic reach on Facebook for free, but Facebook eventually recognized users didn't want feeds full of business content, and that they could monetize visibility by requiring ad spend instead. Purely organic reach is much harder to achieve now.
Jeff: We actually tested Facebook ads very early with a Northeast client back around 2012 or 2013, when almost nobody in dentistry was using the platform yet. The results were genuinely remarkable at the time.
Adam: Right, I remember that, roughly 1,000 to 1,100 dollars a month in spend, and he was averaging somewhere around 25 to 40 new patients monthly from it, mostly cosmetic cases, Invisalign and Lumineers specifically. It was dramatically cheaper and more effective back then simply because so few competitors had caught on yet.
Adam: For organic posting today, I'd start by building from your existing patient base rather than expecting broad organic reach. Actively encourage patients to follow and engage, signage in the office, mentions in your emails, and let it spread naturally from there through their own networks. Unlike Facebook, which allows genuine local targeting, platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter aren't inherently local, so building from patients you already have who are, by definition, local, is the more efficient starting point.
Jeff: Would you recommend a practice maintain a Twitter presence too?
Adam: That's much more optional, same with TikTok honestly, worth doing if you genuinely enjoy it and you're already covering the fundamentals elsewhere, but Facebook is close to essential at this point, and Instagram is increasingly following the same pattern, especially with before-and-after content, always with proper releases.
Adam: For paid social specifically, Facebook owns Instagram, so ads built on Facebook run on both simultaneously. Similar to Google, Facebook has simplified self-service ad creation, though a professional generally optimizes the campaign more effectively. You can start small, capped spend, targeted location, simple content, team photos and a new patient offer, and get more sophisticated over time. I've genuinely seen both stronger and weaker returns on Facebook and Instagram compared to Google depending on the practice, both can work very well or poorly depending on execution.
Jeff: Number five?
Adam: Direct mail, and it genuinely still works. Marketing tends to move in cycles, one channel gets hot, everyone piles in, it gets more expensive and less differentiated, and attention shifts to whatever's newer, TikTok being the current example.
Adam: With mail specifically, since it's a real upfront expense, print and postage committed before you see any results, tracking matters enormously. Use a dedicated tracking phone number specific to that mailer so incoming calls are clearly attributable, and include a QR code linking directly to your website. And critically, make sure your team is actually asking and logging how every new patient heard about you, that data point is often the hardest one to consistently capture, but it's essential, especially for mail specifically.
Adam: Always include a clear new patient offer, a free exam, a discounted cleaning, whatever fits. And the same local-radius principle applies here even more, since mailing 30 miles out to an area that yields almost no actual patients gets expensive fast. I'd stay tightly local, and you can section your radius into a few rotating quadrants, mailing one area this month, another next month, cycling back consistently throughout the year rather than one large one-time blast.
Adam: Consistency matters because you genuinely don't know when someone's going to have a toothache, or a sudden wave of guilt about not seeing a dentist in years, and you want to be the practice they think of in that exact moment.
Jeff: Should the offer on a mailer match whatever offer is running on Google or Facebook at the same time?
Adam: If it's the same specific offer, yes, keep the price consistent across channels, having a cheaper version on one platform than another just creates confusion and erodes trust once someone notices the discrepancy.
Adam: One more tool worth knowing for local mail specifically: every door direct mail through USPS, which lets you select mail routes directly on a map rather than purchasing a traditional mailing list, cheaper, and lets you target specific neighborhoods precisely, a new development near your office, for example, while skipping areas that don't fit your target patient profile.
Jeff: And what about ongoing newsletters to your existing patient base specifically?
Adam: Absolutely worth doing, I'd send a mailed newsletter at least quarterly, and an email newsletter at least monthly, covering practice updates, a bit of education, and a rotating offer tied to a specific service each time.
Jeff: Should that go to your fully active patients only, or everyone in your charts, including someone who hasn't been in for a few years?
Adam: Send it to everyone, including patients who've drifted. I'd only actually deactivate a chart in fairly rare circumstances, if someone hasn't been in for six months to a year, that's not a reason to stop reaching out, you still genuinely want them back.
Jeff: So that covers all five. One last thing worth adding: none of these five work particularly well without a genuinely solid website underneath them, and I know you've covered this in more depth in our DDS Success marketing course, the distinction between what you called an informational site versus a marketing site, using the DMV as the informational example.
Adam: Right, a lot of dental websites read like an informational site, here's Dr. Smith, here's where they trained, which is fine background, but it's not what a new patient is actually looking for. They want to know, does this practice have a new patient special, and where is it. An informational site, like the DMV, is designed to fully answer every question so the visitor never has to call or show up in person. A dental site should do the opposite, build enough trust and information to move someone toward actually picking up the phone or booking, not simply satisfy their curiosity and let them leave.
Jeff: What I like about this whole list is that none of it is exotic, it's genuinely foundational. It's easy to chase the newest tactic, implant funnels, a new platform, whatever's trending, without the fundamentals actually in place underneath it. And when that foundation isn't there, exactly what you described at the start happens, one clever tactic collapses and the whole marketing effort feels like it's failed.
Adam: Right, and something like an implant funnel is really just this same foundation with a specific twist, a targeted Google or Facebook ad driving traffic to a dedicated landing page. If your reviews, your Google Business Profile, and your website aren't solid underneath it, none of that performs the way it should.
Jeff: I remember early on, a competing company was selling Facebook ad management purely on click volume, how many people clicked through to the client's website, without addressing the fact that those clients' websites themselves were genuinely weak. It's like advertising a restaurant with bad food, you'll drive traffic, but nobody converts into a repeat customer. Get the fundamentals solid first, then you can genuinely turn up the volume and experiment further.
Jeff: And I know you'd be remiss not to mention, the granular how-to behind all five of these is covered in real depth at the New Patient Workshop.
Adam: Consider that my second plug of the episode, and yes, fully allowed as the marketing guy. It's a two day virtual workshop with a money-back guarantee, genuinely low risk to try.
Jeff: Adam, thank you so much for joining me this week, this gave everyone a genuinely solid foundation to build from, which I think is exactly what most people need before chasing the next shiny new platform.
Adam: Thanks for having me, happy to be here.
Jeff: Links to everything mentioned, the New Patient Workshop, DDS Success, and more, will be on the episode webpage. If you have questions about MGE, find us online at mgeonline.com or call 800-640-1140. We'll see you at the next episode.