Ep. 94: Doubling Your New Patients by Using “Social Proof”
This week, dental marketing expert Dan Brown joins Jeff to discuss the most important aspect of your marketing: social proof. He describes what it means and how focusing on it has been helping many of our clients double, triple, or even quadruple their new patients without adding a big marketing expense.
Links:
The MGE New Patient Workshop - https://www.newpatients.net
Sample HIPAA release form - https://www.mgeonline.com/sample-hipaa-marketing-release-download
Microphone - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BN1TZG89
Tripod - https://www.amazon.com/Newest-Upgraded-Solidest-Compatible-Samsung/dp/B09XHZ8F7F
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Questions From This Episode
What is social proof, and why does it matter more than traditional practice marketing?
Social proof is what a consumer says about a business rather than what the business says about itself, things like online reviews, before-and-after photos, video testimonials, and third-party recognition such as an Invisalign provider award. Today's patients research heavily before ever calling, arriving already roughly 92 percent through the buying decision the way a car shopper does, so credibility that comes from someone other than the practice itself carries far more weight than anything the practice could say on its own behalf.
How many reviews does a practice actually need before people stop being suspicious of them?
Around 150 is the real floor, since that's roughly the point where people accept nobody could realistically fake that many. Practices that build a consistent habit of asking for honest reviews, even just 5 to 10 new ones a week, can reach 250 a year and often end up with more reviews than anyone else in their market within a couple of years.
Which review platforms actually matter, and why is Yelp still relevant?
Google is the obvious one, but Yelp matters more than most doctors realize, since Bing, Yahoo, Apple Maps, and Apple Safari searches all pull review data from Yelp rather than Google. A practice with excellent Google reviews can still lose a patient who checks directions in Apple Maps and finds a handful of old, mostly negative Yelp reviews instead.
What belongs on a practice website to actually demonstrate social proof?
Two sets of before-and-after photos on the homepage tied to whatever procedure the practice wants more of, cropped to remove any retractors so the photos don't look clinical or unsettling, linking to a fuller smile gallery organized by procedure with a short, plain-language description under each case, and video testimonials layered throughout. Seeing an actual satisfied patient talk about their experience does more for a five-figure case than a before-and-after photo alone ever could.
What does it actually take to film a usable patient video testimonial?
Very little: a dedicated practice phone held horizontally rather than vertically, switched to airplane mode so a call can't interrupt mid-recording, a cheap clip-on microphone since audio quality matters more than video quality, natural light with the patient's back to any window, and a single open-ended question like tell me about your experience here, followed by silence while the patient talks. Editing a few minutes of raw footage into something usable costs very little relative to what a strong testimonial can generate in new production.
Episode Transcript
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Jeff: If there's one thing you can say about marketing, it's that it's always changing, and if you want a consistent, steady flow of new patients, you need to change with it. There are some specific changes MGE clients have made over the last five or six years, things we've been teaching where we've seen clients double, triple, quadruple, or more their new patients in a very short period of time. That's what I want to talk about in this week's episode. My name is Jeff Blumberg, and I'm your host, and I'm joined this week by a special guest, Dan Brown. You may know Dan from prior episodes, including ones on new marketing trends and website construction. Dan is a partner at Blumberg Digital, a premier digital dental marketing company, and he's also a speaker here at MGE, our primary speaker at the MGE New Patient Workshop. Dan, are you all set up over there?
Dan: I am, thanks for having me back.
Jeff: Let's jump right in. You've seen clients double, triple, quadruple their new patients. What's the main thing you've been implementing that's produced that kind of immediate jump?
Dan: Really, the main thing is what we call social proof. In short, that's what the consumer says about a company rather than what the company says about itself.
Jeff: What kinds of things count as social proof?
Dan: First and foremost, reviews, on Google, Yelp, Facebook. Another big one is before-and-after photos, and video testimonials. Anything that adds credibility to the company without the company itself saying so.
Jeff: So anything that adds credibility, but it's the consumer saying it, not the business.
Dan: Exactly, and it can even come from outside the consumer. If you're a platinum-level Invisalign provider and you display that award, that's someone else saying this practice knows what it's doing. Same with community acknowledgment, being named one of the best places to work in town, or recognition for community involvement. It's always someone else talking about the company, its people, its culture, rather than the company flying its own flag.
Jeff: That's interesting, because it used to be that the average general dentist would sponsor the local Little League team, mostly as a new patient play. But that doesn't actually accredit you as a dentist in the consumer's mind, does it?
Dan: Not at all. All the consumer really knows is that you sponsored a team, maybe you're a nice person, or maybe you saw a business opportunity. That's genuinely how a lot of people think about it today, very differently than the way consumers thought twenty or thirty years ago. Think about buying a car decades back, you'd walk the lot, kick some tires, talk to a salesperson. Today, by the time people arrive at a dealership, they're already about 92 percent through the sales process, from research, videos, and reviews done entirely online, and they show up with specific questions salespeople sometimes can't even answer. Social proof and online credibility operate on a totally different scale today, and that's exactly how it applies to a dental practice too.
Jeff: Keep sponsoring your Little League team, to be clear, I'm not saying stop. But seeing an award like a platinum Invisalign provider badge, or seeing that patients genuinely love how gently you treat them, that's what actually moves the needle.
Dan: Huge difference. I always tell people to think like the consumer first. When a marketing company is designing your postcard or your website, they may be genuine specialists in design or coding, but they can get cookie-cutter with their templates and lose touch with how an actual consumer looks at things. Clients sometimes tell me they can't think that way since they've been a dental professional too long. So I ask them, how many of you are active shoppers on Amazon? Almost everyone says yes. Then I ask, how many of you rely on reviews to finalize a purchase decision? Nine out of ten hands go up.
Jeff: I'd put myself in that category too. If I see something rated 2.3 stars, I'm looking at why, or I'm just moving to the next option.
Dan: Right, say you're searching for a replacement ironing board and one option has five stars from fifteen reviews, and another has 4.6 stars from 475 reviews. Which one do you pick? Almost everyone picks the 475. The smaller one, sure, maybe fifteen people faked those reviews, but nobody's faking four hundred, including the occasional bad one, and most people think exactly the way you just did, which honestly makes you more qualified to think about this than most marketing graduates or design specialists, because they don't naturally think that way.
Jeff: I think people also conflate a designer with a marketer. Someone who designs things beautifully isn't necessarily someone who can sell.
Dan: Exactly right, a designer is an artist and a technician, but a marketer's real job is understanding who they're selling to, quickly. Today's consumer searches dentist near me, scans the results, sees one office with 25 reviews and another with 475, and just passes right by the smaller one, assuming those are probably relatives, friends, and staff. That's where social proof starts, and the first and most powerful piece of it is online reviews, which we cover extensively in the New Patient Workshop, including how to organically add 10 to 15 reviews a week. It's not difficult, and there's nothing artificial about it, we even walk through a step-by-step checklist.
Jeff: I'll put a link to the New Patient Workshop on the episode webpage.
Dan: Even a team that's a bit overworked right now can typically manage 5 to 10 new reviews a week. Do the math, that's 250 a year. Even at the low end, two years gets you 500 reviews, likely more than anyone else in town. One habit I recommend: read a couple of the week's good reviews out loud during your morning production meeting, not the bad ones, obviously.
Jeff: Bad ones are going to happen regardless.
Dan: They will, and you shouldn't fear them. About 35 percent of people actually distrust a business with zero negative reviews, since that looks like the reviews were bought from some review farm. So don't go chasing a bad review, it'll show up eventually on its own, and we cover how to respond to one when it does. But the real threshold is around 150 reviews, that's the point where people accept there's no realistic way that many could be faked. That's the magic floor.
Jeff: We actually did a whole episode with you a while back specifically on how to get more reviews, worth checking out if listeners haven't heard it. But what's a strong benchmark beyond that 150 floor, what does doing really well look like?
Dan: Great question. Best answered by searching dentist in your city and state, or cosmetic dentist in your city or zip code, and seeing who comes up with the most reviews. That's assuming you're searching on Google, though people do still use Yahoo and Bing.
Jeff: Does anyone actually still use those?
Dan: They do, and Bing in particular might be about to become a bigger player given everything happening with AI right now. But here's the interesting part: if you search on Yahoo or Bing, or use Apple Safari or Apple Maps for directions, you're actually pulling Yelp's reviews, not Google's. We've had clients with excellent Google reviews whose patient gets in the car, punches the address into Apple Maps instead of Google Maps, and suddenly sees a 1.8 rating on Yelp because the practice only ever collected fifteen reviews there in its lifetime, and a chunk of them got filtered into Yelp's unrecommended bin. The patient turns the car around.
Jeff: That's actually happened to clients?
Dan: It has, which is exactly why you have to care about both Yelp and Google.
Jeff: Is Facebook still a big deal for reviews?
Dan: Less so on its own, but when you're leveraging your local community, and that's really a subject for its own episode, Facebook groups and community pages become important, and having solid Facebook reviews matters there specifically.
Jeff: So to sum up the review piece: I need to care about Google and Yelp, with Facebook as a secondary consideration.
Dan: Exactly. One thing worth knowing, you have a Yelp page whether you realize it or not, and you need to claim it, and make sure you personally hold the login rather than handing it off entirely to a staff member who might eventually leave. I've seen Yelp pages, Facebook pages, and other social accounts effectively get taken hostage that way. You can absolutely delegate day-to-day posting, just keep ultimate access yourself.
Jeff: Got it. And people sometimes ask whether they can coach a patient on exactly what to say in a review.
Dan: You can never ask for a positive review, only an honest one, and we walk through exactly how to phrase that ask in the workshop in a way that naturally draws out the right kind of response. What the patient actually writes matters a great deal, because Google indexes every word in that review. So if a patient writes something like, this is the most pain-free dentistry I've ever experienced, and I've overcome my anxiety about the dentist because of this team, that's language the dentist could never legally say about themselves, but the patient can, and does. And when someone later searches best dentist implants pain-free dentistry, that indexed language is exactly what surfaces. So it's worth genuinely inspiring your team, reminding them at that morning meeting how much of a difference they're making in people's lives, because that's exactly the kind of language that ends up in these reviews.
Jeff: Have you ever had a patient walk in and say, part of why I'm here is because I read your reviews?
Dan: Constantly. There are far more people quietly reading your reviews before ever calling than most doctors realize. We're all snoopers today, we've all been burned before, ordered the burger that looked one way on the menu and arrived looking completely different. Social proof is our protection mechanism against exactly that. A slick, AI-generated website with polished stock photography can be built by a teenager and mean absolutely nothing underneath it. What other people say about the actual experience carries the real weight.
Jeff: It reminds me of an old travel site I used to use, where I'd skip the hotel's own photos entirely and go straight to the traveler photos, since those showed you what the room actually looked like.
Dan: Exactly, it's not a hundred percent guarantee, but it's layered protection, maybe 85 percent confidence instead of walking in blind. And on the fear of negative reviews specifically: think about the type of person who scrolls straight to the five or ten negative reviews out of your 250 total and judges your entire practice purely on those. Do you actually want that person as a patient?
Jeff: No, honestly.
Dan: Most reasonable people read a negative review and think, okay, that seems survivable, and move on, the same way you might read that a restaurant's service was a little slow but the food's great, and decide that's fine for takeout. Everybody understands nobody's perfect. That's exactly why responding to negative reviews, without violating HIPAA, matters, since a thoughtful response reassures the reasonable majority even if it won't win over the person determined to judge you on five isolated reviews out of hundreds.
Jeff: So reviews are really the tip of the spear here. In terms of actual results, what's the best case scenario you've seen once reviews are solidly in place?
Dan: Probably a tenfold increase in organic call volume, going from something like ten random calls a day to a hundred. And a lot of clients report a striking number of people walking in specifically because they read the reviews, especially for larger cases, which I'll get into shortly.
Jeff: So this isn't a nice-to-have, it's genuinely a top priority.
Dan: There's nothing more important, and it's essentially free, it just takes a bit of time and a consistent method. That's first base. Once someone's searching and sees your review count and star rating, you've got their attention, and they'll click through to your Google profile, your Facebook, your Yelp, or your website. That's where second base comes in.
Jeff: What does second base look like specifically on the website?
Dan: Middle of the homepage, two sets of before-and-after photos.
Jeff: Any particular cases you'd recommend featuring?
Dan: Totally dependent on what that practice wants more of. Want more implant cases, feature an implant before-and-after. Want more veneers, feature that. Smile reconstruction, whitening, chipped or cracked teeth all work well too. Think like a consumer, they may not even realize they need something until they see what's actually possible, someone with crowding might never have thought about straightening their teeth until they see a case that makes them want it.
Jeff: What kind of photo, exactly?
Dan: A close-up mouth or smile photo, no professional camera required, just a clean before-and-after. If you use a retractor for the clinical shot, that's fine for records, but crop it out for anything promotional, it tends to look unsettling to a layperson. And you'll always need a HIPAA release specifically for marketing use, different from a standard clinical HIPAA release. We offer a template for that at the New Patient Workshop, though you'll want your own attorney to check it against your state's specific laws, and we'll make that available as a download on the episode webpage this week.
Jeff: If a practice finished a great case and forgot to snap a proper before photo, can they follow up afterward?
Dan: Absolutely, just reach back out and ask if they have one on their phone they could send over, and encourage documenting before-and-afters consistently going forward, it's simply good clinical practice regardless of marketing. For the workflow itself, I'd recommend a dedicated practice phone or tablet with no SIM card, just connected to the cloud with auto-backup, so if the device ever disappears, nothing is lost. Don't trade in an old iPhone for $300 when you upgrade, just remove the SIM and repurpose it as a practice device. The camera on even a several-year-old iPhone is more than capable, and the consumer isn't scrutinizing the technical quality the way a clinician might, just make sure there's no blood visible and the after photo shows a clean, confident smile.
Jeff: And that leads into third base, the video testimonial.
Dan: Right, and it ties directly into asking for the before-and-after photo, since that request often naturally extends into a fuller facial shot too, which is sometimes where you get pushback, someone worried about their makeup or how they look. That's where you reassure them, we're all our own worst critics, and the people watching this aren't here to judge you, and if they are, we don't want them as patients anyway. What I'm really asking you to do is help other people who are sitting on the fence the same way you once were, people who haven't yet found the courage to move forward. One in three Americans don't go to the dentist at all, for reasons like past bad experiences, fear of needles or drills, cost, or simply not understanding what's possible. Would you help us reach those people by sharing your story?
Jeff: Walk me through actually filming it. What equipment, what setup?
Dan: More than we can fully cover here, but broad strokes: anything is better than nothing. Use your phone, hold it horizontally, landscape rather than portrait, since a landscape video can easily be converted for a website or YouTube, or trimmed down for social media, while a portrait video is much harder to repurpose the other direction. Put the phone in airplane mode first, so an incoming call doesn't interrupt right as the patient is genuinely emotional about their experience. Hit record, ask an open question like, tell me about your experience here, and then stay quiet.
Jeff: Why stay quiet?
Dan: Because your voice is closer to the microphone than theirs, and any mm-hmm or nodding sound you make will overpower and distract from their message. Just nod, smile, let them talk, and let it run, thirty seconds, two minutes, sometimes longer. We're probably not using a full five-minute testimonial as-is, but chopping it down to the key moments afterward is simple and inexpensive.
Jeff: And that editing part, is that a big lift?
Dan: Not at all, most practices already have someone on staff who's tech savvy enough, sometimes literally a teenager who edits TikToks in their spare time, using something like CapCut, a simple, free video editing app. A quick tutorial and you're proficient. I had a client attend the workshop, get the full walkthrough, and then have to step out mid-appointment, so he handed the phone to an assistant who hadn't attended, she filmed it upright with poor lighting and audio. We had an editor trim it, add music, add a logo and call to action, for about $200 total. That single testimonial has generated him over $120,000 since.
Jeff: From a video that wasn't even shot the recommended way.
Dan: Right, and honestly, today's consumer isn't looking for a slick, corporate production anyway, especially for a family dentistry practice. If I get a newsletter I know was a canned template some big company sold to a business, I toss it immediately. If I get one that's clearly a little rough but genuinely made by that business itself, I'll actually read it. People want authenticity and connection today, not polish.
Jeff: Let's unpack a couple of practical details listeners are probably wondering about. Do you need special lighting?
Dan: No, and skip those cheap phone ring lights entirely. A decent phone from the last few years already handles lighting well. The one thing to avoid is filming with the patient in front of a window, since they'll end up underexposed with all that backlight. Instead, switch places so your back is to the window and the natural light washes over the patient's face. Filming right in the treatment chair works fine too, just avoid pointing a harsh light directly at them, and don't turn it into a whole production with extra lighting rigs and multiple people standing around, that just makes the patient nervous.
Jeff: What about microphones? You showed me a small Bluetooth clip-on mic recently that made a big difference.
Dan: That's the key fix for the iPhone's built-in microphone problem, since whoever's filming can't make a sound without it picking up loudly. These little mics plug straight into the phone's charging port, USB-C for most Android phones, Lightning for Apple, and clip onto the patient's lapel or sit close by if they're not wearing anything to clip to. You're usually filming from several feet away, and there's often a drill running in another room or hard floors picking up footsteps, sounds that record more clearly than the patient's actual voice does otherwise. A cheap clip mic, around $40 on Amazon, fixes that instantly, and honestly, audio quality matters more today than video quality does.
Jeff: That tracks. When I research a big purchase myself, I'll often have a review video playing in the background while I'm doing something else, and only really tune in periodically, the audio carries most of the value even when I'm not fully watching.
Dan: Exactly, the video mostly just verifies it's a real person, which matters enormously for bigger cases specifically. If you're presenting a $26,000 veneer case, a full arch case, or multiple implants, that's real money to almost anyone. Ask yourself honestly, what dollar amount makes you personally stop and start checking reviews before buying?
Jeff: For me, it's around $150. Below that I generally don't think twice, above it I'm looking into it.
Dan: Most people land somewhere similar, and think about how far above that threshold eight veneers plus whitening sits, easily $10,000 or more. That's a price tag most people don't encounter often. That's exactly the moment to have three or four testimonial videos ready to show, real before-and-after cases from people who've done it, and you can watch a patient's shoulders visibly relax.
Jeff: And if I've got before-and-after photos, should those get built directly into the video itself?
Dan: Definitely, showing the before photo, then transitioning to the after photo right within the testimonial video itself adds a lot of impact.
Jeff: Once the video is finalized, where does it actually go? Google Business Profile, social media, obviously, but where specifically on the website?
Dan: A couple should sit on the homepage, below the before-and-after photos. I'd also build a dedicated patient testimonials page, grouped by service, so your veneers page includes veneers-specific testimonials alongside the technical information and relevant before-and-after cases, your implant page does the same with implant-specific content, and so on for bonding, chipped teeth, whatever services you want to grow.
Jeff: And for a bigger case, would you want a longer version of the testimonial available somewhere, plus shorter clips repurposed for TikTok or Instagram?
Dan: Both, definitely. For a $50,000 or $60,000 full-arch implant case, which plenty of our clients do regularly, that patient may genuinely watch a full ten or twelve minute testimonial covering the whole story. For social media specifically, you need what we call the hook, you have to earn attention within the first second or two. There's no room for a slow introduction anymore. We actually stopped having people say their own name out loud in our own videos years ago, we just put the name as text on screen instead and start talking immediately. Today's consumer is time-bankrupt, you have to get straight to the point.
Jeff: So the hook might be, I came into a family dentistry practice, boom, before photo right on screen.
Dan: Exactly, and that instantly creates curiosity, what did they actually do to get from that to how they look now while they're talking. That's what marketing looks like today, worlds apart from twenty years ago. The very first television commercial ever aired was for a refrigerator, and it ran five minutes long, since advertisers hadn't figured out anything shorter yet, and audiences were simply fascinated by the idea of a moving commercial at all. Attention spans have shrunk dramatically since then, which is exactly why TikTok and YouTube Shorts exist as their own formats now.
Jeff: But the good news for the doctor listening is they don't have to think about any of that part.
Dan: Right, that's the marketing team's job. The doctor's job is simply capturing the raw content, the quick video, the honest review, the before-and-after photo, that's genuinely 99 percent of the work. Hand a good editor that raw material and they can carve it into a dozen different formats to use across just as many places.
Jeff: Which makes sense, since if I'm the doctor right there with the patient, or my office manager is, we can capture it on the spot, versus needing an entire marketing crew to chase the patient down separately, which becomes intimidating fast and turns into a whole production.
Dan: Exactly, and keep it simple starting out. You'll fumble the first few attempts, hold the phone the wrong way, cover the microphone with your thumb, forget the remote mic entirely, catch the schedule visible in the background. None of that matters, most of it can be fixed in post-production for a couple hundred dollars, and you'll be genuinely surprised by the impact even an imperfect testimonial has on someone considering that exact procedure.
Jeff: That tracks with our own experience. We put up a YouTube channel back in 2013, we were early to it, and we're at somewhere around 350 videos now, most of them seven to ten minutes long, not quick two-minute clips. We estimate we've gotten roughly 20 percent of our own clients from that channel over the years, some from videos posted six years ago that people are only just now discovering. We look back at the early production quality and have a good laugh, but people still walk into MGE today saying they've watched every single video on the channel and are ready to get started, all that work happening quietly in the background before we ever spoke to them.
Jeff: Dan, this has been great, thank you for being here. If listeners have questions for you directly, what's the best way to reach you?
Dan: Easiest is email, danb@mgeonline.com.
Jeff: We'll put that on the episode webpage, along with a link to the New Patient Workshop if you'd like to see Dan present this material live, since he runs most of that seminar, the HIPAA release template, and the specific microphones we mentioned. Anything you want to leave listeners with?
Dan: Just get started. This genuinely isn't optional anymore.
Jeff: Well said. Alright folks, that's all we have for you this week. I hope this helps, have a great week, and we'll see you at the next episode.