Dental Unscripted | Getting into Ownership and Practice Management Insights

Spinning.

Welcome to Dental Unscripted,

where Mike Dinsio and Paula Quinn break

down the practice ownership journey,

one episode at a time.

Starting up, buying,

and running a successful dental practice.

hey hey guys welcome back to another

episode of dental unscripted we are doing

some marketing uh series pods today and

i'm excited about this one because it's a

very um uh it's a very it's a

topic that comes up quite a bit and

it and it's really like how much money

do we spend in marketing and how do

we slice up that budget so we had

a bazillion dollars does it go to seo

does it go to mailers does it go

to events

um should i get one of those big

blow-up dinosaurs that waves in the air i

mean where do we put our money right

and so that's what today's topic is i'm

excited about introducing our our guest

and and uh specialist today but paula how

you doing today you're doing all right and

you're feeling good you feel good you're

in it to win it today i am

It's podcast day.

So thanks for always, you know,

just being you, Paula.

Thanks for just being you.

So without that, without further ado,

let's jump right into it.

Guido Tabano with Market by Market is our

marketing specialist today.

And Guido and I debate on this quite

a bit, you know,

because not in a bad way,

in a good way.

It's like how much money

needs to go to each one of these

things to be successful.

And it's so hard for startups because they

have no money.

You know,

they just went through a project that cost

them a bazillion dollars.

And it's like, how much is left?

Well, nothing.

And, you know, my job is patients.

Exactly.

It's a beautiful office,

but now there's no patients.

So that defeated the entire thing that

defeated the entire thing.

But we do have a CBCT.

So I'm glad we got that, guys.

Thanks.

I mean,

that's all that's always the conversation

is, is I want a milling machine.

I want CBCT.

scanner and i'm like do you want any

pacer all the stuff and then i'm like

do you want some patients oh okay that's

good so so guido with uh with mark

in my market way to tell us a

little bit about your company and then we

will jump dive right into this idea of

budget and how we allocate funds

Yeah, absolutely.

So we have been around for over a

decade.

We're a dental marketing company at this

point.

But we started out in legal,

which is like ultra competitive and kind

of keeps us on our toes here.

Because when you deal with like lawyers

versus dentists, like, you know,

the budgets are a lot bigger.

You know, they're not as super, you know,

hyper focused like you are with dental.

But it all kind of starts with these

demographic studies we put together.

So we have another business that optimizes

Google Maps for like franchises and

service industries.

And I always say like,

Dental is a service industry.

All the ads that we run is not

going to make someone go to a dentist.

It just doesn't work like that.

You're either in pain or you need to

go.

And that's the driving factor in that

market.

So you really need to know, like, really,

again, first, who you are,

what you do and who you want to

target versus what's in that community,

who you're going to be able to get

in front of.

And is that even possible?

And they have to like match up for

a very successful office.

Because again, you know,

it's either they're out there searching

and you have the ability to capture them

or they're just not in that market.

And it's not going to happen no matter

what we do.

So that makes sense.

I mean,

we we did an episode about demographics.

Check it out.

And it's really tying that that those

demographics to the actual marketing

strategy and how how to bridge that gap.

I think that's super important.

Check that episode out.

But today, today's about budget.

So I will throw out to you, Guido,

that I would say my goal is for

these docs to have about thirty grand to

spend.

That's traditionally the budget for a

startup.

Now, what I tell them is,

is I want you to have fifty to

spend in your first year.

So it's somewhere between thirty to fifty.

And usually it comes down to how much

money do we have left from the project

and how much money do you have in

your personal bank account to subsidize

this?

And that's it always comes down to that.

And so

You know,

I know that the whole entire world of

marketing has shifted, in my opinion,

where traditional marketing of

pay-per-click and Facebook ads and mailers

and all the things was kind of the

strategy before.

And now with...

all of the AI stuff going on,

it's kind of all about SEO.

There's been this shift in the last call

it year.

And so I debate,

I battle internally of how much dollars do

we spend on SEO knowing that it takes

six months to pick up.

But here the poor startup is starving for

six months.

That doesn't work either.

So there has to be some kind of

balance between investing in SEO

but also getting some freaking patients

your first month.

How do we do this?

How do we look at this?

So I think it comes down to one

thing you said, right?

Is that, again,

it comes down to your market and what

your marketing budget is.

Obviously,

marketing in the middle of nowhere in West

Virginia or parts of Utah is going to

be a lot more cost effective,

and you're going to get more for your

money than in downtown Chicago or New York

City, right?

Because it's more competitive,

leads cost more,

you have to do more to compete.

So that is the first thing we look

at, like budgets.

You can't have a cookie cutter marketing

budget for everyone.

That's the same.

Second thing is it comes down to the

doctor.

A lot of times on a startup,

you have to work a certain amount of

time in another office.

You're going to be here part time, right?

So you have to kind of ramp that

up.

Now we do get doctors that are like,

I'm going full out and like they can't,

like you said,

sit around waiting for patients.

when they open,

when they're not working another job.

So I have to be more aggressive there.

So obviously I need more of a budget,

but I think there's this thing.

And, you know, we see it too,

where it's like, you know,

you build this beautiful office and they

will come and it doesn't work like that.

No,

I always say it's the field of dreams.

It's not, it's not the field of dreams,

bro.

Kevin Costner,

Kevin Costner is not coming out of the

freaking cornfield to play baseball.

It's not happening.

It's not okay.

No, no.

It's all up to you with the insurance.

It's not just because you take insurance

anymore.

They're going to come because no one is

going to those sites and saying who's in

network.

They're still doing a search like I am

looking for a Delta dentist who is in

network with whatever and you need to show

up.

And it's not also anymore that you just

put up a site and Google indexes and

crawls that you have to do some work

to get it to show too.

And it takes a little bit of time.

you know on average for a dental site

to start ranking from when you build it

depending on the market it's probably

going to take about four to eight weeks

so that means wait wait wait say that

again you're you're so fast with it you're

so fast you said you you said so

much information can happen

Right,

so whether it's time you build a website,

right?

Because again,

it's not like years ago where you just

built a website and it kind of sits

on these platforms,

whether it's Bing or Google.

Like work has to be done.

It has to index pages.

It has to like get crawled.

It takes time.

And sometimes you have to manually push

that.

It doesn't happen automatically where

Google will like find it on its own.

Or now we have ChatGPT or these other

search engines too, right?

So-

It takes on average about four to eight

weeks for the needle to even start moving

with organic.

Let's call it organic, not SEO,

because SEO is just a broad thrown around

term.

Right now, what does that mean?

It means that you shouldn't wait till the

very end to build your website.

It means that once your loan closes,

you should build that website and good

websites don't go up overnight because you

have to create

unique content that ranks.

You have to have content that's, you know,

sort of story branded to your office too,

and you don't look like a DSL, right?

Also,

it's hard to have new photos until you're

open.

So we have to play around with stock

photos to start, which is not always good.

But again,

we want to start about six months before

you open.

Wow.

And that wasn't the case, like I said,

a year ago.

I mean, it was the case,

but there just seems to be more of

an emphasis around organic marketing now.

And by the way,

you keep talking about the cost of

marketing and a new patient.

What are those statistics?

I have mine.

I'm curious what yours are.

So this idea of organic marketing instead

of SEO, organic versus direct marketing,

what are those costs for per patient

acquisition historically long run average?

Well,

everything is in a mismatch right now,

I'm going to tell you.

So whatever was there,

like literally in the past ninety days is

just a totally different frontier.

You have Apple Maps that's going to start

running paid.

That's going to compete with the Google

business profile for leaving reviews.

Right.

There's so many different forms of paid

now from local service ads to Google paid

to Meta paid.

So it all, again, depends on the market.

And that's what the main takeaway from

this should be.

Don't compare yourself to the national

average or even to people that are open

in like an area like, I don't know,

Orlando,

because there's different parts of Orlando

and some are gonna be more competitive

than others.

It really has to be what is a

cost per lead cost in your granular

market, which you can see.

You can literally see that,

and that's where the marketing budget

should come from.

So, yes,

we know banks have to give a standard

YouTube.

Usually it's around that market that you

said,

that thirty to thirty five K website

should cost anywhere between five and six

thousand,

seven thousand for a good website.

gonna rank that's your property not leased

to you like some marketing companies can

put it up in a couple weeks and

it's they literally lease the site so you

don't own it that's a problem so you

know but when it comes to actually like

what you should do to generate uh a

new patient right there's data that's

there you can look at a cost per

click you know let's say you know in

sort of a regular generic market.

Again, it's not cost per click, right?

Because a click just means that someone's

clicking on your ad.

That's not a conversion, right?

Some markets where it's not as

competitive,

you're going to get a lot more for

your money.

So, you know, and again,

it's not arbitrarily picking a number

either like a lot of companies do where

they're like,

pick the five hundred dollar package,

pick the thousand dollar package,

pick the fifteen hundred dollar package.

Well,

I've heard three hundred dollars to two to

three hundred dollars per patient for just

marketing in general.

And then I've heard fifty dollars per

patient for more organic.

Those are kind of the numbers that I've

heard a few times.

And I also think it's interesting that

we're going to ask if they're right.

Well, I'm going to,

but I think it's also interesting that

ZocDoc and OpenCare come in at about three

to three fifty per patient.

So where are we at?

It's super high.

Well, first of all,

let's talk about ZocDoc because ZocDoc is

a directory, right?

Directories are great because they have a

lot of authority and a lot of traction.

So when your website links to them,

it increases your authority on a higher

level, which is what you want,

because higher authority sites are how

chat or Google or Bing picks what to

show.

There's not some arbitrary way like why

they show one above another when you're

like, I'm so much better than this office.

You may be a better doctor,

but on a digital presence,

they're better than you because they're

following the rules.

Okay.

directories are good to be and they're not

good to use them because you can do

something for the like a fraction of them

like so if they're charging you three

hundred all they're doing are running paid

branded ads where they're probably paying

about thirty dollars for that lead and

charging you three hundred

So you know what costs three hundred bucks

for a lead?

Probably a dental implant,

which is very competitive.

So this is a very good thing because

everybody wants to do implants, right?

And it's a numbers game.

Okay.

So if a good lead and again,

this changes depending on the market cost

three hundred dollars for a lead,

not a click.

Maybe a click is between twelve and twenty

five dollars.

You're just getting a click,

but you're only converting maybe ten to

twenty percent of those clicks to a lead

that those leads have a closing ratio to.

And depending on the platform where they

come from, there's better quality.

Google tends to have better quality leads

for implants as opposed to Meta,

where you get tire kickers and it's more

visual.

Right.

But it might be better for pediatrics in

some markets.

But we've noticed that Meta doesn't have

the best conversions.

And this is across all markets, right?

Interesting.

So that means that if you give me

three thousand dollars and it's three

hundred dollars a lead,

I'm going to get you ten implant leads.

If you're only going to close twenty

percent of that right for that three

thousand dollars.

And let's say you get five thousand bucks

for an implant because it's easy.

You just made ten thousand.

So your investment was three.

You made ten.

It's an OK ROI.

OK,

but it takes time to build data to

understand where they're coming from and

how the conversions are going to get

better.

So that's going back to what you said

for budgets.

You giving me a GP versus a pediatric

versus a cosmetic three types,

three different budgets.

So interesting.

Interesting.

Well,

the numbers that you were just throwing

out reminded me of my next type of

form of of Mark.

Marketing.

And that is mailers.

Do they work?

Because what you just said was, OK,

we're fishing.

We're fishing for big cases.

We're talking about implants.

And it's the exact same thing.

You throw five grand.

I'm sorry.

Twenty five hundred per drop seems to be

kind of a nice average.

Five thousand mailers.

There's usually like a one to two percent

drop.

actual lead to the five thousand that's

how many calls uh a one to two

percent response rate they call it and

then it's uh the conversion rate so i'm

seeing like in a a more expensive cost

per patient on mailers but do they work

Paula,

I know you see patients in your practice.

You don't see patients in your practice.

You don't own your practice anymore.

But when you owned,

you fought me on mailers for a long

time.

And when you did it,

you always tell it like we got in

this big argument and you were right and

I was wrong.

I don't like that conversation.

We got to find a different way to

spin this.

Spin it, Paula.

Go.

I felt like after you wanted me to

keep doing it, not the initial,

not the initial drop.

I feel like what I didn't do is

my due diligence,

which I would like to save for a

different episode, but I just didn't see.

And it was a feeling, right?

I was like,

I'm not getting very many patients off

this.

I don't want to do it anymore.

Got it.

Correct.

Yes, exactly.

Guido, do you see that mailers work?

It depends on the market, OK?

And it depends on what the mailer says.

So let's take a step back to demographics,

right?

So if you are doing cosmetics and implants

and you're targeting an older audience,

they are probably not on digital.

A mailer is going to work really well.

But you have to make sure that you

target, again,

the right people for that mailer.

If you take a lot of insurance and

you're happy with volume,

a mailer is also going to work with

a low price point for an initial visit

for a startup.

But that might not be the best plan

for you long term if you really don't

want to take clients like that.

So they work,

but the messaging has to be correct and

the demographics of the market have to

match up with that, right?

So it has to be like three or

four different things that sort of are on

the checkbox.

when you're doing that startup and you're

talking to them and analyzing, like,

who is this dentist and what they want

to do?

Right.

So again,

it's all about the market because in some

rural areas they're going to work great.

They're absolutely going to work great.

So I never I'll never forget.

I went like

I went all in on mailers on an

Alaska doctor once and I'm like,

this is going to be amazing.

They're going to get off the boats like

the fish boats.

And there I kind of consider like those

Alaska people,

just good old salt of the earth people

that just, you know,

it's not New York City, that's for sure.

And she threw out mailers and it was

the worst response ever.

That was the last time that I said,

this is definitely going to work.

How do we know?

I mean, do you have an answer here?

How do you know?

Maybe you don't.

I mean,

I don't think you guys actually facilitate

mailers, but yeah.

How do you know?

So we do the demographic reports.

So we do the demographic reports and we

slice and dice the data,

but it comes from a really in deep

discovery call with the doctor and who

they are and what the practice looks like

and working with consultants like you,

right?

That like you're sort of getting us the

vision of what that looks like, right?

So let me tell you something else that

we're not talking about too.

A mailer is just a mailer.

They're still going to do a Google search

or some sort of search on you anyway.

And if you're a startup and you don't

have any reviews or any juice backing you

that like you're even decent,

they're still not going to call you even

from that mailer.

Don't you think the call to action on

there is a big deal?

It does.

Some people will just put on there like,

I do Invisalign.

And it's like, that's all pretty.

What does that mean?

We talked about it earlier.

I either want a new patient special,

right?

Like something like you want,

you want it to be really,

I feel like.

Here's where the visuals matter.

And I don't want to see stock photos,

right?

So if you're doing an Invisalign campaign,

what am I looking for as a consumer?

Number one,

I want to see that you made someone's

smile look really good.

And I want to see me.

So I don't want to see the same,

you know,

typical blonde girl flipping her hair with

like really nice white teeth.

If like you're targeting.

older people or teens like you have to

show real photos that matter.

Number two,

I really don't care if you charge between

five and seven thousand.

You know what I'm looking for as a

parent or an adult.

I probably want zero percent financing,

not even the discount,

because people know that that's a gimmick

to how many times I've seen thousand

dollars off this.

Everybody knows that you just raise your

price.

So what do I want to see?

I want to see my monthly cost or

I want to see some sort of financing

special.

right,

that I know that I'm going to get

because why should I go spend seven

thousand with you when I could spend zero

down and it's one twenty five a month,

which fits in my budget and I don't

have to worry about it.

But don't you know, as a startup,

that's risky, though,

because Invisalign in general, period,

because you're only hitting if you're

dropping X amount of mailers,

maybe two percent want Invisalign.

You know,

you're just using this as an example.

Let's say you're an orthodontist.

You're a GP.

Right.

Again,

what is your what are your calls to

action?

Right.

You're new in the neighborhood.

You're seeing new patients.

If you don't have if you're taking

insurance, that's your call to action.

We take insurance because then you don't

have to worry about no insurance.

No problem.

Right.

Right.

If you don't have it,

then ask us about our in-house plan

starting from twenty dollars a month or

something like that.

You know,

great hours because maybe your market

share is you're in a working class area

and you're open till eight and everyone

else closes at five.

So that's a good call to action.

And again, you know,

you speak other languages like what are

the differentiators?

That's what I want to see on a

mailer.

That's interesting because I think even

not just with mailers,

but pay-per-click campaigns,

there's the expense of the actual medium,

and then there's the promotion, right?

And you have to pay for both.

What's interesting is you took it a couple

different ways there,

and it's

gift cards uh...

five thousand dollars off that stuff can

work what i heard you say is is

make it real to the user that paid

the payment

the the we have insurance the hey we

have uh a no insurance option like that

those are real things for i call it

saturday hours yeah i i think that's

really good and i've never heard that

before that's good stuff and the other

thing that i don't want to see is

like i appreciate that you built a really

nice office but i'm really not picking you

for like again there's exception but i'm

not picking you for your office i want

to see you as a staff i'm going

to see you as the dentist yeah

Right.

That's what I want to see.

Like everyone shows they're like, I mean,

I don't know.

I'm Italian.

I like a nice bathroom.

But like, you know,

I really am not picking your office based

on the nice waiting room and the tiles

you picked out or the millwork you have.

It's like I want to get in and

out.

And that's another thing, too,

like other things in areas.

Right.

Do you have good parking?

Because in some areas that sucks.

She slept the other day to see a

doctor.

The parking was terrible.

And I'm like,

I got to find a new one.

And you know, and you know,

that could be a promotion just by itself.

If you're in New York city and you

have parking, like that's an X factor,

New York, Chicago, Atlanta,

there's a million markets.

We've had people in.

Totally.

We have parking.

I mean, street parking.

Ridiculous.

But if you're doing pediatrics,

you don't have a parent.

I really don't feel like with my four

year old and two year old going across,

you know, like, like, like, like, like,

like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

uh we we had somebody do uh free

uber rides um which i think is great

so that is interesting that you bring this

up because let me let me give you

a little secret of what's going on when

you look at what that over demographic

looks like for these snowbirds paul you're

in there be careful

You are.

You're in Arizona.

I am of age.

He is literally probably talking to us in

a few years.

I'm right there with you.

First of all,

we do not think we're old.

I would love an Uber.

Right.

But I'm saying like the reason why I

bring this up is like you probably are

wintering somewhere else.

Your kids are not there.

You will spend money on cosmetic work.

Right.

Me living in New York versus doing some

cosmetic work like an all on X or

whatever in Florida is like going to be

a lot better priced or an implant or

whatever it is, too.

i don't know how i'm gonna get to

that office like i don't have my kids

or maybe transportation so like when you

look at when we pull them what they're

looking for like that concierge type

dental service is what it is which means

extended hours and figuring out

transportation they literally have said

that so that could be again you have

to be careful because it's medical but if

you're doing you know sedation

And then you can take out how they're

figuring out how to get to you.

That is a win in markets.

That's really interesting.

That's great.

Okay.

So just to kind of wrap up this

episode on budget,

I didn't hear

uh i didn't hear a a specific answer

so like and i know you're gonna say

you're you're not gonna give me a specific

you're gonna say it depends on the market

i know i know no i'm not i'm

gonna give you i'm gonna give you some

i'm gonna give you some general price

points right okay right now if you want

to be competitive if you want to hit

like a million bucks within your first

twelve to fourteen months right you

probably need to spend in a rural market

about twenty five hundred to three

thousand right let's just talk general

if you're going into a very dense area

you're probably your spend is thirty five

hundred to forty five hundred if not five

at least if you're gonna do implants

that's what it takes that means we're

looking at getting you a hundred new

patients in the first hundred days that's

a really good benchmark for a startup it

means we're trying to get you stabilized

within six months which means you have

about twenty five to thirty five

new patients consistently by month six

month eight right so those are good

baselines but if you think you're gonna do

it with just the bare minimum thing you're

getting from the bank it's probably not

gonna happen unless you're gonna take more

well what you just said is very doable

i i would argue that number needs to

be doubled if you want to hit a

million you said a million

I, I, I mean, you know,

or a different marketing.

That's true.

So, so, so, okay.

So, so there's,

so there's a monthly budget,

there's a monthly budget.

And I liked that.

I, I,

I'm right at thirty five hundred a month.

And you run that out for the whole

year.

I think you're going to do okay in

a competitive market.

But now let's talk about percentages.

And I say this because SEO,

direct marketing, mail,

we didn't even talk about events.

events uh should have some money five

hundred dollars set up a a booth that's

something whatever so um where if if it

was your dental practice guido you owned

it how would i do this how would

you slice up and remember you're a startup

you have no money no no patience your

brand new brand

How would you spend that thirty five

hundred or percentage wise?

Number one, I'd have a killer website.

I'd start six months before two.

I would start making a hot list and

I'm going to go out with referral pads,

which don't cost a lot,

maybe spend two hundred bucks on referral

pads.

And I'm going to network with everyone in

that area.

If I'm a GP,

I'm going to think outside of the box.

Who are the touch points of people that

don't have dentists?

Right.

I'm going to go to like, you know,

buildings with doormans.

If it's in an area like that,

I'm going to go to urgent care centers

where someone cracks their tooth and they

don't have a dentist.

I'm going to look at all the opportunities

that I can get in front of.

Three,

I'm going to join the Chamber of Commerce

for like two hundred and something bucks

and I'm going to go to every event

that they have and I'm going to network

with other businesses, too,

and try to see what I can do.

Right.

This is six months before.

And use your membership plan to do that.

Use your membership plan.

Use your membership plan to do that.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

So that way I don't have to.

Then I'm going to take a little bit.

I'm probably going to go to Costco,

get cookies.

I'm going to go around and I'm going

to network like crazy.

And I'm going to go every four to

six weeks to those those offices.

Right.

I'm going to put a little money there,

maybe five hundred to two thousand

dollars.

You haven't spent you haven't spent a lot

of money yet, by the way.

OK.

I am going to turn everything on.

Well, this is six months.

Yes.

All six months before.

All six months before.

I'm going to turn everything on six to

eight weeks before I open.

I'm going to start pushing reviews to my

Google profile because I can get it

verified.

And now Apple.

I'm going to try to get at least

a hundred reviews in the first hundred

days.

When I know I have an opening date,

which we know changes,

I'm going to start pushing ads

conservatively,

maybe like fifteen hundred to two

thousand, depending on the market.

And I got to start running SEO,

which is at least a couple thousand there,

too,

because it's going to take a little bit

of time for the website to pick that

up.

long term i don't know if i want

to run paid ads i mean i really

want to drive everything organic with my

reputation and you know with like ai chat

gpt claude gemini those are better quality

patients hands down they're not coming to

you from an ad i would use ads

to bridge the gap if i want to

do ortho or like you know emergency dental

stuff and things like that or if i

like want to do wisdom teeth in the

summer so that's where ads i think would

come in

Right.

And again,

I would front load what I do because

my marketing costs should be like sort of

like, you know,

have an ROI on it going into the

third or fourth month.

So I know that I'm getting back what

I spend so I can put more into

investing it.

So that thirty five K or whatever you

gave me as a startup,

I should have made my money back.

And I'm like,

I know what I'm going to invest and

get out of it.

I love that.

That was perfect.

Thank you for answering specifically.

Would you spend that first thirty K in

the first six months and track it and

then retool?

You wouldn't spread that thirty five K

over the first year.

That's what I was making money and I

can invest more.

I agree.

Ninety days is critical.

You know that, right?

It's also the hardest because you're like

you're freaking out, you're paying bills.

So you got to stay.

Listen,

you got to stay cool at all times.

Everything is strategy, right?

You just can't rely on me or your

marketing company alone.

It's teamwork.

You got to have a digital presence,

a community presence.

You got to have like everybody needs to

be on the same page.

You know,

Paul is going to coach you on those

huddles every morning.

Like everyone has to be speaking the same

language, right?

Like teams that win,

you're all in sync together and it's the

same thing.

If I'm operating in my own little huddle

here with no communication from you or

feedback,

how do you expect me to get you

to your goals you want?

You know,

I can look at only one part,

which is like clicks or calls,

but I don't know what happens when they

hit the office.

So you got to tell me.

We got to meet frequently.

So that kind of teases up for the

last part of this series.

And I'm excited to do it.

Thank you for being on the show, Guido,

as always.

And I think that was great.

I think that's exactly what...

Doctors need to hear when they're

approaching marketing because there's so

many ways to spend dollars and money.

The question is,

is how do you do it and what

market and what strategy and what

percentage and are you getting your ROI?

And I think that all matters when you're

doing a startup.

So thank you so much for your time

today.

And Paula,

let's shut this down and keep rolling on

the next topic.

Thank you guys so much.

Thanks so much.

Bye-bye.

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