42 Reasons Why Your Dental Marketing Sucks

Stage 1: Common blockers for dental patient leads

A lead is a potential patient who clicks on one of your ads. Here’s why you’re struggling to generate leads or get them to call you.

1. Growth budget and distribution

Are you investing enough in marketing and growth? And equally important — are you spending your investment in the right places?

Established practices that want to grow should spend about 5 to 10  percent of revenue on marketing. (For de novo’s, that number will be considerably higher.)

But you don’t just want to throw that money at the wall and hope something sticks. If you’re looking for fast results, investing in a mix of carefully targeted ads on Google and Facebook will deliver more new patients.

2. Missed phone calls

The average dental practice misses 35 percent of all new patient phone calls. That means you’re throwing away 35 percent of your marketing budget — just lighting it on fire.

If a new patient calls your practice and can’t get you on the phone, they’re not going to call you back. They’re just going to try the dentist down the road.

3. Pricing for new patient specials

A special welcome offer — typically a free exam and a discounted cleaning — is a great way to attract potential new patients who visit your website. (For specialties like implants/full arch, you should offer a free consult.)

This isn’t just theory, either. We’ve found that a good new patient special can actually lower your cost per lead by 45 percent. But this strategy only works if you embrace it. Nobody is going to go for your special offer if you’re pricing it too high.

4. Poor or few Google reviews

Good reviews are essential. When a potential patient looks you up on Google (or Yelp, etc), one of the first things they’ll do is check your reviews.

If you have only a handful (or a lot of negative reviews), that’s going to be an instant turn-off for many. So if that’s the case, you need to get more 5-star reviews, pronto.

This is an all-hands-on-deck effort. Encourage your doctors and hygienists to personally ask their happy patients to leave a review after an appointment. 

And make it really easy for patients to write reviews. Try texting them a review link shortly after they leave your practice or putting up QR codes in your operatories (make sure each review link is unique to the patient and don’t let patients post through your wifi, though, or Google will flag their reviews). 

5. Phone tree

Don’t make your phone system complicated. It should be really simple for a new patient to call your practice and get a human being on the line. 

Too many “press 1 for” obstacles will result in hang-ups.

6. Trackability (or lack thereof)

We could write a book on this one. But the elevator pitch is straightforward: You need to be able to track your new patients through every step of your funnel, as they view your ads, visit your website, contact your front desk, and schedule an appointment.

If you can’t, then you’ll have no idea how your marketing is actually performing — which means you won’t be able to make it better. Using a CRM (customer relationship management software) can be enormously helpful here, as it will allow you to do much of this tracking in one place.

7. Targeting radius

Are you targeting the right geographic areas with your ads? This is more complex than simply targeting all of your surrounding zip codes.

Income and population dentistry are important factors here. Ideally, you want to figure out where your best patients typically come from and aim your ads at those specific areas. 

8. Website or landing page issues

If your site isn’t working properly, you’ll struggle to convert. Common issues include:

• Layout: Should be clean and drive viewers towards a clear call to action (contacting your practice). It doesn’t need to appeal to you — your website exists solely to generate new patients.
• Pop-ups: There can be value in a thoughtfully implemented pop-up. But often, they do more harm than good.
• Images: You want appealing images that highlight your doctors, team, and practice. If you use stock photography instead, make sure it’s good quality.
• Broken links: Double-check your links. You can have the most appealing site in the world, but if your booking link is broken, it won’t matter.
• Slow site load speed: Optimize your site for loading time. People are impatient and most will click away if you take too long to load.

9. Phone line outages

It doesn’t matter how great your marketing is if no one can call you!

10. Bad weather

Dental patients aren’t the USPS. Expect a rise in no-shows and a dip in calls during bad weather. If you remain open, though, try texting patients scheduled for that day to let them know you’re still ready to see them.

11. Seasonal changes

New patient visits reliably dip during certain times of the year. Dentists often call late August through September Suck-tember, because the chaos of back-to-school and summer ending tends to mean people forget about dental care.

Try reviewing your new patient and appointment numbers over the last few years to look for seasonal dips. Once you identify problem areas, you can adjust your marketing to compensate (back-to-school cleaning special, etc.)

12. Ad copy

Don’t try to create your own ads unless you have significant experience running Google and Facebook ad campaigns. You’ll likely end up wasting time and money. 

Much like your website, your ads don’t exist to appeal to you — but to potential new patients. Experienced, professional dental marketers know this and have A/B tested ad strategies that are proven to deliver growth.

13. No online contact options

The vast majority of patients want to be able to contact your practice online. 77 percent say that online scheduling plays an important role in deciding which doctor to go with, and 70 percent prefer to book their appointments online. 

Meanwhile, only 20 percent of patients would rather book over the phone.

Don’t lose that 70 percent of patients to the practice down the road. Try offering four contact options:

• Online scheduling
• Chat
• Forms
• Phone

This advice comes with a caveat for full-arch and implant dentists because those treatments have a completely different buying cycle. There, while you want to offer online contact, you also need to get your online leads on the phone ASAP so you can qualify them and schedule them for a consult.

14. Hours and availability

Most practices are only open during normal business hours… which is also when most patients are at work or in school. If you’re willing to buck the trend and offer appointments in the evening or on weekends, you’ll automatically stand out to anyone who has trouble fitting a cleaning into their normal schedule.

15. Population density

Consider the population density of the areas you’re targeting with your ads. If it’s a lower-density community, you’ll see fewer new patients than you might if you focus your campaign on more populated zones.

16. Competition

Dentists today face more competition than they did a generation ago. However, the market is far from saturated, as almost 40 percent of Americans didn’t see a dentist last year.

In other words, you don’t have to be perfect to stand out. You just have to make a little effort. Address some of the blockers we’ve already covered. You want lots of Google reviews, a website built for conversion with an appealing special offer, and an effective ad campaign.

17. Retargeting

Retargeting means running ads at people who have already visited your site but have not yet booked an appointment. If you’re not doing this, you’re missing out on connecting with folks who may be warm leads — actively looking for treatment — but aren’t quite ready to schedule.

18. Rebranding/name change

Think carefully before changing your name. That can confuse existing patients, as well as potential new patients who read online reviews that only mention your old name.

While a basic branding refresh (without a name change) is often a good thing, you’ll also want to make sure that your new brand is a fit for your patient base.

19. SEO

We don’t think SEO should be your primary marketing strategy. Google is constantly changing their SEO algorithm, which means building your marketing around SEO is like putting every penny you have into a single stock. It might make you rich one day, but then crash and leave you broke the next.

However… that doesn’t mean that dental SEO isn’t important. At a minimum, your site should be SEO-optimized. As with ads, you’re better off working with someone who knows what they’re doing here, as SEO can quickly take you into the weeds. 

Stage 2: Qualified lead blockers

A qualified lead is someone in your local area who contacts your practice as a result of your marketing efforts — and isn’t counting on state insurance like Medicaid to pay for treatment. (Unless you’re a Medicaid practice!) 

Qualified leads are the kind of leads you really want. Here’s what’s blocking them.

20. Ad targeting (low income vs. high income)

If you want more qualified leads, you need to target your ads based on income. For most practices, this will mean aiming to get more higher-income patients, although Medicaid dentists will do the opposite.

The best practice here is to create marketing maps based on income and population so you know where to focus your advertising efforts. 

21. Targeting radius

Most dental patients want convenience. While implant and ortho patients may be willing to travel further for treatment, people looking for a cleaning or a filling are not going to make a two-hour drive to do it. 

22. Wrong services advertised

You need to make sure that the services you’re advertising are the right fit for your market. For example, if your practice is in a college town or a suburb full of young families, you may not be serving the right population to build your business around full arch.

23. Insurance issues 

Dental insurance is a marketing tool. Patients who see that you take their insurance will usually feel more comfortable calling you. 

Top insurance issues include:

• Don’t accept Medicaid
• Changing accepted insurances
• Fee-for-service only

None of these are inherently a problem — but you should keep them in mind when you’re thinking about how to use insurance to create more qualified leads. 

Stage 3: Conversion and scheduling blockers

Once a lead contacts your practice, you’ve got to get them scheduled for an appointment or consult. Watch out for these blockers.

24. Front desk phone scripting/skills

The average dental practice converts less than 50 percent of all phone calls into scheduled appointments. That means you’re probably losing at least 50 percent of all new patient callers (calls you’ve spent marketing dollars to create).

Here, introducing scripting and coaching your front desk team on call handling best practices can make a big difference. With enough buy-in, you should be able to improve your phone conversion rate to more than 80 percent.

25. Response time (non-phone leads)

When a potential patient fills out a form on your website or messages your practice through online chat, how quickly do you respond? Minutes are ideal, hours are okay, but anything longer than that and you’re going to lose people fast.

26. Follow-up cadence

This is mostly relevant for implant/full-arch lead nurturing. Here, you’ll want to consistently follow up with interested potential patients who may not yet be ready to schedule a consult. 

Depending on an individual’s level of excitement or readiness to move forward, you may want to reach back out to them on a weekly or monthly basis.

Repeat issues (already covered above)

We’ve already gone through these issues in previous sections, but they do also affect conversion and scheduling:

• Hours/availability
• Accepted insurances
• Lacking a strong new patient special offer

Stage 4: Show rate blockers

No-shows are a painful reality in the dental business. But here are some areas you could probably improve to reduce your no-show rate.

27. Time to appointment

If you’re making people wait more than 2-3 business days to see you, your no-show rate is going to shoot upward. This is true for both GP and specialties.

If needed, try leaving open blocks in your schedule for new patient appointments or consults, so you can fit callers in right away.

28. Confirmation process

If you don’t have a confirmation process, you should. It accomplishes two goals: alerts you to patients who aren’t going to show up and reminds patients that they’ve got an appointment coming up.

Try sending a text message/email 24 business hours before each appointment asking patients to confirm they’re planning on showing up.

29. Office doctor/schedule changes

This is less common, but if you’re regularly changing patient appointment times after they’ve already been scheduled, that will affect your show rate.

Repeat issues (already covered above)

• Slow availability
• Unappealing new patient special or consult 
• Poor phone scripting
• Seasonal changes, 
• Bad weather

Stage 5: Long-term value, ROI, or retention blockers

Finally, these are the blockers that will prevent someone who shows up for an initial exam and cleaning or a consult from becoming a long-term patient. Many of these overlap, but it’s important to understand all the angles.

Note: From this point on, what we’re covering is mostly the responsibility of doctors and treatment coordinators (and not marketing, ops, or front desk).

30. Poor clarity on treatment

If a patient doesn’t understand why they need a certain treatment, they’re much less likely to follow up. It’s important that your treatment presentations should focus on how treatment will improve a patient’s quality of life and if or how inaction could cause harm.

31. Lack of treatment options

Sometimes (and typically because of money), a patient can’t say yes to the best treatment option. Here’s where it’s really important to have a second or even third option in your back pocket — something that the patient might be able to say yes to so they don’t walk out without getting needed help.

32. Too many treatment options

On the flip side… you don’t want to offer so many options that the patient gets confused and never chooses any! This is why many products or services offer three options (for example, a SaaS product may have a starter, business, and enterprise-level plans or a car may have a base model, mid-level, and touring configurations). 

33. Fear (made worse by over-explanation, lack of solutions… etc.)

More than one in three people are scared to go to the dentist. So you’re frequently dealing with anxious patients who are feeling emotionally overwhelmed… and that’s before you hit them with a three-phase, $15,000 treatment plan.

You’d run away, too.

Taking the time to connect emotionally with the patient, listen to their story, and respond to their stated pain points is essential here. You can’t eliminate all pain or anxiety from their experience, but you can make them feel like they have an ally in the room — which can make a big difference.

34. Money

This is obviously a huge one. Often, a patient simply doesn’t have the money to pay for treatment — a problem made worse by the fact that dental insurance plans typically impose annual maximums of only $1,000 to $2,000.

Additional barriers:

• Lack of financing options
• Misunderstanding around what is available

The more your practice can offer practical, empathetic solutions to the financial barriers patients face, the less of an issue this will be to closing cases. 

Obviously, these solutions may look different for a GP versus an oral surgeon working on a full-mouth reconstruction. Depending on your typical case, anything from in-house payment plans to third-party financing partners may be worth considering.

35. Lack of trust and connection (feeling judged or lectured)

If a patient hasn’t been to see a dentist in a while, one of the quickest ways to make sure they continue to stay away is to give them a lecture about it. Be a friend (or like we said above, an ally), not a stern parent. 

36. Lack of understanding or explanation of insurance benefits

Related to money — if a patient doesn’t understand their insurance options (say, for example, that their plan covers a cleaning every six months or helps reduce their out-of-pocket costs for a crown), then they’re less likely to accept treatment. Here, it can be useful to educate patients on what their insurance covers so that they’ll be more comfortable using the benefits they’re already paying for.

37. Overly technical presentation

This dovetails with what we already talked about re: fear and trust. Too many dentists get caught up in the technical details of treatment but fail to connect with patients about what matters most — how treatment will improve their quality of life.

38. Lack of urgency

If the patient needs treatment, make sure they understand the urgency. You don’t want to fearmonger, but you do want to help them understand why treatment is important and any major risks that come from delay.

39. Lack of a unique selling point (USP)

With marketing patients, you need to be able to answer a key question: Why you? Why is your practice the right place for a patient to get treatment?

Your USP will vary depending on your strengths. You may want to emphasize that you’re a family practice with long-standing ties to your community. Maybe you’re a prosthodontic practice that offers a level of restorative work most GPs can’t compete with.

The specific USP doesn’t matter so much as the fact that you know yours — and make sure your patients do too.

40. Poor handoffs

During a typical visit, handoffs may happen from your front desk to your dental assistant, from your assistant to your hygienist, from your hygienist to your dentist, and then from your dentist back to your assistant or front desk. That’s a lot of opportunities for something to get missed.

Take some time to think through how you and your team handle handoffs. Ideally, everyone in the loop gets the information they need to care for the patient… and make sure they feel cared for.

41. Perceived wait times

Once a patient has agreed to start treatment, it’s usually a good idea to move forward without much delay. From a marketing perspective, this is less urgent than getting a patient in for their initial appointment right away, but you don’t want to lose momentum. (And of course, there could be clinical reasons why fast treatment is essential, too.)

42. Lack of value built

We’ve touched on this more than once already, but it’s so important we want to spell it out here as our final item. Patients need to understand the value of treatment.

This is not about dollars and cents. Not really. It’s about all those dental cliches — being able to smile with confidence, bite into a sandwich again, or simply avoid years of pain and discomfort — that really do make a genuine difference in people’s lives.