Dental Marketing: Fire the Laser!

Gary Bird is CEO of SMC National and host of the popular podcast Dental Marketing Theory. We recently sat down to discuss marketing principles that can help dental practices be more successful, as well as when to fire the laser

What are you doing with SMC National and Dental Marketing Theory?

SMC National is a dental marketing company. We work with people who want to grow their practices. We have about a hundred team members, and we take really good care of them, so they, in turn, take really good care of our clients.

We got started in 2008 when businesses weren’t really emailing their customers. Social media wasn’t used for business yet. There was no text messaging to customers. So, if you wanted to reach them, you had to send postcards or pick up the phone and call them individually. All very expensive. So, I recognized this as a great opportunity.

I met a dentist who said, “Dentistry is really hard to market.” I said, “Okay, we’re willing to give it a shot if you’re willing to give us an opportunity.” And they went from about $90,000 a month to about $450,000 a month over a couple of years. He started referring me to other dentists, and that’s what SMC National is today.

With the podcast, I want to talk to people who are in the dental industry and have unique stories of how they solve problems. It’s a show about what’s working for people in the dental industry and what direction the industry is growing.

You started in 2008. Didn’t people want to cut marketing in the downturn?

Henry Ford said, “A man who tries to stop advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time.” You cut your marketing because it’s easy to cut, and it’s an external vendor, so it doesn’t rock your culture. So now you’re going, “Okay, we’re back to profitable this month.”

But then the ripple effect hits. Now you don’t have new patients coming in. So now everybody’s scared, and everybody’s going, “Man, we’ve got to cut back. We’ve got to lay people off.”

A downturn actually makes marketing easier and cheaper. That’s when market share is grabbed. Many of the big companies that we take for granted today were created during the Great Depression or the tech bubble or the 2008 bubble.

What would be a good range for a marketing budget?

Most people in the dental industry ask, “Gary, how much should I spend per location? $5,000? $10,000?” and that’s not how you pick a marketing budget. And don’t ask marketing people what you should be spending because they’re happy to spend whatever they can get their hands on.

What you want to do is look at your revenue and carve out a percentage for marketing.

In dental, that varies whether you are in Pedo-Medicaid versus GP versus implants versus ortho, but I’m just going to give you some loose bands.

So 1%–3% is like, “Hey, I’m just playing ball; you’re out there.” You might get some good results from that. I would say 3%–5% is like, “I’m taking this seriously, and I’m expecting growth from this.” Anything above that, in the 6%–10% band, you’re expecting massive growth.

Say you just hired a new associate, and they have no way of producing results from a treatment standpoint unless you load them with new patients. That’s when you’re going to want to ratchet up that budget. Now, the reason everybody’s so scared to do this is that they don’t actually have clear metrics around what’s working and what’s not working, which means you’re flying blind.

If you’ve ever watched Shark Tank, the first thing they ask is what it costs to acquire a new patient. Most people say, “We’re spending $10,000 a month, and we’re getting 100 new patients, so my cost per acquisition must be $100.” Then they spend $20,000 and only get 110 or 120 new patients. What happened? Some of their new patients are referrals, some are drive-bys, some are doctor referrals. Maybe the real cost per acquisition is closer to $500 or $600, but it’s invisible to you; you don’t see that.

Once you get control of your cost per acquisition, it changes everything. Because then it’s just math. Then it’s, “Cool, we spend $10,000, and our cost per acquisition is $200. So if I invest another $2,000, I’m going to get 10 more patients through the door.”

What are your thoughts on target marketing?

Most people are net fishing. You throw out a net, and you get some of the fish that you want and hundreds of creatures that you don’t want. What I like to do is more like deer hunting. You see a buck, you have one shot, and you either hit it or you miss it, but it’s extremely valuable every time you hit it.

So who should you target? That’s up to you. If you ask me, I either want to do Pedo-Medicaid, because I can get those patients through the door in huge volumes for really cheap. Or I want to do all-on-four because, yeah, the cost per acquisition is $1,000 or $1,500, but I’m getting a 15x return on my investment.

But if you try to do everything, it’s kind of like doing Chuck E. Cheese with, like, Goldman Sachs. I wouldn’t mix their marketing and go, “Get your Chuck E. Cheese pizza, then go upstairs and do your investing.” Those are two different audiences. You’ve got to be wise in how you pick your target so you can be precise and fire the laser.

How can a dental practice implement this type of marketing?

A dentist breaks everything down into daily metrics. Are you brushing? Are you flossing? If you do this every day, you won’t have to pay me a bunch of money. But if you don’t do this, you’re going to pay me a bunch of money to fix all these problems.

Marketing’s the same. You’re either going to go down to the micro metrics of daily marketing and hold your people accountable, or you’re going to end up throwing money at the problem. Everything in business is like this.

If we see another economic downturn, what’s your advice?

I would double down, triple down, quadruple down. There’s a reason that VC money loves tech: because the upside is so big. So they’re okay picking 10 companies, and if one wins, they still make out like bandits. And now they’re moving to dental. Why? Because it’s safe and the returns are high.

So if you have three years before you’re looking to exit, you couldn’t be in a better position. With the economy and the political cycle, we’ve got a couple more years of fear out there. And that always causes the economy to slow down. Just build the business in a way that you would want to buy it. And if you do that, it’s going to make your life better. Even if you end up not selling it, it makes your life better.

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