Opening a dental practice comes with a long list of decisions. How many operatories? Which insurance plans? When should marketing begin? How large should the team be?
Those decisions can look separate on a startup checklist. In practice, they affect one another.
That's a recurring theme Shane Simmons, CEO and Visionary of Crimson Media, and Michelle Affanato of Affinity Management Consulting have seen while working with dental startups. Shane approaches the equation largely from the marketing side. Michelle works with startup and newer practice owners on operations and practice management.
As Shane put it during Episode 84 of The Dental Practice Launch Podcast, marketing and operations are "two sides of the same coin." If one breaks down, the other eventually feels it too.
A marketing campaign can make the phone ring. Someone inside the practice still has to answer that call, handle it well, and get the patient scheduled.
And that connection starts well before opening day.
Decide What Kind of Dental Practice You're Building First
It's easy to jump straight to the physical pieces of a startup.
A dentist finds a space, starts thinking about the number of operatories, talks with a contractor and begins working through financing. Michelle sees another question that needs to come earlier: What should it actually feel like to be a patient there?
That includes the type of patients the practice wants to attract and even the type of team members the owner wants working there.
Shane sees the same issue from the marketing side. Decisions about insurance participation, desired patient volume, team size and long-term growth all affect how the practice should position and market itself.
Branding can begin before a lease is even signed.
Consider a dentist who wants to build a smaller, boutique-style practice based heavily on the patient experience rather than discounts or aggressive new patient specials. If the website looks like a generic template and leads with offers that don't fit that model, prospective patients get one impression online and a completely different one once they arrive.
The pieces don't match.
A dental marketing strategy works better when it's built around the actual practice rather than added after everything else has already been decided.
Work With People Who Understand Dentistry
Michelle has personally worked with more than 200 dental startups. One lesson from that experience is fairly simple: dentistry has its quirks.
People entering the industry from the outside sometimes encounter processes that don't operate the way they'd expect. That makes industry experience useful when choosing the people helping build the practice.
Michelle shared an example during the podcast involving a startup that had hired an overseas company to handle its website, SEO and marketing.
The website looked great.
It wasn't producing the results the practice wanted.
Three months after opening, the practice was already switching to a marketing company that worked specifically with dental practices in the United States. Michelle said they began seeing a difference in what the website was producing.
Looks weren't the issue. Performance was.
The same principle can extend to contractors, consultants, accountants, lenders and other partners involved in a startup. They don't all need to think exactly alike, but they do need to understand what the dentist is trying to build.
Michelle works specifically on that operational side through Affinity Management Consulting, helping startup and newer practice owners work through the early stages of ownership and the growing pains that follow.
Dental Marketing Should Start Before Opening Day
Waiting until the doors open to think about patient acquisition creates a difficult situation.
The practice is ready.
The team is ready.
The schedule isn't.
Marketing takes preparation, particularly for a startup with no existing patient base. Branding, the website, budgets, campaigns and the overall strategy need time to come together.
During the podcast, Shane explained that the marketing timeline is one of the areas startup owners need to plan before opening. That includes deciding where to market, how much to budget and what type of patients the practice wants those campaigns to attract.
The goal isn't simply to generate as many names and phone numbers as possible.
The marketing needs to fit the practice.
A high-volume insurance-based office may approach acquisition differently from a smaller fee-for-service practice. Location, competition, capacity and the owner's plans matter too.
Opening day shouldn't be the first day anyone starts thinking about those questions.
Marketing Can Generate a Call. The Team Still Has to Convert It.
This is where marketing and operations meet in a very measurable way.
Suppose a campaign is working and prospective patients are calling the office. If the person answering those calls isn't prepared to handle them, the practice can lose patients it already paid to attract.
Michelle recommended using a phone system that records incoming and outgoing calls.
That gives the practice a way to hear what's actually happening.
Are calls being answered properly? Are prospective patients getting scheduled? How quickly can the office get someone onto the schedule? What happens when the caller asks a question the team wasn't expecting?
Without that visibility, a practice owner may see a disappointing number of scheduled patients and assume the marketing company isn't delivering.
The marketing may have delivered exactly what it was supposed to.
The leak happened on the phone.
Hiring, phone training, scheduling protocols and standard operating procedures therefore become part of patient acquisition, even though they aren't technically marketing.
Crimson Media has previously broken down how dental practices can improve phone conversion rates, because getting more calls isn't particularly useful when too many of those callers disappear before scheduling.
Growth Gets Risky When the Numbers Are Missing
Eventually, a startup gets through the earliest phase and starts thinking about what's next.
Maybe two additional operatories are ready to open. Another hygienist could be hired. The owner wants to increase production and bring more patients through the practice.
That may mean increasing the marketing budget.
But Shane raised an important question during the episode: What does it currently cost the practice to acquire a new patient?
If the owner doesn't know, spending more becomes guesswork.
It's the proverbial spaghetti-at-the-wall approach, except now real money is attached to every throw.
Patient acquisition cost isn't the only number that matters, either.
A practice can look busy and continue bringing in new patients while something else is going wrong underneath.
More New Patients Won't Solve a Retention Problem
New patients are naturally a major focus during a startup's first year or two. Every patient has to come from somewhere when there isn't an established patient base yet.
But those patients need to stay.
Michelle described the problem bluntly during the episode. Without retention, new patients can become "one-hit wonders."
They visit once and disappear.
Maybe a patient says they'll call in six months rather than scheduling their next visit. Someone needs a crown but tells the team they'll get back to them when they're ready. Another patient never gets back onto the hygiene schedule.
Do that often enough and the practice needs a constant stream of new patients just to replace the ones falling out.
Spending more on marketing doesn't plug that hole.
Retention protocols, recall, unscheduled treatment and follow-up start telling a different part of the growth story.
That's why marketing performance can't be judged solely by how many new patients walked through the door this month. What happens to those patients afterward matters.
Sometimes Growing Smarter Means Pulling Back
Shane shared an example of a practice that had been open for roughly a year and a half and was growing rapidly from a new patient standpoint.
Eventually, the conversation changed.
Instead of continuing to push harder on new patient acquisition, it made sense to settle down on that spending and look at the patients already inside the practice.
Who had outstanding treatment?
Were existing patients being retained?
Was there enough room in the schedule for them as the team grew?
Those aren't signs that marketing failed. Quite the opposite. Patient flow had reached a point where another part of the business needed attention.
There will also be practices in the opposite position. They have capacity, the team can handle additional volume, and the numbers support putting more money into acquisition.
Neither answer is automatically right.
The practice's numbers should help make the decision.
Don't Copy Someone Else's Dental Startup Formula
Social media makes it very easy to find a dentist talking about how quickly a startup grew.
What isn't always visible is everything surrounding that result.
Market demographics. Insurance participation. Staffing. Competition. Budget. Services. Patient capacity. The owner's goals.
Michelle emphasized toward the end of the conversation that a dental practice isn't one-size-fits-all.
A strategy that worked beautifully for one startup can be completely wrong for another.
The better approach is to use successful practices as reference points while building around the owner's actual vision and circumstances.
That applies to operations and marketing alike.
Marketing and Operations Have to Grow Together
A startup needs patients. No question.
But generating those patients is only one part of building a healthy practice.
The brand has to represent what patients actually experience. The marketing has to reach the right people. The team has to answer the phone and convert opportunities into appointments. Once patients arrive, systems need to keep them connected to the practice.
Then the numbers tell the owner when it's time to push harder and when it's time to fix something internally.
That's why marketing and operations can't operate in separate lanes.
At Crimson Media Dental Marketing, Shane and the team help dental practices build visibility before opening and keep patient flow moving as the practice grows.
Marketing works better when the practice is ready for the patients it brings in.