Marketing is More Than Just New Patients with Evan Lazarus of Simple Impact Media

If you are one doctor with a small team and three ops, how much can you really produce? There's only a certain amount of time and opportunity that can be afforded to a doctor.

This is Growth in Dentistry, a Dental Intelligence podcast, where we ask the question, what does growth in dentistry mean to you? I'm Steve Jensen, a data dental nerd and your host. Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Growth in Dentistry podcast. I am super excited for our conversation today before, before I jump in, a quick shout out to the marketing team at Dental Intelligence for sponsoring this podcast week after week. A lot of work goes into producing these episodes, and I'm so grateful for their help in making sure they cut these right and make sure we've got, like, the right takes and the right content to post on social media. As always, they've got a cool offering for everyone listening to the podcast. If you haven't checked out Dental Intelligence for a while or you've never checked it out, they'll give you a $50 gift card just for taking a demo. They've released some really cool new stuff, so we've got a slew of scorecards. Basically, it gives you the ability to take any metric you previously been able to access inside of DEI along with a bunch of new metrics and put them in one simple, clean view in the way you want to see your numbers. You also have the ability. Evan and I were just talking before we started pushing record. You also have the ability to chat with with an AI bot called the DI Dot that will go and analyze your scorecard for you and you can ask it questions about your performance. It's super cool. If you're messing around with AI and want to come and see how that's working in dentistry, definitely jump on a call with the team and check out Dental Intelligence. Okay, with that aside, I want to introduce my guest for the day, Evan Lazarus. So Evan is the CEO founder of a marketing agency called Simple Impact Media. I've known him for years, and he is one of the sharpest people that I have met in dentistry. We're lucky to have him. He might. His brains might freak some people out because he's so smart. I've had a few team members tell me, they're like, man, Evan's kind of intense. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. Evan just gets right to the point. And that's what I love about him. I think with a lot of folks in, maybe I shouldn't say this, but there are a lot of people in marketing. They're like A lot of fluff, a lot of hype. But like, don't get down to the nitty gritty. And Evan, previously to starting simple impact media in 2016, was the COO of a hedge fund. He was in finance. So he is very much a numbers guy. Gets to business and makes sure that what he's doing with the practices that Simple Impact Media is serving is actually working and driving the right results. So super excited to have Evan on the podcast. So welcome, Evan.

Thanks. You killed me with flattery. I don't know that I'm the smartest guy around. I'm really not that intense. I'm actually pretty laid back. So. Yeah, okay. I used to like to think I'm pretty safe.

No, it's like just that first impression thing people like. It's like the classic guy from finance. We're like, wow, like this guy's like more, I think put together is probably the right way. I would say that that just comes across as like, wow, that's like a little intimidating sometimes. But yeah, I agree with you.

I'll take it.

Yeah. Once you get to know Evan, you're like, okay, he's laid back, but he just gets crap done. So, Evan, I'm grateful to talk to you. So we're gonna folks, today we're gonna talk about marketing. Obviously, I've got the CEO of a marketing agency here with us, but I wanna frame what I'm seeing happening in dentistry and why this conversation might be interesting. So back post Covid, when all these patients flew off the schedule, there was a really big land grab. I think for patients it may have been true. Four years ago, you almost could have like. And maybe this relates to you. Maybe you've worked with a marketing agency that's local, maybe not focused on dentistry, and you had some success four years ago and you know, things seem to be working. But maybe today you're wondering, like, man, it doesn't seem like my, like dollars are going so far. Maybe what you're doing then wasn't working. And I think four years ago you kind of get away with some sloppy, some sloppy tactics or some sloppy methodology within the space. But today that's not, that's not happening the same. The reason why I'm making that claim is I can see the average patient based growth of dental intelligence clients has slowed almost to zero. It's like 0.4%, 0.5% the average practice. So they're really not growing very fast when it comes to the patients. Now that is certainly not true of Simple Impact Media. Clients, they're definitely growing. They're definitely putting in new patients. And so first, Evan, I thought it'd be fun to talk about a question that I think is, like, a little bit of a hot take. Most people are out there wondering, like, what makes a great marketing agency? How do I know the best marketing agency? But I want to flip that on its head and ask you, like, what. Who is your favorite client? Like, what. What can a dental practice do to make sure that they're actually, like, ready to rock and roll in a marketing partnership?

That's a great question. And it's. It's something I've spent a lot of time thinking about because in. In my seat, right. From the agency perspective, there are. There's a lot of. There's lots of dental marketing companies out there, you know, doing different things for different people. And I have learned through the years. I can't say that I knew this from the jump, but over the years, I have learned that we are best when paired with a certain type of client. I don't have a favorite client. I'm not, you know, there's no, like, one practice that stands out above the rest.

I know I want number one, two, and three names.

But there's, you know, let's talk about, like, the avatar, right? What is that? What does that practice look like? What does that doctor owner look like? What is the culture of that team like? I think those are big parts of the success factor. Right. You have one practice that succeeds with marketing. They're growing, their collections are growing, their active patient population is growing. Everything is trending, you know, sort of up. Right. We see that. That growth, and then we have another practice, you know, that kind of just stays and goes sideways or even has some deterioration in its. In its. In its growth or lack of growth.

Why?

Right. Is. Is one dentist better than the other dentist? Not necessarily. Typically, the things that we see that I see that really make for a great client are they start with the why. Right. There's clear goals, Evan. Here's what I want to achieve. Here's why I want to achieve it. Right. I want my practice to go from $700,000 a year in collections over the next 24 months. I'd like to see 20 to 30% growth in the practice. Something that is realistic.

Yeah.

Something that is defined and something that we can then back into.

Okay.

That's great. That's the goal. What does that look like? Does that mean more new patients? Does that mean better retention of our existing patients? Does that mean we need to Improve our diagnostics, does that mean we need to work on, you know, potentially all that unscheduled treatment that's sitting out there that nobody's going after? Right. It's not one thing. Everybody thinks it's one thing. That's the problem is that the thought process for a lot of the doctors when they approach marketing is very linear. But new patients, it's just new patients. Only new patients and new patients, new patients. And that is so far from how to grow a business. New patients, more new patients for some means, you're only going to work harder, you're not working smarter. And so when I get a doctor that can clearly define what the goals are. And it's not just money, it can be other things. It can be culture, it can be outbound communications, like it can be so many things as well. As a doctor that embraces data, either is using DI already or has this appetite to say, you know what, I need to understand more about the car that I'm driving in order to drive it forward is really bad sort of analogy I worked. But, but that's really the two main things that I think dictate that there's a much greater and exponentially higher chance that this doctor, this practice will succeed. And I would say the third thing is a commitment to invest in their business. Because that's what we do, right? You are investing in the growth of the business. It's not going to happen in two months. I would also add in realistic expectations. This is not a 90 day endeavor. We are not going to grow a business in, you know, an unreal, unrealistic. So having that, you know, sense of realistic expectations, the commitment to say, look, I need to invest in the growth of this business. And then for me it's really simple because my job really is to figure out what is the growth strategy. Is it advertising and outbound, you know, communication? Is it something more internal? Is it culture of the practice? Is it customer service, which is so often overlooked? Is it something clinical with diagnostics and production? Like, what does that strategy really look like? So marketing, a lot of people put me in the bucket of just saying, well, I'm going to do Google Ads and build a new website and I'm going to. That's going to be the thing. Well, that's not going to be the thing. It may be one spoke in the, the wheel of things, but that is not going to be the catalyst, you know, for growth. So having that sort of eyes wide open, you know, type of mentality for me is, is the Best. And like I said, the clearly defined goals, if new patience is your only goal, the chances of you succeeding in what you want to accomplish are very, very slim. Yeah, yeah.

I want to, I wanted to say out loud so that people can understand why that's the case. If you noticed, Evan started pointing out a bunch of things along the patient journey that could impact ultimately what your ROI is on marketing spend. And here's what I mean, someone could go spend a bunch of money, get some patients in the doors, but if they have a really poor culture and patients come in and it's not a great experience, that ultimately will impact case acceptance. And then those patients won't say yes to treatment. And then when you start looking at, okay, like, how, how much am I actually completing in collections from my marketing spend, you might have, you might come to the completely wrong conclusion about what's happening with marketing spend, if that makes sense. Right. So we need to have this like, eyes wide open conversation to say, hey, like, where is my business at from a data perspective? So I like that you bring that up, Evan, because that's so crucial. Because if someone has good systems in place, a good culture, there's probably some elements of what types of treatments they're completing. I know, I'll ask you, like, some of that might impact or culture might impact the way you approach the marketing strategy and then have a good workflow that leads to strong case acceptance. Like, in that scenario, their ROI is going to be way better than someone who's haphazard about their systems and processes. So I think that's good for listeners to think. Like, so, you know, doctors, office manager, if you're listening and you're thinking, like, I actually have no idea what my, like, new patient conversion rate is. I have no idea what my phone answer rate is. I have no idea what my hygiene reappointment rate is. I really don't know what my diagnostic rates are, what we're diagnosing, what our treatment acceptance rates are. Like, if you don't have like a really strong pulse on those things that indicate kind of patient experience and workflow strength, that would definitely be something worth diving in with, you know, Evan and Evan and the team along with, okay, now that we have a grasp on those, we need to prove any of them before we know. So I actually ask you, Evan, when you jump in with a client or potential client and you see like, hey, there's some gaps here, do you ever say, hey, we need to fix that before we go put like a bunch of dollars into driving Patients into this workflow. Like, talk me through 5,000%. Okay, yeah, talk me through that. Because it could be.

Here's the way. I mean, it's very simple. Like, I'm going to. I'm going to be as, as transparent and honest about myself and my business as possible. My business succeeds when I retain these practices, these clients for long periods of time. It is a routine, of course, no different than Dental intel we all want. Everybody signs up for Dental intel and then cancels two months later. There's really no value in that for anybody.

Same with the dental practice. They don't want to have patients come once and then never see them again.

Right. So I have to be able to gauge right from the jump. Is this practice, is this doctor owner, Whoever I am speaking with, is this office manager? Do they seem like they are the right fit for us? Because I want to win.

Yeah.

I want to be able to go back to the practice in 12 months and say, you know, your numbers are up 20% year over year. You've done this and you've done this and we're seeing and all of that. I want to be able to paint that picture so that we can back into, well, what was the goal? Right. Are we hitting our marks? Are we effectively doing what you hired us to help you do?

Yeah.

So that's, I think, the. The biggest thing that I look for, and I am, and I'm only going to speak for myself, I think I'm one of the few that will tell a doctor, I can't help you. Yeah, I'm just not the right fit for you. Because if you think that you're going to put marketing in a silo and you're going to hire a vendor and they're just going to magically drop patients in your chair and you're going to magically make more money, you are magically misguided. And the truth of it is, in dentistry is just like every other business. And I've, and I've looked at a lot of businesses in my professional life. It's 80, 20. It's the 8020 rule. Every business has that 80, 20. Right. We spend 80% of our time focusing on the 20% of our staff that causes the most friction or problems. 80% of the doctor owners out there, you know, are not really connected to the business. They're connected to the dentistry. They're connected to some degree. The people that they, you know, know that they've been treating for long periods of time, but they're really disconnected from, you know, are They a champion of the, of the front of the house? Are they investing in their staff? Are they trying to get their staff to be as good, if not great at what they're, what their functions are? Are roles clearly defined? Are there incentives in place? Like what does all of that look like? That to me is super important in my, from my perspective of can I help this doctor? Because like I said, I want to win. And I know that my odds of, of helping a doctor that really is very disconnected from their business, achieving any goal is really, really, really. It's like for me it's. Even if I, even if I do my very best, the chances of the success are very, very low. It's like walking up a, up a hill in the snow with no shoes, you know. And for my, right, my team and my staff, I don't want 80 of their time focusing on the 20 of the clients that really are disengaged from everything.

Yeah.

And that's that, that's really what it comes down to is the culture and the ownership and the willingness to want to, you know, focus on the things that are going to move the business forward, not just talk about it.

Now will you talk me through, you know, a lot of practices I think sometimes will go like in and out of marketing spend. We've kind of talked me through like the, the how you imagine like the, the life cycle of someone working with a marketing agency. Like if I'm an owner, how should I kind of think about my marketing partner long term over the course of a career, you know, I'm gonna go do this thing for 30 years. Maybe I'm gonna own my business for 20. Hopefully folks find killer individuals like you that are running top notch agencies that want to partner, really focus on roi. How do you think, Evan, about long term relationship with marketing partners? Because most time no one's bringing this in house. We're still, except for DSOs. But even then a lot of DSOs, I talk with them and they try to hire some internal marketing and it doesn't go well and they end up working with, you know, guys like you fractionally anyway. So will you talk me through kind of how you picture that long term relationship with a marketing agency and how Dennis should think about approaching that because they might come into the goals like bro, now and then like okay, I.

Mean again, a lot of this is generalization, right? I am generalizing in my answers. It's not a one size fits all. But I think if, if I am speaking sort of like ubiquitous and, and, and, and, and from a 30,000 foot view. It starts with a marketing plan. What's the plan? Yeah, and the plan, the plan is not just, oh, we're gonna build a new website or. Right. Those are the tactics. Those are the things beneath the strategy. And so we need to come up with a strategy, right, that starts with a goal. And then we need to define the budget. And the budget has to be. The budget's probably the most important part because you're not going to spin gold out of crap. Yeah, I'm just being honest. Like you have to look at, okay, I'm a million dollar practice. Just like we have line items in our, in our income statement for, you know, our expenses, right? We're spending 15% on rent and we're spending 15% on, you know, payroll and all of those things. What is your investment in, you know, your growth strategy? And then it's, you know, let's say it's 5%. Where, where do we then spend that money? How are we spending that? That's when the tactics come into play. Right? And so if you don't have that sort of living, breathing, you know, document that defines what it is, you know, we are doing with you, and you're, you're, just, you're going to go, you're, you're, you're going to be the, the, the, the frog on the lily pond, right? Hopping, hopping. Next, next company. Next. Looking for a magic bullet that really never, you're never going to find. Yeah, it is, it is amazing. When I ask a doctor, do you have a budget in mind? I will tell you, and I've spoke to a lot of doctors over the years. It's like 10 to 15% will say yes. So just back into how many years have no idea. They're just winging it, right? They're just sort of winging it based on whatever they spent with the previous vendor or whatever they think their friends are spending. Like there is no science or formula to any of it. And I will tell you, you know, it's hard to move the needle if you're a bigger practice. Let's say you're a two or three million dollars practice. And you. And I've had this happen before. I actually had a $4 million doctor, a practice owner, come to me multilocation. And he's like, look, I really want to get the $5 million in collections annually. I said, okay. He said, but I really don't want to spend more than twenty five hundred dollars a month.

Good luck.

I want you to do the math.

Yeah.

What is it you expect me to do? To move your business by 20% if your actual marketing budget is. Is a tenth of a percent?

Yeah.

Right. Like you're better off taking the $2500 and popping out of Miami for a nice long weekend than you are, because the expectations are just unrealistic. So I think, like I said, it's not one thing. It's a series of a lot of things. You know, my job, the most important job that I have to build those relationships is right in the upfront part of it. It is I have to diagnose the business. I'm not just going to come in and say, oh, yeah, your website kind of looks old. Let's. Let's give it a refresher. That doesn't necessarily mean you're going to make any more money. It may look nicer. Right. And there could be some intrinsic value, but I can't really define what that's going to look like. Right. So I have to really diagnose the business both from what's going on inside the walls. Right. What's our production? What is our annual patient value? Right. All those metrics that I can rip out of Di are really helpful for me because those numbers tell a story. And if I'm going to create a plan, I need to understand, like, if you tell me the car is broken, right, I got to look under the hood. And so that's kind of the most important thing that I do is I. I spend a lot of time looking under the hood to try to make determinations about where we need to invest in this business to grow it. And maybe from the jump, like, I have a client now, a doctor in Florida who doesn't have an issue with new patients. He gets new patients, but they're not worth anything.

Yeah.

Don't say yes to treatment. Right. He's just working hard, working hard, working hard. His production per visit is really, really low. His overhead is really, really high. It is like a double whammy for failure. And so the plan is not just, here's a new website and here's some SEO, because that's not going to move the dial today. Now, a year from now, we will look to, you know, expand what we're doing when it makes more sense and when the data supports, okay, this makes more sense to do this at this time. And so that's the kind of relationship that I think I don't. I get lumped into marketing. Right. I will always be a part of.

You very clearly, not just marketing. Like, there's Your people are getting.

I. Because here's what I realized a long time ago. Doctors reach out and they say to me, look, I want a new website. Or look, I, my SEO guy is terrible. Or working with this agency and I don't know what they're doing. And, and, and it's like, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a smorgasbord of that kind of conversation. Or I want more new patients. And all of that's good and well, but we got to make sure that that's really like, I got to look under the hood at the business first. Is this a marketable practice? That is the first thing I tell every doctor. Is your practice marketable? That's the first question that I asked. And they look at me, they're like, obviously. Yeah, obviously, I'm a great doctor. Every dentist is a great dentist. I've never met a dentist who hasn't told me he's not a great dentist. And so, but I need to understand the business is in a position to succeed.

Yeah.

And when I say to a doctor, what's your annual patient value? What is the value of a patient in your practice? How long do they last? Yeah. Right. What are you diagnosing percentage wise? On average? A month. But how many patients are we getting to? Yes. What is your front door, back door situation? It's like, no idea. Well, we have that information. I just don't know it. It's somewhere. It's in my dentures. It's, you know, it's lost in space. And I said, I, I have to make sure you're marketable. Yeah, Right. And so that's really what that concept means. And so growth is really what I do. Yeah. You might ask me for a website, you might ask me for better Google Ads or any of those things, but what you're really asking me is to help you grow the business. And it might be those things and it might not. I have to figure that out.

Well, one question I had as you were talking around, you know, you threw out a couple percentages. Is there like an expectation I can have? Like, if I want to grow the business faster, maybe, you know, am I planning on spending more? Like, I don't know, 6 to 10, maybe 10 too high, like, percent of collections on marketing. And if I'm more in like maintenance mode, is that a little bit lower?

For sure. You know, like, there is a point of saturation for a dental practice if you are one doctor with a small team and three Ops, how much can you really produce? Yeah, you know, like there's only a certain amount of time and opportunity that can be afforded to, you know, to a doctor relative to the size of the team and the size of the business and the physical size of the. Right. So there are certain limitations that you're going to hit a point of no return. And then so if you get to that point where you know, your growth is really very limited by those factors, then yeah, the strategy obviously changes. It's more about, you know, potentially branding and just staying in front of people. Less about lead generation, less about trying to make the phone ring as much as possible. More about retention. Right. More about your service mix and you know, could be a million things. But yes, you hit that.

That's more. I was asking the question where it's like, hey, some practices get to the point where they're like, hey, we're, we don't necessarily need like a crap ton of new patients, but can you help them start to adjust and say hey, one of the numbers you mentioned is annual patient value. It's like, hey, what if we started adjusting our strategy and we got a little pickier with who we're trying to bring to the business and for what types of procedures? And so because there's going to be some natural attrition, so we need to always keep something going to bring new patients in that to even just maintain the business, that's a requirement. So for folks listening, it's like I would never suggest like you're, you should always have a strong relationship with your marketing partner. Like that should just be a continuous effort. Especially if the plans change or if, you know, there's, you drop some insurance plan, you go out of network and you're like, you have to turn kind of this, you know, the marketing way up again to replace maybe some of what you're losing. Like having that in place is important. But I assume that was probably the case that like, hey, if someone's working with you consistently and then if we want to start focusing on, okay, let's crank up that value of the new patients. That was, that was in the cards too.

Yeah. I think a lot of the, A lot of it is rooted in numbers and you know, dentists by and large are not and again generalizing not the best number oriented people. And I understand why. Right. If you are working in the business, you are not working on the business. And that's the reality of, for, for vast majority of, of of of you know, a practice owners. And so the business becomes priority Number two or even priority number three. Like, I've worked all day, I want to go home, I want to see my kids, that kind of thing. When are we looking at the business? Oh, sometimes I spend, like, an hour on Sunday mornings, you know, kind of going through things. Like, it's hard to run a business if there's no time, attention, and priority spent on understanding what's going on under the hood and what you should even be looking at. Right? Like, where should my attention be, be focused? I think that's a huge part of. I think that's a huge part of it.

Yeah. Agreed. Man. Evan, I can't believe I just looked at the time, and we're already, like, we're already already right there at the top. So I ask every guest this question. This has been super enlightening, talking through what is kind of the ideal practice. What makes them marketable? How should you approach marketing? We've talked about roi. We've talked about kind of percentage of collection spend when we're in growth, what maintenance looks like. I think this has been a very rich conversation, lots to take away. The last question I ask to every guest is, what does growth in dentistry mean to you? And I'd love to hear your response to that.

That's a good question. So growth in dentistry can be a couple of things. It can be an aha moment, right? Like, a lot of doctors, by the time they get to me, they've already had four other consultants, agencies, whatever, and. And they just feel like they're just spinning in a wheel, right? Not going anywhere. And then all of a sudden, something changes, and they're like, I didn't think I could do this. And so you have that aha moment. To me, that's the first sign of, like, growth, and we can do this, and it can be done. I think that's one for me, my personal favorite, because it's not often that you get a doctor that has that aha moment. Growth can be, you know, being a champion of your team, creating culture, and you. You're doing things now you never did before. I sent my office manager to a CE event to invest in, you know, in that person to be better at treatment, coordinating, or. I hired a coach to come in and work, to do this, that, and the other. And my. My, you know, the front of the house is. Is doing such a better job converting phone calls. That to me is. Is that, to me, is growth, right? You're seeing it internally, you're seeing it in the numbers, and you realize that, like, this is the way to grow a business. It's not like I don't want to put growth into a box and say, well, you collected more money this year than you did last year. That's really not. I mean, it's a part of it. Right. I think that's how we. A lot of people would define growth, but I think it's looking at the little things. The little wins stack up to big wins. And sometimes you don't see the little things happen because they're not as evident until a year or two goes by and you're like, wow, we're. We're a much different business than we were two years ago. That, to me, is growth.

Yeah, I love that. What I, What I just heard you say is, is it's that chance or it's that. That perspective where me as an individual, I'm, like, seeking for those breakthroughs. That's another word I might use for aha moments. But then also as a leader, I'm trying to help make sure I facilitate some of those breakthroughs for my team. I love that. It's an exciting way to live. It feels like you're making progress, you're learning, you're expanding. Totally agree.

Yeah. I mean, culture, I will say, the culture of a practice, the culture of a business, it's hard to define because DI analytics isn't going to give you a percentage of your culture. Right. But you can look at the retention of your team. Right. You can look at some of the production of some of the team members. You can analyze phone calls. You can, you know, you can find ways to really laser in on data that really can determine who is doing well at their respective jobs and how do we invest in, you know, getting them to be better or even bringing some of the team members up in just about any capacity at this point. So I. I'm all about, like, lots of small wins.

I love that. Well, Evan, it's been great to have you on. Thank you for joining us. I'll just mention to listeners if you want to get in contact with Evan. Evan, what's the website for? Simple Impact Media. I'll throw it in the show notes.

SimpleImpactMedia.com Easy.

Easy enough. Just like just the name dot com. So SimpleImpactMedia.com I'll throw that in the show notes. And once again, Evan, thank you. And thank you to listeners for joining us. This has been another episode of the Growth in Dentistry podcast. Thanks for joining us today. Keep growing and we'll talk soon.