260: What Dental Practice Owners Must Know Before Spending Another Dollar on Marketing

We're averaging 30 new patients a month. Within the next 4 months, we want to be averaging 40, and by month 8, we want to be averaging 50. And then let's work in partnership towards those goals. And that's really how we'd love to see the partnerships with Dr. Otters.

Hi, I'm Emmett Scott, and just like you, I've had my ups and downs in the dental industry, but times are changing. The DEO has built a map of how to succeed in one of the most challenging industries to navigate. On this show, we talk to dental industry leaders, solve problems, and get you the answers you need to face these challenging times and thrive. Welcome to DEO's Growth Secrets Podcast for dental organizations. Now let's get started.

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Welcome back to the DEO Growth Secrets Podcast, where we uncover the strategies and insights that help dental entrepreneurs grow smarter, scalable, sustainable practices that ultimately help them thrive. And today we're diving into one of the most understood and often frustrating areas of practice growth, which is Marketing. Many practices today are spending significant money on marketing but still struggling to clearly answer a simple question: what am I actually getting in return? And so our guest today believes that the answer lies in something called performance marketing, where marketing isn't just measured by clicks or impressions but by new patients, production, real business growth. And so today I have Daniel Sosa, the founder and CEO of OM Performance Marketing, a digital-focused marketing agent built around accountability, attribution, and ROI-driven growth. And so Daniel has spent more than a decade working in technical marketing, analytics, and software before shifting his focus over to dentistry, where he really saw a fast-growing industry that had yet to adopt true performance marketing principles. And so Daniel, welcome to the DEO Growth Secrets Podcast, my friend. Thank you.

Super happy to be here. And, uh, You absolutely nailed that introduction. I love the way you described it because that basically communicated a lot of the things that basically what I'm trying to go out and say to the world. So thanks for the nice introduction. Absolutely.

Before I start to jump into all of my thoughts and questions about marketing, I would love for you to give our audience a little bit of your background. Like, how did you go from technical marketing and analytics into working specifically with dental practices?

Yeah, so I Started my career in tech startups. That's basically the world I come from. I built a couple software companies. I was head of marketing for software companies and very much in, I don't know if people can relate to this, about 15 years ago is what we call like the growth hacker era when like digital marketing really became analytics based and you could basically optimize every single piece of the experience to get really high conversion rates. So like very technical marketing at the time when these tech startups were booming. Um, and that's basically what I did for a lot of my career. Uh, I became head of marketing for a really fast-growing financial technology startup. That company got acquired and I built an agency because I had built a name around, uh, a lot of the work that I had done. And just through relationships, funny enough, I got connected with Emmett from the DEO. Um, at the time he was the CEO of CDP. Started helping them out. Things started going super well. We all know how well connected he is. So he kept introducing us to more and more dental practices. And we had this, or I had this realization of, wow, there's this awesome, fast-growing, sexy industry of dentistry that is 10 years behind in digital marketing compared to what I was doing, right? In my world, it was not about, hey, are you doing the SEOs or the, am I getting Facebook likes? It was like, Do we understand what it costs to acquire a patient, a customer? Is it replicable? And if we don't actually have that information for our leadership, like we don't have a job. And I said, hey, performance marketing oddly enough does not exist in this space. It's such a mature space. There's so much demand, there's so much supply. Let's bring this level of marketing to the dental industry instead of being in this hyper-competitive technology startup space. And we made a shift to dentistry. Our customers are loving it because the questions that I'm getting from customers is, how do I grow my business? How do I grow my patients? Right? They're not asking me about keywords or traffic or Facebook likes or the vanity metrics. They want to figure out like how they're going to grow their business. And we're, we're basically bringing a marketing model that is built around that.

I love it. Can you explain to our listeners who maybe have heard, you know, general marketing, like you said, SEO keywords, you know, Google Ads and things like that. What's the difference between the quote unquote marketing and performance marketing?

Yeah, the best way I communicate it is traditional digital marketing. You're paying for visibility. So maybe someone will run ads, they'll post on social media, they'll do some SEO. And I think that's why a lot of the people that I speak to are like, Hey, my age, my partner or my marketing team is telling me our traffic is way up or our SEO is doing super well, but my business is flat. Performance marketing is really accountable for results and that's really where the conversation leans into. So obviously we track those metrics like traffic and Facebook likes, but the only conversation that we should be having with doctors and owners and practices is, new patients, production from new patients, and trying to determine the cost for new patient acquisition. So most of our execution leans towards the paid side, which is more measurable, the analytics side, which is like, hey, how can we measure every stage from lead to qualified lead to appointment to patient and try to understand, you know, to not get too technical, the economics of that, which is very simply How much money did we spend? What was the results of that? If that is sustainable, let's spend more money. If it's not sustainable, let's figure out what needs to change to make it sustainable. So very much our conversations in performance marketing and the execution is very much on the measurable side and having the difficult conversations with practices where it's, hey, it's costing us $500 to acquire a customer today and that's not sustainable. And that's not an easy conversation to have 'cause you, As a marketer, you want to just say things are going great. But we're finding that people, people just want results or at least understand when, when or when they should or should not invest more in marketing. And we're helping them have that answer, even if sometimes the answer is this is not an effective channel, it's too competitive. The, the DSOs around you are overspending on ads, so we can't get it to be sustainable. Like, we just want to give people those types of answers. Excellent.

I hear the actionable feedback that's actually received from the performance marketing. So many times we look at marketing that's happened around, you know, the pipeline, and we get, oh, you got this many impressions, this, this many clicks, and it's like, well, that's really great. What do we do about that? And it's actually— is it actually working? And so it— performance marketing really has hit a niche where it gives the offices an opportunity to tweak things, make sure that what they're investing in is ultimately working for them. And so when a practice switches to performance marketing, what would you say are some of the first changes that they typically notice?

I would say the most high-impact thing that they notice is the relationship with the marketing team changes because it's only about results. So like, rarely are we having a conversation about traffic with our, our partners. As an example, um, I've been doing digital marketing for before Facebook ads existed, right? So like I can manipulate things like traffic very easily. I can also find ways to get a lot of really cheap leads as an example, because there's just mechanisms to like get person, people to like one click and submit their leads. But those people won't pick up the phone call, they won't engage with you. Those are vanity metrics. So the, the first thing people experience is the only topic of conversation is Let's set a new patient goal and let's see how we're trending against that goal month over month. Sometimes we'll be trending positive, sometimes we'll be trending negative, but when you're actually focused on the right metric, everyone is aligning around, on how to solve for that. Hey, we're getting a lot of quality leads based on the phone calls we're listening to, but they're not converting. Do we actually have to reduce our ad spend and work on front desk operations for a little bit, like, so you can actually try to solve the real problem. Or we're getting a lot of leads, but none of them are qualified. Are we targeting wrong? Are we going after too much Medicaid when, when we're trying, when we're a fee-for-service practice? So like when you're actually working at the real metric, it helps you figure out what the right problems are. Um, and that's, that's the first thing that, that's the main thing that people are gonna experience.

I feel like marketing is like this shiny diamond because, you know, I like diamonds and everybody wants to catch this shiny too, right? And everybody has, um, you know, the next best one, and there's, there's a lot of competition in the marketing space. Um, however, there's also a lot of hesitation that I see from my client perspective in terms of perhaps not wanting to invest in it, or maybe they've, you know, put money into marketing in the past and it just hasn't yielded the results. Why do you think trust in the dental marketing has eroded in the last little while?

You know, this is the hardest part of being a digital marketing agency. And I would probably say the same for a lot of different sectors, but you know, most of the people we engage with are doctor owners. Their job is to be a business owner and a clinician, not to be a digital marketing expert. And unfortunately, there's, they've been sold too much what I call traditional digital marketing. They're told it's cheap, it's easy. You write a blog and patients come, or you do quote unquote SEO, which that doesn't mean anything to a doctor owner, and your business is going to grow. They've gone through that experience 2 or 3 times. That agency didn't drive results, or that partner didn't drive results. They took their website hostage, so it was hard to rip away from them. And they, after a couple years of that, they just have a bad taste in their mouth. So what we're doing, what a lot of the other really great agencies out in this space are doing, is battling that trust challenge by being more transparent, by being grounded in data and like real results, and just spending more time educating. Very often we're auditing, we're getting into their ad accounts, we're getting into their business. And we're making sure that we can drive an impact. And if we can't, we won't work with them. And I think that's like, hey, it looks to us like you might have a different problem. Maybe your DEO partners need to come in and look at your operations. So we want to kind of like figure out that or ensure that we're educating them and getting into the right partnerships. Because when you've been— when you have a bad taste in your mouth from a few years of turning over marketing, it's, it's hard to decide to invest in that platform again. For sure.

So you mentioned that a lot of the initial phone calls and onboarding and, you know, preemptive talks that happen are with the CEOs or maybe the doctor owner in there. So from your perspective, what would you say really is the CEO's role in marketing? Because they're trained dentists, exactly like you said, not master marketers, right? So how do you like to partner with the doctors, and, and what do you see their role in being with the partnership?

Yeah, one way I'd communicate that for this audience is, right, I'm a marketer, I'm not a, I'm not a doctor. So if I go to a dental practice and they're getting too technical or asking me too many technical questions about what services I should receive, I'm not going to be able to add any value. I just want a healthier, cleaner mouth.

Right.

Obviously they're looking at me to be the subject matter expert where it's like, hey, I'm dealing with pain or I'm dealing with discomfort or I'm uncomfortable with the way it looks. And then they can kind of craft a solution to that. So my expectation is that the doctors are thought leaders. They can educate us on how do they want to position their business. Hey, we want to be high-end, we want to be technology-led, we want to appeal to this avatar in some specific way. And they're the subject matter experts. Beyond that, they should just be holding us accountable to results. They're paying us to drive results. They're paying us to have data around what we're doing, and I think that's their job. If we're pulling them too much into telling us what we should be doing in marketing, asking how we can be better, we're actually forcing them out of their wheelhouse, and it's, it's not allowing us to be the experts in this space. So we really see the relationship as, hey, we need you to be the thought leader, the subject matter expert. Give us realistic goals, right? We— today we're doing 30, we're averaging 30 new patients a month. Within the next 4 months, we want to be averaging 40, and by month 8, we want to be averaging 50. And then let's work in partnership towards those goals. Um, and that's really how we'd love to see the partnerships with doctor owners. Um, multi-location groups or bigger DSOs tend to have dedicated marketing managers or marketing individuals where we can go a little bit of a layer deeper. So some of it is just knowing who the core, the core hero on the other side is for us and working with them the right way. All right.

I've seen so many CEOs, maybe even managers that are like, I can do this. I can run some Google Ads, you know, I can do this myself and, you know, manage my backend, my Google Business. And so, you know, from an expert's position, why can't they just go and run some Google Ads but not be able to then drive that realistic growth? Like, what gets in their way when they, they try to do it themselves in terms of growth?

Yeah, I like this question. I think sometimes a lot of these skills are viewed as interchangeable, or, hey, anyone doing Google Ads, it's the same. Hey, I just go in there and go after the word dentist and I get a bunch of new customers. The reality is, especially Google Ads, it's a very complex platform. It's very proactive to do it right. It's very hard to be great at Google Ads. It's very easy to be bad at Google Ads, and Google is extremely happy to take your money if you don't do it well. So if you have a deep understanding of that platform and you want to run it yourself, I think that's awesome. But I think people should be careful with just putting money in there and going after the word dentist, because there's so much volume for these mature industries like dentistry. There's a lot of expertise in figuring out how to identify intent, meaning the person's actually in market for a dentist in their specific area that fits their avatar. And if you don't do it right, You know, you're spending $10, $15 a click, you can burn through thousands of dollars very, very quickly. So I think that's, that's where the, not just DIY, but it's about making sure that you're properly vetting the people that are deploying your capital is really important. And then Google Ads itself is a platform of limited distribution and diminishing returns, meaning The more you bid, the more competitors bid, because everyone's just constantly trying to get to the first page. So it should always be viewed and, you know, a lot of what we preach is integrated marketing. It's like, how do the tools of digital come together to tell your story? It should always be viewed as a channel, not as your marketing strategy, because you're just paying to play. And not only is it very expensive, it only gets more expensive the more you compete.

And there's a lot of competition out there, right? You see dentist near me and, you know, without those keywords and, you know, how many hundreds of dentists depending on your location and your demographics actually like pop up in there. And so, when it comes to a marketing perspective, how should our CEOs be tying marketing directly to their production capacity, you know, hiring decisions? How do you encourage them to use their marketing strategy for that?

As a performance based company, a lot of the practices that come our way are very focused on growth. Like, that is their goal. They're coming in saying, hey Daniel, I want to build a structure to grow to more practices, or hey, my goal is to bring in an associate so I can grow my business. Um, but a lot of their concern is if I bring in an associate now, it's going to impact my financials, and that person's going to be twiddling their thumbs until we get to that next phase. Um, so For us, it's about what we try to work with them in those types of situations. It's like, hey, let's actually set stride points. Where are you today? Let's go use that 30-patient number again, or whatever your production volume is. Where do you need to be to feel comfortable making this hire? Right? And sometimes that's hard to do. Sometimes it's not, depending how big the gap is. But we, work with them to figure that out. Hey, I really want to be at around 45 new patients steady, um, X production, and then I'll feel comfortable pulling that, that trigger. So then it just becomes— that becomes our North Star, and it's, hey, let's start inching towards— once we get to about 40 new patients per month, um, we communicate so you can start putting out the job role and go start going through the motions for how long it's going to take to hire and Our goal is that by the time you have a strong candidate, the volume is at a point where you can make that hiring decision. Um, and I kind of bring all this down to, it's a partnership, um, and we're working together towards a common goal. Um, I don't believe any type of marketing, no matter how good you are, can be like fully disconnected from the business. Hey, go execute and then send me a PDF with the results that are happening. It's like I've owned businesses my whole life and it's very hard to grow a business and it's really people working together towards a shared goal, communicating well, solving difficult problems to get to whatever that next step is. And I think this question really leans into, hey, I have a specific goal for myself. How do we work together to get there? And marketing is just one of the pieces that helps you impact your revenue and your P&L and all the pieces that help you get there.

Oh, I so appreciate you sharing that because from a coaching perspective, there absolutely is and needs to be a strong relationship between operations and marketing, especially when it's— we're trying to grow and, you know, build top-line revenue, acquire more new patients to come through the door, quality new patients coming through the door. And I know in all your years of marketing, you've seen, you know, many practices and just other businesses that you work with, what would you say are some of the common mistakes that practices are making when they start investing heavily in marketing?

I wanted to address something on your previous question before I jump on that. You know, it's interesting enough, and one of the reasons we love working with the DEO, by the way, is that you guys have a very strong operational skill set. And we've been— we've had multiple partners at this point where the decision has become, let's pause marketing or let's greatly reduce marketing. Let's work with your coach because it seems like there's some operational things that need to be solved. And I think that's where this— that's what it means to be a partnership. It's— it's not— I'm not always just as a marketer incentivized to get you to spend more or put more into marketing if it's clear to me that that might not be the limiting factor. So I think that's That's a really good call out. Your question was, where do— where do businesses—

yeah, where do they make mistakes? Like when they're starting to invest heavily in, in marketing, what are, what would you say are some of the common mistakes that they're making?

Let's go from the logistical side and then into the marketing side. I really believe in owning your intellectual property, meaning your website, your ad accounts, your SEO. Like these are all things that as a practice you can expand on and learn from. Um, I'm seeing too many practices that don't own their website, don't own their ad accounts, don't own their analytics accounts, so they don't own their data. So basically anytime something goes wrong or they need to make a change, they're basically starting from scratch. Um, where I think whether it's dentistry or any type of business, you're kind of going through this never-ending exercise of like learning, collecting information, making a change to get better. So if you don't have those learning, if you don't have that information, you're basically taking a big, big leap back every single time. So big one that I would just suggest to everyone as soon as you can is like take ownership of your marketing system. And that might be as simple as create an email that's called access@mypractice.com that is like the main owner of everything. So whether it goes bad or good, you can continually learn from. Um, and then on the marketing front, I always encourage everyone to— and I challenge a lot of these doctor owners to tell me why someone should go to their practice. Um, I say that because it has become a little bit of a saturated commodity industry, and too much marketing is best dentist near me, best 5-star dentist, most reviewed dentist. And don't get me wrong, 5 stars is amazing, reviews are amazing. But as a consumer, when everything is commoditized, I can't make a decision. So my decision becomes whatever's closest to me. And we're finding that— and obviously, like, it's hard to be creative, but having a value prop, even if it's not anything out of the norm, you know, hey, we're, we're the cheapest or we're the most technology-led or we provide the most spa experience, like really trying to figure out what makes you unique. So now the consumer, if they have 3 locations and they're equidistant or close enough, you might— you can actually have a reason to go to a specific practice over another. And I think too many practices are not putting enough emphasis in like why them. Um, and I just think that's a— that's an unlock. That's an unlock in a world where there's a lot of commodity marketing. If you stand out a little bit, you're actually standing out a lot.

I love it. Simon Sinek says, you know, people buy why, why you do things, not what you do, right? And so in a market like dentistry, where in some places there's a dentist, a dental office on every corner or every other, you know, little strip mall, and so being able to leverage why you're different, how you're different, and ultimately make yourself stand out amongst a crowd of dentist that people are just searching for. And exactly like you said, going to the closest one, that is such a huge benefit to have that and to be able to define it not only from a marketing perspective but from an internal perspective as well. And just to have a reason and a vision as to why you're doing what you're doing in this world of dentistry. So I absolutely love that.

I'm a huge Simon Sinek fan, by the way. I love his stuff, so I totally I totally know exactly what you're saying. Yeah.

How do, how do you help and what would you say is the thought process for some of the doctor owners starting to maybe make a decision in marketing? Because I get emails, right? Come and join this marketing. Come and join that marketing. We've reviewed your Google ad or your blog and we can help you get more people. And so what are some of the red flags that practices should be looking for when they are potentially evaluating different marketing agencies?

You know, I touched on some of those and I think it's, it's doing your due diligence. Marketers can be great salespeople, which is awesome by the way. Like I, I work really hard to be the best salesperson that I could be myself. Um, but they have to follow that up with things that reinforce their confidence and their skill. Um, I'll give you some examples. I really don't like long-term agreements when it comes to marketing. One, because I've been— I am a small business owner, so I understand like being locked to a cost is very difficult when you're— because especially something mission critical like marketing. But I think a great marketing individual or firm should believe in its product so much that that is their retention. Tactic. So one of the things that we tell people is, hey, if we're not following through on our promise, you should fire us. And I think that goes both ways. If I go to a dental practice, and I have done this, and I'm not happy with the service or I don't like the experience, I'm not coming back, right? You're not gonna tie me down to like a negative experience or negative results. Like, this is my time, my money, My, you know, businesses, if they're anything like me, these are like their babies. Um, so things like that are really, really important. Trying to understand how they're going to engage with me as a partner. Okay, are we really going to figure out our new patient metrics? It's not always going to be great, we're not always going to win, but is that the core focus that we're going to work against? I'm not a digital marketer, I don't need to look at the traffic, I don't need to look at the Facebook likes, I need to understand how my business is being impacted. So I think going through the due diligence of those things, making sure that the partner or the individual that's being hired is competent and willing to stand behind their work and that be the main retention strategy are some of the things that I look for. And then lastly, just to say it again, 'cause I think it's super, super important, anyone you work with internal or external, Your ad accounts, your website, all of these things should be owned by you as a business owner because it is intellectual property that is highly valuable. Um, even if, for it to use an example, if your Google Ads was not performing at all, for me to be able to go into the ad account and understand what didn't work, now it gives me a leg up to launch a more effective campaign. So there's little things like that that are actually very valuable. Um, it could save you thousands of dollars when you think about how long it takes to get those learnings back in the door.

Marketing is a process, I always tell my clients, right? It's not something that you can turn on and then 2 weeks later you're like, wow, it's magical, we've got all these new patients coming in the door. How long should it realistically take for a practice to actually start seeing meaningful results from the marketing? And maybe you can give us an example of some of the companies that you've worked with, you know, in the past or that you're currently working with, and you know, what has been the results from partnering with OM Marketing?

I'll tell you the most transparent answer possible. It takes about 60 days to start seeing really healthy movement of what I call the leading indicators. That's like the front-end metrics. Your phone calls are really starting to feel meaningful, your online bookings, the conversations you're having with prospects is really moving. And, but after that, it's when you start to see new patient flow from those leading indicators. What we're seeing is Right around month 6, and we're seeing this at scale. So we just ran this analysis across our entire portfolio. Right around month 6 is when it's the gaps really begin to take off. All the pieces are coming together. Your organic rankings are growing. So your cost for acquisition is going down. Your ad campaigns are really getting optimized. And now we're no longer seeing 3 to 5% month over month growth. We're seeing 10 to 20% month over month growth. So everyone wants to hear it's going to be 2 weeks. Over 2 weeks, you'll start to get more clicks. You'll start to get these vanity metrics. But the reality, if you're looking for really serious growth, it's going to take 5 to 6 months.

I love that. Is there an actual metric or something that the CEOs can look at and determine through partnering with OM Performance Marketing in terms of when is the right time to scale their marketing investments? Like, when do we— when is it when we're growing and when's the right time?

I think this is a business decision. And I say that because we are very much a— I keep saying performance— we're a growth and performance marketing company. People generally come to us when their objective is growth. They have a budget they want to allocate towards growth. We tend to be more expensive than a lot of the alternatives, and not that they're bad, but like If your goal, you're at the end of your career or you just wanna be more kind of protect your brand and stay happy where you are, we're not always gonna be your best fit. So when should someone think about investing or come to us? I think everyone should be investing in marketing to some capacity. It's too competitive a space. You need to protect your keywords, you need to protect your brand. You need to kind of have your, your sliver of the market to stay, to stop, to keep the lights on and stop a decline. Um, but we definitely want to focus on the growth side of things. When you're looking to hire an associate, um, your financials are really healthy and you're trying to say, hey, what can I do with some of this additional capital? Can I get my business to the next step? Can I— can we maybe look to expand our practice? Hey, maybe we need to like understand our growth economics if we're trying to sell within 2 or 3 years. We want to have a strong EBITDA when we have that discussion. Like, that's kind of where— when we are really the right partner.

I love it. ROI is our name of the game. I always relate it back to things that make my heart happy. And so it's that thought process of, you know, you get what you pay for ultimately, right? You know, I can buy a high-end purse and it'll last me for years, or I can buy a low-end purse and I need to buy new ones every 6 months. You can get a high-end dental assistant that has all of the skills that you need, or you can get a low-end dental assistant that requires a ton of training and might not be able to, you know, slide into your practice the best. And so I think that was a beautiful answer and just ultimately recognizing that if you're getting the return on investment for what you're looking for and what your objectives are, then it's a good fit and it's moving in the right direction.

And so how, uh, how familiar are you with the good, cheap, fast quote?

Oh, I don't know that I've heard that before. Maybe I have. Give it to me, Daniel. What's the good, cheap, fast quote?

It's good, cheap, fast. You can have two but not three. Meaning if you want it to be good and cheap, it's not going to be fast. Yes. If you want it to be fast and cheap, it's not going to be good. And if you want to be good and fast, it's not going to be cheap. And I think it's just—

it's very true. Absolutely. Yeah. Heard that quote from another perspective, but when you shared it with me, I'm like, oh, yeah, it's the triangle. And so, yeah, you can only have a few of those things inside of the triangle. You can't have your cake and eat it too. So, so good. If you had to predict the next 5 years of dental marketing, what changes do you see coming down the pipeline?

As a technical geek, I do think a lot about AI in the future and the things that are happening. I think mature markets like dentistry are going to get better, very competitive online because The consumer is too empowered and there's a lot of information. Things like blog posting and things like that are going to be less important. And I think people are going to— how people engage with AI is going to dictate a lot, meaning what AI knows about you, what it knows about your insurance, your age, your preferences, your income. And it's basically going to suggest options for you. That's where I think a lot of this is going. And because of this, I think brand and positioning will matter a lot more. I can see a world where AI knows about me, the things that I care about, and it might say, hey Daniel, this practice really leans into newer technology and X experiences and the things that you care about. And I think if AI is able to separate one practice from another, it's going to be a positive. And that might be on the ad side, on the AI results side. All of them are all going to want to serve what is most relevant for you. So the things that I'm really predicting or where I'm putting a lot of my future focused energy on is how do we position practices and how do we learn how AI is going to serve results to make sure that you can be effectively represented when the world becomes a little bit less Google results, less blue clicks and more answers. And that's what I predict and that's what I'm excited about.

I think you nailed it on the head there. AI is amazing, but it is growing so fast, so quickly, and really being able to tap into it and have it work for you in, you know, your marketing field, giving you better understandings as an owner and what it is that you're trying to accomplish is absolutely some of the next evolution, not only in marketing but in dentistry and across so many different industries as well. And so I have just a couple questions here for you, Daniel, before we, we wrap up. If a doctor is listening to this conversation today and they feel like they're spending money on marketing but not seeing real results, what would you say is their very first best step that they can take to start fixing that?

Not a lot of people are gonna appreciate this answer, but we're testing this a lot with people that we're speaking to and prospects. There are times you're not getting the results and you're just doing something because you heard at a conference that you need to be doing it or something along those lines. You might want to pause it, like fully hit the brakes, because I just believe a lot in learning and data. And when the data's not being reported properly and you're just not seeing results, the best thing you could do is force data. And one way to force data is stop something and see how it impacts your business. If it negatively impacts your business, at least I can say it's working. I don't know how, I don't know what, because maybe I'm not being reported, but at least I can say, hey, my investment is driving something. If there is no negative impact, then you learned a lot. You're saying, hey, what is happening today is not working. Um, it can be scary, but no impact with reduced spend is actually a positive impact when you're a business owner, because that's, that's more net positive revenue in your, in, in your pocket. So that would be one piece of advice. Two, sometimes in business, and it's one of our core values here at OM, which is like have the difficult conversation, is tackle things head on. Figure out whether it's your internal marketing team or not. Let's say, hey guys, let's let's dig in, let's understand what's working and what's not, or at least let's try to better understand it. So I don't think anything should be a blind spot.

This is amazing. If our listeners wanna learn more about your work, if they wanna connect with you and your team at OM Performance Marketing, what is the best place for them to go?

We have a website which is growwithom.com. We also have an Awesome partnership with the DEO. So we're part of the Cost Savings Club. I believe you guys have an app or a portal where we would exist on there. And Kendall, before, just to put you on the spot before we wrap up, tell me what you think is the biggest problem practices are dealing with when it comes to marketing, or what are you hearing a lot about from the other side? Just lack of results?

I think the biggest thing is the metrics and actually the true understanding of where the money is being spent and how the results are coming in. I think there's a lot of shiny things that are being told. You got 2,000 impressions, you got this, you got that. But it's the actual conversion and what's happening with that on the back end where it misses the mark. And that's the portal and the deeper conversations that OM Marketing— performance marketing, excuse me— is able to tap into. And give the doctors that extra layer of information, right? To really uncover, is it because the team's not converting? Is it because we're not answering the phone calls? And not these just flashy numbers that are sometimes being brought to a conversation that the dentist is like, okay, well, that's great, but what does this really mean? And so that's some of the things that I've definitely, from a coaching perspective, are seeing, you know, in the dental space for my clients that are investing in marketing and maybe it's not going as we hope for it to go for sure.

Yeah, I think that's a perfect answer. Um, I called last year, I kept calling it to my team the year of the platform, meaning I'd keep getting on calls and everyone's like, what platform are you using for reporting? And that, I think the reason is for the longest time in dentistry, because PMSs are so locked down and they're HIPAA and all these things, connecting marketing to the patient was kind of like not really doable or too fuzzy or too risky. Um, and in the last 2 years or so, we're seeing a ton of platforms start to come out. Some of them are really great. Um, and not only do they bring in your ad spend, so you know how much you're spending where, they're tying it to the leads, they're tying it to the patient data coming back from your PMS, and you're finally starting to say, oh wow, of 50— of 25% of my patients came from Google Ads and 10% came from organics. And so like we're starting to get to that world. The good thing is it's there. I would say the tough thing is because the PMSs are so locked down, they charge a lot for the connections. Those tools can be slightly expensive, but that's the realities of the— that's the realities of what's on the field right now. But I think we're going to continue to make a lot of progress there. One of our biggest things is, again, the first things that we do is set up a new patient reporting structure with our partners. And I think everyone needs to do that. So that's the core focus. So hopefully that's an area that we can continue to make progress in with our partners. So good.

This has been an absolutely fantastic conversation, Daniel. I'm so grateful for you being here today. And for me, I think one of the biggest takeaways from our conversation is that marketing shouldn't be something that practices just simply spend money on, right? It should be something that they can measure, optimize, and connect directly with the real growth. And so, I thank you today for your time, for joining us on the DEO Growth Secrets Podcast. And to anybody listening, thank you for being a part of our community. Any last thoughts or any last words of insight you want to give to our listeners today?

No, I just want to say Like I told you, we're really going on year 4 of really focusing on the dental space. I think it's extremely exciting. We're really enjoying working with you guys, with the members, and excited to keep having these conversations. So definitely reach out to me even if you're not in market and you just want a sounding board or you want some audits or something along those lines. We're more than happy to keep supporting anyone that needs it.

Amazing. To our listeners, thank you for joining us today. Give us a thumbs up, share this podcast with somebody in your community that might get some takeaways from this. As always, keep smiling, my friends, and we will see you again next time.

Thank you for listening to DEO's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Continue the conversation on our Facebook group and meet other dental leaders, get questions answered, and the strategies you need to succeed. Plus, we have some free resources for you right there on the Facebook page. Remember, you're not alone. Let's do this together. Join DEO's Growth Secrets Group on Facebook, and until next time, keep smiling.