Dental Marketing Goat
Welcome to the Dental Marketing Goat Podcast, where we discuss proven dental marketing strategies that consistently attract predictable new patient flow to your practice.Whether you're a solo practitioner or part of a larger group, we'll provide valuable insights and actionable tips to help your dental practice thrive.Tune in as we explore the latest trends and techniques in dental marketing and how you can use them to drive predictable, sustained growth for your business.
Dental Marketing Goat
#271 How They Got 800% ROI in Dentistry
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
🚀Check out our new Dental AI Receptionist! It schedules better than humans: https://bit.ly/48RHMt2
🚀Grow Your Practice with Cherry Payment Plans: https://bit.ly/4p48qoC
➖➖➖➖
Most dental offices are losing thousands in production because missed calls, overloaded front desks, and bad systems quietly kill new patient growth. In this episode, Gary Bird sits down with Dr. Ben and Dr. Jonathan Geleris from Walnut Creek Dentists to break down how they generated 60–80 new patients a month while hitting an 800% ROI.
You’ll learn how they improved phone conversion with AI receptionists, increased call answer rates from 45% to 70%+, automated patient communication, and created a world-class patient experience that drives treatment acceptance and referrals. They also reveal the systems behind June Portal and how operational automation is helping their practice grow faster without overwhelming the team.
Gary shares real-world dental marketing insights backed by data from working with over 1,195 practices nationwide. If you want better dental marketing, stronger practice management, more fee-for-service growth, and a system that consistently drives new patients, this episode is packed with tactical takeaways.
Subscribe for more real-world strategies that help dentists grow faster.
✨ Timestamps ✨
00:00 Introduction to Marketing Challenges
02:08 Understanding ROI and Marketing Effectiveness
08:17 The Role of AI in Patient Interaction
12:48 Future Goals and Expansion Plans
14:47 Innovations in Patient Data Access (http://juneportal.com)
20:57 Final Thoughts on AI and Patient Experience
Connect with our Guest Here ⤵️
Website: https://wcdentists.com/
Website: http://juneportal.com
Connect with our Host, Gary Bird, Here ⤵️
SMC: https://bit.ly/4jFhb5T
Personal: https://bit.ly/3SCEQZy
Want the strategies we talk about delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to Dental Marketing Digest: https://hubs.la/Q0436vZG0
➖➖➖➖
Dental Marketing Goat is the go-to podcast for dentists who want to grow faster, market smarter, and build practices that thrive in today’s competitive landscape.
Hosted by Gary Bird, the Dental Marketing Goat himself and founder of SMC National, recently named Best Dental Marketing Agency by over 60,000 dental professionals. Each episode unpacks the real strategies, marketing frameworks, and operational shifts that high-performing practices use to attract more patients and increase production. Whether you're a solo practitioner or scaling a DSO, you’ll learn how to align your marketing, team, and systems to drive predictable growth.
🚀 Want to see how SMC can help you grow?
📱 Book a call here:➡️ https://bit.ly/4jFhb5T
🎙️ Check out our 3 Dental Podcasts ➡️ https://smcnational.com/podcasts/
📅 Upcoming Events ➡️https://smcnational.com/events
One of the things that sold us on SNC initially and that I think has continued to like sell us, like why we've been sticking with you guys for a while, is the the trackable platform that you have where we can every month go on and see very basic. What was our ROI? We spent this much and how much did that make us is like very basic. But all beyond that, you know, you can see like each individual, like what their conversion rates are, like how they answer calls, who needs coaching, who's like crushing it.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. Yeah. One thing that I really wanted to talk to you guys about is that you figured out how to get an 800% plus ROI.
SPEAKER_00I think the things that we do are like we try to be very transparent, we're not pushy, lots of photos.
SPEAKER_02Welcome back to another episode of Dental Marketing Go. I'm your host, Gary Berg. Today I got a special guest, Dr. Ben and Dr. Jonathan out of Walnut Creek. They are absolutely crushing with marketing. Not only are they seeing an 800 plus ROI, they're also getting about 60 new patients a month. They're using AI to get them another 10 to 15 new patients, and they're just seeing amazing marketing results. They're going to break down how they've been able to do that, and they're going to give you all the ins and out. And at the end, they're actually going to give you a technique that they use to get their existing patients to absolutely love them and not call the office quite as much with things that they might need, clogging up their front desks. Stay tuned for this one. All right, we are live. And I'm excited today. I'm going to be talking to John and Ben, who are clients of ours, and they've been absolutely crushing it in a really competitive market. And they said that they would come on and share some of the things that they're doing well to help other offices. So thank you so much, guys, for jumping on. I want to first of all just start at your marketing uh in general. Because I know you you made a statement. You said, you know, it's hard. We've done marketing over the years, but we have no idea. Like sometimes it's worked, sometimes it hasn't, but we weren't sure if it was marketing or not. And one of the things that you guys have gotten a lot of clarity on is like what's actually working, what's not. Can you guys give me a rundown on that and how that's been for you guys, just work since uh partnering with us?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think um, so like uh we've worked a few different marketing companies over the years. Um, and um, I think one of the big questions is always like, what are you getting? Like, is this working? And it's really hard to just answer that very simple question with a lot. Um, we we found that all um a lot of the other companies that would present their whatever cherry pick metrics that they wanted to use. Um, and um we couldn't really verify that. And so um one of the things that sold us on SNC initially, and that I think has continued to like sell us, like why we've been why we've been sticking with you guys for a while, is just like the the trackable platform that you have where we can every month go on and see, you know, what was our like the very basic, what was our ROI? We spent this much and how much did that make us as like very basic, but all beyond that, you know, you can see like each individual, like what their conversion rates are, like how like how they answer calls and uh who to co who needs coaching, um, uh who's like crushing it. And so like just the level of detail, I think, is like it shows you that it's working, it's very self-evident. You don't have to um go digging to find that answer. And so that's what we really appreciated about working with you guys.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. Yeah, I uh the one thing that I really wanted to talk to you guys about is that you figured out how to get an 800% plus ROI. So last month, you're already seeing an 800% ROI. Um, how what are you guys doing to get these patients new? These are all new patients coming in buying treatment right away. What tell me a little bit about that?
SPEAKER_00I mean, I know that like every month when I talk with Leslie, she like one of the first things she always says is you guys get so many leads, like you guys are just crushing in on the leads. And I think a big part of that is the marketing. I'm sure a part of that is also like some of the like the background organic stuff, like you know, like our practice has been been here since 1954. It's been around forever. You have a lot of good Google reviews. Yeah, like you know, we're well respected in the community. The doctors that have been here before us, I've been here like uh eight years now. He's been here, what is it? Five, five, yeah. And so the doctors are here before us were great doctors as well. And so, like, just kind of we're we're we're building that momentum.
SPEAKER_02And so that all definitely like well that gets them in the door, but they're buying treatment, like they're buying treatment right away, and not just a little bit of treatment, they're buying a lot of treatment per patient.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I think the things that we do are like we're very we try to be very transparent, we're not pushy, lots of photos. You know, we use uh another an AI product that shows um we uh like x-ray stuff, and so we try to show patients like I don't just say, Oh, you got a cavity here. I say here, here's where your cavity is. You can see the computer is like showing you where the cavity is. So, like, so things like that, um, lots of photos of the problems. Uh and I think we try to be like yeah, I think we try to um just treat people well the way that we want to do it.
SPEAKER_01And we s we spent so this last year, we spent a good amount of time training staff. Um, I guess last two years now. A big uh inflection point was uh I read the book Unreasonable Hospitality. It's uh a book about the restaurant industry, but uh man, it it uh equates to pretty much any industry, um, just treating people not just with good hospitality, great hospitality, but the unreasonable part of it. And our staff love it. Our staff love to find ways to like blow patients' minds.
SPEAKER_02And it's something that we always have to give me a couple things, because the first thing that comes to mind when you say that is like Disneyland. You know, when you go to Disneyland and they do all these little things that you're like, wow, I'm never no one else does that, right?
SPEAKER_01We love it when uh a patient comes through the door on their birthday. We try and make it a big deal for them. Uh, if we can catch it enough ahead of time, we'll have like a birthday gift ready for them as much as possible. Our hygenists are awesome at taking notes about what the life likes to do. Yeah. And so, you know, if the patient's into gardening, we've gotten them like a six-pack of succulents, you know. This, you know, so um, and you know, you do that for enough patients and word spreads. Uh and that's that's been part of it.
SPEAKER_02How do you like practically, okay? Because I I know how busy a dental office is. How do you practically like walk me through Susan's coming in? You look at the you probably look at your your schedule, what, two days before, a day before. Like, how would you who's getting the succulents? Like, how how do you do that?
SPEAKER_01That's the team training. Um, we rely a lot on our assistants and on our front desk for huddling to prepare. And we ask them to do it as far in advance as we can. Even ideally, when they make the appointment, it should be huddled. And so things like that. I'm sure, I mean, just like any practice, we could be better. I'm sure there's things that we miss that slip, you know, slip through the cracks. But the fun part about the unreasonable hospitality is seeing like the staff's energy and and uh reaction behind it.
SPEAKER_02Got it. Okay, that's awesome. Like that is amazing. You do that, you'll be really, really successful. And you can have an 800% ROI as well. I know someone's gonna listen to this. Gary, my my results aren't 800%. And the first thing I'm gonna ask them, are you buying them succulents if they love gardening? And if their answer is no, I'm like, there, that's gonna unlock it. That is that is amazing. I I literally love that, and I love that because a lot of people say stuff like this, but you guys are like actually doing it. And so that's amazing. The other thing, I know we I'm looking at your 800% ROI. One of the things that I know that's driving that is you started using the AI receptionist that we have. And this last, I'm just gonna give you last uh last this month, just this month, it takes all your missed calls and your after-hour calls. It you've had 13 missed calls this month that were new patients, 12 of them booked. So it's scheduling at 92%. Those patients, you wouldn't have never got them if it wasn't for the AI. They would have you went to voicemail, hung up, and went to another practice. So that is driving some ROI here. What has been your experience with the AI receptionists, especially a lot of doctors hate AI, like right out of the box? They're like, AI is bad. It's gonna, it's gonna hurt the patient experience. What are your guys' thoughts about that?
SPEAKER_00Well, uh, I think um we have so like we were really actually excited when we first started seeing this like particular type of product in the dental space. Um, and I think the again, it goes back to like our whole experience with with SMC. Like we have consistently had a pretty high ROI. And so, like, if you're getting you know our high ROI, the next question is why don't you just spend more and then give you more new patients and keep growing faster? And our our the reason why we haven't done that um to like or previously was always well, like you got to be able to answer those calls. Like, and um, and if we're getting more calls or we're spending more money, we don't want these to be going out. And I know like earlier last year, I was looking at the numbers before our call today, and like um last year, towards the end of the year, we had some staffing issues and we were down um staff, and um our uh call answer rate dropped, and like to the point where it was at the low point, it was like 45% of calls coming in we were answering. And like, I don't want to spend more money on marketing if we're gonna be getting a bunch of voicemails, right? Um, and so when we started seeing stuff about the trackable AI receptionists, it's like, well, this is like exactly the solution to the problem, is that someone's always answering this call, even if they don't like nail it, knock it out of the park, best call ever, at least somebody's answering it. And then if they need to like get more information, we can get it on, you know, to to the front desk. And so I can tell you just looking at the last couple of months, now we're up answering calls near like 70 plus percent. Um, and so like obviously work to do, but like that's a huge increase. And I think that's a big part of why, like it, like like that's a for us, that's like you know, like it's a no-brainer. This is working really well. Um, there's definitely issues to troubleshoot, you know. Like some people, I think some people don't like talking to the AI. Um, some people don't mind it. Um, but like I I've done a I've been pretty on top of trying to go back and listen to a bunch of the calls and listen as many of the calls as I can through the trackable platform. Um and it does like a, I mean, it captures the data that you need. It doesn't capture like stuff that you don't need. You don't, you know, like I don't have a front receptionist spending 20 minutes getting to know, you know, like all the details of this new patient's life, and then they know they know show the appointment. Um, you know, it's uh it's all like it it the the AI receptionist um just gets the info that you need. It sounds like a real person. Some people know that it's not, some people don't, and then you move on and it all happens in the background, and you know, nobody has to um to actually talk to them.
SPEAKER_02The biggest thing that I've noticed too is like I I I argue with people on Facebook about this all the time. They're like, well, it ruins the patient experience. And I'm like, you want to know what else ruins the patient experience? Going to the voicemail, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01Like that's a horror.
SPEAKER_02So it's like it's better than that. Like that, that's for sure, right? And it's it's it's actually I've I've kind of looked at since you started using it. It looks like you've jumped about 10 to 12 new patients, and it's 290. So you you basically without spending you spent $299 more for an AI receptionist and got 10 to 15 more new patients. It's kind of a no-brainer, and I think most dentists are in that in that range. Like that's what I've seen is like you're gonna get five to 10 more new patients for $299 a month.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Totally. And a big part of it too that I loved is our staff is is a big reason for that ROI. Uh, we're one of the best staffs in the country, for sure. Um, and we're proud of that. And John and I, we don't answer phones all day, every day. But a year ago, a year and a half ago, we decided we wanted to start training our front desk on how to answer phones. And coming from dentists, it doesn't meld the way you want it to, you know, they're kind of like we do this all day, every day, we kind of know what works. And so, you know, we got a little pushback and implementation for you know uh the order, you know, I hesitate to say script, but it wasn't going as well as we wanted it to. And so this was a solution to that, and I think it's been really beneficial.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. So you guys are um seeing uh about right now you're floating like 60 new patients um a month, your high is like 80. What's the what's the future look like for you guys? Like what's your do you have a do you have a future goal or where where are you guys at overall as an office?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I I think our goal initially and was to consistently get to the point where we're seeing 75 new patients a month. And I think we're creeping up towards that. I don't know if we're averaging that quite yet. You're getting closer, yeah. But I've noticed that when we're there, our schedule is packed and we're we're just busy. Like everyone, you know, like like I think that would be capacity for us. And then we don't have a um like a pathway, like, oh, we're gonna have an associate or do you know expand or anything like that. But I think once we get there, then it's like, well, now we can have that conversation. Now we can can start, you know, thinking about that. We we've talked generally, we've got big picture, you know, thoughts about it, but we haven't like um, but I think, yeah, I think that's the pathway to get there is to consistently be um seeing you know this these new patients. And and now that we've got the AI receptionists answering calls at the rate that we need, now it makes sense to maybe spend a little bit more on marketing if we're still getting that 800% at ROI, you know, like that would be uh that's huge, yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's kind of a no-brainer. Put a dollar in, get get eight back. You you do that all day. That's that's awesome. So um, one of the things that I know that you guys do really well is you take care of your patients. You guys are on a whole nother level uh with your team. You guys care a lot and you go the extra mile. So something that I noticed, and we talked about before the show is that you guys actually built something to help your patients to be able to access all of their data. And this is huge because patients ask for this all the time and no one ever gives it to them. You know what I mean? Like, or it's like no pun intended, it's like pulling teeth, trying to get the stuff that they want, you know what I mean? And it's like, well, you know, this, that, hippah, I'm not allowed to, you know, all that kind of stuff. And so you guys actually built something called June Port Portal, June G uh J-U-N-E portal.com. And the patient can actually go in and access all of their data. Like, what, why did you build that? And how has that impacted your patient journey?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this was probably born from that time where we were only answering 45% of calls, and our front desk was just slammed. And, you know, we've, you know, we've added virtual assistants, uh, we've added uh this AI assistant. And one of the thoughts that we had was most of the phone calls that we're getting, you know, their new patient calls, where else are they coming from? They're billing questions, they're reschedule or cancel. And so uh we decided why don't we just build something in the days of AI and you know, being able to build kind of whatever you want that fits your practice that helps our front desk. And that's kind of what's happening is you know, a patient that wants to reschedule, instead of, you know, we're still in the very, you know, we're still in the very beginning of this process, we're alpha testing it. But now instead of a patient having to call, they can go on an app. Just like if you were gonna schedule an appointment at your barber, we can go online and schedule that. This is all just in the app. If you want to message the office, it's not a text message anymore, it's just in the app. If you want to view your last uh uh appointment x-rays, you can do that from the app.
SPEAKER_02It's just like it's just correct me if I'm wrong, but I I have Kaiser. And so like I broke, I just recently tore my bicep, so I had to go, and then I had to do these tests, and then I have surgery. It's all in the Kaiser app. I log in, everything's there. I don't have to call and ask them what my call. Yeah, you can call. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. And I don't need to call because it's all right there. Like I can go in and it's it's almost too much information at times because they're pretty big. But for you guys, that that's basically what you built, but for a dental office, is that right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think I mean it's like that's how people interact with the world these days is through their apps, through their phones. They get push notifications for every reminder that they need in the world. And so we built something that does that for our practice, basically. So, you know, they can their point of reminders come as push notifications, just like their calendar reminder for you know whatever call they have next, all of that stuff. And so um, yeah, it basically appifies a dental practice, so they have the same, you know, like all of their data that is um hidden in our on our server. Now um they can have access to their data, um, and they can um they it opens up transparency, you know, like they can see what um why we're doing what we're doing, and they can pay their bills, and they can see what the billing was, what the insurance paid, all that stuff.
SPEAKER_02And they don't have to it reduces it reduces the calls to your office too, right? Which reduces manpower.
SPEAKER_01That's very easy. It speeds up the process forms, consent forms. You know, this is something that had only a dental office would know. Like a consent form shouldn't be signed until the day of the appointment. But what do we do? We send that consent form four hours before the appointment. They can sign it on their phone, they walk in, they get their deep cleaning done, the consent's already signed. Um, so it speeds up the process at the front desk. Um and just a time saver. Yeah. Can can other officers use this? Yeah, that's uh uh goal. That's the goal, yeah. Um I think one thing we'd like to do, we have a uh request demo on our website, jomportal.com. And we'd like to get a group of offices that want to be beta testers. Um we'd obviously decrease the cost, you know, make sure that we're covered basically for all the overhead that we have to do, which is a surprising amount. Um, but then basically if if anyone's interested in uh using this, uh you know, agree to a monthly meeting just to see how it's going with us. And I think this has uh some pretty good potential. If you can transfer your patient base over to you know, you communicate with us through the app, that uh eliminates a lot of calls. A lot of work.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's huge. What is uh what PMSs do you guys work with?
SPEAKER_01We uh we're on dentrics, but the the app works with 95% of dental practice management socks.
SPEAKER_02Sweet. Okay, this is awesome. And then just like ballpark, what are you looking at price-wise? Because I you already know the dentist. That's the first question they're gonna ask.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, totally. Um, I think for the beta testers, like our minimum overhead, just being as transparent as possible, because we're pretty new at this point, is 250 to 300 per practice. Like adding a practice, that's like our monthly, that's that's what our integration software costs.
SPEAKER_02So if if so here's how I'd break that down for the dental offices listening out there. Um, is you can either hire another person to help you manage the phones and all those things, or you can get a couple AI, a couple AI agents to answer and you and uh your guys' uh June to manage uh a lot of those questions. Like you can, there's ways that you can spend a couple hundred dollars rather than spending in California, it's you're probably spending five, five, six grand uh right out the door, right? So it's like you can it reduces a lot of workflow. So this is something I'm actually now I'm just processing as we're talking about. Like, there's so many ways that this could save a dental office a lot of money.
SPEAKER_01Uh a big part of what we wanted to build is all these things that review management system, membership plan management system. If you have enough patience in your practice on this app, the app can do it. That you know, that it's it's simple to build a push notification review request that takes somebody to a Google page. And so for our office, and I think this is what we plan on continuing to build for the app, is building a place where all these third-party dashboards that your front desk has to sign into just to keep track of can all just live in one home. Because that's what our front desk complains about, right? Is uh our front desk complains every time we add a new thing, there's a new dashboard they have to learn, there's a new password, there's you know, and so things kind of fall off the wagon. But uh what we wanted to do is build something that they can just go to one spot and hopefully we can build out for other practices too. I think we can.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. Man, thanks for sharing that. And uh we'll get that out there. And then if there's anything else, do you guys think anything else we should cover? Or I think we got I got everything on my side.
SPEAKER_00I got one. Uh this is uh I might nerd out a little bit here, but I got one little uh nugget that I got from listening to trackable calls. Um, so it's really I think it's really fascinating when you're listening to the calls. Um, you can almost hear the moment when people realize they're talking to a computer. And I heard it over and over and over and over and over again. And I like when you when you mentioned earlier like dentists worry about like their the patient's interaction or how it's perceived. There's actually, I I Googled it, there's a term for when somebody starts like realizes they start talking to a computer, it's called social uh presence collapse. So basically, like when you're having a conversation like this, there are certain like social expectations, like you know, like that we just treat each other kindly.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm not gonna burp, I'm not gonna like yeah, pick up a phone and talk it to somebody else. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so when you realize that you're talking to a computer, that all goes away. And so it's it's it's defined. Wait, what is the phrase called?
SPEAKER_02I've never heard I know exactly what you're talking about, but I've never
SPEAKER_00Heard a coin before what is the social presence collapse? So it's when perceived human presence suddenly drops after AI detection. And the four things that it mentioned that tend to happen is one, uh, conversational warmth drops. Um, two, speech becomes transactional. So it's less like having a conversation and more like, okay, what's the next command I need to give you to get you to do what I want? Um, and then three is either depending on the person, either patience will increase or patience will decrease. So for some people, they're like, oh, I'm talking to a computer, like I get frustrated. And some people are like, oh, I'm talking to a computer, I have to be patient to let it do its thing. It can only do so much. Um, and then the last one is some callers will either like start simplifying their language or either or it's like they'll start testing the system to see what it can do. And I've seen all of these things on it. It's really, I think it's really interesting. So that's social presence collapse.
SPEAKER_02What's uh what's the takeaway from that?
SPEAKER_00Uh I just think that like these days people are actually used to this kind of stuff. Anytime you call any big organization or company or anything like that, like AI is not like talking to an AI is not that scary. People have been talking to like unintelligent phone systems, press one for this, press two for that, you know, for I mean, decades now. And so um this is just like actually like a next step. This is, I think, even more helpful um in that evolution. And so, like, you know, from us, from my perspective, I had a lot of the same reservations that I think a lot of the dentists you talk to probably do, but like that hasn't been our experience that like people are so off put by this. Um, I think people are like, okay, fine, they realize they're talking to an AI, they're just like used to that, and then they keep talking to it like that, and they get through the conversation, and now we have a new patient in our schedule, and it didn't take up any of our front desk time.
SPEAKER_02That's so awesome. Yeah, the I love that phrase. I'm gonna be using that. I actually already posted about it in our Facebook group, but one one last one one last thought is um the I I hear this a lot where people say, I hate AI. Every time I call the airport or the airlines or the IRS, their AI sucks. And I'm like, that's not AI. That's those are prompts that they've built with automations, and they're literally made to be really painful. So you never call them again. You always go back to the website. Like AI, when you actually get on an AI agent that's good, they're really good. Like they're they're really good and they'll help you get exactly what you need, and they're trained on that, and they'll always be say the right thing, they'll always give the right answer, they'll always be available. And it's only going to get more. I have a doctor right now that lets AI answer all of their calls. Uh, he saw almost 200 patients last month, and it's scheduling at like 81%. And he just, yeah, he just lets lets AI do it, you know what I mean? And it's one less thing for the front desk to do. And it's not like, it's not like our front desk are just sitting around, you know what I mean? Like they're spread really thin. So eat 10 more patient calls that are five minutes each, that's a lot of time off the off the front desk schedule. So that's awesome. Absolutely love it. Thanks so much for coming on, guys. That's great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you for having us. I know you're uh a big name in the the dental world. And so thank you for uh taking us on.
SPEAKER_02My pleasure, man. I'm only I'm just out here playing around on Facebook. You you guys are you guys are the real heroes. You guys are actually doing the dental work, doing the dirty work. So I appreciate I appreciate it, guys. You guys are awesome.