#273 "I Can't Afford Dental Marketing"

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Most dentists say they can’t afford marketing. The real issue is that they can’t afford to market.

In this solo Dental Marketing Goat episode, Gary Bird breaks down how dental practices should think about marketing budgets in 2026, why underinvesting leads to patient attrition, and the exact percentage-of-collections framework to use if you want to maintain, grow, or scale aggressively.

Gary covers free ways to generate more patients through Google reviews and referrals, how much to spend each month on dental marketing, and why the right marketing system becomes the only expense that actually pays you back. Built from real-world data across 1,195+ practices, this is a tactical blueprint for new patient growth, practice management, and smarter scaling.

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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.

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Transcript

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And today we are going to talk about not being able to afford dental marketing. I hear this quite regularly, actually, where clients will reach out, existing clients or potentially new clients, and they say, I just can't afford to market. And I get what they're saying. But we're in 2026, and you need to figure out how to afford to market. Because if you don't, your practice will gradually gradually die. I know sometimes there's some old heads online and they'll say things like, I never had to market in all my years, or there's somebody who owns a practice in rural Arkansas somewhere where nobody is marketing and he has no competition and they just mop up every single new patient. And I get it, you don't have to market for those situations. However, overall, you have to market in general, or your business will erode away. Attrition is a real thing. You will slowly die as a practice if you don't figure out how to generate new patients. And there's a couple things that you need to think through as we do this. Now, again, this isn't for everybody. Not everybody can market, not everybody should market, but a lot of you should be marketing, and a lot of you should be spending more than what you're currently spending on marketing to actually grow. And I'll give you a framework on that at the end. So, number one, you can't afford not to market. You just can't in the in 2026, your competition, go online and type in Dennis near me and go look at all the ads that pop up. Look at LSA ads, local service ads, look at the ads right below that. Look at all the ads now that are in the map pack. 80% of the first page is ads. SEO is like getting smashed right now. Absolutely smashed. Why? Because Google wants to make money and they don't make money on SEO. So they serve ad over ad over ad over ad. So you're going to have to market if you want to grow. There's no way around it. If you want to expand, if you want to see more new patients, you're going to have to grow. You might be able to survive on the patients that you're seeing and the referrals that you're seeing for now. But as inflation goes up, as the cost of goods go up, as labor goes up, you're going to have to grow. And the going rate right now of all that, you need to be growing by like 5% just to break even. 5%. So that means if you're doing $100,000 this year, you're going to have to be doing about 5% more than that next year. Every single month. And then you're going to have to do 5% more than that the next year, but just because of inflation, the cost of goods, and those kind of things. So you can't afford not to market. Number two, you're already marketing because you're accepting insurance. You just don't feel it the same way. So marketing is paying for new patients up front. When you go in network, you're paying for your marketing on the back end by discounting. And there's a there's a huge trade-off there. Marketing's actually far cheaper than insurance. Obviously, marketing that works, right? So that's really important to understand. But if you're writing off a bunch of treatment every single month to the insurance companies, you might want to consider spending a little bit of that on marketing and getting patients that you don't have to write off every single month. You end up making more money per patient. Number three, marketing is only the expense that pays you back. You know, when you you have your rent, it doesn't pay you back. You have your payroll, it doesn't pay you back. You have your lights, your power bill, your water bill. None of those things pay you back. All super important, but those things are gonna be there whether you have one patient coming through the door or a hundred patients through the door. You're pretty much gonna be paying the same thing for those fixed costs. Marketing is the one thing that when you put money in, it spits money back out. Okay? They're really important that you understand that. And I know a lot of times people they go to their account and their accountant goes, You're paying too much for marketing. Accountants don't understand marketing. They understand basic math, but they don't realize that when you cut your marketing, not all of them, but I've dealt with some of them, feel this way. When you cut your marketing, you're gonna have less money to spend on your fixed expenses. It's very simple, okay? Also, number five four, you're already spending money just on the wrong things. Um, what do I mean by that? Well, a lot of times if you're overspending in your personal life, you could have spent that money on marketing and put more money into your pocket. Sometimes you have to take money out of your personal life on things that you don't need. Maybe you don't need the car. Maybe you don't need the house. Maybe you don't need the plane. Maybe you don't need whatever the thing is. And it might be things in the office too. Maybe you don't need those things yet. Maybe you need to learn how to market so you have more money for the house, for the car, for the plane, whatever it may be. Okay? Number next, start with the free stuff. Start with the free stuff. There's a lot of ways that you can market for free. It doesn't cost you anything. Most people don't do it, and this is why I know that their mind isn't in the right place, but it doesn't cost you anything to go ask your patients for Google reviews. But a lot of dentists think they're above asking for Google reviews. It will help you get more new patients. Just start asking. Um, it doesn't cost you anything to ask your patient for referrals. It doesn't cost you anything. You could be asking all the time. You could get two, three, four more patient referrals every single month. Brand new patients coming through your door if you just ask, but you don't ask. Okay? And then lastly, you need to learn through about scaling, scaling your budget. Okay. I'm not talking about going out and just dropping $20,000 on marketing. You've never spent money on marketing, you go spend $20,000. Don't do that. You'll fail. What you should be doing is you should be starting with a four to five thousand dollar budget minimum. And you say, okay, I'm gonna start with that. I realize I'm not gonna get a ton of new patients from it. I'm gonna get some new patients from it. And then I'm gonna learn, my team's gonna learn how to convert those new patients, get them into the office, get them to accept treatment, and then we're gonna get more of those. And then we're gonna get more of those, and then we're gonna get more of those, and then we're gonna take that money that we get, and we're gonna spend more on marketing, and we're gonna grow more, and then we're gonna do that again. And then over time, you're building a better business that's growing and that's sustainable. Now, here's the framework, okay? This is the framework, really important. If you're spending one to three percent on marketing of your collections, you're not gonna grow, you're just gonna cover attrition. So you say one to three percent. So if you're at $100,000 a month, you're spending one to three thousand dollars, that's just gonna barely cover attrition. That means you're just gonna cover the people that you're losing, you're gonna get some of those back. You're not growing though, you're just gonna maintain. Okay. Four to seven percent, you're gonna start getting some growth. So that's four to seven thousand dollars on a hundred thousand dollars, you're gonna start to get some growth from that. If you need to grow fast, this is your eight to ten percent. This is when you're like, man, I gotta, I gotta double my new patients because I'm gonna get an associate, or I need to buy a new building and I want it to be bigger, so I need to generate more revenue now, so that way when we move into the new building, we can afford it. That's gonna be your 7 to 10% range. If you're at $100,000 a month, that's gonna be $7,000 to $10,000. If you do those things and you work on the basics, like answering the phone, scheduling the patients, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, you will be successful. You will. And over time you'll grow. And maybe, maybe the marketing company, you're like, oh, I've tried that, it didn't work. Okay, gotta keep trying. You don't give up on it. You keep trying. Maybe you need to work with someone else. Maybe, maybe you need to try a different approach. Maybe if your team and you're not holding them accountable, maybe you just need to work on your leadership skills. Maybe you need to up that up a little bit. Maybe you need to uh train your team in a different way, like not yelling at them. Maybe you need to do something else. Maybe there's something else that you need to try to do, but the answer isn't oh, I can't afford marketing. You can't afford not to market.