#284 Why We Charge 2X Our Competition

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Most dentists aren't losing money because they spend too little on marketing. They're losing money because they're paying for websites, SEO, and ads instead of buying predictable new patient growth.

In this episode, Gary Bird breaks down the math behind successful dental marketing, including the marketing budget percentages that drive growth, why 45–55 qualified leads can become 30 new patients, and how phone conversion, show rate, and referrals determine your real ROI. You'll also learn why the cheapest marketing option usually becomes the most expensive mistake.

At SMC, we've helped 1,195+ dental practices build predictable growth using real-world data, proven systems, and outcome-focused marketing strategies, not just deliverables.

If you're serious about new patient growth, practice management, fee-for-service dentistry, DSO growth, or building a smarter marketing strategy, this episode is for you.

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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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Welcome back to another episode. Today we're going to be talking about why our services cost twice as much as our competition. This comes up a lot. We talk to a lot of doctors and they're like, man, this company over here said we're only going to need to pay $3,000. Why are you $8,000? Why are you almost two times or three times higher than your competition? And the answer is very, very simple. And it's important that you understand a couple things. Number one, a lot of doctors want to spend whatever their friends are spending. Okay. So uh my friends are spending $4,000. This is a very popular number. $4,000, $5,000. That's what we should be spending. However, you shouldn't be picking your marketing budget based on what other people are spending because somebody who's doing $500,000 a month in collections should be spending a lot more to keep that boat growing than somebody who's only doing $50,000 a month in collections. From a dollar standpoint, they're not the same. So you should not be looking at dollar uh numbers. You should be looking at percentages. And very simply put, one to three percent covers attrition. That means you're gonna get just enough new patients coming through the door to cover what you're losing out the back door. Three to four percent up to five, six percent, that's going to help you grow. And you grow into that number, meaning as you grow, that percentage becomes smaller, and then you have to grow it again, and then it becomes smaller, right? From a percentage standpoint. And seven to ten percent is for like massive growth. I got to, I want to hire a new associate, I'm opening a new office, and I I have two new hygienists. These are bigger numbers that you're gonna need to produce to keep the team busy. Okay. So that's a basic math that you can just break down there. From there, you then need to ask the question what are you getting for the budget that you're spending? So most marketing companies, when they go to charge somebody, they are charging based on activities. And it's really important that you understand this. So you'll go sign a contract with somebody for X amount of dollars, and they say, We're gonna make you a website. It's gonna be a beautiful website, and we're gonna make you these beautiful videos. There's no outcome besides the deliverable that you're paying for. So in your head, you're thinking, Man, once I get this new website, new patients are gonna be up, baby. No, it's not how it works. You aren't paying for new patients, you're paying for a website. Now, a website may be part of a strategy, but if it's not denoted in your if it's not denoted in your agreement, then you cannot expect that. So maybe it's like, well, we're gonna pay for SEO. That's great. Are you paying for SEO for outcomes? Are you paying for SEO just to rank higher? Because I've seen tons of people who rank really well who aren't getting new patients. We get people that come to us all the time that rank really well and they cannot grow. So there's a lot that goes into getting an outcome. So, and there's nothing wrong with hiring for activities. If you want to go out and hire somebody and say, build me a website, do SEO, run my ads, whatever, just realize that you are the strategist in that situation. You become the strategist in that situation, meaning you have to figure out how to piece this all together to get the outcomes that you desire. You cannot get mad at the marketing company because the marketing company is selling you a particular activity, a website, SEO, whatever it may be, and that is what you're paying for. For us, the reason that we cost more is because we actually know what it goes into producing new patients. So when you come to us, first question we ask you is like, how many new patients are you getting? And how much are you paying for those? And then we're gonna look at it right away and say, you know what, you shouldn't, you shouldn't change anything. Keep doing that. Or, you know what, you could do a lot more with the budget that you have, or you're gonna need to spend a lot more than what you're currently spending to be able to get to where you want to go. And this means that you're gonna pay more, right? You're just gonna pay more because we are actually going to work with you to get those leads to turn into new patients. So we figure out, okay, what is it gonna cost to generate a lead in that market? What is the competition? What's the population? What's the income levels look like? And then we um look at how many leads we can produce, and then we look at averages for unanswered call rate, phone conversion, we look at uh show rate, average show rate, all of those things. We take the averages because we don't know when we're gonna go work with somebody where they're gonna fall. So we take the averages of what we know all of our clients when they first starting working with us, where they're where you're gonna land. And then based on your team's performance, we can guesstimate how many new patients you're gonna get from these leads. I actually, if you're gonna watch this on YouTube, I actually have a proposal right here that you can see. And you can see right here that we break down 45 to 55 qualified leads. If you want to know what a qualified lead is, drop it down in the comments below for $11,550. And then from that, if they're average, they should produce about 30 new patients from that. And then this office said that they get 30 patient referrals on average. So when you add the 30 that we're gonna be driving from marketing and the 30 that you normally get from patient referrals, that's gonna give you a total of 60. Because most of your new patients, or half of your new patients, I should say, usually come from patient referrals, not from marketing. Typically. And there's there's obviously outliers. So we're not just saying, hey, we're doing activities for you, and this is how much we're going to charge. We're saying here's the outcomes that you can expect. This is how many leads, and based on your team's performance, this is what it's gonna look like for you to get new patients. That's why we charge more. If you go and just say, okay, well, I want I want 30 new patients, and this guy said he's gonna give me a website and this guy said he's gonna give me SEO, and I'm only gonna pay $3,000, not $11,000, that's fine. You're just probably not gonna get to your goal. It's right, like you're the strategist and you're paying for these activities, and more than likely you're not gonna get what you want. So if that's okay, then go with the cheaper option. If you're okay with getting you being the strategist and getting the outcomes of you being the strategist, then you go with the other options. If you're like, you know what, I don't know if I'm a great strategist, I'm probably a better dentist. I don't know if I'm the best marketing strategist. I'm going to work with somebody who I'm gonna pay more, but I'm gonna get the outcome that I desire. It's very similar to like um foreign dentist, right? Can I fly across the world and get veneers for way cheaper than I can get in Southern California? Absolutely. Even if even when you account for hotels and the flights and the whole nine yards, I still save a boatload of money by going overseas. Well, why would I never do that? It's because I have no idea what I'm dealing with over there. And if something goes wrong while I'm over there, I'm cooked. And if something goes wrong while I'm over here in America, then I have to have to double pay for it here in America. That's that's not a good risk reward. It's not worth it for me. I'd rather just pay more the first time. All right. Well, hopefully that was helpful. Drop a comment down below if you have any questions. I would love to hear your thoughts on it, your point of view. You have a good one.