"Starting from Scratch" - The Marketing Playbook for Startup Dental Practices

Just opening a dental practice and not sure where to start with marketing?

In this episode of the Dental Marketing Mix, DentalScapes co-founders Dan Brian and Brian Craig break down the free and low-cost marketing moves that every new practice should prioritize — before spending a dime on ads or SEO. While most of their client work is with established practices, Dan and Brian have a lot to say about what actually moves the needle in the early days, and what startup practice owners should ignore entirely.

They cover setting up and optimizing your Google Business Profile (still the #1 local SEO ranking factor heading into 2026), building an affordable website that gets you from zero to early revenue, getting real photography without blowing your budget, and building your Google review velocity from day one. They also dig into why your front desk conversion rate matters more than almost any marketing tactic — and close with a warning about the cheap, automated SEO packages that are quietly preying on new dental practices.

If you're opening a new practice or working with a lean marketing budget, this episode is packed with actionable steps you can start on today.

📋 Full show notes: https://www.dentalscapes.com/starting-from-scratch-the-marketing-playbook-for-startup-dental-practices/

Ready to talk through your practice's marketing strategy? Book a free strategy call with DentalScapes at https://dentalscapes.com/start — we'll point you in the right direction, wherever you are in your growth journey.

Transcript

0:00

All right, welcome back to the dental marketing mix. I'm Dan Brian I'm the co-founder of dentalscapes joined today by my other co-founder, Brian Craig. What's up, Brian? Hey, enjoying the last bit of cold weather, I think. Absolutely, we're rounding the corner. So you and I have been talking a lot lately about, you know, what's best for practices that are just getting started. And it's an interesting question because, you know, we work with practices of all sizes at all stages, but primarily, you know, working with those that are a little bit more established. And, you know, we often talk with folks though who are starting a new practice from scratch and don't necessarily. You know, yet qualify for a larger marketing investment or that doesn't necessarily make the most financial sense at that point. Um, and you know, the reality is there's a lot that these practices, these startups can do, uh, very affordably, very efficiently to generate some initial momentum and get the ball rolling. So today I know we wanted to break down some of the things that we would advise new practice owners on doing to. improve their online visibility, grow their practice, increase profitability, that sort of thing. And I know offline you and I were talking about a lot of things. We got a lot to cover today. Where would you start? What would you prioritize first uh in starting a new practice and looking to build out your marketing? Yeah, so the number one thing I would do as a new practice is create your Google Business Profile. uh That is going to be the core of your online presence, the core of your organic visibility in search. So getting that started, getting a couple of photos up on it, getting everything set right, um hey, it's free. And it's going to be where you build the rest of it from. And it's interesting that you say that because we, you and I talked on the podcast, you know, several months back when white spark put out its local SEO ranking factors report for 2026, the GBP or the Google business profile, as you just mentioned is still number one as far as influencing local search rankings. And, you know, like you said, it is free and some people might be inclined to first say immediately upfront before anything else, you know, build out a website. That's obviously still important, but that GBP really is the cornerstone of local search visibility. And like you said, it's free, so you might as well take advantage of it. Moving into the website though, that's obviously something that every modern practice just has to have by default. And that said, website design can get very expensive depending on how sophisticated you get. I mean, we're talking about 7,500, 10 grand, you know, onward. You can spend a lot to develop a really customized fully fledged website. And that may be out of the initial budget range of a startup practice. So what would you advise those folks to do there? For sure, so there are platforms out there, ones that come to mind are your things like Wix or Squarespace, that they have some decent looking templates that are kind of plug and play with your own content, with your own photography. Will they compete with some of the more established practices in the area? No, not really, but they'll get you from zero to 500 grand or so in revenue. And uh just do that zero to one where you do have the cash flow coming in and you do have the revenue to invest in a more professional presence. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, a lot of those, you know, have really nice starter templates to get you started. You don't have to start from scratch or build from the ground up. There's a lot of, a lot of things you can do to kind of minimize the barrier to entry there. And like you said, these are very affordable tools. think Squarespace for a small business plan is somewhere 20 bucks and up a month or so. Very affordable. You know, obviously get your domain uh set up hosting, but hosting is actually included with a lot of those Squarespace and Wix plans and similarly. So. Very easy to get started and super cost effective. So can't agree with you more there. Now you mentioned something in that explanation, photography, video. What would you advise practices there? Now that's something that can get a little bit more expensive, but it can make a huge impact as you and I both know. It can, yeah. Getting a freelancer, like somebody local that does photography or video, without going to these specific video agencies that are going to charge you several thousand dollars a day to come out. Or even if you're on a really shoestring budget, take one of the newer iPhones, get some well-framed, well-lit photos of of your practice from the outside, you know, when you walk in in the waiting room. You know, get some good photos to put on the site because what you want to avoid is a bunch of stock photography. You want to avoid looking like everybody else. So if you can do just some basic photography on one of these template sites, that'll help you get started and you don't have to spend a ton of money. Yeah, absolutely, definitely. And everyone knows some kind of photographer or videographer out there. So tap your resources. Absolutely. Tap into your business network or your church group or whatever it might be. uh Great idea there. Now, another thing that we didn't talk about when we talked about the Google Business Profile is part of that profile, which is reviews. And when we were talking about those ranking factors, reviews, Google reviews, five-star Google reviews are infinitely important when it comes to prioritizing your practice in local search results. And so I think I would lean super heavy on generating, you five-star Google reviews upfront as you open the practice and as you continue to build the practice down the road, keeping that velocity of reviews, the frequency at which you're getting them, the overall review rating, keeping that at 4.8, 4.9, you know, five as possible. Super super important because it's not just informing patient choice now It's also you know an increasingly important ranking factor for Google and down the road when your practice gets into online advertising It actually influences the performance of your local services ads as well So there are so many reasons to invest upfront in Google reviews What would you recommend that practice owners do there to prioritize those getting started? Yeah, so there are two things that I find set a practice apart when doing Google reviews. The first is that it's automated. You might think, hey, my front desk will send an email out or we'll do something, you know, XYZ, whatever. Doesn't happen regularly, always falls by the wayside. You tend to second guess yourself, oh, were they really happy? Maybe I shouldn't send them a request. So that's the first mistake is not sending them automatically to everyone. The second mistake I see is sending them via email. ah It's not the worst thing in the world, but our world right now from a consumer standpoint does not run on email. It runs on text messages. So what you want to do ideally is have a platform and it can be as simple or as complex as you want it. There are some that are just review platforms all the way up to like a full blown marketing automation or patient CRM type system like a weave or something. Mm-hmm. but you want to have them go out in an automated fashion. You want them to go out via SMS. The other thing that I think is kind of underrated that I've seen some practices do is have some sort of physical item, whether that be a stand with a QR code, whether it be a stack of postcards with your picture on one side and a QR code on the other side. Say, hey, would you be willing to leave us a review? but um some sort of physical reminder there at the front desk as well to reinforce what they're gonna get via text message, you know, an hour later or whenever it is. absolutely. And great to incorporate that QR code on there so they can just quick scan it, leave that review. Another thing we've advised a lot of clients on that seems to have worked really well is to actually put those review QR code stands in the hygiene operatories because the hygienist is often, you know, the person at the practice that the patient has the best relationship with and is most connected with. so to have that ask at the end of, you know, successful cleaning or anything like that is a great way to rack up those reviews really quick. uh One thing that's interesting as we talk about all this, like what we would do as business owners if we were starting a practice and needed to be scrappy uh upfront. One thing that every practice is gonna have regardless, it's just a necessary expense, uh is a front desk team or at least one person who's handling the phones, handling the incoming chats, the emails, the form fills. And that just, I think, uh is So critical to the success of any practice that, you know, I would advise anyone before you even look at online marketing, before you look at any marketing in general, look at who you're putting behind that desk because that conversion rate, the percentage of inquiries and leads that you actually convert into booked appointments makes all the difference. I mean, a 10 % increase in conversion rate of qualified leads can make a massive impact on your bottom line over the course of a year. So. Just another thing that we've seen, I know you and I have time and time again, the difference between a 50 % and 60 % conversion rate in terms of call handling and front desk management is just super important. Is there anything else though that immediately comes to mind beyond GBP, website, reviews, photography? Now we've talked about all of these things. Anything else that comes to mind that you would... really push hard for, you know, a young or at least just starting out dentist to really prioritize. Yeah, I'm going to call it a hack, even though it's not really a hack. We do things as we're incentivized to do them. It's human nature, So I would encourage practice owners to incentivize your team to get reviews. So if your friend S person asks for a review and gets it, you know, give them 25 bucks or, you know, give them something. And I think you would be surprised how fast that review number grows when you're encouraging and incentivizing your team to have that same goal that you do to grow that number. Yeah, I know we keep hitting on reviews and it's just so important. often talk with practice owners and say, and I know you've said similar things, you know, local SEO, we always say is your best return on investment and online marketing simply because you lay the initial groundwork and you start generating momentum and you're generating leads organically. Reviews though, are a close second for me in terms of, know, really getting that bang for your buck. And so if you are paying quote unquote, 25 bucks, a review based on incentives to your team, I just think that's infinitely worthwhile and it's gonna really pay itself back in full and then some. absolutely, great ideas here today. Anything else that you would leave um practice owners with who are just getting started? Any quick tips or bottom key takeaways that you'd like to leave them with today? Yeah, you know, I do want to call out one more thing because I think it's more pervasive in dental and orthodontic marketing than it is in some other verticals. um You'll run across, I'm trying to think of how to best say this, you'll run across people who are advertising ultra low cost SEO packages. When I say ultra low cost, I'm thinking like $399, $499, but really these days, anything under probably $1,500, you're not getting much for it because it's just such a labor and expertise intensive business. I would say if you're being tempted by one of those mass market low dollar SEO packages, save your money because you'll move the needle a lot more just doing the couple of things we've mentioned here on this podcast. taking care of them internally, doing them with your own team and not setting on fire those uh precious dollars as you're starting out your practice. Yeah, and you and I had actually talked about that in more in depth a few episodes back. I think we called it Hocus Pocus or something like that. These startup agencies now, and there's a ton of them out there, like you said, that are really preying on practices, you know, quite honestly, leveraging AI and every agency worth its salt should be using AI to, you know, maximize the marketing investment of their clients. But you have other agencies that are almost entirely fully automated. Everything with no human oversight and they're cranking out stuff. That's literally doing their clients No favors and they run on churn They are just volume shops that you know do a lot of business with a lot of different people at very low prices and in return the value of what you're getting is is very low as well So definitely look out there good tip uh Yeah, well, thanks for joining the show today Brian. Thanks for sharing all of this. This is great and if you are a uh dentist just getting started Looking for any kind of you know advice that we can offer or interested in marketing down the road Just reach out to us dentalscapes.com slash start for a street strap free strategy call can't talk uh And we will connect with you and we will do our absolute best to point you in the right direction Regardless of whether or not you work with us up front or not But thank you so much for listening if you enjoyed what you heard today, or you've checked out other episodes Please take a moment and leave us just a five-star review or know, a rating on Apple podcasts or Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your shows, we would really appreciate it. It's the best way for us to find other dentists and practice administrators out there that we can help. So thanks all for listening. Thanks, Brian, and we'll see you next time.