Marketing Mistakes Holding Your Practice Back

On this episode of The Dentist Money Show, Matt and Christine have a conversation with Joshua Scott, owner and CEO of Studio Eighty Eight, to break down what drives practice growth in today’s dental market. They discuss the difference between branding and marketing, how private practices can compete with DSOs, the biggest marketing mistakes dentists make, and why authentic storytelling and patient experience matter more than ever. Whether you’re a startup or an established practice, tune in for practical insights on attracting ideal patients and building long-term momentum in your practice.

You can check out Studio Eighty Eight here!

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Podcast Transcript

Matt Mulcock: Welcome back to the dentist money show. We have dentist makes smart financial decisions. am Matt and joined here with our beautiful and brilliant co-host Christine Uhen. So to be joined by a multi-time guest. think now don’t know how many times you’ve been here, but Josh Scott. Joshua Scott from Studio 88. Josh, how are you?

Joshua Scott: I’m good man. So glad to be here yet. This might be our second or third time, but always. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Think it is. Yeah, yeah, it was good. to have you on. have Chris here co-hosting for those of you that have been listening for the last couple of months, more than a couple of months now, Chris. We wanted to bring you on specifically because if you don’t know, now you know. I it’s a song maybe. Chris is our practice strategist and dentist. Advisors has such incredible experience on the business side of dentistry, 30 years in the space. And she serves incredible role here at dentist advisors now and our, and our clients practice on clients around strategy, around growing your practice, maximizing profitability. And so we wanted Chris here to be, I want to say the main host, Chris, I’m just kind of here. I’m probably going to shut up after this and let you take it from here. ⁓ yeah, I might throw a couple of jokes here or there to annoy people. ⁓ but I wanted you here cause you bring such a unique.

Christine Uhen: Hahaha. We’ll let you jump in.

Matt Mulcock: experience from the business growth side. then Josh, the star of the show today around marketing. I want to start here with just giving you a chance for those that maybe haven’t heard the past episodes. It’s been a while since we’ve had you on. Maybe just give us a rundown of you, your history and Studio 88 as a whole.

Joshua Scott: Yeah, yeah. Guys, thanks for having me. such, it’s always, these are always great conversations. You guys are easy to talk with and be around. we, I gosh, I started this, ⁓ 12 years ago, studio 88 actually we’re in our 13th year. Before that I was 12 years with a dental practice management company that was based here in Columbus, Ohio. That’s where I’m from. ⁓ like anybody outside clinical dentistry, you kind of end up falling into it at some point. And that’s how I got into it was a family friend who’s running this dental consulting business and was like, Hey, you want to come and be our, marketing director. so went and did that help them grow a ton and realized along the way dentists had a serious need for marketing. ⁓ this was 12, 13 years ago. Like, like marketing was really bad back then. It’s, mean, it’s, been bad, you know, there, there, haven’t solved all of it. It’s way better now than it used to be 12 years ago. But at the time I remember we’re looking around and it was you know, stock photography everywhere, templated websites, the direct mail with the three offers, the coupon things that you would cut out. And, know, it was some just generic family on the front or at the time there was a stock photo of this younger lady. Just, was like almost all the websites across the country. It was just wild. And I remember thinking like probably because I came into it differently. Dentistry was always like inspiring. It’s innovative. It’s a really, it’s a beautiful profession of human serving humans. And I never saw that story being told. And so that is what started this whole thing of can we tell a better story? Because I think if we can do that, if we can connect patients with dentistry at a higher level, it’s not only good for the patients, it’s good for the practices, it’s good for the community, it’s good for health and wellness overall. And so here we are 13 years later, one of the largest agencies in the country, over 500 active clients about, I think we just hired, team member number 56 last Monday, ⁓ building a world headquarters here, in the Columbus area. So just all the, all the things having fun. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Wow.

Christine Uhen: Follow us on social media.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. Well, bless you for that number of employees. We all know that the bigger the team, sometimes the bigger the problem. So, I want to, if it’s okay, Chris, I’m just curious as you go through that, Josh, do you feel like the uniqueness of, of dentistry when it comes to marketing, ⁓ do you feel like there was like dentists are uniquely behind other businesses or

Joshua Scott: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, because you’re talking about the uniqueness of things that they’re facing and they’re kind of doing this generic stuff. Is that unique to dentists, would you say, of being kind of behind other industries?

Joshua Scott: Man, that’s a really good question. And I don’t know if I give you some history here. I believe it was 1978. It was right around then where the US Supreme Court actually ruled that dentists could market for the first time. Like before that it was illegal. As a ⁓ practicing dental owner, you could have a sign on your door. And that was it. And there was even regulations about how big that sign was. And so, you know, if you were, if you were John Smith, got plenty of space. If you had a really long name and you were squeezing that thing in. the significance of that is even when this Supreme court overturned that there was such a stigma in dentistry around marketing. And you saw this then in the eighties and the nineties, when you would be at a study club and somebody would almost like take a shot at somebody like, yeah, he’s in the yellow pages. Like that’s the kind of dentistry is.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Christine Uhen: With the red type, not even just the black type. It was like in red.

Joshua Scott: Yeah, yeah. Like he’s got a full page. Yeah, like he has to market because he can’t get patients on his own. And so that was a very real stigma for and we know this with with change in human behavior. It takes an entire generation to work that out of the system. And then even the next generation is kind of like, I want to market I’ve seen people market is it okay, but how far is too far so they’re timid about it. I think it’s really been in, you know, 2015 2020.

Matt Mulcock: Interesting.

Joshua Scott: Now we’re seeing this generation that’s coming out of school where they already have a marketing budget planned. And it’s like, I’m building a business. Why wouldn’t I market? So I don’t know that it’s so much dentistry as a profession being behind, although I would say they are a little bit. I think it was more of just that stigma of healthcare and marketing and how does that shake out as far as the type of dentist you are? And really it’s the evolution of a business owner. Like not just a practitioner opening their door, but how do I actually build a business?

Christine Uhen: And I can tell you that, again, having worked in dentistry in the 80s and 90s, that was a very, very true thing. was just new that we could legally, much less ethically. And again, that kind of taking each other down a little bit of what’s wrong with them that they have to market was truly, it was a real thing at that time. And how I also think some of that’s the personality.

Joshua Scott: Yeah, no.

Christine Uhen: of a dentist too, historically very introverted, much, aw shucks ma’am, I’m just doing my thing, kind of sort of attitude of my work should stand for itself, all of that. And you touched on this, of the understanding of it’s not just the services I provide, but I actually am functioning as a business for profit, supporting team, taking care of patients, and I need to look at this a little differently, and marketing has taken a much more prominent conversation or become more prominent in the conversation from the business side. So I couldn’t agree more. Now’s the time to talk about it more so than ever.

Matt Mulcock: That’s so cool.

Joshua Scott: Yes.

Matt Mulcock: I don’t think I knew that history that there was that literal legal restriction on the marketing front that has ripple effects for so long after that. The other, the other part of that, this is the angle I’ve always thought of is like 20 years ago and beyond, even maybe 10, 15 years ago, dentist in, depending on the area, didn’t really have to market to be successful. That’s completely changed. What are you seeing there?

Joshua Scott: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Josh, the uniqueness of what’s happening over the last even decade and the need that’s arisen around marketing.

Joshua Scott: Yeah. And that’s, that’s such a great point because most practices, if you’ve got a great practice, I mean, you take care of patients, you’ve got a good patient experience that word of mouth and that visibility in the community will grow. And oftentimes you don’t need more than that to grow dental practice. Now, a lot of today’s dental owner operators have different ambitions, you know, and they want to employ associates. And before they even launch practice one, they’re thinking about two and three and 10. so, so

Matt Mulcock: Ten. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Yeah. ⁓ really?

Joshua Scott: That becomes a real need to not only expand the patient base, but also accelerate that. And so that’s where marketing comes into play. But I still think a great practice and here’s the other part. I think it’s created now in us a very impatient need to grow a practice on a certain timeframe because we meet with colleagues and we see it on social media. So if you were to launch a practice as a startup, as a,

Christine Uhen: Hmm.

Joshua Scott: Dentist in three to five years for that thing to become a million dollars and profitable. I still think that’s with minimal marketing, like good branding, minimal marketing. I still think that’s realistic. But now it’s like, if we’re not hitting a million dollars in year one, or at least a pathway to see that it’s like we’re disappointed in ourselves and in the growth of the business. But we’re not looking at it through a lens of a 20 year business that we’re going to build. If you were, you’re like, okay, I’m making serious steady growth and building momentum every year.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, that’s an interesting point as far as the, the, the impatience there, Chris, I know you’ve again had unique insight and experience into this. Yeah. She’s chomping. Go ahead, Chris.

Christine Uhen: So. Well, so you started that and I’d really like to get some clarity on this because I think that your statement of branding versus marketing. I think this is a point that’s important to make that we need both. And let’s talk a little bit more about that to find branding versus marketing a little more. Let’s talk.

Joshua Scott: Yeah. ⁓ you know, this is a place where you could talk to, you could have 10 different marketing experts up here and we probably all give you different definitions of branding. it’s a little bit, it’s there’s.

Christine Uhen: So in other words, when my clients are asking about this, it’s okay to not have the answers, please, right? Feel okay that you don’t know that.

Joshua Scott: Yeah, there’s some, there’s some subjectivity around it, but ultimately it’s at a very high level. It’s how patients are, they feel and interact with the brand. But some of the components of that logo, definitely any type of tagline or, or values based copy, ⁓ the website, really the web experience at digital experience now, the photography, the video, things that are shaping the story. And that’s why I said, I don’t, that is really hard to get away from right now. think, especially new businesses, consumers in our space, ⁓ are expecting a certain visual identity, a certain intentionality with, the brands, putting up a happy little extracted tooth and putting dentists on a sign. Just that’s not going to work anymore. So that’s why I said that’s the brand. Now the marketing side of it, it kind of gets, then it’s spreading the message. So the brand is the message. Marketing is putting a megaphone to that message, right? That becomes the social media strategy.

Christine Uhen: Perfect. Say that again. Branding is the message and marketing is the distribution and the expansion of that message.

Joshua Scott: Yeah, it’s the megaphone. Marketing is putting a megaphone to that message. And if you don’t have a message, that’s a problem because then you get this hollow just noise that happens. And that’s where I’ve seen a lot of dentists struggle is they want to, they need new patients. Now it’s this knee jerk reaction of, let’s do marketing, but we’ve never backed up to go, okay, but what’s the message? What’s the brand here? And so the marketing becomes the engagement, the spreading of it, social media, search engine optimization, digital ads. I mean, this can be direct mail being out at the farmer’s market. It’s anything as distributing that message.

Christine Uhen: So let’s go back to branding for a second. Let’s talk about how you in particular in Studio 88 work with developing and identifying and creating that brand that is unique to each client.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Can I add to that really quick Chris? Because I feel like I, first of all, incredible explanation of the difference there. So clear. But to Chris’s, to that question, Chris, more specifically, I’d imagine a lot of dentists are like, I don’t know. I’m a freaking dentist. Like, I don’t know what my message is. I just want to help people with their oral health or I want to do these procedures. Like I didn’t, I didn’t come out of dental school to like know what my brand is.

Joshua Scott: Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: So to Chris’s point, how do you uncover that?

Joshua Scott: Yeah. And this was something we had to figure out early on because when I, when I first built studio 88, it was, was we for, ⁓ I mean, to be real realistic, we built a creative agency. The first eight years of our existence, we, we doubled down on that because I feel like that was the space that nobody was in at the time. 12 years ago, everybody was trying to hack their way through SEO. And Google was doing all their algorithm updates and freaking everybody out and going back and you know, and all that. Google ads were fairly new. But people, it was enough the return on it. I mean, you could get people clicking for five bucks, two bucks a click, which was insane. And so people were just, it didn’t matter the website. I they would throw up a crazy landing page and just run a digital ad campaign. So we were hacking our way through a lot of stuff without going.

Christine Uhen: Needed help. Mm.

Joshua Scott: What’s the message? What’s the brand? And I had this thesis of all things being equal. There’s five dental practices in a community. The one with the better creative wins because it’s like somebody standing up there waving their arm and going, Hey, choose me, choose me. And that’s all patients want, man. When they’re searching through Google and you you’re going to right click four or five dental practices, pull up their websites, look through them. You’re begging for somebody to just answer that question. Choose me. And here’s why. And so the creative became a huge role in that we doubled down on brands on our first website. I insisted they use a photographer and get custom photography. So we have never built a website with templates with with stock photography. We’ve never built a website off of templates. I’ve never taken a WordPress ⁓ template or any or from any other platform and recreated it. Everything we’ve done has been from the ground up to tell a story. And so we’ve really had to go. That was a long ⁓ way to get to this answer. So here it is. ⁓ We had to realize early on, you can have creatives come in, they’re inspired, they have a good week and we create this amazing website. The next week it’s like, they create another website, they’re not inspired, they’re having something personally going on and you’re like, what is this? This is not nearly as good. So how do we get the inconsistencies out? How do we create professional work all the time? And that’s the uniqueness of us. We’ve created a process, an onboarding process, ⁓ homework, things, tools that help us pull the story out of it and then recreate that in a very predictable way.

Christine Uhen: That’s fantastic. Yeah. And that story branding, you know, creating the story and then messaging that out to others. So, but I think that’s also critical too, but it’s also the very difficult part, I think for dentists is to take that time, go inward, really think, really share, be vulnerable, be honest with the creative team to actually develop the branding and the messaging. And yeah.

Joshua Scott: Yes. Yes. Yeah, and sometimes the story is because they’ll go like, Josh, I saw you do with so and so and they have an amazing story. I’m not that person. I’m like, No, and you shouldn’t be but the story also, sometimes it’s about the dentist and why they chose dentistry and why that community, sometimes it’s about the practice. Like what are the values of this practice and what is the importance of it in the community? Sometimes it’s about the team, the practices have this really long-term team. You know, we talk about the care and the community that they’ve created, the impact in this community. So the story can take on different angles. It’s just you communicating like why we’re here and why we should be important to you as a potential patient.

Christine Uhen: That’s fantastic. Yeah. And go ahead. The why.

Matt Mulcock: What’s the the simon synick quote the simon synick quote? Yeah, people don’t care what you do. They care why you do it

Joshua Scott: Exactly. Yeah. So when you see a website, then a website that’s packed with services for SEO standpoint, you know, and it’s the latest technology and CE courses and, and the canals and all the things packed in there. It’s like, that’s the what people know you’re a dentist. They’re actually assuming most of that. What they want to know is why, why did you get into this? What is it that you’re trying to do here? How are you helping this community?

Christine Uhen: That’s beautiful. I love it. ⁓ Tell me, can we go a little tactical here? May we switch from the wonderment of branding into the tactics of marketing? And ⁓ let’s start out with a real fun question. What are you getting asked from doctors? Like what’s working right now? What’s hot?

Joshua Scott: Thank you. Yes. I mean, it’s all AI right now, for sure. And it’s funny because it’s got a lot of marketing agencies. ⁓ It’s either one of two things when I’m talking. My vibe, my pulse on the marketing space is it’s either one of two things. Either marketing agencies are freaking out like we may not have a future ⁓ or they’re just they’re dumping everything into it at this frantic pace of we have to be on the leading edge of AI or we may not survive. And so ⁓ while AI is definitely making some improvements, mean, right now, most of it with us is not replicating and building the creative. It’s helping our team find efficiency and margin. I actually gave out the challenge this year to we’ve got 10 different teams within Studio 88. And I said, I want every team to find 20 % efficiency within their team using tech and or AI with that. And for us, it’s really ⁓ a mission to create a more human agency. If we can create 20 % efficiency, 20 % margin with team, it actually allows us to be, to do the things that humans can do, which is strategize, optimize, measure, interpret data, those types of things. Think about projects creatively. But yeah, everything right now is it’s all like, and I think that the public, was, I was going to watch how this is going to go, go down, but right now our clientele, they don’t care. They actually want us to be using AI. They don’t care. They’re just like, you guys are using AI, right? Like you’re staying in front of things, right? And we’re like, yes, we are. like, okay, good. That’s what I needed to know.

Matt Mulcock: They don’t even know what that means. just like, do you use it? I don’t know what that means, but I hear you should be using it. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Thanks for checking in.

Joshua Scott: Nope. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: And thinking about tactics, mean, my again, you’ve heard I’ve been doing dental. I’ve had a dental career of 30 plus years that, you know, I’ve seen everything work and I’ve seen everything fail. Direct mail doesn’t work. Ads don’t work. know, newsprint doesn’t work, whatever it is. Nothing has worked yet. Everything has worked. So can you talk a little bit about tactics in terms of let’s say you’ve got a marketing strategy. Are you using variety of tactics? Tell me a little bit more about that. Which megaphone are you using?

Joshua Scott: Yeah, we have built really strong tactics around ⁓ digital ads, search engine optimization and social media. And I would say most agencies, those are kind of like the best practices of growing a dental practice. Now, that being said, there’s dozens of different tactics and channels you can use. ⁓ You know, somebody starts doing stuff on TikTok and it’s amazing the problem, one of the fallacies that we have when it comes to dental marketing and you’re seeing this right now with AI is every time something comes around where somebody gets some traction on it and it has some hype, everybody jumps on it. Like you have to be doing this to grow a dental practice. You’re missing out on new patients. Right. And so we saw this with Tik Tok a couple of years ago and, and, and to the point where a lot of dentists were pushing back, like I don’t want to dance on social media.

Christine Uhen: or you’re gonna fall apart. if I had a nickel, that’s not me. And I’m like, doesn’t have to be you. Don’t do the things other people are doing. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Joshua Scott: Yeah. Don’t do it. you grow a dental practice without using TikTok? Absolutely. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: without dancing. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: I want you to that again because there are a lot of doctors that have been like just don’t make me do the dance.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Joshua Scott: Yeah, I mean. I know doctors that have grown a practice amazingly, being a comm being in the community, right? Like they’re, they’re on the football stadium. They’re in the basketball gym. They’re, they’re at the farmer’s markets. They’re supporting everything. Like they’re just so integrated in the community. I have practices. mean, 10 years ago, I put a challenge out, um, through a podcast I was doing about just growing a practice purely on Facebook. Could you do that? And I had a couple of clients take me up on that challenge and built multimillion dollar practices just on Facebook. So it’s more about finding like what it is your lane. The awesome thing about dentistry right now is you don’t have to have this like eight point marketing strategy to and it’s ultra competitive to succeed. If you can take advantage of a couple channels and do them well and get dialed in on it, then you can grow an amazing business.

Christine Uhen: That’s such good to hear. Again, this idea of authentic is a big word right now. what I’m hearing is stay true to you, stay true to your goals, stay true to your values, and find there’s a lot of different avenues to achieve the success via marketing.

Joshua Scott: There there is and but I will tell you that the three big ones like number one social media is not going anywhere. Dentistry was late and has been late on social media. I mean even now I’ve got clients that are like, okay, we should have a social strategy. like it’s 2026 but what’s tipping it this year where I think it’s going to explode and be an even bigger factor is AI is now including it in search results.

Christine Uhen: I’ll do an insta.

Joshua Scott: Before that, Google never indexed Instagram or Facebook. So now all of a sudden people are like, ⁓ AI is searching my social media. Okay, I need to have content there. So that’s a big one. Search engine optimization will never go anywhere forever. We forget that the yellow pages was really search engine optimization back in the day. And we would go through and have to find a dentist via search. And then it was Google and now AI is changing that. But the way there’s so much information in the world, the way people search, there will always be a platform for that. And then Google Ads, there’s no better way. If you need new patients next month, there’s no other trigger you can pull. Put $1,500 into Google, get 30 phone calls literally in the next 30 days, and convert eight of them into new patients. So.

Matt Mulcock: I’m curious, Josh, just on the tactics front, ⁓ how much from your standpoint, you highlighted these like foundational tactics, like you’ve got to be hitting this, that or the other. What other factors do you consider when it comes to the uniqueness of the doctor? So for example, personality comes to mind of like when it comes to like social media or geographic region, like

Christine Uhen: Good messages. Go ahead, Matt.

Matt Mulcock: Another thing I’m thinking of is DSOs in certain areas might, you might have to change your tactic. They’re like, what are their factors do you think about and adapt to when it comes to specific dentists and then, you know, the thing, the factors that are in their life and business.

Joshua Scott: Yeah, I mean, it’s a good question, man. Ultimately, it’s just trying to dial in something that feels authentic to them. And so one of things we resist is going ⁓ like creating something sexy and clickable just to be sexy and clickable, right? And the dentist is like, but that’s not me. And so a lot of times, even when we go into a practice, we still have some where we go in and we’re shooting photo and video and man, it’s the files.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Joshua Scott: you know, like the analog paper files, you know, behind the waiting room. And, and you get these situations where it’s like, can, man, especially with AI, man, you could take a photo of that practice and make it look way different, right? And really enhance it. But how do we create authentic ⁓ messaging around maybe a practice that needs an update?

Christine Uhen: The hard part.

Matt Mulcock: Paper, yeah.

Joshua Scott: But and make it like present itself the best that it possibly can, but also not getting to the point where people walk in and they go, what, is this? This does not look like the practice online, you know? So I think it’s just, we do some competitive analysis and we kind of, try to figure out, okay, like what’s the niche here? What are we missing? And yeah, there’s a lot of DSOs in the area. A lot of times, I mean, I was just, ⁓ on a practice site today, long-term client of ours, ⁓ second generation.

Christine Uhen: Am I in the right office? Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Joshua Scott: Father son practice, but their tagline, which we had built for him was a family tradition since 1976. And this is in an area with a lot of DSOs. So that immediately cuts through the noise because it’s DSOs just by nature. They can’t compete on that. They can’t compete on two generations of dentists in a family business in a local community. So there’s, there’s things like that where you can go like, there’s, there’s something there. Let’s focus on that angle.

Matt Mulcock: I’m so glad you brought that up. And that’s a great example because we get so many dentists who are nervous about and are told from DSOs. let’s be honest. They’re told that you can’t compete at their level, which in some cases you can’t budget or whatever, but I love the, that’s a great example of there’s a uniqueness that a lot of these dentists can bring the DSOs can’t compete with. And it’s just, sounds like you’re saying just, just about shifting your mindset.

Joshua Scott: Man, I’ve never, so my 25 years of dental marketing, I’ve never seen an instance where a private practice could not compete with a DSO in a community. I just have not seen it at all. Now, if you no longer want to be a business owner,

Christine Uhen: Hmm

Matt Mulcock: So good to hear.

Joshua Scott: And have that responsibility, I completely understand that decision. But for anybody that is thinking I have to sell because I can’t compete with them, I do not think that that’s true. I’ve never seen that. There’s so much, ⁓ it’s such a big patient base in the world. There’s so many patients, there’s so many humans, it’s everybody, everybody’s a patient, right? There’s so much abundance that…

Christine Uhen: Plenty of teeth.

Joshua Scott: I think what DSOs do is with that fear and that scarcity mentality, they get us, it’s a very narrow view that they create and you don’t see any way out of that. But the truth is building an authentic patient experience, especially if you’re looking, if you’re a single doctor provider and you want to hit like 1.5 million with a 40 % take home, I’m like, dude, you can do that all day in a community. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Shout that from the rooftops. Shout that from

Christine Uhen: Keep it going. Mm-hmm,

Matt Mulcock: The rooftops. You can compete. love that. Chris is ready. Chris is ready to do. Chris is ready to do a tick tock dance after that one. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: mm-hmm.

Joshua Scott: Yep.

Christine Uhen: And we didn’t even ask him to say that. Yeah. After that one, you could put me on TikTok for that. Yeah. Well, and I think too, the idea of, there is room for everybody and we don’t, we don’t say one or the other is better, except that we do feel that our private practicing dentists do have the chance. They can set themselves apart. They should highlight their uniqueness against anybody. And the honest truth is there’s enough teeth in the world. There’s enough patients in the world. And what I have found is that you’re really competing against discretionary dollars, not necessarily the dentist down the street. So how do you create a message, a brand and shout that to the world that makes them want to spend their discretionary dollars on themselves for the results you provide in the experience you create? So that’s something that I will stand on the Hill and fight for.

Joshua Scott: Yeah, yeah, 100%. And comes back to that brand and that story. I think what’s my take on the DSO industry right now, we work with a couple for sure, smaller to midsize. The DSO space right now is so focused on acquisition and it’s just acquiring, acquiring and a group of 10 acquiring two practices here, a group of 25 acquiring a group of 10, a group of a hundred acquiring a group of 50. Like that’s all, nobody’s paying attention to brands in the DSO space for the most part. And so it’s just this like who can get bigger the fastest and get in recap at all these different levels in that whole game, which I get. At some point my theory and we’re starting to see it right now mostly because of interest rates I think getting so high it has slowed down acquisition DSOs are now really starting to look at same store growth and going okay. How do we get organic growth? But at some point, all things being equal, you’ve got these big DSOs in the world. It’s the same thing that’s gonna happen is what’s our next competitive edge? And the first one that takes brands seriously and goes, okay, let’s turn this into a ⁓ big nationwide brand. I mean, Aspen tried to do it, right? Comfort tried to do it, but they’re also just missing some of the values that go along with that but a really good patient serving, patient first DSO that puts branding first is gonna get that edge and then everybody’s gonna start doing it. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: We don’t want them to hear that. DSOs turn this off.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Yes, and again, that idea of creating own your street, own your community, own your own environment first before we get think about a second and multiple locations.

Joshua Scott: If I could, if I could throw one more thing in there, I don’t know. You got me. I’m passionate about this subject, but like, here’s the thing. If you’re thinking about as a private practice, um, a DSO is going to come in with a big ad spend, right? I see this all the time. Some SEO tactics. You, a lot of them are coming in with 10,000, $25,000 a month in a Google ad campaign. They’re going to try to convert as much traffic as they can. We call that direct response. All it takes for somebody to beat somebody in that direct response space is just dollars. Sorry, they just outspend you, right? When you have brands, that is equity in people’s minds. They’ve seen you at the farmer’s market. They’ve seen you at the games. They’ve, they heard about the way you treated, you know, aunt Susie with this procedure, like all that now is it’s get, in people’s minds. That is a space DSOs cannot compete on right now. And So when they come into a community and you’re like, my gosh, there’s a Heartland coming in here or whatever it is. It’s like, fine. You’re going to see them blast everything to try to grow this practice, but good luck competing with you on brand. If you’ve done a good job, because replacing that storyline in people’s heads is really, really difficult. It takes years to gain that momentum. And that’s something that DSOs don’t have the patience for or the time for, nor is it their strategy.

Matt Mulcock: That’s the key point. That’s not their strategy. That’s their weakness is that they have a different strategy than you. I love that you’re bringing this up, Josh. You’re bringing such good examples to temper some of those fears that are again are out there of that you just can’t compete. Yeah, to your point, you can’t compete with their money, but they can’t compete with your unique brand. I love that you’re highlighting that.

Christine Uhen: Can we, let’s keep this going and take this a little more granular if we can and get to a little more specifics. So you mentioned something earlier, your story of, know, put a Google ad out, get 30 calls, convert eight, and I’m good to go. Can we talk a little bit about what you would recommend in terms of, let’s say, budgeting and planning? So tactics we leave to the experts as to how to do this. So tying in a little bit of the business and the expense against this. So looking at Let’s start out with someone who’s newly acquired or starting a company and go from there. Do you have recommended budgets in terms of what could and should be spent to grow? If I’m looking for 50 new patients because all I am is a startup kind of thing, let’s talk about that a little differently in the phases.

Joshua Scott: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we can hit startups. I can give you some parameters on startups. I can give you some parameters on existing practices and I can give you some parameters on elite practices that I’ve worked with. startups, what I, what I tell most startups is

Christine Uhen: Special specialty if I’m differentiation. Yeah, let’s do that.

Joshua Scott: You can get a marketing budget of about 30,000, maybe it’s 25 to 35,000 in that range can get you really pretty far in year one. A lot of that’s gonna be the branding. It’s gonna be getting a website built, the logo built, name, just all the things. The stationary system, business cards, all the things set up. Google business profile, that type of stuff. You can build a really strong brand with that get some momentum from the marketing. Those startups predictably, our clientele go from about zero to I’d say about 650, year one, 650,000 in collections, somewhere around there, year one, on that type of budget. A lot of organic growth, a lot of being part of the community. We have startups.

Christine Uhen: Yeah. So focus on that a little bit more. When you say a part of the community, are you talking about like boots on the ground? I’m meeting people. I’ve got an A-frame that I’m walking around the community with or a sandwich board, you know, kind of thing. Talk a little bit more about that because that, yeah, yeah, the spinner. Yeah. You know, what is, there’s some real personal effort into community marketing is my experience.

Joshua Scott: Yup. Maybe not quite. Yeah, it’s.

Matt Mulcock: Spinning the sign on the corner.

Joshua Scott: Yeah, it’s a ground marketing ⁓ effort. You’re right. Meeting like if you’re at a let’s say you’re in a strip mall or something you’re going that you’re meeting all the other business owners, you’re throwing an open house inviting everybody. I always say this marketing requires a force behind it. It’s usually one of two things. It’s either energy or it’s money. And so in the beginning, you may not have a lot of money. So you got to put energy into it. You guys got to get out hustle, right? As the practice become

Christine Uhen: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, hustle, exactly.

Joshua Scott: Yes, as the practice becomes more successful, now you don’t have time to get out there and hustle. So now you start putting money behind it to power that force. So yeah, that’s a lot of it. It’s just social media. Usually these these guys, they’re they’re decent on social media. They do the networking in the community. They build a great brand and they have a great first year launch. Practices we more we deal with this all time most startups right now They want to go from zero to a million those budgets usually look more like sixty to eighty thousand in year one And that’s usually a big Google ad spend We’ve taken one practice right now from zero to three million in year one We’ve taken we took another practice from zero to four million in year one four million sixty seven thousand dollars at the 365 day mark

Matt Mulcock: OK.

Christine Uhen: I think he’s following this guy, Klob.

Matt Mulcock: Who’s counting?

Joshua Scott: Yeah, who’s who cares? And then we have another one right now that’s on track just opened a couple months ago and he messaged me he’s like, we’re on track to do 3 million if this like holds up. So we also know how to do that those guys here, I’ll throw out a number is gonna freak you out. But the zero to 4 million is spending about $110,000 a month in in digital ads to get that growth.

Christine Uhen: But I’m getting a four to one return on that. I’m not sad about that.

Joshua Scott: If, if I say, give you, give me a million dollars a year and I’ll give you a $4 million practice back. Would you play that game? Now look to, but I’m the first one to go. Most people like would, that would kill them. That would be the most unhappiest year of their life. There’s so much more involved in that, but he’s built an amazing team and amazing infrastructure to support it. So zero to 4 million creates all kinds of problems. Let’s just leave it at that. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Right. Yeah. Different set of headaches, yeah. Problems of abundance are still problems, yeah. And so let’s talk a little bit more about an established doctor. I’m at my million five, I want it, but I also know I can’t just rest. I want to grow maybe another two, 300,000 collections a year. What’s that budget look like and where’s the focus?

Joshua Scott: Yeah. Yeah. And this is where in dentistry is almost this rule of thumb when comes to marketing and you’ll hear this number thrown out, but three to 5 % of revenue. I tend to stick with that for a mature practice, meaning let’s say you’re doing a million dollars. You ought to be investing 30 to 50 grand a year in marketing. But this is also where

Christine Uhen: Mm-hmm.

Joshua Scott: A lot of marketing dollars get invested in the beginning to get a practice up to this point. And then just over the years, the doctors begin to cut stuff and pull stuff back and, we don’t need to do that. And this, if we go back to my marketing is always a force behind it. It’s momentum and that force is pushing it. If you take away the entire force, what happens? It starts to slow down. And these are the practices we deal with all the time where they come to us and they’re like, Josh, we grew in the beginning and there was so much energy and now we’re 18 years into this and it just feels like where our new patients are slowing down, we’re just lacking momentum. And it’s because they got to this point where marketing wasn’t necessary. ⁓ Marketing is a function of any business ever anywhere in this country, just like sales, just like operations. And so I the biggest mistake you can have is pull that back. Like we don’t need it or it’s not working. And then risk three years, five years, eight years down the road, all of a sudden, now you’re in a spot where there is no momentum. And those that’s really difficult. It’ll take you two to three years to get back out of that and to build it back up.

Christine Uhen: Well, I’ve also seen to you again, tying the business side of this back to again, and I was just looking, speaking with another client of they could, they certainly don’t have a lot of new patients, but with the patients they do have, they’re not doing a lot of dentistry on them. So there’s this other idea of if I make the phone ring, which is marketing’s job, right? To drive potential clients to the practice, but I’m not doing well with those phone calls or so-called conversion being measuring some success, but then also my annual patient value, how much dentistry are we doing, and then the whole retention side of things in terms of if I’m growing a business, I need to increase my patient base. can’t be stagnant on a patient base saying I’ve got 50 new patients, but 50 of them that same month are leaving. So can you touch a little bit more on how you recommend a client evaluate success, either return on investment or just tracking marketing success?

Joshua Scott: Yeah, I think it depends on what you’re looking at. the marketing side, if we’re looking at Google Ads, search engine optimization, social media, those types of things, there’s awesome data attached to it. And we have to measure that stuff by data. So for instance, if you’re running Google Ads and you’ve got $1,500 you’re investing per month, and we know that that’s getting let’s say six new patients from that, that’s $250 a new patient. That’s a great campaign. Google patients are usually about, any more, they’re around 300, 350 to get a Google patient. So we want to tie that correlation, right? We want that ROI. On the brand side, that’s where it gets hard to track that. And this is where I get challenged by dentists or business owners where they’re like, Josh, fine. Like what you’re telling me to spend, you know, $4,000 on a photography session, but what’s the ROI of that? And to which I respond, I don’t know. What’s the ROI of potential patients seeing an empathetic and caring team treating patients on your website? Like $4,000 I think it’s 10x that 20x at 100x that I think a $4,000 photo shoot is probably the single best marketing least expensive best return on your investment you can get because it’s telling that story. Otherwise patients have no context for how you’re even treating patients. And so

Christine Uhen: Investment.

Joshua Scott: Can you measure that? Can you go, well, this may people came into my website because of the photography. No, you can’t. It’s but it’s the brand. You know, I use this example like Coca Cola every year. One of the biggest marketing investors in our country. I think it’s like $6 billion every year they’re investing in marketing. They’ll they’ll go run a Super Bowl commercial, right? This last year, I think they’re eight million, seven and a half million for 30 seconds. They buy four spots. So do the math on that. And they have a that campaign with an agency probably is it’s a six figure campaign to produce that. So I mean, they’re in for millions of dollars. And my point is the executive team at Coke is not sitting watching the Super Bowl and looking at sales right then going, is this working?

Christine Uhen: How many clicks?

Joshua Scott: They’re not that’s literally not the point of those ads is the next day sales better be up or we’re pulling Super Bowl ads That is not how that functions It is a higher level of what I would call elite marketing of understanding how brand works its role in it it will actually increase the ROI and drive that that that investment up on the marketing side, but you can’t put ROI metrics on photography a website video a Super Bowl ad

Christine Uhen: I call it Jenga. It’s like, here you have this tower and things seem to be going well. And if I, but what is it? Is it my, is it my, my billboard? Is it my yellow page ad? Is it my ads? Is it my website? And pulling one of them might bring the whole thing down. that mess, the mix, right? That the strategy is about a mix. The strategy includes branding. It includes messaging. It includes the megaphone and messing with any of them, I think is where that tower can come tumbling down. And I think that’s also where I just, my last question I wanted to ask was like, what kind of mistakes are dentists making right now? Or what do you think is one of the biggest mistakes dentists make? For example, as a startup, we recently did a podcast where I said, I’d much rather you put money into marketing than into a toy or technology, because you still need the patients to be able to use the technology on. So I think that’s something where I have seen a mistake early on in a new doctor.

Joshua Scott: Yeah. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Particularly from a startup standpoint, is missing that. So any thoughts that you’d like to share about potential mistakes that are being made?

Joshua Scott: Yeah, the two biggest ones I see is the first one is thinking ⁓ marketing is magic or it’s going to save the day. ⁓ We deal with a client avatar where it’s almost it’s like magic pixie dust or the magic beans you throw in the ground and the next morning the beanstalks there, right? And usually these practices have got to a point where they’re struggling financially. New patients have slowed or just declined to the point where internally they’re freaking out. And this is like whether or not they’re gonna lose their whole business and I’ve got to do something. And it’s kind of a last ditch tactic effort and not a strategy that becomes very difficult. ⁓ I tell people ⁓ the, you you said when’s like the best time to market. Well, it’s like, when was the best time to plant a tree? The answer was 20 years ago. The next best answer is right now. And so when was the best time to market? was probably about five years ago. Yeah. However, the next best time is now. So that’s the first thing is looking at it as a short-term like rescue tactic. The second ⁓ mistake is just not realizing it’s an investment and being able to, there’s still a big perception of this is an expense.

Christine Uhen: All along.

Joshua Scott: And if you’re investing $30,000 over the course of a year, you ought to see that return. I mean, it ought to be real clear of like, yeah, I we were up $200,000 in revenue this year and we were only up 72 the year before, but we invested 30,000 in marketing. And you’re going to see numbers like that. you’re going to see, man, patients are coming in and it just seems like they have higher trust. Our case acceptance crept up by about five percentage points with our recruiting efforts. People are actually coming to us like, saw your website, I wanna work here. So it’s not just all ROI, it’s growing the practice as a whole. I throw this out there not to flex, but just like you guys, I last year we invested Studio 88, it was about $650,000 in marketing. And so this is a game like I’m not just up here talking about it. I play this game. It’s an investment. And so when you see the growth and you’re like, wow, 56, you know, team members and you’re building a building and gosh, Josh, I see you guys everywhere. I’m like, well, you should because $650,000 should be getting us a return on that. And in the year before it was about 600 in the year before that it was 525 in the year before. So I mean, at this point we’ve got

Christine Uhen: You That’s the point.

Joshua Scott: Millions invested in that momentum machine that’s moving and do I need to invest that next year? No, I could save that and put in the college funds for kids and all the stuff but in two or three years I would all of sudden go my gosh, we’re losing that energy that momentum. Where’s it going? And then you’d have to ramp it back up

Christine Uhen: Well, and this just ties into one of our philosophies of being organized and knowing your data. So this is something that I’m hearing of, you’re paying attention to that. And that’s the message to the dentist too. Are you paying attention to your new patients, your lost patients, your spend, your ROI, your call conversion, the case acceptance, the per patient value, all of that. So knowing when to… intervene and change what you’re doing as needed earlier rather than reactionary. So that’s again just reiterating one of our core philosophies of being organized and know your information.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I’d imagine Josh, this whole idea of, I guess to the kind of the bigger picture of like mistakes you mentioned earlier, and Chris, lose, Chris, I think you’d have some insight on this too. How do you decipher between the marketing strategy brand and or tactics not working versus the, the experience being promised, not being delivered.

Joshua Scott: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: But right. Like, cause I’ve heard from many dentists. Yes. Like I’ve heard from a lot of dentists in the past, like I market, it doesn’t work. And my first thought is like, that could be true. And we, and we need to get clear on to your point, the MEC tracking the ROI of dollar spent. But the other thought that I have on that is like, but like, could that also be you not delivering? How do you decipher that? And Chris, I’m sure you have been set on that too.

Christine Uhen: in the practice.

Joshua Scott: Yeah. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Oh, I was just saying pick me. And that is understanding the data that I get from the marketing company, right? The idea of this. These are the ads. These are the costs. These are the clicks. These are the calls that come in. And then there’s the marketing side and the business side is what are you doing with those leads? And then it’s all that other tracking of call conversion, diagnostics. Are they converting the call? Are they scheduling the patient? Is the patient coming? I could pick 11 different points.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Christine Uhen: of diagnostic treatment planning, case acceptance. Do they pay? Do they do the work? Do they come back for their hygiene visit? Do they come for their second hygiene visit? You know, there’s a really good question that has been thrown out there. When does the new patient experience end? Is it the first visit when they get into hygiene, when they finished all their work? So this idea of the delivery on the commitment of the message.

Joshua Scott: Yeah.

Christine Uhen: is measured in my opinion for at least a year.

Joshua Scott: Yeah, it’s a tricky question that we run into a lot because it’s typically like when it’s not working, then we have to go into diagnostic mode and figure it out. And a really recent example, this was like two months ago, but, um, a client was having trouble when it got to the point where I was like, when it gets to the point where we potentially could lose a client, a of times I’ll jump on those calls. I still do as owner. Um, I don’t, fortunately I don’t have to do a ton of them, but, um, I got on this call and I, and the concern was around ads. And so she had run digital ads for six months, put a thousand dollars a month into it, which is not a lot to be honest. So a $6,000 investment calls us is like turn them off. It’s not working. My new patients have gone down. So before I get on the call with her, I go through the last six months of all the data, 90 contacts from the ads. ⁓ We can go through we can listen to phone calls. We have a little AI analysis of yeah, this person scheduled an appointment, whatever. So I go through I’m like, okay, she got 12 new patients from 90 contacts, which isn’t high. But that starts to tell me why are we not converting at a higher rate? So I get on with her and I said, hey, here’s the data. So you got 12 new patients from this and kind of went through some names. She’s like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, so you’re telling me your new patients are off by 34 this year. Yes. But we got 12 new, new patients that we had never had before from digital ads. Right. So you actually got more patients because of the ads, but your overall new patients. you have organically, you’re decreasing, right? And she’s like, Oh, I hadn’t thought about it like that. I said, here’s what I could tell from the data looking at the leads that came in a third of these 90 contacts that came in from digital ads went to voicemail. So I said, your thousand dollars now plays like 700 bucks. You literally threw $300 out the window. The other thing this tells me is if 30 % of your digital ad calls are getting missed, at least 30 % of your organic calls are getting missed as well. This is not just a problem with ads. This is a problem with your phone call system. And if you’re missing 30 plus percent of your calls this year, now I understand why your new patient numbers are going down. And she was like, I never even thought about this. So I was like, I would be on your phones for the next 60 days, like nonstop.

Christine Uhen: likely.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that brings up the point of, of the training or preparation prior to a new strategy implementation of a marketing campaign or anything. It’s like, there’s probably all these different things that you’re highlighting of like a lot of prep to get ready for this. Not because again, Chris, to your point, marketing is going to get them to the door or in the door. But are you ready for that? And are you actually prepared and trained for that?

Joshua Scott: Right yeah

Christine Uhen: And that’s certain. is where internally I call it setting up the engine, right? Is your engine working? Cause marketing is going to put fuel in it, right? So if you’re running with, you know, little leaks everywhere on, you know, I don’t know engines, but I use this that, know, if, yeah, I just let screws are loosened on your, on your engine. And you’ve got all these little leaks in all these different points where the, where the fuel goes through. So this again ties in that. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: You’re like, I’m too far down the analogy road. Yeah.

Joshua Scott: Yep. Yeah. Yeah, if something’s broken, sorry, if something’s broken, marketing will make it worse. Like it just will. But if it’s your phone, yeah, but if it’s like your phones, you may not even know it. You’re just like, I spent $5,000 last month and I got nothing. It’s like, well, 120 people contacted you. What happened? And if there’s a hole there, they’re still just going right out that hole.

Christine Uhen: or at least make it feel worse.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Yeah, I still see that as a mistake though, too, where doctors don’t let their team know that there are ads and or offers out there. And then the call comes in and it’s like, ⁓ do we do implants? Do we do? OK, yes, we do. ⁓ right. So that back to your question about prep. So much of this is everybody on the team in the training upfront. What’s the whole team needs to know? Hey, I saw you might have a patient walk in the door going, I heard you’ve got this great new patient special.

Matt Mulcock: That’s interesting though. Yeah. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Well, you better know what that is if you’re a hygienist to be able to build that up with this patient and welcome more patients into your door. So sharing the marketing messaging, the branding, all of that is also critical from the doctor to the team that are representing.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, yeah, the communication to the team, I’d imagine is super critical. And I’ve never thought of this angle either, Josh, of like the investment to your point, emphasizing investment in marketing. initially your hope is that it grows your business. But the secondary effect is it could also expose a lot of things that are wrong with your business, which I look at as a good thing in a lot of ways. It could be like, we didn’t even know this was a problem to your point of that story.

Joshua Scott: Yeah. 100 percent.

Matt Mulcock: until we started marketing, that can be frustrating. takes you, you got to go beyond like what I’m hearing from you is you’ve got to go beyond my marketing isn’t working.

Joshua Scott: Yeah, yeah, you do. Right now I’ve got a really great case of it’s a big surgical practice. ⁓ One doctor but just all on X, you know, permanent dentures and

Christine Uhen: It’s worth looking further.

Joshua Scott: The marketing gets turned on, the contacts go way up, the consults go up, but all of a sudden it’s like we’re not getting conversions. him and I started talking, he actually brought in a sales consultant and the sales consultant said on day one, she’s looking at everything, she goes, you don’t have a marketing problem, you have a sales problem. And their existing team, maybe where they could have handled the volume at a certain level, once it turned up five notches, it broke, it exposed everything that was broken. And now it’s like, his whole realization is I have to build a sales team now. I’m like, yeah. And if you do that, like, so you just keep, you know, fixing the funnel as you go down, then you’re gonna have a patient experience, you know, issue, then you’re gonna have a follow up. So like, you just have to figure that stuff out. It’s actually, it’s really good.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, that’s interesting. ⁓ this is great, Josh. know we’re, up against time. ⁓ so much incredible insight. Any other final takeaways or final words of wisdom you want to share with, with the people.

Joshua Scott: I think the only thing I usually leave people with is we all know this, like we all want ideal patients and it’s not just enough to drive traffic. We’re really trying to match like the patients that value our services that are good fit with our practice long term that treat our team. Well, the thing I would push back on you is patients are trying to find the ideal dentist as well. It goes both ways. And so for you to say, I want ideal patients, but to never put your brand or your message out there. It doesn’t work. They’re never going to find you. You have patients that are like, I’m looking for an ideal dentist. They’re begging somebody to raise their hand and say, Hey, choose me. And so if you can put a very well branded digital experience out there, you can meet those patients and everybody lives happily ever after, I guess.

Matt Mulcock: I love that. Yeah. Love that as every good story should end. Yeah. ⁓ yeah, exactly. ⁓ yes, exactly. ⁓ Josh, how do people find you throughout their listening and they love, they’re loving what you’re hearing or what they’re hearing. how do they find you?

Joshua Scott: As every good story to them.

Christine Uhen: As we’re telling stories, yes. And they lived happily ever after.

Joshua Scott: Yeah, two ways. Go to studio 88 our website, SAE8.com letter S number eight letter E number eight.com. You can find out just get a feel for what we do there. Submit, know, to schedule an appointment. I’m also on Instagram at Joshua Scott. I’m still in my account, my DM. So if you hear this, just send me a message. Say you heard the episode and give me a shout out. I’m there also to answer any questions. I’m so consultative in nature. There’s never pressure to work with us. A lot of times I’m like, if I were Here’s what I would do and let you run with it.

Matt Mulcock: What I just heard was an invite to slide into your DMS. So there you go. There you go. Okay. I love it. Well, Josh, this was great. So much insight and wisdom. We really, really appreciate it. We should have you back on for sure. There’s a lot more that I think Chris is, is, ⁓ is thinking about of other questions he wants to ask. So, thank you for being here. Really appreciate it. Chris, thanks for, ⁓ being here with all your, your wisdom and insight as well.

Joshua Scott: That’s right. Slide, slide into my DM.

Christine Uhen: Always.

Matt Mulcock: Everyone. thanks for listening. and always you can find us at dentistadvisors.com ⁓ and then studio 88 as well. So, ⁓ really appreciate it, Josh. Everyone. Thanks for listening till next time. Take care. Bye bye.

Christine Uhen: Bye.

Keywords:dental marketing, branding, DSOs, practice growth, patient acquisition, digital marketing, social media, SEO, practice branding, marketing strategy

Practice Management