Is Your Marketing Actually Working? The Few Numbers Every Owner Should Watch

Gary Takacs: Welcome to another episode of The Thriving Dentist Show. I'm Gary, your podcast founder and co-host. We have a great episode for you today. It's a marketing episode. So for those of you that are interested in enhancing your marketing, you're in the right spot. The title of this episode is, Is Your Marketing Actually Working? The Few Numbers Every Practice Owner Should Watch. You're really gonna benefit from this episode, especially if you're interested in not only more new patients, but more quality new patients. Now, before we get to that episode, two quick announcements to make. The first announcement, we have coming up shortly after this episode is published, a Thriving Dentist virtual event. This one is a webinar. And this is happening on August 27th. It's a one hour webinar. You'll get an hour of CE, and the title of this webinar is The $500,000 Question: What Your Dental Practice Is Really Worth In 2026.

Gary Takacs: Well, if you're at all interested in tracking the value of your practice, you're gonna enjoy that webinar. Come join us. It starts at 6:00 PM Eastern Time. It's a one hour webinar. That's 5:00 PM Central — excuse me, I'll go the other way. It's 6:00 PM Eastern Time. So go ahead and do the time translation to figure out what it is in your own time. You'll get an hour of CE. You do need to register. There's no tuition for it. You do need to register and go to thrivingdentist.com/events . And come join us for that webinar, August 27th, starts at 6:00 PM Eastern Time. The second announcement I have is we have a new top clinical tip, a new contributor, a guest contributor. This is Dr. Greg Toback. Dr. Greg Toback. He has a great tip for you. This is one that resonated with me. And the title of his tip is The One iPhone Feature That Changed How I Lead. So this is not so much a clinical tip. It has more to do with a leadership management tip, which we appreciate those in these top tips. And again, this one's titled The One iPhone Feature That Changed How I Lead with Dr. Greg Toback. No further ado. Here's Greg and that iPhone tip.

Dr. Greg Toback: Hey, everybody. Today I want to share with you a quick iPhone tip with all of you. It's made a huge difference for me. You know what nobody warns you about when you become a practice owner, a leader, well, let's be honest, just a human being with great ideas? Your brain doesn't shut off. Mine certainly doesn't. 'Cause I'll be sitting on the couch on Sunday morning, cup of coffee in hand, sitting back, and boom, we should change the monthly scorecard. Or maybe it's 10:30 PM and I need to tell the team about a quick scheduling efficiency tweak I'd like to try on Monday. My instinct: text it immediately. 'Cause if I don't, it's gone. And that thought feels too important to lose, gives me anxiety that I may not come back to it. But here's the problem. My team finally said, Greg, love the ideas, but not at 9:00 PM on a Saturday. Fair point.

Dr. Greg Toback: So I had to figure out, how do I respect their time without losing my thoughts? Enter one of my favorite simple tools. It's the Send Later feature on iPhone. Total game changer. Here's how it works. You type your text like you normally would, and you hit the little plus button next to the message bar. You know the one, that's right there to the left. Scroll down, tap Send Later. Pick your time and done. That message gets delivered when you decide, not when your brain decides. Now, I usually schedule mine around 8:15 to 9:00 AM so I'm not hitting my team with a 7:01 avalanche of brilliant ideas. Been there. So one quick heads up, it only works on iPhone to iPhone. So if your team's on Androids and mixed devices, there are some third party options out there. But here's the bigger point. Great leadership isn't just about communication. It's about timing and respect. You don't have to turn your brain off. You just need a better system for when it speaks. So if you didn't know this feature existed, try it out. You might really love it. Your team will definitely thank you, and you'll still look like the organized one, which between us is half the battle for me. In the meantime, remember, dentists are leaders and how you lead matters.

Gary Takacs: Welcome back to The Thriving Dentist Show. I'm gonna thank Dr. Greg Toback for that iPhone tip. That was a tip that really resonated with me. So I learned a new feature on my iPhone thanks to Greg, and I totally agree that that feature is gonna allow you to be a more effective leader and something your team members are going to appreciate. So I'd encourage you to apply that. Hey, now let's get onto today's episode. Title here is, Is Your Marketing Actually Working? The Few Numbers Every Owner Should Watch. Naren, the line I hear most from practice owners goes something like this: I'm spending money on marketing, but I honestly don't know if it's working. And I have to say, that's fair. They don't know. And one of the things I would comment on is that if they don't know it's working, then they're not likely to want to continue to invest in that particular brand of marketing.

Gary Takacs: Yes, they don't know that it's working. Most practices track their production really carefully. They can tell you all kinds of details about their production, what doctor production is, what hygiene production is, how much of hygiene production is conservative perio therapy. They can tell you all about that. But they really can't go into the same level of detail regarding new patient flow. So today we're gonna unpack this. And I know, Naren, you wanna give our listeners who are practice owners the few numbers that really tell the story. There's a copious amount of marketing data that they could track. It's almost endless. Yes. However, there's a few that make all the difference in the world. Would you agree with that?

Naren Arulrajah: I agree, Gary, and I echo your sentiment. If I talk to a lot of people, they don't really understand marketing, nor do they know if it's working or not working for them. And I think that's partly because A, they're not able to evaluate marketing on its own, right? Is it the most effective way to get new patients? So that's one problem. B, just because the phone is ringing doesn't mean you're having new patients. So there are other things that need to happen for that phone call to convert into new patients. So think of them like two chasms. There are these two beautiful mountains on two sides, and there's two chasms in the middle. And a lot of doctors die in those two chasms. And usually what happens is they try this company and they try some other company and they never escape the two chasms.

Naren Arulrajah: So they just keep repeating that pattern, just being in those chasms. And that's something that after doing this for 19 years, we have realized too. So we can't just help people make the phone ring with new patient calls. You also have to help them get the new patients in the door. Even though it's nothing to do with marketing. It's a lot of other things. That's why, Gary, our mutual coaching becomes very handy because we can now help them actually solve the problem of, Hey, I need 40 new patients. I'm only getting 20. Why is that? Maybe my phone is ringing, or maybe it's not. And if it's ringing, what are the gaps?

Gary Takacs: I think there's a fundamental flaw in the way that most doctors think that they get the information regarding marketing. They ask their team members.

Naren Arulrajah: Yes.

Gary Takacs: And it really doesn't have any data support. It's totally anecdotal. It's completely anecdotal. There's no data support in it. And then if you're making your decisions off of faulty data, then you can run a very high risk of making faulty decisions. So it needs to be data driven. And there's some things that you can correct. I know you're gonna get in the weeds on this, but there's things that can be corrected once you have the data. If you're making decisions from the seat of your pants or with faulty data — the analogy I like to use, because it's very personal to me 'cause I enjoy cars, it's like driving an exotic sports car blindfolded. Exotic sports car is your practice. You're driving it blindfolded. That just sent goosebumps up my arm. Think about driving an exotic sports car blindfolded. Ah, no, don't do that. Well, that's what you're doing. Well, as I mentioned, we're gonna unpack this and you're gonna make it very manageable for listeners. There's a few things. You get those right and watch what happens. Alright, Naren, I'm gonna dive into question number one. Practice owners tell me all the time that they spend money on marketing, but cannot tell if it's working. I don't know if it's working. Why is that so common?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, this is an excellent question. I think it goes to the heart of why most practice owners have no idea if their marketing is working or why it's working or not working. And that's because nobody goes to dental school to become a master of business. At least I haven't yet met somebody who went to dental school because they love business or they love marketing. They go to dental school because when they're young, they were influenced by someone they look up to who was a dentist, who was a pillar in the community, who made a difference in the lives of others. And you're like, I wanna be like that lady or that guy, right? And that's what got them on that path. And I think, but they —

Gary Takacs: Were influenced by maybe a personal experience they had or a family member had. It was a positive experience. They thought it was helpful to them or a family member and they thought, Hey, I wanna be helpful like that.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly. And so we tend to do things we are comfortable with and we tend to not do things we don't enjoy. I'm sure if you're not an accounting person, you might be one of those people who either has a good accountant or keeps postponing your tax work and always filing late and so forth, right? So it's the same thing. And I think because of these reasons, doctors A, don't look at metrics, and they don't look at it with love and joy, and so therefore they might do it one month and they don't do it the next month. So that's at a big picture level, Gary, part of the problem. So A, they aren't focusing on metrics. And one of the things we are gonna unpack in our conversation today is what are those metrics that anyone should be able to answer? And it's not 300. It's like, I can —

Gary Takacs: And when I meet doctors for the first time, there's usually only one number they know about marketing, and that's how many new patients they got this month. Yes, it's usually the only number. But I'll reinforce what you said earlier, looking at these numbers, it's like they're out of position. Right? I've been an athlete most of my life, and it's like a baseball player that's out of position. They're a first baseman, but now someone handed him a catcher's mitt and said, now go catch. And it's like, whoa, I can't do that. That's not what I was trained to do. I was trained to be a first baseman. That's what happens to a lot of doctors when they start really unpacking the numbers, because they're out of position. Okay? So, Naren, now go to question number two. Narrow it down for our listeners. What marketing numbers should an owner of a dental practice look at every month?

Naren Arulrajah: Great question, Gary. I'm gonna make it really, really, really, really simple. And please take notes. Please share this with your team. I'm gonna give you four numbers that every single practice, I don't care whether you are a 20 year veteran or whether you are just out of school, just opening your new practice or bought a practice, should know. Number one, new patients who are calling your office every single month, right? And I know, like Gary said, you need —

Gary Takacs: You need potential new patients.

Naren Arulrajah: Potential new patients who are calling your office every single month, right? Gary already said most practices know how many new patients booked that month, but that is different from potential new patients contacting your office every month, right? And that is really, really important, because if there is a difference between the people who are booking appointments and the potential new patients contacting, i.e. calling — most of them will call, you might fill out a form — calling your office, is there a big gap? That means your conversion machine is not working, the way you answer your phone, the way you —

Gary Takacs: Marketing could be working, but your conversion stops.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly. So you wanna know how many new patients are contacting our office because of marketing, right? Number two, you wanna know the cost of each channel on a potential new patient basis. So for example, you're spending $3,000 in ads and you got five potential new patients contacting, you divide 3000 by five. The cost of that potential new patient from that ad that you are running is —

Gary Takacs: We ask for clarification. Do you wanna know the cost per potential new patient or booked new patient?

Naren Arulrajah: I want both. But let's start with potential new patient. Because if the cost per booked new patient is low, that also is because the person answering the phone is not doing a good job, right? So you want to know the difference. I'll give you a classic example. I had a call yesterday with a very unique kind of a practice. She would go to somebody's house and she would do dentistry. So these are people who are really old or ill. And so she would provide home dentistry —

Gary Takacs: Mobile, mobile dentistry.

Naren Arulrajah: Mobile dentistry, right? And of course she does general dentistry as well, but this is something that she does really well. And her conversion rate when it comes to these mobile patients is like 10% with search engine optimization, right? But when it comes to Google Ads, the conversion rate is zero. Meaning in the last six months, not a single patient who called from Google Ads ever became a new patient, ever booked an appointment. Right? Now, 10% is nothing to get proud of. I know the standard that Gary and I talk about is 70%, so she's way off the mark, but her Google Ads are literally not working for her. But to start, let's look at the cost of a potential new patient. So at least you can start comparing apples to apples. So Google Ads, $600 a new patient, maybe SEO $60 a new patient. Of course you have to figure out your numbers. I hope you understand my point, which is you want to be able to compare the cost of a new patient between different marketing channels.

Gary Takacs: So we really wanna know two things. We wanna know what it costs us to generate a potential new patient phone call.

Naren Arulrajah: Correct.

Gary Takacs: And then you wanna know, of those phone calls, what percent converted to a new patient and compute that cost as well.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly. And the third number, which you already hinted to, which is conversion, right? So you wanna know of the new patients who are calling in general as well as from a particular channel, what percentage are booking an appointment. So if you're getting a hundred new patient calls in let's say a three month time period and 20 of them book, that means your conversion rate is 20%. The average in the US right now is one third. So around 30, 33%. That means two out of three new patients are not booking appointments, right? So one of the things we do, especially for our mutual clients, is we help them fix that problem. And it's not just training them on how to answer the phone, which is important, which is powerful, but it's also your landing pages, it's also your Google reviews. Are you getting good quality Google reviews on a monthly basis?

Gary Takacs: It's also a scheduling template that allows you to accommodate a new patient within a reasonable period of time.

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely. Because they don't wanna wait. Yeah.

Gary Takacs: Your marketing could be killing it. You could be getting all kinds of calls, they're ready to schedule, and their first available new patient appointment is two months out. And today people have the attention span of a gnat. They're gonna go to the next office on their search. It's so easy to go to the next office on their search. It's the next one down in Google. So they're gonna do that. Our benchmarking at Thriving Dentist is, we're not looking for a hundred percent conversion. That's not possible. As much as I like to think everything's possible, that's not possible. 70% or above is an A, and you can be above 70%. 70% or above is an A, 60 to 70 is a B, 50 to 60 is a C. Anything less than 50 is failing. So, Naren, to amplify what you said, when the average in the country is a third, the average practice is failing. Absolutely. Alright. You said there were four things to make. Yes. What's the fourth?

Naren Arulrajah: And the fourth one is, how many people who are looking for someone like you, whether it's for veneers or whether you are a general dentist, are finding you every month. And one of the ways you can figure this out is through Google Analytics. And if you are doing well with search, for example — search today is many, many things, and we'll talk about that later — are you being seen by 10,000 people a month who are looking for someone like you for the services you provide? Or is it 300 or is it 30,000? And that also makes a difference, because a lot of people, at least when it comes to dentistry, they don't make a decision the very first time they see. So you want to be in front of the ideal audience who are looking for someone like you tens of thousands of times every month. It's a directional indicator because we work on SEO, for example, or search, and many clients when they start with us, they're not even seen by 300 people a month. Meaning they don't show up when 300 people are typing in these kind of questions in their regular search engine or their AI engine. But over time they can get up to 10, 20, 30,000 people seeing them for those kinds of searches every month. So let me just —

Gary Takacs: Where would they find that number?

Naren Arulrajah: They would get that from Google Analytics, and Google Analytics will tell them. This is something that you embed the code in your website and all the different pages and Google will start telling you what's going on. It's very —

Gary Takacs: Scientific. It's not a guesswork kind of thing. It's very, very, very scientific. Very, very. I out fifth thing, come again, metric.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. Those —

Naren Arulrajah: Yes. The value of a new patient. Now this is bonus credit, Gary. I don't want to go there for everyone, but of course if you can figure this out, you should. And the reason I said that is, again, I've been doing this for 19 years. We've been doing it for 46 years. Most practices are general practices with a small sliver of high value patients. 10, 20, 30%. Right? So general patients typically are the same for most dentists. Of course, if you're in Manhattan, it might be worth differently because your costs are higher and everything is more expensive. But in general, a general patient is a general patient. Right? Now you should really pay attention to the value of a new patient. I would say give a number for the general patient — meaning the one who comes to you and brings their family and keeps coming back — versus the one who comes for Invisalign, versus —

Gary Takacs: Well, this is problematic because over what time period do you track it? Fred Joyal, yes, founder of 1-800-DENTIST, said, often said, that you need to look at the lifetime value of a new patient. 'Cause it really allows you to sort of understand how valuable every new patient is in your practice. And the lifetime value of a patient could be 20 or $30,000 over a long period of time. Yes. But what's a practical way, practical to consider the time period that you measure the value? I have a suggestion. I'd like to hear it from you first.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. I think today people move. So I like five years, Gary. I think over a five year time — yeah.

Gary Takacs: You can't measure it, man, because if they became a patient, you don't even have a number till — we're in 2026, you don't have a number until 2031.

Naren Arulrajah: Right. Right.

Naren Arulrajah: Oh, okay.

Naren Arulrajah: Right.

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely, I get it. I think that's a good way to think about it. Let me summarize the five data points. Number one, number of potential new patients who are connecting with your office — phone calls, forms, booking link, whatever — number of potential new patients who are connecting. Number two, the value of a potential new patient from each marketing source. So if you have three different ways you are driving new patients, how much does that potential new patient cost you in each one of those methods? One is $60, the other one is 300. You want to know that. That way you are not spending as much money on the $300 new patient option and putting more money into the $60 option. Number three, the conversion rate, meaning the percentage of new patients who end up booking an appointment. So the average is one third.

Naren Arulrajah: And Gary told you an A is 70%, so you want to aspire to at least get 70%, but you can keep going. We have clients who do 80, 90%. Number four, the value of a new patient once they book. In other words, you're getting 10 potential new patients calling from Google Ads, only five book, and you spend $3,000, right? So now your value of a new patient is double the value for potential new patients, because only half of them are booking. So you want to know that as well. And last but not least, you wanna know the value of new patients to your practice. And I like Gary's simple answer. Let's look at how much they would spend in year one. That's something you can easily guesstimate. Year five, it could get murky, and we'll get into this analysis paralysis. So year one might be a good place to look at it. And I think especially if you start spending money for high value services, this becomes even more useful, because, hey, you might make $30,000 from a patient. You might say, I'm okay spending $2,000 to get that patient, because it is a $30,000 patient, right?

Gary Takacs: Better than a toothache. Yeah.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly. Versus a toothache or a general patient who's just gonna come for cleanings and maybe a few fillings here and there. And maybe Invisalign is not worth $30,000.

Gary Takacs: So that leads me to question number three. So how does a practice owner capture this data without some gigantic, unmanageable system?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. I'm gonna focus on the most important metrics. The number one is the number of potential new patients who are calling your office. Right now, 90% of practices have no idea the number of potential new patients who are making contact with their office. Why? Like Gary said earlier, they just ask the office manager, or the person answering the phone. They don't track every single call that comes in. They only track once a person books, right? So they don't know how many potential new patients contacted the office. Only way you find out — and again, Gary said this, we need data, we need to do it scientifically, it can't be anecdotal — put call tracking, put form tracking. So you know every single patient caller is being tracked. You know every single —

Gary Takacs: This is actually something that happens behind the scenes that your marketing company should provide.

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely, Gary.

Naren Arulrajah: 2026, if you don't know how many potential new patients are calling your office or contacting your office, you have big issues to worry about. So that's the number one metric I would track. Conversion rate. Again, you can't guess, you have to find out. Today, you can use —

Gary Takacs: Yeah. That's a math equation that your marketing company can provide. Hey, you got 50 calls from potential new patients that month. Yes. And 30 of them booked new patient appointments. So you have a 60% conversion rate. That comes straight from hard data. Not, I think, doc, I think it's this, I think it's that. You have hard data.

Naren Arulrajah: It's not easy to find out. You need to listen to every call. And today you can use AI to listen to every call. And then you have to figure out who booked, who didn't book, what is the percentage. But it can be done. We do this.

Gary Takacs: Just to make sure you're solving the right problem. It could be that — here's my view, Naren, and correct me if you feel differently. Yeah. It could be that you're not getting enough calls. If you're not getting enough calls, that's a marketing problem. Then yes, we need to have broader marketing to generate more new calls. Right? On the other hand, you could be getting enough calls. Like for example, I actually have this in my client base. When I started working with a client, they were getting 50 potential new patient calls a month. And they were converting 25% of them. They were getting 12 new patients. It wasn't a marketing problem. This particular office, by the way, Naren, had a goal of 35 new patients a month. And they were getting 12 because they had a 25% conversion rate. Well, we worked on conversion, and now with the same 50 new calls, they now are at 75%, 38 new patients a month. It wasn't a marketing problem, it was a conversion problem.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly.

Gary Takacs: So the second number, solve the right problem.

Naren Arulrajah: The second way you fix it is you need a marketing company not only to tell you the number of potential new patients calling, but what percentage of them are booking. Again, whether they use AI or somebody is literally listening to calls, you don't care. But you need that data on a monthly basis. To me, Gary, these are the most important data points you need if you want to solve the problem of getting enough new patients. Because now you know how — and of course you know how much you're spending with your marketing company. So you can divide the number of new patients through that method. You can divide the dollar amount by the number of potential new patients who are calling so you can figure out the cost of a new patient. Yeah.

Gary Takacs: Yeah.

Gary Takacs: That becomes very analytical, very scientific, very mathematical. It's a math equation. So much of life is a math equation.

Naren Arulrajah: And it's so easy. And I know it's easier said than done. The lady that I was talking to the other day, she's only converting 10%, but she has been loyal to this one particular employee for, I guess, 30 years. And she feels bad that this lady won't have anything else to do. And at the same time, she knows, will she change? All of this is going through her head. And she's saying, can you do more Google Ads? I'm like, please don't throw your money at Google Ads, because she's booking zero, literally zero out of all the Google Ads new patients you generated. So what's the point? But I don't know why though. To me, like you said, Gary, simple two numbers. You focus on those, you fix those, everything works. Yeah. Not all clients we deal with, but some, they don't lean into it. So they kind of keep struggling and struggling and struggling. 90% of the time they don't have the data, which is why they don't lean into it. And 10% of the time, I think it's psychology. Yes, but, you know.

Gary Takacs: Anyway. Well, let's get into problem solving. I'll go to question number four. Yes. When the numbers are not where a listener wants them to be, what does that tell them? When the numbers aren't where they want them to be, what does it tell 'em?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, for me, a problem is an opportunity. I don't get depressed. I get excited when there's a problem. And there are two types of problems. One, like you alluded to, is your marketing is not working. You are not getting the number of potential new patients at the right cost, right? So you're only getting 10 potential new patients contacting your office, and it's costing you $3,000, $300 a new patient, when you really need 30 and you don't want to spend 300, you wanna spend a hundred. So that's a marketing problem. So the minute you find out how many potential new patients are contacting your office in a month, you can figure out if it is a marketing problem. If it is a marketing problem, deal with that first, right? Meaning either you're spending too much per potential new patient, or you're not getting enough of what you need.

Naren Arulrajah: So you can have a conversation about what do we do for us to get the number of potential new patients? Either we increase the budget or is there anything else we can do? Right? So that's a marketing problem. The second piece of it is the conversion rate. The average practice is only booking one out of three, which means you might be getting the number of potential new patients you want at the cost you want, but you're not getting butts in the seats, you're not booking those appointments. Then it's a training problem. So the training problem is, like mutual clients, they have a coaching program. They meet with Gary every month. They meet with the team every other week. So they get constant training and constant monitoring in a very positive environment. So they can continue to find why these people are not booking and slowly plug those holes.

Gary Takacs: Yeah. We help the team members succeed. And it's so rewarding. That example that I gave, they went from a 25% conversion rate to consistently at 75, same two people on the phones. And we did not change people, same two people. I asked in the beginning, I asked the doctor, how much training have you provided to the two team members that are answering the phones? And he has a sense of humor. And he said, altogether? I said, yeah, just ballpark it for me. Just ballpark. And he said, oh, let's see, carry the one — altogether zero. So I said, let's start there. So we had zero training, so let's start there. They responded extremely well. They're at 75%, but at 75% ever since, he didn't have to spend any more money on marketing and just had to convert the ones that he was getting.

Naren Arulrajah: Gary, can I give you some bonus answers? So I really talked about if it's a marketing problem, meaning you're not getting the number of potential new patients contacting, fix that. If it is a conversion problem, fix it with training. But I wanna —

Gary Takacs: Could it also be a missed call problem? Yeah.

Naren Arulrajah: It could be. So I wanna — exactly. Let's talk about a few other reasons. Yeah. You might be struggling. One is a missed call. So we have seen it, having worked with dozens and dozens of mutual clients. There are some clients who miss 30, 40% of their calls, period.

Gary Takacs: During business hours.

Naren Arulrajah: During business hours. And in the old days, they would leave a voicemail. In the Uber age, nobody's leaving a voicemail, especially new patients. They're hanging up and going to the next person on their search results.

Gary Takacs: The next office is literally half an inch down the search page.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly.

Gary Takacs: Two clicks. Exactly.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly. And they're assuming, because you don't answer the phone call, you must not be a good practice. 'Cause what did they say, the first impression? Right? The first impression, let them down. They don't want to. Yeah.

Gary Takacs: They're calling at 10 o'clock in the morning, you're not answering the phone. Yeah.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly, exactly. The other thing is Google reviews is becoming important, both for you showing up on search. Our clients show up more than a hundred times for a hundred different keywords and phrases, or a hundred different search phrases every month. So if you don't have Google reviews, at least 10 a month, paragraph reviews, A, you will start getting pushed down on search. That's one of the problems. The second issue is people don't trust you. Right? They're like, maybe they were good once upon a time, but maybe not anymore. You wanna get 10 or more what Gary and I call love letter Google reviews, and some practices, they're only getting two, three. They used to get a lot. A lot of practices, they lost the discipline of asking for reviews, and then it goes down the toilet. Yeah. Another problem could be — this is a new problem we are facing, Gary — a lot of practices are putting a booking link. And this booking link asks for so much information, like 20 minutes of information, your social security number, and this and that and everything else, and they don't even know you. And —

Gary Takacs: You're asking that information from someone that knows you at a very, very, very surface level.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly.

Gary Takacs: And the APIs — the API is the way the booking link interacts with your practice management software — they fail. They fail. They'll present the first available new patient appointment. Yes. And then let's say it's next Thursday at 2:00 PM, and the potential patient looks at that and says, oh no, Thursdays are horrible for me. And then they go back to the calendar and the whole thing just fails. Yes. It literally just — I don't know if there's a computer term for it, Naren, but it literally just fails, doesn't present any other appointments. And again, the potential new patient's gonna say, Hey, they can't even put the right thing on their website. I'm gonna go somewhere else.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly. And we are noticing just by removing that booking link, we see the number of new patients go up. Another tip is awards make a difference. So we have Doctors' Choice awards. So if you are the doctor with the most reviews from other doctors in a city, you can highlight that award. And we are noticing the minute you highlight awards, it increases conversion rate. All these little things help, Gary, you know what I mean? Of course we give you the big, big ideas, which is, is it a marketing problem or is it a conversion problem? But all these other ideas that we touched on, they all help. So one of the things we are doing is we are calling our customer success managers marketing success managers. Why? Because these are problems they have to solve. And unfortunately, they don't have the time, they don't have the wherewithal, they don't have the ability to solve it. So we work with our clients, even though it's kind of beyond our scope of making the phone ring or getting the new patients to call them. We know we still have to help them get new patients.

Gary Takacs: But it has to do with results. Which kind of leads to the fifth question here, which is, a lot of our listeners, this is new information for them. Maybe they have the surface numbers, but they really don't know much more. Talk about how Ekwa can help them.

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely, Gary. I think step one is you wanna get kind of an audit of your marketing. And the reason is, marketing is a science. There is a method to everything. AI is a science. Everything is a science. So one of the things I would recommend is booking what we call a marketing strategy meeting. This is a one hour meeting. We spend six hours prior to the meeting studying you, studying your top competitors, seeing where you stand in the world of influencing patients to find you, potential patients to find you. Are you the one they keep seeing all the time on ChatGPT, on Google, on Gemini, on Perplexity? And how many times, and how are you relative to your top competitors? Are you the dominant player or are you the weaker player? And then what are the reasons why either you are doing well when it comes to getting people who want to call your office or not?

Naren Arulrajah: So we do this thorough review. We spend six hours, it's a $900 value, and the link to book the meeting is ekwa.com/td  — TD for Thriving Dentist. ekwa.com/td . And get the report card, like, how am I doing? And then of course, a blueprint. Our promise to our clients is before the end of 12 months of working with us, you're gonna rank for at least a hundred or more keywords and phrases, and you're gonna get at least 20 new patients calling your office every month. So that's our promise. Of course, it's a lot of work. We put 600 hours worth of work into it to get you there. But the good news is, compared to any other method, like Google Ads or social media ads, this is a fraction of the cost. We charge 1250 a month, $1,250 a month, and I know people who spend five times that and get less quality and less number of new patients. So it really works. It just takes some time. It's not a quick fix. You need a year and you need to put those 600 hours and do all the right things. But if you're willing to work hard, this is a very good way to stand out, dominate your market. You will be the one who keeps showing up tens of thousands of times for a hundred plus different. And then I —

Gary Takacs: I'll vouch for you. I'll vouch for you on that, because of the fact that I've seen that in my own practice. I've seen the results. We've been an Ekwa client since 2018, so that's now eight years, and we get fantastic results. Also, once I got to experience those results myself, I started referring our coaching clients to you. And we see the same results in our coaching clients. And for many of our clients, the only spend that they make on marketing is that 1250 a month for organic search engine optimization. Now, we have others that will spend, through some direction from your team, will spend on Google Ads if there's particular services they might wanna do more of. But in all cases, what I've seen is, boy, I'm spending less than I ever have on marketing.

Gary Takacs: I'm getting better results. Now, if you'd like help on the coaching side, how to improve that conversion rate, and other aspects of really how to develop your ideal practice, one that is a world class practice, but also provides you an effective work-life balance, I'd encourage you to schedule a coaching strategy meeting with me. Go to thrivingdentist.com/csm . We are accepting new clients. We don't always, and sometimes have a wait list. However, we've had a number of clients kind of hit the finish line and it's opened up some spots for us. They hit the finish line, meaning they transitioned their practice. And now we have some openings available. If you'd like to learn more about that, love to learn more about your practice, go to thrivingdentist.com/csm . Well, Naren, you've provided lots of useful information for our listeners. Now it's just a matter of them putting it into action. I'll bring it back full circle. Come join us for our next webinar about value, how to increase the value of your practice. Go to thrivingdentist.com/events  and reserve your seat. That's happening in late August. On that note, I thank you for the privilege of your time. We look forward to connecting with you on the next Thriving Dentist Show.