Episode #353: How do we market to the universe of patients who don’t go to a dentist?

Naren Arulrajah: This is the Less Insurance Dependence podcast show with my good friend Gary Takacs and myself, Naren Arulrajah.

Gary Takacs: We appreciate your listenership, your time, and most of all, we appreciate your intention to reduce insurance dependence in your practice. Our goal is to provide information that will help you successfully reduce insurance dependence and convert your practice into a thriving and profitable dental practice that provides you with personal, professional, and financial satisfaction.

Naren Arulrajah: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Less Insurance Dependence podcast, the official podcast of the Reducing Insurance Dependence Academy, www.rid.academy .  Membership to the Academy is a gift from Gary and me in appreciation for your listenership. Visit RID Academy and don’t forget to register. By registering, you will have access to all of our resources and a free pass to all of our events, including our annual summit.

Speaking of annual summit, the next one is coming up on the 24th of October. That is a Friday, and you get five hours of CE. It starts at noon Eastern. If you wanna learn more and reserve the date, go to RID Academy and pre-register. RID Academy—you’ll learn a ton, so definitely don’t miss out on this opportunity.

Gary Takacs: You know, Naren, this is our fifth annual RID—Reducing Insurance Dependence—Summit. Fifth annual, yes. Each one, we were, uh, you know, we did it as an experiment in 2021, not knowing what to expect. And we had awesome attendance and lots of interest. Every single year, our attendance has doubled.

This has literally become the virtual event in dentistry. And now we’ve got a heavy lift this year to double our attendance from 2024. We had massive attendance in 2024, and we got a heavy lift, but I think we’re gonna do it.

Five hours of CE. The actual event is five and a half hours. We have to give you some breaks in there—we’ve got two 15-minute breaks. But we’ve got keynote sessions, we’ve got a whole variety of panels, we’ve got experts. Everybody associated with that event is gonna have something to do with helping you successfully resign from insurance PPO plans.

If that’s on your radar screen, this is a don’t-miss event. And I think you’ll like the tuition. We are gifting you the tuition in appreciation for your listenership. No tuition. You get five hours—if you stay for the entire amount of time, you’ll get five hours of CE credit at no cost. Come join us.

You have to register. Go to rid.academy and look forward to seeing you there. It’ll be time very well spent.

Naren Arulrajah: Thank you, Gary. Yeah, it’s gonna be an amazing event, and I really think you don’t wanna miss it. It has become a landmark event.

Hundreds of practices have completely gone fee-for-service and, you know, many, many times over have dropped many, many, you know, plans. And they’re happier for it. We have 1,200 members. Become a member. Go to RID Academy and don’t miss our annual event.

Gary, today’s topic is a really, really important topic, and it actually is a relevant topic given, you know, this podcast, which is Less Insurance Dependence. And the topic is: How do we market to the universe of patients who do not go to a dentist? You know, I think—I remember you saying it’s almost half or more than half of the people who don’t regularly go to a dentist. So it’s a massive universe. They don’t have a regular dentist. They don’t have a relationship with their regular dentist. But pretty much half of Americans—half of your target market—is ripe for the picking.

Gary Takacs: You know, Naren. I think one thing that we have to talk about here in human nature is that there is an element in psychology called projecting. Yes. And what I mean by that is everybody that’s listening to this podcast is somehow connected to dentistry, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t be listening to it, right?

Naren Arulrajah: Yes.

Gary Takacs: And so our friends, our associates, our colleagues, our family members, our loyal patients in practices, right?

Naren Arulrajah: Yes.

Gary Takacs: Those are the people we know.

Naren Arulrajah: Yes.

Gary Takacs: Right? I mean, I’ll bet, you know, your friends in Mississauga are friends that are likely dental patients, right?

Naren Arulrajah: Yes. Yes.

Gary Takacs: My friends are, but that doesn’t represent the universe of the public out there. Let me give you some hard data. This is hard data. According to recent research, 49% of Americans put off a visit to the dentist because of fear. 49%. It’s almost half. They put it off. 22% won’t go to the dentist at all. Either one of those statistic sets represent a large universe of people.

And one of the interesting things about that, Naren, is let’s think about treatment and diagnosis. If someone hasn’t been to the dentist in a while, what’s usually going on in their mouth? Are they in great shape?

Naren Arulrajah: No, Gary. I mean, so you’re saying it’s a blessing. It’s an opportunity because they probably have a lot of dental needs.

Gary Takacs: Yeah. I mean, I certainly don’t wish that on an individual.

Naren Arulrajah: A patient. Yeah, exactly.

Gary Takacs: But the reality is it’s deferred maintenance. It doesn’t necessarily have to be exotic. It can be everyday general dentistry, but there’s probably a lot of it—fillings.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly.

Gary Takacs: Root canals, crowns. It’s just like, you know, Naren, if you don’t take your—well, I can’t really talk to you about cars, ’cause you drive that toaster around. Isn’t that what the T stands for? Toaster? Is that toaster?

Naren Arulrajah: Yes. Yes.

Gary Takacs: Oh, it’s Tesla. Oh, I thought it was toaster. But if you drive an ICE—internal combustion engine—car, yes, you have to keep up with maintenance. This is where you’ve got it over me there. And you have no maintenance on your toaster.

Naren Arulrajah: That toaster has zero maintenance. Yeah. No brake changes. No oil changes. Nothing. It’s just—

Gary Takacs: And even the computer upgrades overnight. You don’t even have to—

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. It’s automatic. It’s when you wake up in the morning, it takes care.

Gary Takacs: Yeah. Well, you’re still not convincing me. But for someone with a more traditional car, if you haven’t kept up on maintenance and then you finally take your car to the garage after five years, you’re not surprised when you have a pretty high bill because it’s all the deferred maintenance you haven’t kept up with. And that’s what’s going on in people’s mouths.

Naren Arulrajah: I still remember, like, my first summer they gave us a car. I was an intern at Firm Lab, and we—I never changed the oil, and we were driving like crazy, and the damn engine froze. Crazy. That was my first car. So I guess—when you’re back to—I didn’t realize that you have to do these things.

Gary Takacs: So the toaster appealed to you.

Naren Arulrajah: Yes.

Gary Takacs: I understand. But you know, it’s a large universe of people that don’t go to the dentist. And that may be outside of your purvey, because those probably aren’t the people we hang out with. But they are out there. It’s a huge universe of people. And I personally think they represent very good patients. One of the things that we can do is help people understand that every visit to a dentist can be a comfortable experience.

Naren Arulrajah: And usually, my experience—again, correct me if I’m wrong, Gary—talking to my friends who are dentists, those patients, once they like you, they are patients for life. I mean, usually they hang out with other people who also don’t go to the dentist. And not only are you getting a lot of work from them—all their family members who are—

Gary Takacs: Birds of a feather.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah.

Gary Takacs: Birds of a feather flock together, and they will sing your praises. And it even shows up in your reviews—your Google reviews. We read things like, “I was terrified of going to the dentist until I met Dr. So-and-so. And now I am thrilled to report that I’m over my fear of going to the dentist. This is the most comfortable place in the world. You need to go there.”

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly.

Gary Takacs: Those are the kind of reviews that we see. So Naren, I’m gonna flip it to you on your marketing expertise. Share some marketing tips for our listeners that want to attract people that traditionally aren’t going to the dentist. What might they do marketing-wise to attract people like that?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. So I’m gonna talk about, um, outside of the practice and then within the practice. So outside of the practice is: what can you do to attract those people? So those people are seeking you out specifically, right? These people have not gone to a dentist for a long, long time.

So one of the ways—let’s call it a gateway service or gateways that lead them to you—is emergency dentistry. In other words, there’s a toothache because they ignored something, and now they’re in severe pain and they need to get something done. So, you know, target all the keywords like “dentist open late,” “emergency dentist,” “toothache dentist,” etc., etc. You want to dominate yourself for those kinds of keywords because you want to.

Gary Takacs: Remember not to think myopically about the language we use, right? Think about the language of the public. Maybe a phrase would be, “I have a toothache.”

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely. I see that dozens of times. Or “tooth pain,” “pain,” you know—they’re literally typing in what they’re feeling. Literally. You know, “dentist now.” Like, I mean, it sounds crazy, but they need to see somebody right now because they’re in pain and they don’t have an existing dentist and an existing relationship, right?

So that’s what I would do. Of course, you have to generally do well with SEO, because for you to start ranking for anything you want and go after it, you have to be strong with SEO. So my recommendation is generally: be in that 5% of practices that are getting 95% of traffic because you are in the top 5% of SEO.

Other keywords I would target—as you said—how do they come to you? Because they’re in pain, and that drives them to you. The second set of keywords I would target is, you know, pain-related—dental pain, sedation. They might know some buzzwords around, “Hey, how do I avoid pain?” And they would’ve done some research, and they’re like, okay, they’re starting to look for dentists who provide those—or who, like, you know, “laughing gas dentist,” whatever they can think of. Whatever they think the solution is, they’ll be putting those in. So definitely start ranking for those.

Gary Takacs: It’s more than just keywords. Make sure that you have a landing page—or pages—100% around emergency dentistry. One of the cool things—I learned it from you, Naren, so I’ll give you credit—on that landing page, maybe you have a header with actual Google reviews that you have that talk about visits being comfortable. Put that on that landing page.

Naren Arulrajah: A hundred percent. You know, because now—

Gary Takacs: We got the voice of the patient.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. Pain-free dentistry could be a landing page. Sedation could be a landing page. And put all those relevant reviews on those pages. So they are attracted to “pain-free,” and that’s all they keep hearing. And it’s not your words—it’s other patients’ words, because it’s a Google review that keeps rotating.

Same thing with emergency, right? “I was able to come and see them quickly, and they were the best, and they got me out of pain, and they took care of everything. And now they’re my dentist for life.” And the person reading it says, “Oh, that’s the person I need to go to.”

Now I’m gonna flip this back to you, Gary. This is what we do on the internet. We talked about Google reviews, we talked about SEO, we talked about landing pages. Anyone who’s interested in learning more—book a marketing strategy meeting. Go to ekwa.com/msm. 

I’m gonna flip it to you, Gary. Now that the phone is ringing, how do you (a) get them to show up? Like—what? I know—I’ve listened to phone calls. Sometimes the patient will say, “I’m in pain,” and the person on the phone says, “Oh, why don’t you come three days from now?” You know what I mean?

Gary Takacs: Yeah. Well, let me give you a really practical step one—right in your morning huddle. And by the way, I’m gonna take a little side detour right here and talk about morning huddles, right? I’ve made it my life’s work to study world-class practices. And I’m gonna use an absolute here: I have yet to see—I’ve never seen—a world-class practice that isn’t having a huddle of some sort.

Notice, it doesn’t necessarily—I like morning huddle, but I know some offices that choose to do it at a different time of the day because of the nuances of their practice. But I’ve yet to meet a world-class practice that isn’t huddling together, usually in the morning, to plan their day. And in the morning huddle, before you leave that meeting, pick a morning emergency slot and an afternoon emergency slot together as a team.

Gary Takacs: I’ve been in meetings where we’ve looked at that, and the doctor has said, “Hey, how about 10 o’clock?” And then an assistant says, “No, doctor, take a look. No, 10 o’clock is the worst time. How about 9:15?” So we agree together as a team on a morning emergency slot and an afternoon emergency slot. So when that call comes in, then we know where we’re gonna put ’em. We don’t have to scramble around and fumble.

And the language—train your team on this. Obviously, we’re gonna get their name. “By the way, my name is Carly. Who am I speaking with?” Get their name. “George, I am so sorry you’re experiencing tooth pain. I’m very sorry. You called the right office. We can see you this morning at 9:30.”

Gary Takacs: “Do you need directions?” Now how’s that answer? Instead of “Hold, please…” Five minutes later they come back and say, “We can see you in two days,” because they had to walk around, talk to the doctor, and the doctor had his or her head down in a patient’s mouth.

So now we can handle it very seamlessly by having—as simple as—the time slot already outlined. If you don’t need it, then fine. But if you do, now we have it. “George, I’m so sorry you’re experiencing tooth pain. That’s no fun. You called the right office. Doctor would be concerned.” Write that down. Have your team members say, “Doctor would be concerned. We can see you at 9:30. Do you need directions?” There you go.

Now let me amplify that a little further. If you really want to turbocharge this:

Gary Takacs: Get some advanced training on sedation. There are different levels of sedation—oral conscious sedation—where we use benzodiazepine to make every visit very comfortable in a conscious way. And for many levels of fear, that works just fine.

I like DOCS—Dental Organization for Conscious Sedation. Just Google them. All of their coursework is now online. I don’t know if you knew that, Naren, but they converted. It used to be live courses, and they converted, after COVID, to online courses. They’ve got a brilliant menu of oral conscious sedation courses—rather inexpensive, moderate technology. You’ll need some monitoring equipment, you’ll need some reversal agents to keep in a locked cabinet, but very, very safe, very effective—can make every visit as comfortable as possible.

And if you’re in a state where it is possible to become IV certified, and that’s something that interests you, I would encourage you to add that to your CE and add that to your experience.

Gary Takacs: There are some patients that oral conscious sedation is not enough. They’ll actually need to be IV sedated. And now that really expands it to almost everybody in a very useful way.

If you don’t want to get that yourself, you can contract with a dental expert in anesthesiology that’ll come in and provide IV sedation in your office. They’ll charge the patient an hourly rate for that. The patient pays for that themselves. And that’s another thing you could do if you don’t want to provide that yourself.

Naren Arulrajah: Gary, let me ask you another thing that I know you spend a lot of time teaching your clients—this is the first patient visit, right? Especially with these patients who have never been to a dentist. It could be because of fear of pain, it could be because of a bad experience with a prior dentist. That first visit is a make-or-break, right?

I know a lot of dentists say, “I’ve tried going after that group of people, and I’ve failed, so I give up.” Can you talk about that first patient visit? I know in the case of your clients, I’ve seen reviews literally after the first visit—that person who has not been to a dentist for 10 years writes what I call a “love letter” review. They’re like, “This is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Gary Takacs: The initial—we call it our new patient experience, right? And we call it that intentionally because it is a new patient appointment. It is an appointment; it also is an exam, but it’s so much more than an appointment and an exam. It’s an experience.

Now, what we’re talking about here in the context of emergency care kind of falls outside of that. Because what we do—what we pivot with—is we bring them in to get them out of pain. And at some point, the doctor is going to say, “You’re now out of pain.” You’re going to sit the patient up and you’re going to say:

“You know, George, I’m sorry we had to see you today under these conditions, but I’m happy we could do that and take care of you today. Before you leave today, I would love to talk to you about coming into our practice as a regular new patient. Today you came in as an emergency patient. I’d love to talk to you about coming into our practice as a regular new patient so that we could gather some records, we could talk to you about what your goals are with your oral health, and then we could develop a plan to avoid anything like your experience today ever happening in the future.”

And then ask the obvious question: “George, would you have any interest in that?” I can say almost 100% of the time, what’s the answer?

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely. Given that you’re framing it in a way that connects with them, which is—so this never happens again.

Gary Takacs: You’re already their hero.

Naren Arulrajah: You are their hero. They have been suffering for, I don’t know, X hours or two days, and they’re like—

Gary Takacs: By the way, they might have called three other offices before you. They couldn’t get in for three or four days. They called your office, and you got them in that morning or that afternoon.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly.

Gary Takacs: You’re already the hero. And when you make that request—“George, I’d love to talk to you about coming into our office as a regular. Today you came in as an emergency patient, and I’m just sorry you were experiencing the pain. I’m happy we could help you. But I’d love to talk to you about coming in through the regular channel so we could take some records, talk about your goals, and avoid something like this ever happening again. George, do you have any interest in that?”

But we also have to help your team members with language skills and compassion skills.

Naren Arulrajah: I think sometimes the team members have this mindset—“Oh, these are bad patients,” you know?

Gary Takacs: And I think we need to reset that mindset, right? The good news is—they’re here. We have to meet people where they are. That’s a Dr. Pankey concept—meet patients where they are. The great news is—they’re here now.

And language like, “George, I’m so sorry you’re experiencing pain.” And I would make every step as simple as possible. Don’t throw a stack of forms at them and have them sit in the reception room while their cheek is swollen out to here. Streamline that process. Work with the doctor. Determine the minimum information that you need to be compliant. But you just want to get that patient out of pain and provide palliative treatment.

And then we invite them to come back in through the regular channel. And it’s a winning formula.

Back to the new patient experience, Naren. Maybe we’ll do a future episode on Thriving Dentist.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, let’s do that.

Gary Takacs: Or on Less Insurance Dependence. Let’s do that.

Naren Arulrajah: That could be our next episode.

Gary Takacs: Yeah. But really, I’d like you all to be thinking about how good could your new patient appointment be—so that literally we create patients for life. The goal is to have a patient, as they’re experiencing that, saying, “Wow, I’ve found my place for life. I’m going to be a patient for life. I’m never going anywhere else.”

You know, I’ve shared this with you, Naren, but last week I was talking to one of our clients in Colorado. And I asked her—I already knew the answer, but I wanted her to sort of embellish it for me—I asked her, “Do you have any patients that drive a long way to come to your practice?” She’s in a suburb of Denver, right?

Gary Takacs: And her eyes got really big—we’re in a Zoom call—and she goes, “Gary, you’re not gonna believe this.” And I knew what she was about to tell me, ’cause I already heard it from the office manager.

She said, “Gary, not only drive, but we have a couple—a husband and wife—that fly. They now live in Hawaii. They were patients; they lived in our neighborhood here for many years. We were their dentist. They moved to Hawaii. Now they fly here twice a year.”

Wow. And I knew that was coming, but how cool is that?

Now, Naren, they are not choosing—now granted, they do have other people to see when they visit. You know, they used to live there, they have friends they want to see, and so on. But one of the things they do when they visit is they see their dentist. How cool is that? That’s what a new patient experience can create.

Naren Arulrajah: I think that’s the flip side of why these people are not going—because they never found that perfect dentist. And you could be that perfect dentist. You could be that to people in the—

Gary Takacs: Yeah. Yeah. Well, Naren, this has been a fun discussion. You gave some great tips on marketing to attract these people. Hopefully we provided some tips on—

Naren Arulrajah: Internally—they can follow up with you if they have further questions or anything you shared today.

Gary Takacs: I think follow up with both of us. And if they want to learn how to better market to attract these people, they should set up a marketing strategy meeting with you. Would you share that link?

Naren Arulrajah: The link is ekwa.com/msm.  And we spend a ton of hours researching you, your competition, giving you a plan, and of course, a report card as to where you stack up against your competition.

Gary Takacs: Well, and if you’d like to really develop your practice to full potential, I would love the opportunity to talk to you. You can go to thrivingdentist.com/csm.  It stands for Coaching Strategy Meeting. It’ll be a Zoom meeting with me. We’ll talk about what’s going on in your practice, and I’ll share some tips that will help you develop your ideal practice.

It opens up my calendar. You just pick a time that works, and I would look forward to seeing you in that Zoom meeting. So again, thrivingdentist.com/csm. 

Well, Naren, this has been a fun topic. For now, I want to thank all of our listeners to the Less Insurance Dependence podcast for the privilege of your time. And don’t forget—go to RID Academy and register for the upcoming RID Annual Summit, happening October 24th. We’ll look forward to seeing you there.