Episode 411: Why Dental Ads Get Attention but Still Fail to Produce Booked Appointments

Don Adeesha: A dental ad can attract plenty of attention and still produce an empty appointment book. Welcome back to the Less Insurance Dependence podcast. I’m your host for this session, Don Adeesha. Today I’m joined by Naren Arulrajah, CEO of Ekwa Marketing, and also one of our co-hosts here at the Less Insurance Dependence podcast, to discuss why dental ads get attention but fail to produce booked appointments. Naren, welcome back to the show.

Naren Arulrajah: Hey Don, I’m really looking forward to this conversation. At the end of the day, ads are not the end, it’s the means to the end. And the means is, are we getting booked appointments from quality patients?

Naren Arulrajah: Let’s talk about the two primary types of dental ads you could run: social media ads and Google Ads. Social media platforms are addictive, they learn what content you engage with and serve you more of it, then sell ads against your attention. Google makes 250 billion dollars by serving ads next to the questions you’re asking. The challenge with both, especially in healthcare, is that we think when somebody we think is high quality is running an ad, we think the opposite is true. Imagine a clown outside a dental office paid by the dentist to solicit people. Would you trust that dentist? You wouldn’t, because it’s the opposite of how you build trust.

Naren Arulrajah: If somebody clicks on a Google ad, the conversion rate is half at best compared to organic, maybe 30% versus 60%. Why? The trust factor. They don’t trust you, so even if they book an appointment, they no-show. Even if they come in, they second-guess you, they get a second opinion, they don’t listen to your recommendation. It becomes this heavy burden you’re carrying for the life of that patient. Why? It’s how the relationship started. Did it start with trust or did it start with doubt?

Naren Arulrajah: Don’t get caught up in vanity metrics. If you rely on ads, focus on how many new patient leads, how many new patient phone calls, and how many of them end up showing up. Let’s say you spend a thousand dollars with Google ads and get five leads, that’s $200 a lead. But if only 30% show up, your cost of a new patient becomes $600. Compare that to clients spending less than a hundred dollars, even $60, a new patient through organic marketing. Would you rather spend $600 on Google ads or $60 with organic marketing?

Naren Arulrajah: Running deals is one of those not-to-dos, because the minute you run that deal, they think you’re not good enough. If you’re a qualified doctor, why are you doing free cleaning or this promotion? So have a do-not-do list, and ads kind of belong in it, unless you’re a brand new practice that needs to acquire clients quickly. Even then, have amazing landing pages, a welcome video, 30 to 45 seconds, so I know I’m at the right place. Have before and after pictures, ideally full face, so people can visualize themselves in that outcome.

Naren Arulrajah: You really need to make getting five star love letter Google reviews a part of your practice, at least 10 reviews, ideally 15, and these should be paragraph reviews. Other people who are serious are going to read those reviews, and even before they call, they’re persuaded to want to choose you. Still, you have to expect to spend five to ten times more versus a well-run organic marketing campaign. Unless you have amazing landing pages, welcoming videos, full face after pictures, and 10 to 15 Google reviews every month, don’t waste your money on ads.

Naren Arulrajah: Marketing is helping your ideal patients find you, like you, and trust you. There are two primary ways to do that without paying for ads. One is you become a social media influencer, but the challenge is you have to dedicate five to ten hours a week creating content, and the algorithm doesn’t care where the person lives, so most of your reach lands outside your local market. The other option is organic marketing through Google. To become the top in SEO, you have to be in the top 3%. The fewer people who get a lot of free traffic, the more the other 97% pay Google $250 billion to show their ads next to them.

Naren Arulrajah: It takes a year for you to rank for at least a hundred keywords, but once you’re there, your cost of acquiring a new client is typically 20%, even 10%, of the same thing through Google Ads or social media ads. As time goes on, SEO gets more effective because what you did last year helps you this year, so your cost continues to go down while the cost of ads continues to go up. Making the phone ring is 70% of the battle, the other 20 to 30% is the Google reviews, the landing pages, and how you answer the phone.

Naren Arulrajah: They really need to go back to first principles. What are you doing day in and day out for thousands of people to find you when they need you? Today with AI, people are asking very specific questions, and AI will give them the three best options and why. When clients get an AI lead, the person has already decided, there’s no selling involved, no convincing involved, they’re already sold. It is much, much higher quality versus the person you have to work hard to convince.

Naren Arulrajah: We do an audit, we spend six hours, and the link is lessinsurancedependence.com/msm, and we just tell you how you’re doing. It could be an app, it could be Lighthouse, it could be CRUX. Of course, when it comes to helping people like and trust you, I wouldn’t recommend AI voice or AI video for doctors, because of trust. I’m not a huge fan of AI receptionists for the same reason. Run away from anything that is not human. The link again is lessinsurancedependence.com/msm, that’s our gift to you.

Don Adeesha: That was Naren Arulrajah on how to market to PPO and fee-for-service patients without weakening the message for the entire audience. To learn more about Naren and Ekwa Marketing, visit the link in the show notes. I’m Don Adeesha, and this has been the Less Insurance Dependence podcast. Thanks for listening. Keep on leading.