In this episode of the Less Insurance Dependence Podcast, host Don Adeesha sits down with Naren Arulrajah, founder and CEO of Ekwa Marketing, to tackle one of the most uncomfortable questions a practice owner can ask: is my marketing actually attracting the patients I want — or just the patients I happen to get? After 19 years and hundreds of dental practices, Naren has seen the same pattern repeat: a doctor says they want high-value, fee-for-service patients, but nothing in the practice — not the marketing, not the phone training, not the conversion tracking — is set up to attract or book them. The gap between what a dentist says they want and what their systems actually produce is the blind spot most practices never examine.
Naren opens with something more personal than most marketing conversations: the idea of the automatic life. The dentist who wakes up and does what they’ve always done — not because it’s building the practice they want, but because it’s what they’ve always done. The 80% of high-value patient calls that don’t convert aren’t a marketing problem. They’re a systems problem. A team trained to ask about insurance will handle every call like an insurance call — including the ones from patients who never asked about insurance and were ready to book a full-mouth case. That mismatch, invisible to the doctor because nobody is tracking the calls, is the leak that marketing dollars keep filling without fixing.
The episode ends with a clear first step: book a Marketing Strategy Meeting at lessinsurancedependence.com/msm. Naren’s team spends six hours auditing how the practice shows up on Google — keyword rankings, reviews, landing pages, AI visibility, and the blind spots behind the blind spots — and delivers a full findings document at no cost. For a doctor who has been saying “I want high-value patients” without knowing whether their systems support that goal, this is the place to start.
Key Takeaways
- The automatic practice is the enemy of the ideal practice. – Most dentists are running on autopilot – doing what they’ve always done because it’s familiar, not because it’s building what they want. Naren’s question: if you were to evaluate the last 24 hours, the last week, the last month — are you doing the things that are actually moving you toward your ideal practice?
- 80% of high-value patient calls don’t convert – and the doctor has no idea. – The average dental practice converts only about 20% of high-value inbound calls. The team trained on PPO conversations handles every call the same way: leading with cost, flagging insurance limitations, and cooling down patients who called excited. Tracking the calls reveals the leak. Not tracking it means the leak never stops.
- You can’t attract ideal patients without showing up for them on Google. – If you want implant patients and you type “implants near me” and you don’t appear, you don’t have a marketing problem – you have a visibility problem. Naren’s benchmark: ranking in the top 10 for 100 or more relevant keyword phrases every month. That’s what separates the top 5% who get all the organic benefit from the 95% who pay for PPOs or ads instead.
- Your Google reviews are a mirror – not a marketing tool. – If your reviews are one-liners, your patients don’t love you yet. If your reviews are full paragraphs talking about being treated like family, about a hygienist who knows their name, about finally not dreading the dentist — that is evidence. That is what high-value patients read before they call. Ten paragraph reviews per month is the benchmark for a healthy, relationship-driven practice.
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Episode Timestamps
- 00:00:50 – Episode Introduction: Are You Marketing to the Patients You Want?
- Host Don Adeesha opens with the core question: most dentists want high-value, fee-for-service patients — but their marketing, their website, their offers, and their photos may be sending a completely different message without them realising it
- Naren Arulrajah, founder and CEO of Ekwa Marketing, joins to walk through how to identify your ideal patient, audit what your marketing is actually attracting, and make smarter changes to close the gap
View Transcript
Don Adeesha: Welcome back to the Less Insurance Dependence podcast. I’m your host for the session, Don Adeesha. And today we are asking a question that every dental practice owner should really be thinking about. Are you marketing to the patients you actually want or just the ones you happen to get? A lot of dentists want more fee-for-service patients, more high-value treatment opportunities, and more patients who truly understand and appreciate the quality of care they provide. But the problem is their marketing may be sending a completely different message without them realizing it. Sometimes the website, the ads, the photos, and even the offers are attracting patients who are mainly looking for convenience, insurance acceptance, and the lowest possible price. So today I’m joined by Naren Arulrajah, founder and CEO of Ekwa Marketing, to talk about how dentists can identify their ideal patient, understand who their marketing is currently attracting, and make smarter changes to bring in more of the right patients over time. Naren, welcome back to the show.
- 00:02:03 – The Automatic Life — and the Automatic Practice
- Naren opens with a personal analogy: for years he operated on autopilot — doing more and more without asking whether the "more" was actually getting him what he wanted at that stage of his life. Most practices run the same way
- The question every practice owner needs to ask: am I building the practice I actually want, or am I just doing what’s always been done? The diamond-under-the-light story: searching where the light is, not where you actually dropped it
View Transcript
Naren Arulrajah: Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. So is a practice. Going back to my example of me just living the life my mom wanted — just doing more of whatever I’m doing and being more successful, without realising: is it important? Is it useful? Is it in line with what I need in this phase of my life? So the real question you need to start with is: what is your ideal practice? And in this particular question, you said the ideal practice has high-value, fee-for-service patients. But if you are not aware of it and you’re not creating it, whatever exists will continue. Just like I continued doing more and more even when that more didn’t give me what I wanted or needed. So if your goal is to get high-value patients — I work with four to five hundred practices and I’ve been doing this for 19 years — one of the things we notice is: the doctor says "I want high-value patients," but you haven’t worked on it. You haven’t transformed your organisation.
- 00:09:15 – The 80% Leak — High-Value Calls That Never Convert
- Only about 20% of high-value new patient calls actually result in a booking. The other 80% hang up and either write a negative review or never call back
- Why: a team trained for PPO patients handles every call the same way. They lead with cost. They flag insurance. They cool down patients who called excited. And the doctor never knows — because nobody is tracking the calls
View Transcript
Naren Arulrajah: We listen to phone calls, and many of these high-value patients never book. Why? Because the practice is a PPO practice. They know how to ask about insurance and book that patient. They don’t know how to make the high-value patient who’s going to pay out of pocket feel welcome. So the average percentage of high-value patients who are getting booked is 20%. Your marketing is driving them in, but 80% of them don’t book. And what do they do? They go and write negative reviews, or they never think of you again — because that experience was not what they expected. Do you know your conversion rate? Do you know how many high-value patients are calling you? Do you know what happened in those conversations? Do you know how many booked and how many didn’t? Because we live in 2026 — all of this can be tracked. If you’re not doing it, you are busy trying to get high-value patients but getting none of the results.
- 00:11:32 – When the Team Is Wired for Insurance — and Can’t Switch
- A team that has spent years handling PPO patients is wired to lead with cost, coverage, and limitations. Put a high-value patient on the line and they handle that call the same way — scaring the patient before a treatment conversation ever starts
- The root cause isn’t attitude. It’s alignment. Until the team sees new patients — especially high-value ones — as an opportunity they benefit from, the tone on the phone won’t change
View Transcript
Naren Arulrajah: Let’s say you have a practice currently dominated by PPO. You can’t really blame the team to continue thinking like insurance team members when that’s all they see. They’re worried about the patient reacting to cost. I hear this all the time: a patient calls for some high-value service and the team immediately says "it’ll cost $2,000, it’ll cost $4,000" — literally scaring the patient. Why? Because they’re thinking: insurance patient. That’s how they’re going to react. Imagine you love your car and you wanted to get it fully restored, and instead of getting excited about the transformation, somebody just hits you with the cost. You’d start to wonder — should I really do this? The doctors aren’t aware of it, because it’s a blind spot. They can’t hear what’s being said on those calls. So it repeats. If you want to stop being a PPO practice, you need to train your team to stop acting like one.
- 00:16:37 – How to Define Your Ideal Patient
- Start with the services you’re genuinely passionate about — not what’s lucrative, not what a colleague is doing. Study your last 10 reviews. What are the paragraph reviews saying? Those words — "treated like family," "painless," "I actually look forward to coming" — are a map of what your best patients value
- Then ask: who do you want to be a hero to? That question defines both the qualitative feel of the practice and the specific clinical services worth marketing
View Transcript
Naren Arulrajah: I believe there are two ways to look at an ideal patient. One is the type of services you want to be an expert at — and don’t do it just because your friend is doing it or because it’s lucrative. Something you are actually passionate about. Let’s say you are passionate about beautiful smiles. Take extra CE, do some free cases early on, create before-and-afters, build the proof. Because the proof also tells you you are getting better. The second piece: read your last 10 reviews. If you have paragraph reviews saying things like "they treat me like family," "I used to be afraid of going to the dentist, now I love going," "they make everything painless" — those are your ideal patients telling you what they care about. Now the question is: who do you want to be a hero to? Once you know who they are and what they value, can they find you? Can they trust what they see? Do you have the proof to grow their confidence? That’s the sequence.
- 00:20:17 – Aligning the Marketing Message to the Patient You Actually Want
- Knowing your ideal patient means nothing without the fundamentals: call conversion rate, missed call percentage, keyword rankings, landing pages with real before-and-after cases, and paragraph reviews that tell the right story
- Google controls 95% of how patients find a practice. The top 5% of practices on Google get all the organic traffic. Everyone else pays for it through ads or PPO plans
View Transcript
Naren Arulrajah: There are fundamentals. If you don’t know your conversion rate — whether it’s a lead coming in or the phone ringing — you have a blind spot. Many practices are only answering 50% of their calls. Half your patients can’t even get through. What do they do? They go to the next office on Google. That tells them immediately: these people don’t care. All the marketing work you did to get them excited — gone. So conversion rate, missed call percentage — do you know these things? And when it comes to showing up for the patients you want: if you want Invisalign patients, are you ranking for Invisalign keywords on Google? On ChatGPT? On Google Maps, Google AI mode, Google IO view, regular search? Google is 95% of how consumers find you. It is worth $4.7 trillion. It is the second most valuable company on the planet. You want to be in the top 5% on that platform. The top 5% get all the organic benefit. The other 95% are paying for PPOs or ads instead.
- 00:27:33 – How to Audit Your Marketing Right Now
- Three things to check immediately: call conversion rate (benchmark: 70-80%), Google reviews (benchmark: 10 or more paragraph reviews per month), and keyword rankings (benchmark: top 10 for 100 or more relevant searches per month)
- These are not guesses — they are measurable. Every one of them can be checked today. If any of them are below benchmark, that is a hole the practice is bleeding from
View Transcript
Naren Arulrajah: I’ll give you a list. Number one: know your call conversion rate. If it’s less than 70 to 80%, go in, listen to those calls — especially the ones that didn’t book. Find out whether it’s a system issue or a training issue. And solving it takes weeks and months of consistently checking — not just once. Number two: the quantity and quality of your Google reviews. A healthy practice should be getting 10 or more paragraph reviews every single month. Not one-liners — paragraphs. "They treat me like family. I used to hate the dentist. Now I actually look forward to going." Those are the signals that your relationship-driven positioning is actually working in real life. Number three: are you ranking in the top 10 for 100 or more relevant keywords every month? That’s the benchmark. Many of our clients are now hitting 150 because of AI-driven content. If you’re not at 100, that’s a hole you need to fix.
- 00:32:07 – The One Thing to Do First
- Book a Marketing Strategy Meeting at lessinsurancedependence.com/msm. Ekwa spends six hours auditing the practice — keyword rankings, reviews, landing pages, AI visibility, phone conversion, and the blind spots behind the blind spots
- The findings come in a document. Even if the doctor does nothing else after the meeting, they will know exactly where the gaps are and what needs to change
View Transcript
Naren Arulrajah: If there’s one thing you can do, book a marketing strategy meeting. This is a lot of work to figure out on your own. It’ll take six to eight hours, and when you are distracted by your family, your practice, your commitments — you won’t get to it. Or if you do, you won’t give it the time it deserves. So book that meeting. It’s a $900 value. Our gift to you. We will spend those six hours auditing how you show up on Google — your keyword rankings, your reviews, your landing pages, your AI visibility, and the blind spots behind the blind spots. Things like duplicate content, AI-generated content that doesn’t meet Google standards, NAP consistency issues, Google Lighthouse code, Google CrUX. We will tell you what’s going on. You’ll have a document. You can refer back to it. And then you decide what to do. The link is lessinsurancedependence.com/msm. Just book that one meeting. It’ll take one minute.
Patients really do not care about what the cost is if they receive a tremendous value — because the value you receive is more important than the money you spend. People don’t want to just buy something. What they want is a relationship.
Mike Sonick
Leadership is what holds everything together. If there’s no leadership, everything crumbles down.
Lester De Alwis
Resources
One of Gary's most significant achievements as a dental practice management coach is transforming his own practice, LifeSmiles, from one that was infected with PPO plans, no effective marketing strategy, and an overhead of 80% to a very successful dental practice that is currently one of the top-performing practices in the US.
As CEO of Ekwa Marketing, Naren has over a decade of experience working with dental practices and helping them attract the ideal type of patients to their practices. It is his goal to help dentists do more of the type of dentistry they love with the help and support of effective digital marketing.
