The Invisible Marketing Advantage with Joe Liquorish & Myran Billen [CPD Available]
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The speakers highlight that dental practices often fail not due to poor ad spend or platform choice, but because of weak underlying operations below the surface. They emphasize that true success comes from foundational elements: clinical excellence, consistent patient journeys, team alignment, and a modern, unified online presence. A key insight is that most patients decide on dental treatments 6–18 months before booking, meaning marketing must build trust and visibility over time, not just drive immediate traffic. The case study of a Midlands practice demonstrates transformative results—from £65K to over £180K monthly revenue—achieved by improving lead response times, qualification processes, and follow-up nurturing. Practices are encouraged to implement automated lead responses (within 60 seconds), pre-qualify leads with friction questions (e.g., pricing awareness or urgency), and use nurture sequences to reduce no-shows from 24% to 7%. The team also stresses the importance of tracking beyond cost per lead, focusing instead on cost per booking and cost per treatment. They recommend AI-driven tools for automation, lead recovery, call analysis, and CRM integration. A core takeaway is that competitors aren’t winning on top-of-funnel ads—they’re winning through superior lead handling, faster responses, and better patient engagement. The session concludes with actionable steps for practices: audit speed to lead, add qualifying questions to forms, create a 5-day nurture sequence, record TCO calls, and re-engage cold leads. These changes, especially when implemented consistently over time, lead to long-term revenue growth, even with stable or modest ad spend. The message is clear: sustainable growth requires invisible, behind-the-scenes improvements in operations, not just flashy campaigns.
Speaker 2
Okay, so yeah, some of you here might know who we are already.
For those of you who don't, we'll run through our back story quickly.
Okay, so myself and Myron, we met in school back in 2014.
Whilst we were in school, we decided that we were going to start some form of business.
We got into the marketing world as soon as we left our A levels.
So we had quite a few different clients, some in the dental industry, but a lot of them were not in the dental industry.
So when Covic came, a lot of those businesses had to shut down and unfortunately that business failed.
We then went and worked inside multiple different dental practises and we saw a pattern emerge and that's when we decided to launch the current version of our business, which is Clicks Dental.
So that was in 2023.
Since then we've managed over £3,000,000 in advertising spend, worked with 100 plus practises across the UK and Ireland and we're lucky enough now to have a team of 15 plus dedicated team members.
Speaker 3
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Speaker 4
OK.
So what we're going to be doing throughout this presentation is linking back to a real life case study from one of our clients, OK.
This is actually applied in the Midlands and we're going to be touching on that because there's no better kind of story or experience that you guys can see down from up here that's actually in your industry themselves.
OK.
So as an example, when we first started working with this practise from in that 24 month period, the same town, the same treatments were advertised.
They went from a £65,000 per month, month monthly average revenue to a £180,000 plus per month monthly average revenue.
And the key thing to remember there is the difference wasn't just Facebook, it wasn't just Google, it wasn't just TikTok.
There are multiple levers.
Speaker 2
At play, so we're getting leads but not enough our booking.
Speaker 4
We've tried agencies before, we've got nothing but rubbish leads.
Speaker 2
And our team is too busy to follow up properly.
So these are different cities, different practises and the same conversation.
Over the last three or four years we've spoke with over 200 dental practises and audited them and everyone seems to be coming with the same sorts of things.
Which are these conversations?
Speaker 4
So most practises don't have a marketing problem, they have an invisible one.
Speaker 2
So let's go through the foundations, the foundations every winning practise has before any agency can help.
Now, a lot of people might be looking for a silver bullet or a marketing trick, but if these foundations are not in place, then any sort of marketing strategy that you implement is not going to have the leverage that you might want it to have.
So I would think about your practise.
If you're an associate, think about the practise that you're working in.
Are these things true for your practise?
And if they're not, then the rest of the stuff that we're going to talk about today is ultimately not going to have the result that you want it to have.
Speaker 4
OK, so first thing, Clinical Excellence, OK, treatments people genuinely talk about with their peers as well, OK, So as you can see, here is an example.
You need to really get your case studies across, your before and afters across, really get across your clinical accidents.
Speaker 2
So a premium patient journey from first call to final review, that whole process has to be similar every single time.
You want to make sure that your patients are going through the same process between your different clinicians in the practise, whatever it might be.
You need to have consistency across your processes.
Speaker 4
A-Team that actually cares, receptionists, TC OS, nurses, dentists, everybody has to be aligned on the same vision.
That's something that we actually found working in practise years ago as well, that look, if you have certain team members that aren't aligned on your vision, it can be completely detrimental for your practise as well.
Speaker 2
And if you do have those people in your practise, especially in some key roles such as reception, TC, OS, then you need to weed them out early because ultimately if if there's one single member in your team that's not aligned, they can pull down the rest of your team.
Speaker 4
So consistent reviews and social proof.
OK, be real, be specific about it, and also consistently update that as well.
Speaker 2
So a clean, modern presence, website, branding, photography.
Again, these are things that probably everyone has heard already, but you have to think about your business.
Do you have all of these things in tandem now?
Speaker 4
So no agency can fix a broken foundation.
That's something that a lot of agencies might try and misneed you with.
OK, you need to have all of these foundations in place.
Clinical Excellence, a premium patient journey, a team that genuinely cares, is aligned on the same vision, consistent reviews, social proof as well, and then a clean modern presence with multiple touch points.
Speaker 2
So if your foundations are weak, no agency will save you.
If they're strong, the right agency is going to multiply you.
So let's go through the dental marketing fundamentals.
We could spend the whole time today talking about the fundamentals that everyone has probably heard already, but we're going to go through them again.
The same applies here.
You need to look at your own business and ask yourself, do these apply for your business?
OK, pixels and tracking set up correctly for every channel.
Now, we're not going to go through how to do this today.
Again, we have a bunch of resources that we're going to be giving away at the end for everyone to do these basic things.
But you need to know have all of the tracking set up so you know what levels to put in your marketing.
You know realistically where the patients are coming from.
It baffles us how many times we speak to practise owners who have no idea they're putting in thousands of pounds of marketing in every single month of their practise.
They have no idea where their patients are actually coming from.
They might think it works on the surface, but without these things it's very difficult to know for sure.
Speaker 4
You need to know who you're targeting specifically, OK?
Build a clear picture of your ideal patient.
And this is something that we advise before you even think about marketing, right?
You need to actually paint your patient avatar, ideal patient avatar.
What do they look like?
What are they into what?
What are the kind of things that they are reacting to best in terms of information being received?
How should you be, psychologically speaking, to these people specifically should really paint that picture.
Speaker 2
And you probably offer multiple different treatments in your practise.
And it's not to say that you can't do multiple treatments, but our most successful practises, we align a couple of different treatments and through our marketing, through our messaging, we're aligning the practise to attract patients similar to that treatment.
So you want to think about the treatments in your business that ultimately going to bring in the most revenue and align your presence based on attracting that type of patient.
That doesn't mean you can't do the other types of treatments in the practise.
It just means you want to be preferable online to the exact type of patient.
You want to be tracked and be very clear about the exact type of patients that you don't.
Speaker 4
So keep your presence current, OK?
We're talking on a few touch points there, if you will.
Google My Business, your website, your reviews, your social media, it needs to be updated regularly and you need to be interacting with people as well.
Somebody gives you a review, reply to that review.
So people know that you're interactive and that you're a real, real life practise that can actually see patients and resonate with patients as well like them.
Speaker 2
And so many people are still using stock content across their websites, across their social medias.
You're not doing anything to separate yourself from the practise down the road.
So you'll, if you see any of our clients websites, any of our clients, everything that you see on their website is going to be organic content based around their practise.
It does so much for patients to see who it is.
They're going to see see a whole bunch around what's actually going on internally within the practise.
Speaker 4
I just wanted to touch on that as well, Joe, is that you can't just have one touch point online, optimise.
You can't just have the best Instagram, but then you don't have Google reviews or you don't have a good website.
Has to be congruent for your marketing to be able to work because potential patients, they will find you in multiple different areas online, lots of different touch points and they all need to be congruent as well.
Speaker 2
So yeah, run out on multiple channels, don't put all your spend in one place.
We've seen this so often, even in our own business.
We used to focus so heavily on one platform.
Let's say that that platform, the algorithm changes, something happens with your ads.
If you only have one means of getting patients right now, then you're putting yourself at risk.
So with our clients, we like to do an omnipresence, which is across Meta, Google.
And it doesn't just go for digital marketing.
Internally within your practise, you need to be hitting as much touch points as possible.
Internal marketing, even things like Flyers, that side of things, you want to be doing as many different things as possible to be getting patients through the door.
So if one of them fails, you still have backups and other means to get patients through.
Speaker 4
And optimise your landing pages.
So, and this is really important, like they don't just need to look pretty, they need to actually navigate well and function well.
When somebody lands on your landing page, it should be concise.
It should be really easy for them to understand exactly what it is that you've got going on and what you're trying to get them booked in for.
Make it super seamless for them when they enter your landing page.
Speaker 2
And ideally you want to have one call to action.
People have so many different call to actions on their website, sending people in all different directions and confusing their patients.
You want to have 1/4 action to one specific thing.
Again, that comes down to optimising for conversions as not just aesthetics.
Speaker 4
And make high level video content.
This is 2026 now guys, as we're all aware, marketing has never been more visual and information processing has never been more visual.
And really to make your practise stand out from the competitors that are doing high quality videos, you need to be joining that wave and making the best quality videos you can, really getting yourself across.
So when people see your videos and see your presence online, they feel like they know you.
They know your brand before they even inquire and.
Speaker 2
Unfortunately, it's not just enough to have one piece of good content.
I'm sure everyone's had it.
Where you've seen a piece of content on your phone that you've seen already, your brain is going to subconsciously completely switch off to a piece of content that you've seen multiple times already.
So that's why it's so important to keep updating your creatives and keeping fresh because essentially someone when they first see your ad, it might not be the right time at that specific moment that they're going to take the action.
But you want to make sure in six months time, in 12 months time when it is that time for them that you're there with fresh content to reengage them.
Speaker 4
And commit to finding what works.
OK.
The system rewards consistency, not novelty.
OK, so as Joe touched on as well about testing different platforms, but not just platforms, test different types of image creatives, video creatives, maybe try lead form alongside landing pages, the call to action as well.
Really find what works and then you can make data-driven decisions to actually optimise your campaigns moving forward.
Speaker 2
There's been so many times that we've had meetings with dental practise owners and they've said yeah, I tried this agency for a month and it completely didn't work.
Again, we've we're going to go on in a second to talk about a lot of patients don't make the decision the first time that they see something.
That's one of the biggest places that we see practises fail is they run out for a short period of time and they think, oh, this platform doesn't work for me.
Our clients that are winning the most right now, we've been running ads with them for years upon years.
Speaker 4
So the fundamentals every winning practise has to have in place.
OK, so your pixels and tracking, make sure you know your data and know what to do with that data as well.
Know who you're targeting with your clear patient avatar.
Keep your presence current.
And that's on all of your different online switch points.
Run ads on multiple channels, find winning platforms, optimise your landing pages, make high level video content and commit to finding what works.
Speaker 2
So look, these are really the basics that you need to have when it comes to dental marketing.
OK, So we now want to talk about the 6th to 18th month window and why your ROI report is lying to you.
OK, so when do you think a patient actually decides to get dental implants?
So we actually did a study a couple of years back with one of our clients who allowed us access to his patient base where we spoke to 30 people who had dental implant treatment.
And the majority of them had made the decision that they wanted dental implants at least 6 to 18 months before they actually went and got the procedure.
So the stages that people are going to go through is going to be their first thought.
So maybe they start to get a wobbly tooth, maybe they've had a denture for years and they're finally sick of it.
Then they're going to start doing research.
They're going to look into different practises.
They're going to go into the financing, start to look at what different places are going to cost.
They're then going to talk to their partner and say, look, this is something that I'm going to go ahead and actually do.
And then that's at the point where they're likely going to start making inquiries.
So everyone.
So by the time they inquire, they've already half chosen.
Your job isn't to convince them.
Your job is to be the practise that they were already thinking of.
Speaker 4
So most practises market to the 5% ready to inquire today and they completely ignore the 95% deciding right now.
OK, so then they wonder why the ads have stopped working and they'll completely give up on it and they will never move forward and their business will stay stagnant in growth.
Speaker 2
Yeah, the market hasn't shrunk.
Essentially their visibility has.
So stop just running campaigns and start being present.
You've got to build your visibility, you've got to build your trust and you've got to build your timing.
I said this at the start, everyone's looking for that secret, that silver bullet in their marketing.
The reality is you have to be consistent every week, every month for years.
And that's not to say you can't start a campaign that's going to work, but if you want to build a long term sustainable practise, you can eventually sell.
These are all things that you're going to need to have in place.
Speaker 4
So the invisible marketing advantage?
What's beneath the waterline?
Speaker 2
So we've got a diagram here.
You can see over the top, this is what everyone thinks they need to compete on.
More ads, creatives spend and websites.
All of these things are very important, but the 90% actually decides who wins is below the waterline that people are not paying enough attention to.
That's going to be things like your speed to lead, how quickly you actually get to a response, the qualification process you have in place, the nurture, the TCO conversion, the lead recovery and the tracking.
Speaker 4
So throughout this talk, as mentioned at the beginning, we're going to be coming back to a specific case study for one of our clients in the Midlands.
OK, so this is a three surgery practise and this is over the course of 24 months.
So they started at 65 K plus per month and they got to 180 K plus per month.
The same practise, the same town, but when they plug certain leaks, that's what they got to.
Speaker 2
OK, so let's talk about the leaks.
So before we talk about leak number one, I want everyone here to do something.
So if everyone could take their phone out, I see a couple of people have got their phones out already.
So if everyone could take their phones out, please.
What I want you to do is open your practise website on your phone.
And if you're an associate right now, I'd recommend you do this for the practise that you're actually working out.
OK, so I recommend you do this.
It might open your eyes to some things.
What I want you to do is submit an inquiry to your own practise.
OK.
If you have a different business that isn't necessarily within dentistry, I would recommend you do it for whatever it is that you're involved in.
So once you submit an inquiry, put a fake name, put your real number in it, and then put your phone face up and see what happens.
So we'll let everyone go through that process now.
Do that with your practise.
We'll give everyone a little bit of time to do this.
Speaker 4
If we
get a show of plans as well once people have done that just.
Speaker 2
We're all good, yeah.
Done, done, done.
Yeah, OK, perfect.
So this is really, we've tried so many different things, so many different variations and look, a lot of different variations are going to work here.
Here's one that we have found that's very optimal in the first naughty to 60 seconds.
So a lot of people who have already submitted their inquiry, you should have had personalised SMS, an e-mail and a WhatsApp by name.
OK.
Speaker 4
Within 60 seconds, you should also have an autodial setup from a real number and a voicemail if missed.
OK, when it comes to the autodial, we're going to go into the intricacies of that slightly later.
That's a really, really good thing to have set up in the back end of your systems.
Speaker 2
So within 5 minutes once a dial has been made you can set something up which is an automation.
Try calling when's a good time to reach out?
Within 10 minutes e-mail with case studies and a booking link.
So this is the ideal for 1st 5 minutes that we have seen that works extremely well within practises.
There's tonnes of different variations that you can have in place, but this is one that works extremely well.
OK, so we'll click my practises close.
It's a Saturday and look, that is exactly the point.
Your ideal patient is not inquiring on Monday at 11 AM.
They're inquiring Monday night, 8:00 PM.
They're inquiring a weekend when they have time to sit on their phone.
Not everyone is inquiring when your receptionist or your TCO is sitting there looking at your CRM.
And that's the reality of it.
OK, so in a study that we researched, by Monday morning, if someone inquires on a Saturday, 47% of people who haven't heard back have already inquired with a different practise.
OK, so.
Speaker 4
You need to ask yourself these specific questions.
Did you get an SMS back within 60 seconds after inquiring on that website?
Did you get a call within 5 minutes?
Did you hear nothing at all?
Now I know it's not been 5 minutes in 5 minutes.
You guys can check that.
Did you hear nothing at all as well?
Did you even get any communication back?
Speaker 2
Yeah.
So ask yourself these questions and if you guys have got something by now, if you did get a message or emails, ask yourself was it personal?
Did it answer any question that you might have had and did it give you a reason to reply?
So yeah.
Speaker 4
For those who did get a response, was it personal, did it answer your questions, and did it give you a reason to reply?
Because look, you can have all the automation set up, but if the copyrighting is not there, if it's not been written in a clever, in a in a specific and strategized way, then it's just noise.
Real responses is what converse.
Speaker 2
So if the answer to any of these questions was no, here's essentially some of the fixes.
Again, we don't have a massive amount of time today, so we can't go into intricacies again.
There's going to be some resources at the end.
So if you don't have a CRM right now, there's tonnes of different CRMS.
You've got Boxley, you've got High Level, you've got Salesforce, you've got all these different CRMS.
Connect the lead form that you're running or your inquiry from your website to the CRM directly.
Speaker 4
Also fire a personalised SMS within 60 seconds and we actually recommend WhatsApp as well.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
So auto dial the team within 5 minutes.
So something that we have set up for some of our clients is essentially as soon as a lead comes into the pipeline, what it can do is it can auto dial your practise or a separate phone that you're going to have in your practise.
Your team will then pick it up and there'll be a whisper message.
For example, you have a new lead from Facebook called John for dental implants.
Your team then knows straight away who who the leads for.
They can pull up their CRM, they can see more information.
And then it's going to when your team selects a key, it's going to auto dial the patient.
OK, so that takes away the problem of having to have your TCO, your reception team sitting there and relying on them to get to a lead as soon as it comes in.
So that completely takes that part out.
Speaker 4
Voicemail recovery sequence if missed.
Now it sounds basic, you're leaving a voicemail, but it is so criminal the amount of practises we come across and even once we initially start working with, when we see their reception teams handling the leads, there's a lot of people that don't pick up the phone.
But if you're not leaving a personalised voicemail with an added level of scarcity as well, let them know that there's a limited time on this.
It needs to be personal.
Speaker 2
OK, Weekly report on average response time.
Again, there's a bunch of ways that you can set this stuff up.
If right now you don't have the the ways to do this, I would recommend manually trying to look at your response time.
You can look at when the lead came in.
You can then look at your phone systems and see when that lead was dialled.
And I think a lot of you will be surprised at the response times that you have.
Speaker 4
So here are some examples of our systems specifically that we've got in place.
So weekly response time report, instant call routing directs your practise, your phone and CRM.
And I really, I really want to stress this one as well with the auto dial because look, you want to get to these people when they're in that buying state of mind, as soon as they've inquired, you need to try and get hold of them.
And that really eliminates the manual work behind that.
Of course, we've gone over a 62nd personal voicemail for no answers and a personal SMS or WhatsApp for no answers as well.
Speaker 2
So yeah, track it, automate it and report on it.
What you don't track, you can't measure.
So if you're not tracking these things in your practise then you'll I'm completely running blind right now.
Speaker 3
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Speaker 2
So again, yeah, we took the practise that we worked with.
The average response time when we first started was 4 hours down to 90 seconds with the autodial.
That booking rate went from 6% to 32% by implementing these changes.
So cold qualification, big mistake people may make is they are filtering the reception in their TCO calls or in the consultation with the dentist, which is actually the worst thing.
So we've seen 30 to 50% higher booking rate when leads are pre qualified on the front end.
OK, so I want to preface this right.
If you've never run a marketing campaign before, what I would recommend you doing is in the beginning, keep it as open as possible.
You don't want to add qualification in, in the very first time that you do marketing.
You want to get the feedback from the initial leads that you get so you know what friction to add in your process.
So a lot of people will start marketing, they'll go for that testing phase and they will look at that as a failure if they don't get the result.
The beginning part is about getting the feedback from the initial leads that you get.
If you realise, OK, these people were not price aware whatsoever, an example of a friction that you can add into your process is a pricing awareness question.
So for example, here's one of our lead forms.
Implants start from as little as 2500 lbs.
Are you aware of this?
And then the patient can go through and select.
So yes, I'm happy, yes, I'm aware.
I would like to discuss payment.
I wasn't aware if they put the end, I'm not sure this is within my budget right now.
You can put conditional logic in your form which basically says, would you still like to continue with with this treatment or cancel my inquiry?
Ultimately, you don't want Facebook giving you back leads that are not going to be suitable for your treatment because what that's doing is it's telling the platforms, I like this.
I, I, I, this is a, this is a good result for me.
And it's telling the platform, yeah, get me more people like this.
So you really want to cut these people out before they come in.
But in the beginning keep it open and then start to optimise with time.
Speaker 4
Another good friction question or qualifying question that you can add just for that added element of treatment urgency is when are you looking to start.
OK, it's a simple question, but it's a really, really impactful for us in practise because we get to see then, OK, this person's just in quiet, where are they currently at along their patient journey already before we even got in touch with them, where are they currently at?
And then you can mould your communication to them around that specific.
Speaker 2
So also going to give your reception team a really good idea of where that leads at, OK, So if they're saying I'm researching my options right now, they might want to approach that lead a little bit differently than that.
If they say as soon as possible, OK, So it's going to give them, you want to give them as much context as possible.
So essentially qualify upstream before the inquiry is submitted.
Multiple ways.
You can do it.
You can do it in the lead form, you can do it on the landing page.
You can put your pricing specifically on the landing page that you're sending people to lead forms.
You're going to get a much higher volume of leads.
We actually really like running lead forms and putting the qualification in there.
Landing pages adds a lot of friction to it.
Maybe if you don't have the team to sustain a tonne of leads, you might want to go straight for the landing page route.
OK, so.
Speaker 4
If you just go back one side as well, I just want to mention that you want to optimise not for lead volume, but for lead quality.
I really want to stress that as well.
And here's an actual example of that.
With that said, Midlands practise we've been speaking about, OK, so when we added these friction qualifying questions, the lead volume went down by 18%, but the actual books consultations went up by 47%.
Definitely something to consider.
Speaker 2
So the empty space, the next one.
So between inquiry and consultation, we've found that you get 15 to 30% no show rate on Meta consultations without a nurture sequence in place.
So here is the fix for this.
Here's a nurture sequence that you can put in place.
OK, so on day one, this is once they've booked a consultation, guys.
So once they've booked a consultation, you want to send them immediately the booking confirmation.
And something that we've started adding recently, which is working extremely well.
It's a video walkthrough of what to expect.
We know as an example, the patients are extremely nervous of going to the dentist.
OK, It's not, unfortunately, it's not a happy experience for a lot of patients.
If they can see the practise environment, they can see some of the clinicians, they can start to get a feel for your practise.
They're going to feel much more comfortable coming to you, and adding something like this makes it feel like a personal experience for them.
Speaker 4
Sure.
And that kind of leads on to this Day 2 sequence as well.
So meet your TCO or meet your clinician video, OK?
Speaker 2
This, this wants to be whoever they're going to see, OK?
Speaker 4
And I want to say as well, this doesn't need to be super high level Hollywood level content.
If anything, what we found working really well recently is having the TCO make short personal selfie video where they're actually speaking to them on a really personal level and it almost feels as though that that's such a bespoke message to them.
Speaker 2
OK, so day before they want an SMS reminder and also a call to confirm their appointment.
This is something that so many people miss out on is if they don't hear back from a lead, they will keep them in their diary.
OK, they'll they'll keep them in their diary.
And the problem with that is, is you get no show and that's completely wasted time for your clinician.
If you don't hear back from a patient, you called them, you tried to contact them, take them out of the diary, let them know, and book someone else in in that place.
Speaker 4
And then the morning of their appointment, send them a message, send them their appointment info, and send them some social proof just to get them back in that mindset when they first inquired.
Speaker 2
OK.
So fill the gap with the right messages.
So again we've got welcome message day one day, two day before morning of these are all really important that you can do.
Again, we took this practises no show rate from 24% to 7%, so 23% revenue uplift with the exact same diary.
This is honestly something that we would highly recommend everyone put in place.
Speaker 4
OK.
So the TCO bottleneck, OK, so untrained conversion is attached on every single one of your marketing campaigns.
Now less than 10% of practises actually record and review their TCO calls, which is absolutely crazy because realistically your Tcos, your receptionist, they're the gatekeepers of your practise and they're the people that are really going to be either slipping all the leads through the net or the ones that are actually getting them through and engaging with them well.
Speaker 2
So a lot of people, they will hire a receptionist, they'll hire ATCO and they will expect them to do what it is that they want them to do.
You have to be very clear with these people exactly the process you want them to follow.
So for example, we actually have a call centre team.
We train everyone on exactly the script that they want, that we want them to follow, and we're constantly reviewing it to make sure that they're actually following the process.
Now, what you can actually do here is you can record every call through your CRM system.
The CRM should allow you to do this or your practise phone system, and then you can get AI to essentially pull that transcript, pull the transcript of the call and match them together.
It's going to be very difficult for you to sit there listening to every call.
So this is where things like AI can come in to give you a call report, give you a weekly review of different TCO's to understand who's performing, who's not, give flowers to the people that are performing, and train the people that aren't.
Speaker 4
And a weekly performance report per TCO.
OK, So don't just get the reports in and not give it back to your team.
Like Joe just said, you have to give them back the feedback, whether it's positive or negative.
Let them know where they may be messed up on a on a patient.
Let them know where they did really, really well.
Let them know where their dialogue was perfect.
It's really important.
Speaker 2
OK, so train them, script them, record them, review them.
So yeah, this took this TCO's conversion 832% and essentially doubled the the treatment starts.
Sorry guys, we're going to have to run for it quite quick because I don't think we have too much time left.
So we've got missed lead recovery as well.
So the leads you've already paid for, 6070% of leads never booked.
Something we hear all the time, we generated so many leads, none of them booked.
So you're going to get that number of leads that are going to book.
But the mistake a lot of people make is they think, oh, they're dead leads, they're rubbish leads and they do absolutely nothing with them.
Speaker 4
So day five there should be an SMS and a WhatsApp.
Speaker 2
So this is this is if no one has replied, by the way, if they've got through the sequence or initial sequence, they've not responded to you.
Speaker 4
So day five, I think a message saying still thinking it over really good re engaging them.
Day 12, an e-mail and a WhatsApp.
So your questions answered.
So they're common Q&A's, the common questions that you find from your ideal avatar, when they come into your practise, address them within that message as well.
Speaker 2
Yeah, so these are going to be like emails, Whatsapps, You're not just going to send this message.
You have to build these out again.
We're going to have resources at the end that people can take from campaigns that we're running already.
Day 18 auto task, get your team to reach out again.
They've probably called the patient numerous times by this point.
If you call them much later on, you'll be surprised how how many people you can still get out of your pipeline.
Day 21 e-mail, meet the team behind your smile.
Day 30, SMS, WhatsApp, last chance, and then you can send them a final exclusive offer.
You can even go one step beyond this for people that are well over day 30 and keep them in a continuous cycle.
You can essentially build this sequence once and run it forever.
And here's a diagram that we've got of a sequence that we have for our client.
It's essentially like a circle sequence, right, that they continuously go through.
We, we actually in one of the practises that we worked in, we had a patient come in and he had over 20 grand worth of implants.
And when we spoke to that patient, he, we actually realised he had inquired 18 months before.
And he told us the reason that he came back in was because he got an e-mail that reached out to him with a specific case study in it that he resonated with so much that finally gave him the decision to move ahead with that.
So here's a reactivation we did 200 cold leads from the from this client's failing campaign that he ran before.
Sent out the reactivation, 14 books, 401K in treatment.
This was specifically through dental implants.
Speaker 4
OK, tracking blindness, OK, So your cost per lead is not the key determining metric for success on your campaign, OK?
That's something that we need to make really clear.
Cost per lead is something that a lot of agencies might come to you and advertise and say, look, we've got the lowest cost per lead.
We can get you this cost per lead, but it's not the defining metric.
And here's a good example of that OK, 11 client we actually spoke to about this.
They thought because they had a low cost per lead, they thought their campaigns were working really well.
They thought everything was a success where they actually did a deep dive.
They came to realise, like the more important metric, the cost per Invisalign patient was 1400 lbs for them.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
So once they minus the lab fees, once they managed the associate costs, they were actually losing money on their treatment.
So the fix, know these numbers.
OK, if you don't know these numbers, you need to Start learning these numbers for your practise.
The cost per lead, again, metric does matter.
Cost per book consultation is more important.
Cost per attended consultation even more important than that.
Realistically, this is the number you need to know your cost per required patient for each individual treatment that you're running.
So know your numbers.
All of them.
We're going to give in our resource at the end this Excel sheet that you can take, which is going to give you a very clear picture ultimately of what your cost per acquisition is, your cost per show and your cost per booking.
You can plug your numbers from your last marketing campaign into this.
Speaker 4
Okay, so the commutative result, what happens when you actually fix this and this again is going back to that real life case study, Okay, So if you just go back to the one next one, so revenue per month, okay, so before as we mentioned 65K now 180 K plus their response time before they're a four hour response time.
We got it down to a 92nd response with the autodial feature and everything we've gone through.
Speaker 2
They went from a booking rate of 8% to 32% and no show rate 24 down to seven and their cost per Invisalign patients specifically this campaign 1400 down to 620.
So you can see, yes, we made improvements to the stuff above the water line, but the majority of these improvements were made below the water line that we went through earlier.
So we know that AI is a hot topic.
It's something that we're massively diving into as an agency right now.
We want to give everyone some actionable things that you can implement AI in if you're not currently implementing AI in your business.
Instant response.
So sub 62nd SMS reply 24/7 even at 2:00 AM on a Sunday.
Speaker 4
Also summarising your CRM, OK, so every call needs to be transcribed patient notes or potential patient.
The notes from the call, their decisions, the next steps, all are logged.
So, you know, even if they haven't taken action on that call, somebody can follow up with the right type of dialogue.
Speaker 2
Reactivation at scale, reactivating those leads.
This is not stuff you should be doing manually.
You need to set it up in your system.
Once you set it up once, you can run it forever and call analysis like we went through earlier.
So these AI changes the maths in four specific places.
There's so many different ways you can implement AI.
This is where I would start if you're not currently implementing it in your business.
Okay, so 5 things you can do on Monday without an agency.
No agency required.
Okay.
Speaker 4
So audit your speed to lead now.
You guys have actually technically already done this by inquiring with your practise today.
So really keep close eye on that.
Speaker 2
Yeah, add 3 qualifying questions to enquiry form.
If right now you're working with an agency or you've got a lead form going right now and you're saying OK all of my leads are not good quality, Start adding some friction to your process.
Build A5 touch nurture sequence once they've booked to improve your show rate and record one TCO call this week and listen to it.
OK, so pull your last 200 unconverted leads and send one re engagement message.
Speaker 4
OK, so again, five things.
We're just going through them here.
Do you want to take a picture as well?
Please feel free to take a quick picture.
Speaker 2
OK, so some of you will do these five things and they'll work and that's the goal.
Others will hit a ceiling because look, building this stuff properly is a full time job.
So look, a couple of things that we do as an agency.
Paid ads is the main thing.
Paid ads, Facebook, Instagram, Google built for high value treatments.
Speaker 4
AI back ends.
As Joe mentioned, we're going head first into AI at the moment.
We're constantly optimising our system.
So speed to lead qualification recovery, the tracking systems overall, the plumbing that comes beneath the marketing.
Speaker 2
And yeah, sales support in installing AI to understand CCO training, conversion review in the chair side, half of the funnel.
So we install the system, we run it, we optimise it.
So for anyone who is interested, who's got practise, maybe you're an associate, whatever it might be, we're happy to run a complete audit for you.
We'll mystery shop your practise.
We'll map your 6 leaks, will give you the report.
So essentially the message from today is your competitors aren't beating you on Facebook, they're beating you below the waterline.
So for everyone who's interested, we have a multi mastery course and this is completely free for everyone here at this event today, you're essentially going to be able to get the monthly metrics dashboard that we went through, which is going to help you course to understand dental marketing.
We went over quite the high level today.
There's a lot more information in here for you guys to implement free access to the dental community, nurturing sequence templates, front desk training guide, in practise content guides as well.
So yeah, thank you guys for listening.
There's a QR code if you scan that, it's going to take you directly to our community where you can get all of that content.
And we're adding to this community frequently.
So there's frequent trainings updated.
Sorry guys, I know we rushed through that quite a bit at the end, but I really appreciate everyone for coming today and sitting here.
Thank you so much.
And yeah.
Speaker 4
Actually open the floor as well, just to any questions if people have any, if we'd love to answer them now as well.
Speaker 2
Presentation must have been good.
No questions.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Oh, yeah.
Go on, my man.
Speaker 4
What percentage of your spend would you put like top of funnel, middle funnel?
Speaker 2
Well, look, in the beginning you've got to put the majority of it to top of funnel because you're not going to have the other one.
So definitely the beginning, everything's going to be cold.
As you start spending more and more money on your marketing, you're going to be able to open the middle of funnel and the bottom of funnel.
So it really would depend what stage of marketing you're at and what stage of business you're at to add those different levels.
Speaker 4
As as Joe showed earlier on the screen, we have a resource as well where you can actually reverse engineer numbers.
So you can put numbers in, you can actually find like the predicted kind of outcomes from that and reverse engineer from that point.
So once you've started collecting data, hitting that cold audience, you can then get the numbers, use those numbers to your advantage and then spend what you need to spend on the middle of the funnel and etcetera.
Cool.
Speaker 2
I have.
Speaker 5
A question regarding WhatsApp.
We don't have a WhatsApp currently, we have all the other mediums.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 5
WhatsApp is something which is kind of too personal to people.
I understand for us that people are writing up WhatsApp.
The thing that we are thinking and which is keeping us from WhatsApp is when they ask questions, they want immediate answer.
And sometimes you're not around to, you know, does that hinder or does that cause them to, you know, feel like, oh, they, they didn't even answer WhatsApp, right, right.
Speaker 4
Now what we like to do is we like to add automation, right?
I think we're in 2026 now.
We don't need to be micromanaging everything.
We don't need to be looking at our phones and instantly responding manually, right?
We can with the CRM set up, if you integrate WhatsApp with that, you can have it automated so that when people get in touch, they get an auto response, might even be AI integrated with that as well.
But one thing that we found that has exponentially increased our planet's results was introducing WhatsApp as a lead follow up.
So as soon as somebody actually inquires with the ad, send them automated message on WhatsApp specifically alongside SMS as well.
And we find that the response rates on WhatsApp are just much, much higher SPS.
Speaker 2
Personal when you're asking that question is that because right now the team that you've got, you feel like they don't have the time to respond to the WhatsApp, is that what it is the.
Speaker 5
Problem is, yeah, yeah, on to WhatsApp and I feel like if I introduce that to them.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 5
Like as a patient myself, if I'm patient I would expect on WhatsApp to be.
Speaker 2
Of course, yeah.
Look, there's a number of things you can do.
There's a bunch of like AI bots that you can train up on your business.
Alternatively, you can have call to actions on your WhatsApp saying call the practise, or if you want to reach out to someone, click here to call the practise.
So yeah, maybe that's something you need to look at within your team or maybe that's something that you can use AI to.
Actually, if that is a gap for you right now, I personally don't think that AI can be good as someone within your practise manually doing it.
But if that is a gap for you right now, I think that's going to be a great next step, yeah.
Speaker 4
Because I think so.
And I think one one thing that we've been doing as well, we've seen a lot of success from is let's say somebody signs up to your ad within that WhatsApp lead follow up that they get send a personalised video as you may be as the practise owner, somebody in practise, maybe somebody that they're going to see as well, send them a personalised video as the first immediate message within 60 seconds of them signing up.
So they have that.
And then like Joe said, you can also have call to actions on there for them.
So if they do want to book in right away, they can click book it.
We find a lot of people through WhatsApp just auto book in anyways themselves as well.
So yeah, we've.
Speaker 5
Got the AI bought on the website WhatsApp.
WhatsApp is something you're like.
But yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2
No worries, just.
Speaker 6
To expand on that, WhatsApp with the automated WhatsApp messages with the business thing, it does that thing where it asks for, you know, seeks permission or.
Speaker 2
Something or.
Speaker 6
We need to seek permission.
Is it OK that we ask you?
Speaker 4
The question so to be honest with you, our with our system, ours doesn't.
Speaker 2
Do that, yeah.
So, yeah, you've got different things, right.
So you can have a business WhatsApp.
We through our platform that we have our CRM, we essentially get a WhatsApp through there.
So it's already kind of plugged in with the AI, but I think what you're talking about.
So you just have a separate phone with a business WhatsApp on, right?
Yeah, right.
Speaker 6
Then obviously if you if they don't respond within 24 hours or something, it goes back to the.
Speaker 2
Beginning.
Speaker 6
Fast to seek.
Speaker 4
Should again, so yeah, what we, what we actually recommend is like have have your practise phone, right, have a business WhatsApp on there anyways, we recommend that.
But what we do is like with our CRM, like Joe said, we integrate a separate WhatsApp account to that CRM.
So essentially when you get WhatsApp inquiries from your ads, it will come through to the CRM.
So you it's filtered already and you can essentially just control it all through there instead.
Speaker 2
Of do you do you have a CRM right now?
Speaker 6
Yes, well, it's.
Speaker 2
OK, got you.
Got you, got you.
Well, yeah.
So I'd have to have a look at the settle to be honest to to know a little bit more on that.
Speaker 6
Let's say you have a, a new newly launched practise, right?
And then you already have some marketing up and running.
How do you tend to decide how much budget you tend to set each ad set?
Do you tend to go for like higher ticket value services or you tend to go for probably the most common ones at a low, you know, at a low ticket basically?
Speaker 2
Starting, I honestly think a mix of both is good.
I would start running multiple campaigns and seeing realistically what you're getting the best traction for and you're going to need enough budget to put into those different areas.
But ultimately it's going to come down to the results of the campaign.
If we start running a new patient campaign for a client and ultimately it's not so obviously not as high value as a dental implant, but it's crushing.
We're going to put more budget in it.
So it's really going to come down to which campaigns you're running that have the most success that I'd recommend.
But I think a good mix of both is what?
Speaker 4
I'd recommend that as well.
A real life case study is a client we have in Cardiff and we implanted dental implant campaigns with them.
That was not something that they were even initially thinking about dental implants.
You know, that was something that we kind of brought to them as an idea because we, we thought, you know, there could be a lot of success here.
And when we actually started implementing the dental implant campaigns, we realised that was an absolute hotspot for it.
And that's the most successful campaign to the point where they actually went and got an associate to come in specifically.
Speaker 2
For, yeah, they wanted to do Invisalign and we said, look, we're going to test this treatment.
And look, some areas, some locations, some treatments are just going to work way better than others.
So it's not always what you want to deliver.
Unfortunately.
You have to test the market to see what your market and your location is looking for.
You have to supply the demand and you can't supply demand if the demand's not realistically there.
So ultimately test in the, in the beginning, see what's working specifically for, for your campaigns and double down on it.
That's what I'd recommend.
Speaker 4
1st engineer from the numbers as well that that you find.
Speaker 2
Sorry you had a question.
It's.
Speaker 5
Similar to this practise in the Midlands. 3 surgeries.
You've gone from 65 to 180.
Great.
Brilliant.
What was the actual spend on all the Google ads?
Facebook.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
So when we first started with them, they were spending a lot of money with another agency.
They were spending a ridiculous amount, probably 8 to 10 KK a month when we first started because they were trying to ramp.
We basically kept a similar spend across the time.
So it wasn't necessarily.
So they were spending roughly about 10 KA month, OK.
So yeah, we're spending ten KA month.
And look, a lot of that revenue as well.
Yes, the majority of it was, a lot of it was coming from new patient, but it was also using their internal database, making sure that when patients came in that they were getting good experiences, that they're referring people.
So a lot of the work we did wasn't just on the front end, it was on the stuff that's beneath as well.
So, yeah, all good.
Just one particular campaign, No, multiple campaigns.
Dental implants, Invisalign and a new patient campaign.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 5
Sure, sure.
You mentioned one of them earlier about the your niche which would like the dental infants you just mentioned.
So how?
How does the practise find out?
Speaker 4
You got a split test.
Speaker 2
Yeah, you got a test.
Speaker 3
The only.
Speaker 4
Way is when you first start your boxing.
So before you start your marketing, you've got to picture your ideal patient avatar, right?
So have that in mind.
What, how, what do they look like?
What do they, what's their demographic specifically, right?
Get a campaign out specifically for that.
Maybe you, your special interest is in dental implants, get a campaign out for that.
But don't just shook yourself off from other types of campaigns and types of treatments.
You need to test different things.
Try an Invisalign campaign, an ABC small makeover campaign, a general new patient one, maybe even a planned membership 1, whatever you're optimising for specifically.
Try a bunch of different things and you're going to find winning formulas that you can then use for to move forward and.
Speaker 2
The reality is you do have to look at your practise as well.
You're obviously going to have people in your practise that want to do certain types of treatments, so that's always what we recommend you starting with and trying to make it work for those treatments.
But don't always cancel yourself off to the other types because your area might have a big demand for it.
Cool.
All right.
I think they're telling us to go.
Guys, wait one more, one more of.
Speaker 4
Course you split test but for like high ticket events do you find it works better to show the price on the front end like in the creators?
Speaker 2
It's a great question, great question.
Honestly, it's so location specific.
We have some clients where it's like, okay, they're getting such a bad quality of lead, we have to put the price up.
Some clients, we keep it completely open and it just works insanely well.
So honestly, I think the biggest thing there is it comes down to location and you've got to see what works for that particular client.
No one client is going to be the same unfortunately.
Speaker 4
You know how we said to add lead from qualifying questions to add friction, it's not just lead from qualifying questions that you can add.
It's like you said, you can actually add the pricing on the image creative specifically.
Maybe you can film a new video where you mentioned, yeah, densely to start from as little as X per month with with obviously the interest, full percent interest financing or something like that.
You know, I think that's, yeah, definitely worth doing for sure for you too.
Speaker 2
Thank you very much guys.
So.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Successful dental marketing starts with strong foundational elements like clinical excellence, consistent patient journeys, team alignment, and up-to-date digital presence.
Most practices fail not due to lack of ads, but because they overlook invisible factors such as speed to lead, lead qualification, nurturing sequences, and TCO performance.
A real-life case study shows a Midlands practice growing from £65,000 to over £180,000 in monthly revenue by fixing internal processes, reducing response times to 90 seconds, and increasing booking rates from 6% to 32%.
Summary:
The speakers highlight that dental practices often fail not due to poor ad spend or platform choice, but because of weak underlying operations below the surface. They emphasize that true success comes from foundational elements: clinical excellence, consistent patient journeys, team alignment, and a modern, unified online presence. A key insight is that most patients decide on dental treatments 6–18 months before booking, meaning marketing must build trust and visibility over time, not just drive immediate traffic.
The case study of a Midlands practice demonstrates transformative results—from £65K to over £180K monthly revenue—achieved by improving lead response times, qualification processes, and follow-up nurturing. , pricing awareness or urgency), and use nurture sequences to reduce no-shows from 24% to 7%. The team also stresses the importance of tracking beyond cost per lead, focusing instead on cost per booking and cost per treatment.
They recommend AI-driven tools for automation, lead recovery, call analysis, and CRM integration. A core takeaway is that competitors aren’t winning on top-of-funnel ads—they’re winning through superior lead handling, faster responses, and better patient engagement. The session concludes with actionable steps for practices: audit speed to lead, add qualifying questions to forms, create a 5-day nurture sequence, record TCO calls, and re-engage cold leads.
These changes, especially when implemented consistently over time, lead to long-term revenue growth, even with stable or modest ad spend. The message is clear: sustainable growth requires invisible, behind-the-scenes improvements in operations, not just flashy campaigns.
FAQs
By implementing an auto-dial system that routes leads to the team within 5 minutes and setting up automated SMS or WhatsApp replies within 60 seconds of inquiry. This ensures immediate follow-up and significantly improves conversion rates.
Pre-qualifying leads with questions like pricing awareness or treatment timeline filters out uninterested patients early, improving lead quality and booking rates. This reduces waste and ensures marketing spend focuses on truly qualified prospects.
Top performers have strong internal systems—such as fast response times, qualified lead nurturing, and trained team members—while underperforming practices rely on surface-level ads and lack alignment across team members and patient journeys.
Yes, when automated with AI and integrated into a CRM, WhatsApp delivers higher response rates. A personalized video message within 60 seconds of inquiry builds trust and encourages immediate action, even without real-time human availability.
A structured nurture sequence—sending day-one confirmation, a video walkthrough, and daily reminders—builds patient confidence by showing what to expect, reduces anxiety, and increases attendance from 24% to just 7%.
AI enables advanced lead reactivation, CRM transcription, call analysis, and personalized messaging, allowing practices to scale follow-up efforts, track performance, and optimize conversions without manual intervention.
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