Our Clients Are Better Than Industry Average & Growing

Practices in our client network are running disciplined, systems-driven marketing programs, and this is helping them add new patients at a rate that’s 40% higher than industry average and generate practice production that’s more than DOUBLE the industry average.

That’s no coincidence – and it’s not luck. We love working with successful dentists, and this success is the byproduct of specific, repeatable tactics that most practices aren’t running … at all, or not consistently enough to see the compounding effect.

Before we get into the deets on what’s working for our clients, I’m dropping a scheduling link here so you can book a consultation to talk growth with our experts and ensure your practice is all set to break records, too! Join our group of successful clients today.

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Here’s what’s actually working for our clients.

Direct mail is at the core.

Practice awareness has a decay problem. Digital channels are fast but forgettable; paid ads win impressions for a few seconds; a search result competes with 10 other results on the same screen; and AI takes users down a unique path, completely out of search. Direct mail works on a different mechanism entirely: a physical presence in a specific place, on a recurring schedule, with no other ad competing for attention in that moment.

Not all direct mail behaves the same way, though, and this matters more to dentists than you might realize. Postcards can be great; they’re easy but tend to be more transactional, causing a glance, a quick read, and then being discarded in moments. I say this as a generalized comment since we have clients successfully using postcards in some markets; however, our four-page newsletters draw a different kind of attention for our clients. They sit on a counter. Get picked back up. They include room for content – not just an offer – and this changes what they can do for a dental practice. They explain procedures and benefits, address fears, introduce team members, and make a case for procedures patients aren’t even thinking about. When the newsletter is in the home, the dentist becomes recognized and trusted, and trust is a valuable commodity for dentists and critical to a clinic's success today.

The distinction is where the core idea comes from. New-patient generation for a dental practice is rarely, if ever, a single-touch decision. Most people aren’t choosing a dentist the moment they receive one piece of mail, one single ad, or one recommendation from a friend. Think about it for yourself: you receive a piece of mail, check the business out online, maybe you look at social or chat about it with a friend, and then you go back to the website and call. Newsletters build familiarity and get patients thinking proactively about your service – not waiting around for them to search. They also get patients considering their needs, wants, convenience, and timing, moving them through your funnel and prompting them to take action. A newsletter arriving in the same household every month is doing that exact work quietly, whether or not anyone in that house has called yet.

None of this means direct mail works alone. It’s just one channel that happens to be built to create sustained, low-friction familiarity and awareness, which drive results across other channels. That’s why it’s the core – or foundation – that other channels build on rather than compete with, and our clients are leveraging it for success.

Websites built for speed … as well as style.

A dental practice website has to satisfy two readers at once: the patient deciding whether to book, and the search engine deciding whether the site deserves to be found at all. But one job matters more than any other, and that’s turning up when someone is searching for a dentist and giving them a reason to book the moment they land. Our client websites consistently outperform on that second piece because they aren’t treated as a brochure – they’re built around actual questions patients search, structured so each service and location owns its own page instead of competing with the rest of the site for the same search terms, and kept current as a practice adds providers, services, or locations.

That ongoing attention is the real differentiator. SEO isn’t something a practice buys once and forgets; it compounds the same way direct mail does, building authority and visibility month over month as the site earns trust with search engines. We work hard on this element for our clients.

Our custom websites are focused on conversion, with branding, content, and photos that look sharp and load fast. Because speed isn’t a feeling – it’s a Google score, and we build to pass.

That compounding, though, takes time to pay off. That’s the gap paid ads and Local Services Ads (LSAs) exist to fill, putting a practice in front of a patient who’s searching today, while the website and SEO work is still building toward the top. This is the mix that’s working for our clients.

Are you “paying” for attention?

When a practice wants new patients now and not in six months, paid ads come into play. Local Services Ads are the newest element we’re working with in paid. They push users to the top of the page when a practice qualifies, appearing above the map pack, standard paid ads, and organic results in the spot marked with a Google Verified badge. But getting there isn't simple. Honestly, our digital account managers will tell you – it’s a PIA. License checks, insurance verification, and background screening mean a slower setup than launching a standard campaign, but imagine having your practice visible with a Google Verified badge. We do help walk our clients through the entire process.

Now, on top of all this, we’re all dealing with AI Overviews. They are raging, and most (if not all) websites are seeing lower traffic as a result. What that means for a practice isn't that Overviews always sit above paid – they don’t – but Google places ads above, below, or inside them, depending on the query.

That's the real argument for running the system as a system rather than betting on any one channel. SEO still compounds over months the way direct mail's mailbox presence does, but it's competing for less and less real estate on the page while it builds. Paid and LSAs buy the visibility SEO hasn't earned yet, and they're worth the setup friction precisely because most of your competitors won't finish it.

There's a third target on that crowded page now, sitting alongside SEO's slow build and paid's instant buy: the citation itself, and it’s no longer just a Google AI Overview to chase. ChatGPT, Gemini, and others are each pulling a meaningful and growing share of search that used to be driven mostly by Google. Consumer use of AI for local business recommendations jumped from 6% to 45% in the last year. This shift matters because each engine picks who it cites differently.

What earns a citation across engines, again, isn’t a single one-hit-wonder. It’s consistency. Generative engines cross-check a business' name, address, hours, and services across the web rather than trusting one source, and gaps between listings, outdated hours on one listing, and an incorrect service on another are exactly what knock a practice out of the running. That’s why our SEO plans include FAQ pages and blog content structured around the real questions patients ask. We also carefully manage and maintain active Google Business Profiles and keep that content up to date.

None of this replaces ranking well the old-fashioned way. This all sits next to it as one more surface where a practice must show up consistently.

Where marketing pays off.

Last week, we published an in-depth article on the importance of call handling. The goal is to have every channel above – direct mail, website, SEO, and paid ads – produce the same outcome: the phone rings or a form comes in. What happens in the next 60 seconds decides whether that lead becomes a patient or becomes nothing. Our data shows top-performing clients book roughly 85% of the new-patient calls they answer, compared to a 53% average across our clients, which is pretty good considering the objections patients raise today. Check out that article for more data around the impact of call handling.

What about the gap between visits, reminders, relationships & practice production?

I got an email from my own dentist last week – a reminder that I’m due for my next visit. But have I heard anything since my last visit? Nope. Nada. No note about a special offer. No mention of an elective service I might not know I'm a candidate for. Nothing telling me my insurance benefits reset soon, and I'm about to leave money on the table by not using them. That silence isn't neutral. It's a missed chance to give a patient any reason to think about the practice before the next cleaning shows up on the calendar. It can also contribute to perceived indifference. That happens to be the number one reason patients leave dentists. Perceived indifference. Think about how you feel when you don’t feel appreciated by a business you’re patronizing. You know what I’m talking about.

Email newsletters close part of that gap, and the performance backs it up for our clients with a 40–50% open rate that’s genuinely strong. But email only reaches the guarantor's inbox, which is exactly what happened with my own reminder; it landed with me and stopped there. A mailed newsletter fixes that blind spot. It lands on the counter for the whole household, guarantor and dependents alike, including your female head of household, who makes most of the decisions. That’s why the two channels work better paired than either does alone: email for the fast, trackable touch, and the mailed newsletter for the reach email structurally can't deliver.

And then it’s the visibility factor. Are you watching your metrics?

One big benefit our clients leverage for success: Practice ZEBRA. None of the tactics above means anything if a practice can't see whether they're actually working. Practice ZEBRA pulls it all together in one place, tracking production, new-patient volume, call outcomes, and hundreds of metrics. That gives owners clear insights without the guesswork or manual tracking reports that can complicate informed decision-making. That's the real question behind "Are you watching your metrics?" Not whether a number went up last month, but whether the month-over-month trend line is actually pointing toward growth or just holding still while it feels busy.

Right now is the perfect time to check in on your metrics in ZEBRA, get your patient newsletter in the mail, ensure your website is ready to compete in the AI era, and have your new-patient awareness campaign firing on all cylinders.

Let’s gear up now and be ready to fly strong into 2027. >>> Book a consult to talk about your growth plans today!