How to grow a dental business?
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What Does “How to grow a dental business?” Talk About?
This episode of the James Dooley Podcast features James Dooley and Kasra Dash walking through a practical framework for growing a dental practice from the ground up and at scale. The conversation opens by addressing new and expanding dental businesses, using the example of a practice franchising from South Florida to Orlando, and covers how to establish a strong digital foundation through a well-optimised website, local SEO, Google and Bing rankings, and YouTube video content featuring before-and-after transformations and patient testimonials. Both hosts emphasise that high-ticket treatments like Invisalign and dental implants require significant patient trust, and that a consistent, visually compelling online presence is what separates practices that win those patients from those that lose them to competitors.
The episode moves into a detailed comparison of marketing channels, including PPC, Facebook advertising, influencer partnerships, sponsorships, and traditional media such as billboards, radio, and newspaper ads. James and Kasra are candid about where dental marketing budgets are commonly wasted, pointing to the lack of trackable ROI in traditional advertising and the high cost of poorly managed PPC campaigns. They also discuss how authentic photography outperforms stock images in building credibility and how social media platforms including Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Facebook should all be leveraged to maximise the return on any investment in visual content. Kasra closes by describing his role as a fractional CMO for dental practices, explaining how he audits existing spend, shuts down underperforming channels, and reallocates budgets toward strategies that deliver measurable new patient acquisition and improved lifetime value.
“You may as well just go and get some money and set it on fire. Right. Literally burning money.”
— James Dooley
Who Are the Guests on “How to grow a dental business?”?
James Dooley is a seasoned digital marketing strategist, business mentor, and the host of the James Dooley Podcast. With extensive experience in SEO, lead generation, and scaling businesses across multiple industries, James is known for his direct, ROI-focused approach to marketing. He is also associated with FatRank.com, a lead generation platform that works specifically with high-value service businesses including cosmetic dentistry. His ability to break down complex marketing strategies into actionable steps makes him a sought-after voice in the entrepreneurial and digital marketing space.
Kasra Dash is a digital marketing consultant and fractional CMO who has carved out a specialist niche in dental practice growth. With a background in SEO and business investment, Kasra has worked directly with dental practices to audit their marketing spend, identify wasteful channels, and redirect budgets toward campaigns with proven returns. He positions himself as a bridge between clinical expertise and commercial marketing strategy, helping practice owners who excel at dentistry but lack formal advertising training to build more profitable and predictable patient acquisition systems. He can be reached at kasradash.com.
What Are the Key Takeaways From “How to grow a dental business?”?
Here are the key points discussed in this episode:
- Building a strong SEO presence is the single most important first step for any dental practice looking to grow, as it delivers both lead generation and long-term brand trust that paid channels cannot replicate as cost-effectively.
- High-ticket treatments like Invisalign and dental implants require visible trust signals such as before-and-after photos, video testimonials, and case studies, because patients conduct extensive research before committing to expensive procedures.
- Authentic original photography consistently outperforms stock images on social media and Google Images, and using stock photos actively undermines credibility with prospective patients evaluating a practice online.
- Traditional marketing channels such as billboards, radio ads, and flyers are difficult to justify in a dental marketing budget because they offer no reliable way to track conversion rates or calculate return on investment.
- Increasing the lifetime value of each patient through upsells such as teeth whitening and annual checkup plans means a practice can afford to spend more on marketing while remaining profitable, making channels like PPC viable that would otherwise be too costly.
“A lot of people shop around so even though let's say Google's charging you 50 or 100 dollars for the actual click that click might not actually convert with you. It might actually convert with one of your competitors. So again that's the other benefit of SEO. So once you've started ranking you're kind of getting the click. It doesn't matter if they're shopping around. You're there.”
— Kasra Dash
Is “How to grow a dental business?” Worth Listening To?
This episode is genuinely worth your time if you have ever wondered whether your dental marketing budget is being spent wisely or simply burned. James and Kasra do not deal in vague generalities. They walk through specific channels, name real dollar figures for treatments like Invisalign, call out the click fraud risks in PPC, and explain exactly why a dentist in Orlando ranking organically on Google is in a stronger position than one running expensive ads that shoppers click and abandon. The comparison between trackable digital channels and untrackable traditional media alone is a practical framework any practice owner could apply immediately.
What makes this episode particularly valuable is Kasra's transparent breakdown of his fractional CMO role, which demystifies what a marketing consultant actually does inside a dental business day to day. Rather than abstract strategy talk, he describes auditing six thousand dollars a month in ad spend and consolidating it into two focused channels instead of six diluted ones. The influencer marketing tactic, the sponsorship angle for family-focused practices, and the CRM follow-up systems James mentions toward the end all add layers of practical depth that go well beyond generic dental marketing advice. Listeners leave with a clear mental model of where to start, what to stop, and what to scale.
Who Should Listen to “How to grow a dental business?”?
This episode is ideal for:
- Dental practice owners who are spending money on marketing but are unsure which channels are actually generating new patients and revenue
- Entrepreneurs franchising or expanding a healthcare or service business into new geographic markets who need a replicable digital growth framework
- Freelance marketing consultants and aspiring fractional CMOs looking to understand how to position themselves as specialists within a specific industry vertical
- Business owners in any high-ticket service sector who want to understand how patient or client lifetime value calculations should inform their advertising budget decisions
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What Are Listeners Saying About This Episode?
“As someone who just opened a second dental location, this episode gave me a concrete checklist I didn't know I needed. The point about stock images destroying trust hit hard because I realised we've been doing exactly that. Switching to real patient photography immediately after listening.”
“The breakdown of PPC versus SEO for Invisalign inquiries was incredibly clear. I've been burning money on Google Ads for months and this conversation finally explained why the clicks weren't converting. The lifetime value framing completely changed how I think about my ad budget.”
“Kasra's explanation of the fractional CMO role was the most useful part for me. I never understood what hiring a marketing consultant for a dental practice would actually look like in practice, but the idea of auditing spend and cutting the billboard budget to double down on SEO makes total sense now.”
Kasra Dash: So I'm joined with James and today we're going to be talking about how to grow a dental practice. I think we should probably start off with potentially new dental practices and we can then deep dive into more established businesses. But let's say you're starting off. Potentially you've franchised. Let's say you've got a dental practice in South Florida and now you want to open up a new one in Orlando. How would you go about doing that?
James Dooley: So if you're looking at how to grow a dentist company then the first thing I would look to try and start setting up is making sure I've got a website. So having the website and then doing SEO to the website. So with regards to search engine optimisation I would want to be ranking in Google, Bing and also if I can, if I've got any videos, ranking certain videos in YouTube as well. So videos could be either of the actual dental practice itself showing the facility. Showing the cleanliness and stuff like that. It could be of certain testimonials from clients saying what an amazing job. If they did teeth implants and stuff like that I’d try and get all that. Teeth whitening before and after photos. If they do teeth whitening videos before and after. Of teeth whitening and stuff. All the different products and services that they do within their dental practice I want to be trying to promote everywhere I possibly can online. So SEO I would start with as being the number one thing that I'd be looking to try to do. Not just for generating leads but for brand building. Making certain that you've got those tests because if someone, if I'm looking to have a new set of teeth I'm going to be doing my research and I want to see previous job case studies and testimonials. Even with Invisalign. Invisalign probably in the UK it costs about three, three and a half thousand pound. In the US it's probably about four and a half, five thousand dollars depending on the state and stuff like that. We're talking averages here. But even Invisalign. It's quite a big decision on somebody's life and if you don't have the trust factors. If you've not got that social media presence. If you've not got the before and afters. If you don't have any video testimonials and case studies then at the end of the day they're probably going to go with one of your competitors that does have all of that.
Kasra Dash: Yeah I think the next point as well is if you are spending a lot of money on photography or videography within the business on brand building you want to also be leveraging the money that you've spent on those images and videos for social media. Posting all the time. Posting whether it's in LinkedIn, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram. Pinning anything that you've done on Pinterest. Being present everywhere. That again if someone is just looking at your social media account that they go yeah I can trust this company. This is a company that I want to have my Invisalign braces done with or teeth whitening kits done with. I want to be everywhere. And again I'm coming back to branding and just making certain that I every so often keep throwing in testimonials. What people are saying. But on social media as well one thing to just add to what you've said. Try to get your own images. Like I don't know what dentist you actually use but a lot of dentists that I look at their social media they're just using stock images. And I don't know what your thoughts are but as somebody that's being trained up especially in the digital marketing world I look at them and I'm like I don't trust that company. I don't know if that's just my...
James Dooley: No I completely agree. I mean a lot of times you can tell it is a stock image. Sometimes the less professional images as long as it's got to look good. At the end of the day if you're doing a before and after shot you want to make certain ideally they've got yellow teeth at the start and at the end they've got white teeth. So you want to try and make certain that that is set up in that manner. But having unique images is key. But also it's key for ranking in Google Images as well. And I think sometimes this is a very visual. If you're getting new teeth, you’re doing some sort of cosmetic dentistry. You want to be making certain that you're ranking in the Google Images and you’re being seen on places like Flickr and Pinterest and places like that because they want to go oh I want that. Oh mine seem a bit more yellow than that. Maybe I should have this being done. Maybe you might have coffee stains in the teeth or whatever it is. But trying to get that out there is key. But then the next part I'd say for growing a dentist or dental practice. If you've got a product or service in an area. So you said South Florida right. Or let's say you were saying you're opening up the new office in Orlando. If I'm brilliant at Invisalign braces in Orlando. At that point I might be able to run PPC. Now I won't just go and run PPC for cosmetic dentistry in Orlando because it's very very very expensive. But if you have a specific product or service that you've got a great hook with and a great conversion and it makes you good profit at that point you could run PPC. It's a massive caveat. There’s a lot of click fraud and it's very very expensive unless you're using a professional agency to get that set up right. I don't know what your thoughts are on PPC.
Kasra Dash: No I agree. So what we've typically found is with PPC. Let's take Invisalign for an example. A lot of people shop around so even though let's say Google's charging you 50 or 100 dollars for the actual click that click might not actually convert with you. It might actually convert with one of your competitors. So again that's the other benefit of SEO. So once you've started ranking you're kind of getting the click. It doesn't matter if they're shopping around. You're there. With PPC you're going to need a lot of trust factors in place. You're going to need a good back end. So it needs to be very profitable for your dental practice. And also if you've got potential upsells. So let's say for example yes they've come in for Invisalign but if you can upsell them for teeth whitening. And if you can upsell them as a yearly checkup client then that lifetime value of that client maybe went from let's say two and a half or four thousand dollars to let's say six thousand dollars. So you can ultimately just spend more on your marketing because you're getting a lot more profit in the back end. But yeah what else would you recommend? So there's other things that people talk about quite a lot in dentistry. Traditional marketing. So billboards, TV ads, radio ads, magazines. Now if I'm being honest I hate doing this and the reason why I hate doing it is because there's no tracking of conversion rate optimisation. There's no tracking on was it that billboard that got me this inquiry which led to this profit. So it's so difficult for someone to turn around and put a return on investment value on traditional marketing. I'm not saying it doesn't work. It does work well at times. However I feel there's much better ways now of spending that money.
James Dooley: Run Facebook ads and target certain demographic. You can go into Orlando and say within 50 miles of Orlando. You can target. You might start realising that some of the work that you do caters more towards females. So a billboard just caters to everyone that drives past it. Where Facebook ads you could say okay I'm realising teenagers don't have the money to have implants or don't need it. It's 30 to 60 year olds female within 50 miles of Orlando. And you can put all them filters in place. So it's a lot of different filters and stuff like you can do via social media advertising which can work well. But also via your SEO strategies you can be making certain that you're targeting the towns or Orlando as the major city. Specifically the products and stuff of what you want to sell. So for me I'm not a big fan of traditional marketing. And do you know what. Over in the US I think every business owner wants to be an entrepreneur and they feel that they have to have a big billboard of their picture on there. And I'm like are you tracking return on investment. And as a business mentor or a fractional CMO at times I'm like I would take that money and I would then spend it more wisely in other areas.
Kasra Dash: Definitely. A few other things that you can actually do. And this works well. So a lot of dentists. Dental practices. They want families. And in the US you can actually sponsor kids’ baseball games or kids’ soccer games and football games and stuff like that. So that's a good way of getting in front of the parents. I spoke about this on my YouTube channel a couple days ago. I remember when I was in high school there was actually a practice that came in and they were like telling us how to brush your teeth and what sweets you should avoid and what fruits and stuff that you should eat. You could do something like that. I personally don't think that works as well because you're in front of the kids. They're not the actual decision makers. But again you can test that out. And another strategy that works very well is influencer marketing. So for example you can get some B list celebrities in Orlando or wherever you're located. Get them in. Get some free teeth whitening done and in return they essentially repost your work on their social media following. And because they are actually located within that area that might be actually presented to let's say four or five thousand people within Orlando or Miami or wherever. And then they will essentially enquire with you. So that's another strategy.
James Dooley: It's a good strategy. I mean another one is lead generation companies. So over at FatRank.com you could apply to try cosmetic dentistry. They only generally deal with the high end type services. So like implants and stuff like that. Or if it is cosmetic dentistry. That type of work. As opposed to just checkups and stuff. But if they do qualify they do get a no risk supply of inquiries that come through. But then also talk to me a little bit because you've been working a lot in the dental industry. You are Mr dental practice growth man. So obviously you kind of mark yourself as a fractional CMO. But you do a lot with dentists and dental practices. So why don't you talk a little bit about yourself as being a consultant or a fractional CMO where you can go in and help dentists. They are very good at fixing teeth or making teeth look nice. That doesn't mean to say they're good at advertising and marketing. Every dentist should have some sort of freelance CMO or consultant that is helping them knowing where to spend the money. Because the amount of people that waste money on buying the wrong type of leads or using the wrong SEO agency and burning money. You may as well just go and get some money and set it on fire. Right. Literally burning money. So explain a little bit more about you in the dental practice space.
Kasra Dash: So yeah basically we’ve both been doing SEO for many years now. Growing businesses. Investing into actual businesses. And one thing that I found was that dental practice owners they are really good at their job. However in university and college and stuff like that they've not actually been trained up to actually advertise. They know how to do cosmetic dentistry. They know how to do Invisalign checkups. They're really good at what they do. But advertising just isn't their forte. And that's just come from me speaking to various dental practices over the years and stuff. So I've basically been able to kind of position myself as like the dental growth expert. As much as I don't like calling myself an expert. This is what people title me as. And I can basically look at what they're advertising on. What they're spending on. And say to them like hey you're overspending on your PPC. Or actually your PPC hasn't generated you any actual inquiries for your business. Why don't we switch that off and reallocate that budget to something that is working. Whether that is social media posts. Whether it's Facebook ads. Whether it's SEO. Whatever the case may be. And you would be surprised as to how many people are actually spending on billboard ads and not actually tracking that. Or potentially they've done some radio ads. Or potentially they've done some newspaper ads. Or even some flyers and stuff like that. And it's just not generating them the ROI. So I've basically come in and I can evaluate your business and I could say right okay we're spending six grand overall or six K on advertising every single month. Why don't we just reallocate that six K to doing these two things as opposed to doing these six things and you're going to get a lot more bang for your buck. And it works out very well. A lot of business owners they don't realise how much they're wasting money and potentially they've outsourced their SEO to what I, what we like to call SEO cowboys. There's a lot out there. It's quite disheartening to say that because SEO can work for a lot of businesses but if you're not correctly vetting or if you don't know how to track the KPIs in SEO you can get essentially taken for a ride.
James Dooley: So I think that it's kind of a win-win really. So if there is any dentist business owners now that say I like this video. I'm looking to grow. How can they initially contact you. How do they get hold of you to say do you know what. I want to book a strategy session with you. And I want you to look at my business wherever it's based. And this is what we do. And this is what we're spending money on now. And they can listen. They cannot listen. But obviously you're going to come along as a fractional CMO. So that's a CMO that understands all angles of marketing and you can give your honest opinion. If I think you're overspending here and you're not spending enough in a certain place. And the good thing is that these business owners they should be setting KPIs even on yourself. If they came to you right as a consultant and said we're spending ten thousand pounds a month and we're getting this amount of clients and you was to turn around and say well I think you should allocate some of the budget here. You need to be showing them that you're getting them more than what there was the previous months. But how can a dentist or dental practice get hold of you to initially have this strategy session.
Kasra Dash: Just go over to my website kasra dash.com or check the link down in the description as well.
James Dooley: So if anyone is looking to grow their dental practice. First and foremost I'd strongly recommend booking a call with Kasra. Kasra can go through everything that we've spoken about in this video of how to grow more dentistry leads. But then it's also it's not just about the volume of leads. It's trying to build and improve upon that average transactional value and lifetime value of existing customers. Obviously you've got an amazing CRM system in there as well. For some dentist companies that might want to be using that which can do text message follow ups, email follow ups, even WhatsApp follow ups and stuff like that. These people like you said they're brilliant at fixing people's teeth and working on cosmetic dentistry but they're not marketers and this is where you can come in. So head over to kasra dash.com or check out the link in the description.
Creators & Guests
Host
James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.