May 11, 2026 • 53 mins
Special Offer: Get 15% OFF your first FIGS order with code FIGSUK at checkout.
Shop now at https://www.wearfigs.com/
———————————————————————
UK Dentists: Collect your verifiable CPD for this episode here >>> https://courses.dentistswhoinvest.com/smart-money-members-club
———————————————————————
Your ads can be “working” and your diary can still be empty. That’s the painful gap we tackle as we get practical about paid advertising for dentists and dental practice owners heading into 2026. I’m joined by co-host Dr Dan Shaffer and marketing specialist Rahil as we unpack what’s genuinely changed on Meta, why the algorithm now pushes towards creative that feels bespoke to the viewer, and why “creative is key” is no longer a catchy line but the deciding factor in performance.
We compare Facebook and Instagram ads with Google Ads (PPC) in a way that makes sense for real-world patient acquisition. Google often brings higher intent leads because people are actively searching for implants, Invisalign, emergency appointments, and cosmetic treatments. Meta can generate more eyeballs and cheaper leads, but those enquiries can be harder to contact or less ready to book. Our north star stays the same throughout: bums on seats, not vanity metrics.
We also get specific on execution: when to use a conversion-focused landing page, when a Meta lead form helps, and why sending traffic to a generic homepage usually breaks the journey. We talk testing culture (static vs video, captions, colours, variations), boosting winning organic posts, and how AI is reshaping marketing through longer search queries, Google AI Overviews, and zero-click searches. If you’re trying to set a smarter dental marketing budget and build a funnel that converts, this one will sharpen your thinking.
———————————————————————
Disclaimer: All content on this channel is for education purposes only and does not constitute an investment recommendation or individual financial advice. For that, you should speak to a regulated, independent professional. The value of investments and the income from them can go down as well as up, so you may get back less than you invest. The views expressed on this channel may no longer be current. The information provided is not a personal recommendation for any particular investment. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and all tax rules may change in the future. If you are unsure about the suitability of an investment, you should speak to a regulated, independent professional. Investment figures quoted refer to simulated past performance and that past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results/performance.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr James (02:00):
Smart Money Members Club also includes multiple
money courses and webinarstories with finance for
dentists, including part of thecontent tax as well as on family
investing.
All this content coins has averifiable CPD, and you can
download your certificates thereand then on the PC lesson.
In addition to this, we alsoinclude a whopping 10% discount
(02:20):
on the dental identity and a 5%discount on lab builds for
dental principles, amongst otherparts and discoints for
members.
Please use the link in thedescription to claim your
verifiable CPD for this episode.
Paid ads.
Let's talk about paid adsbecause you haven't done that in
a long time, especially what'snew in 2026.
(02:43):
Because the game has donechange, hasn't it, Rahil?
But we'll come on to that injust a second.
This is another episodeco-hosted uh by myself and Dr.
Dan Shaffer.
Hello.
Uh partner in the Business ofDentistry conferences that we
were talking about uh on theprevious few episodes uh that we
filmed, that we filmed.
And as I say, we're actuallyfilming a hat trick podcast
episode today, which is reallycool.
(03:04):
We're still in the venue forthe business of dentistry event
yesterday, which we're superpleased with, how that went,
which is really cool.
But anyway, that's not thepurpose of today's podcast.
That is not the main purpose oftoday's podcast.
The main purpose is to discusspaid ads, how dental practices
can leverage them, how they canuse them, how they can get the
max out of it as well, becausesome people will be doing it but
(03:25):
not doing it that well.
And then also, number three,what has changed in 2026?
Because what is that updatecalled on Meta, Rahil?
What's it called?
Oh man, that's gonna annoy theabsolute heck out of me.
Uh but I'm sure it'll come I'msure it'll come to us.
I'm sure it'll come to us.
But in essence, what haschanged uh when it comes to
advertising on Meta is thatthere's a lot more of a focus on
(03:48):
creatives that are bespoke tothe exact person who is viewing
the ad.
You're getting profiled on thatlevel by the algorithm.
There might be a baselinecreative, and then the creative
is adapted for you as a uniqueindividual who is on the
platform to encourage you toclick.
And that is why the game haschanged.
More on that in just a minute.
But anyway, it might be a goodplace to start.
(04:09):
Uh Ragha, what might be a goodplace to start is is just to
talk about what is still themeta uh in uh 2026 by way of
what seems to be working themost effectively.
Yeah, most effective.
What is what does meta standfor again?
I remember Elton said it at thelast event.
It was most most effective.
Most effective tactic tacticaladvantage.
(04:31):
Something like that was itactually is it actually is a um
it's an acronym, yeah,apparently, which I didn't know.
I just thought it meant themost supreme tactic, most
effective tactic available.
It's just come to me.
It's just come to me.
So there we go.
So what is now that we'vedefined that, what is the meta
in 2026?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
What is the meta for paid advertising?
Um for dental practice, thefirst time.
Yeah, yeah.
Of course.
When it comes to advertising oneither Facebook or Instagram,
when it comes to paid ads, thecreative is key.
I think you you covered itbefore.
Um and the reason is, and thename of the update is gonna is
(05:12):
still escaping me, but it willcome to me at some point.
But the targeting system thatit does now is so advanced that
it will show your ad to theright people if the creative is
right.
You can obviously set a lot ofstuff in terms of like you know,
your targeting and of, youknow, we we can go we can go
(05:34):
into stuff like that, but if thecreative isn't right, it
doesn't matter how good you setyour, you know, your targeting
or what clusters the metaactually groups it into, nothing
will nothing will be aseffective as if the creative is
actually right.
Um that's more on the obviouslyon the meta side.
(05:56):
Um what we kind of you know, wedo both Google and we do meta
paid advertising.
We actually are of the opinionthat you maximize Google, which
is I'd actually say not whatmajority of agencies will do,
they will look to optimise metafirst.
Um our logic for optimizingGoogle is that you capture them
(06:22):
at a more kind of warm stage inthe buying journey.
If they're actively searchingfor be it implants or invisaline
or whatever, whatever treatmentit may be, there's already a
base level of interest that isthere compared to Meta when
someone gets shown an ad.
Obviously, there's a lot ofretargeting that's done, but
(06:43):
primarily if they're shown an adfor the first time, it's a lot
harder to gauge that that levelof interest of where they are.
They could be ready to go, orthey could be literally barely
interested.
Whereas with Google, we kindof, you know, the barrier or the
the bar is higher in terms ofyou're actively searching.
On Google, you're not justdoing it for a hobby, like no
(07:05):
one searches invisible near meor you know, cosmetic bonding
burning them or whatever it maybe, like you know, just because
they're bored, but you know,they actively have an interest,
it's you know something that uhthey're looking to pursue.
So we actually optimise forGoogle first, which does mean a
higher cost per lead, granted,but in terms of higher quality
(07:25):
leads, which eventually leads tomore bums and chairs, as we
talked about earlier, it's uhit's a more effective strategy
for us.
Speaker (07:33):
It's interesting, isn't it?
Because I mean, with let's sayimplants or clear aligners or
competent bonding, or you know,whatever else it is.
Um the cost per lead on Google,let's say, you know, it's a
really expensive case, it's anall-on-for you're doing, it's
gonna you're gonna generate 10to 15,000 pounds.
Your cost per lead might bewhat, £100, something like that,
(07:57):
you know, in a competitivearea?
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Yeah, so let's say it honestly depends on the
treatment.
Yeah.
Um let's say for something forsomething like that, yeah, you
are gonna look at a high costper lead on Google.
Speaker (08:09):
Or or for uh a filling or an emergency appointment, it
might end up being £10 or £5.
You know, a low cost per lead.
And it's difficult for me as apractitioner, as a dentist, and
a clinic owner, or a clinicowner, to be able to assess um
properly, right?
(08:29):
Well, I've got to budget amarketing spend, an advertising
spend, I've got to look at allof these things as part of a
cost of running the practice.
Yes.
And I'm laying out thesehundred pound tokens to generate
these patients, and I need tosee it translate into the cases
to get the payoff.
Yeah.
And and that's really difficultfor me to get my head around.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
I get what you mean, and it's it's why some practices
will feel like they're throwinghundreds, if not thousands,
every month on paid ads, and youknow, they're not seeing bums
on chairs.
Um because there's there is avery, you know, it's it's it's a
very complicated game, paidads.
Like, you know, there's a wholeand it comes back to the funnel
(09:15):
of what we were talking aboutearlier.
Like, you know, you may youmight be excellent at generating
awareness, but when it comesdown to actually getting
patients that are, you know,potential patients that are
ready and getting the bums inthe chairs, you know, your your
journey might not be optimizedfor that, and you're gonna have
a massive drop-off.
So it comes back to what wewere saying earlier.
We were we were backwards.
(09:37):
Typically, what we'll find iswe will do paid advertising for
the higher, higher valuetreatments, be that clear
liners, be that implants and bethat cosmetic bonding, that you
know, those are the sorts ofsorts of treatments that you'll
typically find a practice we'lldo paid advertising for, and
we'll work backwards.
We'll say, right, if we want todo 10 cases, and you know, if
(10:01):
we want to do 10 cases thismonth, a case could be of clear
liners, we could say a casecould be one an implant, it
could be cosmetic, but we'llcast it, we'll class it all as a
case.
We want to do 10 of these thismonth, and then we work
backwards to work out, okay,this is how many leads we're
gonna have to bring in.
And then we you know we createan average.
(10:22):
So we're like, right, if thecost per lead average that we're
looking for is around 50-60pounds, that sets what is going
to be essentially our paidadvertising budget.
So we don't like to just pull afigure out of the air just
because the practice has beenlike, well, you know, we spend
this much on paid ads becausethis is what we've always done.
We just target base everything.
(10:44):
We look at what your, you know,what you want to do, what your
conversion rate is from thispoint to this point to this
point, and we basically get to apoint where like, right, we
need to generate this manyleads.
Your average cost per lead isgonna be this, this is gonna be
our budget, and then we see whatwe, you know, we see what comes
out from it.
But there is always, as withanything, there is always a lot
(11:06):
of there's a there is a learningperiod with paid outs as well,
which is what I think a lot ofpractices don't like.
And obviously, like it feelslike you're throwing money away.
Um, but that learning period iscrucial to be able to like
refine, test, learn what works,what doesn't, and it eventually
makes everything a lot moreefficient as you do more and
(11:27):
more of it.
Speaker (11:28):
And it is fascinating hearing you analyze the
financials like that, which isexactly what we find in the
business of dentistryorganization, is that we meet so
many dentists who haven't gotthe experience or the confidence
to know the questions to ask,let alone get the information.
I mean, you know, whatquestions should I be asking a
(11:49):
marketeer about paid ads?
I I don't really know how thesystem works.
I I didn't know till recentlyabout quantifying the cost of an
implant lead to a certainnumber of pounds.
And and it's fascinating reallyto hear you break down the
finance, uh the finances, theanalysis there.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
So the way you know the way that we the way that we
look at things is like, youknow, let's say implant or you
know, clear aligners, should weset up you know, around £4,000,
should we say it will cost likeour patient will pay the
practice?
Obviously, each practice hastheir own kind of you know
individual systems in terms ofhow much profit is going to be
(12:30):
seen from that.
But let's say for clearaligners, you'll assume that
let's say one third of it willgo to the practice owner and to
minus their running costs andeverything like that.
And then it comes down to thepractice owner, and it's like,
okay, how much would you becomfortable to pay to get one of
these patients in the seat?
And for a lot of for a lot ofpractice owners, even they
(12:51):
haven't thought about this andthey don't have the metrics to
actually show what they havebeen paying beforehand, and it
turns out when you look into it,that they're losing money on
every case that they do.
Because even though they'recost per lead, which is what a
lot of agencies and what a lotof marketers will ask you to
focus on, because like you know,it's like you know, the it's
(13:13):
the first metric that everyonesees that oh yeah, our cost per
lead is great, everything mustbe going well.
But actually, when you drilldown into it, it's like, yeah,
cost per lead is great, it meansyou're getting a lot of like
you know, interested eyeballs onyour stuff that are inquiring.
But how many of them can youactually get in contact with and
get them scheduled in forbookings?
How many of those bookings areactually turning up?
(13:35):
How many of those ones thatturn up are actually the right
people that are converting?
So there's so many othermetrics, not just this cost per
lead that it feels like every uhevery agency hangs its hat on
in a sense that oh yeah, we candeliver, like, you know, a cost
per lead, like you know, we candeliver a £30 cost per lead, a
£20 cost per bag, you know,that's great.
Like, you know, there's manyways to make your cost per lead
(13:57):
cheaper, but it for us it's moreabout we want to give you the
bang for your buck, and bang foryour buck isn't necessarily
that you know so many leads,it's high quality ones that are
actually going to translate intobuns on seats, yeah.
And eventually money for thepractice.
Speaker (14:13):
And this really needs to be taken into account if we
look at in the backdrop of howthe profession has changed over
the past couple of decades tonow be a consumer-driven model
rather than patients are there,they come to practice, you don't
need to attract them because uhyou know that's how it used to
be.
But now consumer-driven, we'vegot the competition and
marketing authority, um uh youknow, just looking at pricing
(14:35):
and dentistry.
And are they going to be takinginto account this cost to
generate leads in aconsumer-driven dental market?
It's a really interestingquestion.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Well, it used to be that you know you open up a
dental practice and you knowyou'd have people walk in.
And I'm pretty sure that youknow a lot of practice owners
who are listening can probablyattest to this, it's not the
case anymore.
Like, you know, you have to youhave to show why people should
be coming to you over the otherdental practice, like probably
even across the street from you.
(15:04):
It's getting to that stage nowwhere like you know, there are
so many practices, and it is youknow, just like anything, it is
a competitive, you know, it isa competitive world out there,
and it is going into uh nearenough a race to the bottom on a
lot of treatments.
Like, you know, people are justconstantly undercutting each
other, which means thatprofitability for the practice
(15:25):
owner especially is gettingdwindled down and dwindled down,
and then it's like yourmarketing has to work even
harder because what you werepaying beforehand that you used
to make money on and you werecomfortable paying this much to
get a bum in a seat, suddenlybecause you've lowered this down
cost you know, you've loweredthe price down by 250 pounds,
(15:45):
suddenly I'm not making I'mbarely making any money at the
end of it.
So it's you know, it's it's areally interesting landscape at
the minute.
Um one that I think everyone iskind of navigating their their
their way through one way oranother.
Some people are, you know, theyfeel like they have no choice
other than to engage with thisrace to the bottom.
Some people are, you know,standing out on other things,
(16:08):
you know, and that's where whatwe were talking about earlier
with the organic strategy andactually making sure that these
things don't just operate intheir own silo.
Like, you know, make yeah, yourpaid ad could say one thing,
but as we've discussed, if theycome in and then your practice
looks and feels like somethingcompletely different, it's like,
well, I feel like I've beenmissold to here.
(16:28):
Or if they click on a paid ad,and as you know, it's not just
as simple as now paid ad, youknow, lead consultation,
booking, treatment.
You know, the paid ad is onlyone piece of that puzzle.
They might go for your paid adand they might look at your
social media that you're organicsocial media, they might look
at your website, and if the paidad and that journey is the most
(16:49):
polished thing ever, buteverything else around it just
doesn't speak the same way thatthat does, there's a massive
disconnect there.
So it might seem like, oh mygod, I'm getting so many clicks
on my paid ads, everything'slooking great, but the bums
aren't in the chairs, becausethere's a disconnect between
that and the way that the restof the marketing kind of funnel,
(17:09):
in a sense, that we weretalking about earlier, is is
operating.
Dr James (17:14):
Interesting.
Let's go back to that creativethat we talked about a second
ago, because the creative isking, right?
And this is obviously morerelevant to med ads, I get.
Yeah, um, but we and we dodefinitely want to talk about uh
Google in just a second.
The creative is king.
How can we make our creativistsengaging as dentists?
What about I think a lot ofpeople default to video
(17:36):
creatives, so there's a lot tobe said for still creativists,
right?
UK dentists, Dentists WhoInvest now has an official
platform where you can learnabout finance and obtain UK
compliant, verifiable DVD at thesame time.
The only platform that existson which you can do both.
The Smart Money Members Clubhas hundreds of hours of mini
courses, webinar series, andlive day recordings on all
(17:58):
things finance slash taxefficiency for UK dentists.
This includes complete courseson how tax works for UK
dentists, finance so that youcan invest and grow your own
money, business so you canimprove your profitability as an
associate or principal, and forthose out there that want it,
there's also a mini course andhow you can responsibly enter
(18:18):
the crypto space using measuredamounts of capital.
I've gathered this content fromthe best to the best I could
find in each respective area sothat you know that this is how
people at the forefront of eachfield advise their clients.
The Smart Money Members Clubalso contains discounts on
common things that UK dentistsneed to pay for on a regular
basis.
This includes a whopping 10%discount on dental indemnity,
(18:42):
the offer to beat your incomeprotection deal no matter what
you're paying, and for theprincipals out there, 5%
discount on lab bills and 10%discount on practice insurance.
These are designed to offerhundreds, if not thousands, in
annual savings.
The purpose of this membersclub is to not only boost your
monthly income but also manageyour outgoings as much as
possible and therefore createmore profit.
(19:03):
To celebrate the launch of theSmart Money Members Club, and
given that the CPD deadline iscoming up soon, I've decided to
offer the first month for thisplatform entirely for free.
This offer will end in thecoming weeks as soon as the
current CPD cycle is up.
To collect your CPD for thispodcast episode using the Smart
Money Members Club, feel free touse the link in the description
(19:25):
of this podcast.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
There is a lot to be said.
So we've done we literally lastmonth we did a really big
analysis on a lot of on all ofthe ads that we're kind of
managing for for all of ourpractices, and it was nearly a
dead-even split.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Really?
Speaker 1 (19:45):
So 52% of our top ads were video, but that meant 48
of them were actually 58%.
Dr James (19:53):
And can I comment on that briefly, right?
Static ad ads to create are waymuch less effort.
Right.
So this actually knowing thismakes ads so much more
accessible.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
100%, 100% video video ads, look, that they they
are you know they're brilliant.
You can you can explain somuch.
Like I'm not I'm not gonnadiminish the value of a video
ad, but they are a lot of work.
Not only for you guys, likeeven for even for us like from
the agency side to you know comeup with the script to edit it
in the right way, to make surethat you know we've got the B
run, everything that we need,like it's a lot more work, but a
(20:29):
static, genuinely in terms ofthe way the feed is, can
actually feel a lot more naturalif it's done right.
If it feels off, you know thoseads that you look at and you
can tell it's an ad, those as astatic won't do well.
But if it's something that'sactually pretty native to the to
the platform, what I mean bythat is like it looks like it
(20:51):
should be part of the feed.
Those do really well asstatics.
Speaker (20:55):
So what about just words on a coloured background?
I mean, those are part of myfeed and my socials all the
time.
And I I do read them, I mean,but I've never thought of
putting something like that as apaid ads.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
The thing is, what people what people don't like
with with meta and with paidadvertising generals, it comes
back to this testing pointearlier.
There are certain things thatwe know that will drive links,
like it's just the way it is.
But let's say with somethinglike that, what people don't
want to do is put a small littlebit of either what they don't
(21:31):
want to do is put a little bitof money behind it to test it.
And that could be somethingthat it doesn't work, and we're
like, okay, at least we know itdoesn't work now, but it could
work.
And then we could drive more,we could drive more from it than
we do with like a highperformance, like a high like
you know, edited video ad.
We have to be able to test allof these, all these different
things.
And something we do on theregular is if we find a winning
(21:54):
static for an ad, we will changeso many little things on it.
We'll change the colour, we'llchange the colours, like you
know, because different colourspeople respond to it in
different ways.
We'll change the like you know,where like you know, the
position of the logo, even likethe the style of the well, we
will change so many differentthings, and from one winning ad,
we then now have like 10variations of something that you
(22:16):
know we don't know whether thisis working, but we just need to
keep finding what people areresponding to.
We've realized that theyrespond to the colour blue over
the colour green.
We have to be able to test,like we have to be able to test
that.
It doesn't just there's noformula of right, put the money
in.
This ad is gonna definitelygenerate you 30 leads if you do
(22:36):
it.
Like the the algorithm isalways changing, so that's why
the creative for us isespecially on Meta is is so so
key.
Dr James (22:45):
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, and I've actually beenthere for my own ads before,
where you have exactly the sametext, okay, on uh uh let's say a
yellow background, right?
And then you swap it to, Iremember there was this one time
with swap, it was from a yellowsunset background to a red
background, and I think theclick three rate went up by one
percent.
And that's actually quite alot, right?
(23:07):
Like that's that's asignificant amount.
It went from like four percentto five percent, or possibly
five to six, which is prettyyeah, I was pretty pleased with
that.
To be honest with you, and I weliterally just changed the
colour for the same money,you're getting more people.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah.
You're essentially getting moreleads for the same money by
just editing one color.
Dr James (23:26):
The colour just psychology is crazy, it
fascinates me.
And I'm sure you've got allsorts of stories like that as
well, where you took the logoand or or even when you put
spelling mistakes in thatsometimes as well.
You know, you can you canreally go there.
I would I've seen some thatwork reels watch out for reels,
okay?
They do that intentionallysometimes, and the reason is
(23:48):
people engage in the commentslike you can't spell the word
hello, you're so dumb bad, andthen that puts just the
engagement.
I'm not saying everybody can dothis.
I just said it's funny that itexists.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
We're gonna all thought the spelling mistakes on
that.
Speaker (24:02):
Oh, the tental ads on the spelling mistakes.
I don't know who's listening tothe podcast.
Dr James (24:07):
There we go.
There we go.
I can always I can understandthat I can already see it.
I can see that working.
Yeah, sure.
Um but yeah, so um there's sothere's so there's so many
different things you can yeahyou can test.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Like, you know, it's obviously the you can test on
the creator, but you can alsolike you know, you can test on
the captions as well.
Like there's um there's a wholekind of debate going on on
whether people want to havethese, you know, short, snappy
captions that kind of tell youum they kind of you know
(24:42):
summarise what you need to knowand that you like a couple of
lines, or some people go forreally, really long-winded
captions to give meta moreinformation about these are the
type of people that we you knowthat we think this ad should be
should be pushed to.
Um there's so many things youcan test, and the only way one
of the things that we one of thetips that people can take like
(25:04):
straight away is we will alwaysboost high performing organic
videos as a paid ad.
Because we already have a sensethat you know the people that
follow our accounts on socialmedia, for example, they're
pretty much our ideal patients,if you think about it.
The people that are alreadyfollowing us, that are engaging
(25:24):
with our content, we'd love tohave more of them as patients,
yeah?
So if a video or a static thatwe've done is already performing
well with this group of peoplethat already follow us, that are
our ideal patient group, whydon't we just push it out to
more people like that?
Don't reinvent the wheel,right?
So if we if something performswell organically, we will always
(25:46):
push it paid-wise as well.
And that means that sometimesit's not the most polished video
or it's not the most polishedstatic.
It's something quite fun.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
But those sometimes do very well from a paid point
of view.
So it's one of those thingsthat a lot of people will like
real life, don't they?
Speaker (26:06):
They like reality.
Dr James (26:08):
Yeah, it's one of those things.
I think one of the greatestmistakes people make in
marketing is they automaticallyassume it has to be really
polished, right?
Like they they think they thinkto themselves, hey, I'm doing
marketing now.
This is what marketing lookslike, and it's super it, you
know, they spend lots of timecrafting and refining something
that just looks a bitartificial, and that actually
(26:29):
turns people off, right?
Listen, there's there's there'san art to it, right?
Because you can't just gocompletely uh you know lazy with
the post at the same time,right?
But there's there's there'sthere's a line.
There is a line.
That's what I'm getting at.
And you know, sorry, were yougonna say something on that?
Speaker 1 (26:43):
I was just I was just gonna ask, like, think about
the type of content that youengage with on on a bit on
social media.
That's exactly it's not alwaysthe most, you know, the one that
has the most like you knowproduction value behind it that
shows this absolutely perfectlife.
There is a case that you needthese high-quality videos, be it
of your patient journey, likewhen a patient got, you know,
you need to, there's videos thatyou need to invest in.
(27:05):
But there are there is amassive case for real,
authentic, in the momentcontent, because that's what
people on the platforms are usedto.
The stuff that we found reallyinteresting with ads was 88% of
our top performing ads were theyhad a native feeling to them.
It felt like they belonged ineither the the Reels tab or on
(27:28):
your on your like you know, onyour home, like on your on your
feed.
It felt like they weren'tactually as obvious that this
was an app.
Those were our best, like a lotof our best performers felt
native to the platform asopposed to, oh, I can instantly
tell this is an app.
There's exceptions to it,obviously, if you're running an
open day, if you're running asale, if you're running an
(27:49):
event, you need to make itobvious that you know this is
you know this is what we'redoing.
But when it comes to like youknow, general inquiries or like
you know, booking for like youknow, clear aligners or
implants, sometimes the bestthing isn't to just be bold and
like you know, high quality, isactually to blend something in
with their feed that looks likesomething that they engage in
(28:10):
normally.
Speaker (28:11):
Exactly.
And it's weird, isn't it?
Because when when you watchsomething on Netflix or you
know, you're watching a film ora series, you you kind of get
forced into watching adverts.
Um and and you know, like for Idon't know, uh a new mop or you
know, with this family that'svery manufactured in the advert
and they do this song and danceroutine, and you know it's
(28:32):
manufactured, and you don'treally want to watch it, it's a
bit cringe, but you end upwatching it because you're
forced to watch it.
It's very different on socialbecause you can choose whether
to scroll past, you can choosewhether to click on, you can
choose what you want to do, andif you don't like it now, you
can even do it later.
You know, so it's very muchmore under your control.
It's just shoved in front ofyour face and you choose whether
(28:53):
to interact.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
And that's why that's you know, that's the whole meta
versus Google debate summed upbecause you know you advertise
on on Facebook and Instagrambecause of what you've just
said, like you know, it's justgonna come in your feed, you are
gonna get a lot more eyeballson this stuff.
Like it's only natural there'smore people on the platform,
like you are gonna get moreeyeballs on it, and more
eyeballs, you can generate alower cost police.
(29:15):
It's just like it's just facts.
That's just the way that it is.
But we don't know where thatperson, like you know, that
person that it's being shown to,it is so much harder to look at
where they are in terms oftheir interest level in the
treatment.
They could be ready to buytomorrow and get into a
consultation, or they couldliterally just be finding out
(29:37):
about it for the first time.
It's so much harder.
Whereas, you know, it comesback to the Google that you
know, Meta versus Google, whensomeone searches something on
Google, you have at least asense that, okay, I'm interested
in this thing.
Exactly.
There's an intention to whatthey're doing.
With Meta, it is harder tojudge that intention, so you
know you get more eyeballs, butwhich means like a lower cost
(29:59):
per lead, but then you'll hear alot of people say, Oh, but I
couldn't get a hold of the lead,or like you know, you know,
they they were a no-show orthis, that, and the other.
So they it can be a lowerquality.
Speaker (30:09):
So then, in the example we were using before, maybe uh
let's assign the arbitrary £100for this £10,000 implant case.
For a meta lead for a similarkind of treatment, you'd expect
to pay a lot less, maybe £10,£20, you know, whatever it might
be.
But then you're saying thatthat lead doesn't quite have the
intention that the Googleleague would have.
(30:30):
So you couldn't have you mightget five times the number of
leads.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
But that'll be five times harder to contact, or
they'll get more Notion, or youknow, whatever it is, like you
know, of course, there's there'sdifferent ways of looking at
this.
Like that there are going tobe, you probably heard like you
know, some agency owners or somepeople in marketing tell you
that meta, like you know, metais the way to go.
Like, you know, there'sarguments for both.
Like, you know, we do thingsthis way because, in terms of if
(30:55):
someone's giving us uh you knowa kind of paid marketing budget
to work with, what's ourpriority for that practice?
Bums on seats.
It's not it's not number ofleads and all, like in the van,
like in a great like in thevanity matrix that a lot of
people like to look at.
What is our priority is to makesure you get bums on seats that
are actually interested in whatwe were what we were
(31:16):
advertising at.
Dr James (31:17):
You know, one quick question on Meta before we move
on to Google, because I I dothink it's super important we
talk about Google today as well.
I wanted to ask what yourstance was on let's say you have
a really good ad, really goodcreative, everything along those
lines.
Let's say that's going reallywell.
Where should that traffic besent to?
As in, where should the CTA goto?
(31:37):
Should it should it go to ameta leads capture form or
should it go to a landing page?
Or should it go to book aconsultation or just to the
website?
Or or is it just straight up tothe homepage on your website?
Let's there's throw all theoptions out there.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
So well, I wouldn't send it, I wouldn't send it to
the website um because that adis going to be for something
specific and that home and yourhome page is for everything.
So instantly they're gonnalet's say if they're inquiring
about like a clear alignment aswell.
We've used this example before,your homepage isn't gonna be
clear aligner focused, it'sgonna be everything about like
the practice as a whole, andthen that journey that they were
(32:16):
on becomes like it's gotbecomes great.
So I wouldn't send themdirectly to the website.
Landing pages is something thatwe use a lot of because it you
know it keeps them, it keepsthat journey going.
Like, you know, if they clickon a clear aligner ad, we have a
landing page that's conversionfocused based on clear aligners.
The advantage with lead formsis that it keeps them it's very
(32:38):
slick, it's slick, it keeps themin the platform.
And what Instagram, whatInstagram and Facebook both have
is like the autofill feature onlead forms where you know
you've got your details saved,you just click it in, it's very
slick, it's very easy.
There's there's advantages toboth.
The disadvantage with leadforms is and it comes, it's and
(33:00):
it's the biggest advantage ishow easy it is.
The amount of people thatbecause it's so easy, they'll be
like, Yeah, like you should.
I'll learn a bit.
Like I'll learn more, I'll givemy details, but then when it
comes down to it, they're eitherhard to contact or whatever it
may be.
Like it's ease can sometimes beit's undoing, whereas you know,
sending them to a landing page,and then there's like you know,
(33:21):
specific call to action onthere, they're actually having
to you know take a little bitmore time, read through that
landing page, click on you knowwherever that call to action is
gonna go, but it's more specificaction, and if they are
interested, that you know it's agood way to like improve that
quality of lead.
Um, but they both have theirthey both have their advantages.
I would definitely do one ofthe two as opposed to either um
(33:47):
sending them to like thehomepage of the website or
something like that.
I would definitely, yeah, Iwould definitely send them to
either a a lead form or or anoptimized kind of landing page
based on that.
Speaker (33:58):
Or you can get them directly to phone you.
I mean direct contact, I meanWhatsApp or whatever else.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Well, yeah, so what we yeah, it there's this it's
again it comes down to there'syou know there's things that
work good on the whole, but likewe have noticed discrepancies
among practices where we thoughtlike you know we would have two
practices in you know prettysimilar areas, not like you
know, geographically competing,but it's pretty similar areas
(34:25):
where we'd be like, no, thisshould work.
It's working for this one, itshould work for this one.
And that would be our firstpoint of call would be to like
you know try it this way.
But it wouldn't work for them,and you know, potentially
something like you know, gettinginto getting into calling
straight away would.
So it is kind of again havingthat ability and having that
(34:46):
willingness to test things outand understand that it's not
gonna be perfect from day one,like nothing like you can't just
no matter how much time youspend on the creative and how
much time you spend on makingsure this journey is the most
optimized it can be, there aregonna be things that we need to
learn and we need to test as wego on, and just having that you
(35:07):
know kind of willingness to dothat.
Dr James (35:09):
Nice.
All right, we really shouldtalk about Google.
Yes.
And tell me this.
I mean, I've always been amed-ads guy.
Yeah, it depends what you'retrying to do as well, right?
Like for good for dentalpractices, uh, Google can also
work as well as medads becausepeople are obviously searching
uh for your well, they'll have aproblem, and they're searching
(35:30):
for uh perhaps a cosmetictreatment or pain or something
along those lines, right?
Um so I can see how that wouldwork in principle for dental
practices because people areGoogling, they're already
problem aware and they knowabout the solution, they just
want to find it.
So it's very intentional,right?
Whereas sometimes people aren'teven aware they have how can
someone Google something andthey're not even aware they have
(35:51):
a problem.
Exactly.
Like, so it depends on yourniche, right?
If that's actually going towork for you.
But yeah, tell me, tell methis.
Do you feel that Google has hada little bit of a resurgence
recently versus Meta?
Or is it just or or was italways the case that they've
been about the same or maybeGoogle had an edge?
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Those are the big two.
Like, you know, regardless ofwhether you put Meta first or
Google first, like those are thetwo, you know, for nearly every
dental practice like out there,those are the big two that you
should be optimizing.
Google and Meta, whether you doGoop, whether you do Google
more, great.
If you do Meta if you do Googlemore, if you do Meta more, it's
(36:28):
up to you.
Like we've noticed that Googlewas a Google definitely a couple
of years ago was a really,really good place to advertise.
It was just after, it was inand around and just after that
COVID period.
Google was really good.
Like the cost per leads werereally cheap and the leads were
(36:50):
still really good quality.
But now that you know, morebusiness like that, everyone
started to over the past coupleof years, everyone started up
again, they got more cash flow,they're putting more money into
Google.
Like, you know, the cost perleads have gone up again.
People are like, you know,spending very aggressively on
Google, and like the cost perleads have gone higher, and it's
(37:10):
you know, it is pretty much uha case around the board that
they are gonna be higher thanMeta.
Um we do it because of thatintention piece that you both
mentioned earlier.
Um but I'm not gonna pin my haton oh yeah, like you know, it's
not a case of oh yeah, one overthe other.
It's ideally like you should bedoing both.
(37:32):
Nice.
You should be capturing theseones with higher intention from
Google, but also giving yourselfthe ability to have more
eyeballs from Meta.
Like our strategy is usuallylike you know, we have a Google
and we have a Meta spend, it'svery rare we have just one.
Yeah but in terms of one thatwe would look to maximize, we
(37:52):
look to maximize Google firstbecause it's all about guns and
suits.
Dr James (37:57):
Okay, tell me this, because I've I ran ads over the
years, found I completely gethow they work, but Google
doesn't actually work in thesame way that Meta does, right?
It's it's uh pay-per-click, Ibelieve, isn't it?
And it's all about keywords.
Can you give give us a littlebit of a rundown how Google
works for those who are in asimilar place to me?
Because I I'm not actually it'sactually not something I really
(38:17):
know a great deal about.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, and I want to avoid getting too technical with
it.
Sure, yeah.
Oh yeah, even just the handlevel.
I'm gonna I'm I'm not gonna gettoo technical, but yeah, it's
it's Google ads also called likein the paper click, as you
said.
Dr James (38:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
So let's say it's you know you bid on keywords or
search terms, um, be that youknow a treatment name and then
the city name or best dentistnear me for like whatever
whatever those keywords andthose terms may be, you can't
guarantee unless you're puttingin huge amounts of money, you
(38:52):
are not gonna be the person thatif every single person searches
up this term that your ad isgonna feature.
So the more money you put in,the more percentage of times
your ad is gonna come up.
And then every time someoneclicks on it, you basically pay
a fee.
And it's that's what that'swhere like you know the
pay-per-click comes from.
We always find it's better toobviously have landing pages
(39:15):
there, they're more conversionfocused, but you'll often find
people are always bidding forthe same kind of keywords or
search terms, um, which is whereit can get really competitive,
and this is where in essence AIis kind of changing the way that
that Google paid ads is workingfor us, because what used to be
(39:39):
the trend of people is theyused to search very short
questions on Google or veryshort keywords on Google.
Now you'll actually find thatthe average kind of search
length has gone up.
People are asking more specificquestions, which means from a
dental practice point of view,the keywords that yes, are still
(40:02):
you know very popular, but arethe most expensive.
There's a more variety ofthings that you can actually be
bidding on now, and even morespecific ones that will be
nearly untapped because a lot ofpractices and a lot of ACs
won't realise that AI isaffecting the way that you know
people are people are askingquestions in completely
(40:24):
different ways than we werebefore.
Speaker (40:26):
Do you mean like let's say teeth whitening?
Yeah, people used to put intoGoogle um cheap teeth whitening,
let's say.
Yeah, and then you used to bidon that term, and now people in
ChatGPT or whatever AI search,they're putting in I want to
whiten my teeth near Rochester.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
There will be a lot more specific with.
I think I think you know, Dan,you're obviously like you know,
you're uh an a you know a big AIuser in terms of ChatGPT and on
all these other facts, you'llnotice yourself being more
specific with the questions thatyou ask AI compared to what you
search on Google.
I I want white teeth, how do Ido it?
(41:03):
There's there's just thethere's I don't want to get too
technical.
Speaker (41:07):
I I want to avoid getting too technical with it,
but basically what you're sayingbecause it does vary the the
way that people ask questions.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
It gives people there's more opportunity now on
Google because of AI than youknow than there was before,
which is why you know we'restill, you know, we're still
very much very much on the onthe optimized Google train.
Dr James (41:28):
Okay, and I'm glad you brought AI in because I was
actually just about to ask thatas well.
Okay, cool.
So I'm guessing where someonelike you comes in whenever it
comes to Google ads, Rahil, isyou'll have a big old bank of
keywords that Dennis usedsomewhere, because that's
actually really hard to figureout.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
So we what we have that what we have that kind of
separates us is we have so muchdata when it comes to the when
it comes to paid ads in general.
I think we're spending upwardsacross Google and Meta, we're
spending upwards of a quarter ofa million every month.
So the amount of data that wehave on and it's ever it's not
(42:09):
as if it's like, oh yeah, onemonth we have this and what like
it's consistently every month,and we can look at the buy with
we can look at patterns on whatpeople are clicking on a couple
of months ago compared to whatthey aren't clicking on now, and
that's what really sets kind ofany you know what sets a lot of
agencies apart is like how muchdata you basically have access
(42:30):
to to inform your decisions.
Like, you know, you are gonnamake a lot of decisions based on
like you know, just I thinkthis would work, but for a lot
of us, like you know, we backdecisions based on data, and
what we have is essentially alot of that.
Um, and data always uh informsour previous decisions and our
future decisions, whether welike it or not.
(42:50):
We are gonna base it on what'sworked.
So if a new practice comes in,it's not as if we are starting
from scratch here.
We already know, like, okay,your practice is, you know, this
is where your practice, youknow, this is what your practice
is doing right now, this iswhat you want to focus on.
Let's see if we've worked withanother practice, it's probably
a similar area, but you know,another practice who was in this
(43:13):
position beforehand, what'sworked for them.
Then we can have a look back atpractices like them near you in
a geographical area and seewhat's worked for them.
Like we just have a big kind ofsilo of data that's ever
growing that just gives us, youknow, gives us more access to to
figure out what will workquicker and gives us the ability
to test so much moreefficiently.
Dr James (43:35):
Yeah.
Well, that's cool, isn't it?
Because obviously we wantdata-led decisions, don't we?
Um, and I can totally see howwhen it comes to the keyword
side of things, you're trying toput yourself in the shoes of
what the other person is asking.
But because us dentists are arejust too technical ourselves,
that's quite hard to guess, youknow.
(43:56):
Um, so I can I can definitelysee that being valuable.
And I want to actually circleback to the AI thing that you
mentioned just a second ago.
Speaker (44:02):
There's no worry that as soon as we talk about
anything, we always have to talkabout the uh AI effect on that
subject.
Dr James (44:09):
Pretty much, right?
Which kind of gives you alittle bit of a clue as to how
and launch AI is just gonnacompletely shape everything up,
or is shaking everything up, isshaking everything up, rather,
um, because it just has so manyuh it's so much utility,
utility.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
Um yes, you see there were ads in ChatGPT now.
Oh really?
They rolled their their pipe,they've they've started to roll
them out in the US.
It hasn't cut it hasn't madeits way over to the UK.
But if you ask a question,let's say, about um when you
you're you're asking ChatGPTabout an air fryer, it will show
you ads for air fryers now.
(44:46):
It won't just give you likerecommendations, there'll be ads
related to your search, likeyour query and AI.
Dr James (44:52):
Does it say ad?
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Yes.
Oh, it does funds but it'swhatever it's suddenly another
channel.
With the amount of you know,people that are using AI, it's
suddenly another channel.
So like the AI is it's it'sit's you know, it's changing
everything in terms of the theway that we're we're looking at
stuff.
Dr James (45:08):
You know what?
Just on that, um incidentally,someone was talking on the stage
yesterday on business ofdentistry.
Um And um someone then we had aQ ⁇ A section for that person.
And uh I went over with themicrophone, I gave it to the
individual who wanted to ask aquestion.
And the person who was askingthe question, they they
literally they took the mic andthey were like, hey, I've just
(45:29):
chat GPT to you, okay?
The person who's on the stage.
You know, I and I was justlike, like, you know, you know,
fair enough.
Uh I guess it's a completelyreasonable thing to do.
I just it just never would haveoccurred to me to do that.
And you know, while you'retalking, people are literally
chat GPTing, you know.
I tried to see what comes up.
Speaker (45:46):
Um, but yeah, I guess um luckily the audience member
did confirm that what thespeakers were speaking about was
actually very true according tochat GPT and the code.
Which was a great confirmation.
It was a very positive thing.
Dr James (45:59):
Oh, yeah, hopefully I didn't give people the
impression that it wasn't a goodone.
No, you didn't you didn't.
Speaker (46:03):
I just think that was a really nice uh bit of the
story.
Dr James (46:08):
Yeah, that was why he actually he was like, guys, look
what I've just found inChatGPT.
It's really positive and itconfirms what you're saying,
basically.
That was his messageeffectively that he then said
when I gave him the mic.
Uh, but yeah, so uh where I wasgoing on that was uh well to
another thing to mention on thatis actually our next conference
will be focusing on AI as a keycomponent as well, because
(46:29):
someone's gotta do it inflipping dentistry, right?
Someone someone's got to stepup.
And you know what?
Like I said, there's just somuch to tell you there in some
of the applications.
Speaker (46:37):
I think that's gonna be interest as well.
Dr James (46:39):
That's that's gonna be part of it for sure.
So keep your eyes uh keep youruh yeah, you know, keep your
keep uh eyes peeled, keep youreyes peeled is the is the word
I'm looking for uh for news onthat one.
But Rachel, what I wanted toask you is how much do dental
practices have to take this intoaccount as to the strategy?
Now, do they have to doanything different?
Are you doing anythingdifferent as a marketer for
dentists and dental practices?
Speaker 1 (47:00):
We are like, you know, we are because we have to
be.
Um I think it's AI is at thestage now where you just you
know you can't ignore it.
Um so we have to, you know,bear in mind everything.
Um we were talking about itearlier when it comes to Google
now.
There's this thing called umthat you know, there's this
(47:23):
zero-click searches.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Uh-huh.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
And that's because Google's AI is generating you an
AI overview before you even seethe paid ads, the organic, the
organic like um listings,anything, the AI overview will
come up first.
So if someone has a like aproblem, Google will solve it
for them in the AI overview, andthey won't even need to click
anything anymore.
They don't even get to see thepaid ads.
(47:47):
So it's something that we'realways constantly looking at is
like, you know, how is AI kindof changing like you know the
way the platforms are arebehaving.
Um obviously each platform andyou know, everyone's got their
own kind of AI as well.
Um so we've got to we've got tobe wary of it.
Um but from let's say anindividual dental practices
(48:10):
point of view, um it's kind ofbeing I think it's the I think
it's kind of being aware that itit's here to stay almost.
Like this AI, and I don't know,everyone calls it a bubble, but
it's it's not going anywherenow.
It is gonna and it probablyalready has affected the way
that we do near enougheverything at this point.
(48:33):
There's only so much anindividual dental practice can
do with it from a marketingpoint of view, is that you know
that is more on us as marketeersto actually take the technology
and use it in the mostefficient way for them.
Like, you know, we use it alot, like I'm not afraid to say
it, like as a you know, as ateam at Mind Small Media, we use
(48:53):
AI a lot when it comes to whenit comes to our like daily
stuff, uh and that's because itcan do things so much better
than we can.
And the biggest one is probablylike interpretation of data and
reporting.
I'm not gonna tell it to yeah,based on this, going generate me
however many like new ads,because you know that's where
(49:15):
you need the human element ofcreativity.
But in terms of summarising theresults of like the hundreds of
thousands of ads that we arerunning at a time and generating
stuff that's common, likecommonalities among the winners,
it can do that so much betterthan we can.
That's that data analysis, andit saves the team hours where
they can then be focusing on theclients and getting creative
(49:36):
with what's working and what'snot.
But we we use AI all the timeto you know supplement what we
do, and there's obviously a lotof you know AI tools in and
around the industry, not just inmarketing, but also like you
know, in all aspects ofdentistry that you know that
help out and make things moreefficient, like you know, 3D
scanners that use you know, thistechnology is probably the one
(49:57):
that's been around for for a lotof years now.
People didn't associate it withAI, but it is AI just in you
know, just in another just inanother form.
Um but it's it's something youhave to be aware of in this in
this day and age.
Speaker (50:11):
And are you are you worried about running a
marketing agency and AI comingin and kind of cutting into your
business uh so to speak?
Oh we I mean I know AI givesyou efficiencies and you said it
could do jobs differently andit can take snapshots of fast
amounts of data and do all kindsof really good stuff.
Yes.
But do you see AI taking achunk?
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Oh, and I I'm not gonna sit here and lie and say
that oh, you can't do a lot ofwhat a marketing agency will do
for you with AI.
Like you can, but the a AI isonly as good as what you feed
into it.
And I am very confident insaying that the average dental
practice will not be able toutilize AI from a marketing
(50:57):
standpoint, from a marketingstandpoint in terms of like
running managing their theirmeta out or building their
website or wherever it may be,as good as let's say if they
worked with a with a specialistagency, because we just have so
much more data and inputs thatwe can give it.
Yeah, AI is only as good aswhat you give it.
Like, you know, if you ask itto write you a script for an
(51:18):
Instagram reel or for an ad, forexample, the more detailed you
are with that prompt that yougive it, the better the output's
gonna be.
If you give it somethinggeneric, it's gonna pull generic
stuff.
Excuse me.
Um but if you're specific withit, it will give you some pretty
good output back.
And I'm not gonna lie and saywe don't use it.
(51:40):
We help, we ask it to like youknow, we ask it to help with our
scripts and like you know,thinking of new ways to like you
know present content that wehaven't thought of before.
But actually the creativityelement of like new stuff to try
and actually like you knowinterpreting all of this and
making a new plan out of it,that's where I think a lot of
(52:02):
dentist practices they did justgo with like an AI-led approach,
would struggle.
Like it just doesn't haveunless you feed it an incredible
amount of data, that intuitionto make the decision that's
right for your practice, it willgive you something that's
generic that could workanywhere.
And you know, I'm pretty surepeople will have seen it.
If you ask it for social mediaideas without giving it context,
(52:24):
it will just give you stuffthat's painfully obvious.
Speaker (52:27):
Hallucinations, yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
Yeah, it'll either give you stuff that's painfully
obvious or stuff that's justlike, well, this definitely
won't work.
And that's because it's takingstuff from everywhere.
Whereas if you're specific withit and you, you know, you use
it in a way that is, you know,you need to kind of learn, you
know, it's the same withanything, you need to learn
these, you know, these newplatforms and how it wants to be
(52:50):
prompted and the data it needsto be given, and all these, you
know, we could do a a wholepodcast on it.
It's just like you know, it'ssuch a a trendy topic at the
minute, but it's um it's onethat we're definitely uh trying
to be on top of as we can day today, that all the team are uh
are using it, and I think thatevery dental practice like
(53:11):
should be using it.
Like I don't think it'ssomething to be shying away
from, but over reliance on itwhen you're not feeding it the
right stuff is potentiallysomething I would I would be
worrying about.
There is
Smart Money Members Club also includes multiple
money courses and webinarstories with finance for
dentists, including part of thecontent tax as well as on family
investing.
All this content coins has averifiable CPD, and you can
download your certificates thereand then on the PC lesson.
In addition to this, we alsoinclude a whopping 10% discount
(02:20):
on the dental identity and a 5%discount on lab builds for
dental principles, amongst otherparts and discoints for
members.
Please use the link in thedescription to claim your
verifiable CPD for this episode.
Paid ads.
Let's talk about paid adsbecause you haven't done that in
a long time, especially what'snew in 2026.
(02:43):
Because the game has donechange, hasn't it, Rahil?
But we'll come on to that injust a second.
This is another episodeco-hosted uh by myself and Dr.
Dan Shaffer.
Hello.
Uh partner in the Business ofDentistry conferences that we
were talking about uh on theprevious few episodes uh that we
filmed, that we filmed.
And as I say, we're actuallyfilming a hat trick podcast
episode today, which is reallycool.
(03:04):
We're still in the venue forthe business of dentistry event
yesterday, which we're superpleased with, how that went,
which is really cool.
But anyway, that's not thepurpose of today's podcast.
That is not the main purpose oftoday's podcast.
The main purpose is to discusspaid ads, how dental practices
can leverage them, how they canuse them, how they can get the
max out of it as well, becausesome people will be doing it but
(03:25):
not doing it that well.
And then also, number three,what has changed in 2026?
Because what is that updatecalled on Meta, Rahil?
What's it called?
Oh man, that's gonna annoy theabsolute heck out of me.
Uh but I'm sure it'll come I'msure it'll come to us.
I'm sure it'll come to us.
But in essence, what haschanged uh when it comes to
advertising on Meta is thatthere's a lot more of a focus on
(03:48):
creatives that are bespoke tothe exact person who is viewing
the ad.
You're getting profiled on thatlevel by the algorithm.
There might be a baselinecreative, and then the creative
is adapted for you as a uniqueindividual who is on the
platform to encourage you toclick.
And that is why the game haschanged.
More on that in just a minute.
But anyway, it might be a goodplace to start.
(04:09):
Uh Ragha, what might be a goodplace to start is is just to
talk about what is still themeta uh in uh 2026 by way of
what seems to be working themost effectively.
Yeah, most effective.
What is what does meta standfor again?
I remember Elton said it at thelast event.
It was most most effective.
Most effective tactic tacticaladvantage.
(04:31):
Something like that was itactually is it actually is a um
it's an acronym, yeah,apparently, which I didn't know.
I just thought it meant themost supreme tactic, most
effective tactic available.
It's just come to me.
It's just come to me.
So there we go.
So what is now that we'vedefined that, what is the meta
in 2026?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
What is the meta for paid advertising?
Um for dental practice, thefirst time.
Yeah, yeah.
Of course.
When it comes to advertising oneither Facebook or Instagram,
when it comes to paid ads, thecreative is key.
I think you you covered itbefore.
Um and the reason is, and thename of the update is gonna is
(05:12):
still escaping me, but it willcome to me at some point.
But the targeting system thatit does now is so advanced that
it will show your ad to theright people if the creative is
right.
You can obviously set a lot ofstuff in terms of like you know,
your targeting and of, youknow, we we can go we can go
(05:34):
into stuff like that, but if thecreative isn't right, it
doesn't matter how good you setyour, you know, your targeting
or what clusters the metaactually groups it into, nothing
will nothing will be aseffective as if the creative is
actually right.
Um that's more on the obviouslyon the meta side.
(05:56):
Um what we kind of you know, wedo both Google and we do meta
paid advertising.
We actually are of the opinionthat you maximize Google, which
is I'd actually say not whatmajority of agencies will do,
they will look to optimise metafirst.
Um our logic for optimizingGoogle is that you capture them
(06:22):
at a more kind of warm stage inthe buying journey.
If they're actively searchingfor be it implants or invisaline
or whatever, whatever treatmentit may be, there's already a
base level of interest that isthere compared to Meta when
someone gets shown an ad.
Obviously, there's a lot ofretargeting that's done, but
(06:43):
primarily if they're shown an adfor the first time, it's a lot
harder to gauge that that levelof interest of where they are.
They could be ready to go, orthey could be literally barely
interested.
Whereas with Google, we kindof, you know, the barrier or the
the bar is higher in terms ofyou're actively searching.
On Google, you're not justdoing it for a hobby, like no
(07:05):
one searches invisible near meor you know, cosmetic bonding
burning them or whatever it maybe, like you know, just because
they're bored, but you know,they actively have an interest,
it's you know something that uhthey're looking to pursue.
So we actually optimise forGoogle first, which does mean a
higher cost per lead, granted,but in terms of higher quality
(07:25):
leads, which eventually leads tomore bums and chairs, as we
talked about earlier, it's uhit's a more effective strategy
for us.
Speaker (07:33):
It's interesting, isn't it?
Because I mean, with let's sayimplants or clear aligners or
competent bonding, or you know,whatever else it is.
Um the cost per lead on Google,let's say, you know, it's a
really expensive case, it's anall-on-for you're doing, it's
gonna you're gonna generate 10to 15,000 pounds.
Your cost per lead might bewhat, £100, something like that,
(07:57):
you know, in a competitivearea?
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Yeah, so let's say it honestly depends on the
treatment.
Yeah.
Um let's say for something forsomething like that, yeah, you
are gonna look at a high costper lead on Google.
Speaker (08:09):
Or or for uh a filling or an emergency appointment, it
might end up being £10 or £5.
You know, a low cost per lead.
And it's difficult for me as apractitioner, as a dentist, and
a clinic owner, or a clinicowner, to be able to assess um
properly, right?
(08:29):
Well, I've got to budget amarketing spend, an advertising
spend, I've got to look at allof these things as part of a
cost of running the practice.
Yes.
And I'm laying out thesehundred pound tokens to generate
these patients, and I need tosee it translate into the cases
to get the payoff.
Yeah.
And and that's really difficultfor me to get my head around.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
I get what you mean, and it's it's why some practices
will feel like they're throwinghundreds, if not thousands,
every month on paid ads, and youknow, they're not seeing bums
on chairs.
Um because there's there is avery, you know, it's it's it's a
very complicated game, paidads.
Like, you know, there's a wholeand it comes back to the funnel
(09:15):
of what we were talking aboutearlier.
Like, you know, you may youmight be excellent at generating
awareness, but when it comesdown to actually getting
patients that are, you know,potential patients that are
ready and getting the bums inthe chairs, you know, your your
journey might not be optimizedfor that, and you're gonna have
a massive drop-off.
So it comes back to what wewere saying earlier.
We were we were backwards.
(09:37):
Typically, what we'll find iswe will do paid advertising for
the higher, higher valuetreatments, be that clear
liners, be that implants and bethat cosmetic bonding, that you
know, those are the sorts ofsorts of treatments that you'll
typically find a practice we'lldo paid advertising for, and
we'll work backwards.
We'll say, right, if we want todo 10 cases, and you know, if
(10:01):
we want to do 10 cases thismonth, a case could be of clear
liners, we could say a casecould be one an implant, it
could be cosmetic, but we'llcast it, we'll class it all as a
case.
We want to do 10 of these thismonth, and then we work
backwards to work out, okay,this is how many leads we're
gonna have to bring in.
And then we you know we createan average.
(10:22):
So we're like, right, if thecost per lead average that we're
looking for is around 50-60pounds, that sets what is going
to be essentially our paidadvertising budget.
So we don't like to just pull afigure out of the air just
because the practice has beenlike, well, you know, we spend
this much on paid ads becausethis is what we've always done.
We just target base everything.
(10:44):
We look at what your, you know,what you want to do, what your
conversion rate is from thispoint to this point to this
point, and we basically get to apoint where like, right, we
need to generate this manyleads.
Your average cost per lead isgonna be this, this is gonna be
our budget, and then we see whatwe, you know, we see what comes
out from it.
But there is always, as withanything, there is always a lot
(11:06):
of there's a there is a learningperiod with paid outs as well,
which is what I think a lot ofpractices don't like.
And obviously, like it feelslike you're throwing money away.
Um, but that learning period iscrucial to be able to like
refine, test, learn what works,what doesn't, and it eventually
makes everything a lot moreefficient as you do more and
(11:27):
more of it.
Speaker (11:28):
And it is fascinating hearing you analyze the
financials like that, which isexactly what we find in the
business of dentistryorganization, is that we meet so
many dentists who haven't gotthe experience or the confidence
to know the questions to ask,let alone get the information.
I mean, you know, whatquestions should I be asking a
(11:49):
marketeer about paid ads?
I I don't really know how thesystem works.
I I didn't know till recentlyabout quantifying the cost of an
implant lead to a certainnumber of pounds.
And and it's fascinating reallyto hear you break down the
finance, uh the finances, theanalysis there.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
So the way you know the way that we the way that we
look at things is like, youknow, let's say implant or you
know, clear aligners, should weset up you know, around £4,000,
should we say it will cost likeour patient will pay the
practice?
Obviously, each practice hastheir own kind of you know
individual systems in terms ofhow much profit is going to be
(12:30):
seen from that.
But let's say for clearaligners, you'll assume that
let's say one third of it willgo to the practice owner and to
minus their running costs andeverything like that.
And then it comes down to thepractice owner, and it's like,
okay, how much would you becomfortable to pay to get one of
these patients in the seat?
And for a lot of for a lot ofpractice owners, even they
(12:51):
haven't thought about this andthey don't have the metrics to
actually show what they havebeen paying beforehand, and it
turns out when you look into it,that they're losing money on
every case that they do.
Because even though they'recost per lead, which is what a
lot of agencies and what a lotof marketers will ask you to
focus on, because like you know,it's like you know, the it's
(13:13):
the first metric that everyonesees that oh yeah, our cost per
lead is great, everything mustbe going well.
But actually, when you drilldown into it, it's like, yeah,
cost per lead is great, it meansyou're getting a lot of like
you know, interested eyeballs onyour stuff that are inquiring.
But how many of them can youactually get in contact with and
get them scheduled in forbookings?
How many of those bookings areactually turning up?
(13:35):
How many of those ones thatturn up are actually the right
people that are converting?
So there's so many othermetrics, not just this cost per
lead that it feels like every uhevery agency hangs its hat on
in a sense that oh yeah, we candeliver, like, you know, a cost
per lead, like you know, we candeliver a £30 cost per lead, a
£20 cost per bag, you know,that's great.
Like, you know, there's manyways to make your cost per lead
(13:57):
cheaper, but it for us it's moreabout we want to give you the
bang for your buck, and bang foryour buck isn't necessarily
that you know so many leads,it's high quality ones that are
actually going to translate intobuns on seats, yeah.
And eventually money for thepractice.
Speaker (14:13):
And this really needs to be taken into account if we
look at in the backdrop of howthe profession has changed over
the past couple of decades tonow be a consumer-driven model
rather than patients are there,they come to practice, you don't
need to attract them because uhyou know that's how it used to
be.
But now consumer-driven, we'vegot the competition and
marketing authority, um uh youknow, just looking at pricing
(14:35):
and dentistry.
And are they going to be takinginto account this cost to
generate leads in aconsumer-driven dental market?
It's a really interestingquestion.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Well, it used to be that you know you open up a
dental practice and you knowyou'd have people walk in.
And I'm pretty sure that youknow a lot of practice owners
who are listening can probablyattest to this, it's not the
case anymore.
Like, you know, you have to youhave to show why people should
be coming to you over the otherdental practice, like probably
even across the street from you.
(15:04):
It's getting to that stage nowwhere like you know, there are
so many practices, and it is youknow, just like anything, it is
a competitive, you know, it isa competitive world out there,
and it is going into uh nearenough a race to the bottom on a
lot of treatments.
Like, you know, people are justconstantly undercutting each
other, which means thatprofitability for the practice
(15:25):
owner especially is gettingdwindled down and dwindled down,
and then it's like yourmarketing has to work even
harder because what you werepaying beforehand that you used
to make money on and you werecomfortable paying this much to
get a bum in a seat, suddenlybecause you've lowered this down
cost you know, you've loweredthe price down by 250 pounds,
(15:45):
suddenly I'm not making I'mbarely making any money at the
end of it.
So it's you know, it's it's areally interesting landscape at
the minute.
Um one that I think everyone iskind of navigating their their
their way through one way oranother.
Some people are, you know, theyfeel like they have no choice
other than to engage with thisrace to the bottom.
Some people are, you know,standing out on other things,
(16:08):
you know, and that's where whatwe were talking about earlier
with the organic strategy andactually making sure that these
things don't just operate intheir own silo.
Like, you know, make yeah, yourpaid ad could say one thing,
but as we've discussed, if theycome in and then your practice
looks and feels like somethingcompletely different, it's like,
well, I feel like I've beenmissold to here.
(16:28):
Or if they click on a paid ad,and as you know, it's not just
as simple as now paid ad, youknow, lead consultation,
booking, treatment.
You know, the paid ad is onlyone piece of that puzzle.
They might go for your paid adand they might look at your
social media that you're organicsocial media, they might look
at your website, and if the paidad and that journey is the most
(16:49):
polished thing ever, buteverything else around it just
doesn't speak the same way thatthat does, there's a massive
disconnect there.
So it might seem like, oh mygod, I'm getting so many clicks
on my paid ads, everything'slooking great, but the bums
aren't in the chairs, becausethere's a disconnect between
that and the way that the restof the marketing kind of funnel,
(17:09):
in a sense, that we weretalking about earlier, is is
operating.
Dr James (17:14):
Interesting.
Let's go back to that creativethat we talked about a second
ago, because the creative isking, right?
And this is obviously morerelevant to med ads, I get.
Yeah, um, but we and we dodefinitely want to talk about uh
Google in just a second.
The creative is king.
How can we make our creativistsengaging as dentists?
What about I think a lot ofpeople default to video
(17:36):
creatives, so there's a lot tobe said for still creativists,
right?
UK dentists, Dentists WhoInvest now has an official
platform where you can learnabout finance and obtain UK
compliant, verifiable DVD at thesame time.
The only platform that existson which you can do both.
The Smart Money Members Clubhas hundreds of hours of mini
courses, webinar series, andlive day recordings on all
(17:58):
things finance slash taxefficiency for UK dentists.
This includes complete courseson how tax works for UK
dentists, finance so that youcan invest and grow your own
money, business so you canimprove your profitability as an
associate or principal, and forthose out there that want it,
there's also a mini course andhow you can responsibly enter
(18:18):
the crypto space using measuredamounts of capital.
I've gathered this content fromthe best to the best I could
find in each respective area sothat you know that this is how
people at the forefront of eachfield advise their clients.
The Smart Money Members Clubalso contains discounts on
common things that UK dentistsneed to pay for on a regular
basis.
This includes a whopping 10%discount on dental indemnity,
(18:42):
the offer to beat your incomeprotection deal no matter what
you're paying, and for theprincipals out there, 5%
discount on lab bills and 10%discount on practice insurance.
These are designed to offerhundreds, if not thousands, in
annual savings.
The purpose of this membersclub is to not only boost your
monthly income but also manageyour outgoings as much as
possible and therefore createmore profit.
(19:03):
To celebrate the launch of theSmart Money Members Club, and
given that the CPD deadline iscoming up soon, I've decided to
offer the first month for thisplatform entirely for free.
This offer will end in thecoming weeks as soon as the
current CPD cycle is up.
To collect your CPD for thispodcast episode using the Smart
Money Members Club, feel free touse the link in the description
(19:25):
of this podcast.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
There is a lot to be said.
So we've done we literally lastmonth we did a really big
analysis on a lot of on all ofthe ads that we're kind of
managing for for all of ourpractices, and it was nearly a
dead-even split.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Really?
Speaker 1 (19:45):
So 52% of our top ads were video, but that meant 48
of them were actually 58%.
Dr James (19:53):
And can I comment on that briefly, right?
Static ad ads to create are waymuch less effort.
Right.
So this actually knowing thismakes ads so much more
accessible.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
100%, 100% video video ads, look, that they they
are you know they're brilliant.
You can you can explain somuch.
Like I'm not I'm not gonnadiminish the value of a video
ad, but they are a lot of work.
Not only for you guys, likeeven for even for us like from
the agency side to you know comeup with the script to edit it
in the right way, to make surethat you know we've got the B
run, everything that we need,like it's a lot more work, but a
(20:29):
static, genuinely in terms ofthe way the feed is, can
actually feel a lot more naturalif it's done right.
If it feels off, you know thoseads that you look at and you
can tell it's an ad, those as astatic won't do well.
But if it's something that'sactually pretty native to the to
the platform, what I mean bythat is like it looks like it
(20:51):
should be part of the feed.
Those do really well asstatics.
Speaker (20:55):
So what about just words on a coloured background?
I mean, those are part of myfeed and my socials all the
time.
And I I do read them, I mean,but I've never thought of
putting something like that as apaid ads.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
The thing is, what people what people don't like
with with meta and with paidadvertising generals, it comes
back to this testing pointearlier.
There are certain things thatwe know that will drive links,
like it's just the way it is.
But let's say with somethinglike that, what people don't
want to do is put a small littlebit of either what they don't
(21:31):
want to do is put a little bitof money behind it to test it.
And that could be somethingthat it doesn't work, and we're
like, okay, at least we know itdoesn't work now, but it could
work.
And then we could drive more,we could drive more from it than
we do with like a highperformance, like a high like
you know, edited video ad.
We have to be able to test allof these, all these different
things.
And something we do on theregular is if we find a winning
(21:54):
static for an ad, we will changeso many little things on it.
We'll change the colour, we'llchange the colours, like you
know, because different colourspeople respond to it in
different ways.
We'll change the like you know,where like you know, the
position of the logo, even likethe the style of the well, we
will change so many differentthings, and from one winning ad,
we then now have like 10variations of something that you
(22:16):
know we don't know whether thisis working, but we just need to
keep finding what people areresponding to.
We've realized that theyrespond to the colour blue over
the colour green.
We have to be able to test,like we have to be able to test
that.
It doesn't just there's noformula of right, put the money
in.
This ad is gonna definitelygenerate you 30 leads if you do
(22:36):
it.
Like the the algorithm isalways changing, so that's why
the creative for us isespecially on Meta is is so so
key.
Dr James (22:45):
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, and I've actually beenthere for my own ads before,
where you have exactly the sametext, okay, on uh uh let's say a
yellow background, right?
And then you swap it to, Iremember there was this one time
with swap, it was from a yellowsunset background to a red
background, and I think theclick three rate went up by one
percent.
And that's actually quite alot, right?
(23:07):
Like that's that's asignificant amount.
It went from like four percentto five percent, or possibly
five to six, which is prettyyeah, I was pretty pleased with
that.
To be honest with you, and I weliterally just changed the
colour for the same money,you're getting more people.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah.
You're essentially getting moreleads for the same money by
just editing one color.
Dr James (23:26):
The colour just psychology is crazy, it
fascinates me.
And I'm sure you've got allsorts of stories like that as
well, where you took the logoand or or even when you put
spelling mistakes in thatsometimes as well.
You know, you can you canreally go there.
I would I've seen some thatwork reels watch out for reels,
okay?
They do that intentionallysometimes, and the reason is
(23:48):
people engage in the commentslike you can't spell the word
hello, you're so dumb bad, andthen that puts just the
engagement.
I'm not saying everybody can dothis.
I just said it's funny that itexists.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
We're gonna all thought the spelling mistakes on
that.
Speaker (24:02):
Oh, the tental ads on the spelling mistakes.
I don't know who's listening tothe podcast.
Dr James (24:07):
There we go.
There we go.
I can always I can understandthat I can already see it.
I can see that working.
Yeah, sure.
Um but yeah, so um there's sothere's so there's so many
different things you can yeahyou can test.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Like, you know, it's obviously the you can test on
the creator, but you can alsolike you know, you can test on
the captions as well.
Like there's um there's a wholekind of debate going on on
whether people want to havethese, you know, short, snappy
captions that kind of tell youum they kind of you know
(24:42):
summarise what you need to knowand that you like a couple of
lines, or some people go forreally, really long-winded
captions to give meta moreinformation about these are the
type of people that we you knowthat we think this ad should be
should be pushed to.
Um there's so many things youcan test, and the only way one
of the things that we one of thetips that people can take like
(25:04):
straight away is we will alwaysboost high performing organic
videos as a paid ad.
Because we already have a sensethat you know the people that
follow our accounts on socialmedia, for example, they're
pretty much our ideal patients,if you think about it.
The people that are alreadyfollowing us, that are engaging
(25:24):
with our content, we'd love tohave more of them as patients,
yeah?
So if a video or a static thatwe've done is already performing
well with this group of peoplethat already follow us, that are
our ideal patient group, whydon't we just push it out to
more people like that?
Don't reinvent the wheel,right?
So if we if something performswell organically, we will always
(25:46):
push it paid-wise as well.
And that means that sometimesit's not the most polished video
or it's not the most polishedstatic.
It's something quite fun.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
But those sometimes do very well from a paid point
of view.
So it's one of those thingsthat a lot of people will like
real life, don't they?
Speaker (26:06):
They like reality.
Dr James (26:08):
Yeah, it's one of those things.
I think one of the greatestmistakes people make in
marketing is they automaticallyassume it has to be really
polished, right?
Like they they think they thinkto themselves, hey, I'm doing
marketing now.
This is what marketing lookslike, and it's super it, you
know, they spend lots of timecrafting and refining something
that just looks a bitartificial, and that actually
(26:29):
turns people off, right?
Listen, there's there's there'san art to it, right?
Because you can't just gocompletely uh you know lazy with
the post at the same time,right?
But there's there's there'sthere's a line.
There is a line.
That's what I'm getting at.
And you know, sorry, were yougonna say something on that?
Speaker 1 (26:43):
I was just I was just gonna ask, like, think about
the type of content that youengage with on on a bit on
social media.
That's exactly it's not alwaysthe most, you know, the one that
has the most like you knowproduction value behind it that
shows this absolutely perfectlife.
There is a case that you needthese high-quality videos, be it
of your patient journey, likewhen a patient got, you know,
you need to, there's videos thatyou need to invest in.
(27:05):
But there are there is amassive case for real,
authentic, in the momentcontent, because that's what
people on the platforms are usedto.
The stuff that we found reallyinteresting with ads was 88% of
our top performing ads were theyhad a native feeling to them.
It felt like they belonged ineither the the Reels tab or on
(27:28):
your on your like you know, onyour home, like on your on your
feed.
It felt like they weren'tactually as obvious that this
was an app.
Those were our best, like a lotof our best performers felt
native to the platform asopposed to, oh, I can instantly
tell this is an app.
There's exceptions to it,obviously, if you're running an
open day, if you're running asale, if you're running an
(27:49):
event, you need to make itobvious that you know this is
you know this is what we'redoing.
But when it comes to like youknow, general inquiries or like
you know, booking for like youknow, clear aligners or
implants, sometimes the bestthing isn't to just be bold and
like you know, high quality, isactually to blend something in
with their feed that looks likesomething that they engage in
(28:10):
normally.
Speaker (28:11):
Exactly.
And it's weird, isn't it?
Because when when you watchsomething on Netflix or you
know, you're watching a film ora series, you you kind of get
forced into watching adverts.
Um and and you know, like for Idon't know, uh a new mop or you
know, with this family that'svery manufactured in the advert
and they do this song and danceroutine, and you know it's
(28:32):
manufactured, and you don'treally want to watch it, it's a
bit cringe, but you end upwatching it because you're
forced to watch it.
It's very different on socialbecause you can choose whether
to scroll past, you can choosewhether to click on, you can
choose what you want to do, andif you don't like it now, you
can even do it later.
You know, so it's very muchmore under your control.
It's just shoved in front ofyour face and you choose whether
(28:53):
to interact.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
And that's why that's you know, that's the whole meta
versus Google debate summed upbecause you know you advertise
on on Facebook and Instagrambecause of what you've just
said, like you know, it's justgonna come in your feed, you are
gonna get a lot more eyeballson this stuff.
Like it's only natural there'smore people on the platform,
like you are gonna get moreeyeballs on it, and more
eyeballs, you can generate alower cost police.
(29:15):
It's just like it's just facts.
That's just the way that it is.
But we don't know where thatperson, like you know, that
person that it's being shown to,it is so much harder to look at
where they are in terms oftheir interest level in the
treatment.
They could be ready to buytomorrow and get into a
consultation, or they couldliterally just be finding out
(29:37):
about it for the first time.
It's so much harder.
Whereas, you know, it comesback to the Google that you
know, Meta versus Google, whensomeone searches something on
Google, you have at least asense that, okay, I'm interested
in this thing.
Exactly.
There's an intention to whatthey're doing.
With Meta, it is harder tojudge that intention, so you
know you get more eyeballs, butwhich means like a lower cost
(29:59):
per lead, but then you'll hear alot of people say, Oh, but I
couldn't get a hold of the lead,or like you know, you know,
they they were a no-show orthis, that, and the other.
So they it can be a lowerquality.
Speaker (30:09):
So then, in the example we were using before, maybe uh
let's assign the arbitrary £100for this £10,000 implant case.
For a meta lead for a similarkind of treatment, you'd expect
to pay a lot less, maybe £10,£20, you know, whatever it might
be.
But then you're saying thatthat lead doesn't quite have the
intention that the Googleleague would have.
(30:30):
So you couldn't have you mightget five times the number of
leads.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
But that'll be five times harder to contact, or
they'll get more Notion, or youknow, whatever it is, like you
know, of course, there's there'sdifferent ways of looking at
this.
Like that there are going tobe, you probably heard like you
know, some agency owners or somepeople in marketing tell you
that meta, like you know, metais the way to go.
Like, you know, there'sarguments for both.
Like, you know, we do thingsthis way because, in terms of if
(30:55):
someone's giving us uh you knowa kind of paid marketing budget
to work with, what's ourpriority for that practice?
Bums on seats.
It's not it's not number ofleads and all, like in the van,
like in a great like in thevanity matrix that a lot of
people like to look at.
What is our priority is to makesure you get bums on seats that
are actually interested in whatwe were what we were
(31:16):
advertising at.
Dr James (31:17):
You know, one quick question on Meta before we move
on to Google, because I I dothink it's super important we
talk about Google today as well.
I wanted to ask what yourstance was on let's say you have
a really good ad, really goodcreative, everything along those
lines.
Let's say that's going reallywell.
Where should that traffic besent to?
As in, where should the CTA goto?
(31:37):
Should it should it go to ameta leads capture form or
should it go to a landing page?
Or should it go to book aconsultation or just to the
website?
Or or is it just straight up tothe homepage on your website?
Let's there's throw all theoptions out there.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
So well, I wouldn't send it, I wouldn't send it to
the website um because that adis going to be for something
specific and that home and yourhome page is for everything.
So instantly they're gonnalet's say if they're inquiring
about like a clear alignment aswell.
We've used this example before,your homepage isn't gonna be
clear aligner focused, it'sgonna be everything about like
the practice as a whole, andthen that journey that they were
(32:16):
on becomes like it's gotbecomes great.
So I wouldn't send themdirectly to the website.
Landing pages is something thatwe use a lot of because it you
know it keeps them, it keepsthat journey going.
Like, you know, if they clickon a clear aligner ad, we have a
landing page that's conversionfocused based on clear aligners.
The advantage with lead formsis that it keeps them it's very
(32:38):
slick, it's slick, it keeps themin the platform.
And what Instagram, whatInstagram and Facebook both have
is like the autofill feature onlead forms where you know
you've got your details saved,you just click it in, it's very
slick, it's very easy.
There's there's advantages toboth.
The disadvantage with leadforms is and it comes, it's and
(33:00):
it's the biggest advantage ishow easy it is.
The amount of people thatbecause it's so easy, they'll be
like, Yeah, like you should.
I'll learn a bit.
Like I'll learn more, I'll givemy details, but then when it
comes down to it, they're eitherhard to contact or whatever it
may be.
Like it's ease can sometimes beit's undoing, whereas you know,
sending them to a landing page,and then there's like you know,
(33:21):
specific call to action onthere, they're actually having
to you know take a little bitmore time, read through that
landing page, click on you knowwherever that call to action is
gonna go, but it's more specificaction, and if they are
interested, that you know it's agood way to like improve that
quality of lead.
Um, but they both have theirthey both have their advantages.
I would definitely do one ofthe two as opposed to either um
(33:47):
sending them to like thehomepage of the website or
something like that.
I would definitely, yeah, Iwould definitely send them to
either a a lead form or or anoptimized kind of landing page
based on that.
Speaker (33:58):
Or you can get them directly to phone you.
I mean direct contact, I meanWhatsApp or whatever else.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Well, yeah, so what we yeah, it there's this it's
again it comes down to there'syou know there's things that
work good on the whole, but likewe have noticed discrepancies
among practices where we thoughtlike you know we would have two
practices in you know prettysimilar areas, not like you
know, geographically competing,but it's pretty similar areas
(34:25):
where we'd be like, no, thisshould work.
It's working for this one, itshould work for this one.
And that would be our firstpoint of call would be to like
you know try it this way.
But it wouldn't work for them,and you know, potentially
something like you know, gettinginto getting into calling
straight away would.
So it is kind of again havingthat ability and having that
(34:46):
willingness to test things outand understand that it's not
gonna be perfect from day one,like nothing like you can't just
no matter how much time youspend on the creative and how
much time you spend on makingsure this journey is the most
optimized it can be, there aregonna be things that we need to
learn and we need to test as wego on, and just having that you
(35:07):
know kind of willingness to dothat.
Dr James (35:09):
Nice.
All right, we really shouldtalk about Google.
Yes.
And tell me this.
I mean, I've always been amed-ads guy.
Yeah, it depends what you'retrying to do as well, right?
Like for good for dentalpractices, uh, Google can also
work as well as medads becausepeople are obviously searching
uh for your well, they'll have aproblem, and they're searching
(35:30):
for uh perhaps a cosmetictreatment or pain or something
along those lines, right?
Um so I can see how that wouldwork in principle for dental
practices because people areGoogling, they're already
problem aware and they knowabout the solution, they just
want to find it.
So it's very intentional,right?
Whereas sometimes people aren'teven aware they have how can
someone Google something andthey're not even aware they have
(35:51):
a problem.
Exactly.
Like, so it depends on yourniche, right?
If that's actually going towork for you.
But yeah, tell me, tell methis.
Do you feel that Google has hada little bit of a resurgence
recently versus Meta?
Or is it just or or was italways the case that they've
been about the same or maybeGoogle had an edge?
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Those are the big two.
Like, you know, regardless ofwhether you put Meta first or
Google first, like those are thetwo, you know, for nearly every
dental practice like out there,those are the big two that you
should be optimizing.
Google and Meta, whether you doGoop, whether you do Google
more, great.
If you do Meta if you do Googlemore, if you do Meta more, it's
(36:28):
up to you.
Like we've noticed that Googlewas a Google definitely a couple
of years ago was a really,really good place to advertise.
It was just after, it was inand around and just after that
COVID period.
Google was really good.
Like the cost per leads werereally cheap and the leads were
(36:50):
still really good quality.
But now that you know, morebusiness like that, everyone
started to over the past coupleof years, everyone started up
again, they got more cash flow,they're putting more money into
Google.
Like, you know, the cost perleads have gone up again.
People are like, you know,spending very aggressively on
Google, and like the cost perleads have gone higher, and it's
(37:10):
you know, it is pretty much uha case around the board that
they are gonna be higher thanMeta.
Um we do it because of thatintention piece that you both
mentioned earlier.
Um but I'm not gonna pin my haton oh yeah, like you know, it's
not a case of oh yeah, one overthe other.
It's ideally like you should bedoing both.
(37:32):
Nice.
You should be capturing theseones with higher intention from
Google, but also giving yourselfthe ability to have more
eyeballs from Meta.
Like our strategy is usuallylike you know, we have a Google
and we have a Meta spend, it'svery rare we have just one.
Yeah but in terms of one thatwe would look to maximize, we
(37:52):
look to maximize Google firstbecause it's all about guns and
suits.
Dr James (37:57):
Okay, tell me this, because I've I ran ads over the
years, found I completely gethow they work, but Google
doesn't actually work in thesame way that Meta does, right?
It's it's uh pay-per-click, Ibelieve, isn't it?
And it's all about keywords.
Can you give give us a littlebit of a rundown how Google
works for those who are in asimilar place to me?
Because I I'm not actually it'sactually not something I really
(38:17):
know a great deal about.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, and I want to avoid getting too technical with
it.
Sure, yeah.
Oh yeah, even just the handlevel.
I'm gonna I'm I'm not gonna gettoo technical, but yeah, it's
it's Google ads also called likein the paper click, as you
said.
Dr James (38:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
So let's say it's you know you bid on keywords or
search terms, um, be that youknow a treatment name and then
the city name or best dentistnear me for like whatever
whatever those keywords andthose terms may be, you can't
guarantee unless you're puttingin huge amounts of money, you
(38:52):
are not gonna be the person thatif every single person searches
up this term that your ad isgonna feature.
So the more money you put in,the more percentage of times
your ad is gonna come up.
And then every time someoneclicks on it, you basically pay
a fee.
And it's that's what that'swhere like you know the
pay-per-click comes from.
We always find it's better toobviously have landing pages
(39:15):
there, they're more conversionfocused, but you'll often find
people are always bidding forthe same kind of keywords or
search terms, um, which is whereit can get really competitive,
and this is where in essence AIis kind of changing the way that
that Google paid ads is workingfor us, because what used to be
(39:39):
the trend of people is theyused to search very short
questions on Google or veryshort keywords on Google.
Now you'll actually find thatthe average kind of search
length has gone up.
People are asking more specificquestions, which means from a
dental practice point of view,the keywords that yes, are still
(40:02):
you know very popular, but arethe most expensive.
There's a more variety ofthings that you can actually be
bidding on now, and even morespecific ones that will be
nearly untapped because a lot ofpractices and a lot of ACs
won't realise that AI isaffecting the way that you know
people are people are askingquestions in completely
(40:24):
different ways than we werebefore.
Speaker (40:26):
Do you mean like let's say teeth whitening?
Yeah, people used to put intoGoogle um cheap teeth whitening,
let's say.
Yeah, and then you used to bidon that term, and now people in
ChatGPT or whatever AI search,they're putting in I want to
whiten my teeth near Rochester.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
There will be a lot more specific with.
I think I think you know, Dan,you're obviously like you know,
you're uh an a you know a big AIuser in terms of ChatGPT and on
all these other facts, you'llnotice yourself being more
specific with the questions thatyou ask AI compared to what you
search on Google.
I I want white teeth, how do Ido it?
(41:03):
There's there's just thethere's I don't want to get too
technical.
Speaker (41:07):
I I want to avoid getting too technical with it,
but basically what you're sayingbecause it does vary the the
way that people ask questions.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
It gives people there's more opportunity now on
Google because of AI than youknow than there was before,
which is why you know we'restill, you know, we're still
very much very much on the onthe optimized Google train.
Dr James (41:28):
Okay, and I'm glad you brought AI in because I was
actually just about to ask thatas well.
Okay, cool.
So I'm guessing where someonelike you comes in whenever it
comes to Google ads, Rahil, isyou'll have a big old bank of
keywords that Dennis usedsomewhere, because that's
actually really hard to figureout.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
So we what we have that what we have that kind of
separates us is we have so muchdata when it comes to the when
it comes to paid ads in general.
I think we're spending upwardsacross Google and Meta, we're
spending upwards of a quarter ofa million every month.
So the amount of data that wehave on and it's ever it's not
(42:09):
as if it's like, oh yeah, onemonth we have this and what like
it's consistently every month,and we can look at the buy with
we can look at patterns on whatpeople are clicking on a couple
of months ago compared to whatthey aren't clicking on now, and
that's what really sets kind ofany you know what sets a lot of
agencies apart is like how muchdata you basically have access
(42:30):
to to inform your decisions.
Like, you know, you are gonnamake a lot of decisions based on
like you know, just I thinkthis would work, but for a lot
of us, like you know, we backdecisions based on data, and
what we have is essentially alot of that.
Um, and data always uh informsour previous decisions and our
future decisions, whether welike it or not.
(42:50):
We are gonna base it on what'sworked.
So if a new practice comes in,it's not as if we are starting
from scratch here.
We already know, like, okay,your practice is, you know, this
is where your practice, youknow, this is what your practice
is doing right now, this iswhat you want to focus on.
Let's see if we've worked withanother practice, it's probably
a similar area, but you know,another practice who was in this
(43:13):
position beforehand, what'sworked for them.
Then we can have a look back atpractices like them near you in
a geographical area and seewhat's worked for them.
Like we just have a big kind ofsilo of data that's ever
growing that just gives us, youknow, gives us more access to to
figure out what will workquicker and gives us the ability
to test so much moreefficiently.
Dr James (43:35):
Yeah.
Well, that's cool, isn't it?
Because obviously we wantdata-led decisions, don't we?
Um, and I can totally see howwhen it comes to the keyword
side of things, you're trying toput yourself in the shoes of
what the other person is asking.
But because us dentists are arejust too technical ourselves,
that's quite hard to guess, youknow.
(43:56):
Um, so I can I can definitelysee that being valuable.
And I want to actually circleback to the AI thing that you
mentioned just a second ago.
Speaker (44:02):
There's no worry that as soon as we talk about
anything, we always have to talkabout the uh AI effect on that
subject.
Dr James (44:09):
Pretty much, right?
Which kind of gives you alittle bit of a clue as to how
and launch AI is just gonnacompletely shape everything up,
or is shaking everything up, isshaking everything up, rather,
um, because it just has so manyuh it's so much utility,
utility.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
Um yes, you see there were ads in ChatGPT now.
Oh really?
They rolled their their pipe,they've they've started to roll
them out in the US.
It hasn't cut it hasn't madeits way over to the UK.
But if you ask a question,let's say, about um when you
you're you're asking ChatGPTabout an air fryer, it will show
you ads for air fryers now.
(44:46):
It won't just give you likerecommendations, there'll be ads
related to your search, likeyour query and AI.
Dr James (44:52):
Does it say ad?
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Yes.
Oh, it does funds but it'swhatever it's suddenly another
channel.
With the amount of you know,people that are using AI, it's
suddenly another channel.
So like the AI is it's it'sit's you know, it's changing
everything in terms of the theway that we're we're looking at
stuff.
Dr James (45:08):
You know what?
Just on that, um incidentally,someone was talking on the stage
yesterday on business ofdentistry.
Um And um someone then we had aQ ⁇ A section for that person.
And uh I went over with themicrophone, I gave it to the
individual who wanted to ask aquestion.
And the person who was askingthe question, they they
literally they took the mic andthey were like, hey, I've just
(45:29):
chat GPT to you, okay?
The person who's on the stage.
You know, I and I was justlike, like, you know, you know,
fair enough.
Uh I guess it's a completelyreasonable thing to do.
I just it just never would haveoccurred to me to do that.
And you know, while you'retalking, people are literally
chat GPTing, you know.
I tried to see what comes up.
Speaker (45:46):
Um, but yeah, I guess um luckily the audience member
did confirm that what thespeakers were speaking about was
actually very true according tochat GPT and the code.
Which was a great confirmation.
It was a very positive thing.
Dr James (45:59):
Oh, yeah, hopefully I didn't give people the
impression that it wasn't a goodone.
No, you didn't you didn't.
Speaker (46:03):
I just think that was a really nice uh bit of the
story.
Dr James (46:08):
Yeah, that was why he actually he was like, guys, look
what I've just found inChatGPT.
It's really positive and itconfirms what you're saying,
basically.
That was his messageeffectively that he then said
when I gave him the mic.
Uh, but yeah, so uh where I wasgoing on that was uh well to
another thing to mention on thatis actually our next conference
will be focusing on AI as a keycomponent as well, because
(46:29):
someone's gotta do it inflipping dentistry, right?
Someone someone's got to stepup.
And you know what?
Like I said, there's just somuch to tell you there in some
of the applications.
Speaker (46:37):
I think that's gonna be interest as well.
Dr James (46:39):
That's that's gonna be part of it for sure.
So keep your eyes uh keep youruh yeah, you know, keep your
keep uh eyes peeled, keep youreyes peeled is the is the word
I'm looking for uh for news onthat one.
But Rachel, what I wanted toask you is how much do dental
practices have to take this intoaccount as to the strategy?
Now, do they have to doanything different?
Are you doing anythingdifferent as a marketer for
dentists and dental practices?
Speaker 1 (47:00):
We are like, you know, we are because we have to
be.
Um I think it's AI is at thestage now where you just you
know you can't ignore it.
Um so we have to, you know,bear in mind everything.
Um we were talking about itearlier when it comes to Google
now.
There's this thing called umthat you know, there's this
(47:23):
zero-click searches.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Uh-huh.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
And that's because Google's AI is generating you an
AI overview before you even seethe paid ads, the organic, the
organic like um listings,anything, the AI overview will
come up first.
So if someone has a like aproblem, Google will solve it
for them in the AI overview, andthey won't even need to click
anything anymore.
They don't even get to see thepaid ads.
(47:47):
So it's something that we'realways constantly looking at is
like, you know, how is AI kindof changing like you know the
way the platforms are arebehaving.
Um obviously each platform andyou know, everyone's got their
own kind of AI as well.
Um so we've got to we've got tobe wary of it.
Um but from let's say anindividual dental practices
(48:10):
point of view, um it's kind ofbeing I think it's the I think
it's kind of being aware that itit's here to stay almost.
Like this AI, and I don't know,everyone calls it a bubble, but
it's it's not going anywherenow.
It is gonna and it probablyalready has affected the way
that we do near enougheverything at this point.
(48:33):
There's only so much anindividual dental practice can
do with it from a marketingpoint of view, is that you know
that is more on us as marketeersto actually take the technology
and use it in the mostefficient way for them.
Like, you know, we use it alot, like I'm not afraid to say
it, like as a you know, as ateam at Mind Small Media, we use
(48:53):
AI a lot when it comes to whenit comes to our like daily
stuff, uh and that's because itcan do things so much better
than we can.
And the biggest one is probablylike interpretation of data and
reporting.
I'm not gonna tell it to yeah,based on this, going generate me
however many like new ads,because you know that's where
(49:15):
you need the human element ofcreativity.
But in terms of summarising theresults of like the hundreds of
thousands of ads that we arerunning at a time and generating
stuff that's common, likecommonalities among the winners,
it can do that so much betterthan we can.
That's that data analysis, andit saves the team hours where
they can then be focusing on theclients and getting creative
(49:36):
with what's working and what'snot.
But we we use AI all the timeto you know supplement what we
do, and there's obviously a lotof you know AI tools in and
around the industry, not just inmarketing, but also like you
know, in all aspects ofdentistry that you know that
help out and make things moreefficient, like you know, 3D
scanners that use you know, thistechnology is probably the one
(49:57):
that's been around for for a lotof years now.
People didn't associate it withAI, but it is AI just in you
know, just in another just inanother form.
Um but it's it's something youhave to be aware of in this in
this day and age.
Speaker (50:11):
And are you are you worried about running a
marketing agency and AI comingin and kind of cutting into your
business uh so to speak?
Oh we I mean I know AI givesyou efficiencies and you said it
could do jobs differently andit can take snapshots of fast
amounts of data and do all kindsof really good stuff.
Yes.
But do you see AI taking achunk?
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Oh, and I I'm not gonna sit here and lie and say
that oh, you can't do a lot ofwhat a marketing agency will do
for you with AI.
Like you can, but the a AI isonly as good as what you feed
into it.
And I am very confident insaying that the average dental
practice will not be able toutilize AI from a marketing
(50:57):
standpoint, from a marketingstandpoint in terms of like
running managing their theirmeta out or building their
website or wherever it may be,as good as let's say if they
worked with a with a specialistagency, because we just have so
much more data and inputs thatwe can give it.
Yeah, AI is only as good aswhat you give it.
Like, you know, if you ask itto write you a script for an
(51:18):
Instagram reel or for an ad, forexample, the more detailed you
are with that prompt that yougive it, the better the output's
gonna be.
If you give it somethinggeneric, it's gonna pull generic
stuff.
Excuse me.
Um but if you're specific withit, it will give you some pretty
good output back.
And I'm not gonna lie and saywe don't use it.
(51:40):
We help, we ask it to like youknow, we ask it to help with our
scripts and like you know,thinking of new ways to like you
know present content that wehaven't thought of before.
But actually the creativityelement of like new stuff to try
and actually like you knowinterpreting all of this and
making a new plan out of it,that's where I think a lot of
(52:02):
dentist practices they did justgo with like an AI-led approach,
would struggle.
Like it just doesn't haveunless you feed it an incredible
amount of data, that intuitionto make the decision that's
right for your practice, it willgive you something that's
generic that could workanywhere.
And you know, I'm pretty surepeople will have seen it.
If you ask it for social mediaideas without giving it context,
(52:24):
it will just give you stuffthat's painfully obvious.
Speaker (52:27):
Hallucinations, yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
Yeah, it'll either give you stuff that's painfully
obvious or stuff that's justlike, well, this definitely
won't work.
And that's because it's takingstuff from everywhere.
Whereas if you're specific withit and you, you know, you use
it in a way that is, you know,you need to kind of learn, you
know, it's the same withanything, you need to learn
these, you know, these newplatforms and how it wants to be
(52:50):
prompted and the data it needsto be given, and all these, you
know, we could do a a wholepodcast on it.
It's just like you know, it'ssuch a a trendy topic at the
minute, but it's um it's onethat we're definitely uh trying
to be on top of as we can day today, that all the team are uh
are using it, and I think thatevery dental practice like
(53:11):
should be using it.
Like I don't think it'ssomething to be shying away
from, but over reliance on itwhen you're not feeding it the
right stuff is potentiallysomething I would I would be
worrying about.
There is
Popular Podcasts
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com