In 2025, dental providers will find that growth through acquisitions is becoming more challenging, which means practices need to maximize the potential of their existing locations. As ClariFi Health CEO Elliot Zibel pointed out at Dykema DSO 2024, it’s about making the most of available space—turning unused areas into operatories and ensuring your current facilities are running at full capacity. On the marketing side, the challenge is ensuring that digital ads are targeting new patients where there is available capacity, avoiding the issue of overbooking. Overall, aligning your marketing strategy with actual demand and capacity is key to growing your DSO without overstretching your resources.
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Capacity Balance Is Essential to Maintain Patient Expectations & Grow Revenue
When staffing shortages hit, appointment availability takes a dive, and patients are left with a tough choice: either wait and get frustrated or head to a competitor. That’s where capacity alignment in your marketing strategy becomes crucial.
Spending a blanket amount across all locations may be the easiest budgeting strategy, but it can backfire. You end up frustrating patients with long wait times or creating a situation where some locations are overwhelmed while others are practically empty. That not only damages your reputation but it also wastes money.
Having said that, never base marketing on “a general sense” of capacity.
Capacity is nuanced and you need specific data to get results. Talk with operations to get a deeper understanding of your capacity on every level: capacity by location, by doctor, hygienist, and by service line. Marketing and operations need to work together to develop a process that ensures the current capacity—which will fluctuate—is being integrated into the current ad strategy and budgeting.
The trick is to take a more tailored approach. By planning your media investments based on the actual capacity of each practice, you can direct resources where they’ll make the biggest impact. This helps reduce patient frustration, avoid overbooking, and get the most out of your marketing spend.
Marketing + Ops Must Work Together
In 2025, if you’re running a DSO, getting marketing and operations on the same page is pretty much a must. When these teams work together, it’s not just about hitting the numbers—it’s about making sure everything clicks. Think of it this way: you’re not just throwing out random ads, you’re putting them where they’re actually needed.
Besides above-mentioned capacity alignment, here are more areas where MOPS should align:
- Service Line Alignment: So, not all services are the same, right? Some are more in-demand than others, and some bring in more cash. If marketing knows what services are making the most noise, they can focus on those. For example, if orthodontics is bringing in more patients and generating more revenue, marketing can zero in on that. This helps avoid wasting time and money on stuff that’s not going to give the return you need. A little insight can go a long way in making sure that campaigns aren’t just pulling in leads but pulling in the RIGHT leads.
- Messaging Alignment: Messaging isn’t just about flashing a discount here and there. It’s about making sure the tone and message actually match what’s going on in the practice. If marketing is pushing an offer that doesn’t line up with how the practice operates, it might bring in the wrong crowd. For instance, offering a huge discount might get people in the door, but if they’re not the type who’ll stick around for long, you’re just wasting resources. When marketing knows what kind of patients to target, and how, it leads to better results.
- Technology Alignment: And, of course, technology can’t be left out. With the right tech tools, you can really start connecting the dots. For instance, a good CRM can let marketing know what services patients are most interested in. That info helps shape smarter campaigns. But it’s not just about collecting data— it’s about how you use it. When marketing and operations are plugged into the same tech stack, you’re going to see smoother campaigns and a better experience for everyone involved. And that’s not just good for marketing, but it helps operations too.
So, yeah, getting marketing and ops to work together might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s amazing how much smoother things go when everyone is on the same page. It’s a total game plan that can drive growth without wasting resources.
You Need an Integrated Tech Stack for Next-Gen Patient Care
This is the #1 thing you need to do because if you want to put together marketing strategies that will work for your business, you need to know your numbers for show rates, cost per booking, LTV, etc. A good tech stack is the foundation of data-enabled marketing and gives you the right data signals to improve performance in an increasingly complex media buying landscape with sophisticated consumers.
Last-click attribution is last-decade tracking that leaves you marketing blind, without insight into what’s happening along the patient journey. A modern martech stack will help you build a multi-touch attribution framework that gives you a fuller picture of the patient journey so that you can nurture patients along the way. You need a CRM that can be integrated with an online booking platform like NexHealth and call tracking like Patient Prism. That’s what’s going to give you better data on the conversion actions and signals you can feed into your ad platforms.
With increasing demand for healthcare privacy and evolving HIPAA regulations, it’s a perfect time to update your martech stack. A well-integrated data platform will be compliant, provide you with better signals, and offer more transparency in reporting so you can see exactly the impact that marketing is having—essential in a high-competition environment where growth is the goal, but budgets are tight.
One of the biggest trends for 2025 is using smarter data to make informed decisions, moving beyond guesswork to enhance patient acquisition strategies. With advanced tech tools, you can gain deep insights into the full patient journey—from first contact to booked appointments—allowing for precise targeting, better performance measurement, and strategic adjustments that drive engagement and appointment rates.
“We’re using a vendor called Level AI, which is able to score all our calls, assign them a disposition, perform real-time sentiment analysis, and enable screen mirroring. We can actually go really deep into the calls to help train our agents, making them sharper in terms of scheduling, addressing patient needs, and improving the overall quality of the phone. —Matthew Fitzgerald, CMO, Tend
Advice: You need to have a strong MarTech stack that tracks marketing efforts across all channels, from initial contact to appointment booking. This will give you a clear picture of how marketing impacts patient acquisition and revenue and how you can improve.
Focus on The Right Patients Needed to Grow
Marketing needs to be in conversation with the C-suite to understand exactly what is needed for growth–and to make sure the focus is in the right place.
Not all leads are the same. Stop treating all search intent and service-line conversions the same.
I’ve been beating this drum for a while because I’m still seeing some DSOs who are tracking “Cost Per Lead” as a single metric across everything as if a $100 cleaning lead had the same value as a $3000 orthodontics lead. Which one do you want more of?
You need a good martech stack so you know which clicks turned into cleaning and which turned into an implant procedure. Feeding that data back into the advertising algorithms enables them to find more users like that one.
Don’t be afraid to prioritize the leads you need with value-based bidding. If you want to get more valuable leads, you should take that value into account in your targeting and bidding and be willing to bid higher for qualified leads that will have a higher payoff on conversion.
Value-Based Bidding:
In 2025, healthcare marketers will need to prioritize value-based bidding to stay competitive. This approach focuses on targeting niche audiences with the highest potential for driving revenue and long-term patient value (LTV). To make it work, marketers must build a robust tech stack that integrates 1P data (like call tracking), campaign performance, and audience insight– and even claims data. By embracing this trend, DSOs can allocate ad budgets more effectively, attract high-value patients, and deliver greater ROI in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Talent Recruitment is a Priority
Hygienist and clinician shortages are putting a strain on growth for DSOs, making talent recruitment more important than ever. Building a brand that people want to work for is key to attracting quality talent—and keeping them.
“The top two challenges we’re working on are onboarding and retaining clinicians. Patient flow isn’t always an issue at the majority of our offices – it’s how we onboard and keep our clinicians and our talent.” —Chris Bird, VP of Marketing, Mosaic Dental Collective
“Capacity is what it’s all about and obviously, that starts with staffing. We’ve made a lot of changes on the talent acquisition front, and I’d say our operation there is stronger than it ever has been. That’s paramount. We work very closely with that team to make sure we’ve got the right people in the right places and optimize the staffing model in every location.” —Jody Martin, CMO, Smile Brands
Luckily, marketing can play a huge role in supporting recruitment efforts. The key to attracting top talent isn’t just posting a job listing—it’s about creating a strong brand that makes people want to work with you.
- Build a Strong Brand as an Employer: First off, your brand image matters. If your reputation is less than stellar, no marketing campaign will work. Start by optimizing your “About Us” and career pages to showcase your culture and values. Make sure applicants can feel the work environment through engaging content—think videos, photos, employee testimonials, and even team accolades. Highlight the perks, growth opportunities, and benefits your dental group offers to make your workplace appealing to top-tier candidates.
- Improve the Application Process: A clunky or confusing job application system can send potential candidates running. To avoid this, invest in Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) to remove any barriers to applying. This could mean simplifying forms, speeding up site performance, or making the job listing more clear and compelling. By ensuring a smooth, user-friendly experience, you’ll increase the chances that interested professionals will follow through with their applications.
- Advertise and Build Awareness: Marketing isn’t just about waiting for job seekers to come to you. Use targeted advertising, especially through Google Ads and social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, to raise brand awareness and keep your dental group top of mind. While job seekers may come to you directly through Google when they’re ready, social ads can keep your DSO in their minds, even if they’re not actively looking for a job. Show off the positives—happy employees, growth opportunities, and a supportive work environment—to build long-term interest.
By enhancing your recruitment marketing with these strategies, you can better compete for the talent your DSO needs to thrive.
Marketers Seek New Measurement Frameworks
In a privacy-first world, marketers are searching for new solutions to evaluate marketing impact and help them determine where to invest next.
As such, healthcare marketers are increasingly grappling with the limitations of traditional measurement approaches. HIPAA and state privacy laws continue to present major obstacles, particularly when it comes to using tracking pixels. For risk-adverse healthcare organizations, these tracking tools are no longer an option.
On top of that, advertising platforms like Meta and TikTok operate as “walled gardens,” meaning marketers can’t easily tie engagement data to actual outcomes. This makes it incredibly difficult to measure the effectiveness of campaigns across various platforms, as healthcare decision-making tends to be complex, with many touchpoints and interactions spread across different channels.
In response to these challenges, Cardinal’s Chief Strategy Officer, Rich Briddock, emphasizes the importance of adopting a new measurement framework:
“We strive for things like closed-loop, multi-touch attribution, and machine learning forecasts that determine where we should spend the next dollar. This is the dream that we all have as marketers.”
However, he points out the reality marketers face, where HIPAA concerns and loss of tracking capabilities often feel like insurmountable challenges. To overcome these issues, Cardinal has turned to Media Mix Modeling (MMM), which correlates revenue with investment rather than relying on pixels.
MMM addresses three key challenges in evaluating marketing impact and guiding future investment decisions:
- Walled Gardens: Eliminates dependency on tracking every impression and click by correlating revenue with investment, bypasing closed ecosystems (like Meta and Tikok).
- HIPAA Compliance: Removes pixel-based tracking concerns, using revenue and investment correlation instead, ensuring privacy compliance.
- Shallow Tracking: Focuses on revenue-driven metrics that matter to key stakeholders (CEO, CFO, COO), moving beyond surface-level metrics that lack outcome alignment.
As Rich explains, “Wall gardens cease to become a problem because you’re not trying to track every impression and every click. Instead, we’re tracking revenue—the metric that truly matters to all stakeholders, from the CEO to the CFO.” By focusing on this broader, more impactful metric, we can better determine whether our marketing efforts are truly driving business growth.
Introducing RevRx
Meet RevRx™—Cardinal’s proprietary business intelligence tool. At its core is a powerful Bayesian econometric model designed with a full-information MMM framework. What sets it apart? It’s fueled by 15+ years of healthcare media expertise, giving us the insight to feed the model the right inputs for smarter, sharper results.
This model helps CMOs identify the most effective channel mix to drive patient growth while lowering customer acquisition costs (CAC). By analyzing past performance and correlating revenue with investment, RevRx™ removes the guesswork that typically surrounds marketing strategies. It empowers dental groups to measure the true impact of their media spend, offering precise, data-backed guidance for future investments.
Unlike traditional methods that rely on pixel-based tracking and impressions, RevRx™ focuses on revenue-driven metrics, giving stakeholders, including CEOs and CFOs, clarity on where marketing dollars are best spent. With an impressive margin of error of less than 4%, RevRx™ offers actionable insights into how each channel contributes to patient acquisition and overall revenue. It combines rigorous data analysis with Cardinal’s healthcare expertise to deliver predictive insights, ensuring that marketing efforts align with growth goals. By integrating these insights into your campaign strategy, RevRx™ helps reduce wasted ad spend, improve ROI, and ultimately drive long-term business growth.
Learn more about MMM and RevRx™.
Conclusion
So, as we look ahead to 2025, it’s clear dental marketers should zero in on several important areas. For instance, Chris Bird, VP of Marketing at Mosaic Dental Collective, shared how online scheduling is still a huge opportunity—something that might seem basic but really helps streamline patient flow.
Then, there’s the focus on the education surrounding the mouth-body connection—John Pham, Sr. Director Digital Marketing & Operation at PDS Health, points out that explaining how oral health impacts overall health is a key part of the patient journey. In fact, building trust and improving the patient experience is central to getting patients to come back and accept more services.
Jody Martin, CMO at Smile Brands, also mentioned the importance of a single patient management system to enhance both patient and clinician experiences. That’s where integrating marketing with operations comes into play. Jody stressed how optimizing marketing at each office, rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach can make a huge difference.
So, with all these shifts happening, dental marketers, as always, should focus on improving patient experiences, using smarter data to drive decisions, and building efficient systems (like integrated tech stacks and AI adoption) to support growth. It’s about making every part of the patient experience and marketing strategy more connected, more efficient, and more aligned with what patients need.
