DSO Marketing Strategies to Grow From $500,000 to Million-Dollar Revenue with Courtney Rogers

Alec Goldman:
Welcome to How I Grew My Practice, a podcast presented by NexHealth. I'm your host, Alec Goldman. In this episode, we have Courtney Rogers, head of marketing of Platinum Dental Services, a DSO, here to talk about DSO marketing strategies to grow from $500,000 to $1 million in revenue. Courtney, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?
Courtney Rogers:
Hey, doing good. Yeah, it's a beautiful green day outside, so can't ask for anything better. It's good.
Alec Goldman:
Well, we're so excited to have you here. Courtney,
Alec Goldman:
if you don't mind, for the folks who do not know you could share a little bit about yourself, how you ended up in marketing, and how you ended up in marketing at a DSO called Platinum Dental Services?
Courtney Rogers:
Sure. So Courtney Rogers, as you said, started out pretty young doing marketing and SEO. Back in like 2007, 2008, local SEO just started and I jumped on that wave pretty hard. Grew a small agency to a couple of hundred clients. Moved over to enterprise, and started doing a technical SEO on PPC for a security company, ADT. Then I was looking for another challenge, another project to work on, another company to work with, and approached Platinum Dental Services and the rest is history. But yeah, jumped from small businesses to enterprises and then straight over to dentistry.
Alec Goldman:
That's very cool. Um, we have had lots of folks from the marketing world jump on the podcast, many of which are helping small businesses, uh, install marketing strategies to help them grow. Um, I guess first off, when we're talking about DSO marketing strategies, how are some of, how is that different from the typical SMB marketing strategy for a single location?
Courtney Rogers:
Yeah. So I definitely apply the individual practice marketing strategies, you know, across each location. You know, there's not much difference there. The DSO specifically, when we market, you know, for the DSO, that's a little bit different. But on the day to day of our individual practices, I treat them as if they're their single client, their needs are not more important than the next practice next to them in our organization. Everybody is equal in my mind.
Alec Goldman:
Thank you.
Courtney Rogers:
So I treat them all with, you know, just as much importance as the next one. So, but they're individual practices and I mark them all individually.
Alec Goldman:
Very cool. So there's been, again, we've had so many folks from the marketing world join the show. If you don't mind sharing a little bit, I know that Platinum has been doing quite well, and I know that you've been leading marketing there for quite some time, but wanted to see what are some of, the key marketing strategies that you install for the practices at Platinum.
Courtney Rogers:
Yeah, that's a good question. When we first get a practice or we're working with a new doctor partner, a new location, or maybe a practice is just struggling, the first thing I do is go to search, you know, so that's a core component of our strategy is PPC as well as organic search. I put a lot of effort into making sure our locations can rank organically and we do maintain top positions in the top three across. I would say probably 80% of our locations, which is pretty hard to do. We obviously pick a lot of locations that are in competitive areas. So I'm pretty proud of that. We do a good job with that. It takes a lot of effort and content and technical SEO, to make sure the pages are where they need to be, keywords or page speed is all the mumbo jumbo you hear with other agencies. But we make sure all that stuff is in place.
And then beyond that, the thing that I think takes Platinum Dental Services to the next level, is we obviously wanna make sure your phone is ringing, but then Platinum has taken it upon ourselves to also support the practices, to make sure that we help the offices answer those new patient calls, so we actually make sure that we take the full funnel. So, if they have a staff member who's sick or is not able to get to the phone, we're there. And we've built systems and technology through building out the tech stack phone calls answered within two rings. So we get those new patients on the schedule and that's a big component of our new patient strategy that I think potentially a lot of other DSOs maybe don't do. I think a lot of them do but I think the successful ones are doing stuff like that. So get the traffic, get the phone call, and then make sure that they're on the schedule in the right place. You know it's pretty easy but that's what I focus on every day for each practice. It's pretty straightforward, but it works.
Alec Goldman:
It's certainly straightforward when you put it that way, but I think that's ultimately, it doesn't need to be super complex. It measures the entire funnel. The funnel is certainly much more than just getting the conversion, the lead on the site is actually getting the person in the seat.
Courtney Rogers
You got the ad click, you got the landing page, you got the phone working, you got the phone routing to the right person, you have the right person answering it with the right tone, with the right script, having the right training to put them in the right column. There are so many pieces of that funnel that have to be perfect, and I think the marketing team isn't necessarily the person that says, Hey, this isn't the right person to be answering that phone. But I think nowadays in a lot of industries and a lot of organizations, it kind of is starting to be more of a patient experience, full holistic view, you know, the marketing team can provide. And we definitely work hand in hand, myself, Jessica, the head of the office operations, and Vince, the CEO, to make sure that this full experience for the patient is just clean. And it's really easy for patients to get in and be seen. So, but yeah, you're right. There are a lot of little pieces in that funnel. I can go on, there's even more. Ha! So...
Alec Goldman:
Well, what else? I mean, what are the other, if you have to keep extending the funnel, what are the other things that you're, is platinum tracking?
Courtney Rogers:
Yeah. Yeah. So once they're once they're on the schedule, obviously, we need to follow up. So that's where NexHealth, your guys' product comes into play. We've standardized all our locations across NexHealth. And that was a great decision. Just for the simple fact that it's so easy for me to know that every single office is consistently sending those messages at the right time, at the right cadence, the right messaging. You don't have new employees coming in with old training or ideas that maybe they brought from another organization that they go and change things. We can keep an eye on things and make sure that things are clean and work really well. There's that follow-up. I know a lot of people use payments and things like that, so just keeping that full funnel nice and clean. If it's not clean, how is that new patient going to come back and refer people? There's more to this than that first new patient experience. Yeah, all these little pieces really matter in the grand scheme of things for new patients. And, you know, it's not even new patients. You also have just the follow-up coming back in for the next treatment. But you gotta do all those little things to bring that bottom line to where you want it. So, yeah.
Alec Goldman:
So I know a massive benefit that a DSO has really over a small individual practice is the fact that you have the ability to oversee and look at all the metrics across all the different locations and kind of take best practices from each of those locations and deploy and install across. Again, the portfolio of practices. However, that only can happen if you standardize the technology and systems. across those locations. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of standardizing the tech stack at a DSO?
Courtney Rogers:
Oh, for sure. I mean, the first thing I did in the marketing stuff was websites, domain hosts, how we build the sites, the technologies behind all that. In all sorts of different places, we had some on some agents. It was just all over the place. Now it's all standardized. If I want to change anything anywhere, it's all easy. Rolling things out across the board is really easy as well because we've standardized all that tech stack. It's all on WordPress, it's all custom designed, you know, it's all really easy for us to manage and maintain now. That's the website. Obviously, AdWords and all those different platforms are already standardized. You know, they're just the ad networks. at the office level, all of our phones have been systemized and standardized to the same provider.
I can pull reports from all the offices. I can pull reports from all my agents at the support center to see who's answering, who's not, who's taking too long to get to the phone, and who's taking five rings versus this office which only takes two rings. That allows me to see where potential... patient experiences are not really that great. Somebody's trying to get in and not able to get the phone to be answered, they're not gonna get in and sit down. So that's really important. And then obviously at the different technologies of Open Dental and NexHealth, those different patient management systems, those are given, once we put those together, it was really easy to see how that help keep everything moving really smoothly. So the... It was just really a no-brainer to start standardizing as many things as we could. But in the beginning, when I first came on with some of the marketing things and the phones, it was spread out and I couldn't see what was happening and what we could do to do better until we standardized those things. So it's good. It helped out a lot. I think once we standardized even just the phone system and the new patient experience to what I just described, some of our offices that were only seeing maybe 10, 15 new patients that's their average range now, depending on the seasonality of the year.
So it's like triple if not four times better. From the simple fact of just now we know who's answering the phone and who's not and who needs the help and who needs the support. It's not like we're just going to reach out and like, hey, answer your phone. Let's put an extra agent on that person's system and route their phone calls quickly. Like that's much easier. You know, nobody's getting yelled at or frustrated. They just need support. That's what we're here for. So, you know, and I don't know that data until I see it and I don't see it in a clean way unless I standardize it. So it's been awesome. Yeah. Yeah.
Alec Goldman:
That's very cool. So what I'm hearing is, I'm guessing, I guess the question, how are you seeing all this data across all of the platinum locations?
Courtney Rogers:
So with the phone systems, I bring everything into an API, through an API into Domo or a dashboard or even just pull reports in CSV and do things in Excel or in Sheets and pull Pivots and just pull it every once in a while. Vince has done a really good job of getting all his practice data into Domo. So he standardized that already. So he can see all the metrics of doctor production, future scheduling, and things like that. And I brought in the perspective of, let's see who's answering the phones, let's see how long it's taking somebody to get into an appointment. Those types of metrics we didn't ever really pay attention to. I'm sure they did, but just not at the level that I wanted. And so we pull a lot of that stuff through APIs. And any partner that we work with, if they're not giving us an API. I'm not interested in it, so that's why I picked you guys at NexHealth if you guys have an API and it's really clean. I know a lot of different competitors of you guys are using your API, so it's got to be pretty good. We're excited to start working with that here soon. I've got a bunch of pretty good ideas that I'm going to start doing with it.
Alec Goldman:
So it sounds like you're taking, because at least for Platinum who's using NexHealth, you use NexHealth API and you plug that into, you said it was DOMA.
Courtney Rogers:
Yeah, so we're using Domo for our grid analytics. Yeah, your business intelligence view, BI.
Alec Goldman:
Yep. So that'd be, and that gives you kind of this one-stop shop of being able to take a look at all the metrics across the funnel being website traffic all the way down to patient and see.
Courtney Rogers:
I bring all the phone calls, who's answering, who's not answering, how long it took them to answer. I see everything at all levels now. Yeah.
Alec Goldman:
This means that you have insight into what's happening across every single practice. What's the process like to kind of go to each practice and give them the feedback, both constructive and perhaps, uh, I mean, constructive and positive to give them the feedback so that they actually are, you know, raising the bar and improving the patient experience and in turn revenue numbers.
Courtney Rogers:
Yeah, well I struggle with this one person because it's like, this isn't my place to say, this is more like a, like, you gotta, you know, this is more like operation type stuff, that's why I always say like, I'm sorry, I don't know how to handle this conversation, but I struggle with it even still to this day where it's like, hey, this is, but it's not really a red flag, it's more of just like, hey, let's look at this, because this is something that I think they need help with, they need support is really what it comes down to. And so that's how it always comes out.
It's just a conversation of empathy. And it's like, I'm not reaching out to say, hey, this person isn't answering the phone. It's like, we need to answer the phone somehow. So let's figure out how we can get that to work the way we need it to. So those conversations, I always just start with the operation team. I don't even go directly to the offices. That's more for the OLs and RLs and the operation team to work through. I just present the data and kind of show things where. Because all those numbers impact me and my bottom line. So if I'm not paying attention to those, I don't think I'm doing my job as well as I should be.
Courtney Rogers:
But that's a conversation that's with empathy, the RL, the regional leaders, and the operation team usually do those.
Alec Goldman:
Yeah, of course. But, you know, you can imagine tons of small practices. I don't want to say running blind, but there are certainly, there's very few that are measuring at the level of detail that you're suggesting that platinum is running at, right? So this is really the perk of why lots of practices are making the move to a DSO because of the amount of support that they have from folks like yourself.
Courtney Rogers:
Yeah, it can get overwhelming with all that data and you don't really know, like, what do I do with all this? You know, like, what's my day-to-day gonna be with all these different metrics you're tracking? But at the end of the day, it really comes down to this and this is what, it's just a patient experience. if you called a location and you were in pain and it took you six rings to answer and or they didn't answer I don't think you would want to go to that practice. I think you might call a different location to get in somewhere else and so At the end of the day, everything we do and everything we build is to support the doctors and their patients.
And so, you know, staff and regionals and OLs and people that understand that, it's a really easy thing and it's something they've learned to appreciate over time because it's like I know why this practice isn't doing so well. I can see it in the numbers before they even know it's gonna happen. I know a month before that they're gonna have the lowest new patient numbers they've had in six months because I have a historical record of their availability on their schedule and I can project that forward to see, okay, they might have a slow month this month. Let's let them know maybe to work on getting extra people in or maybe some existing patients in. Yeah, it's definitely data I don't think that they've looked at before at this level, but it definitely impacts the bottom line when you start to pay attention to it.
Alec Goldman:
So obviously standardizing the tech stack is what allows you to kind of have these baseline metrics across the locations. But that then means that you have a really hard choice of selecting very specific vendors to help you create that, you know, that individual, that one stop shop dashboard of all the analytics. What's your process for thinking about how to make the right decision on technology?
Courtney Rogers:
Customer support, for me personally, it's always customer support. There are so many agencies out there in software and tech stacks and a lot of them will combine all of this into one and it's like, okay, well, that's nice of you, but I can't ever get you on the phone or you don't support my practices at the level that I'm looking for. A lot of DSOs will employ a lot of different staff to do a lot of different things in a lot of different areas. They're not experts all the time in all these little things. We need to rely on these different tech stacks, like NexHealth or Fluentstream, our phone provider, Domo to be able to support us when we need it on individual office levels and kind of delegate at that level. And so that's what I look for customer support and the response time and just the efficiency of those agents and how well they're trained.
We've had other tech stacks for things that NexHealth does multiple times across the years since I've been here and the customer support and response time hasn't been anywhere near what you guys do. So kudos, good job, because you know we've been with you guys almost two years now and that's for a reason because you guys do a good job with all those things. At the individual practice level, sure you'll answer my email but you'll also answer the email that you know is important to them. So yeah, customer support is what drives all my decisions with tech stack.
Alec Goldman:
Yeah. And it makes a ton of sense, especially when the lifeblood of the business is so contingent on these technologies working and listening, every practice, even within a DSO, every practice is slightly different from the services they're offering the hygienist, the doctors, um, you know, we want to make sure that the messaging of each tool, how online booking forms, all that stuff works is going to be customized, which means that there's obviously a laugh back and forth. To make sure that you guys not only get something that is standardized but also customized for each of the specific practices.
Courtney Rogers:
Yeah, and you guys have done a good job. You guys have a lot of customizations. And like I said, customer support is definitely what wins me over for sure.
Alec Goldman:
So, Courtney, I know that we are coming up at the 20-minute mark. I want to ask one last question, which is, I know that there are lots of folks who work at DSOs, lots of folks who are focused on marketing, but what advice would you give another DSO looking to standardize their tech stack and kind of continue to grow their revenue? What would be a final piece of advice that you would want to share?
Courtney Rogers:
I mean if they haven't already done it, to do it, to start to clean that up so they can see a lot of the data. The reason why we did it is to support the doctors if they're similar to us, another DSO as you mentioned. we're here to support the doctor and their patients as much as possible. Seeing all that data and seeing everything clean and organized gives us the ability to adapt quickly and to act with accuracy to where things are not a guess.
We're getting to the right answer very quickly and we're addressing things in positive ways, giving shout-outs every day, we're letting people know the good news and the good data as well, as well as helping people when we see things that are hitting the a little bit and we bring it back to the center. So if you haven't already done it, start to think about standardizing and picking the right agencies and vendors to work with that give you the freedom for APIs and data. And then obviously customer support is really important, but you gotta support your doctors and you gotta support your staff. And that's priority number one for platinum. So if you're not doing it as a DSO, you gotta be doing it.
Alec Goldman:
Courtney, thank you so much for joining us today. Lots of amazing thoughts on just general marketing strategies to grow platinum, but really love the conversation on standardizing the tech stack and the importance of really what it allows for your decision making at your organization.