"You have no business spending thousands of dollars on external marketing when you have got revenue sitting right inside your practice." – Sara Hansen
Brief Overview of the Episode
Marketing is not a logo, a flyer, or a Google Ads login. It is a system that touches every step of the patient journey.
Dr. Bruce Baird sits down with Phoenix Dental Agency’s Sara Hansen to expose why so many practices are sitting on 500,000 to 1 million dollars in existing revenue while chasing “more new patients.” They walk through internal marketing, net zero marketing, and the hard truth that throwing products at the problem will never replace a clear strategy.
From owning your building (internal marketing) to owning your block, neighborhood, and eventually your city, Sara and Bruce outline a staged approach that helps you grow production, drop team overhead, and attract patients who value comprehensive care.
What This Episode Reveals
• Why most offices are quietly sitting on up to a million dollars of untapped revenue in their existing patient base
• How a broken marketing mindset keeps doctors proud of “spending nothing on marketing” while profit silently erodes
• The difference between product based marketing and a true marketing system that evolves with your career
• How internal referrals, reviews, and re engagement consistently outperform cold external campaigns
• Why video and authentic imagery are now non negotiable if you want trust in the first 10 to 15 seconds
• How net zero marketing works so that increased marketing spend actually drives overhead down
What You’ll Learn
• How to think about marketing as a system, not a stack of unrelated products
• A practical framework for “owning” your building, block, neighborhood, and city with the right strategy at the right time
• The internal marketing levers that can add 35,000 to 100,000 dollars a month in revenue without heavy ad spend
• How to set a realistic 4 to 8 percent marketing budget that supports growth instead of starving it
• Ways to use authentic video and photography so patients feel like they already know you before they call
If This Sounds Familiar
• You feel constant pressure to “get more new patients” but production and profit are stuck
• Your schedule swings from chaos one week to holes the next, even with “healthy” new patient flow
• You are proud of spending almost nothing on marketing, but your team overhead keeps climbing
• You have paid for websites, ads, or mailers that never turned into consistent case acceptance
• Patients tell you they will “think about it” after a long consult, then quietly disappear
• You know you want higher value, comprehensive care cases, but do not see them often enough
Next Steps:
• Listen to the full episode and audit your own marketing mindset as you go
• Identify how much unscheduled treatment and inactive patients are already sitting in your charts
• Decide what “owning your building” looks like in the next 90 days: internal referrals, reviews, and re engagement
• Set a clear marketing budget tied to a business problem you want to solve, not to “spend as little as possible”
• Share this episode with your leadership team and start mapping your marketing systems together
Start Your Calibration Today
For less than the cost of one crown a month, your team can access the full CCI platform: on-demand training, live masterminds, and a supportive online community dedicated to helping dental teams thrive. Download our free guide: 5 Hidden Signs That Kill Case Acceptance to uncover where misalignment is costing your practice. Or take the first step today and enroll your team in Clinical Calibration Institute. Because when your team is aligned, case acceptance grows, stress drops, everyone feels safe, and every patient gets the level of care you know they deserve.
Own Your Marketing Or Own Your Regret (E.261)