The Dental Marketer

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The Dental Marketer

I recently had Dr. Rahul Kallianpur, founder of Hudson Dental Co. in Pleasantville, NY, on the show.

He just wrapped up his first full calendar year, built solid local momentum, and stacked 165 five-star Google reviews... all while staying fully fee-for-service with a cosmetic and surgery focus.

Here’s what doesn’t show up in the highlight reel:

?? Early growth looked fine on paper… but the wrong patients were walking in.

??Marketing was doing its job. ??Phones were ringing. ??Appointments were getting booked.

?? But the patients coming through the door didn’t match the model he was building

    
• more emergency-driven than comprehensive
    
• more transactional than relationship-focused.     

?? And the urge to “just take insurance for volume” got very real.... especially while launching a startup and welcoming a first child within three months!

Here’s what I learned:

    
1. Early-stage marketing can’t be “smart” until the owner learns what they’re actually buying. The first phase may be messy on purpose, then it gets intentional once patterns show up.
    
2. Volume can create false confidence. Emergency-driven traffic can fill the schedule and still fail to build a practice (one-and-done visits, long travel radius, low lifetime value).
    
3. Fee-for-service growth depends on “pre-qualified referrals,” not just leads. The best new patient is often the one who arrives through someone already aligned with the experience and values.
    
4. The “avatar” isn’t a branding exercise, it’s a filter. When the ideal patient is clearly defined (habits, expectations, lifestyle), the messaging stops sounding generic and starts attracting the right people.
    
5. Marketing budgets don’t always decrease with maturity, they shift toward higher-intent demand. As trust signals rise (reviews, presence, reputation), spend can increase because the keyword intent is more expensive (implants/cosmetics) and more worth it.
    
6. A premium patient experience begins before the patient becomes a patient. The phone script and tone can turn “Do you take my insurance?” from a dead-end into a guided next step (value + clarity + reassurance).
    
7. Hiring for hospitality can outperform hiring for dental experience... depending on the role. People from service industries can be taught dentistry basics faster than they can be taught genuine warmth.
    
8. The system is only as strong as the handoff. The “end of visit” is where fatigue and overwhelm can kill acceptance... moving treatment conversations to a separate consult space can change everything.
    
9. The last interaction should not be payment. Handling transactions in the back (or in-room) reduces the “negative final note” and protects the emotional close of the experience.
    
10. Micromanagement is often a disguised control habit from clinical training. This one is interesting... listen in to see the real reasoning behind this!