Marketing costs can easily drift without clear benchmarks, clear goals, or reliable data. In this episode, Kirk Behrendt continues the Metric Monday series with practice coach Ariel Siegel to break down marketing percentage as part of overall overhead. They explain what marketing percentage actually measures, why the benchmark matters, how internal and external marketing must align, and how to evaluate return on investment using real practice data. If you want to understand how much you should be spending on marketing and how to know whether it’s working, listen to Episode 1003 of The Best Practices Show!

Main Takeaways

1. Marketing percentage measures the total percentage of revenue spent on both internal and external marketing efforts.
2. The general benchmark for marketing spend is around 3%, depending on whether a practice is in growth or maintenance mode.
3. Effective marketing fuels new patient growth while also strengthening the practice brand.
4. Internal marketing systems and patient experience must align with external marketing efforts.
5. Tracking return on investment requires comparing marketing spend to new patient numbers and resulting production.
6. High marketing spend without strong systems can result in poor conversions and wasted dollars.

Snippets

00:56 What marketing percentage measures

01:44 The 3% benchmark and why it varies

03:07 How marketing impacts new patient growth and branding

04:22 Why more new patients is not always better

06:52 Using ROI to evaluate marketing effectiveness

08:12 How to respond when marketing percentage is too high

10:03 Using call and conversion data to diagnose marketing performance

11:34 Final Thoughts on Marketing Strategies

Guest Bio/Guest Resources

Ariel has a master’s in healthcare administration and several years of dental experience in all aspects of the administrative roles within the dental office. Her passion is to work with dental teams to empower team members to realize their full potential in order to better serve patients, improve office systems to ensure a well-functioning team/office, and to help everyone have fun in the process!

More Helpful Links for a Better Practice & a Better Life:

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2. Best Practices Association: https://www.actdental.com/bpa
3. Upcoming Events & Workshops: https://www.actdental.com/events/
4. Smile Source: https://www.smilesource.com/
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