New patients are the number. The write-off is the killer.
SEOD builds Bay Area dental marketing around the two numbers that decide your year: what a new patient costs to acquire, and what your PPO contracts leave behind.
- 16 years operating
- $54M+ P&L operated
- 128 verified 5-star reviews
15 min. No sales pitch. Direct founder access.
Three things squeezing Bay Area dental practices in 2026.
Reimbursement is getting cut, not just held flat.
Humana reduced its PPO rate for adult prophylaxis (D1110) by 6.1% effective January 1, 2026. On 30 adult cleanings a week that is roughly $3,200 a year gone from a single code. Marketing does not change a fee schedule, which is exactly why the mix of patients you attract now matters more than raw volume.
Buying a new patient costs roughly 26x what reactivating one does.
Published benchmarks put acquisition near $312 per new patient against about $12 to reactivate a dormant one. Most practices spend the entire budget chasing the first number and never work the second. The Sprint works both.
AI answers are absorbing the “dentist near me” click.
A randomized field study found Google’s AI Overviews cut outbound organic clicks by 39.8% and raised zero-click searches by 34.5%. When a parent asks ChatGPT for a pediatric dentist in San Mateo, the answer gets assembled without anyone visiting your listing. If your practice is not in the source set those engines read, you never see the patient you lost.
The Sprint is built for this environment. Not the 2019 dental playbook.
Built by an operator who reads a P&L the way you do.
Eric ran $54M+ in F&B P&L across BCD Tofu House, Gen Korean Barbecue, Sake2Me Sushi, and Obaba Fresh. Sixteen years running businesses where a fixed room, a fixed staff, and a fixed number of productive hours decide whether the month works.
A dental practice runs the same math with different vocabulary. Chair utilization is table turns. Hygiene recall is repeat covers. Your overhead percentage behaves like prime cost. He has sat with this problem in its other form, where the answer was never “get more traffic,” it was “stop leaking the demand you already paid for.”
You get an operator who asks what a new patient is worth to you before spending a dollar finding one. Not an agency that reports impressions and calls it a win.
The Operator Sprint, tuned for dental.
$750 setup + $250/mo × 6 months · $2,250 total · Cancel anytime after month 6
- Onsite kickoff at your practice between sessions. 90 minutes with Eric, including a listen to how the front desk actually handles an inbound new-patient call.
- Google Business Profile deep optimization built around your highest-margin services, usually implants, Invisalign, and whitening rather than generic “family dentistry.”
- 48 GBP posts across the 6-month Sprint, written to real patient intent (“same-week emergency appointment,” “Invisalign consult,” “new patient exam and x-rays”).
- Insurance-forward page copy. The plans you take, stated plainly, because “do you take my insurance” is the question that ends most first calls.
- Review response written for medical services, staying inside the line on patient privacy while still sounding like a person wrote it.
- AI-answer optimization so your practice surfaces when someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for a dentist in your city.
- Reactivation sequence for dormant patients, the cheapest chair you will fill all year.
- Monthly dashboard showing GBP impressions, calls, direction requests, and new-patient form fills, with cost per new patient calculated rather than implied.
- Monthly 15-minute operator call with Eric. He reads your numbers and tells you where the money is going.
- Text Eric directly at 707-718-3579. 4-hour response window, 9am to 9pm PT.
15 min. No sales pitch. Direct founder access.
What we don’t do for dental.
No practice management software.
Dentrix, Open Dental, and Eaglesoft own this and we would be a worse operator of it than your office manager. We read the reports, we do not run the system.
No HIPAA-covered patient messaging.
Weave and similar platforms are purpose-built with the agreements already in place. We do not move patient communication into tools that were not designed to carry it.
No clinical claims in ad copy.
We do not write outcome promises about procedures. That is a regulatory problem for you and a trust problem with patients, and no click is worth either.
No review gating or bought reviews.
We build a request cadence that asks every patient. Filtering for the happy ones violates platform terms and is the fastest way to lose a profile you spent years building.
The tools we actually run for dental.
Not a logo wall. These are the systems we log into on your behalf during the Sprint.
Google Business Profile Manager
Your biggest discovery channel. Services, photos, hours, Q&A, and posts.
Weave
Patient communication and review requests, where the agreements already exist.
Google Ads
High-intent capture on “emergency dentist” and named-procedure searches when paid is in scope.
Google Local Services Ads
The badge unit that sits above standard results for local service intent.
Meta Business Manager
Community and school-year targeting for family practices, run to a real radius.
Yelp Business Manager
Still consulted for healthcare choices in the Bay Area. Response and velocity managed.
Dentrix and Open Dental exports
Read-only. We work from your reporting and never touch the clinical system.
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude
Tracked monthly for how often your practice gets cited in AI answers.
What this looks like in practice.
A typical dental client sees weekly GBP impressions rise 2 to 3x within 30 days of Sprint kickoff, and calls sourced from the profile become measurable instead of guessed at. The bigger shift is usually that cost per new patient becomes a number the owner can state, because it gets calculated every month rather than estimated once a year.
These are the patterns we build toward, not a promise. Actual outcomes vary by city competition, your PPO mix, and how your front desk handles an inbound call. We publish named client results only with the client's permission and real numbers attached.
Sprint vs the two alternatives you're weighing.
Most Bay Area practice owners weigh a part-time marketing coordinator, a dental-specialist agency retainer, or the Sprint. Here is the honest comparison.
| SEOD Operator Sprint | In-house marketing coordinator | Dental-specialist agency retainer | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost over 6 months | $2,250 total | $24,000 to $36,000 (part-time salary plus burden) | $12,000 to $30,000 |
| Bay Area onsite | Yes, 90 min with Eric | Yes, they work in your office | Rare, usually remote only |
| Who you actually talk to | Eric, by text, 4-hour window | Your employee | An account manager, not the strategist |
| Google Business Profile posts | 48, written to your service mix | Yes, competing with other duties | Usually templated across clients |
| AI-answer optimization | Baked in | Rare | Sometimes, often sold as an add-on |
| Cost per new patient reported | Yes, calculated monthly | Depends entirely on the hire | Sometimes, often blended into ad spend |
| Commitment | 6-month bundle, cancel anytime after | Ongoing employment | 12-month contract is common |
| Dormant patient reactivation | Included | If they get to it | Usually a separate line item |
Coordinator cost assumes a $40K to $60K Bay Area part-time salary plus roughly 25% burden, prorated to 6 months. Agency range reflects published Bay Area dental retainers. Neither alternative is wrong for every practice. If you need someone in the office 30 hours a week, hire the coordinator.
Questions Bay Area dental owners ask.
Is any of this HIPAA-covered?
No, and that is deliberate. We work with marketing surfaces and read-only reporting exports. We do not handle protected health information, we do not touch your clinical system, and we do not put patient data into tools that were not built for it. If a task would require a business associate agreement, we say so and point you to Weave or your practice management vendor.
How do you respond to a review without violating patient privacy?
We never confirm someone was a patient, never reference treatment, and never discuss specifics in public. The response acknowledges the experience, states your standard, and moves the conversation to a phone call. That pattern is standard and it protects you whether the review is fair or not.
Can you help us move from PPO toward fee-for-service?
On the marketing side, yes: leading with services patients choose and pay for directly, and stating plan participation clearly so the wrong calls stop reaching your front desk. The contract decisions themselves are yours and usually your consultant's. We will not pretend that is our lane.
What should a new patient cost us to acquire?
Published benchmarks land near $312 in competitive markets, and the Bay Area is competitive. The number that matters more is yours, which most practices have never actually calculated. We calculate it monthly and put it in the dashboard so the spend conversation stops being a guess.
Do you integrate with Dentrix?
We read from it, we do not write to it. You or your office manager pull the reports and we work from those exports for the dashboard. Same for Open Dental and Eaglesoft.
Will you guarantee a number of new patients?
No. Anyone guaranteeing patient volume is either buying the number with your own ad spend or inventing it. We commit to the deliverables on this page, on the timeline on this page, logged so you can verify each one.
We already have a marketing company. Is this worth a call?
Two honest outcomes. Either we replace them and match the scope for less, or we cover the pieces they do not, usually Google Business Profile depth and AI-answer visibility. Eric will tell you which one applies, including when the answer is to stay where you are.
Do you work with practices under $600K in collections?
Yes, if you are actively growing. Below roughly $400K the free 3-Point Visibility Audit is the better starting point, and you can revisit the Sprint once the chair time exists to absorb new patients.
Three ways to start.
Not ready yet? Start with the free 3-Point Visibility Audit. 48 hours. No sales call. Get the audit →