What is the best way to promote yourself

I’ve created a huge library of dental videos, and the most useful ones for practice growth are in my YouTube Teeth4life Marketing playlist.

AI can be hit-and-miss if you use it blindly — but when you ask the right questions, ChatGPT becomes a powerful research tool. It can uncover ideas, evidence, and strategies in seconds that would normally take weeks to gather.

This section focuses on one thing:
✅ How general family dental practices can market themselves effectively
(Not specialist dentistry — that’s a totally different game.)

Sustainable growth for a general family dental practice still comes mainly from word of mouth, but today that happens online through Google reviews and local search. The strongest foundations are: an excellent patient experience (driving referrals), an optimised Google Business Profile (photos, posts, review replies), and a simple website that converts quickly with clear “Book/Call/Directions”. Social media helps build trust, Google Ads can capture urgent demand, and leaflets work when targeted locally. All marketing should follow GDC advertising guidance.

Don’t start this journey alone

The best advice I can give is simple: don’t try to do this on your own.

Find a friend, a trusted colleague, an experienced mentor — or better still, connect with people in your peer review group who want to improve and grow in the same direction. We all have different strengths and weaknesses, and you’ll often learn fastest from those with business experience or strong IT and digital skills.

You can register on our DentalHealthService website for free so patients and families in your area can find you when they need help.

If you don’t already have a website, we can provide a simple one at minimal cost. It doesn’t need to be fancy — it just needs to be easy to find, clear, and ready when someone searches for a dental professional nearby.

With collaboration, we can support each other, share what works, and build better services that improve oral health — and everyone’s wellbeing.

If you click on the image, you’ll be taken to an earlier resource outlining how we could build a Dental Health Service run by a group of like-minded professionals — supporting one another, while still working independently and autonomously.

The first video explains how we can learn from each other and grow faster through collaboration. Because unless dental school has changed dramatically, most of us receive little to no training on how to start, run, or protect a business.

After a year of foundation training—where you learn the common pitfalls and pressures of a dental career—it’s no surprise that many people feel safer working in a corporate environment. But dentistry under the NHS, which behaves more like a corporate rather than a service, also shows how poor systems can break the individauls working in it.

So let’s try something different. Let’s build a smarter, more supportive way forward — together.

The introduction possibly explains why I’ve made all these resources. I wish I could have watched some clinical videos when I was a student. My first apicectomy was after reading a book. 🫣 It did work, but the video shows a different option.

These are two videos I made around three years ago. The main focus is a marketing framework I called PERIO — a simple acronym designed to help dental professionals communicate prevention and value more effectively.

The idea was inspired by the way banks successfully sold products such as Payment Protection Insurance (PPI). That marketing was highly persuasive and extremely effective… but in many cases it crossed the line into mis-selling and wasn’t ethically justified.

Dentistry must take a different path. Our marketing should be honest, evidence-based, and patient-centred. We can still be persuasive, but in the right way — using NUDGE theory (sometimes called libertarian paternalism) to help people make better decisions while keeping their freedom of choice.

I do occasionally go off on tangents when speaking, but the slides contain useful resources and practical ideas worth reviewing.

Many of us are worried about AI. I don’t think it will take our jobs away in dentistry, but when you do a scan of a restoration it may tell you it’s not good enough and you need to remove a bit more decay. It’s not particularly empathetic.

We will always need people to provide our service, but the technology can help us deliver prevention which ultimately should mean we have more time off work and the work when we are there should be more rewarding in many ways. I dictated the following to AI.

I think I’m an undiagnosed dyslexic voice recognition certainly helps. The next was used with chatgpt but it reflects my opinions.

An outline for your Health Hub?

Prevention-First Dentistry 🦷✨

A simple business model designed to build long-term oral health — not short-term dependence.

1) Vision

My ideal dental business is built around one core principle: we can’t ethically place someone onto a “plan” without first understanding their oral health properly. Every patient deserves a thorough assessment before any ongoing care or treatment schedule is recommended.

In traditional terms, the first objective is to help them become “dentally fit” — stable, comfortable, healthy, and out of immediate risk.

2) The Problem With “Instant Plans”

Many dental systems encourage a quick sign-up approach: Meet → Pay monthly → Treatment later. But dentistry doesn’t work like that.

People arrive with different risks, different levels of disease, and different priorities. The correct sequence should always be:

🔎 Assess properly
🧠 Diagnose accurately
🧩 Plan intelligently
🛡️ Maintain long-term

3) The Core Workflow

Step 1: Full assessment and risk review ✅

This includes a proper clinical examination, history, prevention assessment, and (where needed) X-rays and periodontal review. The goal is to identify what is required to make the patient dentally fit.

Step 2: If not dentally fit → personalised pathway 🗺️

If a patient isn’t dentally fit, we create a timed, staged schedule of treatment — realistic, individualised, and designed to restore stability as efficiently as possible.

This is not a generic package. It’s a tailored route back to health.

Step 3: Once dentally fit → shared responsibility 🤝

Once stable, long-term care becomes a partnership:

The dental team supports, monitors, and intervenes when needed
The patient takes responsibility for habits, diet, cleaning and prevention

Prevention should be the foundation. If it fails, both sides feel disappointed — because the goal is to avoid repeat problems, not to create ongoing treatment dependency.

4) What the “Plan” Should Cover

A dental plan shouldn’t be a sales mechanism. It should be a health-maintenance system. It should focus on:

1. Maintenance 🪥

Prevention, monitoring, early intervention, hygiene support, and risk-based reviews.

2. Repair 🔧

Small repairs that prevent bigger ones — keeping the mouth stable and comfortable.

3. Replacement 🦷

Crowns, dentures, implants, and larger reconstructions when needed — ideally as a last resort.

5) A Fair Pricing Model 💷

The fee structure should reward prevention and loyalty:

✅ Patients who are already dentally fit should receive a substantial discount on replacement dentistry when needed.
📌 Patients who require stabilisation should pay appropriately for the individualised plan and staged treatment needed to restore health.

That keeps the system fair and sustainable — without pressure to “sell plans”.

6) The Children’s Prevention Model 👶✨

This is where the model becomes life-changing: early prevention, minimal intervention, and long-term protection.

Early years: prevention-led, minimal intervention ✅

If children are seen regularly, their dental needs should be small — often less than 20 minutes a year for prevention, education and monitoring.

When appropriate, SDF can stabilise early decay without injections or drilling. Children should rarely need local anaesthetic until they have maturity and capacity.

Age 18+: low-cost continuation plan 🌱

When a child becomes 18, they should move onto a minimal-cost plan — often still supported by parents. It can be marketed as protecting their child’s future:

✨ “Every time I look at it, I feel I’ve done something good for my child.”

7) Positioning in the Dental Market 📌

There is a big difference between what people want and what they truly need. Some of the most profitable dental businesses provide what people want — not always what they need.

There should be room for both models. However, both should start with prevention — because prevention is the foundation of ethical, stable, high-quality dentistry.

8) Summary ✅

This model follows a simple sequence:

🔍 Assess first
🧱 Build “dentally fit”
📅 Schedule personalised treatment when needed
🤝 Share responsibility once stable
👶 Protect children early
🦷 Reward maintenance and loyalty with fair pricing

🌱 Create health — not dependence.