For Independent Dental Practices
The growth you are looking for
is already in your practice.
The call that came in at lunch and never got returned. The treatment plan that stalled at "let me think about it." The family of nine years that quietly stopped coming. Every practice is already losing more than it would gain from another ad.
Marketing that starts with what you already have.
Not ready for that? Read the argument. It covers the whole case.
$0 due today Thirty days to decide Month to month, no contract
Four-Year Record, One Practice, Anonymized
Change over four years, same market, same practice
What you already know
Growth leaks out in ordinary moments.
None of these is a marketing problem in the way the word is usually sold. Every one of them is a patient the practice already earned, lost somewhere between interest and treatment. Marketing can create opportunities. What happens after that decides what the opportunities are worth.
The call at lunch
Somebody rings while the desk is at lunch, or after hours. Nobody calls back for a day or two.
"Let me think about it"
They heard the treatment plan, they meant it, and that is where it has sat ever since.
The family that stopped
Nine years, every six months, then nothing. All they get now is an automated text.
The patient nobody asked
They would send their friends and their family tomorrow. No one has ever given them a reason to.
Why it keeps happening
Nearly everyone selling dental marketing is paid on the media spend.
So the recommendation is decided before anyone looks at your practice: buy reach. Media buying with generic search work attached, offered to every practice as the right model for that practice. Nobody could make that claim honestly about every practice at once, and it is not a character flaw that they do. It is arithmetic. An organization paid on media spend cannot recommend spending less of it, and cannot start where there is no media to buy.
You bought what was on offer. That is the whole accusation, and it is not aimed at you.
The alternative is not proprietary. Define who the practice is for and aim everything at that. Every marketing student knows it. What is rare is an arrangement that lets anyone be paid to do it.
Nothing today
You are not charged to start. The $2,500 setup fee comes when your first campaign is ready, and it is refundable for thirty days.
Flat monthly, after you decide
$1,995 a month, one number, and it does not start until you have decided to continue.
Leave whenever
Month to month, thirty days' notice, no contract. Every month is a decision we have to earn.
Which is why Opkie does not sell that work at all. No ads, no websites, no search. A practice already generates more opportunity than it converts, and building the communication that stops it leaking out is the whole of the job. The terms in full, and what we are answerable for
Old school is the new school
Nine places where the right communication changes the outcome.
Answer
Recover the calls and inquiries that would otherwise just disappear.
Book
Turn more of them into appointments on the schedule.
Show
Get more of the people who booked into the chair.
Accept
Follow up on the treatment that got a "let me think about it."
Retain
Keep good patients from quietly drifting off.
Reactivate
Bring back the ones who already did.
Expand
Let patients know about the things the practice does that they never knew about.
Refer
Give happy patients a reason and an easy way to send somebody.
Reach
Build your own list of local people you can contact directly, an asset you own rather than rent.
All nine come down to who is messaged, when, and what it says. Getting clear on who the practice is for is what decides all three, and it is the one thing a practice cannot write about itself. And notice where referrals sit: you can always ask for them directly, but far more arrive when the other eight are going right.
What the work produces
$64K
New production in five weeks
Garland, Texas · Database reactivation
The first recommendation for this practice was not an ad budget. It was their own records: dormant patients who had chosen the practice once and simply had not been contacted well. Working that list produced $64K in new production in the first five weeks, without new-patient ad spend.
A provider paid on media has no reason to make that recommendation. We had no reason not to.
One result, in one market, under that market's conditions. The rest of the record is on the evidence page
The thinking, on record
We make this case in public.
Episodes from the Opkie channel: the argument, out loud, with practicing dentists in the room.
More on the Opkie channel
The case file
Everything here can be checked.
This site is built to be verified, not skimmed. Five places to look, depending on what you need to know.
- The Argument Why good practices end up with interchangeable marketing. The full case at length: what the old directory model actually constrained, why digital reproduced the same result anyway, and what any of it has to do with the calls your front desk takes. Read the argument
- How We Work Terms you can hold us to. Nothing charged today, a refundable setup fee when the first campaign ships, and a flat monthly that starts only after you continue. What the work asks of your team, and what Opkie is answerable for, stated plainly. See how we work
- Evidence What happened, where, with a human in it. Accounts from Garland, New Orleans, and Millcreek: what each practice looked like, what was done, and what happened, with the conditions stated rather than implied. See the evidence
- About A family firm with a point of view. Independent practices hold the one thing corporate dental cannot buy or build: a patient relationship with a specific, known doctor. Who we are, and why the work runs the way it does. About Opkie
- Library The body of work, open. Guides, reports, and working documents, free to read without a form in the way. The depth of the shelf is its own argument. Browse the library
Practice fit
Built for a specific kind of practice.
A fit
- Independent owner-operators who know their patients by name
- Practices that want the right patients, not just more patients
- Owners ready to work the base they already have before paying to find a new one
- Teams willing to do the internal work that makes the external work produce
Not a fit
- Volume-first practices More of the same patients is a different job.
- DSO-affiliated or corporate-owned The work requires owner decision-making authority.
- Practices that want a vendor to execute a decided plan The first part of the work is deciding who the practice is for. That cannot be handed over already decided.
- Practices whose binding constraint is staffing Different problem, and marketing will not fix it.
If the second column reads like your practice, we will tell you on the first call.
Who we are
A family firm, not an agency floor.
Opkie is a Salt Lake City family firm built from the operator side. We have owned and scaled clinics ourselves, which is why the work starts inside the practice instead of inside an ad account.
One practice per market. Month to month, because every month should be a renewal decision we have to earn.
Common questions
Asked before nearly every call.
Is this just another marketing agency?
Agencies sell channels: ads, search, websites. We do not sell any of them. We work on what your practice already has: the calls that come in, the treatment already diagnosed, the patients already on your list, and the people they would send you if anyone asked. Most of the growth you are looking for is already there.
Is this on top of what I already spend, or instead of it?
Neither. We do not run ads, build websites, or do search work, so nothing here competes for your marketing line and nothing replaces what is already on it. Keep the agency if it is working. What we do makes what you are already running more effective, because the people it brings in get answered, booked, and followed up properly.
How much of my time will this take?
Less than doing it yourself, which is the alternative this replaces. We do the work. You approve direction, give access to the systems we need, and make the decisions that are genuinely yours to make.
What does it cost to start?
Nothing today. We build your first campaign, usually within a week. The $2,500 setup fee is charged then, and if you decide inside thirty days that it is not for you, tell us and it comes back. The $1,995 a month does not start until after you have decided to continue.
Do you work with more than one practice in a market?
No. One practice per market. The work runs on your own patient list and the communities your people belong to, and inside one market those overlap, so serving two practices would mean messaging the same families under two names. If we already serve a practice in your area, we will decline and say so immediately.
Get Started
Decide after you have seen the work.
Nothing is charged today. We build your first campaign, usually within a week, and you have thirty days from there to decide whether to continue.
Prefer to talk it through first? Book twenty minutes, or read the full argument.