What You’ll Learn:

Table of Contents

• Play 1: The Teams
• Play 2: The Quarterback
• Play 3: The Offensive Line
• Play 4: Touchdowns vs Field Goals
• Play 5: Penalties
• Play 6: Halftime Show
• Play 7: The Scoreboard
• The Very Official Super Bowl to Dental Marketing Conversion Chart
• The Final Whistle
• FAQ

I Don’t Know Who’s Playing, But Your Dental Practice Should Still Show Up

Play 1: The Teams

Or: Your Dental Practice vs Every Other Dentist Who Also Owns a Website

From what I understand, football involves two teams. They wear different colors so you can tell them apart, and they are competing to prove they’re the best footballers of all the footballers. This feels extremely familiar.

In dental marketing, there are also two teams. Team One is your dental practice. Team Two is every other dental practice within driving distance of your front door.

I assume this is how the Super Bowl teams are chosen, too. The football business guy looks at a map of the conferences and divisions, zooms in about five miles, and says, “You. You two. Fight.”

When a patient searches “dentist near me,” they are not choosing between you and a dentist three states away, but between you and the practices that show up right next to you in search results, on Google Maps, and on social media. That is the legendary matchup of men in tight pants (or dentists in scrubs, as it were).

You can have a great team inside your practice. Amazing doctor. Friendly staff. Comfortable chairs. Fully stocked treasure chest with bouncy balls and stickers for the orally hygienic boys and girls. But if your online presence is outdated, inconsistent, or hard to find, you are basically giving up your spot on the field to the practice down the street.

Meanwhile, that practice might not even be doing anything revolutionary. They’re still using paper forms on clipboards, the heathens. But they’re visible. They show up in search. Their social media looks alive. They have reviews that make them feel like a safe choice. And in local marketing, being a safe, familiar choice wins a lot of games.

In football, I assume the teams spend a lot of time preparing for their opponent. Watching footage, making plans, wearing matching outfits, skulking behind bushes to spy, painting black lines on their faces for some reason (intimidation, maybe?), etc.

In dental marketing, preparation looks like understanding your local market. Knowing who else is showing up and making sure your practice looks current, professional, and easy to choose. You’re already on the field, champ. The only question is whether patients can tell which team they’re supposed to root for.

Play 2: The Quarterback

Or: Your Website, Which Benefits From Being Hot and Smart

Alright, so. The quarterback.

From what I can gather from every form of media having to do with football, the quarterback is the most important player on the team. Everyone looks to them and everything goes through them. When things go well, they get credit. When things go badly, people yell at them through their televisions. They’re usually dating a very famous model.

Your website is the quarterback of your marketing strategy. Probably. I am saying this with confidence because everyone else seems to express their sports-related opinions with confidence, and also because it makes sense if you do not think about football too hard.

Every other marketing effort you run eventually funnels back to your website. Social media posts, Google search results, online ads, reviews, copywriting… you get it. Someone clicks something, anywhere, and where do they end up?

Hopefully on your beautiful, convenient dental website.

A quarterback is responsible for a lot; throwing the ball, running with the ball, catching the ball when that one guy throws it through his legs, and doing interviews after the game ends (without the ball) where he reveals that his strategy is giving it 110%. Your website, too, must carry the burden of leadership. It needs to load quickly and look modern. It needs to explain who you are, what you do, and why someone should choose you, ideally without making them hunt for basic information like your phone number or whether you accept insurance.

And when your quarterback sucks, the whole team suffers.

If your website is slow, confusing, outdated, or looks like it was built during a time when we all still said “the Facebook,” patients are going to hesitate. And hesitation is how you lose momentum. I am pretty sure momentum is important in football because my husband says this often, and it’s not about physics and literal momentum, I guess.

This is also where a lot of dental marketing breaks down, much like the bodies of former football players after the age of 50. You can invest time in paid ads, social media marketing, and reputation management, but if your website is clucky, generic, or unclear, you’re dropping the ball. (Feel free to laugh, that was a really good joke.)

A strong dental website does a few key things very well. It makes a good first impression and answers questions quickly. It tells patients exactly what to do next, whether that is calling, booking online, or learning more. It supports everything else you are doing instead of quietly sabotaging it.

The quarterback doesn’t work alone, obviously. There are other players involved. Some of them block. Some of them run. Some of them are doing other presumably critical tasks. One of them kicks, but only sometimes, and sadly his points don’t count as much.

Which brings us to…

Play 3: The Offensive Line

Or: SEO, Which Is Doing a Lot Of Emotional Labor

Okay. The offensive line.

These are the people who stand in front of the quarterback and do… something. Blocking? I think? They do not score. They do not get cool slow-motion shots. They exist to prevent disaster.

This is SEO.

SEO isn’t super exciting, pals. No one gathers around the office to celebrate a really strong meta description. No one says, “Wow, that title tag gave me chills” even when I worked really hard on it and it’s very, very good. And yet, when SEO is not doing its job, everything immediately falls apart. Local SEO, in particular, is doing an incredible amount of invisible labor for dental practices.

Good SEO looks like:

• Your Google Business Profile being accurate and active.
• Your name, address, and phone number being consistent everywhere online.
• Your website loading quickly and making sense to search engines that are, as far as I know, not human and do not have eyes.

SEO is why your practice shows up when someone searches “dentist near me” instead of disappearing into the internet void where old MySpace pages and abandoned blogs go to rest (RIP to my blog post about polar bears wearing pants from ten years ago).

When SEO is working, nothing dramatic happens; you just keep showing up. Patients keep finding you. The quarterback continues to quarter his back.

When SEO is not working, it is chaos. You get buried under competitors, your rankings drop, you start wondering if Google is mad at you personally. You might even consider “doing something viral” to fix it, which is not how this works but might be funny, so I encourage you to try.

I assume in football, when the offensive line fails, everyone blames the quarterback anyway. This also feels extremely accurate to dental marketing. Practices will say, “Our website is not converting,” when the real issue is that the right people aren’t even making it to the site in the first place.

SEO doesn’t get applause, but it keeps the game moving. It gives your other marketing efforts room to breathe. It is the difference between fighting for visibility and quietly building a strong, stable foundation for the shinier marketing players. And yes, it takes time. The offensive line doesn’t just show up on Super Bowl Sunday and hope for the best. They practice. They prepare. They do drills and drink protein shakes, I bet.

So if your dental marketing feels like it’s under constant pressure, or like something is always breaking down before you get a chance to score, it might not be the quarterback’s fault. It might be that Google’s algorithm has changed yet a-freaking-gain and your offensive line is snacking on Twinkies instead of updating the SEO strategy. (This metaphor is not labored at all, stop it.)

Play 4: Touchdowns vs Field Goals

Or: Not Every Marketing Win Has to Be a Big, Screaming Victory

In football, there are two different ways to get points. One is very exciting and one is less exciting but still counts. I do not know how many points either of these things are worth and to be honest they seem fairly arbitrarily assigned anyway, but I do know that people react differently to them, which is what matters.

In dental marketing, this is the difference between touchdowns and field goals.

Touchdowns are your big, obvious wins like new patient calls, online appointment requests, or someone filling out a form and saying, “Hi, I’d like to become a patient and I am emotionally ready to commit.”

Touchdowns are what everyone wants. They’re measurable, satisfying, and they make the crowd cheer. Or, in your case, they make the front desk smile and say, “I actually have a boyfriend, but I’ll schedule you for Thursday.”

Field goals are smaller, quieter wins. These are the modest number of likes, comments, shares, story views, video watches, profile visits, and that moment when someone says, “I feel like I see your practice everywhere.”

No one throws a parade for a field goal but if you ignore them entirely, you are going to have a very frustrating season. And also the kicker won’t get to do anything and that makes me feel bad for that guy. You’re really important, buddy! You’re on the team, too!

Anyway, this is where a lot of dental practices get a bit stuck. They post on social media and immediately ask, “Did this book a patient?” They run an ad and expect instant phone calls. They look at content that builds familiarity and think it didn’t work because it did not directly lead to a conversion that afternoon.

But marketing doesn’t work like that. Or if it does, someone should tell literally everyone else.

Field goals matter because they warm up your audience, build brand awareness and trust, and make your practice feel familiar and safe before someone is ready to commit. By the time a patient is ready to book, you’re not a stranger. You’re the team they have been watching all season.

And yes, touchdowns are the goal. Obviously. This is a business. But field goals keep you in the game. They add up!

This is definitely also how football works. You wouldn’t ignore an entire avenue of scoring just because it’s not the most dramatic one. That would be silly. And you’re not silly, kicker guy. You’re a valuable and cherished part of the team.

Play 5: Penalties

Or: When Your Marketing Does Something Technically Allowed but Spiritually Incorrect

Penalties are the part of football where everything suddenly stops and a person in stripes explains what just happened using words that do not clarify anything for me personally. Then my husband calls him an idiot because of footage that, regrettably, also means nothing to me no matter how many times they replay it in slow motion.

There aren’t usually catastrophic mistakes. No one is getting escorted off the field or arrested, but they slow you down. They quietly make everything harder than it needs to be and enough of them can totally change the trajectory of a game.

One very common penalty is inconsistency.

Posting three times in one week and then disappearing for three months is a penalty. Updating your website once every presidential administration is a penalty. Starting strong and then forgetting you ever had a dental marketing plan is absolutely a penalty.

Another penalty is relying on stock photos that look like they were generated in a lab where no one has ever been to a dental office.

You know what I mean. Generically attractive people shot in perfect lighting with perfect teeth. A website header that features a suspiciously enthusiastic family laughing directly at the camera for no clear reason. Patients can feel this. They may not consciously register it, but something in their brain says, “This feels fake,” and that hesitation costs you yards. Or points. Or something measurable.

Then there is the penalty of having no clear call to action.

Your website might look nice. Your social media might be active. But if a patient has to work to figure out what to do next, you’re making the game harder than it needs to be. It’s easy! Call. Book online. Request an appointment. Choose one. Put it somewhere obvious. Repeating this is not illegal, I promise.

Some penalties are more subtle. So subtle that one might simply nod their head in sage agreement with outraged friends at the Super Bowl party when the penalty in question appears to be nigh undetectable to the human eye.

Outdated information. Broken links. A Google Business Profile that has not been updated since those halcyon pre-pandemic days when you still had toys in the waiting room. These things chip away at trust. They might not knock you out of the game, but they definitely do not help you win it.

In dental marketing, most penalties are preventable. They just require attention and maintenance. Someone actually looking at the thing and asking, “Does this still make sense?”

Clean marketing is disciplined marketing. It prevents you from undoing your own hard work for no good reason so you don’t sabotage yourself.

And speaking of things that stop the game entirely, it’s almost halftime. Which is great, because I have some thoughts.

Play 6: Halftime Show

Or: Dental Branding and My Personal Disappointment

Halftime is when football temporarily stops being about football and becomes about spectacle.

The game pauses and me and my plate of nummy lil’ snacks start paying attention while someone very famous appears. Even people who do not care about the sport suddenly have opinions.

This is branding!

Halftime is the part of your dental marketing that is not directly trying to sell dentistry. It is the content that exists to make people feel something in the hopes of building a recognizable dental brand.

Most often, dental practices accomplish this with social media content that shows personality, team photos, behind-the-scenes moments, light humor, trends, and Reels that have nothing to do with crowns or fillings and everything to do with being human.

It is also where I need to pause and say that I was deeply disappointed to learn that Taylor Swift is not performing at this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. This feels like a missed branding opportunity for football, frankly.

Taylor Swift understands branding. Eras. Storytelling. Consistency. Reinvention. Fans who will follow her anywhere. This is what dental practices are trying to do, and it’s not fair that I don’t get to work her more clearly into this part of my extended football metaphor.

Sigh.

Anyway, your halftime show content isn’t about immediate conversions. No one is watching the halftime show and saying, “Wow, I should call my dentist right now.” That would be unhinged. Commendably health conscious, yes, but also weird.

However, your branding builds familiarity, trust, and emotional connection. A lot of dental marketing legwork comes from making your practice feel approachable, familiar, and comfortable for the people in your community.

And just like the actual halftime show, some people will complain. (Like me, a few paragraphs ago.)

“This has nothing to do with dentistry.”
“Why are they doing this trend?”
“I do not understand what is happening.”

That is a-okay. Not every halftime show is for everyone, but every halftime show is for someone, and that someone will remember you when the game starts back up.

This does not mean you need to dance on Instagram if that makes you want to crawl under a desk. Just remember that if your marketing is all touchdowns and no halftime, it feels transactional. If it is all halftime and no scoring, it feels unfocused. You need both.

Play 7: The Scoreboard

Or: The Numbers, Which I Respect but Do Not Fully Understand

This is the giant thing everyone keeps looking at to determine who is winning. It displays numbers. Those numbers mean something. People have very strong feelings about them. They hold a frankly baffling amount of influence over my husband’s quality of life.

This is analytics.

In dental marketing, the scoreboard is made up of website traffic, phone calls, form fills, online bookings, Google reviews, engagement, reach, and a handful of other metrics that marketers talk about with alarming confidence.

Let me fill you in on a little marketing secret. Seriously, lean in, I could be banned from the International Society of Marketing People for sharing this: You don’t need to understand every number to benefit from them. You just need to pay attention to the overall trends:

• Is traffic going up or down?
• Are calls increasing?
• Are people actually booking online?
• Are more patients finding you through search instead of referrals alone?

These are some of the questions that tell you whether your marketing is working, not whether one post “went viral” or whether a Reel got more views than usual.

The scoreboard exists to inform decisions, not to shame you. One bad game doesn’t mean the season is over. One slow month doesn’t mean your marketing is broken. Context matters. Patterns matter. Adjustments matter. You matter, kicker guy.

This is also why guessing is just a truly terrible strategy.

Without a scoreboard, you’re just whoopsy-daisy marketing your way through the year and hoping for the best. Which, to be fair, is how a lot of people start, but it’s not how you win the Super Bowl.

I assume in football, coaches look at the scoreboard and then make changes. They don’t just say, “Well, that ‘s probably good,” and call it a day. They drink Gatorade and strategize and yell and smack players lovingly on the butt.

The same is true for dental marketing (except the butt thing. Don’t… don’t do that). You look at what’s working and you fix what’s not. You double down on the plays that move the ball forward and stop running the ones that keep getting you penalized.

And if all of this feels overwhelming, that is totally normal. There is a reason teams have coaches. There is a reason dental marketers exist. There is a reason some people know the rules and other people are deeply invested in the snack spread. We divide and conquer, and somebody has to bring the pigs-in-a-blanket.

Which brings us to the end of the game. Or the season. Or the metaphor. Honestly, it has gone on longer than I expected, but I think we won the trophy. (Medals? Do the players get medals? Or is it a trophy? Remember to research this before publishing, it would be super embarrassing otherwise.)

The Very Official Super Bowl to Dental Marketing Conversion Chart

For the visual learners and the people who skipped straight here.

The Final Whistle

So there you have it, sports fans. An entire football game, explained through dental marketing, by someone who could not tell you what a down is and has absolutely no interest in learning.

And that is kind of the point.

“What? What could you possibly mean?” I hear you say, utterly stunned and impressed.

The football metaphor works not because dentistry and sports are secretly the same thing, but because marketing follows predictable patterns. Competition. Visibility. Strategy. Consistency. Measurement. Personality. Trust. It also works because I am a genius. 

You need a strong foundation that holds everything together. A website that does its job, SEO that keeps you visible, content that builds familiarity, and branding that feels human. Some practices go all-in on touchdowns and ignore the field goals. Some live entirely in halftime and forget to score. Some never check the scoreboard and just hope for the best.

The practices that win long-term are the ones that pay attention to the whole game, ultimately winning the Super Bowl trophy and/or medals.

Frequently Asked Questions

About the Author: Megan Nielsen is an SEO strategist and the Grand Overlord of copywriting at My Social Practice. My Social Practice is a dental marketing company that offers a full suite of dental marketing services to thousands of dental practices throughout the United States and Canada.