Why should dentists invest heavily in marketing instead of cutting costs? Because you cannot shrink your way to a healthy practice. The sinking ship dentist responds to the squeeze by cutting corners and pushing volume, and it never works, because the market under that model keeps eroding. The adapting practices do the opposite. They invest heavily in marketing, on purpose, because that is how you reach a better-paying patient and move upstream from the commodity grind. Marketing is not an expense you trim when times are tight. It is the engine that gets you to a place where times are not [...]