TL;DR
"How do we reach practice owners?" The real question is who decides, and what would make them switch. In an independent practice the owner doctor signs and the office manager often decides who gets through. In groups and DSOs a central team approves vendors. Reach them when the problem is pressing, through people they already trust, with pages that describe the problem in their words and show the switch will not disrupt the practice.
How practices are organized today
Before you pick a channel, know which kind of practice you are selling to, because the buyer changes with ownership.
- Physician practices. According to the American Medical Association's Physician Practice Benchmark Survey (published June 24, 2025), 42.2% of physicians were in private practice in 2024, down from 60.1% in 2012, and 34.5% worked in hospital-owned practices. The same survey found 47.4% worked in practices with 10 or fewer physicians.
- Dental practices. The ADA Health Policy Institute reports that 16% of US dentists were affiliated with a dental support organization (DSO) as of 2024, and that 72.5% were private practice owners as of 2023. Among dentists up to 10 years out of dental school, more than 1 in 4 were affiliated with a DSO in 2024, according to ADA News (November 17, 2025).
What this means for a vendor: one product may face three different buyers. A small independent practice, a multi-location group, and a DSO or hospital-owned practice each buy in a different way.
Who decides in each kind of practice
| Practice type | Who usually signs | Who evaluates and can stop it | What they care about most |
|---|---|---|---|
| Independent practice | The owner doctor or dentist | The office manager or practice administrator | Cost, time to set up, disruption to the schedule, how much the staff has to learn |
| Multi-location group | A managing partner, administrator or operations lead | Operations, IT and billing leads | One standard across locations, contract terms, fit with existing systems |
| DSO | A central executive or purchasing team | Clinical leadership, IT, and the offices that will use it | Standard pricing, rollout across many offices, security and contract terms |
| Hospital-owned practice | The health system | Health system purchasing, IT and compliance | Approved vendor status, security review, system contracts |
The office manager matters more than most vendors expect. In an independent practice, the office manager or administrator often screens vendor calls and emails and decides what the doctor sees. Write material for that person: what changes for the staff, how long setup takes, and what they need to do. Then give them a short summary they can hand to the doctor, with the cost, the risk and the result in a few lines.
For DSOs, the sale is usually to the central team first and the offices second. The DSO marketing guide covers how DSO purchasing works in more detail.
What practices need to see before they switch
A practice that already has a vendor for what you sell is not looking for a new one. It is looking for relief from a specific problem. Show them:
- The problem in their words. Write the way an owner describes the problem late at night after the practice closes: "month-end books are late", "claims keep getting denied", "the phones ring out at lunch". Not your product category name.
- How the switch works. Who does the setup, how long it takes, and what happens to the schedule and the staff while it happens.
- What it works with. Name the practice management, EHR, imaging or billing systems you connect to. If you do not connect to one, say so.
- How patient information is handled. If your product or service will create, receive, keep or send patients' protected health information for the practice, you are generally a business associate under HIPAA, and the practice will need a business associate agreement with you. Have it ready, along with answers to common security questions.
- Proof from practices like theirs. References from practices of the same type and size, used with permission.
- Clear terms. Price, contract length and how to leave. Practices are slower to sign when they cannot see how to leave.
One rule on payments to practices. If what you sell is paid for by Medicare, Medicaid or another federal health program, do not offer practices anything of value for referrals or for recommending you to other practices without review by healthcare counsel. The HHS Office of Inspector General puts it plainly: "In the Federal health care programs, paying for referrals is a crime."
Which channels reach practice owners and office managers
No single channel does the job. These are the ones worth testing, and the role each plays.
- Search ads and search pages. Owners and managers search when the problem is pressing. Build one page per problem and send the ad for that problem to that page, not to your home page. Google counts landing page experience, meaning how relevant and useful the page is to the person who clicked, as one part of Quality Score, so point each ad at a page that says the same thing rather than at a general home page.
- Search is also where your outbound lands. Every cold call or email you send leads some owners to look you up. If nothing useful shows up when they search your name and your problem, the call was wasted.
- Trusted advisers and partners. Practices take advice from practice-focused accountants, consultants, dental and medical dealers, IT providers, and their state and specialty associations. Give each partner its own page and its own way to send you a practice, so you can see which partner produces customers.
- Events. State and specialty association meetings, study clubs and DSO-focused conferences put you in front of owners, managers and group leaders. Build one page and one follow-up for each event, too. The dental B2B marketing guide covers trade shows and dealer coordination for the dental side.
- Email and direct outreach to office managers. Short, specific, about one problem, with a clear next step such as a 15-minute call or a price sheet.
- LinkedIn. More useful for reaching group and DSO leadership, whose job titles are listed there, than for reaching an owner doctor in a small practice.
- Social ads. Practices rarely switch a vendor they trust because of a cold social ad. Social works better for reaching people who have already visited your site or met you at an event.
Before you build anything new, look at what you already have. A useful tool buried on your site, such as a cost calculator or a checklist, can often produce leads faster than new content once it is easy to find. If you are choosing which channel to fund first on a small budget, see which marketing channel comes first on a small medtech budget.
How much can you spend to win one practice?
Work this out before you set any budget. The numbers below are made up to show the method. Replace them with your own.
| Step | Example |
|---|---|
| Monthly fee a practice pays you | $500 |
| Your gross margin on that fee | 70% |
| Gross profit per practice per month | $350 |
| Average months a practice stays | 24 |
| Gross profit from one practice over its life | $8,400 |
| Share of qualified demos that become customers | 1 in 8 |
| Most you can pay for one qualified demo and break even | $1,050 |
If a channel brings in qualified demos below that number, it can pay for itself over time. If it brings them in above it, change the channel, the pages or the offer before you add budget. Remember that gross profit over 24 months arrives slowly, so decide how long you can wait to earn back what you spend.
The same method works for a one-time sale: use the gross profit from the first order and any repeat orders you can reasonably expect.
Mistakes that waste a vendor's budget
- Sending every ad to the home page. The page should repeat the problem the ad named.
- One message for everyone. The owner, the office manager and a DSO purchasing team need different material.
- Counting every form fill as a lead. Job seekers, students and other vendors fill in forms too. Decide in writing what counts as a lead; this guide on what counts as a lead walks through how.
- Expecting cold social ads to win switches. Use them to follow up with people who already know you.
- Hiding the terms. Practices want to see the price, the contract length and how to leave.
- Treating a DSO like a large independent practice. The decision sits with a central team, and the sale takes longer.
Where to start
Pick one type of practice, one problem and one channel. Write the page in the owner's words, make sure the form reaches a person who follows up the same day, track which leads become customers, and do the break-even arithmetic above with your real numbers. Then add the next channel.