Ask most practice owners how many patients are on their membership plan and you’ll get a guess. Ask them how many patients are on their payroll or what their mortgage payment is, and you’ll get an exact number, because those numbers matter to them.
That gap is the whole problem. If you don’t know your member count within a few patients at any given time, your membership isn’t a real part of your practice yet. It’s a line item nobody owns.
Here’s how to fix that: what a membership actually is, the mindset shift that turns it into a revenue system, twelve ways to grow it, how to price it, and a simple plan to get started this week.
- What a Membership Actually Is (and Isn’t)
- The Mindset Shift: From Loss Leader to Revenue System
- 12 Ways to Grow Your Membership
- 3 Ways to Get Team Buy-In
- Make It Desirable, Not a Discount Plan
- How to Price Your Membership Plan
- Marketing Your Membership
- Your Action Plan: Pick Three
What a Membership Actually Is (and Isn’t)
Strip away the jargon and a membership is simple: a direct agreement between a patient and your practice. They pay a monthly or annual fee. In exchange, they get a defined package of care.
That’s it. But that simple definition matters, because it tells you what a membership is not.
It’s not insurance. Insurance puts a company between you and your patient. A membership removes that middleman entirely. It’s a direct relationship between you and the person in your chair, priced by you, delivered by you.
It’s not a discount plan. A discount plan says “we’re cheaper.” A membership says “you’re a member here.” One of those attracts price shoppers who leave the second someone undercuts you. The other builds loyalty. More on this below.
It’s not a last resort you mention when someone can’t afford treatment. If your membership only comes up at the end of an awkward insurance conversation, it’s not doing its job.
It’s not just for fee-for-service or out-of-network practices. This is the misconception that trips up the most practice owners. You don’t have to drop your PPOs to run a strong membership program. Plenty of heavily PPO-driven practices run thriving memberships right alongside their insurance mix, and plenty of fully out-of-network practices do too. Different models, same opportunity: patients without dental insurance, or with dental benefits that don’t actually serve them well, still need a way to say yes to care.
If you’re fee-for-service and wondering why you’d ever discount anything, you don’t have to. A membership is a bundle, not a discount. It’s a packaged list of care your patients already need, priced as a package. Whether you build in savings on additional treatment is your call.
And a bundled, recurring relationship changes patient behavior on its own. Patients who pay as they go show up when something hurts and drift the rest of the time. Patients who’ve bought into a membership show up because they feel invested, the same way people who pay for a gym membership actually go more than people who don’t. More visits means more chances to catch problems early, more diagnosed treatment, and more production for your practice.
One more thing: your membership should have your name on it, not your software vendor’s. Patients shouldn’t sign up for “the Smile Advantage plan.” They should sign up for your practice’s own plan, under your own brand. A membership platform should power the back end quietly and stay out of the patient relationship.
The Mindset Shift: From Loss Leader to Revenue System
A lot of practices treat their membership like a loss leader, something they offer because it feels like the right thing to do, not because it’s supposed to make money. That framing sets you up to under-invest in it and then wonder why it never grows.
Built right, a membership should be profitable at every level. Profitable for the practice and still affordable for the patient. Those two things aren’t in tension. They’re both true at once when the plan is priced and run correctly.
Here’s the shift that changes everything: every practice is obsessed with new patients. Ad spend, referral programs, SEO, all of it aimed at people who haven’t walked through your door yet. That’s fine. But your biggest, cheapest, most immediate opportunity is usually already sitting in your patient base.
If your membership is still tracked on a spreadsheet, run by one person in their spare time, or something you only bring up when a patient can’t afford a treatment plan, you’re leaving that opportunity on the table. Treating it as a real, owned, promoted part of your practice is what turns it into a revenue system instead of an afterthought. (If you’ve been managing yours manually and telling yourself it’s working fine, it’s worth reading about the hidden costs of a DIY membership plan before you decide it’s not worth fixing.)
12 Ways to Grow Your Membership
There are a lot of ways to grow a membership program. Here are twelve. Three of them matter more than the rest combined, so start there.
The three that matter most
Team buy-in. Nothing else on this list works if your membership lives entirely with one team member. It can’t be Sally at the front desk carrying the whole thing alone. Every person who talks to a patient, the scheduler, the assistant, the hygienist, the treatment coordinator, needs to mention it naturally, consistently, and with confidence. This one matters enough that it gets its own section right below: see 3 Ways to Get Team Buy-In.
A tractor beam for new patients. Your membership isn’t just a fallback for patients who can’t afford insurance. Put it in front of people who haven’t met you yet. Uninsured families searching for a new dentist will pick the practice with a clear, visible membership option over the one that offers nothing. Your membership can pull new patients in, not just retain the ones you already have.
Converting your existing patients. This is the gold mine most practices ignore. You’ve got two groups sitting in your chairs right now: uninsured patients paying visit by visit with nothing tying them to your practice, and insured patients whose dental benefits don’t actually serve them well. Both groups are candidates for your membership, not just the uninsured ones. Promote it to everybody, not only the patients who obviously need it. Internal marketing to your own patient base is the cheapest growth available to you, because you’re not paying to acquire anyone. (For more on why this pays off, see how membership plans boost patient retention.)
That last point surprises people. Even patients with decent medical benefits often have dental coverage that’s genuinely bad: high premiums, low annual maximums, narrow networks. For a lot of insured patients, your membership is simply the better option once they see the numbers side by side.
And the other nine
The rest of the list won’t move the needle the way the top three will, but they compound over time. Layer these in once the first three are solid:
- Morning huddle scan. Flag membership-eligible patients on the day’s schedule before they ever sit down.
- Treatment plan comparison. Show the cost of a treatment plan with and without the membership side by side.
- QR codes everywhere. Waiting room, checkout counter, statements, anywhere a patient has a spare moment.
- Homepage placement. If a patient has to dig for your membership on your website, most won’t find it.
- Doctor video. A short video of the dentist explaining the plan in their own words builds trust fast.
- Email blasts. Simple, direct emails to your existing list about the plan and what it covers.
- Social proof. Real patient stories and testimonials about the value they’ve gotten.
- Business partner flyers. Cross-promote with other local businesses your patients already frequent.
- Membership drives. A focused push, for a week or a month, with a specific enrollment goal.
3 Ways to Get Team Buy-In
If your membership depends on one person remembering to mention it, it will never grow past what that one person can carry. Real growth happens when a patient hears about your membership consistently, at every touchpoint, before they ever reach the person who’s supposed to close the sale.
There are three moments where that consistency matters most.
1. The phone. This is often the first touchpoint, and it’s where most practices fumble the question that comes up constantly: “Do you take my insurance?” The answer that works: “We don’t, but we have something better.” Whoever answers your phones needs a version of that line ready, not a shrug or an apology.
2. The assistant. Your assistants are in and out of the operatory more than anyone else on your team. That makes them your biggest potential advocates for the membership, starting the conversation chairside, long before a patient reaches checkout. A quick, natural mention while walking a patient back or finishing a procedure does more than people expect.
3. The treatment coordinator. The treatment coordinator is often the final anchor who seals the deal, but they shouldn’t be the only voice the patient hears about it. If a patient’s first exposure to the membership is a hard pitch at checkout, they just want to get out the door. If they’ve already heard about it from the phone, the assistant, and the doctor, they’re warmed up by the time they reach the coordinator, and closing the conversation becomes easy instead of awkward.
Get these three moments consistent and you’ve built a system that doesn’t depend on any single person’s memory or motivation.
Make It Desirable, Not a Discount Plan
What you call your membership, and how you frame it, decides whether patients see something exclusive or something cheap.
“Discount plan” and “savings plan” sound like exactly what they are: a markdown. A discount plan signals “we’re cheaper than insurance.” That framing attracts patients who are shopping on price and will leave the moment someone offers a better deal.
“Membership” sounds like something else entirely: a country club, a gym, a med spa, a salon. People pay for those and actually use them, because they’ve bought into something, not just paid for a markdown. That’s the frame you want. Never let your plan read as a cheap, last-minute option. Present it as something a patient is proud to be part of. (We’ve written a full breakdown of this psychology in Stop Calling It a Discount Plan, worth reading if positioning is where you’re stuck.)
There’s a deeper reason this matters beyond how it sounds. Insurance is designed to be paid for and never used. Every claim costs the insurance company money, so their incentive is for you to pay premiums and skip the dentist. A membership is the opposite. You want your members using it. A member sitting in your chair means more exposure to their actual health, more diagnosed treatment, and more production. Design and talk about your plan like something meant to be used, because it is.
How to Price Your Membership Plan
Pricing a membership doesn’t need to be complicated, and overthinking it usually backfires. Here’s a straightforward three-step framework.
- Tally your preventive core. Add up what a year of cleanings, exams, and X-rays actually costs at your own fee schedule, per patient.
- Take 10-15% off the total. Apply one discount to the collective sum, not a separate discount mapped to every individual service code. A single number is simpler to quote and simpler for your team to explain.
- Round to a clean number. Round to the nearest $10. Don’t price it down to the penny. A convoluted number ($387.42/year) deters patients in a way a clean one ($390/year) doesn’t. Simple beats precise here.
If you want a deeper walkthrough of setting fees for different plan types, Pricing Your Membership in Advantage Academy covers the step-by-step process, and Structuring a Membership Plan That Sells covers how to keep the plan itself simple once the price is set. (We’ve also written about that structuring framework here on the blog: How to Structure a Membership Plan That Sells.)
What we typically see. These are averages, not a rule, a measuring stick to compare against, not a target to hit exactly:
- Child: around $300 per year
- Adult: around $400 per year
- Perio: $600-700 per year
Higher or lower than these numbers is completely fine. Your region and your own fee schedule decide where you actually land.
Stack the value
Once your core pricing is set, layer in a few low-cost extras that raise the plan’s perceived value without adding real cost. Things like a free oral cancer screening, a free cosmetic consultation, or free whitening are nearly free for you to deliver but genuinely meaningful to a patient deciding whether to enroll. The goal is a plan that feels loaded with value, never cheap.
Marketing Your Membership
A membership that nobody knows about doesn’t grow. Once your plan is priced and your team is bought in, get it in front of patients everywhere they interact with your practice: your website homepage, your waiting room, checkout, statements, social media, and new patient orientation.
Smile Advantage’s marketing library includes sample materials practices can adapt for their own plan: trifold brochures, membership cards, social media posts, and postcards, all customizable with your practice’s own name, brand, and colors so your plan looks like it belongs to you (see What a Membership Actually Is (and Isn’t) above on why that matters). Smile Advantage customers can find these materials and more inside Advantage Academy.
Your Action Plan: Pick Three
You’ve now got a full list of ways to grow a membership program. Don’t try to do all twelve at once. Pick three.
- A team meeting to get everyone bought in. Walk through the three buy-in moments above. Give your team the phone script. Make sure everyone, not just the treatment coordinator, can talk about the plan naturally.
- New energy around marketing it. Website, social, in-office signage, new patient orientation. It’s common for a practice to have hundreds of members and nothing about the plan visible anywhere on their website. Don’t let that be you.
- One person who owns it. Not as an afterthought squeezed between other duties, but as a real responsibility: a few hours a week, tracking numbers, following up, eating and breathing the membership.
That’s it. Three priorities, not twelve. Nail those, and the rest of this list becomes a lot easier to layer in over time.