Denali Creative - A Stubenbordt Company

10/14/2026

Your surgical coordinator is the most important revenue generator in your practice. More than your surgeon. More than your marketing.

So why does almost nobody train them to sell?

New video: the 4 sales rules every refractive surgery coordinator needs.

Five minutes or it’s gone. Call a web lead back in 5 minutes instead of 30 and you’re 100× more likely to reach them (MIT / InsideSales research).
Never sound like bad news. “You’re not a LASIK candidate” should be the start of a better conversation, not the end of one.
Nobody leaves with a financing brochure. Get them approved in the office, on an iPad, in five minutes.
Ask for the date. Repeat their goals, make the recommendation, offer two openings.

Tonight’s homework: fill out your own website form and time how long it takes someone to call you back. That number tells you more than any marketing report.

Watch it here: https://youtu.be/6UP0dr-Mlyg

Free download in the description: the Refractive Surgery Coordinator Hiring Scorecard.

10/14/2026

Your marketing got the phone to ring. What happens next matters.

Tomorrow, I’m joining Alphaeon Patient Financing to present “The First Call Advantage: Building a Stronger Practice Through Better Phone Skills.”

We’ll talk about how to turn more patient inquiries into scheduled appointments through better conversations, stronger first impressions, and a team that feels confident answering the questions patients actually ask.

I’ll share practical examples and techniques to help your team:

• Build trust and understand what matters to each caller
• Handle pricing and affordability questions with confidence
• Introduce financing naturally into the conversation
• Help patients take the next step toward scheduling

If you own or manage a practice, or work directly with prospective patients, I’d love to have you join us.

📅 Thursday, October 15
🕒 3:00–4:00 PM Central | 4:00–5:00 PM Eastern
💻 Live webinar

[Register here](https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1107689153152200277)

Can’t join live? Register and Alphaeon will send you the recording.

10/06/2026

Your patients’ FSA funds shouldn’t ghost them.

A timely reminder can help patients check their balance, understand their plan deadlines and arrange eligible care before unused funds may be forfeited. October is a good time to start that conversation.

Make your reminder useful: name the type of care your practice provides, give patients a clear next step and encourage them to confirm eligibility with their plan administrator. Keep the urgency honest—do not promise that everyone has a December 31 deadline or that every remaining dollar will disappear. Some plans allow a carryover or grace period. The deadline to receive care may also differ from the deadline to submit a claim.

Need a seasonal social campaign that makes the message clear and gives patients a reason to act? Denali Creative helps healthcare practices turn timely topics into thoughtful patient-facing content.

Let’s plan your practice’s next campaign.
(682) 831-0900
https://www.thinkdenali.com

10/03/2026

Big change for practice owners: you can now advertise in ChatGPT.

As of this summer, OpenAI allows ads for dental practices, eye care, and minimally invasive cosmetic treatments like Botox and fillers. Ads show up below ChatGPT's answer, there's no minimum spend, and clicks start around $3 to $5.

We set up accounts for two of our practices this week. The suggested campaigns targeted the whole country at $100 a day, so check those defaults before you spend anything.

Here's our full guide: what's allowed, what it costs, how to set it up, and how we'd test it.

https://www.thinkdenali.com/chatgpt-ads-healthcare-practices/

09/17/2026

Your next patient may discover your practice through an AI answer before ever visiting your website.

For medical practices, understanding that journey means connecting search visibility with qualified inquiries, booked consultations, and new patients.

In our latest article, we explore:

• What research actually shows about AI summaries and search clicks
• Why strong SEO still matters
• Which metrics help connect marketing to practice growth
• A practical 30-day plan to review your results

Built for ophthalmology, dental, and other elective-care practices navigating changes in search.

[Read “AI Search for Medical Practices: What to Measure Now”](https://www.thinkdenali.com/ai-search-medical-practices/)

09/10/2026

📞 Your marketing can generate the lead. Your phone team has to book the patient.

We just launched a new Dental Phone Training video from Denali Creative designed specifically for dental front-office teams.

🎥 Watch the video here:

https://youtu.be/GCIFBuDXNJE?is=X8PZo0FC1SHooXI2

You can invest in Google Ads, SEO, AEO, social media, and a great website — but if a potential new patient calls and the conversation doesn’t lead to an appointment, that marketing opportunity is lost.

This training covers the fundamentals every dental team member answering the phone should know, including:

• Creating a strong first impression
• Building rapport quickly
• Communicating value
• Handling common questions and objections
• Guiding the conversation toward an appointment
• Turning more calls into booked new patients

After watching the video, we also created a quick test your team can take to reinforce the key points:

https://www.thinkdenali.com/dental-phone-training/

At Denali Creative, we don’t believe marketing stops when the phone rings.

Generating the lead is only half the job. Converting it is what drives growth.

09/08/2026

AI has become the core of what we do at Denali Creative—and that didn’t happen overnight.

For the past three years, we’ve spent our days and nights learning, building, testing, and pushing ourselves with one goal: to become the best in the world at using AI for SEO, answer engine optimization (AEO), design, and new patient generation.

We’ve fully embraced it, from how we research and develop strategies to how we design websites, create content, and identify opportunities for our clients. We’re putting years of healthcare marketing experience behind the technology, because knowing what to build—and why—still matters.

Today, we’re proud to launch Village Dental’s new website.

It’s a self-optimizing site designed for ongoing, AI-driven improvement—not something we launch and leave untouched until the next redesign. We’ve brought together thoughtful design, SEO, AEO, and a patient-focused experience with a clear purpose: help more people find the practice, get their questions answered, and take the next step toward becoming a patient.

The new site brings Village Dental’s four locations together, helping patients explore their options, choose an office, and book online.

We’re proud of this launch and grateful to the Village Dental team for trusting us with their brand.

At Denali Creative, embracing AI means continually challenging how we work and putting what we learn to work for our clients. The late nights have been worth it. This is the kind of work we’ve been building toward.

Take a look: https://villagedentalraleigh.com

08/25/2026

A compliance note for every practice and organization hosting optometric CE:

Effective January 1, 2027, ARBO is changing how COPE attendance gets reported — and if you run CE events, this lands on your desk, not your attendees'.

The new rule: attendance records for all COPE Accredited CE must be submitted to OE TRACKER within 30 days of the activity. Whether it's a one-hour lunch-and-learn or your three-day annual meeting, the clock starts the moment the course ends.

In our work with ophthalmic and optometric organizations, we see the same pattern: attendance reconciliation is handled "when someone gets to it." That workflow dies December 31st.

Three things to put in place now:

Name a single owner. "The meeting team" is not accountable — one person is.
Choose your method per format. QR codes via the OE TRACKER app for live meetings; ARBO's Excel upload for webinars and hybrid sessions.
Separate COPE from Non-COPE at the planning stage. They're two different submissions. Sort your agenda now, not after the event.

And here's the angle most providers overlook: reliable credit reporting is marketing. Doctors return to meetings where their CE posts within days — not the ones generating renewal-season panic calls.

We break down the full policy, both submission paths, and the pre-2027 checklist here:
🔗 https://www.thinkdenali.com/cope-attendance-records-policy-2027/

Denali Creative — Healthcare marketing, taken higher.
Planning a 2027 CE event? We build the registration pages and pre-event sequences that make new workflows land smoothly.

The new COPE attendance records policy takes effect January 1, 2027. Providers must submit CE attendance within 30 days — here are both submission options.

07/20/2026

Hiring the right Refractive Surgery Coordinator can be the difference between a practice that grows and one that quietly leaves revenue on the table.

In this new video, I break down the 4 most costly hiring mistakes I see ophthalmology practices make—and, more importantly, how to avoid them.

If you’re an ophthalmologist, administrator, practice manager, or anyone responsible for growing a refractive surgery program, this is one video you don’t want to miss.

🎥 Watch here: https://youtu.be/hYh4JgWho8I?si=MJwbUQL_asIlIl2A

I’d also love to hear from you:
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced when hiring or managing a refractive coordinator?

If you find the video helpful, I’d really appreciate a 👍 Like, a 💬 Comment, and a 🔔 Subscribe. It helps me continue creating practical content to help practices grow.

Your refractive surgery practice may not have a lead problem—it may...

07/06/2026

Your marketing didn’t fail when the patient clicked the ad.
It failed ten seconds later.

They called your office interested, motivated, and ready to ask about LASIK, cataracts, premium lenses, dry eye treatment, or a consultation — and the entire value of that lead was decided by how your front desk answered the phone.

Every dollar you spend on marketing has one job: make the phone ring.

But what happens next is where most ophthalmology practices quietly lose revenue.

-A rushed greeting.
-A missed opportunity to build trust.
-A caller placed on hold too quickly.
-A team member who answers questions but never guides the patient toward booking.
-A price shopper who could have become a consult, but instead hung up and called the next practice.

That is why phone training may be the highest-ROI, lowest-cost growth move most ophthalmology practices overlook.
Our new guide breaks down exactly how to turn more inbound calls into booked consults, including the greetings, scripts, caller types, and front-desk behaviors that help patients feel confident taking the next step.
Because better marketing gets the phone to ring.
Better phone training turns that ring into revenue.
Read the full guide →
https://www.thinkdenali.com/ophthalmology-phone-training-2026-blog/