Two Approaches to Branding for DSOs: Choosing the Right Strategy for Your Organization

When launching a Dental Service Organization (DSO), one of the most important branding decisions you’ll make is whether to operate under a single, unified brand or allow each location to have its own distinct identity. Both approaches have their advantages and challenges, and the right choice depends on your growth strategy, patient demographics, and operational preferences.

At Patientli, we support DSOs in both branding approaches, offering tailored solutions to ensure a professional and scalable presence. Patientli Looks, our system of brand, website and materials design, can help to streamline the creative process for your organization regardless of the approach it chooses. 

Here’s a breakdown of the two strategies, an honest assessment of the pros and cons of each approach, and how we help you succeed with either model.

Approach 1: A Single Brand for the Entire Organization

Under this model, all locations share the same name, visual identity, and brand messaging. This approach creates a unified experience and strengthens brand recognition, giving patients the sense that they’re interacting with a larger, established organization. DSOs like Tend and Dentologie take this approach, with each location operating under the brand of the entire organization. Patients who prioritize a seamless experience across locations and appreciate businesses with robust technology, streamlined processes, and centralized oversight may find this approach more appealing. 

Pros of a Unified Brand

• Strong Brand Recognition: Every location benefits from the overall reputation and awareness of the parent brand.
• Cost-Efficient Marketing: Branding efforts are streamlined, reducing the need for multiple campaigns and unique marketing materials. From an SEO perspective, all locations benefit from the strength and authority of the organization’s primary website. This consolidated approach enhances link-building efforts, increasing the visibility of individual locations in search results.
• Consistent Patient Experience: Patients know what to expect at every location, which can lead to increased trust and loyalty with the brand as a whole, not just their preferred provider at their preferred location
• Simplified Operations: Standardized branding, messaging, and marketing processes ensure efficiency and alignment across locations.
• Opportunity to Build a Valuable Brand: One often-overlooked advantage of this approach is the cumulative value it builds for the organization’s brand itself. Since all locations operate under a unified name, every marketing effort and investment in brand recognition benefits the entire organization. A strong, recognizable brand can be a significant asset, particularly if the organization pursues acquisition opportunities or seeks additional funding for expansion.

Cons of a Unified Brand

• Reputation Risks: Since patients will see all locations as a single entity, a single negative experience at one location can impact the entire brand.
• Limited Local Adaptability: Individual locations have less flexibility to tailor their brand identity and messaging to local market needs and preferences.
• Potential Brand Dilution: If not managed well, adding new locations with varying service offerings can weaken the brand’s clarity, as patients will generally expect a relatively consistent experience across all locations under a unified brand.
• Potential for Reduced Organic Visibility for Services: Organizations using a unified brand typically have a single website with location-specific pages listing available services. While this structure ensures brand consistency, it may result in lower organic visibility for individual services compared to single-location organizations that can optimize separate service pages for local search rankings. 

How Patientli Supports This Approach

Patientli provides DSOs operating as a unified brand with the services and infrastructure needed to maintain consistency and strong visibility across all of their locations. 

• Branding: When your organization uses a Patientli Look, you’ll instantly have access to a variety of branded layouts for everything from signage to marketing materials, website pages and patient giveaways. You’ll also and on-call design support, ensuring that all locations maintain a cohesive and professional look.
• Website:  provide a single website for the entire DSO, with dedicated pages for each location to ensure consistency while allowing for localized content.
• Pricing: This model benefits from lower per-location costs, making it a budget-friendly option for growing DSOs.

Approach 2: Individual Branding for Each Location

This model allows each location to have its own brand identity, name, and marketing strategy. While the locations remain part of the larger DSO network, they operate under unique branding tailored to their local markets. As an example, DSOs like Heartland Dental operate using this approach to allow their member practices to maintain their unique connection with their own communities and existing patient base. Patients who value working with a small, local business may prefer to work with offices taking this approach. 

Pros of Location-Specific Branding

• Local market adaptation: Each location can tailor its brand to best connect with its unique target and community while still receiving the support of the whole organization.
• Less organizational risk from poor experiences: A negative experience at one location won’t affect the entire DSO, as patients often don’t recognize the connection between different offices and the parent organization.
• Brand diversity: The DSO can appeal to multiple patient demographics through distinct brands tailored to each location, or through brands that project a strong community connection. 
• Flexibility & innovation: Each location has the freedom to experiment with unique marketing initiatives and service offerings.

Cons of Location-Specific Branding

• Higher Marketing Costs: While operating under individual brands can provide flexibility in messaging and approach, it does lead to more marketing overhead, as each brand requires some degree of customization to its marketing strategy, campaign design and execution. This fragmentation can require an increase in overall marketing expense needed to support the strategy of each brand and location.
• Operational Complexity: Managing multiple brands requires strong coordination and oversight. Patiently helps mitigate this risk from a design perspective through our professionally-designed Looks, which each brand can utilize
• Brand Recognition Challenges: Without a unified brand, each location must build awareness and visibility individually

How Patientli Supports This Approach

With Patientli, you can be sure that all of the individually-branded practices that make up your organization are supported with excellent branding and marketing.

• Website: Under this approach, Patientli provides a unique website for each location, allowing for distinct branding while maintaining consistency in key areas such as policies or key content. While building out many sites for your individually-branded locations will never be as cost efficient as building a single site for a DSO with unified branding, our streamlined web design and content system is highly efficient and can still allow your organization to benefit from the efficiencies of its size through a discounted multi-location plan. Contact our sales team for details. 
• Branding: Patientli makes it easy for each practice in your organization to have their own polished and professional look. Our system of Looks ensures each location has their choice of professionally-designed brand identities, complete with professionally designed collateral for all of their marketing activities. Organizations are able to specify the Looks they’d like their practices to have access to. Check out available Looks here.
• Marketing: With a separate website and brand for each practice, DSOs taking this branding approach receive more personalized marketing attention. Since we’ll create a website for each location, complete with pages for each of the services it offers, organizations taking this approach can benefit from higher visibility for the services offered in each location
• Pricing: This approach results in higher per-location costs due to the need for multiple websites and more tailored marketing strategies. However, your organization can still benefit from its size with multi-location discounts on our plans. Schedule a demo with our team to learn more. 

Choosing the Right Branding Approach for Your DSO

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to branding a DSO. The right choice depends on your organization’s goals, target patient base, and operational structure.

• Opt for a single brand if you want a streamlined, cost-effective approach that builds strong brand equity.
• Allow for location-specific brands if you prioritize flexibility, market segmentation, and risk management.

Whichever approach you choose, Patientli is here to provide the tools and expertise needed to build a professional, scalable brand for your DSO.