Healthcare / Dental
Dental marketing measured in new patients, not clicks.
A dental practice does not have a traffic problem. It has a chair time problem, a recall problem and an answered calls problem. Marketing that reports on sessions instead of new patients is describing something the practice cannot spend.
How do dental practices get more new patients from Google?
Most new dental patients come from a local search on a phone, a map result, and a quick read of recent reviews. Winning that sequence means a Google Business Profile with the right primary category and accurate hours, pages that answer the questions patients ask before booking, a steady flow of recent reviews, and a booking path that works in under a minute.
Paid search adds volume for specific high intent searches such as emergency dental, implants and clear aligners, where somebody is looking for a provider today rather than researching.
The part most practices underuse is the patient list they already have. Hygiene recall and reactivation of lapsed patients usually produce appointments at a lower cost than any advertising channel, because those people already chose you once.
The number that matters is cost per new patient, and nobody can tell you it in advance.
Dentists think in production per acquired patient. Agencies think in cost per lead. The gap between those two numbers is where most dental marketing budgets quietly disappear.
A lead is a form fill or a phone call. A new patient is somebody who booked, arrived, was diagnosed and accepted treatment. Between the two sit your answer rate, your scheduling coordinator, your insurance mix and your no show rate, and none of those are visible in an advertising dashboard.
You will find plenty of published cost per new patient figures for dentistry. We do not use them, because every one we could trace led back to an agency blog with no stated methodology or sample. Publishing a number we cannot source would be the easiest thing on this page and the least useful.
What we can do is measure your own. Track enquiries by source, booked appointments, attended appointments and accepted treatment, then divide. After two or three months you have a real figure for your practice in your market, which is worth more than any benchmark.
Benchmarks you can use to sanity check a quote.
LocalIQ aggregates its own customers' Google and Microsoft Ads accounts each year. Read these as orientation, not as a target, and note carefully that they are cost per lead rather than cost per patient.
SourceLocalIQ, Search Advertising Benchmarks, 2026
Converting a cost per lead into a cost per patient needs your booking rate and your show rate. Any figure that skips that step is guessing. Results vary by market, budget, competition and other factors. Nothing here is a guarantee of a ranking, a lead volume or a revenue outcome.
Four different searches, four different practices.
Treating dentistry as one keyword set is the most expensive mistake in the category. These four behave nothing alike.
Emergency: decided in minutes
A broken tooth on a Friday afternoon. The patient calls the first practice that appears to be open and answers the phone. Distance, hours and a human voice decide this, and content plays almost no part.
- Highest paid search cost, highest conversion rate
- Lost almost entirely to voicemail rather than to competitors
- Worth a specific page, a specific ad group and a phone plan
New in the area: decided in days
Somebody moved, changed jobs or changed insurance. They are choosing a long term practice, so reviews, insurance acceptance and how the team is described carry the decision.
Specific treatment: decided in weeks
Implants, clear aligners, a crown they have been putting off. Research heavy, price sensitive, and often compared across a much wider radius than routine care.
Nothing at all: the patients you already have
No search happens. Hygiene is due, treatment was diagnosed and never scheduled, or somebody has not been seen in eighteen months. This is the largest and cheapest source of production in most practices.
A campaign that mixes all four into one ad group will report a respectable average and hide four different problems.
Recall and reactivation are marketing, even though they do not look like it.
Every practice has a list of patients who were diagnosed and never scheduled, and a longer list who have simply drifted. They already chose you, already trust the clinician, and already know where the car park is. Reaching them costs a fraction of acquiring a stranger.
The reason this gets ignored is that it produces no dashboard. There is no impression share, no keyword ranking and nothing to show in a monthly slide. There is just a list, a sequence and a person who follows up.
Read the full breakdown: Recall and reactivation are marketing, even though they do not look like it.Hide the full breakdown: Recall and reactivation are marketing, even though they do not look like it.
Doing it properly means an automated sequence with human escalation, sent through channels the patient agreed to, with unscheduled treatment and overdue hygiene handled separately because the conversations are different. It also means being careful about what the message contains.
Using patient information to market a service generally needs a written HIPAA authorisation from that patient first. Treating an appointment list as a marketing list is the single most common way a practice creates a problem for itself.
In practice, an appointment reminder is a treatment communication and a promotion of a whitening special is marketing. The safe design keeps clinical detail out of the message entirely and puts it behind a login or a phone call.
Where an independent practice actually wins.
A DSO backed practice down the road will usually outspend you on paid search and brand. It will not out-position you on the things patients are choosing between.
| What patients weigh | Corporate group | Independent practice |
|---|---|---|
| Advertising budget | Larger, centrally managed | Smaller, needs to be aimed |
| Named clinician | Often generic or rotating | One dentist patients can read about and ask for |
| Continuity of care | Staff turnover is visible in reviews | The same people every visit, if you say so |
| Review content | Volume, frequently about the location | Fewer, but naming individuals |
| Speed of decision | Approvals and brand templates | You can change the site this afternoon |
| Local specificity | Templated location pages | Genuine detail about the area you serve |
Reviews that name a hygienist are worth more here than any slogan, which is why review collection is a front line activity rather than an afterthought.
Recent, plentiful and answered.
BrightLocal's 2026 consumer survey, base 1,002 US adults, measures the thresholds patients apply before they will consider a practice at all.
SourceBrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey, 2026, base 1,002 US consumers
Which is why review work is a continuous process rather than a campaign. A practice with forty reviews, all from two years ago, reads as a practice that stopped caring.
Five constraints most dental marketing advice skips.
None of these are optional and each one is linked in the sources at the foot of this page.
- There is no such thing as a HIPAA certification, and no website is HIPAA compliant on its own. HHS states plainly that it does not certify any person or product as HIPAA compliant, and the Security Rule contains no requirement to certify at all. Anyone selling you a certificate is selling you a document, not a defence.
- Using patient information to market a service generally needs a written HIPAA authorisation from that patient first. Treating an appointment list as a marketing list is the single most common way a practice creates a problem for itself.
- State licensing boards, not just HIPAA, govern what a clinician may publish. New York's Board of Regents rules allow a patient testimonial only where the patient has expressly authorised it in writing, the portrayal is disclosed, reasonable disclaimers accompany any claim about results, and fictional patient testimonials are prohibited outright. Rules differ by state and by profession, so the answer for one practice is not the answer for another.
- The FTC requires competent and reliable scientific evidence behind a health claim before the ad runs, and says plainly that a "results not typical" line does not cure a deceptive impression. A testimonial is not substantiation for the claim underneath it.
- The FTC's rule on fake reviews and testimonials took effect on 21 October 2024. It covers buying reviews, writing your own, and suppressing negative ones. Every review we help collect is first party, requested from a real customer, and never gated on the rating they intend to leave.
Before and after photography sits at the intersection of all five. A defensible gallery has written authorisation from each patient, consistent lighting and no retouching, honest framing about what is typical, and it stays within your state board's rules on portraying treatment.
The unanswered phone is the largest line item nobody budgets for.
Before recommending any increase in budget, we listen to what happens to the calls a practice is already paying for.
Call tracking exists to answer one question: how many people rang, and what happened. In dental practices the recurring pattern is a cluster of missed calls at lunchtime, a run to voicemail after five, and a scheduling conversation that offers one appointment slot and ends when it does not suit.
Fixing that is not glamorous and it is frequently worth more than a larger ad budget. The same volume of enquiries converting at a better rate costs nothing extra in media.
Recording calls in a dental practice needs care. Recordings can contain clinical detail, so where the recording lives, who can hear it and how long it is kept are decisions to make deliberately rather than by default.
Insurance information belongs on the website, not in the first phone call.
A large share of dental enquiries end the moment somebody learns you are out of network for their plan. When that discovery happens on the phone, you have paid for the click, occupied a team member and produced nothing.
Practices avoid publishing plan information because the list changes and because they would rather have the conversation. The result is a slower funnel full of people who were never going to book, and a frustrated front desk.
Read the full breakdown: Insurance information belongs on the website, not in the first phone call.Hide the full breakdown: Insurance information belongs on the website, not in the first phone call.
A plainly worded page that names the plans you are in network with, explains how out of network benefits typically work, and says clearly what a fee for service practice is, filters enquiries before they cost you anything. It also happens to be exactly the kind of specific, useful page that earns visibility on its own.
The same applies to membership plans. If you run one, it needs a page with the actual inclusions, because it is the answer to the most common objection in the category and it should not be locked inside a conversation.
What we would run for a practice.
Each is a separate scope and can be bought on its own.
Local SEO
Map pack visibility for the area you actually draw patients from, starting with the primary category.
Google Ads Management
Emergency, implant and aligner campaigns kept separate, measured on booked appointments.
Review Management
First party review collection at a steady pace, with replies that are not templated.
Call Tracking
Which marketing produced which ringing phone, and what happened to the ones nobody answered.
Marketing Automation
Recall and reactivation sequences that run whether or not anyone remembers.
WordPress Web Design
A fast site where booking works on a phone and the insurance page does its job.
Your website works alongside the practice management system you already run.
We do not replace your practice management system, we do not migrate it, and we do not ask you to change it. The site links to it from the places a patient is ready to act, and embeds the vendor's own widget where the vendor publishes one. Being plain about the mechanism: that is all it is. Nothing is synced, nothing we build reads or writes your records, and the names below are systems our clients run, not partners of ours. In a general practice the handoff that earns its keep is the one somebody reaches at ten at night, when the office is shut and the only thing between an enquiry and a voicemail is whether the booking link is where they expected it.
Practice management
Charting, scheduling and the ledger stay exactly where they are. The website never reads them and never writes to them. Where your system publishes a patient facing booking page or an account login, the site links straight into it, so nobody meets a second system they did not ask for.
- Dentrix and Dentrix Ascend
- Eaglesoft
- Fuse
- Open Dental
- Curve Dental
- Denticon
- SoftDent
- CareStack
Imaging and diagnostics
This part of the stack has nothing to do with a website and it should stay that way. Nothing we build touches a sensor, a scanner or a study, and no image travels through the site. We name these only so it is clear we know where the line is.
- DEXIS
- CS Imaging
- Planmeca Romexis
- Apteryx XVWeb
- Pearl
- Videa
Patient communication and online scheduling
Most of these publish an embeddable booking or request widget. Where yours does, it goes on the page a patient is already reading rather than behind another click. Where it does not, the link is labelled clearly enough that nobody wonders where they have been sent.
- Weave
- Lighthouse 360
- Solutionreach
- NexHealth
- RevenueWell
- Flex Dental
- Dental Intelligence
- Swell
What we actually change
Not the system: the path to it. Where the button sits on the page, whether it says what happens when you press it, how many taps it takes from a phone, whether it appears again at the point a patient has finished reading and decided, and whether somebody who is not ready yet has a second way to reach you. That path is ours, it is measurable, and in most practice audits it is the part doing the damage.
Where the handoff is only a link
Some vendors publish an embeddable widget and some publish nothing at all. Where there is nothing to embed and no deep link worth pointing at, the site sends the visitor to your booking page or your login and stops there. That is a perfectly good outcome and we would rather say so than describe a seam we cannot remove. What we can do is make the destination unsurprising, so nobody arrives wondering whether they are still dealing with you.
Get a dental marketing audit.
We look at your profile, your local visibility, what happens to your calls and where your recall is leaking, then tell you what we would fix first.
One caveat on all of that. These are descriptions of rules as they are published today, not legal advice about your situation. They differ by state and they change, sometimes quietly, so check the current wording with your own counsel or compliance officer before you rely on any of it. Where a rule touches your marketing we write to the stricter reading and send it to you for sign off before anything publishes.
Straight answers.
How much should a dental practice spend on marketing?
It depends on how many new patients you actually need, what a patient is worth in your practice, and how competitive your area is. A practice with two open hygiene days needs a different plan from one with a six week wait.
We size the plan against the gap you are trying to close and show the arithmetic before you commit. We do not publish a percentage of revenue figure for dentistry, because the ones in circulation are not traceable to a real survey.
Does SEO or Google Ads work better for dentists?
They do different jobs. Paid search buys volume today for a defined set of intent, which makes it the right tool for emergency appointments, implants and aligners, and for filling a specific gap in the schedule.
Local SEO and reviews build the position you occupy without paying per click, which is the cheaper source of routine new patients over time. Most practices need both, weighted differently depending on whether the immediate problem is volume or cost.
Can we use patient before and after photos?
Only with the patient's written authorisation, within your state board's rules on portraying treatment and results, and with framing the FTC would consider substantiated.
The practical test is whether the set is representative rather than curated. A gallery of best cases presented as ordinary outcomes creates a deceptive impression, and a results not typical line does not fix it.
How do we compete with the corporate group that opened nearby?
Not on spend. On specificity. A named dentist patients can read about, continuity of care stated plainly, reviews that mention individuals by name, and genuine local detail rather than a templated location page.
Practically that means an about page worth reading, a review process that runs continuously, and a site that answers the questions people ask on the phone before they have to ring.
Why is our practice not showing on Google Maps?
The most common causes are the wrong primary category, an address that does not match the area being searched, an unverified or suspended profile, or duplicate listings competing with each other.
Proximity is the factor nobody can buy. If a patient is searching three towns away, no amount of optimisation will place you first, which is why the honest work is category, prominence and review signal within the radius you can realistically serve.
How long does dental SEO take to work?
Profile and listings corrections often show in local visibility within weeks because they change signals Google reads quickly. Competitive organic terms compound over months, and how many months depends on your market.
We will not give you a date for a ranking. What we will do is show you leading indicators every month: profile actions, calls by source, booked appointments and where they came from.
What should a dental practice website include?
Named clinicians with real credentials, the treatments you actually provide, honest insurance and payment information, a booking path that works one handed on a phone, and recent reviews shown where a hesitant patient will see them.
It also needs to be fast and accessible. A patient with a screen reader, a shaky connection or an older phone is still a patient, and accessibility failures are the most common defect on the web.
Where this comes from.
Primary documentation and published research behind the guidance on this page.
- HHS: HIPAA privacy rule and marketing (opens in a new tab)
- HHS: be aware of misleading HIPAA marketing claims (opens in a new tab)HHS does not certify any person or product as HIPAA compliant.
- New York State Board of Regents Rules, Part 29: unprofessional conduct and advertising (opens in a new tab)Testimonials need written authorisation, disclosure and disclaimers.
- FTC: health products compliance guidance (opens in a new tab)What counts as competent and reliable scientific evidence for a health claim.
- FTC: final rule banning fake reviews and testimonials (opens in a new tab)
- Google Business Profile Help: tips to improve your local ranking on Google (opens in a new tab)Relevance, distance and prominence, in Google's own words.
- LocalIQ: search advertising benchmarks (opens in a new tab)
- BrightLocal: local consumer review survey (opens in a new tab)
Talk to the team
A short call, a look at how the business currently shows up, and a straight answer on what we would do first.