Dental marketing is unusually easy to measure and unusually easy to sell badly, which is why the category attracts both excellent specialists and a long tail of package vendors. A practice has a known chair capacity, a known payer mix and a reasonably knowable value per new patient, so the honest question is not how much traffic an agency produces but what a new patient costs to acquire and whether that number leaves a margin. This page covers what the work consists of, what actually drives the cost, and the rules around reviews and patient stories that create real exposure for the practice rather than for the agency.
What the money actually buys
For most practices the programme has four components. The Google Business Profile is first and is frequently the largest single source of new patients: correct categories, accurate hours, real photographs, services listed, and a steady flow of genuine reviews. The website is second, and its job is narrower than agencies pretend: load quickly, say clearly what is offered and where, show the team, and make booking or calling effortless on a phone. Paid search is third, and it works because dental intent is immediate and local, though clicks in this category are expensive and a poorly configured account burns money quickly. Fourth is recall and reactivation, which is email and messaging to patients you already have, and which is almost always the cheapest new production available. An agency that leads with a new website and never mentions the fourth is quoting the most expensive item first.
Measure cost per new patient, not traffic
Every number that matters is downstream of one calculation: total marketing spend divided by new patients who actually attended, compared with what a new patient is worth to your practice over a realistic horizon. Getting there requires call tracking that survives the front desk, a booked-versus-attended distinction, and a way to record where each patient came from at the point of booking rather than by guesswork later. Google publishes documentation on the different ways to track conversions, and any competent agency will insist on setting this up before spending. If a candidate proposes to report traffic, impressions and rankings but has no plan for connecting spend to attended patients, they have chosen metrics they can always win on. Ask what happens if cost per new patient rises for two consecutive months, and what they would change.
Reviews and patient stories carry real exposure
This is where dental marketing goes wrong in ways that reach the practice rather than the agency. The FTC's endorsement guidance is explicit: endorsements must reflect the honest opinions and experience of the endorser, material connections between an endorser and the advertiser must be clearly disclosed, and advertisers are responsible for claims made on their behalf. Incentivised reviews without disclosure, testimonials written for a patient to approve, and before-and-after imagery presented as typical when it is not are all problems that land on a licensed practice. Patient information adds a second layer: publishing a patient's images, name or clinical details is a privacy matter requiring proper written authorisation, and no agency should be collecting or publishing that material without one. Ask precisely how a candidate solicits reviews and who writes the words. If the answer is anything other than the patient, decline.
How practices usually buy it
Most practices buy an ongoing monthly retainer, often bundled with a website the agency also hosts, and that bundle is where lock-in hides. Establish before signing who owns the domain, the site, the content, the photography, the phone numbers used for call tracking and the Business Profile. Tracking numbers matter more than they sound: a practice that loses its tracked numbers at the end of a contract loses its call history and sometimes its listing consistency. Keep the initial term short and specify what exists at day ninety. General practices tend to need broad local coverage while implant, orthodontic and cosmetic services justify their own dedicated pages and campaigns, so ask any candidate which services they intend to promote separately and why.
Questions people ask about dentist practice marketing
What should a dental practice spend on marketing?
Work backwards from capacity rather than from a benchmark ratio. Decide how many new patients per month you can actually see, multiply by what a new patient is worth to you, and set a maximum acquisition cost from that. A budget derived from your own chairs beats an industry average every time.
Is a new website usually necessary?
Less often than it is proposed. If the current site loads quickly on a phone, states services and locations clearly and makes booking easy, the money is usually better spent on the Business Profile, paid search and recall. Ask a candidate to justify a rebuild against those three alternatives.
Can we offer patients a discount for a review?
Incentives require disclosure and create real risk. The FTC's guidance requires endorsements to reflect honest experience and material connections to be disclosed, and platform policies are stricter still. The defensible approach is to ask every patient, make it easy, and never write or edit their words.
How long before a dental campaign is fair to judge?
Paid search and Business Profile work can be assessed within a quarter because volume is controllable. Organic growth and recall programmes take longer. Agree in advance which metric is judged at day 90 and which at day 270.