Let's TalkLet's TalkPremium clicks bought for a check-up that is worth almost nothing on its own, in an account that cannot see what the patient became.
Give us read access to the account and a sense of your treatment values. We come back with what each campaign actually produces, which treatments it attracts, what a patient from each is worth, and the three changes worth making first. Recorded walkthrough, no call required.
Four failures we see repeatedly in this vertical, and what each one actually costs.
General dentistry keywords carry high click prices because the category is competitive, and the visit they produce is worth very little in isolation. An account judged on first-visit revenue concludes paid search does not work. An account judged on what that patient becomes over several years frequently concludes the opposite, and the two accounts can be identical.
Toothache at 9pm, an implant consultation and a routine check-up are three different searches with different urgency, value and competition. Run together at one target, the account optimises toward whichever converts most cheaply - typically the emergency or the check-up - while the elective work that actually funds the practice gets starved.
Practice management systems hold what the patient actually had done and almost never feed it back. So bidding optimises toward form fills and calls, not toward patients who accepted a treatment plan. Without that loop, the platform is being asked to find cheap appointments and it will, indefinitely.
Dental advertising is regulated by a dental board rather than by a medical board, with its own positions on specialty claims, fee advertising and terms like sedation. Copy written from a general marketing template routinely breaches one of them, and the platform approving the ad is not a defence for the licensee.
Business outcomes rather than dashboard metrics. None of these is a guaranteed number - where we do guarantee something, it is written into the offer above.
The real deliverables, not a list written to make a proposal look thicker.
Not the general agency pitch. The reasons that only apply to this kind of business.
Until treatment values reach the bidding, Google is being asked to find cheap appointments and it will do that perfectly. The integration is unglamorous plumbing rather than strategy, it takes real effort with practice management software, and it is the single change that most alters what a dental account produces.
Dentistry answers to its own board with its own positions on specialty claims, fee advertising and sedation terminology. Agencies that have learned physician rules apply them and get it wrong in both directions. We establish the right rulebook for the state before any copy is written.
For many practices the cheapest available revenue is reactivating lapsed patients rather than buying premium clicks, and saying so moves money out of the line we are paid on. It is usually the correct first recommendation in a practice with a large dormant list.
What each type of patient is worth over the relationship, which sets every bid decision that follows.
Emergency, elective, routine and family, each with its own campaign, target and page.
Offline conversion import keyed to accepted treatment, so bidding optimises toward patients rather than appointments.
Specialty claims, fee advertising and sedation language, for the state the practice is licensed in.
Implants, orthodontics, cosmetic work - researched purchases that need real pages rather than a services list.
Negatives monthly; reporting to accepted treatment value rather than to lead volume.
The parts of this that come from having run it in this industry before rather than from running it well in general.
A dental click that looks indefensible against a check-up fee is frequently a bargain against five years of a family's treatment. Establishing that number is what converts paid search in dentistry from something practices abandon into something they scale, and it is arithmetic rather than marketing.
Dental emergencies happen in evenings and at weekends, they convert at high rates, and an account advertising into hours the practice does not answer is paying premium prices for voicemail. The hours decision belongs in the campaign plan rather than in operations.
A parent searching for a family dentist represents several patients over many years, which is a materially different bid calculation from an individual check-up. It is a distinct search intent and almost no dental account separates it.
Specialty claims, how fees may be advertised, and terms describing sedation are governed differently for dentists than for physicians, and the distinction is invisible to a generalist agency. Getting it wrong is the licensee's problem, which is why we establish it before writing.
This is the nearest thing we have to a direct comparison: a multi-location dental network at 31,000+ leads, $19 cost per lead and a 44% lift in appointment show-rate. It was a network rather than a single practice and the paid structure differed, so we will not imply the numbers transfer. The relevant part is that the gains came from measuring past the enquiry - to attendance - which is the same discipline this page argues for extending to accepted treatment.
Read the full case studyIt usually is not against a check-up fee and frequently is against patient lifetime value, and the difference is arithmetic rather than optimisation. A patient who stays five years, brings a family and accepts restorative work is worth a multiple of what the first visit suggests. Practices that never calculate that number conclude paid search fails, and they are measuring the wrong thing rather than running a bad account.
No, and separating them is usually the first structural fix. A toothache at 9pm and a routine check-up are different urgency, different competition and different value, and one shared target means the account optimises toward the cheaper conversion. Emergency also needs its own hours strategy, because advertising into evenings you do not answer is the most expensive setting available.
Separate campaigns, separate pages, and treatment values imported so the bidding knows what those patients are worth. A general practice campaign will not produce them - they are researched over months against different competition. Without the value signal the algorithm will keep finding check-ups, because those convert more cheaply and it is being asked for cheap conversions.
No, and that confusion causes real problems. Dentistry is governed by a dental board with its own positions on specialty claims, fee advertising and sedation terminology, and an agency applying physician rules gets it wrong in both directions - refusing what is allowed and permitting what is not. We establish the correct board for your state before writing anything.
It sends what actually happened - the treatment accepted and its value - back from your practice management system into the ad account, so bidding optimises toward patients rather than appointments. It is genuinely the most impactful change available in most dental accounts, and it is plumbing rather than strategy, which is why it is so often skipped.
It depends on your state's dental board rules as much as on marketing judgement - some boards impose requirements on how fees may be advertised, including disclaimers. Take it to your own advice. Where it is permitted and handled properly it filters well, particularly for elective treatment, and it is one of the places a generalist agency most often creates a problem.
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