Dental marketing built around the treatments that pay
A new patient enquiry is worth anywhere from nothing to five figures depending on what they came in for. Marketing that counts them all the same will steer you towards the cheap ones.
Organic impressions for one client in 12 months
Client pages ranking top for their own service names
Based here, working with firms across the UK
New patient numbers are the wrong target
Almost every dental marketing report leads with new patient enquiries. It is the easiest number to move and the least useful one to have, because an NHS check up and an implant case are counted identically.
Practices that grow are usually the ones that worked out which treatments they want more of, what one is worth over a patient lifetime, and what they can afford to pay to win one. Then they advertise for that, and accept a higher cost per enquiry in exchange for enquiries worth having.
That requires knowing which enquiry came from which search, which almost no practice is set up to see, because the enquiries arrive as phone calls to a busy reception.
What actually moves a practice
The Google Business Profile
Dentistry is a local search market and the map pack sits above everything else. Categories, treatment listings, photographs and a steady flow of recent reviews do more here than any amount of blogging. Covered on our local SEO page.
Treatment pages, one per treatment
Implants, aligners, veneers, whitening and emergency appointments are separate searches with separate intent. One page listing all of them competes for none of them properly.
Counting the calls
Most dental enquiries are phone calls. Without call tracking you cannot tell which treatment the caller wanted, so you cannot tell which advertising produced the valuable ones.
Paid search for the high value work
Implant and aligner clicks are expensive and worth it when the treatment value justifies them. This is where a practice can outspend competitors profitably, but only if the measurement is honest.
Counting every new patient the same way is how a practice ends up busier, tireder and no better off.
The GDC has rules about how you advertise
Dental advertising sits under GDC guidance and ASA rules covering how treatments are described, what before and after imagery can be used, how prices must be presented, and claims around registration and qualifications.
A lot of generic agency copy simply is not compliant, and practices are the ones who carry that risk rather than the agency that wrote it. We write with the guidance in mind and expect your principal to review before anything is published.
What the first six months look like
Audit
Where you rank, what you are paying per enquiry, and what the competition holds. You get the findings either way.
Priorities
Which work types are worth chasing, based on what a matter is actually worth to you.
Measurement
Call tracking first. Most enquiries in these sectors arrive by phone and go uncounted.
Scale what pays
Spend follows the work types that convert, not the ones with the cheapest clicks.
What practices ask
We already get plenty of NHS patients. Why advertise?
Usually you would not, for NHS work. The argument for advertising is private treatment, where the value per patient justifies a real acquisition cost. If your private mix is small and you do not want to grow it, marketing is probably not your best next investment and we will say so.
How important are reviews?
For a local practice, very. They affect the map pack directly and they affect whether somebody picks you over the practice listed above you. Asking properly, at the right moment, is the cheapest improvement available to most practices.
Our reception is too busy to handle more enquiries.
Then that is the constraint, not the marketing, and spending more would waste money. We would rather fix the enquiry handling first, or target fewer and better enquiries. Plenty of practices need higher value patients rather than more of them.
Do you work with practices outside Liverpool?
Can you guarantee a number of new patients?
No, and an agency that does is either guessing or counting enquiries that were never going to book. What we can do is tell you what a realistic cost per enquiry looks like for the treatments you want, and show you honestly whether we hit it.
Talk to us about your practice
Tell us which treatments you want more of. We will tell you what winning those patients would take and what it would realistically cost.
