Industries / Dental

Online marketing for dental practices.

The map pack, the reviews, and the offer that gets a new patient to pick up the phone.

Online marketing for a dental practice is the work of winning the local search that happens when someone needs a dentist, and being the practice they trust enough to call. That comes down to a Google Business Profile that ranks in the map pack for your city and your procedures, a steady flow of recent reviews, paid search on the high value procedures you want more of such as implants, clear aligners, and cosmetic work, a new patient offer that gives a first time caller a reason to choose you, and call tracking that shows cost per booked appointment instead of cost per click. CurrentAds runs the whole program including local, paid, SEO, reviews, the website, and the tracking, on accounts your practice owns.

Looping motion graphic representing the CurrentAds Local and Maps service, the lead channel for Dental

The discovery path

How customers actually find you in this industry

  1. 01

    Nearly every search is local and urgent enough to act on

    Dentist near me, emergency dentist, and same day appointments dominate. Proximity does a lot of the ranking work, which means the practices you compete with are the ones within a few miles, not the ones with the biggest budget.

  2. 02

    The map pack is the shortlist

    Three profiles, a star rating, a review count, and a call button. Most people never scroll past that. Categories, services, hours, photos, and review velocity are what decide who occupies those three slots.

  3. 03

    Reviews are read, not counted

    Patients look at the recent ones and at how the practice replies to the bad ones. Two years of silence under a one star review costs more new patients than any campaign will bring in that month.

  4. 04

    High value procedures follow a different path

    Implants, clear aligners, and cosmetic work involve research, financing questions, and comparison over weeks. Those searches want cost information, before and after evidence, and a consultation offer, not an emergency phone number.

  5. 05

    The offer breaks the tie

    When several nearby practices look equally good, a clear new patient offer such as an exam and x ray package, or a free consultation for a specific procedure, is usually what converts. Insurance clarity does the same job.

Priority order

The pillars that matter most here

We run the same ten services for every client. What changes by industry is the order they are built in and where the budget goes. For dental, this is the sequence we argue for.

  1. 01

    Local and Maps

    Profile optimization, correct primary and secondary categories, service lists, photos, posts, and map pack ranking for your city. In dental this is the single highest leverage channel available.

  2. 02

    Reputation

    A review request after every visit, professional responses that never discuss treatment publicly, and monitoring of the profiles patients actually read. Review velocity feeds both trust and map ranking.

  3. 03

    Paid Media

    Separate campaigns for emergency, general new patient, and high value procedures, because a same day toothache and an implant consultation are different businesses with different acceptable costs.

  4. 04

    Analytics and Tracking

    Call tracking and form tracking connected to your practice management software where possible, so you can see cost per booked appointment and cost per treatment consultation by procedure.

  5. 05

    CRO and Landing Pages

    Procedure landing pages with pricing context, financing information, insurance clarity, and online booking. Most dental sites bury the two things a new patient wants to know.

  6. 06

    SEO

    Procedure pages, city pages, and the structured data that supports local ranking. Organic new patients cost nothing per click once the pages are ranking.

  7. 07

    Email and SMS

    Recall reminders, unscheduled treatment follow up, and reactivation of patients who have not been in for two years. The cheapest production in the practice is already in your database.

See all ten services and how they compound, or what it costs.

What we report

The metrics that actually matter

Live in your portal, not a monthly PDF. These are the numbers we commit to reporting for dental, whether they moved in the right direction or not.

  • Cost per booked new patient appointment, not cost per call
  • Cost per treatment consultation for high value procedures such as implants and aligners
  • New patient volume against schedule capacity, since a full schedule changes the goal
  • Call answer rate and time to answer during office hours
  • Booking rate on answered calls, which is a front desk metric
  • Map pack position for your city and priority procedure terms
  • Review count, average rating, and review velocity over the last 90 days
  • Recall and reactivation revenue attributed to email and SMS

Where it goes wrong

Three ways this gets broken

01

Buying new patients the practice cannot see

Campaigns run, calls come in, and nobody tracks whether they were booked. Without call tracking the practice judges the whole program on a vague sense of how busy last week felt.

02

Bidding on implants with a general dentistry landing page

The most expensive clicks in dental land on a homepage with a smiling stock photo and a contact form. High intent, high value searchers leave, and the campaign gets labeled as not working.

03

A profile that has not been touched since it was claimed

Wrong hours over a holiday, no procedure list, four photos from 2019, and unanswered reviews. Meanwhile a competitor two miles away posts weekly and asks every patient for a review.

Compliance and practical notes

What we work around in dental

Patient privacy applies to dental practices too

A dental practice that transmits health information electronically in connection with covered transactions is generally a HIPAA covered entity. We configure tracking so appointment type and patient identifiers are not passed into advertising platforms, and we never confirm a treatment relationship in a public review reply.

Advertising claims and specialty titles

State dental boards regulate advertising, and describing a dentist as a specialist or using a specialty title generally requires the corresponding credentials. Superlative claims such as best or painless are restricted in some states. Your practice remains responsible for compliance, and nothing publishes without your approval.

Offers, insurance, and before and after photos

Advertised new patient offers must state what is included and any exclusions, and some states restrict discounted offers tied to certain services. Before and after images require patient consent and should represent typical results rather than the single best case.

Reminders and marketing messages

Appointment reminders and marketing texts carry different consent requirements. We keep them separate and build the consent language, sender identification, and opt out into the forms.

General information, not legal advice. Rules change and vary by state. Your business stays responsible for the legality of its own offers, claims, and disclosures, and nothing goes live without your approval.

FAQ

Dental questions

How many new patients will this bring in?

We will not give you a number before we have seen your market, your capacity, and your current tracking, and any agency that does is guessing. What we guarantee is delivery: the written plan, verified tracking, live campaigns, and reported baselines within 30 days, or the month is refunded.

Is the map pack really more important than ads?

For general new patient demand, usually yes, because that is where most local searches resolve and there is no cost per click. Ads matter most for high value procedures and for filling gaps while local ranking is being built. We run both and report them separately.

How do you get more reviews without breaking the rules?

Every patient gets asked through the same process after their visit, with no incentive offered and no filtering by expected sentiment. Requests go by the channel your patients respond to, and we handle responses so nothing published discusses a patient relationship.

Can you market implants and aligners specifically?

Yes, and they need their own campaigns, landing pages, and offers. These are considered purchases with financing questions, so the funnel runs to a consultation rather than a booking, and success is measured as cost per consultation and consultation show rate.

We are a multi location group. How does that work?

Each location gets its own profile strategy, local ranking work, and reporting line, while campaigns, pages, and creative are managed centrally. That prevents locations competing against each other for the same terms and stops the strongest location masking a weak one.

Get the plan for your market

Thirty minutes, a senior operator, and a written plan you keep either way. Month to month, and you own every account we touch.