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Case Study — Dental

Atlanta Dental Group Cuts Cost Per Patient from $248 to $71 — 3 Locations, 6 Months

A multi-location suburban Atlanta dental practice was bleeding patients to a new competitor. Ad Boost rebuilt their digital acquisition from scratch — service-specific campaigns, intent-matched landing pages, and bid strategies tuned to when patients actually search.

$71 Optimized CPL
94 New Patient Calls/Mo
68% High-Value Service Mix
$187K Mo 6 Revenue Attributed
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A 3-location suburban Atlanta dental practice dropped their cost per new patient appointment from $248 to $71 in 6 months by shifting from referral dependence to Google Ads campaigns built around high-value services — implants, Invisalign, and cosmetic dentistry. Monthly new patient calls grew from 19 to 94, and Month 6 saw $187,000 in accepted treatment plans directly attributed to the campaigns.
The Challenge

A Referral-Dependent Practice Facing a Real Threat

When a competitor opened nearby, patient flow dropped 22% in 6 months. The practice had no digital acquisition engine and no way to fight back — until they called Ad Boost.

🔗
Referral Dependency
Nearly 100% of new patients came through word-of-mouth. There was no paid channel, no SEO pipeline, and no way to turn a marketing dial when referrals dried up.
⚔️
Competitor Pressure
A new dental chain opened within 2 miles of two locations and immediately started running aggressive Google Ads. Patient inquiries dropped 22% in the first 6 months without any paid response.
📉
No Digital Attribution
The practice had no way to measure which marketing activities produced appointments. Every decision was based on gut feel rather than data, making it impossible to scale what was working.
🎯
Wrong Service Mix Targeting
A previous agency had run campaigns targeting generic "dentist near me" searches, pulling in low-value cleaning inquiries rather than the high-value implant and cosmetic cases the practice actually needed.
Our Approach

5-Step Campaign Architecture

We rebuilt the entire campaign structure from the ground up, targeting high-intent patients at the right moment with the right message for each service.

1
Service-Specific Campaign Segmentation
We created isolated campaigns for implants, Invisalign, and cosmetic dentistry — each with its own budget, bidding strategy, and ad creative. Separating from general dentistry searches allowed Google's smart bidding to optimize for the patient type that actually books high-value treatment, not just the cheapest clicks. General cleaning campaigns were paused entirely until the high-value funnel was proven.
2
Insurance-Qualifier Landing Pages
Each campaign drove to a service-specific landing page that qualified visitors by insurance acceptance upfront. Asking "Do you have dental insurance?" before the contact form eliminated low-quality leads who would not show for appointments and pushed cost-per-shown-appointment down by 31%. Pages were tested in two variants for headline angle and form length.
3
Competitor Conquest on Local Zip Searches
We built a conquest keyword layer targeting searches like "dentist near [zip]" and "dental office [neighborhood]" — the exact queries the new competitor was capturing. Ads emphasized the practice's 15-year history and multi-location convenience. This alone recovered 40% of the estimated lost referral volume within 90 days.
4
60-Second SMS + Appointment Confirmation Sequence
Every form submission triggered an immediate SMS from the practice number within 60 seconds. A 3-message sequence confirmed the appointment request, sent a reminder 24 hours before, and requested a confirmation reply. No-show rate dropped from 28% to 11%, effectively multiplying the value of every lead the campaigns generated.
5
Bid Adjustments for Evening and Weekend Search Spikes
Analytics revealed that the highest-converting searches happened between 7–10 PM on weekdays and Saturday mornings — times when the prior agency had reduced bids to save budget. We flipped the strategy: bids increased 35% during peak intent windows and decreased during low-conversion mid-day weekday hours. Cost per qualified click dropped 19% within 30 days.
The Results

Six Months of Measurable Growth

Every metric moved in the right direction. The practice went from reactive to proactive — with a repeatable digital acquisition engine across all three locations.

$71
Cost Per New Patient Appointment
(down from $248)
94
New Patient Calls Per Month
(up from 19)
68%
Implant and Cosmetic Inquiry Mix
(highest-value services)
$8.5K
Monthly Ad Spend Across
All 3 Locations
$187K
Month 6 Revenue in Accepted
Treatment Plans Attributed
22x
Return on Ad Spend by Month 6
(treatment plans vs spend)
"

We had always relied on word of mouth and it worked — until it did not. When that competitor opened up, we had no backup plan. Ad Boost not only stopped the bleeding but completely changed how we think about growth. We now have a system that brings in the right patients, not just any patients. Our implant schedule is booked 6 weeks out for the first time ever.

SM
Dr. Sarah M.
Lead Dentist and Practice Owner — Atlanta Metro, GA
Common Questions

Google Ads for Dental Practices — FAQ

Questions we hear from dental practice owners before they start their first campaign.

Most dental practices spend between $3,000 and $12,000 per month on Google Ads depending on location, competition, and the services they want to promote. High-value service campaigns for implants or Invisalign typically require higher bids but deliver a much stronger return on ad spend than generic cleaning campaigns.
A well-optimized dental Google Ads campaign targeting high-value services like implants, Invisalign, and cosmetic dentistry can achieve a cost per new patient appointment between $60 and $120. General cleaning campaigns tend to have lower CPLs but also lower average patient value. Focus optimization on service mix, not just raw CPL.
Most dental practices begin seeing consistent lead flow within the first 30 to 45 days. Full campaign optimization — including landing page testing, bid strategy refinement, and audience layering — typically takes 60 to 90 days to reach peak efficiency. Month 3 results are generally 30 to 50% stronger than Month 1.
Google Ads outperforms Facebook for dental practices because patients are actively searching for a dentist when they click. Facebook can work for awareness and retargeting campaigns, but intent-based search ads consistently deliver higher close rates and better quality appointments. We recommend starting with Google and layering in Facebook retargeting once your conversion baseline is established.
Yes. Service-specific campaigns, competitor conquest keywords, and zip-code-level targeting allow independent and multi-location practices to appear above large dental chains for high-intent searches. Precise audience targeting often gives independent practices a quality advantage — patients searching for implants or Invisalign want a specialist, not a factory.
Dental implants, Invisalign, cosmetic dentistry, and teeth whitening generate the strongest ROI from Google Ads because the average treatment value is high. A single accepted implant case can return 20x or more on the ad spend required to acquire that patient. We always recommend launching high-value service campaigns first before expanding to general dentistry keywords.

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