Why Dentists Can't Afford to Skip Digital Advertising in 2025

It seems like only a short time ago, advertising for your dental practice meant something very different from what it does today. Most often, you were likely to rely on word of mouth, a listing in the Yellow Pages, or a decent ad in the local paper. You might’ve even gone big with a billboard near the highway. And for a while – a long time, actually – that worked. Back then, competition might’ve been lower, too, as the number of dental offices in your community was likely much lower. The majority of patients usually found you through friends, family, or if they saw your name in passing around town.

It’s no secret that things have changed, in some ways very drastically, from the days of the Yellow Pages. Today, most people pull out their phone and start Googling before they do anything else. Whether they’re looking up a toothache or checking out reviews for a new dentist, the internet is where the journey begins. That means dental practices need to show up in those searches if they want to stay competitive.

Your Patients Are Online

With 93% of the U.S. population having access to the internet, today’s general consumer is online. A lot. Sure, a lot of that internet usage can be attributed to doom-scrolling on social media apps, but it also includes hours and hours of Googling, reading, website hopping, and communications. Think that doesn’t impact your dental practice? Think again. Over 70% of consumers run a search (usually 3 or more) before ever deciding to pick up the phone to schedule an appointment. And that’s just in the dental industry.

If someone’s comparing local dentists, chances are they’re reading reviews, looking at photos of your office, maybe even watching a quick intro video on your website – all before they’ve made contact. If you’re not visible online, you probably won’t make their shortlist. It's like having a great office tucked away on a back street with no sign out front.

The Impact of Search

Traditional ads (like newspaper ads, mailers, or billboards) are like fishing with a big net. You might catch a few big fish, but a lot of it is guppies and plastic. It's hard to know if your advertising has made a real impact, other than what your patients might be telling you when they come in. Historically, this is unreliable at best and detrimental to gathering real data at worst. But, I’m getting ahead of myself – we’ll talk more about the real-time results and advanced tracking capabilities digital ads bring to the table in a bit.

Digital ads are less like a net and more like a fishing spear. Beginning with some of our initial strategy conversations, our Digital Ads team works to identify exactly who your ideal patient is. We often call these ideal patients “patient avatars.” Identifying these early on helps our team strategize the most effective way to target, budget, and craft messaging for those avatars. Then, utilizing Google’s enhanced demographic targeting, dental practices can aim for their ideal audience by age, location, household income, even interests or life events, increasing the likelihood of reaching not just people in your community, but the people most likely to turn into long-term loyal patients. Ya know, the ones you built your practice for.

Budget Flexibility

Also unlike traditional advertising, where various vendors and rep deals behind the scenes set the price you pay for ad placements, digital ads let you set a budget that fits your goals and adjust easily as you go.

Whether your goal is to drive new patient numbers higher, or simply make your local community aware that you exist at all (or both…), you have the power to decide how much you want to spend daily, monthly, and annually on your advertising efforts. While most practices should allocate around 10% of their annual revenue to marketing/advertising efforts, I think regardless as to how much you spend, most would agree they’d rather know pretty certainly that they got a significant return for that money. With the transparency of digital ad channels like Google and Meta, you and our team are able to see the impact your budget is having in real time. Spending too little? We’ll know pretty quickly when you’re not seeing the results you want. Struggling to reach your daily budget? Maybe search volume is low, so we need to think about where we can expand our reach to get in front of the right customers.

Once your campaign has been running for some time (we generally advise giving a 6-month minimum to any campaign to get its “legs” under it and build some consistency), your budget, messaging, and targeting should feel pretty dialed in. Consistency allows you to better predict your annual advertising budget more effectively and plan accordingly for the year. For example, you're probably able to predict some busy seasons at your practice by seeing how booked you are. This is a good opportunity to focus on awareness tactics (thing social media, ads, display ads, or even YouTube ads) and dial back the daily spend on your direct-response search campaign.

Perhaps there are other seasons, like when you’ve hired a new associate and need to fill production, that dialing up the spend on your search and awareness campaigns would increase your ability to compete, show up, and generate contacts effectively during that season, too.

Real-Time Analytics

Platforms like Google Ads and Meta give you dashboards full of real-time insights (we even have a fancy one where we pull in all integrations so you can see everything in one place, from your website analytics to your SEO efforts to your advertising). Which headlines are catching attention? Which images are converting clicks into appointments? Using data to our advantage, our team is working for you to continually optimize for better, more precise results.

We use key benchmark data to better understand what’s running well, what needs improvement, and where we can help the practices we work with better set expectations as the market continues to shift and evolve. That level of customization and optimization doesn’t come with traditional marketing, even a little bit.

Meet Patients Where They Are

Imagine someone Googling “emergency dentist near me” at 6:00 pm after chipping a tooth. If your practice shows up at the top with a clear, helpful message and a click-to-call button, that’s a new patient you very likely would not have reached otherwise.

Search ads are all about capturing that real-time intent, which makes them a crucial piece of your advertising strategy. If you do nothing else with digital ads, search ads are deemed essential in our books.

Search ads are one of the most efficient ways to get in front of someone who’s actively looking for what you offer. Emergency dentistry is a very obvious example of this, but other examples include real searches like “dentists that take payment plans,” “dentists for kids,” “dentists open Saturdays,” or “highly rated dentists.”

And the truth is, if you’re not showing up where people are searching, you can be sure your competitors are.

Tell Your Story, Not Just Your Services

The world of digital ads gives you space to be more than just another dental office and show off what makes you different. Maybe you’ve got a spa-like waiting room, Saturday hours, or an excellent track record with nervous patients that really helps you stand out from the noise. With many brand awareness strategies, such as social media ads, display ads, or YouTube video ads, we can harness the solid brand identity your practice holds and capture the attention of those who are interacting online in their daily lives.

These channels don’t just drive clicks, they build trust and familiarity over time. Paired with a direct-response search campaign, a fully-fledged digital ads campaign is one that saturates the market by creating and meeting demand, telling your story effectively from the first impression all the way through the website journey and first appointment.

Keeping Patients Engaged

A well-rounded digital ads strategy doesn’t just stop with the first click. Let’s consider your patient’s day for a moment – a mom, busy professional, or student just visited your website for the first time after clicking on an ad, and they, of course, love what they see. But, they don’t call yet. They didn’t even click the “schedule” button you have front and center. Maybe they got pulled away by their busy toddler who just threw his breakfast on the floor, or had to hop into a Zoom meeting they were already late to, or needed to start their commute to school or work, or they just remembered they didn’t set up the grocery pick up for this afternoon, or gosh is it really the first of the month again? Better make sure the rent or mortgage payment has been submitted…

Ok, you get it – life happens. Let’s just assume none of those factors are at play and that mom simply wants to do her due diligence and research more dentists in her area before deciding which one she’ll trust with her family’s health. Or that the student is waiting until he knows for certain which insurance carrier his parents use before picking up the phone to ask if your office accepts it.

Most often, patients (aka, people) are not going to convert immediately after clicking an ad. The good news is that it doesn’t mean they’re lost entirely. Retargeting ads, email campaigns, an active social media profile, and regularly updated content like blogs can help keep your practice top-of-mind until they’re ready to book.