3 Things We Wish Dentists Knew About Social Media

When you’re starting or acquiring a dental practice, your whole life becomes “build mode.” 🛠

You’re building a team, building workflows, building trust with new patients, etc. So naturally, when it’s time to turn your attention to digital marketing, you approach it like any other project: What tools do I need?

You’ve got your SEO wrench, your Digital Ads hammer, and your beautiful new custom website as your level. And then there’s Social Media.

It’s still a tool, of course, but the vibe is actually more Bob Ross than Bob the Builder!

Think of social media like your paintbrush: it doesn’t fasten things in place, but it brings your brand to life, infusing everything with color, dimension, and personality!
But here’s where confusion can set in. A lot of practice owners pick up the social media paintbrush... and expect it to work like a power tool.

Social media isn’t as clear-cut as SEO. Instead of reaching one audience (Google social media aims to reach hundreds of diverse, thinking, breathing humans. It's also not as trackable as paid ads. It doesn’t always come with instant feedback or a neatly packaged ROI. For these reasons, it’s often misunderstood, underutilized, or expected to do things it just wasn’t built to do.

After years of working alongside many wonderful and talented dentists, we’ve noticed a few recurring friction points—the biggest reasons practices end up feeling stuck, frustrated, or disconnected from their online presence. And it makes sense! Social platforms are constantly changing. What worked a year ago doesn’t always work today. Algorithms shift, user behavior evolves, and honestly, it’s exhausting trying to keep up when you’ve got a practice to run.

That’s where we come in! This is what we do, day in and day out. Our team of Social Media Specialists stays on top of trends, updates, and best practices so you don’t have to!
So let’s break it down, shall we?

Listen. I completely understand wanting to put your most polished, professional foot forward on social media. Why wouldn’t you? That’s exactly what you’re doing on your website and in the rest of your marketing. Here’s the thing, though—social plays by a different set of rules. And if your presence comes across as too polished or too pristine, it can start to feel… salesy. Robotic. NPC vibes, if you will.

What matters most here is authenticity.

Show your digital audience who you, your team, and your practice really are! And that doesn’t mean being unprofessional. In fact, it’s the opposite. Authenticity builds trust. People want to see the human side of your practice because it helps them feel more comfortable choosing you.

Often when we ask practice owners, “What do you hope to gain from social media?” The answer is “new patients.” Which is totally fair, and the end goal of most of your digital marketing efforts! The catch is, social works a little differently.

The truth is that most people aren’t following your practice because they’re ready to book an appointment tomorrow.

Organic (not paid) social media is not built to close the deal in a single post. It is built to create connection, trust, and awareness, layer by layer, until someone feels ready to reach out. And in a market where patients often have endless choices, that connection becomes a serious competitive edge.

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.