A new patient exam and a full implant case cost roughly the same to acquire through paid search and are worth completely different amounts. Practices that do not separate them end up filling the calendar with the wrong appointments.
What a click costs in dental right now. Median Google Ads cost per click in the United States, from the October 2026 edition of the Paid Media Cost Index, a Diwizi dataset pulled on October 15, 2026 with the date the source last refreshed each figure.
| Search | Cost per click | Source refresh |
|---|---|---|
| dental implants | $26.49 | Sep 13 |
| dentist near me | $13.92 | Sep 13 |
| invisalign | $9.42 | Sep 14 |
| cosmetic dentistry | $15.63 | Sep 14 |
Dental median, $14.78 across 6 keywords. Free to reuse with credit to the Cost Index.
Almost always in what is being counted as a win.
Implants, orthodontics, veneers and routine cleanings have very different values. Counted identically, bidding drifts toward the cheapest appointment to book.
Broad terms attract people checking whether you take their plan. High volume, low value, and easy to filter out with the right negatives and messaging.
Most dental bookings start as a phone call. If calls are not tracked to keyword level, the account is optimising on a partial picture.
People will drive further for implants than for a cleaning. One radius for all treatment types is either too tight for the valuable cases or too loose for the routine ones.
Structured around treatment value rather than appointment count.
Before anything gets scaled, the data has to be right. GA4 and Google Tag Manager audited and rebuilt where needed, conversion actions deduplicated, Meta CAPI or server-side tagging where it applies, and offline conversion import so the platform optimises toward revenue instead of form fills.
High-value treatments separated from routine appointments, with values attached, so bidding pursues the cases that actually pay for the chair time.
Because the booking happens on the phone, and untracked calls make the whole account look worse than it is.
Paid traffic dies on a bad page. I build and iterate the landing pages the campaigns point to, so the conversion path is one system instead of two vendors blaming each other. Fixed scope, tied to the campaigns, not open-ended web design.
A Looker Studio dashboard tied to your real conversion data, plus a written read on what changed and why. No 40-tab spreadsheet, no vanity metrics, no 'impressions are up' as a headline.
Healthcare advertising has platform restrictions and, depending on your market, regulatory ones too. Clinical claims stay with your practice. I build within the constraints you set.
Some engagements have numbers I can publish from the account. Others are confidential, by contract or because they were employed roles, so I can speak to scope and approach but not exact figures. I would rather show you the real mix than invent a case study.
Google Ads and Performance Max in one of the most competitive local markets in the US, with expensive clicks, ZIP code choices and seasonal demand. The performance data is confidential by contract, so the case covers the work and the lessons, not the numbers. Read the case.
Cumulative account history since 2020: 5,707 clicks and R$ 63.61 per conversion. Conversions are contact actions recorded by Google Ads, not sales. I also created the brand identity and built the site. Read the case.
I have also worked in paid media in healthcare. Nothing from that work is published anywhere on this site: no employer named, no budgets, no results, no internal detail. It is listed only because it is where a large part of my healthcare experience comes from.
I go through the account, the tracking and the conversion path and tell you what is actually broken. You get the findings whether or not we work together.
Tracking, conversion actions and structure get corrected first. Optimising on top of bad data just makes you confidently wrong.
Campaigns, ad copy, audiences and landing pages built around how your buyers actually search.
Weekly optimisation against the metric that matters to your business, with a monthly written read on what moved and what is next.
Long-form writing on this topic from the blog.
Practices that want implant, orthodontic and cosmetic cases rather than routine cleanings.
Not a fit: A practice that cannot answer the phone during the day or say where its new patients came from.
Yes, and you should. Those searches are distinct from routine dental queries, and they justify much higher bids. Separating them is usually the first structural change I make in a dental account.
By tracking calls and form fills to keyword level, and ideally by feeding back which enquiries became booked, attended appointments. Cost per lead without attendance data overstates performance.
For treatment demand that already exists, search wins, because someone typing 'dental implants near me' is actively looking. Meta can work for cosmetic treatments where demand is created rather than captured.
Single locations can work well, precisely because targeting is tight. It is more about whether your high-value treatment mix justifies the local CPCs, which varies a lot by market.
A short form beats a long discovery call. Give me the basics and I will come back with a straight read on whether I can help, usually within one business day.
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