Orthodontic Marketing Agency

The short answer

Orthodontic marketing is judged on started cases, not on leads. Free consultations are the industry norm, so consult requests are cheap and often unqualified, and the number that matters is the share that convert to a signed case and what each one costs. Two buyers exist: parents of children roughly 10 to 14, and adults comparing clear aligners against mail-order options. General dentist referrals still produce a large share of cases in most practices, and they are either tracked on a dedicated phone line or not tracked at all.

consult-request to started-case rate across orthodontic clients — verify with Tim

Consult requests that become started cases

typical cost per started case — confirm

Cost per started case

average case fee used in reporting — confirm with Tim

Average case value the reporting runs against

A consult request is not a case

Because the exam is free, the barrier to requesting one is near zero. Say the report shows 60 consult requests. The schedule shows 22 kept appointments and 9 signed cases. The agency reports 60. The practice banked 9.

Every step in between is measurable and most practices measure none of it. Request to booked appointment. Booked to kept. Kept to same-day start. Same-day to signed within 30 days. Once those four numbers exist, you can tell whether the problem is the campaign, the reminder sequence, or the treatment coordinator.

The gap between request and kept appointment is usually the cheapest thing to fix, and closing it costs no additional ad spend. That is not a marketing win we get to brag about. It is still the first move.

Three demand sources, and one of them is not on Google

Parents of 10 to 14 year olds search on brand and location, often after a general dentist says it is time. Adults searching clear aligners are shopping price, treatment length, and whether they have to wear something visible to work. Those two audiences need separate pages and separate ad copy, because almost nothing that persuades one persuades the other.

The third source is the referring general dentist, and for a lot of practices it is still the largest. Referral relationships are marketing work: a referral page a GP office can use, case updates that get back to the referring doctor, and a tracked line that tells you which offices send and which stopped.

Timing matters more here than in most healthcare categories. Start volume spikes in summer before school and again in December, when families have unused FSA dollars and met deductibles. Budget flat across twelve months and you underspend both peaks.

Orthodontic Marketing: how we run it for orthodontic practices

Separate funnels for parents and adult aligner patients

Different pages and different ads. Parents want the doctor, the office, and the payment plan. Adults want treatment length, visibility at work, and how you compare to mail-order aligners.

Local search across every office

Multi-location practices lose to their own duplicate listings more often than to competitors. One clean Google Business Profile per office, correct categories, and reviews attributed to the right location.

Paid search and paid social with seasonal weighting

Budget pushed toward the pre-summer and end-of-year windows when starts cluster, pulled back in the slow months instead of spending evenly and wasting both.

Referring dentist program

A referral page GP offices use, tracked phone lines per referring office, and reporting that shows which relationships are producing and which went quiet six months ago.

Consult-to-start tracking

Call tracking and CRM integration that follows a request through booked, kept, and signed. Reporting is built on started cases and cost per start, and no campaign gets judged on form fills.

Services

What we would run here

Local search marketing

Families search for help close to home, and the map pack sits above every organic result on that search. Ranking your locations there is a different job than ranking a website, and for treatment providers it carries rules nobody else deals with.

PPC management

Our best-fit accounts run $50,000 to $100,000 a month through Google. Run right, paid search is the only channel that produces admissions this month; run badly, it funds your competitors' research.

Search engine optimization

Other agencies report positions; we report phone calls. Every keyword we chase is one a family types when they are ready to place someone, and every call traces back to the page that earned it.

Online reputation management

One angry post on a thin profile costs you calls you will never know you lost. We build the review volume that absorbs it and write the responses that will not get you fined.

Lead generation

Lead generation in this industry has a bad name for good reasons: the same inquiry sold to four facilities, per-admission deals that violate federal law, dashboards full of form fills nobody answered. We build the opposite — your own inquiry flow, on your own numbers, tracked to the admission.

Metrics and reporting

You have been sent a report full of numbers that went up while admissions stayed flat. We report calls, qualified calls, and cost per admission by channel, and we show the math.

Free audit

Want to see where your calls are going?

We audit your rankings, ads, and call tracking against the programs you compete with, then show you what is leaking. Yours to keep either way.

Prefer the phone? (561) 269-2833

Compliance

The rules that apply to this category

This is the part that catches agencies who have not worked in this category before.

Orthodontics is a recognized specialty and the title is protected

Orthodontics and dentofacial orthopedics requires an accredited two to three year residency after dental school. A general dentist providing aligners may advertise the service but may not call themselves an orthodontist or imply specialty status, and state boards enforce this. If you are a specialist, say so precisely and name the residency. If a competitor in your market is not, that is a differentiator, not a lawsuit.

Before-and-after images require a marketing authorization

Intraoral photos and smile galleries are protected health information. Marketing use requires a signed HIPAA authorization that names the channels and can be revoked. For patients under 18 the authorization comes from the parent or guardian, and it is separate from the treatment consent already in the chart.

Outcome and timeline claims

Advertising a specific treatment length, such as straight teeth in six months, invites a board complaint unless the claim is substantiated and qualified as typical. The safer version gives a range and names what changes it, and it converts better anyway.

In-house payment plans and Regulation Z

A monthly payment headline is the strongest ad we run in this category and the one that carries the most disclosure risk. In-house financing payable in more than four installments can fall under Regulation Z, which changes what the ad has to state. Have counsel confirm the structure before a dollar-per-month figure goes into a headline.

Sources

FAQ

Questions we get asked

How do you measure orthodontic marketing?

Started cases and cost per start. Consult requests get reported, but they are an input. If an agency's monthly report leads with leads or with website traffic, ask them what a case costs you and watch what happens.

Should we charge for the consult?

Most practices should not, but a small deposit credited toward treatment cuts no-shows. If your kept-appointment rate is under 60 percent, test that before you raise ad spend.

How do we compete with mail-order clear aligners?

On the things they cannot do: x-rays, attachments, mid-treatment adjustment, and a doctor who sees the case. Do not compete on price, and do not pretend the price gap is not real. The adults who choose you are choosing supervision, so the page has to be about supervision.

How long does orthodontic SEO take?

Local pack movement in two to three months. Competitive city terms like orthodontist plus your city take six months or more, and in dense metros a single-location practice may never take the head term. Neighborhood terms and adult aligner queries are the winnable ground.

Do referrals from general dentists still matter?

For most practices they are still the largest single source of starts. They also get neglected because nobody owns them. We put a tracked line on each referring office so you can see which relationships are producing and which went cold.

We have four offices. Can one program cover all of them?

Yes, and it has to be built per office. Multi-location orthodontic practices lose more traffic to duplicate and mismatched Google listings than to competitors. Cleaning that up is usually the first month of work.

Free audit

Find out where your calls are leaking.

We take apart your rankings, your ads, and your call tracking, then show you where the calls are going instead of to you. The audit is yours to keep whether we work together or not.

Prefer the phone? (561) 269-2833