How to get new dental patients: the Doctor Dent case

Google search ads, backed up by social media, bring new patients to a dental practice if you judge campaigns by bookings rather than clicks. At Doctor Dent in Prague’s Vinohrady, yearly enquiries rose from 302 to 498. Within five months, the cost of a website visit fell from 16 CZK to 4 CZK.

Visits, though, grew far faster than patients: ad traffic rose by 493%, yearly enquiries by 65%. If you watch only the cost per click, it is easy to keep running a campaign that brings cheap visits and no appointments. Example: campaign A spends 40,000 CZK on 10,000 visits at 4 CZK each and gets 20 bookings, so one booking costs 2,000 CZK. Campaign B spends the same on 4,000 visits at 10 CZK each and gets 40 bookings at 1,000 CZK each. On clicks, A wins. On patients, B does.

Doctor Dent started at 16 CZK per website visit

The starting point was a familiar one: a clinic with modern equipment and a premium setting that wanted more booked patients. We started working together in May 2024. The cost per visit is what the clinic pays for one click on an ad that brings someone to the website.

The budget went up only once, between June and July. From July it stayed between 36,000 and 41,000 CZK a month, while visits grew every month. So the whole drop in cost came from work on the campaigns, not from extra spend.

Weak campaigns get switched off and strong ones get their money

Over the period, we set up 12 campaigns for Doctor Dent and switched off the weak ones as we went. Running several campaigns makes sense because each one shows separately what works. With one big campaign for everything, you can’t tell which part of it brings in patients.

For your own practice, split campaigns by the treatments you want to sell: implants, dental hygiene, whitening, a check-up for new patients. Someone searching “implant price” decides differently, and at a different pace, from someone searching “dentist accepting new patients”. Decide in advance what counts as a weak campaign, for example one that has spent 5,000 CZK in 4 weeks and brought no enquiries.

Give it time. The table shows that the biggest jump came between July and August, and things only settled in October. The first two months are for collecting data. If you cancel a campaign after three weeks because it “doesn’t work”, you pay for the learning and never see the result.

Bookings grow more slowly than visits, and you can live with that

The strongest objection goes like this: if visits rose by 493% and enquiries by 65%, most of the money must be going to waste. The answer lies in the budget. It barely changed after July, so the extra 196 enquiries a year came without any rise in spend. A cheaper visit puts more people on your website for the same money, and even a small share of them adds up to more patients.

The second point is how you compare results. For Doctor Dent, we compared bookings in the same months of two consecutive years: 103 from August to October 2024, and 164 in the same period of 2025. That is 59% more. Comparing with the same period last year filters out the effect of the summer holidays, bank holidays and the September return to the dentist.

None of this works unless you track bookings. A typical afternoon at reception: the phone rings, a new patient wants an appointment and, asked where they found the clinic, says “online”. Reception doesn’t write it down, and a month later nobody knows which campaign brought them in. All it takes is a “source” field in the booking system and online booking that records the source automatically. We explain how to work out the cost per booked patient in How to measure clinic marketing.

Social media doubled conversions on the same budget

Google catches people who are looking for a dentist right now. For Doctor Dent, we added Meta Ads, regular photo shoots, reels and work with influencers. On the same ad budget, conversions (enquiries and bookings from ads) doubled. Post reach rose by 100%, and the clinic gained 510 followers in 7 months.

A patient who has seen the clinic a few times on Instagram will often recognise it in search results and click on it rather than on an unfamiliar name. That’s why social media works alongside search ads, not instead of them. We cover what belongs in a dental clinic’s content, and what doesn’t, in Dental clinic Instagram.

Influencers and patient photos follow a few simple rules. An influencer must not promise results: § 2(1)(b) of Act No. 40/1995 Coll., the Czech advertising law, treats such promises as an unfair commercial practice. Publish “before and after” photos only with the patient’s written consent and a visible note that the result may differ for another patient. This is set out in § 58(3) of the Organisational Rules of the Czech Dental Chamber. A free audit shows whether the clinic breaches any of this and what competitors near you are advertising. You get the PDF by email within one working day.

You can copy the method to another practice, but not the numbers

The method transfers. Split campaigns by treatment, switch off weak ones based on enquiries, compare bookings with the same months last year and back up search ads with social media. This works wherever the practice is.

The specific numbers don’t transfer. The 4 CZK per visit applies to one clinic in Vinohrady, with its own setting, competition and services. In another town or for other treatments, the starting cost is usually different, and so is the drop. You’ll find the full details in the Doctor Dent case study.

When the method isn’t enough: if your diary is full six weeks ahead, another enquiry won’t turn into a booking. It will only annoy the patient. The same goes if reception doesn’t pick up the phone and the website has no online booking. First free up capacity and make it easy to get an appointment. Only then add ads.

Frequently asked questions

Should I start with Google or Instagram?

If you need patients soon, start with search ads, because they catch people looking for a dentist right now. Instagram works more slowly. Angel Smile, a dental practice in Prague, uses both Google Ads and Meta Ads, and its monthly enquiries rose from 23 to 47. Searches for its name on Google went up from 250 to 480.

Does this work outside Prague?

The principle is the same. The cost per click and the size of the catchment area differ. ED Clinic has practices in Jesenice and Kostelec nad Černými lesy, and social media brought it 1,500 new followers in a year. Its average post reach rose by 200%. In a smaller town, target your ads at a radius of a few kilometres around the practice.

How much should I spend on Google Ads each month?

Start from your free slots, not from what competitors spend. Example: you have 10 free slots for new patients a month, and one booked patient from ads costs you 1,500 CZK. A budget of 15,000 CZK then fills your capacity, and anything more only builds a waiting list.

Get three numbers ready this week

1. On Monday, add a “source” field to the booking system and ask reception to fill it in for every new patient.
2. On Wednesday, check in the ad account how much each campaign cost last month and how many enquiries it brought.
3. On Friday, count the free slots for new patients next month. Use them to decide whether to raise the budget or switch off campaigns with no enquiries.