Marketing for Dentists: Getting More of the Right Patients

Most new dental patients find a practice by searching locally and then reading what other people say. The practices that win are the ones that own the “dentist near me” map results with a complete Google Business Profile, back it with a clear website, and do all of it inside the AHPRA advertising rules. That last part is not optional, and it changes the advice considerably.

Dental marketing is the one industry where the standard small business playbook can actively get you in trouble. Most of what follows is the same as any local business. The compliance section is not, so it comes first.

Compliance First, Because It Changes Everything Else

Advertising a regulated health service is governed by section 133 of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law, and AHPRA publishes guidelines on what that means in practice. The short version is that your advertising must not be false or misleading, must not create an unreasonable expectation of benefit, must not offer gifts or discounts without clearly stating the terms, must not encourage indiscriminate or unnecessary use of health services, and must not use testimonials.

That last one is the big one, and it catches almost every practice that hires a general marketing agency.

A testimonial, in this context, is a statement about the clinical aspects of your service used in your advertising. So a patient quote about how good their new crown is, sitting on your homepage, is a problem. So is a screenshot of a five-star Google review pasted into an Instagram post. So is a video of a happy patient describing their treatment.

The distinction that matters is control. AHPRA’s position is that practitioners are not responsible for unsolicited reviews published on third-party sites they do not control, and are not required to have them removed. A Google review sitting on Google is not your advertising. The moment you copy it onto your own website or into an ad, it becomes advertising that you control, and the prohibition applies.

Proposals to relax the testimonial ban have been discussed for several years, but as at the time of writing the prohibition still applies. Do not act on a marketer telling you the rules have changed. Check the source.

Win the Local Map Pack

With testimonials off the table, local search carries more weight for dental practices than it does almost anywhere else. Fortunately Google publishes how it works.

Local results are ranked on relevance, distance and prominence: how well your listing matches the search, how close you are to the person searching, and how well known you are. Google says plainly that businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up in local search results, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking.

Read those two sentences together and the strategy writes itself. Reviews accumulating on your Google Business Profile help you rank, and that is entirely legitimate, because those reviews live on Google’s platform rather than in your advertising. What you cannot do is harvest them into your own marketing materials.

Practically, winning the map pack means a few unglamorous things. Your primary category set correctly, and secondary categories for the services you actually provide. Accurate hours, including whether you take emergency appointments. Real photographs of the practice, the team and the waiting room, because people are nervous and want to see where they are going. Your name, address and phone number identical everywhere it appears online, because inconsistency across directories quietly undermines the whole thing. And a website with a page for each significant service, so there is something relevant for Google to match against a search.

Google also states there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Worth remembering when someone rings your practice manager offering exactly that.

What Your Practice Can Do Itself

That last point deserves emphasis. Practices routinely spend thousands chasing new patients while their own recall list quietly lapses. Fix the recall system before you fund a campaign.

The compliance audit in step four is worth doing properly rather than skimming, because the problems are rarely obvious. Practices tend to look for patient quotes, find none, and assume they are fine. The things that actually get flagged are quieter: a services page promising a “perfect smile”, a before-and-after gallery with no context about how typical those results are, a homepage banner offering a free consultation without stating the terms, or a stray line about being the area’s leading practice that a web designer wrote as filler in 2019.

A practical way to run it is to open every page and read it as though you were a regulator with no interest in your intentions. Anything that makes a promise, ranks you against others, or implies a typical outcome goes on the list. It is a dull afternoon and it is by far the highest-value thing on this page, because unlike everything else here, the downside is not a wasted budget.

Where Paid Ads Fit

Google Ads work for dentistry, but only for the right services.

They make sense for high-value treatments where a single patient is worth well into four figures or beyond: implants, orthodontics, cosmetic work, and emergency appointments. Someone searching “dental implants [suburb]” has both intent and value behind them, and the maths on a click supports itself comfortably.

They rarely make sense for general check-ups. The clicks cost roughly the same, the patient is worth much less up front, and you are competing with every practice in the area for someone who will probably choose on convenience anyway. That demand is better captured through the map pack, which is free.

Meta ads have a narrower role again and carry more compliance risk, because the format encourages exactly the things the rules prohibit. Before-and-after photos in particular are a common trap: they are not banned outright, but they must not create an unreasonable expectation of benefit, and a carousel of your best cosmetic results very easily does. If you run paid social, keep it factual and keep it about the practice rather than the outcomes.

Whichever you run, send the click to a page about that specific treatment. Sending someone who searched for implants to your homepage wastes the click, and at dental click prices that is an expensive habit.

There is a second reason to be careful with dental advertising that has nothing to do with cost. Every ad you run is advertising a regulated health service, which means the compliance rules apply to the ad copy itself, not just your website. Headlines are where practices slip, because ad formats reward superlatives and urgency, and both sit close to the line. “Best dentist in Perth” is a claim you cannot substantiate. “Limited time implant offer” pressures a clinical decision. Whoever writes your ads needs to understand that before they write anything, and if they do not, you are the one carrying the risk.

The safest and usually the best-performing approach is boring and factual: name the treatment, name the suburb, say something concrete about the practice, and let the landing page do the persuading.

What Dental Marketing Costs

I am not going to quote you a monthly figure, because the ranges published by dental marketing agencies vary so widely that any number I gave would be close to meaningless. What is more useful is knowing what you are actually paying for and how to judge a quote.

A proposal should separate three things: ad spend that goes to Google or Meta, management fees that go to the agency, and one-off build work like a website or landing pages. If a quote presents a single monthly number without that breakdown, ask for it. You cannot evaluate value without knowing how much of your money is actually buying visibility.

Two structures to be wary of. Management priced as a percentage of ad spend rewards whoever manages your account for spending more rather than spending better. And lock-in contracts of twelve months or more, common in the dental space, mostly protect the agency, particularly in a field where you will not have a reliable read on results for the first quarter anyway.

Ask any prospective provider one question above all others: who reviews the advertising for AHPRA compliance, and what happens if a complaint is made? If the answer is vague, that risk is landing entirely on your registration, not theirs.

The Common Mistakes

Inheriting non-compliant content. Most problems I see were written by a previous agency and never reviewed. Testimonials, superlatives and outcome claims sit on practice websites for years.

Screenshotting Google reviews onto social media. Extremely common, and it converts a compliant review into non-compliant advertising in one tap.

Inconsistent details across directories. Three versions of your address and two phone numbers scattered across old listings quietly undermines your local ranking.

Advertising general dentistry through paid search. Expensive clicks for low-value, convenience-driven decisions.

Ignoring the recall list. Paying to acquire strangers while existing patients lapse is the most expensive mistake on this page.

When It Is Worth Getting Help

If your Google Business Profile is incomplete and your recall system is patchy, that is where the return is, and none of it needs an agency. A practice manager can do most of it over a few weeks.

It is worth a conversation when the basics are genuinely done and you want the technical side handled, when you are running ads for high-value treatments and cannot tell what they return, or when you want someone to go through the existing site with fresh eyes before a complaint does it for you.

Be selective about who you use. Dentistry is one of the few industries where a marketer who does not know the rules can create a genuine regulatory problem for you, and the consequences land on your registration rather than their invoice.

If you want a second opinion first, I offer a free 15-minute chat. No pitch, just straight answers. You can also run your site through the free audit, or read how I approach SEO and Google Ads.

Questions Dental Practices Ask Me