Why Google Ads Shouldn’t Be Your Only Patient Strategy

Spending $4,000 a month on Google Ads might get your phone to ring, but if that’s your only marketing channel, you’re building your dental practice on rented land.

When the spending stops, so does your patient flow.

Here's why growing dental practices are diversifying, and how you can lower your patient acquisition cost while growing sustainably, and relying less on Google Ads.

The Rising Cost of Google Ads

In 2025, the average cost-per-click (CPC) for competitive dental services like implants, emergencies, or cosmetic dentistry can often exceed $15. The costs continue to rise annually, seeing a 12.88% increase from 2024 to 2025.

Not only do practices need to deal with rising costs and increasing competition, but many practices spend thousands monthly without even tracking ROI or conversions.

It's like an monthly bill that just gets higher and higher with no real understanding of if it's fully optimized or its true effectiveness.

However, Google Ads does indeed convert quickly.

What Google Ads Can't Do

Despite their strengths and popularity among dental practices, Google Ads aren't too great at the following:

• Build trust or local reputation
• Create long-term visibility that compounds
• Educate patients who need time before booking

If you rely only on ads, you could miss out on patients with higher lifetime value who need more touchpoints before deciding on their next dentist.

Example: $3,200 With No ROI

Late last year, a Phoenix GP spent $3,200/month on "emergency" keywords with a Google Adwords account he set up himself. His website was simple and quick, something that he also set up himself with help from a family member.

What were the results? An 8 - 10% patient return rate and roughly $400 per recurring patient. Far too expensive.

There are a lot more pieces of the puzzle missing to lead to such low numbers, sure, but essentially, this practice was handcuffed to running Google Ads. Patients were certainly calling and coming through the door, but they had no systems for retaining them long term.

4 Reasons Not to Rely Solely on Google Ads

1. Volatile Costs

CPCs for dental terms are always rising. Why? Because most dentists are on there, including your competitors, and many of them think that Google Ads and a website is the only digital marketing strategy you need.

Google ads is based on an auction system. Whoever is willing to pay the highest for a click will show up at the top of the search results at the end of the day.

Your $4,000/month budget buys less visibility every year.

2. Low Conversion If Intake Is Weak

Most offices don’t answer 100% of calls. If your front desk isn’t tight, you're paying for leads you can't book. Worse, if you don’t track calls with proper tagging, you may not even know where the drop-offs are happening.

3. No Compound Growth

SEO, local branding, and content all compound over time. Ads don’t. Every month, you start over. Content that ranks today can keep driving patients for years. Ads don’t work unless you keep feeding the meter.

4. No Differentiation

Everyone can run ads and most of your competitors are. What sets you apart? Paid ads alone don’t showcase your personality, specialty services, or patient experience.

Smarter Channels to Layer In

SEO + Web Content

Target long-tail searches like "how much do veneers cost" or "do dental implants hurt."

Patients need information before booking, and Google favors helpful, local content. Blog posts, treatment pages, first time visitor information, and FAQs optimized with real patient questions outperform generic ad copy when it comes to building trust.

Example: A Wisconsin GP published a comparison blog. In 60 days, it ranked on page one and brought in 7 organic consults.

Reputation Marketing

Your Google Business Profile and online reviews influence both clicks and SEO rankings. A five-star practice with fresh reviews gets more calls.

Reviews also offer conversion power. Patients will always trust what others say more than what you say.

Pro Tip: Patients that leave reviews with treatment names and the local mentions are 10x more powerful than general reviews (e.g., "I got a dental implant at their Scottsdale location" or "my child visited their Indianapolis location for braces")

Social Media (Now SEO-Indexed)

As of July 2025, Google now indexes Instagram content (posts, reels, etc), and captions with location and service keywords.

That means a post about Invisalign can help you rank locally and attract more people to your practice's social presence. Use your Instagram bio and captions to include service keywords and location tags.

At the bare minimum, try this strategy:

• Post at least once weekly and use location based tags
• Add links in your bio to your website or treatment pages
• Use descriptions complete with keywords and links to your website
• Upload reels where treatments and location terms are referenced

Unsure of what to post?

We made a 2025 Social Media Calendar for Dentists that you can download for free. It contains relevant, dental based social media posts for the entire year so you can save time planning and stay consistent.

Retargeting + Email Nurture

Many dental treatments aren’t impulse buys. Outside of immediate pain, it often takes multiple touches to convince someone to get dental work done that they've been putting off.

Set up Facebook / Instagram retargeting to capture visitors who have visited your website previously. Make sure your ads reinforce your practice, patient experience, and standard of care.

Pro Tip: Use video in your social ads whenever possible!

Email is especially valuable for nurturing inactive patients. Recall reminders, and promoting seasonal offers like whitening or aligners are great ways to reactivate your database of patients.

What a Smarter Dental Marketing Budget Looks Like

Here's an example of what to do with your $4,000 marketing budget other than putting it all into Google Ads.

This mix creates:

• Lower cost per patient over time
• Better ROI per click
• A defensible marketing asset
  

Metrics That Actually Matter

Most dental practices running Google Ads just track clicks, and if patients are still coming in, that's all that really matters to them.

To be much more efficient, measure:

• New patients by channel (Ads, SEO, referrals)
• How many clicks turned into patients?
• Cost per scheduled patient from Google Ads
• Call answer rate during ad hours
• Treatment acceptance rate
• Repeat visit % from ad leads
• Lifetime value of ad-sourced vs. other sources

You could be paying a lot for leads or even single-visit patients that just do an exam and never return. It's key that you find out fast!

Bottom Line: Ads Work Best With Strategy

Google Ads work for dentists and are a great accelerator. They're attractive because they're fairly easy to set up and run, and in most cases you can do it yourself without investing in a company or marketing manager.

However, Google Ads is Google's #1 money maker. It's in their best interest that you can easily set it up yourself and become overly-reliant on them as clicks continue to get more expensive.

The most profitable practices we work with use Ads to accelerate growth, not sustain it. Diversify your channels, improve your intake systems, and build long-term visibility that doesn't disappear when your card stops running.

Ready to Get More from Your Marketing Budget?

Curious if your practice is overly reliant on Google Ads? Contact us to get a free visibility assessment and understand where you stand in your market with showing up where patients are looking.

Get in touch today.