For any dental marketing campaign, calculating Return on Investment (ROI) is critical. You want to know if what you’re spending on marketing is paying off in production value.
In this guide we’ll cover the measurable data metrics, nuances of online marketing for dental practices, and the impact of in-office procedures on marketing ROI. When you understand how to measure the ROI of your campaigns you’ll know how they are working to keep your practice financially healthy.
To measure the ROI of your marketing, you need to make the connection between:
You can determine marketing effectiveness by the number of new patient leads it delivers, and marketing ROI by connecting scheduled new patients to production value.
For example, if you spent 10K to get 20 new online referral patients in a month and the production value of those patients was $30K, that means you got 3x ROI - seems simple. But there are additional considerations that could either increase or decrease ROI.
For example, consider the lifetime value of an active patient. You might spend $300 to get a particular patient, but if they become a consistent recall patient for a decade, the production value tied to that investment exceeds what you get from their initial visit.
And say that new patient refers 5 new patients who also are consistent recall - now the ROI on that initial $300 is ballooning.
Also consider that your marketing may drive high-quality dental leads to your office, but the production value is low because they didn’t schedule or because the patient didn’t accept their treatment plan. This is why it is important to track new patient leads. If your new lead numbers are low, it’s a marketing problem. If your lead numbers are strong but new patients or production isn’t, then you need to look at issues with the front desk scheduling and treatment acceptance.
To summarize, you want to measure:
Online campaigns for both organic and paid search can take time to get to the point of maximum results. Initially we suggest you give this six months.
After the campaign runs for six months, calculate these metrics:
Now, compare each of these metrics to the previous six months. If the campaign is bringing in an increase in new leads you are converting into patients, you’re moving in the right direction.
Note that it’s important to avoid comparing disparate time periods. For example, comparing 2025 to 2020 won’t give you an accurate picture of how your marketing is doing because other factors probably influenced results. Instead, use concurrent 6 to 12 month time periods for comparison.
At GDW we have clients that are meticulous about tracking ROI. They ask call leads about their needs and how they discovered the office, which provides data leads. When new patients come in for their appointment they discover the referral source and add this to the patient’s record in their PMS.
With data on the new patient referral source, they can connect the production value of a patient - both new and recall - to the referral source. They also know if they are getting leads (meaning the marketing is working) but not converting them into scheduled appointments, so they can look for issues with in-office scheduling.
Other practices are more anecdotal about this data. They ask new patients how they found the practice, but from there just infer ROI.
How you approach this process is up to you. If your practice is doing well, you're established in your market, and your sense is that your online visibility is working, perhaps the anecdotal approach is enough.
However, if you are in a competitive market and planning what to invest, being more precise is worth it.
A marketing company like GDW has the job of delivering dental leads to your office. However, attracting every quality lead in your area will be wasted if most of the time your phone goes to voicemail during office hours. Or if it takes you a week to respond to a website contact form.
GDW only runs paid ads during office hours because so many conversions are calls. We advise that you have a designated staff member whose priority is to answer calls to the office.
If you are a fee-for-service office (or want to move that direction) your front office staff must be able to accurately talk about insurance, in-house savings plans, and financing. Uncertainty about insurance and payment options is a scheduling killer. Phone staff must highlight the strengths of your office, explain how you can file insurance claims even if you are not in network, present payment options, and guide leads towards scheduling appointments.
If your marketing generates dental leads, your front desk converts them into appointments, and patients accept their treatment plans, then you have a great chance at getting high ROI from your dental marketing.