Why Your Dental Practice Is Paying Too Much Per Lead
Most dental accounts we audit are bidding hardest on the lowest-value cases in the practice. Here is the arithmetic nobody runs before switching on Google Ads.
Daniel Okafor
Head of Paid Media · $80M+ managed ad spend · Google Ads certified since 2012
The arithmetic
A hygiene appointment is worth perhaps £90. An implant case is worth £4,000. If your account bids on both with the same strategy and the same target cost per acquisition, you are systematically overpaying for one and underinvesting in the other.
This is the single most common problem we find in dental accounts, and it is usually worth more to fix than anything else on the list.
Why it happens
Because "cost per lead" is the metric the platform reports, and it treats every lead as identical. It is not the platform's fault — it does not know what a lead is worth to you. But if you never tell it, it will optimise for the cheapest ones. Which are, reliably, the least valuable ones.
The fix
Segment by case value. Separate campaigns, separate budgets, separate targets. Feed conversion values back into the platform so the bidding actually knows what it is chasing.
Then measure cost per booked consult, by procedure. Everything else is noise.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good cost per lead for a dental practice?
It depends entirely on the case value, which is why the question is usually the wrong one. A £200 cost per lead is excellent for implants and catastrophic for hygiene appointments. Work backwards from case value, close rate and the margin you actually keep — then judge the number against that, not against a benchmark from someone else's practice.
About the author
Daniel Okafor
Head of Paid Media
Daniel has managed north of $80M in ad spend across Google, Meta and Amazon. He is unusually interested in the unglamorous parts of paid media: feed hygiene, incrementality testing and knowing when to turn things off.