How to Get More Dental Patients Without Discounting
To get more dental patients without running another $59 special, fix five things in order: the Google Business Profile, reviews, search ads, the phone and reactivation of patients who stopped coming. None of them need a discount.
Below is what each step looks like when it's done, what Florida's rules say about offers, and a short list to start on this week.
Only one of the five needs ad spend.
- Fix five things in order: the Google Business Profile, reviews, search ads, the phone and reactivation.
- In my view, a new-patient discount brings in patients who leave for the next coupon.
- A Florida ad for a free or discounted service needs the 72-hour statement under Fla. Stat. 456.062.
- LocaliQ's 2026 benchmarks put the average dental cost per click at $8.00 and cost per lead at $72.97.
- Four of the five steps need no ad spend: the profile, reviews, the phone and reactivation.
Why not use a discount to get more dental patients?
A discount changes who calls. The patient who picks a dentist on a $59 cleaning offer picks the next dentist the same way. You pay for the ad, the hygiene hour and the x-rays to meet someone who was never choosing you.
That's why the discount offer is the first thing I take out of a dental account.
There's a compliance cost too. In Florida, any ad for a free or discounted service has to carry the capitalized 72-hour statement required by Fla. Stat. 456.062. Fee information in an ad also has to say the fee is a minimum only, under Fla. Stat. 466.019(3)(g). The discount ads I see often miss one or both. I'm not a lawyer, so check the rule before any offer runs.
A free 15-minute call with Blake by phone or Zoom. You get a written Method Plan for the cases you want, with the first fixes in order. It's yours to keep whether we work together or not.
1. Is the Google Business Profile complete?
Start here, because it's free and it's often where a new patient sees you first. Google's local ranking help page says local results come down to relevance, distance and prominence, and that there's no way to pay for a better local ranking.
What you control is relevance: a verified listing, the right primary category, accurate hours, services listed, real photos of the office and team, and replies to reviews.
Don't stuff keywords into the business name. The name on the profile is the name on the sign.
| Item | What done looks like |
|---|---|
| Profile | Every field filled, photos from the last 90 days |
| Reviews | A review link by text after every visit |
| Search ads | A monthly cost per booked exam by campaign |
| The phone | Answer rate, booking rate and callback time logged |
| Reactivation | A quarterly message to patients gone 18 months |
2. Are reviews being asked for the right way?
Ask every patient, the same way, at the same moment, with a direct link. Make it a checkout step that happens every time, not something the desk remembers on good days.
Google's review policy sets the limits. No incentives of any kind, no selective asking where only happy patients get the link, and no reviews from staff or anyone with a conflict of interest.
Replies have a HIPAA limit. In 2019, HHS's Office for Civil Rights settled with a Dallas dental practice for $10,000 after it disclosed patients' protected health information in replies to Yelp reviews. A safe reply never confirms the reviewer is a patient and never discusses treatment.
You'll find the full request text and a reply template in my post on Google reviews for dentists.
3. When should search ads start?
Start ads after the profile and reviews are in shape, because the ads send people to a listing and a site that now hold up. LocaliQ's 2026 search benchmarks put the average dental cost per click at $8.00 and cost per lead at $72.97. At those prices, the click has to land on something ready.
- $8.00Average dental cost per click
- $72.97Average dental cost per lead
Source: LocaliQ 2026 search advertising benchmarks
Build one campaign per service. Set location targeting to Presence, turn on call reporting and add negative keywords from day one. Skip remarketing lists, since Google's personalized advertising policy treats health as a sensitive category.
A good report shows spend, calls, booked exams and cost per booked exam by campaign, every month. The full build is in my guide to Google Ads for dentists and cost tracking.
My view on timing: I'd rather a practice spend three months on the free steps and start ads in month four than run ads from day one into a broken front end. When ads run while the profile shows the wrong hours and the phone goes to voicemail at lunch, the ads get blamed.
4. Does someone answer the phone?
This step decides whether the first three were worth doing, and it's easy to leave unmeasured. Every lead from the profile, the reviews and the ads becomes a call or a form. The front desk turns it into a patient or doesn't.
What I set up:
- Call tracking with recording, with a consent announcement at the start of each call. Florida requires all parties to consent under Fla. Stat. 934.03(2)(d).
- A missed-call text back within a minute, with a booking link. Any CRM or call tracking tool that sends the text in under a minute works.
- A call within five minutes for form fills during office hours.
- A weekly review of five recorded calls with the person who took them. It isn't a performance review. It's a talk about what would have gotten that caller on the schedule.
You're done when your answer rate, booking rate and average callback time are written down. The post on dental call tracking and the front desk has the scorecard.
5. Which past patients can be reactivated?
Start with patients who haven't been in for 18 months and haven't moved to another practice. It's a list you already own, with contact information and a treatment relationship attached.
HHS's HIPAA marketing guidance says a communication made for a patient's own treatment isn't marketing. So a recall message about overdue care is different from an ad. Keep it about their care:
It's been a while since your last visit. Here's a link to book a time that works for you.
Send it once a quarter, by the channel the patient agreed to.
Texts need care. Fla. Stat. 501.059 counts a text as a telephonic sales call. A message to someone with a prior or existing business relationship isn't "unsolicited" under the statute, but keep the patient's written consent to texting on file and let your attorney read the message.
Each quarter, pull the list from the practice software, send the message and count who booked.
What to do next
In the Double Jaw Method™, the top jaw is thinking: name the patient you want more of. The bottom jaw is action: attract them and wow them. The five fixes above line up with it: the profile and the ads name the patient, and reviews, the phone and reactivation attract and wow them. A Method Review applies both jaws to your practice.
- Open your Google Business Profile and fix every empty field, old photo and wrong hour.
- Write the review-request text and decide who sends it and when.
- Call your own office at 12:10 p.m. from a number the desk doesn't know, and note what happened.
- Pull the list of patients with no visit in 18 months.
- Hold new ads until steps 1 through 4 are done. If ads are already running, check the landing page and the call tracking.
The Double Jaw page for dentists explains how I work through these five with a practice. Specialty practices follow the same front-end logic, and my post on oral surgery marketing and its three lead sources covers it from the referral side.
FAQ
What is the fastest way to get new dental patients?
Fix the Google Business Profile and the phone first. Both cost nothing and both are where new patients decide whether to book. Ads have a better chance once those two are in shape.
Do new-patient specials work for dentists?
They bring in calls, often from patients who choose on price and leave on price. In Florida they also trigger the 72-hour statement under Fla. Stat. 456.062 and the minimum-fee rule under 466.019(3)(g).
How many Google reviews does a dental practice need?
There's no set number. To a patient, a steady flow of recent, genuine reviews with replies says more than the total.
Is reactivating old patients cheaper than finding new ones?
It costs less to start. The practice already has the contact information and the relationship, so the main costs are a message and the time it takes to pull the list.
Book a Method Review
Book a Method Review: a free 15-minute call with Blake by phone or Zoom about all five steps for your practice. You get a written Method Plan with the first fixes in order, yours to keep whether we work together or not. Prefer to start on your own? Take the free scorecard to see which step to fix first.
