Orthodontics is one of the more competitive local health categories on the web. A single case is worth several thousand dollars over 18 to 30 months, so every practice within a 20 mile radius is willing to pay for the click. That makes execution, not budget, the thing that separates a practice with a full consult calendar from one whose treatment coordinator has empty afternoons. This page walks through how AdsTalent runs marketing for orthodontic offices, what actually moves case starts, and what a first 90 days with us looks like.
How orthodontics buyers actually search
The person searching for an orthodontist is almost never the patient. In roughly three out of four cases it is a mother in her late 30s or early 40s searching on a phone, often at night after the kids are in bed, and often after a school dental screening, a comment from a family dentist, or a photo that made her look at her child's teeth differently. For adult clear aligner searches the pattern shifts. Those searches skew female, 25 to 45, and are frequently triggered by a wedding, a career move, a divorce, or catching a candid photo on someone else's phone.
The queries fall into a small number of predictable buckets. Branded searches for the practice by name. Category searches like "orthodontist near me," "braces for kids," and "Invisalign near me." Price and financing searches like "how much do braces cost" and "orthodontist that takes payment plans." Insurance-driven searches like "orthodontist that takes Delta Dental" or "orthodontist that takes Medicaid." And a growing volume of aligner brand searches, mostly Invisalign, with Spark and other systems trailing.
The buying cycle is longer than most local service categories. From first search to booked consultation is often two to four weeks. From consultation to signed treatment contract can be another one to three weeks, because the family is comparing two or three practices, checking insurance benefits, and figuring out how the down payment fits into the household budget. A practice that only measures form fills is missing half the picture. Phone calls, text messages through Google Business Profile, and direct walk-ins after a drive-by still account for a meaningful share of new starts.
Industry benchmarks are worth knowing before setting a budget. The AAO reports the average orthodontic case is around $5,000 to $6,500 depending on complexity and region, and about 27 percent of orthodontic patients are now adults. Practices typically need somewhere between 15 and 25 new consults per month per doctor to keep a chair full, and the conversion rate from consult to start usually sits between 55 and 75 percent for a well-run treatment coordinator.
What orthodontics businesses come to us with
- Consult volume has dropped and the owner cannot tell whether it is the market, a new competitor, a Google update, or the last agency drifting.
- Google Ads cost per click has climbed past $12 to $18 on brand terms like "Invisalign" and the practice cannot justify the spend against actual starts.
- The Google Business Profile is being outranked by a nearby DSO or a corporate aligner chain that opened a location two miles away.
- Reviews have plateaued or the practice took a hit from one or two bad reviews and does not have a reliable way to keep new five-star reviews coming in.
- The website was built for a rebrand three or four years ago and was never wired up properly for call tracking, form attribution, or conversion reporting.
- Referrals from general dentists have softened and the practice has no digital presence with those referring offices or their patient base.
- The front desk cannot tell which ad, keyword, or channel drove a given caller, so the owner has no idea which spend to protect and which to cut.
- Insurance carrier changes or Medicaid policy shifts have reshaped the case mix and the marketing has not been updated to reflect who they actually want to attract.
What an AdsTalent orthodontics marketing program includes
For most orthodontic practices, the primary channel is local SEO built around the Google Business Profile and the top three or four physical locations. The map pack is where family decision-makers compare options, read reviews, and tap to call. A profile that ranks in the top three for "orthodontist," "braces," and "Invisalign" plus the city name will usually drive more consult calls than any single paid channel, and it does it without a per-click cost. We rebuild the profile, categories, services, products, photos, and Q&A, then run a weekly cadence of posts, photo uploads, and review responses.
Google Ads sits right behind local SEO in impact. For orthodontics we do not chase broad category terms at $15 clicks. We build tightly themed campaigns around Invisalign, adult clear aligners, braces for kids, free consultations, and payment plans, with location targeting drawn to match actual patient draw distance rather than a lazy radius. Call tracking on every ad is table stakes. So is negative keyword hygiene, because "invisible fence," "invisalign attachments falling off," and DIY aligner queries will otherwise eat the budget.
Paid social, meaning Meta and to a lesser extent TikTok, is where adult aligner demand actually gets created. Facebook and Instagram still index heavily toward the mother demographic that decides where the family goes, and short video of real doctors, real staff, and real results outperforms stock imagery every time. We run this as demand generation, not last-click, and measure it against consult lift and branded search lift rather than direct form fills.
Reputation management is not a nice-to-have in this category, it is a core channel. We put a review request into the practice management workflow so it fires at the moment of contract signing and again at debond, and we monitor and respond to every review across Google, Yelp, and Healthgrades. A practice that adds 8 to 15 new Google reviews per month will out-convert one that adds one or two, even if their ad spend is identical.
Conversion rate optimization on the website closes the loop. Most orthodontic sites bury the phone number, hide the financing page, and make new patients fill out a 20 field form to book a free consult. We tighten the consult flow to a short form, a visible phone number with call tracking, and an online scheduler that writes back to the practice management system where possible.
The monthly report a practice owner should be reading contains four numbers. Consults booked. Consults completed. Case starts. And blended cost per start across all channels. Everything else is diagnostic.
Channels we run for orthodontics
Local SEO and the Google Business Profile are the anchor, because a top-three map pack ranking in the practice's city compounds every other channel. Google Ads runs alongside, weighted toward Invisalign and branded consult offers rather than broad category terms. Local Services Ads are used selectively, since availability for orthodontics has been inconsistent and lead quality varies more than for plumbing or HVAC, but where they are live we run them. Paid social on Meta drives adult aligner demand and referral to friends and family, and we test TikTok for practices with staff who are comfortable on camera. Reputation management runs across Google, Yelp, and Healthgrades, with review generation wired into the practice management system. Email marketing keeps existing patients, siblings of current patients, and past consults engaged with retainer reminders, sibling discounts, and adult aligner offers, which is one of the highest ROI channels most practices ignore. Analytics ties every channel back to booked consults and case starts through call tracking, form attribution, and periodic reconciliation with the practice's PMS.
How an orthodontics engagement works
The first 30 days are audit and foundation. We pull two years of Google Ads, Google Business Profile, Google Analytics, and call tracking data if it exists, and reconcile it against the practice management system to see actual starts by source. We rebuild the Google Business Profile, fix categories and services, clean up NAP citations across the top data aggregators, install or fix call tracking, and get proper conversion tracking on the website. The client sees a written audit, a 90 day plan with target spend by channel, and access to the reporting dashboard.
Days 30 to 60 are launch and cleanup. New Google Ads campaign structure goes live with tight ad groups, real negative keyword lists, and call tracked ads. The Meta campaigns launch with a mix of doctor and staff video and before-and-after content shot at the office. Review generation is wired into the practice management workflow so requests fire on contract signing. The website conversion flow is tightened, the consult form is shortened, and financing and insurance pages are rebuilt so they actually rank and convert. The client starts seeing weekly numbers on consults booked by source.
Days 60 to 90 are optimization and reporting maturity. We start killing what is not working, whether that is a keyword theme, an ad set, or a landing page, and doubling down on what is producing consults. Local SEO starts to move in the map pack as citations, reviews, and profile activity compound. The client gets their first full monthly report tying spend to consults booked, consults completed, and case starts, with a written recommendation for the next 90 days. From this point forward the engagement runs in monthly cycles with a standing call, a written report, and a rolling roadmap.
The client owns the website, the ad accounts, the Google Business Profile, the call tracking numbers, and every asset we create. We own the execution, the reporting, and the honest read on what is working.
What success looks like
A two-doctor, single-location orthodontic practice in a metro suburb, doing roughly $2.5M to $3.5M in collections with a 15 mile draw, typically comes to us doing about 12 to 18 new consults a month at a blended marketing spend of $6,000 to $9,000, with a case start rate around 60 percent. After 90 days on a rebuilt program, that same practice usually sees consult volume move into the 22 to 32 per month range at similar or modestly higher spend, with case starts following one to two months behind as the consults close.
The changes that drive it are rarely dramatic in isolation. The Google Business Profile moves from ranking four to seven in the map pack up to the top three for the main city and one or two adjacent neighborhoods. Google Ads cost per consult drops from the $250 to $400 range down into the $120 to $200 range as broad match waste gets cut and the account is rebuilt around Invisalign and consult offers. Review volume goes from two or three new Google reviews a month to 10 to 20 as the practice management workflow starts firing requests reliably. And the front desk finally has a call tracking dashboard that tells them which caller came from which campaign, which lets the practice make real decisions instead of guessing.
None of this is a straight line. Month four is usually better than month three, and month six is usually better than month four, but any given month can be soft because a school break, a holiday, or a competitor promotion moved traffic around. The number that matters over a year is cost per case start, and for a well-run program in this category it usually settles between $250 and $500.
Orthodontics marketing FAQ
Q: How much should an orthodontic practice spend on marketing?
Most single-location practices we work with spend between 4 and 8 percent of collections on marketing, split across paid media, agency fees, and tools. A practice trying to grow aggressively or open a second location often runs closer to 8 to 12 percent for a defined window.
Q: What is a realistic timeline to see results?
Paid search and paid social start producing consults in the first 30 to 60 days. Local SEO movement in the map pack usually shows up between 60 and 120 days. Case starts trail consults by 30 to 60 days because families take time to make the decision, so a fair read on the program is at the 90 to 120 day mark.
Q: Do we need to change our website first?
Not always. We can usually run paid media against the existing site and get results, and then rebuild the site in parallel. If the site is more than four years old, has no call tracking, or has a broken consult form, we will fix those specific things before turning ads up.
Q: Should we run Invisalign ads or braces ads?
Both, in separate campaigns. Invisalign and adult clear aligners are searched by adults with different intent and higher cost per click. Braces searches skew toward parents with children ages 8 to 14. Running them together in one campaign wastes budget and buries the numbers.
Q: What data do we need to share to make this work?
Access to Google Ads, Google Business Profile, Google Analytics, any existing call tracking, and ideally a monthly export from the practice management system showing consults booked and case starts by source. We can work without the PMS data, but the reporting is less precise.
Q: How are leads routed to our office?
Phone calls go directly to the front desk over call tracking numbers that record source and campaign. Form fills go to a shared inbox and, where the practice management system supports it, write directly into the new patient queue. Text messages from Google Business Profile route to a number the front desk actively monitors.
Q: Do you require a long contract?
We work on a rolling monthly agreement after an initial 90 day commitment. The 90 days exist because paid media and local SEO both need that window to produce a fair read. After that the client can leave with 30 days notice and keeps every asset.
Q: What is the most common mistake you see orthodontic practices make with marketing?
Judging the program on form fills alone. In this category, the phone is still the primary conversion, and a practice that only counts form submissions will underspend on the channels that are actually filling the consult book. The second most common mistake is running one big Google Ads campaign that mixes braces, Invisalign, and brand terms, which makes it impossible to see what is working.