Dental Practice: 47 New Patient Leads in 60 Days

Industry: General Dentistry · Market: Central Illinois · Timeframe: 60 days

The Situation

A two-dentist practice in Central Illinois had brought on an associate dentist and needed to fill a new patient schedule quickly. Referrals and organic word-of-mouth were strong for the established providers but weren't generating enough volume for a new chair. They needed a fast-moving, measurable channel to generate new patient inquiries.

They'd tried Google Ads briefly the year prior and found the search volume in their market too thin to generate meaningful volume. Their patient base was mostly 30–65 year-old homeowners within a 10-mile radius. Meta Ads — with demographic and geographic precision targeting — was the better fit.

Campaign Strategy

We ran two campaigns simultaneously:

• New patient offer campaign — A Facebook and Instagram lead gen campaign targeting 28–65 year-olds within 8 miles of the practice, promoting a new patient exam and X-rays offer. Meta's lead form (native in-app form) was used for frictionless submission — patients didn't have to leave Facebook to inquire.
• Lookalike audience retargeting — A custom audience from their existing patient list (2,200 patients) used to build a 1% lookalike audience — people demographically similar to their current patients. These audiences converted at 2.3x the rate of cold audiences.

Creative That Worked

Three ad variations were tested. The winner: a simple before/after smile photo with the headline "We're welcoming new patients in [city]. New patient exam + X-rays." No professional photography — a phone-quality image of a real patient result (with permission) outperformed stock photography in every split test.

The losing variations: a practice photo with the dentists' names (too impersonal for cold audiences), and a video tour of the office (high CPM, low conversion). Simple benefit + offer + local signal was the formula.

60-Day Results

47 new patient inquiries via Meta lead form. Of those, the front desk team converted 31 into booked appointments (66% contact-to-book rate). At an average new patient lifetime value of $2,400, 31 patients represent roughly $74,400 in lifetime revenue from a $1,316 ad spend over 60 days.