Which marketing is bringing patients into your practice?
By Oral Connect
Quick answer
You’re paying for marketing. But which adverts are bringing people into the practice? Start with four simple questions: how many people got in touch, how many booked, how many came in, and how much did they pay?
Look past the clicks and enquiries
Ask your team or agency what happened after each enquiry. Follow the same people from enquiry to appointment and payment. Count someone once, even if they filled in a form and then called.
Record when enquiries arrived and when you checked their progress. Newer enquiries have had less time to book or pay. Keep future appointments separate from visits already made.
Practical checks
- People who got in touch.
- People who booked an appointment.
- People who came to their appointment.
- Money received from those patients.
Check where patients found you
Check where each patient first heard about you. If their answer differs from the record, keep both and ask your team to check.
If you don’t know, write ‘not known’. Don’t give an advert credit just to fill a gap. A person may have seen an advert and heard about you from a friend, so the report cannot always tell you exactly what persuaded them.
Practical checks
- Keep ‘not known’ visible in the report.
- Ask your agency to explain any missing information.
Follow up after the appointment
How many patients came in but haven’t gone ahead with treatment? Ask why and record their answer. With more expensive treatment, someone may want more time to decide. Don’t assume price is the reason.
How many have an agreed follow-up, and how long have they been waiting? Keep one shared list with a named person responsible, the last conversation, and the next agreed action and date. If someone says ‘call me in three months’, record when. A new enquiry shouldn’t push that promise aside.
Agree how and when to contact them. Stop if asked. If they don’t reply, review what to do next rather than chasing indefinitely. Clinical questions go to the treating team.
Practical checks
- Name the person responsible for the next conversation.
- Record the last conversation and the next agreed action and date.
- Keep a patient-requested callback visible, even when new enquiries arrive.
Separate treatment agreed from money paid
Record agreed treatment separately from money paid. Take off refunds when adding up payments. Money received still needs to cover treatment costs and other bills before it becomes profit.
Made-up example: a patient agrees to treatment but hasn’t paid. Record treatment agreed, not money received. If another patient pays but you don’t know how they found you, record the payment and leave that as ‘not known’.
Practical checks
- Check payments against your practice records.
- Keep agreed treatment and money received as separate figures.
Choose one thing to improve
Take the report to your next team or agency meeting. Ask where people are getting stuck and what you will change. If enquiries are not becoming bookings, check both the enquiries and how they were handled before deciding who or what is responsible.
Practical checks
- Were enquiries answered and followed up?
- Could people find a suitable appointment?
- What will we change before the next review?
Look beyond the first treatment
Completing treatment needn’t end the relationship. When someone’s next check-up is due, are emails, texts and letters enough, or is a named person making calls where needed? Use the interval set by the treating clinician and the recorded due date, rather than contacting everyone every six months.
If a regular caller seems too costly for routine appointments, have you considered outside help with admin and calls, often called BPO? A future article will look at the longer-term value of patient relationships, recall and whether outside administrative support makes sense for your practice. This is a topic to explore, not an offer of a calling service.
Practical checks
- Check the recorded recall due date and any appointment already booked.
- Respect contact preferences and stop requests; refer clinical questions to the treating team.
How Oral Connect supports the workflow
Campaign and ad-set attribution depends on captured source identifiers and the implemented attribution model. Proposed treatment value, accepted treatment and collected revenue are different measures. Explore marketing attribution and reporting
The Open Treatment Hub uses a two-way Dentally connection to support systematic follow-up of open courses of treatment. Confirm available fields and sync behaviour during onboarding. Explore open-treatment follow-up
Plan the next conversation with our open-treatment follow-up checklist.
Questions practice owners ask
What should I ask my marketing agency?
Ask what happened after each enquiry and what information is missing. Get an explanation you understand before spending more.
Does a cheaper enquiry mean better marketing?
Not necessarily. Compare bookings, visits, payments and spending, allowing each group the same time to book and pay.
How do we keep a promised callback from getting lost?
Record a named person responsible, the last conversation and the agreed next action and date in one shared list. Keep that date visible when new enquiries arrive, and respect any change in contact preferences.
Operational guidance, not clinical or legal advice. Your practice remains responsible for appropriate patient care and communications.
Make sense of your marketing results.
Ask us about connecting enquiries, bookings and follow-up. Please do not include patient names, records or other patient information in your enquiry.