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Dental marketing ROI calculator · AI-run campaigns
How many patients before this pays for itself?
Enter your own assumptions to explore a scenario. Prefilled figures and the six-month chart are illustrations, not verified benchmarks or a prediction of when cash will arrive.
Start here
Pick a treatment, then adjust to match your practice.
The presets are typical UK figures to start from — not promises. Every slider should end up reflecting your own numbers.
What you spend
What a lead costs
Implied cost per enquiry: £75
How your team converts
What it's worth
You need 1.3 cases a month for your margin to cover the £2,950 marketing cost. At your numbers you'd expect 1.3.
Illustrative six-month scenario
Cumulative marketing cost against cumulative margin from accepted treatment, allowing for the fact that enquiries don't arrive on day one and patients don't say yes the same week.
This is an illustrative model, not a forecast. Its timing assumptions are not measured evidence. Accepted treatment value is not cash received; margin-based returns are not net profit unless all relevant costs are included.
How to read it
What counts as a good return.
Under 1×. The margin from treatment isn't covering the marketing cost. Sometimes acceptable for a month or two while a campaign learns — never acceptable at month six. If we saw this on your account we'd say so and change something.
1× to 2×. It works, but there's not much room. Usually the fix is conversion, not budget — response time, no-shows, or the price conversation.
3× and above. Healthy. At this point the question stops being "does this work" and becomes "how much more can we spend before it stops".
The number this doesn't show. Future patient value is uncertain. Count only defensible assumptions about retention, repeat care and referrals; do not treat projected future income as money already earned.
And the one that flatters it. If you set margin to 100% you're looking at gross treatment value, not profit. Useful for comparing channels, misleading for deciding whether you can afford it.
When do leads actually start?
Every channel behaves differently. Budget accordingly.
The single most common reason a practice thinks marketing failed is that they judged a slow channel on a fast channel's timescale.
| Channel | First enquiries | Reliable by | Typical cost per enquiry | What the leads are like |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | 3–14 days | Week 6 | £60–£250 | Highest intent of anything you can buy. They're actively looking and comparing practices — so they're also ringing two competitors. |
| Meta ads (Facebook & Instagram) | 1–7 days | Week 8 | £20–£90 | Cheaper and more plentiful, but colder — they weren't looking for you. Needs a proper follow-up sequence or most of it is wasted. |
| Google Maps & Google Business Profile | 4–8 weeks | Month 4 | Falls over time | Excellent. Local, ready to book, often calling rather than filling in a form. And you keep it when you stop paying. |
| Organic SEO — treatment terms | 3–6 months | Month 9–12 | Lowest, eventually | Well-researched patients who've read your page before contacting you. Slowest to build, cheapest to hold. |
| Your existing patient list | Days | Immediately | Nearly nothing | The best leads in the building and the most neglected. They already trust you. Start here before you spend on ads. |
Ranges reflect what we typically see across UK dental accounts. Yours will differ by town, treatment and competition — we'll show you real figures for practices like yours on a call.
What moves the number
Six levers. You control four of them.
Go back to the calculator and move the conversion sliders instead of the budget slider. That's usually where the return is hiding — and most of it isn't ours to fix.
Response time
An enquiry answered within five minutes books far more often than one answered the next morning. Nothing else on this page moves the result as much for as little money.
→ Moves "enquiries that book" more than any targeting changeNo-show rate
Consultations booked and never attended are pure waste — you've paid for the lead and used the slot. Confirmation, a day-before reminder and directions fix most of it.
→ 75% attendance to 90% is roughly a 20% lift in casesThe consultation itself
Whether the price is presented with finance, whether there's a clear next step, whether anyone follows up the ones who said they'd think about it. This is a sales system, not a personality.
→ The single biggest driver of cost per patientThe offer
"Book a consultation" asks for commitment. "Free smile assessment, no obligation" doesn't. The same ad spend against a lower-commitment offer produces markedly more enquiries.
→ Directly lowers cost per enquiryCost per enquiry
Targeting, search terms, negatives, creative and campaign page. Real, and we work at it monthly — but it has a floor, and past a point the returns come from your side of the table.
→ Typically improves 20–40% between month one and month threeLead quality
Putting the price in the ad, filtering out the wrong searches, and matching the page to what was promised. Fewer enquiries, better ones — which usually reads as a worse cost per lead and a better cost per patient.
→ Why we report on patients, not leadsWhat we'll ask you to have ready
- A low-commitment offer for each treatment you're advertising
- Someone named who answers enquiries, with a response-time standard
- A call script for the price question, agreed with your team
- A brochure or guide to send within a minute of the enquiry
- Finance options your team can explain confidently and compliantly
- Every outcome recorded — booked, attended, accepted, and why not
What we do about it
- Write the offer and test it against alternatives
- Automate the instant reply so nobody has to remember
- Write the call script and train your team on it
- Design the brochure and build the WhatsApp and email follow-up
- Track every enquiry to the ad that produced it
- Review real calls with you monthly and change the campaigns on what we hear
Next step
Bring your numbers and we'll run this properly.
Your case values, your booking rates and your town. We'll tell you what's realistic, what it would cost, and how long before it pays for itself — including if the honest answer is that your existing patient list is the cheaper place to start.