They promise patients
Nobody can promise a number of starts or a date. Ad performance depends on your market, your offers and your front desk.
Google Ads for orthodontic practices
Orthodontist PPC: How to Choose Who Runs Your Google Ads
Most orthodontic practices do not lose money on Google Ads because the platform is broken. They lose it because the person running the account never learned how a new-patient consult actually gets booked, who answers the phone, or what a treatment coordinator does with a request. This page is a buyer's guide to orthodontist PPC: the questions that separate a careful manager from a careless one, what a good answer sounds like, and what to do in the first two months.
If you already know you want help with Google Ads management for your practice, jump to the plans near the end of the questions below, or schedule a call.
Why this hire is different
An Orthodontic Account Is Not a Generic Dental Account
A family choosing braces or clear aligners is not shopping the way someone with a broken pipe shops. The parent or adult patient usually spends days or weeks reading, compares two or three offices, and treats the first visit as an audition. That visit, the consult, is the thing your paid ads should be built to produce, so everything a manager does should be judged by whether it puts qualified people in your chair for one.
What patients actually type
The searches that matter fall into a few families. Some are about the treatment itself: braces for teens, adult braces, clear aligners, retainers, early evaluation for a child. Some are about price and payment: how much do braces cost, orthodontist that takes my insurance, monthly payment plans, whether a consult is free. Some are about the office: orthodontist near me, Saturday hours, accepting new patients. A smaller group is urgent, such as a broken wire or a poking bracket, and those searchers are mostly your existing patients, which is a reason to keep them out of a new-patient campaign.
Why the offer and the front desk matter as much as the ads
Google Ads sends a person to a page and a phone number. After that, the practice owns the result. A manager who never asks how quickly a form is answered, whether the phone is covered at lunch, or whether the treatment coordinator can book a consult on the first call is managing half of the funnel. Ask for that curiosity before you ask for a proposal.
Healthcare ad rules you should hear about before you sign
Google treats health as a sensitive area. Read the current healthcare and medicines policy and the personalized advertising rules in Google's own help center before any campaign launches, because details change. In plain terms, ads for orthodontic care should avoid promises about outcomes, should show prices only when they are real and complete, and should be careful with before and after photos and with urgency language. Some health topics also limit which audiences an advertiser can build from website visitors, so a plan that leans entirely on follow-me ads may need a different shape. A good manager raises these rules without being asked and your state dental board has its own advertising rules that sit on top of them. This is not legal advice; your board or counsel has the last word.
Interview checklist
Eight Questions to Put to Every Candidate
Use this as a script. Ask the same questions of every agency, freelancer or staff hire you speak with and write their answers beside the right-hand column.
| What you ask | What a good answer sounds like | What a weak answer sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| How will you count a new patient? | We will track phone calls, consult form submissions and online booking separately, and ask your coordinator to mark which ones became consults and starts. | We report clicks and impressions, and leads are whatever the form says. |
| What campaigns will you build? | A search campaign for braces and aligner intent, separate groups for adults and for parents, and a brand campaign for people looking up your practice by name. Other formats only after the search basics are working. | One campaign with every service and city in it, run on automated settings from day one. |
| How do you handle negative keywords? | We review the actual search terms weekly at first and block jobs seekers, do-it-yourself braces, DIY aligner kits, school searches and other practices. | Google handles that for us. |
| Who writes the ads, and who approves them? | We draft, you approve anything that mentions pricing, financing, insurance or results, and nothing goes live that makes an outcome claim. | We write whatever converts, including urgency and before and after images. |
| What will you do about healthcare policy? | Check the current rules, keep claims plain, and flag anything that might limit audiences or ad serving before launch. | That is Google's problem, not ours. |
| What happens to my ad spend? | It goes to Google directly from your own card on your own account, you can see it any time, and you own the account if we part ways. | We pool spend through our account and send you a summary. |
| How will I see what is happening? | A monthly report in plain words plus access to the account, with calls, forms and booked consults shown beside spend. | A dashboard of clicks and a quarterly call. |
| What is your contract? | Month to month, so we earn the next month. | Six or twelve months, with a setup fee, to get us started. |
Questions practice owners ask
Orthodontist Google Ads Questions, Answered
How much does orthodontist PPC cost?
Think of two separate bills. The first is ad spend, which Google charges to your own card and you cap yourself. The second is the manager. Ours runs $895 monthly when we handle a single platform, rises to $1,595 for a pair and $2,295 for three, and carries no setup charge or commitment. Derive the spending ceiling from what a started case is worth to the practice and how many consults it takes to start one, never from a round number.
Should an orthodontist run Google Ads personally or hire a manager?
Either can work. Running it yourself costs time you rarely have and mistakes are paid for in ad spend. A specialist manager costs a monthly fee and should save more than that in wasted clicks. A middle path is to hire a manager to build and tune the account while your front desk owns call handling.
What should a first-visit offer say in an ad?
Say what is true: that you offer consultations, whether they are complimentary and what they include. Avoid implying treatment results, and do not promise a price you cannot honor to every caller. Check Google's healthcare rules and your dental board's advertising rules, and have a coordinator confirm every claim before it runs.
Can I advertise braces and Invisalign-style aligners in the same campaign?
They are better as separate campaigns or at least separate ad groups. Different searchers use different words, different landing pages explain each option well, and you will want to see which brings more booked consults. Mixing them hides that, and it makes it harder to write an honest ad for either one. Keep adult and teen searches apart for the same reason.
Do I need a landing page just for ads?
You need a page that matches the search. Someone typing adult braces should land on a page about adult braces with a clear consult button and a phone number, not on a home page with six services. Many practices build three or four focused pages and send each campaign to its own.
How long before I know it is working?
Ads can run within days of approval, but the first weeks are for learning which searches bring real consult requests. Expect adjustments over several weeks before judging, and judge on booked consults rather than clicks. No honest manager can promise a number of patients or a date.
Will Google show my ad to people already in my practice?
It can, which is why brand and existing-patient searches should be handled on purpose. A brand campaign is cheap insurance against another office buying your name. Negative keywords for broken wire, retainer replacement and patient login keep current patients out of the new-patient campaigns.
What about Bing and Meta for an orthodontic practice?
Bing is a modest add-on with its own audience and is often managed alongside Google. Meta ads can help families and teens remember you and suit seasonal offers, though health rules apply there too. Start with Google, learn what a booked consult costs and add other platforms from that base.
What reporting should I receive?
Calls, form submissions and booked consults by campaign, the search terms that brought them, spend, and a plain note on what changed that month. If your coordinator marks which consults started treatment, ask for that to be matched to the ad source so the report ends in starts rather than clicks.
Warning signs
Red Flags to Watch for in a Proposal
One account for several practices
If your ad account is a shared bucket you cannot enter, you cannot leave. Ask who owns the account.
A long contract and a setup fee
Good work earns the next month. Lock-in usually means the work is hard to defend.
Reports without booked consults
Clicks and impressions are activity. A report that stops before the consult is hiding the only number you care about.
Before and after images as the hook
Health advertising policy and board rules tighten around outcome imagery. Ask what they have checked, not what they like.
Automation switched on before anything is measured
Automated bidding learns from conversions. If the conversions are page views, it will optimize for page views.
No interest in your front desk
If the manager never asks about response time, hours or the coordinator, they are optimizing the half they can see.
A sensible start
Your First Sixty Days With a New Manager
Week one: access and tracking
You get admin access to the account. Calls, forms and booked consults are tracked as separate goals, and the coordinator learns how to mark the ones that become a start.
Weeks one to two: structure
Campaigns are built around braces, aligners, adults and parents, with a brand campaign on the side. Locations are set around the places you actually serve.
Weeks two to four: search terms
Every few days the manager reads the real searches, blocks the wasted ones and moves the good ones into tighter groups.
Weeks four to six: pages and offers
Landing pages and ad wording are adjusted from what people actually asked and which versions produced consults.
Weeks six to eight: first honest review
You review booked consults, the cost of one and the share that started. Only then do you decide whether to raise the budget, keep it flat or add another platform.
Nearby trades
PPC Guides You Might Want Next
Want the whole picture for orthodontist? There is a full orthodontist marketing site at orthodontist.getphound.com.
Want the organic side or the lead side too? See getting more leads, buying leads, lead generation programs, SEO, internet marketing, and best keywords for orthodontist.
Get in Touch
Ready to Talk About Your Orthodontic Ads?
Schedule a call with our CEO at 610-825-4363 or email hello@getphound.com. Bring your current ad account if you have one and we will walk through it with you.