← Dental Practice Circle

Marketing & Acquisition

Turn local interest into inquiries the practice can follow up.

We audit your marketing workflow, fix the handoffs, configure the tools, and build the automations or help hire the person you need. Then we test the setup, train your team, and hand it over.

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Situation

Is this your problem?

Sound familiar?

  • You can't say which marketing brings patients in.
  • Your Google listing shows old hours or missing services.
  • Campaigns launch, then run without an owner or a next step.
  • The agency invoice arrives on time. The report doesn't.
  • New-patient specials get announced once and forgotten.
  • Referrals happen, but nobody tracks them or says thank you.
Scope

What this workstation owns.

From a local search to a qualified inquiry your front desk can book.

Listings & local presence
  • Keep the Google Business Profile complete and current
  • Keep directory listings consistent: name, address, phone, hours
  • Update holiday hours and service changes everywhere they appear
  • Refresh photos and service descriptions
  • Find and correct duplicate or wrong listings
Campaigns & content
  • Run the approved campaign calendar
  • Prepare new-patient special materials
  • Draft social and Google Business Profile posts for approval
  • Keep campaign landing content current
  • Retire expired offers everywhere they ran
Referrals & partnerships
  • Run the patient referral program within state rules
  • Record who refers and how often
  • Send approved thank-yous to referring patients and partners
  • Maintain community and professional referral relationships
Source tracking & attribution
  • Ask every new inquiry how they heard about the practice
  • Record the source in the practice management system
  • Maintain call-tracking numbers and tagged campaign links
  • Match marketing spend to new patients by channel
Reporting & vendor oversight
  • Produce the weekly and monthly marketing report
  • Flag stalled campaigns and unusual spend
  • Hold agencies and vendors to agreed deliverables
  • Prepare the quarterly cost-per-new-patient review
Metrics

How do we measure success?

Five measures. Targets agreed from your practice's baseline.

Qualified inquiries
Inquiries from marketing activity that match the practice's patient profile and contact criteria.
Spend per inquiry
Total campaign spend divided by qualified inquiries, tracked by channel and campaign.
Inquiries followed up
Share of marketing inquiries that get a first response inside the agreed window.
Source recording rate
Share of new patients with a recorded "how did you hear about us" source.
Cost per new patient
Marketing spend divided by completed first visits, tracked by channel and reviewed quarterly.
Automation

AI agents and automations for this workstation.

A few examples. We build around your practice's needs and existing systems, not a fixed menu.

Listing-health agentaudit → draft → verify

Built forYour Google Business Profile is out of date, your listings disagree across directories, or nobody owns keeping them current.

2.7x
More likely seen as reputable
70%
More likely to attract visits
50%
More likely to lead to a purchase

Google-reported figures for businesses with complete Business Profiles, cited by Yext's local-search research roundup. The figures cover local businesses generally, not dental practices, are not independently verified, and are not a forecast for your practice.

Yext local search statistics roundup ↗

The manual way

  • Search your own practice name and open each listing one by one.
  • Compare hours, phone, services, and photos against reality.
  • Log into each directory and edit by hand.
  • Hope nobody set up a duplicate listing somewhere else.
  • Repeat whenever you remember, which is rarely.

With AI agents & automation

  • A scheduled audit compares every listing to your approved record.
  • Differences become drafted updates, not silent edits.
  • A named person approves each change before it publishes.
  • Applied changes are re-checked to confirm they went live.
  • Listings that can't be fixed automatically go to a person with the reason.

Systems needed

  • Google Business Profile
  • Directory accounts
  • Approved practice record

Human control

A named person approves every change before anything publishes. Platforms that block automated edits produce a task with exact instructions for a person instead. Duplicate and suspicious listings always go to a person.

Full build specification
Trigger / problem
Hours change, a service is added, a photo goes stale, or a directory invents a duplicate listing. Today these sit wrong for months because nobody checks.
What it reads
Your Google Business Profile and the directory listings you approve for monitoring, compared against the practice's approved record: hours, phone, address, services, and photos.
What it decides
Whether a live listing matches the approved record. Match versus mismatch is a fixed comparison, not a judgment call.
What it does
Drafts the update for each mismatch, queues it for approval, applies approved changes where the platform allows, and re-checks afterward to confirm the listing now matches.
Human approval / takeover
A named person approves every change before anything publishes. Platforms that block automated edits produce a task with exact instructions for a person instead. Duplicate and suspicious listings always go to a person.
Systems needed
Owner access to your Google Business Profile and the directory accounts in scope, plus one approved record of your hours, services, and contact details. We inventory what you already own first.
Privacy / access
Listings carry no patient information, and the workflow keeps it that way: business details only, no patient content of any kind. Access uses your practice's own accounts and follows your staff permissions.
Logging & failure handling
Every audit, draft, approval, applied change, and re-check is logged. Failed edits surface as tasks with the platform's error, never silently dropped.
Success metric
Share of monitored listings that match the approved record, and time from a real change (new hours, new service) to every listing reflecting it.
What the practice owns at handoff
The audit workflow, the approved practice record, the approval process, and the full logs, running in your accounts and documented.
Good fit when
Your Google Business Profile is out of date, your listings disagree across directories, or nobody owns keeping them current.
Not a fit when
Your listings are already maintained on a schedule someone owns, or you run one location with one listing you update yourself in minutes.
Content-draft agentdraft → approve → schedule

Built forPosting happens in bursts and then stops, content waits weeks for review, or campaign pages stay live long after the offer ends.

<1%
Conversion on a generic page
2.8%
Health-industry landing page median
400%
More conversions with dedicated pages

Agency customer story reported by Unbounce: one Montreal dental clinic sent paid ads for multiple services to one generic website page and saw conversion rates under 1% for forms and calls; dedicated pages per campaign produced 400% more conversions. The 2.8% figure is Unbounce's health-vertical median. This is a single older engagement about paid-ad landing pages, not social content, not our results, and not a forecast.

Unbounce Webistry dental clinic story ↗

The manual way

  • Someone writes posts when they remember to.
  • Drafts wait in an inbox for a yes that takes weeks.
  • Approved copy gets pasted into each platform by hand.
  • Campaign pages stay live after the offer expires.
  • Nothing matches the campaign calendar, if there is one.

With AI agents & automation

  • Drafts follow the approved campaign calendar, not memory.
  • Every draft enters one review queue with a deadline.
  • Approved items are scheduled to publish at set times.
  • Expired offers are flagged for retirement everywhere they ran.
  • Missed reviews surface as a gap, not a silent publish.

Systems needed

  • Scheduling tool
  • Approved campaign calendar
  • Brand assets and templates

Human control

Nothing publishes without a named person's approval, ever. Offers, prices, claims, before-and-after imagery, and anything touching a patient story need the owner's explicit sign-off. Rejected drafts return with the reviewer's notes.

Full build specification
Trigger / problem
The campaign calendar says content is due, or an offer is about to expire. Today posting depends on someone's spare hour, and stale offers stay live.
What it reads
Your approved campaign calendar, brand assets, approved claim and price list, and the content currently published on your profiles and pages.
What it decides
Which calendar item is due and which template applies. The AI drafts the words; it does not decide what the practice offers, charges, or claims.
What it does
Drafts the post, profile update, or campaign page copy, attaches the approved assets, and places it in the review queue with a deadline. Approved items get scheduled. Expired offers get flagged for removal.
Human approval / takeover
Nothing publishes without a named person's approval, ever. Offers, prices, claims, before-and-after imagery, and anything touching a patient story need the owner's explicit sign-off. Rejected drafts return with the reviewer's notes.
Systems needed
A social and content scheduling tool, your approved campaign calendar, and your brand assets. Most scheduling platforms support approval queues directly. We check what you already own first.
Privacy / access
Content is drafted from approved business material only. Patient photos, stories, or testimonials enter a draft only with documented written consent, which a person verifies before the draft exists. Access follows your staff permissions.
Logging & failure handling
Every draft, approval, rejection, scheduled post, and retirement flag is logged, so the record shows who approved what. Failed publishes are retried once, then flagged to a person.
Success metric
Share of calendar items published on time, review turnaround time, and expired offers retired within the agreed window.
What the practice owns at handoff
The content calendar, templates, approval queue, scheduling setup, and logs, running in your accounts, documented.
Good fit when
Posting happens in bursts and then stops, content waits weeks for review, or campaign pages stay live long after the offer ends.
Not a fit when
You post rarely by choice and a simple reminder covers it, or your agency already runs a calendar with an approval process you trust.
Source-attribution agentcapture → tag → report

Built forYou can't say which channel brought your last twenty new patients, or what a new patient actually costs you.

$125
Blended cost per new patient
$350 vs $50
Mailer vs referral, same month
1 of 4
Sources visible without records

Illustrative calculation, not measured results: a practice spending $3,000 a month sees 24 new patients, a blended $125 per patient. With sources recorded, the same month reads: ads $1,800 for 12 patients ($150 each), mailer $700 for 2 ($350 each), referral program $500 for 10 ($50 each). Without source records, only the blended number exists and the mailer looks as productive as the referrals. The audit must validate your actual volumes and spend.

The manual way

  • Hope whoever answers the phone asks how the caller found you.
  • Record the answer somewhere, sometimes.
  • Guess which campaign deserves credit at month's end.
  • Add up spend and divide by a feeling.
  • Let the agency grade its own homework.

With AI agents & automation

  • Every inquiry path asks the source question once.
  • Call-tracking numbers and tagged links do the asking where they can.
  • Sources land in the patient record, not a side spreadsheet.
  • Monthly cost per new patient is drafted by channel for review.
  • Gaps in recording show up as their own number.

Systems needed

  • Practice management system
  • Call tracking / tagged links
  • Report template

Human control

A person reviews the drafted report before it circulates. Anything the agent cannot match is reported as unmatched, not smoothed over. Budget, campaign, and vendor decisions stay with the owner.

Full build specification
Trigger / problem
A new patient completes a first visit, or the month closes and nobody can say where the patients came from. Today attribution is a guess and cost per new patient is a blended average that hides the losers.
What it reads
The source question on your intake paths (phone script, web forms, booking requests), call-tracking numbers, tagged campaign links, the practice management system's new-patient records, and your marketing spend by channel.
What it decides
Which recorded source matches each new patient. Matching follows fixed rules: recorded source first, tracking data second, unknown stays unknown. The agent never invents a source.
What it does
Records the source in the patient record, reconciles the month's new patients against spend by channel, and drafts the cost-per-new-patient report for a person to review.
Human approval / takeover
A person reviews the drafted report before it circulates. Anything the agent cannot match is reported as unmatched, not smoothed over. Budget, campaign, and vendor decisions stay with the owner.
Systems needed
Source fields in your practice management system (most major dental PMS platforms have them), a call-tracking layer where calls matter, and tagged links for campaigns. We verify what you already own before scoping.
Privacy / access
Attribution uses the minimum: source, channel, and first-visit status. No clinical information enters marketing reporting. Access follows your existing staff permissions.
Logging & failure handling
Every recorded source, match, and report draft is logged. Inquiries with no recorded source are counted and shown as a gap, so the report never looks cleaner than reality.
Success metric
Share of new patients with a recorded source, and a monthly cost per new patient by channel the owner actually reads.
What the practice owns at handoff
The source-recording workflow, tracking setup, report template, and full logs, running in your accounts, documented.
Good fit when
You can't say which channel brought your last twenty new patients, or what a new patient actually costs you.
Not a fit when
Your growth is almost entirely referral and you already record sources reliably, or your spend is small enough that the blended number tells you what you need.
Campaign-report agentpull → compare → flag

Built forYou pay an agency or run ads yourself, and the only document that arrives on time is the invoice.

2 hrs → 20 min
Report assembly → digest review
6.5 hrs/mo
Illustrative time saved
4 accounts
Assumed reporting sources

Illustrative calculation, not measured results: 2 hours a week assembling numbers from four sources (ads account, analytics, call tracking, agency PDF) versus 20 minutes reviewing a drafted digest: about 6.5 hours a month back, before the value of catching a problem in week one instead of month three. The audit must validate your reporting sources and review time.

The manual way

  • Log into each ad account and analytics tool.
  • Copy numbers into a spreadsheet nobody owns.
  • Reconcile them against the agency's PDF, if it arrived.
  • Notice the stalled campaign at quarter's end.
  • Write the awkward email asking what happened.

With AI agents & automation

  • Numbers pull on a set schedule from every source.
  • The digest compares spend and results to targets and last period.
  • Anomalies get flagged: spend up, inquiries down, report missing.
  • Drafted questions go to the agency or vendor in your name for review.
  • The owner reads one page, not four logins.

Systems needed

  • Ad platform read access
  • Analytics
  • Report template

Human control

A person reads the digest and decides what to act on. Drafted vendor questions send only after a person approves them. The agent never touches a budget, bid, or campaign setting.

Full build specification
Trigger / problem
The reporting period closes, or spend crosses a set threshold without matching results. Today this surfaces when the invoice arrives or the quarter ends.
What it reads
Spend and results from your ad platforms, website analytics, call-tracking data, and any agency reports you approve for comparison.
What it decides
Whether results are inside agreed targets and whether sources disagree. Threshold comparisons and source mismatches are fixed rules, not judgment calls.
What it does
Assembles the digest, compares it to targets and the previous period, flags anomalies, and drafts the questions worth asking the agency or vendor, queued for your review.
Human approval / takeover
A person reads the digest and decides what to act on. Drafted vendor questions send only after a person approves them. The agent never touches a budget, bid, or campaign setting.
Systems needed
Read access to your ad and analytics accounts and a place to file the digest. If an agency runs your ads, we set up reporting access you own, so the data survives any vendor change.
Privacy / access
Campaign reporting uses aggregate numbers, not patient records. Access is read-only and follows your existing staff permissions.
Logging & failure handling
Every pull, comparison, flag, and approved send is logged. A source that stops reporting is itself flagged, so a silent feed never reads as good news.
Success metric
Reports delivered on schedule, share of months where anomalies were caught inside the period, and time the owner spends getting the picture.
What the practice owns at handoff
The reporting workflow, templates, thresholds, access, and logs, running in your accounts, documented. If you change agencies, the history stays with you.
Good fit when
You pay an agency or run ads yourself, and the only document that arrives on time is the invoice.
Not a fit when
You spend little enough that a monthly glance covers it, or your current agency already reports into accounts you own, on time, with numbers you trust.
Hiring

We help you hire for this workstation.

One role. Two hiring routes.

Role for this workstation

Marketing & Acquisition coordinator

Keep listings current, run approved campaigns, record sources, and report what marketing brings in.

Reports to your office manager or the named workstation owner. Clinical decisions stay with clinicians. Budget and vendor decisions stay with the owner.

EmployeeBest when the role also owns front-desk or on-site work alongside marketing.
Remote human virtual assistantBest when the work can run securely through your marketing, phone, and practice systems.

How we help

  • Define the role, hours, boundaries, and access
  • Choose employee, direct hire, or agency
  • Source and screen qualified candidates
  • Interview every candidate with one scorecard
  • Set up access, training, SOPs, and onboarding

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Resources

Resources.

Relevant articles for improving this workstation.

Marketing Measured WrongReferrals That Go ColdThe Call You Paid to Generate Went to VoicemailThe Dental Patient Journey as an Operational MapThe Five Numbers Every Dental Practice Should TrackMissed-Call Text-Back: The Highest-ROI Automation in DentistryPatient Communications Specialist VAThe Three Ways Dental Practices Lose Money (Without Knowing It)
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FAQ

Common questions.

Bring us the part that isn't working.

We build it, train your team, and hand it over. Your team owns and operates it.

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