Which dental services to advertise? Start with your schedule

In short

Advertise the service where your schedule has the most valuable open chair time, and start with one. Look at your schedule first and your fees second. Check the schedule for each dentist separately, because one dentist may be booked solid while another has open slots. Then decide who will see the patients from the ad and which days your front desk should book them for. If no dentist has open time, don't advertise anything.

Who this is for

This is for you if your practice offers several services, such as implants, orthodontics, or cleanings, and you want to start advertising or clean up the ads you already run. You may be hearing advice that points in opposite directions. One person tells you to advertise implants because they're expensive. Someone else tells you to advertise cleanings because they're cheap. We don't settle who's right here. This article shows you how to pick a service based on your own schedule.

If every dentist at your practice is booked for months ahead, this article won't help you. Ads would bring in people your front desk has no appointment times to offer.

We wrote this at Helpify. Helpify brings patients to dental practices and follows up so they make it to the chair. More about who we are is on the About Helpify page.

A full schedule doesn't always cover the whole practice

You may hear from your team that the practice has plenty of patients and the schedule is full for months. When you look at each dentist's schedule, you may also find that one dentist is booked solid while another dentist at the same practice has openings. On some days, nobody may be seeing patients in one of your operatories. Both things can be true at the same time.

That's why you check the schedule dentist by dentist. Ask "Do we have open slots?" and you get one answer for the whole practice. Ask "Who has open slots, and when?" and you get an answer you can pick a service from.

Write it down in a simple table. Each row is one dentist and one service that dentist provides. If a dentist provides two of the services you might advertise, give them two rows.

Illustrative example, fictional data. These are not Helpify's results, our fees, or typical numbers for a practice. The first two rows only show how to fill in the table. You fill in the last row yourself.

In this example, implants have the higher value per treatment, but Dentist A has no time to see new patients. An implant ad would send leads to a dentist with no open slots. Dentist B's Tuesday and Thursday afternoons would stay open.

A 15-minute exercise: open slots for the next four weeks

You can fill in the table with your schedule open in front of you. You don't need any new software.

1. Open the schedule for the next four weeks.
2. For each dentist, count the open slots for the services in the table over those four weeks. Divide the result by four and write it in the "Open slots per week" column.
3. In the "Days and hours" column, write when those slots tend to come up, for example "Tuesday afternoons."
4. In the last column, write the value of one treatment based on your own fees. For cleanings and pediatric dentistry, add the word "entry." We explain why in the next section.
5. Mark the rows that have open slots and compare their values.

Count only the slots a new patient can actually get. Time held for existing patients or for emergencies isn't open to a person from an ad. If you don't know which hours a dentist holds this way, ask them.

Four weeks give you a picture of the coming month. They don't show you the whole year. If a dentist is on vacation during those weeks, check the weeks after that too, so you don't write a zero where there are usually open hours. Redo the table when something changes in the schedule, for example when a new dentist joins the practice.

Core services and entry services

It helps to split the services at your practice into two groups. Core services are implants, orthodontics (including clear aligners), and cosmetic dentistry. They earn for the practice through the treatment itself. The patient comes in for a specific treatment, and you can see its value in your fees.

Entry services are cleanings and pediatric dentistry. An entry service is a low-cost service that brings a new patient into your practice for the first time. It earns for the practice once the patient stays. The first visit is where it starts. For a service like this, check whether you have open slots for first visits. Also check whether the schedule, including the hygiene schedule, has room for these patients' next visits.

We won't give a number for how many cleaning patients come back for more treatment. Only your practice's own records show that. Take the patients who came to you for the first time for a cleaning a year ago, and check how many of them had more visits after that.

We don't have a measurement showing that any one of these services is more profitable for a practice than the others. That's why we don't rank them. Your schedule decides first, and your fees come second.

We describe campaigns for core services on the pages about dental implants, orthodontics, and cosmetic dentistry. Campaigns for entry services are on the pages about cleanings and pediatric dentistry.

Three questions that settle the choice

Once the table is ready, answer these questions.

1. Where is the open time? Pick the rows with open slots, and among them the one with the highest value per treatment. For an entry service, also count the room for return visits.
2. Who will see these patients? Check that the dentist with open slots provides the service you want to advertise and wants to take new patients. If the treatment takes several visits, check that the dentist has room for the later visits too, along with the first consultation.
3. Which days should your front desk book these patients for? Your front desk needs to know which dentist and which days to use for people from this ad. Without that, they may offer the first open slot anywhere in the practice, including with a dentist who has no room. Write it down on one sheet and give it to the front desk before the ad goes live.

If you have an answer to all three questions, you have your service to advertise. If you're missing the answer to the second or third one, work it out with the dentist and the front desk before you start.

Why start with one service

Start by advertising one service. The reason is simple. One service means one page the ad leads to and one set of numbers you can judge. You see how many leads came in, how many patients your front desk booked, and how many showed up for the consultation. When you advertise several services at once, those numbers get mixed together, and it's hard to judge each service on its own.

Add a second service once the first one has a steady flow of leads. Before the ads go live, write down what a "steady flow" means for your practice. Later, go back to the table and check where the next open slots are. It could be another dentist, or other days with the same dentist.

When not to advertise anything

If the table shows zero open slots for every dentist, don't advertise anything. Every person from an ad would hear from your front desk about an appointment weeks or months away. You'd spend your ad budget on leads you have nowhere to book.

The same goes when the only dentist with open slots doesn't want new patients for that service. Go back to the table when the schedule changes, for example when a new dentist joins or someone adds days in the office.

How we do it

Helpify brings patients to dental practices and follows up so they make it to the chair. We start with one service. We run Facebook and Instagram ads with videos filmed at the practice, and we build a service page with a form. After every lead, the patient gets a confirmation and the front desk gets reminders to call and book. We remind patients about appointments, and after a no-show we help the front desk reschedule. The dashboard shows leads, booked appointments, patients who showed up, and ad spend.

Each service is a separate campaign with its own fees and its own service page.

You pay once for the campaign build: the service page, the ad videos, and front desk training. After that, you pay a flat monthly fee for campaign management, and it doesn't start until the day your ads go live. You pay your ad budget separately, straight to Meta. I'll show you the numbers along with a plan for your practice.

Helpify's fee doesn't depend on the size of the practice's ad budget.

Helpify is based in Poland. We work remotely and take on dental practices in Poland and the United States.

Read more about how the process works on the Helpify System page. Book a free 30-minute call. It's online, with Maciej Odrobina, the founder of Helpify. Book a call.

Questions and answers

Which dental service is the most profitable to advertise?

We won't point to one service, because we don't have a measurement showing that any service is more profitable for a practice than the others. Whether an ad pays off depends on the open slots in your schedule and the value of treatment at your fees. Put both into the table from this article, and work out the loss from open chair time in the calculator.

Should you advertise several services at once?

Not at the start. One service means one page and one set of numbers you can judge. Add a second service once the first one has a steady flow of leads and the table shows open slots for the next one.

Should you advertise cleanings at your dental practice?

A cleaning is an entry service, so it earns for the practice once the patient stays. Advertise cleanings if you have open slots for first visits and room in the schedule for return visits. Only your own practice's records show how many of these patients stay.

What should you advertise when a new dentist joins?

Add the new dentist to the table like anyone else. If they have open slots, advertise a service they provide and have open time for. Agree with your front desk that patients from this ad get booked with the new dentist, on that dentist's days.