Most established practices are busy. Busy with check-ups, hygiene and the odd filling, while the implant surgery sits empty on Thursdays.
The Bigger Brand is a Manchester-based dental marketing agency working with established private and mixed dental practices across the UK and Ireland. The work usually focuses on increasing higher-value treatment within your existing patient base, alongside attracting new patients, improving enquiry conversion and building local search visibility. Strategy is set after reviewing treatment mix, pricing, clinical capacity and conversion rates, and reported as treatments booked and revenue.
Once a practice has been going for a few years, new patients tend to arrive on their own. Word of mouth, the sign outside and a Google listing that’s been there for ages keep the book ticking over, so marketing starts to feel optional.
The catch is that you get whatever turns up, rather than the work you’d choose. Good marketing gives you a say in that. It lets you decide which treatments you’re known for in your town, and who finds you when they go looking.
This is the thing nobody says out loud at the conferences.
You can be fully booked and barely profitable. Twenty check-ups and a hygiene list keep everyone busy and pay for the lights, but they don’t pay for the associate, the new scanner or the four-day week you keep promising yourself.
Meanwhile the treatments you actually trained for, and enjoy, happen once a fortnight.
The strange part is that the patients who want those treatments are usually already on your list. They’ve been coming for years and have never been told what’s possible, because there’s never time in a check-up, and nobody followed up the treatment plan that got mentioned once in 2023.
So for most established practices, the first win comes from asking the people who already trust you, well before any advertising.
We ask early, and it catches people out.
How many implant cases a month can you actually place? Which days are quiet? Is the bottleneck the surgeon, the surgery or the treatment coordinator’s diary?
There’s no point generating demand you can’t service. A three-month wait for a cosmetic consultation loses more patients than it converts, and it damages the reputation you’ve spent years building.
Occasionally the honest answer is that you don’t need marketing. You need another associate or an extra day of surgery time, and we’d rather say that than sell you a campaign that makes things worse.
When we look at an established practice, the same problems tend to come up.
Hundreds of patients have never been offered anything beyond a check-up. Treatment plans get presented and never followed up, and whitening patients have never been asked about bonding.
So the only people finding you are the ones who already know you exist. That’s a listing, not a marketing channel.
Often it’s a practice with fewer reviews and a worse website, but a properly managed Google profile.
There’s no standard for response times, no script for the price question and no reminders before the appointment.
Money goes out, patients come in, and there’s no way to connect the two. Every decision ends up a guess and every renewal a leap of faith.
The order matters. We start with what costs least and pays back fastest, then add volume once the practice can convert it.
These are the cheapest cases you’ll ever book. There’s no ad spend involved, and it often funds the rest of the work in the first quarter.
Which treatment do you want more of, and can you actually take it on? Everything follows from that answer, not from whatever’s fashionable.
There’s no sense pouring enquiries into a process that loses two-thirds of them. Follow-up sequences, call scripts and reception training usually pay for themselves faster than advertising does.
The map pack, treatment pages and location pages bring in traffic that keeps arriving after you stop paying for it.
Meta and Google ads aimed at the specific treatment, with proper tracking and creative filmed in your practice.
We report on treatments booked, cost per booked case, consultations attended and revenue against spend. Monthly, on the same day each month, in thirty minutes.
We’ll review your treatment mix, patient list, enquiry handling and local visibility, and show you where the quickest wins are. It’s free.
Usually by increasing higher-value treatment among existing patients, rather than by attracting more new ones. Common approaches include reactivating lapsed patients, following up unaccepted treatment plans, improving enquiry-to-consultation conversion and reviewing treatment pricing. New patient advertising usually works best once conversion and capacity are sorted.
It varies a lot with practice size, location and treatment mix, so on its own it’s a limited measure. Practices with spare clinical capacity and a strong conversion process benefit from higher volumes, while practices at capacity may gain more by increasing average treatment value. Treatments booked and revenue per patient are usually more useful measures.
It depends on the practice’s stage and goals. Patient reactivation usually gives the fastest return, with no media cost. Local SEO and Google Business Profile management bring a steady flow of local enquiries. Paid advertising suits specific treatment campaigns. And follow-up systems improve returns across every channel; they’re often what’s holding results back, rather than the channels themselves.
Yes. Existing patients are usually the most valuable marketing opportunity, because they already have a relationship with the practice. Common approaches include contacting lapsed patients, following up unaccepted treatment plans, and telling patients about treatments they may not know you offer. Contact must comply with UK GDPR and PECR rules on marketing consent.
