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Social & Search Advertising

Local ads that fill your consult calendar.

Orthodontics is won and lost in a few square miles. We build and manage the Google and Meta campaigns that make your practice the obvious choice in yours — and get you ready for what AI search comes next.

Orthodontics is a local decision

Almost no one drives past three orthodontists to reach a fourth. Families choose a practice they can get to after school, on a lunch break, or between activities — which means the moment that decides where a new patient starts treatment usually happens in a local search. When a parent types "orthodontist near me" or "Invisalign for teens," they are not browsing. They are choosing. Local ads exist to make sure your practice is the one they see at that moment.

46%

of all Google searches have local intent

RankTracker

76%

of nearby smartphone searchers visit a business within 24 hours

Google/Ipsos

28%

of those local searches end in a purchase

Google/Ipsos

$86.60

average cost per orthodontic lead on Google Ads

CUFinder benchmarks

Against the lifetime value of a comprehensive treatment case, a well-run local campaign is one of the few marketing investments where the math is obvious.

Google: capturing demand that already exists

Someone searching "braces cost [your city]" has already decided they want treatment; the only open question is where. The broader dental category shows how well this converts: WordStream's 2026 benchmarks put Dentists & Dental Services at a 10.67% conversion rate — well above the 8.18% all-industry average — at an $8.00 average cost per click.

Example

A two-location practice runs a Search campaign geo-targeted to a 15-minute drive radius around each office, with ad groups split by service line — Invisalign, braces for kids, adult orthodontics — each pointing to a matching landing page with online scheduling. Location extensions surface the nearest office and phone number directly in the ad, and call-only ads run during front-desk hours. Benchmarks show why that last piece matters: call-only ads in orthodontics convert around 12.5% — roughly double typical landing-page conversion.

Layer Local Services or Performance Max with location goals on top, and Google becomes a demand-capture machine: it doesn't create interest in orthodontics, but it wins the interest that already exists in your zip codes.

Meta: creating demand before the search happens

Nobody opens Instagram looking for an orthodontist — but parents in your service area scroll it daily, and orthodontic treatment is one of the most visual outcomes in healthcare. Facebook and Instagram ads put before-and-after transformations, patient stories, and consult offers in front of precisely the households most likely to need you, months or years before they ever search. The cost structure makes Meta a natural awareness layer: orthodontic benchmarks show Facebook clicks around $1.45 and CPMs near $14 — a fraction of search costs. Conversion rates are lower because intent is lower, and that's fine. That's not Meta's job.

Example

A practice runs a radius-targeted Instagram Reels campaign showing a teen's 18-month smile transformation, aimed at parents 32–54 within 10 miles. Most viewers don't click — but weeks later, when that parent's child gets a referral from their dentist, "that practice from Instagram" is the one they Google by name, where a branded search ad and a strong organic listing are waiting. Retargeting closes the loop: site visitors who didn't book see a follow-up offer for a free consultation.

Google harvests intent; Meta plants it. Practices that run only one are leaving half the funnel to competitors.

Keywords and negative keywords: the skeleton of a multi-campaign strategy

A cohesive account is really a routing system, and keywords are the routing rules. A typical orthodontic account separates campaigns by intent tier:

1. Branded

Your practice and doctor names. Cheap, high-converting, and defensive — competitors bid on your name whether you do or not.

2. High-intent service

"Invisalign near me," "orthodontist [city]," "braces consultation." The core of the budget, matched to dedicated landing pages.

3. Research-stage

"How much do braces cost," "Invisalign vs braces." Lower bids, education-focused pages that earn trust before the consult.

4. Competitor & conquest

Selective and measured — only where the local economics actually work.

Negative keywords are what keep these campaigns from colliding. Add "invisalign" as a negative in the general braces campaign so the Invisalign campaign — with its dedicated landing page and offer — wins that auction. Add branded terms as negatives everywhere except the branded campaign so you aren't paying high-intent prices for people who already know you.

Just as important, negatives protect budget from spend that can never convert: "free braces," "how to remove braces at home," "orthodontist jobs," DIY aligner queries, and out-of-area city names. In a category where clicks cost $5–$8, a neglected negative list quietly burns hundreds of dollars a month — industry analyses estimate typical campaigns waste roughly a quarter of spend on poorly matched clicks. A shared negative list, reviewed monthly against actual search-term reports, is one of the highest-ROI maintenance habits in paid search.

The result of getting this right isn't just efficiency — it's coherence. Each searcher lands on the page built for their exact question, quality scores rise, costs fall, and every campaign reinforces rather than cannibalizes the others.

Ads and SEO are one system, not two channels

The practices that grow fastest treat paid and organic as a single visibility strategy, because that's how patients experience them. The mechanics reinforce each other in both directions. Search-term reports from your ad campaigns are the best keyword research SEO money can't buy — they show the exact phrases real local patients use, which convert, and which don't, informing what pages and content to build. In the other direction, strong SEO makes ads cheaper: relevant, fast landing pages raise quality scores and lower cost per click, and a practice that appears in both the paid slot and the local map pack captures dramatically more of the page.

Organic search still drives about 48% of orthodontic website traffic — paid search adds roughly 16% on top, and the combination compounds. There's also a timing complement: ads produce patients this month while SEO authority builds; as organic rankings mature, paid budget can shift from broad coverage to the highest-value conquest and service-line opportunities. And with AI search increasingly synthesizing answers from organic content while displaying ads alongside them, the practices whose content, reviews, local listings, and campaigns all tell one consistent story will win both placements at once.

Run separately, ads and SEO each work. Run together — shared keyword intelligence, consistent messaging, one measurement view from click to consult to treatment start — they compound into a growth system. Pair this with our local SEO service line, and make sure web design and web development convert the traffic you buy.

Let's look at your local market together.

We'll walk through your campaigns, your negative keyword coverage, your Meta presence, and how your ads and SEO can run as one system — no obligation, no generic audit deck.

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