Decide what you want more of
Before you spend anything, spend an hour with your diary and your books. Which treatments make money after lab fees and clinician pay? Which clinicians have gaps, and when? If an implant dentist is booked to March, marketing implants this month just makes people wait.
Your answer changes everything that follows:
| Your practice today | What marketing is for | What to leave alone |
|---|---|---|
| Full NHS contract, no spare capacity | Keeping your details accurate and being clear you're NHS, so people stop ringing for what you can't offer | New-patient ads of any kind |
| Mixed, with private capacity | Private treatments and hygiene, with clear wording on what's NHS and what's private | Anything that suggests NHS treatment is only available privately |
| Wholly private, quiet diary | New private patients and plan members, starting with people who live nearby | Expensive campaigns for your rarest treatment |
| Wholly private, strong in one treatment | That treatment: its page, its reviews, then perhaps ads | Trying to rank for everything at once |
Digital or online marketing for dentists is the part of this that happens on Google, your website and social platforms. It isn't a separate plan. The patient who rings because a neighbour mentioned you has usually looked you up first.
Who you're marketing to
UK patients aren't all choosing a luxury. The CMA's launch of its private dentistry study quotes a 2024 General Dental Council survey of why people turned to private care: 36% couldn't get NHS treatment at all, 31% couldn't get it quickly enough, 25% said their practice had stopped offering it, and 18% preferred it. The same release says 1 in 5 people in Great Britain used private dental care in 2024.
On the NHS side, 40% of adults in England were seen in the 24 months to March 2026. So a lot of people searching for a dentist near you are trying to get seen. They want to know if you're taking new patients and what the first visit costs before they care about your new scanner.
They're being told to shop around, too. The CMA's guide for patients says to compare prices, check evening and weekend hours, look at reviews, ask friends and search the GDC register. We turn that into a checklist in how to get more private dental patients.
What each channel is good for
| Channel | Good for | How fast | Wrong for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Existing patients | Lapsed patients, hygiene, treatment they've already asked about | Soon | A new practice with no list |
| Google Business Profile and reviews | People nearby choosing right now. Google says you can't pay for a better local ranking | Fixing errors can help quickly. Reviews build slowly | Nobody, though it's less useful if you're full |
| Your website | Turning every other channel into enquiries | As soon as it's fixed | Nobody. Every channel leads here |
| SEO | Treatment research and local searches, without paying per click | Hours for some changes, months for others | A practice that needs patients this month |
| Google Ads | People searching today, and testing what they'll book | Soon after approval | Anyone who can't answer the phone or doesn't know what a case is worth |
| Social media | Familiarity among people who already know you, and showing your team | Slow | A practice with nobody to post each week, or anyone expecting bookings from it alone |
SEO means showing up in Google's unpaid results, and there's more on what the work should include in dental SEO services. Our guide for dental practices shows how the search side fits together.
The order we'd do it in
- Ring your own practice. At lunchtime, on a Monday morning, after 5pm. Ask what a new patient exam costs and how soon you could be seen. Everything below depends on that call going well.
- Look after your existing patients. Check that recall works and that people know what else you offer. It's the cheapest step here, as long as you follow the messaging rules below.
- Fix your Business Profile. Right category, right hours, your real name with no added keywords. Our UK guide goes through it, including replying to reviews.
- Get the website basics right. A plain statement that you're NHS, mixed or private, a clear price list, a working phone link on mobile, and the details the GDC asks for.
- Write two treatment pages. Only for what you want more of and can actually deliver. Our new landing pages feature drafts these, or you can write them yourself in an evening each.
- Measure for three months before adding anything. It's dull, and it's what stops you paying for the wrong thing.
- Then test ads on one treatment, if the sums work.
- Social comes last. Do it if someone at the practice enjoys it. It can't rescue a phone nobody answers.
Plenty of guides put a lot more on the list, such as video, directories, community events and print. Any of those can work, and we're not saying skip them forever. We'd get these working first.
What to spend
There's no authoritative UK figure. Here's what's published, and none of it gives a sample or method that we could find:
| Published by | Figure |
|---|---|
| RR Dental Accountants | 3% to 6% of turnover for established practices, 8% to 10% for growth. Indicative bands: £800 to £1,500 a month for a £600,000 mixed practice, £2,000 to £4,000 for a £1m private one |
| Updent, June 2026 | 5% to 12% of annual turnover |
| LineUp, October 2026 | 2% to 15%, depending on practice type |
Say your practice turns over £700,000 (made up). At 3% to 6% that's £21,000 to £42,000 a year, or £1,750 to £3,500 a month. That's a sensible ceiling for a first look. It isn't a target, and a practice with a full diary has no reason to spend it.
Be careful with cost-per-patient figures. For patients won through SEO, RR gives a target of £15 to £45, DubSEO says £50 to £150 and Whitehat SEO says £80 to £250. Those can't all describe your practice. Use them as a rough check, then replace them with your own numbers within a few months.
The rules that catch practices out
- Marketing emails and texts. The ICO says you can't send them to individuals unless they've specifically consented, or they're an existing customer who bought or discussed something similar and was given an opt-out when you collected their details and in every message. It says this guidance is under review after the Data (Use and Access) Act. The exception doesn't reach bought-in lists.
- Lists built from treatment records. A list of everyone who's had a crown tells you about their health. The ICO says using special category data for direct marketing should rest on explicit consent, and that inferring health from other information can count. So keep any message general, or ask first.
- Refer-a-friend schemes. The ICO advises against asking patients for friends' contact details for marketing, or encouraging them to forward your messages. Give patients something they can pass on themselves.
- Social media. If you promote treatment on social or deal sites, the GDC says you must make clear it may not suit every patient and depends on a satisfactory assessment. It also says you must not post information or comments about patients on social networking sites.
- Reviews. Asking is fine. Rewarding a review without saying so is illegal, and Google doesn't allow rewards at all, or asking only the patients who seemed happy.
- Claims. Keep documentary evidence behind anything people will read as fact, and leave out "best" and "pain-free" unless you can back them. Our guide to GDC advertising rules has the detail.
Keep score in one place
You need one spreadsheet, with a row for each new patient or enquiry: date, how they found you, what they asked about, whether they booked, and the value of what they accepted. Ask on the phone and on the new-patient form. It's crude and it works better than most dashboards, because it ends in money.
Add your Business Profile's calls, website clicks and searches and, if you do SEO, Search Console's clicks and impressions once a month. Look at it quarterly. Then stop whatever hasn't produced a booked patient in two quarters, unless you can say why it's about to.
Where Sojig fits
Sojig, our product, covers the search part of this. Each week it checks your site, drafts fixes, drafts an article and tracks where you rank, including on Google Maps from your town, for you to approve. It also drafts Business Profile replies and posts, which you copy in by hand for now. Plans are priced in US dollars, from $99 a month as of November 2026.
It's the wrong tool for most of the list above. It doesn't run ads or social, and its integrations don't include practice software, so it won't touch recall or tell you which enquiries booked. If you'd rather hand all of this to one team, a dental marketing agency is the better fit, and dental SEO services has questions to ask anyone you consider.