+40 Dental Office Marketing Statistics for 2024
Dental marketing is a tricky space for dental offices. The vast, vast majority of content online surrounding dental marketing is created by… well… dental marketing companies. So, you can imagine that there’s probably a teeny-tiny bit of bias dripping between each word.
To help, we decided to travel through journals, whitepapers, and research papers to uncover the truths behind dental marketing. These statistics may help enlighten you to how dental marketing is performing as we begin to approach 2025.
We don’t have skin in the game. We’re not partnered with any dental marketing company, and we don’t sell any marketing services. So, this is an unbiased list aimed at truly helping you navigate the crazy world of marketing — where data often comes from marketers themselves. It’s a twisty ride that can get very expensive if you’re not paying attention.
Are Dentists Investing More or Less in Marketing?
Let’s cut to the chase; rising costs and labor shortages are directly impacting the dental industry. For many offices, finding ways to lean out costs is key. But how is that impacting marketing budgets?
The majority of dental offices are boosting their (+60%) digital marketing budgets — which is pretty typical during years where revenue is stressed. For smaller offices, this jumps to 94%. (Local IQ¹ & Forbes²)
Around 50% of businesses spend between $5,000 and $25,000 on content marketing. For dental offices, these costs actually fluctuate pretty drastically. Many offices actually prioritize physical mail (see below). (Siege Media³)
The biggest challenge for over 50% of dentists is figuring out which platforms to invest in. There are too many different social media platforms, ad sources, etc. It can make identifying the best routes challenging. (HubSpot⁴)
Dental PPC (Search Engine) Marketing Statistics
Let’s start with paid ads. This is an expensive entry into the marketing ecosystem. But it can be effective. We won’t spend too much time on this, as paid ads are relatively straightforward. You give money to Google, and Google lets you rank above everyone. But you have to pay for every click.
Around 30 percent of all website traffic is driven by paid search. It can be hard to trace this statistic, but the latest available research shows that paid is 30 percent in the healthcare vertical. (based on SEMRush Open.Trends⁵ data compilation).
Spend on PPC varies significantly. Smaller practices often spend $0, with some larger practices spending over $2,000 per day. In general, offices spend around $5,000 per month on PPC ads. (AAD⁶)
Google Ads returns $2 per $1 spent. This data is estimated by Google’s chief economist, Hal Varian, and published in the American Economic. (American Economic⁷)
The average Bing ad cost is only $0.84 (much cheaper than Google’s $2). However, this varies widely by industry. (Microsoft⁸)
The average landing page conversion rate for dental offices is around 10 percent. (HubSpot⁴)
Google still accounts for around 95% of search engine traffic. (StatCounter⁹)
Dentists spend the vast majority of their resources on local SEO. Getting into Google snippets for “dentist near me” remains the single biggest driver of revenue in digital marketing (beating out social media ads). (WORKFORCE)
Only 13% of dental offices have a strategy for “voice search,” but voice assistant (e.g., Siri, Alexa, etc.) use is rising year-over-year. (HubSpot⁴)
98% of people read local reviews. From conversations we have had with dental marketing companies (many of the biggest in the world) and dental offices (from local to the biggest DSOs in North America), reviews and local SEO are by far the most important part of digital marketing. (BrightLocal¹⁰)
57% of local searches come from mobile devices. (ReviewTrackers¹¹)
Social Media Marketing Statistics for Dental Offices
All of you probably have a Facebook page (at the very least). In the past, this was probably the single most “trendy” form of marketing. But, as time goes on, the return on investment is lower than it used to be. It’s still valuable, but it’s not a silver bullet for dental offices.
Unsurprisingly, +95% of dental offices use Facebook across pretty much every modern study across every country. (ResearchGate & Google Scholar data compilation).
60% of healthcare providers (doctors and dentists included) say that social media improves the quality of care delivered to their patients. (WebFX¹²)
Nearly 40% of patients say they use social media to guide dental and medical decisions. (Search Engine Watch¹³)
All of this said, the competition is fierce:
94% of dental marketers use YouTube (Statista¹⁴)
92% of dental marketers use Instagram (Statista¹⁴)
92% of dental marketers use boosted FB posts (Statista¹⁴)
90% of dental marketers use X (Statista¹⁴)
57% of dental marketers use LinkedIn (Statista¹⁴)
90% of people (between 18 and 34) say they trust social media for health information. (Search Engine Watch¹⁵)
The average ROI of Facebook is supposedly around 9.2%, but sources show it as low as 3%. We estimate it will be lower for dentists in bigger cities given the competition for eyes. (WordStream¹⁶)
SEO Statistics for Dentists
Love it or hate it, you need SEO. Unless you plan on paying for every click, putting a little time into your website pays dividends. If you only spend money on one single category of digital marketing, it should be this one. It’s your bread-and-butter. Marketing agencies will sell dental offices on the downstream platforms and marketing strategies. Those are fine. But if you don’t have a good handle on your local search strategy, that should be your sole focus.
Dentists spend the vast majority of their resources on local SEO. Getting into Google snippets for “dentist near me” remains the single biggest driver of revenue in digital marketing (beating out social media ads). (WORKFORCE)
Only 13% of dental offices have a strategy for “voice search,” but voice assistant (e.g., Siri, Alexa, etc.) use is rising year-over-year. Note: a voice assistant strategy generally means creating content and webpages that have language that’s similar to how a person would speak to a phone (i.e., “find the nearest dental office”) (HubSpot⁴)
98% of people read local reviews. From conversations we have had with dental marketing companies (many of the biggest in the world) and dental offices (from local to the biggest DSOs in North America), reviews and local SEO are by far the most important part of digital marketing. (BrightLocal¹⁰)
57% of local searches come from mobile devices. (ReviewTrackers¹¹)
People trust Google more than any other review website (by a lot). This means that spending time and resources on some of the smaller niche review sites may not be worth it — especially if you’re cash and time strapped. (BrightLocal¹⁰)
The conversion rate of local SEO for the healthcare industry is nearly 50%. If people find you through local search, they have an extremely high conversion rate (compare this to 3% for social media). (ThinkWithGoogle¹⁷)
Email Marketing Statistics in Dentistry
You’ll see a lot of fishy numbers and statistics for email marketing when it comes to dental offices. Things like “the return is $44 for every $1 spent” (which is on every top Google result for “dental email marketing”) is mostly B.S. It’s a statistic from an email marketing platform that doesn’t display how they got their data or even what their data is beyond some very, very flashy statistics.
In general, email marketing works. But, it’s important to remember that Google’s latest updates for Gmail make it likely that most of your emails are dropping directly into the spam or promotion folder of your patients.
The average email open rate hovers around 40 percent. (HubSpot¹⁸)
Images boost open rates of dental emails by around 10 percent. (GetResponse¹⁹)
Around 65% of family offices use email marketing, so it remains cost effective for smaller offices. (CampaignMonitor²⁰)
The best time to shoot out emails is in the morning (7 am to noon). However, there will be a portion of your patients that have night jobs, etc. So, it makes sense to do the occasional mid-afternoon email. (HubSpot¹⁸).
Sundays are (by far) the worst day to send out emails to patients. Tuesdays are typically the best according to most of the data we aggregated from various sources (ADA, HubSpot, MailChimp, etc.). But, the difference between non-Friday workdays was minimal. Saturdays are better than Fridays. (WORKFORCE)
A quick note: It’s easier than ever to “do” dental email marketing. Many of the cheaper competitors to Mailchimp also have email building tools. You can create templates and shoot out weekly/monthly emails pretty cheaply and easily. So, if you’ve held back for time considerations, now is a good time to dip your toes into the water.
Direct Mail Statistics for Dental Offices
We think physical mail is particularly interesting for dental offices. Of note, our best campaigns have always been physical or in-person (granted, we market to dental offices — not to patients; there is a tangible audience difference). That said, the main benefit of physical mail is that it doesn’t get stuck up in the digital noise.
According to VWO, around 86% of people are “ad blind” (i.e., they see so many ads they just start ignoring them completely). And, we believe this. I think most of us reading this are probably ad blind at this point. Emails are good too, but spam filters make it trickier than ever to get patients to actually see and read what you send them — especially if you’re doing outreach to find new patients.
Many studies show direct mail as having the highest response of any campaign type (Spectrum²¹). That said, it is more expensive. You can expect to spend around $0.50 to $0.75 per contact in postage — with more money going towards direct mail design.
74% of all marketers (across all industries) say direct mail has the best ROI. (Lob²²)
50% of patients say they read postcards. (PostGrid)
Important: the data this comes from is from a very good direct mail campaign with well-designed postcards; you’ll still need to be unique and interesting to compete.
Physical mail creates a bigger impression than digital ads, with 47% of patients remembering print ads compared to 17% remembering a digital ad. (UPrinting²³)
The average person receives 16 pieces of mail per week. That same person receives around 300 emails. (PB²⁴)
Dental Texting & Calls Statistics
Every dental office should be doing texting and calls. We’re 99.9 percent sure that there isn’t a single office in NA that doesn’t practice these two things. So, we’re going to focus less on “look how this works” and more on statistics that highlight some strategies that may work better than others.
Dental practices in NA miss around 20% of their new-patient inbound calls. Around 80% are answered, and 50% of those are converted into new patients (that’s a total conversion rate of 40%.) (DentistryIQ²⁵)
Around 68% of dental conversions (that are tracked) come from phone calls. (Ruler Analytics²⁶)
Around half of dental practices (49%) use automated reminders, while 46% rely on manual calls and SMS from their office support staff. (NexHealth²⁷)
52% of consumers admit that SMS messages are influencing. That said, only around 19% of consumers prefer to be contacted via text. (Validity)
58% of people unsubscribe from SMS because they get annoyed at the frequency of the texts from the office they subscribed to. (Validity)
Wrap Up
To sum the dental office marketing industry up, competition is heavier than ever. So, the overall cost pay-per-click ads is higher. That said, AI tools, easy-to-use automated reminder systems, and digital tools cut costs across other areas. So, it evens out. Physical mail still holds a place in the industry, with many offices telling us it’s their secret weapon.
Remember, it can be challenging to navigate the dental marketing landscape. Statistics come from marketing companies, and everyone wants to convert you into a client. So, take all statistics (these included) with a grain of salt.
Sources:
https://www.siegemedia.com/strategy/content-marketing-statistics
https://economicimpact.google/methodology/#:~:text=First%2C%20we%20assume%20that%20businesses,Economic%20Review%20in%20May%202009.
https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/mobile/worldwide
https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1348819/healthcare-social-media-usa/
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/02/28/facebook-advertising-benchmarks
https://www.getresponse.com/resources/reports/email-marketing-benchmarks
https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/the-state-of-small-business-marketing/#one
https://spectrummarketing.com/direct-mail-response-rate-report-2021/
https://www.pb.com/docs/US/pdf/Microsite/Nonprofit/ed_np_getyourmailopened_05MailMoment.pdf
https://www.ruleranalytics.com/resources/dental-and-cosmetic-conversion-benchmark-report/
https://www.nexhealth.com/resources/dental-marketing-statistics?topics
