Google Ads Case Study: How a General Dental Practice Cut Cost Per Lead by ~70%

The practice

A well-established general dental practice offering routine care plus higher-value restorative and specialty treatments — crowns, root canals, and endodontic work. Strong clinically, but new-patient growth depended too heavily on referrals and word of mouth. They wanted a predictable, measurable channel for attracting new patients — and they didn't want to hand control of it to an agency.

The challenge

The practice had never run Google Ads seriously. The goal wasn't just "more clicks" — it was more of the right patients (people actually searching for crowns, root canals, and a new dentist), booked as calls and appointment requests, at a cost that made sense against the value of a case. And it had to be built in an account they owned, so nothing would be lost if the relationship ever ended.

What we did

We built the account from the ground up — inside an account owned by the practice, with Dental Ads Hero linked only as a manager.

• Structured campaigns around high-value treatments. Instead of one generic "dentist" campaign, we built dedicated campaigns and ad groups for the practice's most valuable services — crowns, root canals, and endodontics — so budget followed the searches that mattered most.
• Tracked what actually matters. We set up conversion tracking on phone calls and online appointment requests, so every dollar tied to a real patient action — not vanity metrics like impressions or raw clicks.
• Refined targeting geographically. We tested performance by location and trimmed spend in areas that didn't convert, concentrating budget where the practice won patients.
• Optimized continuously. Month after month, we refined keywords, added negative keywords to cut wasted spend, adjusted bids, and improved ad copy — which is why efficiency kept climbing over time rather than plateauing.

The results

The account didn't just launch well — it compounded. In the first quarter after launch, cost per lead sat around $178 as the campaigns gathered data. Within a year, it was under $70. Today it holds steady in the mid-$50s — a roughly 70% reduction. Over the same period, the conversion rate climbed from 6.5% to a consistent 12–14%, meaning far more of the practice's ad clicks turned into actual calls and appointment requests.

At maturity, the account generates 400+ patient calls and appointment requests every quarter — and across the engagement, more than 3,500 in total. Just as importantly, the practice owns every campaign, keyword, and piece of performance data. If they ever left, they'd take all of it with them.

Performance over time

The account didn't spike and fade — it improved quarter after quarter as we optimized. Here's the real trajectory of cost per lead and conversion rate.

The demand we captured

Google Ads didn't just drive "traffic" — it captured real demand across the treatments that matter to a general practice. Here's the approximate breakdown of the non-brand searches that drove calls and appointment requests:

Approximate share of non-brand tracked conversions over the engagement.

How we built and optimized the account

The results came from structure and discipline, not guesswork.

• Dedicated campaigns for high-value treatments. Separate campaigns for crowns and for root canals/endodontics, so budget and messaging matched intent — instead of one generic "dentist" campaign.
• Geographic testing. We ran a targeted experiment to measure performance by ZIP code and cut spend in areas that didn't convert, concentrating budget where the practice won patients.
• Performance Max to expand reach. Layered in alongside Search to capture additional high-intent demand efficiently.
• Relentless negative keywords. We continuously filtered out wasted spend — job-seekers, "free clinic" searches, and price-shoppers — so budget went toward real patients. This discipline is a big reason cost per lead kept falling.
• A profile that kept pace with a growing account. This account grew over more than two years and spanned a wide range of demand—from new-patient and cosmetic searches to same-day emergencies—so the Google Business Profile had to reflect everything the practice offered and stay current as the account expanded. We kept the listing complete and accurate across services, categories, and hours, built out the elements Google rewards, and helped the practice improve its review velocity so it earned trust for both routine and urgent searches. Managed alongside the ads, the profile helped the practice show up in the map pack and local results—not just at the top of the paid listings.

How patients contacted the practice

Every conversion was a real patient action — a phone call or an online appointment request. The split:

Tracking calls and bookings separately let us optimize toward the contacts that actually book patients.

Why it worked

Three things: building around high-value treatments instead of generic traffic, measuring real patient actions instead of clicks, and relentless ongoing optimization rather than "set and forget." None of it relied on locking the practice into a contract — just doing the work well, in an account they control.