Orthodontic Marketing
Win the starts, not the impressions.
A parent comparing three orthodontists is not comparing your clinical results. They are comparing what they can find, what other parents said, and what it will cost.
Who this is for
You are a private orthodontist being outspent by people who will never treat a patient.
A DSO opened nearby with a marketing budget you cannot match and a brand built for exactly this. Direct-to-consumer aligners have trained a generation of adults to believe orthodontics is a commodity purchased online. Both of these are true at once and neither is your fault.
What you have that they do not is a person who will actually treat the case, in a practice the family will visit twenty times over two years. That is a genuine advantage and it is almost never marketed, because it is hard to put in an ad and easy to put in a search result.
You are also aware that most marketing sold to you is dental marketing with the word orthodontic pasted on. Your economics are not a dentist's economics, and advice that ignores that has cost you money before.
A parent books a consult, attends, is entirely pleasant, and never starts. Nobody in the practice can tell you why, or how often it happens.
The words you actually use
- starts
- consult-to-start
- case value
- observation
- Phase I
- aligners vs brackets
- treatment coordinator
- retention
- contract length
If a marketing partner cannot use these correctly in a first conversation, you will spend the engagement teaching them your business.
Who else is in the room
Treatment coordinator
Consult-to-start conversion, the number the practice actually lives on, and the one most marketing reporting never touches.
The parent, not the patient
Cost, payment plans, appointment convenience, and whether the practice will still be there in two years. The person being treated has almost no say.
The economics
Why generic marketing advice fails here.
Orthodontics is not general dentistry with straighter teeth. Four structural differences change what marketing should even be trying to do.
- Case value
- $5,000 – $8,000+
- High, but collected over eighteen to thirty months. Cash flow and start volume matter more than headline case value.
- The decision-maker
- Usually a parent
- You are marketing to someone who is not the patient, weighing cost against convenience for a two-year commitment.
- Consult-to-start
- The number that matters
- More consults with a flat conversion rate is a busier practice, not a better one. This is where most orthodontic marketing quietly fails.
- Relationship length
- 18 – 30 months, then retention
- Twenty-plus visits. A family that starts becomes a referral source for years, which is why a start is worth far more than its contract value.
Which is why we report starts and consult-to-start conversion. A campaign that raises consults and lowers conversion has made your practice worse and will look like a success on any normal marketing report.
These are typical ranges for the specialty, not claims about our results. Check them against your own numbers. That is the point of putting them here.
Where patients start
How people actually find a practice like yours.
Ordered by how often we see each one. The last entry is the one almost nobody in your market is measuring yet.
- 01"Orthodontist near me" and "braces for kids" on Google Maps, usually by a parent on a phone
- 02"Invisalign vs braces" comparison research, often months before any call
- 03Referrals from general and pediatric dentists, still real but no longer sufficient on their own
- 04Insurance acceptance checks, frequently the very first filter applied
- 05Other parents, then a search on your name to verify
- 06AI assistants, when a parent asks which orthodontist in the area is best for a teenager
A quick gut check
Ask ChatGPT which orthodontist in your city is best for a teenager, then again for an adult considering Invisalign.
- Is your name in either answer?
- Do you know whose name is?
- Do you know why it is theirs and not yours?
It takes ten seconds and you do not need us to run it. Most practices have never checked, which is the reason the answer is usually someone else.
What usually breaks
Four failure points, and what actually causes them.
Most practices have two or three of these running at once. They compound, which is why fixing one channel in isolation rarely changes anything.
Positioning
Nothing distinguishes you from the DSO except that you are smaller.
Usually because: The genuine advantage (one orthodontist, the same face for two years, a practice embedded in the community) is never actually stated anywhere a parent will read it.
Visibility
You are outranked for the searches parents run, by practices with larger budgets and worse clinical depth.
Usually because: Thin treatment content, no answer to the comparison questions parents research for months, and a map presence that has not been actively worked.
Consult quality
Consult volume is acceptable. Starts are not.
Usually because: Marketing attracts price-led inquiries because cost and payment plans are absent from the site, so the coordinator meets the objection for the first time in the room.
Adult market
Adult aligner cases go to direct-to-consumer brands and to the general dentist down the road.
Usually because: Everything about the practice's presentation says children. Adults researching aligners do not see themselves in it and never inquire.
How we work
Five steps, and two of them are measurement.
The middle three steps are ordinary agency work and you should expect any competent firm to do them. The two on either end are the ones worth holding us to, because they are the ones that make the middle falsifiable.
- 01
Measure where you stand today
MeasurementBaseline: visibility for parent-led and adult-led searches separately, map position against the DSO specifically, reputation depth, and whether assistants name you. Where your practice management system allows, we also establish your current consult-to-start rate, so we can be judged on it.
- 02
State the advantage a DSO cannot copy
One orthodontist, continuity of care, a practice that will still be here when the retainer needs replacing. Obvious to you, invisible online, and the only positioning a corporate competitor structurally cannot claim.
- 03
Build for two different buyers
The parent of a twelve-year-old and a thirty-eight-year-old considering aligners are researching different things in different language. Most practices serve the first and accidentally exclude the second.
- 04
Qualify before the consult
Cost ranges, payment plans and insurance information published, so the consultation opens with someone who has accepted the terms rather than discovering them.
- 05
Measure the change, and show our work
MeasurementThe same baseline, re-run, reported in starts and consult-to-start conversion. If consults rose and conversion fell, we will tell you that, because it means we made your practice busier and not better.
Our commitments
What we hold ourselves to.
90 days
To measurable progress
against the metrics agreed in your Growth Plan
1
Practice per market
we do not take your direct competitors
You
Own every asset
domain, site, profiles and ad accounts stay yours
These are commitments we make to every practice we take on, not projections of results. We publish client outcomes only where the practice has agreed to be referenced and the numbers can be traced to a source.
This works best when you are:
- Private practice competing against DSO or corporate marketing budgets
- Wanting to grow the adult aligner side without abandoning the pediatric base
- Willing to publish cost ranges and payment options
- A treatment coordinator whose conversion rate can be measured
Not a fit if you are:
- Competing primarily on being the cheapest aligner option
- Unwilling to discuss cost before the consultation
- Wanting consult volume rather than starts
- Expecting starts to move inside one month
We would rather tell you on the first call than six weeks in.
FAQ
Questions we get asked.
Do you work with other orthodontists in my area?
No. One practice per market. Given how tightly orthodontic catchments overlap, we will be explicit about what we count as your market before either of us commits.
How do we compete against a DSO with a much bigger budget?
Not by outspending them. By owning the searches that carry intent in your immediate catchment, by having the review depth a national brand cannot fake locally, and by stating the one thing they structurally cannot claim: that the same orthodontist will be there for the whole treatment. Budget wins broad awareness. It does not automatically win a parent comparing three practices five miles from their house.
Can you help us grow adult aligner cases?
Yes, and it usually requires separating the adult message from the pediatric one rather than adding a line to the existing page. Adults researching aligners are comparing you to direct-to-consumer brands on convenience and price, and to their general dentist on trust. That is a different argument and it needs its own surface.
Why do you report starts instead of leads?
Because starts are what your practice runs on. A campaign that increases consults while lowering consult-to-start conversion has made you busier and less profitable, and it will look like a success on a normal marketing report. We would rather be measured on the number that matters even when it is less flattering.
Who owns the website and accounts?
You do. Domain, site, Google Business Profile, ad accounts and analytics registered to you and retained by you if the engagement ends. Confirmed in writing before you sign.
Can you show results from other orthodontic practices?
Not yet. We publish outcomes only where the practice agreed to be named and the numbers can be traced to a source, and we are not going to show you a percentage attached to an anonymous practice in the meantime. Your own measured baseline is available before you commit to anything.
Related specialties
See where you stand in orthodontics.
Where you stand against the DSO in your catchment, reported in starts rather than impressions.