Orthodontic marketing

Two buyers: a parent for a teen, an adult for themselves

A teen case is booked and paid for by a parent, who wants the total, the monthly figure, how many visits it takes and how much school it means missing. An adult deciding for themselves asks different things: braces or clear aligners, how either looks at work, and whether the appointments fit around a job. So orthodontist marketing runs two campaigns and two pages, not one funnel for both. The adult side also meets Meta’s cosmetic rule: ads for cosmetic procedures must be targeted to people 18 or older and can’t contain statements of inferiority about physical appearance (Meta health and wellness policy, checked 3 November 2026). Orthodontics isn’t on Meta’s list of examples, but an aligner ad sold on looks sits close to it, so adult campaigns run 18+ and talk about the treatment, never about what is wrong with someone’s smile.

The free consult, then the records visit

The first booking is often a free consult, and the case moves forward at the records visit, when the x-rays, photos and scans are taken and the treatment plan is drawn up. Some practices do both on the same day and some don’t, and the page says which. It also says what the first visit includes, how long it takes and that a parent comes along when the patient is a child, so nobody arrives expecting a quick look and leaves with a second appointment they didn’t plan for. Consults book into the after-school slots you hold for new families, and when records are a separate visit, the parent picks that slot before leaving the consult, so the next step doesn’t wait on a callback.

Payment plans are the price answer

Parents rarely ask only for the total. They ask what it comes to each month, how much is due at the start, and what their dental plan pays if it includes orthodontics. So the in-house payment plan is part of the offer, on the page and in the follow-up, beside the total fee. In an ad, the rules tighten. Google’s dishonest pricing policy, enforced since 28 October 2025, says advertisers “must clearly and conspicuously disclose the payment model or full expense” a user will bear (checked 3 November 2026). A headline like “$X a month for 24 months” also states two of Regulation Z’s triggering terms, the amount of a payment and the period of repayment, and if the plan counts as credit, either one brings the down payment, the terms of repayment and the annual percentage rate into the ad with it (12 CFR 1026.24(d), checked 3 November 2026). Whether an in-house plan counts is your counsel’s call; either way, a monthly figure goes into an ad only with the full terms beside it.

The family dentist sends the referral

Many orthodontic cases begin at a six-month checkup, when the family dentist says it is time and writes down a name. That referral is a relationship you keep, and marketing for orthodontists has to sit beside it rather than across it, so the campaigns never bid on a referring dentist’s practice name. The booking form asks who referred the family, so a referred start is counted as that dentist’s and not credited to an ad, and you can see which offices send families and which of those families go on to start treatment.

The school calendar sets the season

Families plan treatment around school. Plenty would rather start in the summer, before the next school year begins, and the slots every parent asks for are the ones after school, which are also the slots your current patients fill. So the budget follows open consult time: parent campaigns push when there are after-school slots to fill, and adult campaigns take the morning chairs. The end of the plan year counts too, and it runs on the parent’s benefits, not the teen’s. Braces are among the dental treatments the IRS counts as medical expenses (Publication 502), a health FSA covers qualifying expenses for the dependents the parent claims, and health FSAs are generally use-it-or-lose-it, with either a grace period of up to two and a half months or a capped carryover if the plan provides one (Publication 969, both 2025 editions, checked 3 November 2026). So a parent with money left in the account may ask about starting before the plan year closes, and the follow-up says when the next start dates are.

The consult that waits for the other parent

The consult goes well. The orthodontist walks one parent and the teenager through the records, the options and the fee, and the parent says they need to talk it over at home. That is a fair answer: the other parent wasn’t in the room, and it is a large bill spread over a long treatment. What happens next decides the case, and often nothing does. A printed estimate goes home in a backpack, the front desk says to call when they’re ready, and the parent at home hears a secondhand version with the price in it and none of the reasons.

So the follow-up is written for the parent who wasn’t there. It goes to the parent who came, ready to forward, and never to the teen’s phone or email, and it carries the plan as the orthodontist explained it, the total beside the monthly figure, and an offer of a short call or video meeting with both parents. Then it keeps going over the weeks that follow, and a family that says “after the school year” gets a date they chose instead of a closed file.

The referral slip from the dentist down the road

The family dentist hands over a slip with your name on it, sometimes beside two others. That evening the parent looks you up on a phone and calls at twenty to six, when the front desk is checking in the after-school appointments and lets it ring, or has already gone home. They don’t leave a message. The next name on the slip answers, and the referral your relationship with that dentist earned is booked somewhere else before you know it existed.

So the line is covered through the hours when parents call, and a call that rings out gets a text back offering a consult time. The booking page takes a consult request at any hour, with the referring dentist’s name as one of its fields, so a family who would rather not call at all doesn’t have to. A referred family has already been told to come to you; whether it books shouldn’t depend on who was free to pick up.

Where the rest of it leaks

Nothing here is judged on clicks: the paid ads for medical practices we run are counted on consults kept and treatment starts, with the parent campaign and the adult campaign reported apart. The first visit is booked on a page that says what it includes, which is the job of the website and booking page, and calls that ring out during after-school appointments are caught by missed call recovery. Families who leave with a treatment plan and a decision to make get patient follow-up written for the parent at home. Searches for your name after a referral land on your map listing and your site, which is the local SEO side of orthodontist SEO, and patient reviews are asked for within the rules, from the parent, once the family has something to say. On the higher plans, patient reactivation works the list of children told to come back when they’re older and the retainer checks that lapse. The full eight, and how they hand off to each other, are laid out under what we do, and the patient acquisition cost calculator puts a month of spend against the starts it produced. All of it maps onto the seven leaks we look for in week one.