New Dental Practice Marketing Budget: First Year

A start-up’s marketing budget has two parts that behave very differently: one-time launch costs, and the monthly spending that fills the schedule. Mixing them together makes the first year look either far cheaper or far more expensive than it really is.

Launch costs: spent once

These are the things you pay for once and use for years:

Name, logo and brand basics.
The website build.
Signage, including any temporary banner.
Photography of the office and team.
The opening event and any opening mailer.

Budget them as a project, separately from monthly marketing, and get quotes early. Signage and the website in particular tend to cost more and take longer than first estimates.

Ongoing costs: spent every month

Paid search, social ads, mail, any agency or website management fees, review and reminder software, and the time someone on your team spends on the Google profile and reviews. This is the part you measure month by month.

An example, with made-up numbers

These are example numbers to show the thinking, not a recommendation. Say a start-up sets aside $20,000 for launch costs and plans to spend $4,000 a month on ongoing marketing for the first six months. If that spending brings in 40 new patients a month, the cost per new patient is $100. If it brings in 10, it is $400. Neither number means much on its own; what matters is how it compares with what a patient is worth to the practice over the years they stay, and whether the schedule can absorb them.

Size spending to the schedule you can staff

A new practice can usually see more patients than it has, but not unlimited patients. If new patients wait weeks for a first visit, they book elsewhere. Set a monthly new-patient goal you can actually serve with your current dentist and hygiene hours, and raise spending when capacity grows.

Plan to step down

New practices usually spend more relative to revenue at first, because there are no reviews, referrals or recall patients yet. As those build, the practice should need less paid volume. Decide in advance when you’ll review each channel, and what result would make you keep, change or stop it.

The budget and ROI guide covers how to set a budget, work out what a patient is worth, calculate cost per new patient and split spending across channels.