The challenge
Cheltenham Dental Studio offers a full range of NHS and private dental treatments from their practice in central Cheltenham. Practice Manager Sarah Mitchell had been running a modest Google Ads campaign for over a year, primarily targeting private treatments including Invisalign, dental implants and teeth whitening.
The campaigns were generating some traffic but very few bookings. Sarah had no clear picture of which keywords were driving enquiries and which were simply costing money.
"We were spending around £800 a month and getting maybe three or four new patient enquiries. For a dental practice where a single implant case can be worth several thousand pounds, we knew the channel should be performing better. We just didn't know where the problem was."
What we did
The initial audit revealed several compounding issues. The campaign was targeting broad dental terms nationally rather than locally, the ads were going to the homepage rather than treatment-specific pages, and there was no call tracking in place. The majority of new patient enquiries come by phone, so without call tracking the account had almost no conversion data to work with.
We rebuilt the account with a clear focus on high-value private treatments:
- Geographic targeting tightened to Cheltenham and a 10-mile radius, eliminating spend from users who would never travel to the practice
- Treatment-specific campaigns created separately for implants, Invisalign, whitening and general private dentistry, each with its own budget and dedicated landing page
- Call tracking set up via Google Ads call extensions and a tracked phone number, feeding real conversion data into the account for the first time
- Negative keywords added to block searches for NHS pricing, dental nursing jobs, dental school and DIY whitening products
- Ad copy rewritten to emphasise the practice's central Cheltenham location, experienced team and flexible payment plans for higher-value treatments
The results
Within three months:
- New patient enquiries up 112%
- Cost per new patient enquiry down from £187 to £64
- Private treatment enquiry share increased from 34% to 71% of all enquiries
- Implant and Invisalign enquiries specifically up 180%
"We doubled our new patient enquiries in the first three months. Clear reporting, no nonsense. Exactly what we needed."
Sarah Mitchell, Practice Manager, Cheltenham Dental Studio
What we learned
Dental practices often underestimate the importance of separating campaigns by treatment type. A patient searching for teeth whitening and a patient researching dental implants have very different intentions, budgets and decision timelines. Treating them identically in one campaign produces mediocre results for both.
The other critical issue was call tracking. Without it, a dental practice is essentially running blind. The vast majority of bookings happen on the phone, not via a web form. Once call tracking was in place, we could see clearly which keywords and ads were generating actual bookings rather than just clicks, and optimise accordingly.