Where should I advertise my dental practice to find new patients?

There are two distinct questions wrapped up in this one, and most dentists are only thinking about one of them. Adrian Lefler breaks both down in this video: where geographically your ads should be targeted, and where on the internet or across which channels your ad dollars should actually go. Getting both right matters, and they require different kinds of thinking. On geography: the rule of thumb is to advertise where your patients actually come from, and not much further. If you pull your patient data and ninety-five percent of your active patients live within a three-mile radius of your practice, that is a meaningful signal about the practical draw of your location. You can push the boundaries a bit by targeting the edges of that area, but dramatically expanding the geographic radius of your campaigns tends to inflate impressions and clicks without generating patients who will actually show up. People have options closer to home. A general dentist is not a destination that most patients will drive twenty miles to reach when there are comparable options nearby. The geography math shifts for specialists. An endodontist, periodontist, prosthodontist, or oral surgeon can reasonably target a wider area because patients who need specialized care are more willing to travel to get it, and the referring GP network can pull from a broader region anyway. If you are running a referral-heavy specialist practice alongside any direct patient advertising, the geographic targeting strategy should reflect both of those patient sources differently. On channel selection: this is where the conversation gets genuinely complex, and Adrian is direct about what that means for a practice trying to figure it out on their own. Should you run Google Ads? Social media advertising on Facebook and Instagram? Display ads? Connected TV? Banner advertising? The honest answer is that the right combination depends on your specific market, your practice type, your budget, and what your competitors are already doing. That is exactly the kind of analysis a good marketing company should be able to walk you through based on their experience in your area. What they bring is pattern recognition across dozens or hundreds of similar campaigns, which is more useful than any generic framework about where dental ads "usually" perform best. Dentists want to know whether Google Ads or social media advertising tends to produce a better cost per new patient for a general practice in a mid-sized market. They ask whether connected TV and display advertising are worth considering at a modest budget or whether those channels only make sense at scale. They want to understand whether they should be running ads in multiple channels simultaneously from the start or building one channel at a time. And they wonder what the right signal is that their current geographic targeting is too broad or too narrow. This video gives you the right framework for those questions without oversimplifying the answers. About My Social Practice My Social Practice is one of the most trusted dental marketing agencies in the country, with 15+ years of experience and more than 7,000 dental practices served across the US and Canada. From SEO and social media to AI-powered tools and dental websites, they help practices grow with marketing that actually works. Paid advertising strategy, channel selection, and geographic targeting for dental practices are services they have refined across thousands of campaigns. About Adrian Lefler Adrian Lefler is the CEO and co-founder of My Social Practice. He has spent the better part of two decades in the dental marketing trenches, and he brings that experience to stages, podcasts, and practices across the country. He hosts the BYTE SIZED podcast, covering dental AI and technology, and is a sought-after keynote speaker at dental conferences and events. Want Adrian to speak at your next event? He brings real talk, practical strategy, and a few laughs to every room. Book Adrian: https://mysocialpractice.com/dental-m... Learn More If you want to dig deeper into what was covered in this video, here are a few resources worth checking out: Dental Marketing Services: https://mysocialpractice.com/dental-m... Dental Advertising: https://mysocialpractice.com/dental-a... Dentist Marketing: https://mysocialpractice.com/dentist-... Dental PPC Advertising: https://mysocialpractice.com/2025/05/... SEO for Dentists: https://mysocialpractice.com/2025/06/... #DentalMarketing #MySocialPractice #DentalAdvertising #DentalPPC #LocalDentalMarketing #DentalPracticeGrowth #DentalMarketingTips © My Social Practice | mysocialpractice.com