You know what a bad month looks like. The phone rang, the forms came in, the consults got booked, and the schedule still had holes where the big cases should have been. That gap is the only reason to hire a dental implant marketing company, and it's the only thing worth judging one on: started implant cases that paid. Everything else is a proxy, and proxies are what agencies hide behind when the chairs stay empty.
What follows is a list of demands, not nice-to-haves. Put each one in writing. A company that can meet them will hand them over without flinching. A company that can't will explain why the request is unreasonable, and that explanation is your answer.
The only number that counts is started implant cases
A lead is a form submission. A booked consult is a calendar entry. A started case is a patient who showed up, heard a plan, said yes, financed it, and sat in the chair. Companies report the first two because they're easy to produce and easy to inflate. You're buying the third.
Ask a direct question: of the patients this campaign produced last month, how many started treatment, and what was the production on those cases? If the answer arrives as impressions, clicks, "quality leads" or a screenshot of a busy calendar, you've learned something important. Ask them to define every stage of the funnel in the agreement, and write the definition of a started case yourself.
Watch for a related sleight of hand: case counts padded with treatment the practice would have booked anyway. Ask how they separate marketing-attributed starts from the patient who called because her sister works your front desk.
Make them define a qualified case for your practice, not theirs
A single implant and a full-arch case aren't the same product, and a company that files them under one lead category is telling you it has never worked an implant schedule. A full-arch inquiry needs a different conversation, a different offer, and often a different financing path than a single-unit replacement. Denture-relief patients sit somewhere else again.
Ask the company to describe in writing which case types it's targeting for you, the minimum case value it screens for, and how the ad copy and intake questions change across those types. Then ask what happens when a single-implant inquiry lands inside a full-arch funnel. A company that has thought about it will have an answer ready.
Financing approval is the real conversion event
A lot of implant treatment isn't paid in cash at the consult. It's paid through a financing decision, and that decision is the conversion. A patient who loves the plan and can't get approved isn't a started case. That's an unscheduled treatment plan with a story attached.
Ask how financing fits their process. Who introduces it, at what point in the conversation, and what happens when a patient is declined or approved for less than the plan requires? Ask whether the follow-up sequence acknowledges the financing step or pretends every lead is ready to pay in full. If the company has never asked which lenders or payment options your practice works with, it's optimizing for a version of your practice that doesn't exist. I've written more about this step in full-arch case acceptance, from consult to started case.
Ask what happens between the form and the chair
The handoff is where implant marketing money dies. A lead sits in an inbox for half a day, someone calls once, and the patient has already booked with the practice that answered first. Ask the company to describe the exact path from form submission to scheduled consult to treatment coordinator conversation, and ask who owns each step.
Then ask what it measures: time to first contact attempt, contact rate, show rate, and how many consults reached a presented plan. Ask whether calls are recorded and reviewed, and whether your front desk and treatment coordinator get feedback or just blame. A company that won't look at the phone is selling you traffic and calling it patient acquisition. (The longer version is the 9pm inquiry response gap.)
Require them to work the unscheduled treatment plans already in your chart
Your practice is sitting on the cheapest implant cases it will ever get: patients who already know you, already heard a plan, and already said "not yet". Some have the money now. Some have new benefits or a new job. Few of them have been contacted with any consistency.
Ask any company pitching you whether its work includes that list. If the answer is that it only runs new-lead acquisition, you're paying full acquisition cost for every case while warm cases sit in the chart. Recovery work can be run without ad spend, and it usually should come first, because it shows you what your real conversion and capacity look like before anyone touches a marketing budget. More in the cases already in your chart, and how I approach it on the dental implant marketing page.
Screen their campaigns for form-fillers
Look at the actual creative before you sign anything. An offer built around a free consultation, a quiz or a low-commitment download produces volume and very little else. Implant patients who are ready to move respond to different signals: financing language, real case photos, a named clinician, and a reason to act now rather than someday.
Ask how the funnel disqualifies people. What questions does the form ask? Does it capture budget, timeline or existing treatment? A form that accepts a name and a phone number and nothing else is built for lead counts, not for chairs. If the company pushes back on qualifying questions because they'll hurt volume, it has just told you which number it's paid on. I've covered why in why full-arch ads keep finding form-fillers.
Put the reporting requirements in the contract
Agencies report what makes them look good. Your agreement should name every metric, the source of each one, and how often you see it. Anything that can't be traced back to your practice management system or your own ad accounts is a story, not a report.
| Metric | What it proves | Where it has to come from |
|---|---|---|
| Ad spend by platform | Whether the budget was actually delivered | Platform billing you pay directly |
| Leads by source and campaign | Which channel produced what | Ad accounts and call tracking |
| Speed to first contact and contact rate | Whether the handoff works | Call tracking and front desk log |
| Consults booked and consults that showed | Whether the leads are real people | Practice management system |
| Treatment plans presented | Whether the clinical conversation happened | Practice management system and coordinator notes |
| Started cases and case value | Whether the marketing produced revenue | Practice management system, tied to patient source |
Ask for access to every ad account, analytics property and tracking number. If the company owns the accounts, you're renting your own pipeline and you'll pay for it twice.
Pricing questions that reveal how they operate
Ask for the invoice broken down by line rather than one monthly number. Get every line item named before you compare anyone against anyone else, and find out what triggers an extra charge and what's included without limit.
Then ask who pays the ad platforms. Money should move from your card to Google and Meta directly, at cost, with no markup and no agency float (why that matters). Get the required spend in writing, and ask what happens to the campaign if you fund less than that in a given month.
Finally, ask what happens the day you leave. Do you keep the accounts, the creative, the landing pages, the call recordings and the data? Get the answer inside the contract, not in an email from an account manager.
Confirm they actually work with implant practices
A company that builds the same site and runs the same campaigns for family dentistry, orthodontics and implants isn't disqualified by that alone, but it means you have to ask blunt questions. What share of the client base is implant or full arch? What was the last implant campaign the team built, and what did the intake look like?
If they have implant clients, ask for two you can call. Ask the owners one thing: how many started cases did the marketing produce in the first ninety days, and would you sign again? If they don't, ask what they're putting at risk instead. Everything else is commentary.
Contract terms to get in writing
- A definition of the outcome in your words, with the count and the time window stated plainly.
- What happens if the number is missed: refund, continued work at no fee, or a credit. Name it before you sign, not after a bad quarter.
- Notice period and exit terms, including who keeps the accounts, the creative and the data.
- Whether they also work with competing practices near you, stated plainly.
- The reporting cadence and the named source for every metric on the list above.
- Who approves creative and ad copy, and how fast changes get made once you ask.
- How patient data moves between the ad platform, the intake form and your practice management system, reviewed with your own counsel and compliance advisor.
Where I stand on this list
I'm Dustin Hobbs, and I run Louisville Web Lab on my own. I'll tell you what I don't have before I tell you what I do: I don't have an implant client you can call yet. That's exactly why my terms are what they are. With the New-Patient Engine, the practice funds its own ads, paid straight to Google and Meta at a minimum of $300 a day, and I'm measured on paying patients: started, paid cases, not leads or booked consults. It only fits a practice whose average case is over $5,000 and that has real capacity for fifteen new cases. If there aren't fifteen in ninety days, the fee comes back and I keep working until there are, and you keep the page, the tracking, the automation and the Google profile either way. How I count is published at how we measure.
If that list reads like the conversation you want to have, see how the New-Patient Engine works and bring your own numbers to the call.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as a fair guarantee from a dental implant marketing company?
A fair guarantee names an outcome you actually care about, in units you can verify, over a defined window: started cases that paid, not leads and not bookings. It also states the conditions attached, including who funds ad spend and what happens if that spend stops. If the guarantee is vague, unverifiable or full of outs, it's marketing copy, not a commitment.
How long should I wait before judging whether the marketing works?
Long enough for a first contact to travel through consult, presentation, financing and treatment start, because that's the chain you're paying for. A single month of lead counts tells you nothing. Ask the company to state its expected timeline in writing, including the lag from first lead to started case, and hold them to it.
Should I pay per lead, a flat retainer, or a share of case value?
Each structure rewards different behavior. Per-lead pricing rewards volume, percentage deals depend on how attribution gets counted, and flat retainers reward whichever outcome the contract names. Any of them can work if the definition of a started case is airtight and you have direct access to the source data. Focus less on the structure and more on the definition and the reporting.
What's the first step before I sign with anyone?
Write down your own numbers: current case volume, average case value, unscheduled implant treatment already in the chart, and how many consults the team can actually handle. Then compare companies against those numbers. What a full-arch case costs to acquire walks through the arithmetic.