We talked him out of social media. Two years later, we are doing it.

Starting point

When we started working together in 2023, the practice had a website that matched neither its logo nor its own standards: visually weak and unrelated to how the owner wanted to present himself. Google Ads were already running, but broadly targeted at ‘dentist’. Little came back. The owner had been in practice for several years, wanted to grow and had read about what marketing and sales can achieve, but had not yet seen it in his own practice.

On top of that, there was a blind spot in the engine room: the tracking was poor. He did not know what he was spending money on or what actually happened to that money.

The real need

The brief was more visibility for implantology and full-arch restorations on four implants. The wish behind it was different: he had not set out to treat simple cases for ever. He did his Master's degree to make a difference exactly where he finds it worthwhile, in the field he wants to work in.

And he needed someone to guide him through the maze of marketing offers: simplicity, understanding, calm, and the budget placed on the right lever instead of spread thinly. Main needs in the Kompass: ideal patients and ideal staff. Phase: Grow.

What we did

The foundation first: a new practice presence and design, online booking that actually works, and tracking that shows where things come from. In parallel, the low-hanging fruit via Google Ads, starting with the treatment cases people are already searching for.

Then we broadened the scope: content, local visibility and AI visibility. When the structure reached its limits, we fundamentally recategorised and restructured the data and rebuilt the content for search engines and language models.

At Christmas, staff recruitment was added at short notice: image films for the practice's public presence and recruiting films that we ran as a campaign. Result per campaign: around twelve valuable applications in two to three weeks, leading to one or two hires. We have reactivated the campaign repeatedly since then.

For around one and a half to two years, social media has also been running, starting at the point when the practice moved from growing to scaling.

Where the conductor comes in: ad delivery, campaign management and data capture ran automatically, but a person had to look into the engine room and translate what was happening there, in words the owner understands without a marketing degree.

What we deliberately did not do

At the start, we advised against social media. Not because it does not work, but because without a working website, without online booking and without tracking, every click goes nowhere. We also deliberately did not start with building the practice's image: design and foundation first, then the cases people were already searching for, and the image came later.

Hurdles

The hardest part was expanding local and AI-driven visibility. At one point the body of content had grown so large that the previous method no longer held up. We solved this by fundamentally recategorising and restructuring the data and consistently rebuilding the content for search engines and language models.

Result

• 40 to 50 per cent more new patients per month
• Website visitors up from a few hundred to as many as 20,000 per month at times
• Recruiting campaign: around 12 valuable applications in 2 to 3 weeks, leading to 1 to 2 hires
• Significantly better advertising results relative to the budget spent

Beyond the figures: today the owner knows what he spends his budget on and what it achieves. The practice has moved from the growth phase into the scaling phase.

What other practices can take from this

Sequence beats activity for its own sake. If you advertise broadly for ‘dentist’, you get broad cases, not the ones you did your Master's degree for. And if you start without tracking, you are buying visibility blind.

Frank's learning from the project: ‘Modesty, consistency and a clear direction lead you to success.’ Today he would scale more boldly and earlier; back then it was our first dental client, and nobody yet knew how big the lever from Google Ads, Meta Ads and visibility work really was. At the same time, the slow route was the right one for growing healthily together.