Marketing, websites and new patient systems built for orthodontists.
An orthodontic practice runs on starts.
A free consult only matters if the family says yes to treatment, and that decision usually belongs to a parent weighing cost, timing and whether this is the right office. Adults comparing clear aligners from a specialist against direct-to-consumer options are a second market with different questions. We build the website, search, paid media, referral program and consult follow-up around that number, with pages for parents, pages for adults and financing explained up front. Every consult and start is traced back to its source through HIPAA-aware, server-side tracking, with no patient information sent to ad platforms.
Questions this page answers
- Orthodontist marketing agency
- How do orthodontists get more new patient starts
- Who should run marketing for my orthodontic practice
- How to market clear aligners to adults as an orthodontist
- Orthodontist website design for parents
- How to track orthodontic consults to starts
Step 1 of 2
How can we help you get found?
Next: name, email and budget. That’s it.
Where growth is won or lost in orthodontic.
Orthodontics has an unusual buyer. The patient is often eleven or twelve, but the decision belongs to a parent, sometimes two, who weigh cost, office hours, how far the drive is after school and whether the doctor seemed trustworthy at the free consult. Many families first hear about treatment from their general dentist, so referring dentists have long been one of the practice's most valuable sources. The number that runs the business is starts per month: consults that became signed treatment contracts. Everything upstream is only useful if it moves that number.
The calendar shapes demand. Families plan around summer break and back-to-school, and some look at year-end insurance and flexible spending balances. Adults are a second market that behaves differently: they research clear aligners, compare specialist care against mail-order kits and their dentist's in-house offer, and want evening or early appointments. Treatment coordinators carry the conversion, presenting fees and in-house payment plans, often through OrthoFi, and following up with families who need time. Prior vendors mostly reported consult requests and never saw how many became starts.
We build the practice around starts. The website speaks to parents first, gives adults their own path and explains payment plans plainly. Campaigns split parent and adult demand and follow the school calendar. Referring dentists get a planned program and an easy referral page. Pending plans from Dolphin, Ortho2 Edge or Cloud 9 surface to the coordinator with tasks and reminders, and consults and starts return to Google Ads as offline conversions. Tracking is server-side and HIPAA-aware, with BAAs where vendors offer them and guardian consent on file for minors.
The problems we fix in orthodontists.
Consults that never start
Free consults fill the calendar, but families leave with a treatment plan and a price and then go quiet. Without structured follow-up, pending starts sit in the software until they age out.
Referring dentists go silent
General dentists have always been a major source of new patients, yet many practices only thank them at the holidays. When a new orthodontist opens nearby or dentists offer aligners in-house, referrals quietly fall.
Adults need a different pitch
Adult patients compare specialist aligners to mail-order kits and their own dentist's offer. A site written only for parents of twelve-year-olds does not explain why a specialist is worth it.
Spend ignores the school calendar
Starts cluster around summer break and back-to-school, when families plan appointments and flexible spending budgets reset. Flat monthly budgets miss the windows when parents are actually deciding.
Web, marketing, creative and systems for orthodontists.
Built on your accounts, wired into the tools your team already runs, and measured to booked work.
- Home page
- Free consultation page
- Treatment for children and teens page
- Adult treatment page
- Payment plans and insurance page
- Doctor page
- Referring dentist page
- Location pages
Each page answers one intent, carries one call to action, and lands the lead in your CRM with the page attached.
Websites and digital product.
Clear answers on when a child should first see an orthodontist, what treatment costs and how payment plans work, the first visit step by step and free consult booking from every page.
- Adult treatment pagesClear aligners, clear braces and adult treatment explained, including why a specialist-supervised case differs from mail-order, with consented adult results and flexible scheduling details.
- Payment and insurance pagesIn-house payment plans, down payment ranges if you publish them, orthodontic insurance benefits, flexible spending and HSA use, and an online estimate or payment plan tool where your software supports it.
- Referring dentist portalA page where general dentists can send referrals, see how their patients are progressing and request records, so referring is easy for the dental office staff.
- Google Ads searchAlways on, heavier in summer
- Google Business ProfileAlways on, weekly posts
- Referring dentist programMonthly visits, quarterly events
- Meta adsSummer and back-to-school
- Pending plan follow-upWeekly after every consult
- Review requestsAt treatment milestones
Demand, search and reputation.
Separate campaigns for parents searching braces for kids, adults searching aligners and emergency or second opinion searches, each with its own page and budget.
- Local SEO for every officeGoogle Business Profile management, review requests at debond and milestones, and location pages for each office, including satellite offices open only certain days.
- Meta for parents and adultsParent-focused ads timed to the school calendar and adult aligner campaigns, built within Meta's health targeting limits, with no patient data in audiences.
- Referral dentist programA planned calendar of visits, lunch and learns, progress updates and study club presence, tracked so you know which dentists refer and which have gone quiet.
- Smile transformation contentConsented before and after cases and debond day moments, with guardian authorization for minors on file before anything is published.
- Doctor and team videoThe orthodontist explaining early treatment, adult options, what the free consult covers and how payment plans work, cut for the website, YouTube and social.
- Office photographyReal photos of the open bay, the team and the office experience that make parents and teens comfortable before the first visit.
Brand, photography and collateral.
Consented before and after cases and debond day moments, with guardian authorization for minors on file before anything is published.
- Doctor and team videoThe orthodontist explaining early treatment, adult options, what the free consult covers and how payment plans work, cut for the website, YouTube and social.
- Office photographyReal photos of the open bay, the team and the office experience that make parents and teens comfortable before the first visit.
Comes in from
- Website forms
- Tracked calls
- Ads and LSA
- Google Business Profile
Lands in
- Dolphin Management
- Ortho2 Edge
- Cloud 9
Comes back as
- Per-source attribution
- Automated follow-up
- One weekly scoreboard
Built to your system of record, not around it. Nothing is re-keyed by hand.
Integration, automation and data.
Pending treatment plans from Dolphin, Ortho2 Edge or Cloud 9 surfaced to the treatment coordinator with follow-up tasks, reminders and payment options until the family decides.
- Call tracking on a HIPAA planCallRail on a HIPAA-eligible plan with a BAA, numbers per channel and per referring program, and calls scored for consult booked.
- Starts sent back to ad platformsConsults and starts matched to their source and sent to Google Ads as offline conversions without health details, so bidding learns from families who begin treatment.
- Payment plan and texting automationOrthoFi or in-house payment plan options delivered in pending plan follow-up, and Weave texting for appointment reminders, missed calls and review requests at milestones.
What a great orthodontic website contains.
The pages that do the selling for this kind of company, and what each one has to do to turn a visit into a call.
Home page
Speaks to parents and adults, shows free consult booking and office locations, and answers the cost question with a link to payment options.
Free consultation page
What happens at the first visit, how long it takes, records taken and what the family leaves with, plus online booking.
Treatment for children and teens page
When to schedule a first visit, early treatment explained accurately, braces and aligner options for teens and consented results with guardian authorization.
Adult treatment page
Clear aligners, clear braces and adult cases, why specialist supervision matters and flexible appointment times for working adults.
Payment plans and insurance page
In-house plans, down payment and monthly options, insurance benefits, FSA and HSA use and a payment estimate tool where available.
Doctor page
The orthodontist's residency, specialty training and memberships stated accurately under your state's rules, with a short video.
Referring dentist page
Simple referral form, records requests and progress update options, making it quick for general dental office staff to send a patient.
Location pages
One per office with hours, satellite days, team photos, directions and reviews, so each ranks in its own map pack.
Patient resources page
Emergency instructions, eating with braces, aligner care and appointment reminders, which reduce calls and support reviews.
Where the demand comes from, and when.
The tools orthodontists already run on.
We build to your system of record rather than around it. Leads, calls, jobs and revenue land where your team already works, with the attribution attached.
Dolphin Management
Consults, pending treatment and starts exported to attribute each start to its source.
Ortho2 Edge
New patient exams and contract dates read for consult to start reporting.
Cloud 9
Cloud scheduling and treatment status connected to follow-up tasks and attribution.
OrthoFi
Payment plan options surfaced in follow-up, with completed agreements flagged as starts.
Weave
Phones, texting, missed call text back and review requests at milestones.
CallRail
HIPAA plan with BAA, calls scored for consult booked and sent to Google Ads.
Google Business Profile
Per-office profiles, hours for satellite days and review responses kept current.
What we run the account by
Starts per month.
Signed treatment contracts started in the month, by source, office and patient type, the number the practice runs on.
Consult to start rate.
Share of completed consults that become starts within a set window, the measure of coordinator follow-up and presentation.
New patient consults by source.
Consults booked and attended, attributed to search, profile, social, referring dentist or patient referral.
Referrals by dentist.
New patients from each referring office over time, so declines are caught early and relationships get attention.
Cost per start.
Media and management cost divided by starts attributed to paid and owned channels, reported by parent and adult audience.
Rules we respect
HIPAA and tracking technologies.
HHS guidance flags pixels on pages collecting health information. We use server-side, HIPAA-aware tracking, BAAs where vendors offer them, and keep patient information out of ad platforms.
Specialist wording.
Orthodontics is a recognized dental specialty, but state dental board rules on specialist claims vary. We keep wording accurate and build to the strictest rule that applies.
Photo consent for minors.
Smile transformations and testimonials of patients under 18 require written authorization from a parent or guardian, captured and stored before any use.
Payment plan and financing disclosures.
Ads quoting monthly payments or financing terms can trigger lending disclosure rules. We keep payment claims accurate and have your financing partner or counsel review the final wording.
The orthodontic playbook.
Find where starts are lost.
We pull consults, pending plans and starts from your practice software, listen to new patient calls and map referral sources by dentist to see where families drop off.
Build the follow-up engine.
Treatment coordinator pipeline, payment plan delivery, reminders, call tracking and server-side conversions go in first, with ad pixels removed from booking, intake and portal pages.
Launch parent, adult and referral demand.
Parent and adult campaigns with their own pages and budgets, local SEO for each office and a referring dentist program, all scheduled around the school calendar.
Run the practice by starts.
Monthly reporting on consults, starts and consult to start rate by source, referring dentist and office, so budget, staff time and doctor visits follow what produces treatment.
- Strategy and brandwe lead it or back your team
- Paid mediamanaged day to day
- Search and AI visibilityrun and reported monthly
- Websites and hostingbuilt, hosted and cared for
- CRM and lead systemsrun for you or with you
- Creative and contentproduced in-house
Fully managed, alongside your team, or built and handed off. Month to month after the initial term.
Why orthodontists choose us.
We report consults, starts and pending plans by source, not clicks, and we tie those numbers to Dolphin, Ortho2 Edge or Cloud 9 so the practice and the marketing agree.
- Referrals treated as a channelReferring dentists get the same planning and tracking as ads, so you see which dental offices send patients and can act before a valuable relationship goes quiet.
- Families and HIPAA handled carefullyWritten guardian consent before any minor's photos are used, server-side, HIPAA-aware tracking, signed BAAs where vendors offer them, and no patient information sent to ad platforms.
Reading for orthodontists.
- Lead Generation · Takeaway
A dental marketing plan has two engines, new patient acquisition and hygiene recall, and most practices fund the first while ignoring the second.
Lead Generation · 10 min read
Dental Marketing Plan: New Patients, Recall and a 12-Month Calendar.
A dental practice grows on two engines: new patients and hygiene recall. This plan lays out the Google presence, the ads, the pages, the scheduling and texting, the HIPAA guardrails and a quarter-by-quarter calendar that keeps both engines running.
Read - Systems & Integration · Takeaway
Capture gclid, gbraid and wbraid into hidden form fields and store them on the lead in your CRM, or there is nothing to upload later.
Systems & Integration · 10 min read
Google Ads Offline Conversions From Your CRM: A Working Setup.
A contractor, clinic or brokerage that only reports leads to Google Ads is training its bidding on the wrong outcome. Here is how we get booked jobs and closed deals from the CRM back into Google Ads, with value, without the upload errors.
Read - Lead Generation · Takeaway
Speed to lead is the elapsed time between a lead being created and your first genuine attempt to contact that person.
Lead Generation · 10 min read
Speed to Lead: What It Means, the Chart, and How to Measure It.
Speed to lead is the gap between a buyer raising a hand and your first real attempt to reach them. Here is what it means, the response time chart, how to measure it honestly, and the system that shrinks it.
Read
Hiring an agency for a orthodontic business.
- Who should run marketing for my orthodontic practice?
- A firm that measures starts, not leads. We build a parent-first website with adult pages, run search and Meta by audience, manage each office's Google profile, plan your referring dentist program and connect Dolphin, Ortho2 Edge or Cloud 9 so every start is tied to its source. Tracking stays server-side and HIPAA-aware, and reports show consult to start rate by channel.
- How do orthodontists get more new patient starts?
- Improve what happens after the consult before buying more consults. Follow up pending plans on a set schedule, present payment plans clearly, make it easy for a second parent to review the plan, and track who has not decided. Then build demand from parents, adults and referring dentists, timed to the school year when families plan treatment.
- How should an orthodontist market clear aligners to adults?
- Explain what a specialist adds: diagnosis, supervision and handling of cases that are not simple. Adult pages cover aligners and clear braces, flexible scheduling, payment plans and consented adult results. Campaigns target adult aligner searches separately from parent searches, with their own budget and landing pages, and we track adult consults and starts on their own line.
- Can we call ourselves orthodontic specialists in ads?
- Orthodontics is a recognized dental specialty, and orthodontists who completed an accredited residency can generally advertise as specialists. State dental board rules on specialty wording differ, and general dentists offering aligners face stricter limits. We keep specialty language accurate and consistent and build to the strictest rule that applies in your state.
- Can we post patient smile transformations on social media?
- Only with written authorization, and for patients under 18 that means a parent or guardian signs. We set up consent capture at the start of treatment and at debond, track which patients have approved which uses, and never post identifying treatment details without permission. HIPAA applies to these posts just as it does to the website.
Let’s grow your orthodontic business.
A short note on where the business is and where it needs to go. A senior partner replies within one business day.