By Beth Leach, President, Orthodontic Revolution. Beth has marketed orthodontic practices since 1995.
Most orthodontic marketing reports answer the wrong question. They tell you how many people saw your ads, how many clicked, and where you rank. None of that tells you what it costs to start a case, and that is the only number that pays your overhead.
Here is what a report should measure, in the order a patient actually moves through your practice.
The funnel a report should follow
1. Inquiries, by source
Every phone call, form, text, and booking request, tagged to where it came from: Google Ads, Meta, organic search, your Google Business Profile, a doctor referral, a patient referral. Calls matter most here. A lot of orthodontic inquiries still come by phone, so an agency that only counts form fills is missing much of the picture. Call tracking should use numbers that ring your office, with recordings you can listen to.
2. Booked consultations
How many of those inquiries became a scheduled new patient exam. If inquiries are up and bookings are flat, the problem is usually not the marketing. It is how calls are answered, how fast forms get a reply, or what happens to missed calls after hours.
3. Kept consultations (show rate)
How many booked patients actually came in. A falling show rate points to confirmation and follow-up, not ad targeting.
4. Starts
How many of those patients started treatment. This is the line that turns marketing into production.
5. Cost per start, by channel
Spend on each channel divided by the starts it produced. This is the number that tells you where to put next month's budget. A channel can look cheap per lead and be expensive per start.
Why are we getting leads but few starts?
This is the most common complaint we hear, and the funnel above is how you find the answer. Look at where the numbers drop off.
- Lots of inquiries, few bookings. Look at the phones. Listen to recorded calls. Check how long forms wait for a reply.
- Lots of bookings, few kept appointments. Look at confirmations and reminders.
- Lots of exams, few starts. Look at the consultation itself, the financial conversation, and follow-up with pending patients.
- Cheap leads, no starts from one channel. That channel is attracting the wrong people. Cut it or retarget it.
Referrals belong in the report too
For most orthodontic practices, general dentist referrals are still a major source of starts. A good report shows which referring offices sent patients this month, which ones slowed down, and how long it has been since each one last referred. A referrer who quietly stops sending patients is one of the most expensive problems a practice can have, and it rarely shows up in an ad report.
AI visibility is now part of the picture
More parents are asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude to recommend an orthodontist. Ranking on Google does not guarantee you are named in those answers. A modern report should show whether the AI engines mention your practice, and which competitors they name instead.
Be honest about what attribution cannot see
No report is perfect. A parent might see your ad on Instagram, search your name a week later, and call from the number on your Google profile. A family referred by a friend may never say so. Good reporting admits this. It tracks what can be tracked, asks new patients how they heard about you, and treats the numbers as direction, not certainty. Be suspicious of any report that claims to know the source of every single start.
What a good monthly report looks like
- Inquiries by source, including calls
- Booked consultations and show rate
- Starts, and cost per start by channel
- Referral activity by referring office
- AI visibility across the major engines
- A conversation with a person, not just a PDF
How Orthodontic Revolution reports
We built our own system to do this, because we could not find one that followed a patient all the way to a start. It is called PracticeROI, and every one of our engagements runs on it.
- Every inquiry is tracked into a single pipeline that ends at Patient Won or Patient Lost.
- Call tracking runs on your own numbers, with recordings and missed-call follow-up.
- You see cost per lead, show rate, and source attribution across the whole pipeline, so a channel that produces cheap leads and no treatment gets caught in month two rather than month eight.
- Referral tracking alerts you when a top referring office stops sending patients, with the number of days since its last referral.
- Our AI Smile Score checks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude directly and reports whether they named you.
- We review it with you monthly, on a call, with a person who knows your practice.
We will also tell you when something is not working. That is the point of measuring it.
See what your current report is missing
Bring your last three marketing reports to a free practice audit. We will show you which of the numbers above you can see today and which ones you cannot. If you are choosing an agency, our guide on how to choose an orthodontic marketing agency covers the rest.