What marketing metrics should a multi-location dental group track?
A multi-location dental group should track new patients, cost per new patient, call answer rate, booking rate and Google review growth for each location, then roll them up to the group. Group totals hide problems. One office may be missing calls while another is short of chair time. Location-level metrics show where marketing works, where operations leak and where budget should move next.
- Measure by location first, then roll up; group averages hide weak offices.
- New patients and cost per new patient are the core outcome metrics.
- Call answer and booking rates show whether the front desk converts the demand marketing creates.
- Google profile health and reviews drive local visibility for every office.
- Use your own baselines; compare offices with each other and with their own history.
- Every practice welcome — retainers from $499/mo, Goals-Driven engagements, Performance-Linked Payout Models available.
- Dallas, Texas LLC
- US client team · Central Time (CST)
- 25+ US healthcare clients
- BAA signed with every client
- HIPAA compliance training across client and delivery teams
- Contracts and invoices in USD
-
Primary Care · North Dallas, TXCase study →
-
MedSpa · North Dallas, TX
-
Skin Care · Beverly Hills, CA
-
Dental · Christiansburg, VACase study →
-
Pediatrics · Blacksburg, VACase study →
-
Pediatric Dentistry · Blacksburg, VACase study →
-
Dental · Roanoke, VACase study →
-
Functional Medicine · Telehealth · USACase study →
“They were able to get all my ideas and work with me over a period of three to four months and create this amazing website. It's super customized, very modern, and it incorporates all the elements that I had wanted — the patient portal, nice pictures, a very interactive website, patient reviews. I would highly recommend their company to anyone who wants to make an excellent website.”
Why group totals are not enough
Dental groups often report marketing at group level: total leads, total spend, total new patients. Those figures are useful for the board, but they hide the variation that matters for decisions. One office may be at capacity with a waiting list. Another may have empty hygiene slots and a front desk that misses calls at lunch. A third may sit in a more competitive market where each new patient costs more to win.
Measuring each location separately, with the same definitions, lets leadership see which offices need more marketing, which need operational fixes, and which need neither. It also stops strong offices from masking weak ones. Our multi-location practice marketing guide covers the wider strategy.
The core scorecard for each location
| Metric | Definition | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| New patients | First visits completed in the period | The outcome that marketing exists to produce |
| New patients by source | Search, Google profile, paid ads, referrals, insurance directories, signage | Which channels work in each market |
| Cost per new patient | Marketing spend divided by new patients, by source | Where budget pays back |
| Call answer rate | New-patient calls answered live during opening hours | Whether demand reaches a person |
| Booking rate | New-patient calls and forms that booked an appointment | How well the front desk converts |
| Show rate | Booked new-patient appointments that were kept | Reminder and scheduling quality |
| Treatment acceptance | Share of presented treatment that was scheduled | Whether new patients become valuable patients |
New patients and cost per new patient are the headline numbers. The others explain why those numbers move. If an office has plenty of calls but a low booking rate, more marketing will not help until the front desk process improves. If the booking rate is strong but calls are few, the office needs more visibility.
Agree on definitions before you compare offices. Decide what counts as a new patient, how emergency visits are treated, and how a patient who calls one office but books at another is credited. Without shared definitions, offices end up debating the numbers instead of acting on them.
Local search and reputation metrics
For most dental offices, the Google Business Profile is one of the biggest sources of new-patient calls. Each location needs its own profile, and each should be measured on its own.
- Profile actions: calls, website clicks and direction requests from the profile, tracked monthly.
- Review count and recency: new reviews per month and the date of the latest review.
- Average rating and response rate: how many reviews get a reply, and how quickly.
- Local ranking checks: visibility for core searches from several points around the office.
- Profile completeness: services, hours, photos and booking link kept current.
Our guide to Google Business Profile for multi-location dental groups explains how to set this up, and how many Google reviews a dentist needs gives review context by city. Review requests must follow FTC rules: no incentives, no fake reviews and no selective gating.
Website and paid search metrics belong in the scorecard too, but as supporting numbers. Track sessions to each location page, calls and booking requests from those pages, and paid search spend, calls and booked appointments by office. If several offices share one ad account, make sure campaigns are split by location so spend and results can be assigned correctly. Shared campaigns that cover a whole metro area make it hard to tell which office benefited.
How to use benchmarks sensibly
Group leaders often ask what "good" looks like. Public benchmarks can help with context, but they vary widely by market, payer mix and service mix. A fee-for-service cosmetic practice and a Medicaid-heavy family practice will see very different costs per new patient, and neither is wrong.
The most reliable benchmarks are internal. Compare each office with its own history, and with sister offices in similar markets. Look for outliers, then find out why. A sudden drop in new patients at one office may come from a missing profile category, a staffing change at the front desk or a new competitor nearby. The metric tells you where to look; a conversation with the office manager usually tells you why. Our US dental marketing benchmark and cost to acquire a new dental patient answer give wider context to read alongside your own data.
What we found when we studied 2,318 US dental practices on Google
Patients praise the care and the people. Where they push back is the treatment-plan conversation: upselling is the one review theme where complaints dominate.
2,318 US dental practices across 20 metros · review themes, pace and replies from a 120-practice subsample · every headline figure re-derived from raw data.
Building the monthly group report
A practical group report has one page per location and one summary page. The location page shows the scorecard, trends over the past year, and a short note on actions taken. The summary page ranks offices on a few core metrics and flags any that moved sharply.
Data usually comes from several systems: practice management software for new patients and treatment, call tracking for calls and answer rates, the Google profile for local actions, and ad platforms for spend. Bring it together in one place, using the same definitions for every office. Call recordings and patient-level records contain protected health information, so keep them in systems covered by a Business Associate Agreement and share leadership reports as aggregated numbers. Our guide to HIPAA compliance for multi-location practices covers access and vendor rules.
Share the location page with each office manager, not just with leadership. Offices that see their own numbers every month tend to act on them. Pair the report with a short monthly call so managers can explain changes and ask for help.
Related pages from the US team
Multi-location practice marketing
Strategy for groups and franchises with several offices.
Google profiles for dental groups
Set up and measure one profile per office.
US dental marketing benchmark
Context to read alongside your own data.
Dental marketing, USA
How Ichelon Consulting US works with dental practices and groups.
Every practice welcome — Goals-Driven engagements from $499/mo
We benchmark your last 90 days, agree monthly goals with you, and track them live on Ichelon Agency OS with a report every Monday. Performance-Linked Payout Models are available. Our US leadership is based in Dallas, and strategy calls run in US business hours.
Common questions
What is the most important marketing metric for a dental group?
New patients by location, paired with cost per new patient by source. These show whether marketing is producing patients and at what cost. Supporting metrics such as call answer rate and booking rate explain why those numbers change.
Should dental groups track marketing by location or at group level?
Both, but location first. Group totals hide offices that are missing calls or short of capacity. Measuring each location with the same definitions, then rolling up, shows where marketing, operations or budget need attention.
How should a dental group measure front desk performance?
Track the share of new-patient calls answered live during opening hours and the share of calls and forms that book an appointment. Reviewing these by location and by hour shows where staffing or scripts need work.
Are there reliable marketing benchmarks for dental groups?
Public benchmarks give context but vary by market, payer mix and services. The most useful comparisons are internal: each office against its own history and against sister offices in similar markets.
How many Google reviews should each dental office get?
It depends on the market. The useful targets are steady new reviews every month and a count that is competitive with nearby practices. Review requests must follow FTC rules, with no incentives, fake reviews or selective gating.
A note on this guide: it explains marketing practice, not legal advice. Rules on privacy, advertising and insurance change and vary by state, so confirm anything compliance-related with your own counsel.
Want one view of marketing across all your offices?
A 30-minute call with the US team. We'll look at how each location is measured today and suggest a short scorecard your leadership team can review every month.