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Guide · Glossary
Dental marketing glossary
Marketing reports are full of acronyms that rarely get explained. This glossary covers the terms UK practice owners and managers meet most often when working with an agency or reading an ads report, in plain English and with a dental example where it helps.
What do the main performance measures mean?
These are the numbers that tell you whether marketing is producing patients, in rough order from the ad to the chair.
- Impressions: the number of times an ad was shown. One person can see an ad several times, so impressions are not people.
- CTR (click-through rate): clicks divided by impressions. A useful signal of whether an ad is relevant, but not of whether it brings patients.
- CPC (cost per click): what you paid, on average, for each click. Varies a lot by treatment and area.
- Lead: an enquiry with contact details, from a form, call, chat or message.
- CPL (cost per lead): ad spend divided by leads. Easy to measure and easy to be misled by, because cheap leads are often the ones that never book.
- Cost per consultation: ad spend divided by consultations booked from that campaign. A far better guide to campaign quality than cost per lead.
- Show rate: the share of booked consultations that attend. Reminders, deposits and a quick booking time all affect it.
- Consult-to-treatment rate: the share of attended consultations that go ahead with treatment. Sometimes called conversion rate or case acceptance.
- Cost per treated patient: ad spend divided by patients who started treatment. The closest single number to what a patient costs to win.
- ROAS (return on ad spend): treatment value divided by ad spend. Only meaningful if treatment value comes from your practice software rather than estimates.
- Patient lifetime value: what a patient spends with the practice over time, including recalls, hygiene, plans and later treatments.
What do the tracking terms mean?
Tracking is what lets ad platforms learn which people become patients, and what lets you see which campaigns pay.
- Pixel: a small piece of code on your website that tells Meta (the Meta Pixel) or Google (the Google tag) what visitors do after clicking an ad.
- CAPI (Conversions API): Meta’s way of receiving conversion events directly from your server or CRM rather than the browser. It is more reliable than the pixel alone and can send events that happen offline, such as a consultation booked by phone.
- Offline conversions: bookings, attendance or treatment value recorded in your CRM or practice software and sent back to Google or Meta, matched to the original click or lead. They let the platforms optimise for patients rather than form fills.
- Call tracking: unique phone numbers on ads and landing pages so calls from ads are counted as conversions.
- Attribution: the rules for deciding which ad or channel gets credit for a patient. Different platforms use different rules, which is why their figures rarely agree.
- CRM (customer relationship management): the system that holds every enquiry and its progress, such as GoHighLevel or HubSpot. See lead conversion and dental CRM.
What do the Meta and Google ad terms mean?
The words you will see in campaign settings and reports.
- Lead form (instant form): a form that opens inside Facebook or Instagram, pre-filled with the person’s details. Quick to complete, which raises volume and can lower quality unless it includes qualifying questions.
- Qualifying questions: questions on a form about treatment interest, timeframe and finance, used to sort ready patients from browsers.
- Remarketing (retargeting): showing ads to people who have already visited your website or engaged with your content. Platform rules on health-related remarketing apply, so check the current policy.
- Lookalike audience: a Meta audience of people similar to a list you provide, such as past patients. Meta has restricted some audience features for health-related advertisers, so check what is available for your account.
- Creative fatigue: falling performance as the same people see the same ad too often.
- Search campaign: Google ads shown against what people type, such as “dental implants near me”.
- Keywords and negative keywords: the searches you want to appear for, and the ones you exclude, such as “NHS dentist” or “dental nurse jobs”.
- Search terms report: the list of actual searches that triggered your ads. Reviewing it regularly is how wasted spend is found.
- Performance Max: a Google campaign type that runs across Search, YouTube, Display, Maps and Gmail from one set of assets, with Google’s automation choosing placements. It needs strong conversion data and clear exclusions to work well for dental practices.
- Smart Bidding: Google’s automated bidding strategies, such as maximise conversions or target cost per acquisition. They are only as good as the conversions you feed them.
- Impression share: the share of eligible searches where your ad actually appeared. Low impression share on your core treatment searches usually means budget or ad rank is limiting you.
- Landing page: the page a person arrives on after clicking an ad. For dental campaigns, ideally one page per treatment.
What do the practice and conversion terms mean?
The operational side, where most paid enquiries are won or lost.
- Speed to lead: the time from an enquiry arriving to the first contact attempt. Minutes matter, because many patients enquire with more than one practice.
- TCO (treatment coordinator): the team member who guides patients from enquiry through consultation to a decision, often handling finance and follow-up. Some practices use TC for the same role.
- Chair utilisation: how much of your clinicians’ available time is booked. Marketing should be planned around spare capacity, not just demand.
- Dormant patients: registered patients who haven’t visited for a long period. Reactivating them is often cheaper than finding new ones.
- Membership plan: a monthly payment plan covering routine care, used by many private practices to build a stable patient base. See private new patient marketing.
What do the regulatory terms mean?
The bodies and rules that shape what dental ads can say. This is a summary, not legal advice.
- GDC (General Dental Council): the UK regulator for dental professionals. Its standards require advertising to be accurate and not misleading, and its guidance on advertising sets out what practices must and must not do, such as how the word “specialist” can be used.
- ASA (Advertising Standards Authority): the UK’s independent advertising regulator. It enforces the advertising codes and publishes rulings, several of which involve cosmetic and dental claims.
- CAP Code: the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct & Promotional Marketing, written by the Committee of Advertising Practice and enforced by the ASA. It covers online ads, websites and social media, including rules on misleading claims, substantiation, prices and health-related claims.
- Prescription-only medicine (POM): a medicine that can only be supplied on prescription. POMs, including botulinum toxin, cannot be advertised to the public in the UK, which is why “Botox” should not appear in practice ads.
- Personal attributes policy: Meta’s rule against ads that assert or imply things about the viewer, such as their health or appearance. “Embarrassed by your crooked teeth?” is the classic example of what not to write. See Meta ads rules for dentists.
- Representative example: the standard set of finance details that UK consumer credit rules can require when an ad mentions certain finance terms. Your finance provider will usually supply approved wording.
Questions practices ask
FAQs
What is the difference between cost per lead and cost per consultation?
Cost per lead divides ad spend by enquiries. Cost per consultation divides it by consultations actually booked. The second is a better measure because it ignores enquiries that never answer, never book or were never real patients.
What is CAPI and do dental practices need it?
CAPI is Meta’s Conversions API, which sends conversion events from your server or CRM to Meta. For dental practices it matters because it can tell Meta which leads became booked consultations, so campaigns learn to find people who book rather than people who just fill in forms.
What are offline conversions in Google Ads?
They are results that happen away from your website, such as a consultation booked by phone or a treatment plan accepted in the practice, uploaded back to Google and matched to the original click. They let Smart Bidding optimise for patients.
Is Performance Max good for dentists?
It can be, but only with reliable conversion data, sensible exclusions and close monitoring. Without them it can spend on placements and searches that don’t produce private patients. Many practices start with search campaigns and test Performance Max once tracking is solid.
What does TCO mean in dentistry?
It usually means treatment coordinator: the person who looks after patients between enquiry and treatment, explaining options, cost and finance, and following up. A good TCO often has more effect on conversion than any change to the ads.
Related services
Facebook & Instagram Ads for Dentists
Create demand for private treatments, and judge every campaign on consultations booked, not form fills.
↗Google Ads for Dentists
Catch patients already searching for implants, aligners or a new dentist, without paying for NHS or emergency clicks.
↗Lead Conversion & Dental CRM
Speed-to-lead, follow-up and reception scripts, so the enquiries you pay for turn into consultations.
↗Patient Tracking Dashboard
Every patient traced from the ad that found them to what they paid, by clinic, treatment and postcode.
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