Dental splits into two completely different businesses. Routine check-ups are low value and high volume; implants, orthodontics and cosmetic work are high value and long consideration. Running them in one campaign guarantees the cheap leads swamp the profitable ones.
Most wasted budget comes from asking one channel to do the other's job. Here is how the work divides for dental clinics in United Kingdom.
Nobody opens Instagram planning to buy from you. Meta's job is to interrupt well enough that they want to, then stay in front of them until they do.
Read the detail: Meta Ads for dental clinics in United Kingdom
Someone typing your category into Google has already decided they want it. The job is being there, and making the next step obvious enough that they take it.
Read the detail: Google Ads for dental clinics in United Kingdom
Why this matters to your bottom line. When both run without shared measurement, they claim the same conversions and you fund the same customer twice. Sorting attribution out first typically recovers more margin than any bidding change, and it costs nothing extra.
Two separate numbers, and only one of them is paid to me.
Paid by you, directly to Meta and Google, on your own billing account. Realistically you need around £1,800 a month across both channels before the data becomes readable enough to act on.
Below that figure you are not testing, you are guessing expensively. I will tell you on the call if that is where you are.
A flat monthly retainer for the work — strategy, build, testing, optimisation and reporting across both platforms. Based on account size, never a percentage of your spend.
A percentage model rewards me for spending more of your money. That is a strange incentive to build into an agreement you are relying on.
Your risk is limited by design. Media spend sits on your billing account so you can stop it yourself at any hour. The retainer is month to month with 30 days notice. The ad accounts, pixels and data are in your name, so if we part ways you keep every bit of history you paid to build.
Structure, tracking and 90 days of spend across Meta and Google, checked against your actual margins rather than platform-reported returns.
One source of truth so the two channels stop claiming the same conversions and you stop funding customers twice.
Meta builds demand, Google captures it. Budgets and targets set against what each is actually responsible for.
Money moves toward whatever holds up profitably at higher spend, reported monthly in language you can act on.
Your industry decides the funnel and the policy traps. Your market decides the costs and the compliance. Most accounts get one right and ignore the other.
Health advertising policies restrict before-and-after imagery and outcome claims on both platforms. Radius targeting matters — nobody drives an hour for a cleaning. No-show rates make booked appointments a misleading metric on their own.
The number worth reporting: Cost per booked and attended appointment, split by treatment value.
You are governed by UK GDPR and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations. Consent must be explicit and granular before any advertising cookie fires. The ICO has been increasingly active on cookie banners that make rejecting harder than accepting. Google Consent Mode v2 is effectively mandatory if you want conversion modelling to work.
Black Friday now runs the full week. Boxing Day sales start on Christmas Day online. January is genuinely quiet. Payday spikes at month end are more pronounced than in most markets, and worth building budget pacing around.
Creative direction for this vertical: Trust and anxiety reduction do more than price. Practice environment, staff introductions, and clear explanation of what happens during a procedure. Nervous-patient messaging converts unusually well.
You can start with one, and often should. Which one depends on whether people are already searching for what you sell. If they are, Google first. If they do not know they need it yet, Meta first. Running both badly is worse than running one well.
By what each is accountable for, not by a fixed ratio. Typically the channel capturing existing demand gets funded to the point where it stops finding profitable volume, and the rest goes to creating new demand. That split gets reviewed monthly against results, not set once.
Media spend goes directly to Meta and Google on your own billing account — around £1,800 a month across both is where the data becomes readable. My fee is a flat monthly retainer on top, based on account size. Never a percentage of your spend.
I will not quote one before seeing your account, and you should be wary of anyone who does. What I will do on the call is tell you honestly whether your margins, your offer and your budget make paid ads viable at all.
Month to month, 30 days notice, and the ad accounts, pixels and data stay in your name throughout. You keep every bit of campaign history you paid to build, which matters because that history is what the bidding algorithms learn from.
Me. The person on the call is the person in the account, every month. The client list is kept deliberately short for exactly this reason — there is no junior to hand you to.
Bring your accounts and your margins. You will get a straight view of where the money is going and what I would change first — whether or not you hire me.
Book a free strategy call →Same page, one axis at a time, if you want the detail separated.
The funnel, the policy traps and the metric that decides success, without the country-specific detail.
Costs, privacy rules and seasonality for United Kingdom, across both channels.
Find out which of the two is actually costing you money before committing to a plan.