Dental marketing
Dental Marketing in Canada: What Actually Fills Chairs
By Kyle Senger
15+ years in local marketing; Google Ads certified; Shopify Partner.
Picture this: you're a practice owner in Calgary. You've got a solid team, good reviews, and a website you paid decent money for. You're spending $2,000 a month on marketing. New patients are coming in, but you genuinely can't tell if that's because of your marketing, your location, the fact that your hygienist is incredible, or just luck.
That's the real dental marketing problem in Canada. Not "how do I get found on Google." It's: how do I know what's working, and how do I stop paying for what isn't?
This article covers dental marketing in Canada as a whole, from channel selection to budget math to the regulatory stuff that most agencies don't bother to mention. If you want to go deep on SEO specifically, we've got a complete guide to dentist SEO for Canadian practices that covers that territory in detail. This one is about the bigger picture.
The Canadian Dental Market Is Not the US Market
This matters more than most agencies will tell you.
Google Ads for dentistry in the US is brutal. Keywords like "dentist near me" can run US$8-$20 per click. In Canada, per DataForSEO data, the same query runs about CA$13.69 per click with medium competition nationally. That's still real money, but it's not the bloodbath it is south of the border.
"Dentist Saskatoon" runs CA$8.97 per click. "Dentist Toronto" is CA$11.62. "Family dentist" nationally is CA$8.30 with low competition. Those are workable numbers for a practice with a reasonable ad budget.
Here's the thing, though. The gap between Canada and the US also means a lot of US-built dental marketing playbooks don't translate. Strategies built for a CA$20-per-click market are overkill here. And agencies that learned their craft in Chicago or Phoenix will sometimes over-engineer your campaigns and over-charge you for the privilege.
Work with someone who knows the Canadian numbers. Or at minimum, ask your agency to show you the actual CPC data for your city before you sign anything.
What Dental Marketing in Canada Actually Includes
Dental marketing isn't one thing. It's a stack of channels, and each one has a different job.
Google Ads fills the chair fast. You show up when someone searches "dentist near me" or "Invisalign Toronto" and they're ready to book. The trade-off is cost, you pay every click, and the moment you stop paying, you disappear. For a growing practice or a new grad opening their first location, Google Ads is usually the right first move. Budget typically runs $1,500-$5,000/month in ad spend on top of whatever management fee you're paying.
Local SEO is the long game. It's how you show up in the map pack, the three-box result that appears when someone searches for a dentist near them. It takes 3-6 months to move, but once you're there, you're not paying per click. For a full breakdown of what that actually involves, the dentist SEO guide covers it well.
Your Google Business Profile (GBP) sits at the intersection of both. It feeds your map pack ranking AND your paid local ads. It's also the thing most practices manage inconsistently. Review velocity, meaning getting a steady stream of new reviews rather than a burst and then silence, is one of the biggest factors in local pack visibility. In my experience, practices that establish a steady review cadence — even a handful per month sustained over a quarter — show meaningfully better map-pack performance than practices sitting on a static review count, regardless of which province they're in.
Social media is a brand channel, not a lead channel, for most dental practices. It keeps you top-of-mind with existing patients. It's not where people go when they have a toothache. For a full picture of what social can and can't do, see our social media marketing guide for dentists.
Your website is where all of it lands. A slow or confusing site wastes every dollar you spend on ads and SEO. For what actually makes a dental website convert, the dentist website design guide is worth your time.
The Budget Math Canadian Dentists Actually Need
Per the 2026 State of Dental Practice Marketing Report, dental practices typically spend 10-15% of revenue on marketing. That's a wide range, and it's not that useful on its own.
Here's a more grounded way to think about it.
Let's say your practice generates $800 per new patient in first-visit revenue (this is an illustrative figure, check your actual number in your practice management software). The industry benchmark for cost per new patient in general dentistry runs roughly $150-$400 CAD. So if you're spending $250 to acquire a patient who generates $800 on the first visit and returns twice a year for years, that's a good investment.
The math that actually matters: new patients acquired per month × average first-visit revenue, compared against your total marketing spend. If you're spending $3,000/month on marketing and getting 8 new patients, your cost per new patient is $375. Is that within your threshold? That's the question. Not "are my rankings going up."
Most agencies don't show you this math. They show you impressions, clicks, and rankings. Those are inputs, not outcomes. Ask your agency: how many new patients did we get this month, and what did each one cost us?
The Regulatory Reality (And Why It Matters for Your Marketing)
This is the piece most Canadian dental marketing agencies skip, and it can get you in real trouble.
In Ontario, under Ontario Regulation 853/93, you cannot publish patient testimonials, reviews, or external ratings on your own website or reference them on social media. That means you can't screenshot a Google review and post it on Instagram. You can't put "What our patients say" on your homepage. These are considered unprovable claims and constitute professional misconduct under the Regulation.
You also can't use superlative claims. "Best dentist in Toronto," "#1 family practice," "state of the art" , all of it is off-limits in Ontario under RCDSO advertising guidelines.
Other provinces have their own colleges and their own rules. British Columbia (CDSBC), Alberta (ADA&C), Saskatchewan (CDSS), and Quebec (ODQ) each govern advertising separately. If you're in Quebec, Bill 96 adds French-language requirements on top of that. The rules aren't identical across provinces, so if you're a multi-location group operating in more than one province, you need province-specific guidance, not a one-size-fits-all content strategy.
Here's the practical implication: a lot of standard dental marketing tactics, patient spotlights, testimonial videos, before/after galleries, don't work the same way in Canada that they do in the US. If your agency is building you a strategy based on US templates, ask them directly: "Is this compliant with [your provincial college]'s advertising guidelines?"
If they don't know what you're talking about, that's your answer.
The Canadian Dental Care Plan Is a Real Marketing Opportunity
The Canadian Dental Care Plan launched in 2024, and it's shifting where some patients are looking for care.
CDCP covers lower-income Canadians who previously had no dental coverage. For practices that accept CDCP patients, there's a real opportunity to market specifically to that segment, especially in communities where access to care has historically been limited.
This isn't about discounting your practice. It's about visibility. If you accept CDCP and your competitors don't, that's a differentiator worth communicating clearly on your website, your GBP, and your Google Ads. "Accepting Canadian Dental Care Plan patients" is a specific, searchable phrase that a meaningful number of Canadians are now looking for.
Most practices haven't updated their marketing to reflect CDCP at all. That's the opportunity.
How to Evaluate a Dental Marketing Agency in Canada
A few patterns I see consistently across practices that are unhappy with their agency.
The first one: they don't own their own assets. If your agency controls your Google Business Profile login, your Google Ads account, or your domain, you're in a vulnerable position. One practice owner in Alberta spent four months and legal fees recovering their GBP after leaving an agency that had locked them out. That's not rare. Before you sign anything, confirm in writing that all accounts are in your name and you have admin access.
The second one: they report on inputs instead of outcomes. Rankings went up. Traffic went up. Great. How many new patients booked? What was the cost per new patient? If your agency can't answer those two questions clearly every month, the reporting is decorative.
The third one: pricing is opaque. Some agencies charge a percentage of your ad spend, meaning they make more money when you spend more, whether or not it's working. Flat-fee management is cleaner. You want your agency's incentive aligned with your results, not your budget size.
For a full breakdown of how to evaluate dental practice marketing strategies and what to look for in a Canadian agency, that guide goes deeper on the vendor-selection side.
Red Flags to Watch Before You Sign
Use this before you commit to any dental marketing agency in Canada.
They can't tell you your estimated cost per new patient. If they pitch you on impressions and clicks but can't connect those to booked appointments, walk away.
They use percentage-of-spend pricing for ads. Your incentives are misaligned from day one.
They don't mention provincial advertising regulations. If they're building you a testimonial page without knowing the RCDSO rules, they haven't done Canadian dental work before.
They promise specific rankings or results in a fixed timeframe. No one can guarantee a Google ranking. Anyone who does is either lying or doesn't understand how SEO works.
They don't give you admin access to your own accounts. Non-negotiable. Full stop.
They lock you into a 12-month contract with no performance clause. Good agencies don't need to trap you. If the work works, you stay.
