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Orthodontics · google ads

Ten to twenty five case starts a month. Smart Bidding wants thirty.

Google recommends at least thirty conversions in the last thirty days before Target CPA can be evaluated. A busy orthodontic practice does not start thirty cases a month. That single mismatch explains most of what goes wrong in these accounts.

The volume problem

The revenue event is too rare to bid on.

Google's own guidance is to have at least thirty conversions in the preceding thirty days before evaluating a Target CPA strategy. Orthodontic practices start somewhere between ten and twenty five cases in a good month. So the conversion that actually matters is, by a clear margin, too infrequent for the bidding system to learn from.

This is not a reason to avoid automated bidding. It is a reason to feed it a more frequent signal that still correlates with revenue, which in orthodontics is the paid records appointment rather than the free consultation or the eventual case start. That is the whole architecture, and it follows from Google's published limits rather than from an opinion about them.

Two audiences, one account

The parent and the adult buyer share nothing.

Parent of a teenager

  • Searches braces for kids, orthodontist near me, cost of braces.
  • Bound to the school calendar, and the summer break is the only one long enough to absorb bonding and adjustment.
  • Price sensitive, and comparing against a general dentist offering the same appliance.
  • Frequently searching years before treatment will actually start.

Adult self purchaser

  • Searches clear aligners, invisible braces, adult braces, and by brand.
  • Not bound to any calendar. Follows New Year and pre wedding intent instead.
  • Comparing against a direct to consumer aligner at roughly one sixth of the price.
  • Deciding in weeks, not years, and far more likely to convert inside the window.
What we do differently

Four decisions specific to orthodontics.

Bid the specialist title, hard
Orthodontist is a protected term that roughly 571 people in Australia may use. General dentists advertising the same treatment cannot say specialist, specialises in or specialty. That is a legally enforced differentiator and most orthodontic accounts do not build a campaign around it.
Split the parent and the adult
Different queries, different pages, different seasons, different objections and different competitors. Running them in one campaign means every optimisation decision is an average of two markets that behave nothing alike.
Pace against state school terms
Term dates differ by state, and the only break long enough to comfortably absorb bonding is the six week summer holiday. Because the consult to case start lag sits in front of it, budget should build through Term 4, not in December when the decision has already been made.
Ignore the American playbook
Local Services Ads are the standard recommendation on United States orthodontic marketing pages. Google does not offer them in Australia at all, though Orthodontist is an eligible category in the eleven countries where they exist. Advice built on them is unusable here.
The number the category quotes is American
There is no published Australian cost per click for orthodontic terms. The widely circulated figures come from a study of 3,542 United States campaigns, in United States dollars, which puts orthodontics at $8.76 a click with a 14.21 per cent conversion rate against general dentistry's 7.74. That conversion gap is genuinely interesting and probably transfers. The dollar figure does not, and several Australian pages quote it without saying so. We would rather tell you the number does not exist than invent one.
Straight answers

Questions clinic owners actually ask

Why do orthodontic Google Ads campaigns underperform?
Most often because they are optimised to the free consultation. That is the most frequent event in the funnel and the least committed, so the bidding gets efficient at producing enquiries that do not become cases. Compounding it, the event that matters, a case start, occurs ten to twenty five times a month against Google's recommended minimum of thirty conversions in thirty days for evaluating Target CPA. The workable answer is to optimise to the paid records appointment, which is frequent enough to learn from and involves an actual financial commitment.
Should an orthodontist bid on Invisalign?
Usually yes, and with clear eyes about who else is in that auction. Invisalign is a brand a patient can have fitted by a general dentist as well as a specialist orthodontist, so the term draws roughly 21,000 potential advertisers against your 571 fellow specialists. The differentiator available to you and unavailable to them is the protected title, so the campaign should lead with specialist registration rather than with the brand. Be careful with the manufacturer's own Australian marketing as a source: its site quotes an insurance figure derived from United States patient data in United States dollars.
When should an orthodontic practice increase its ad budget?
Ahead of the summer break rather than during it. The only Australian school holiday long enough to comfortably absorb bonding and the adjustment period is the six week summer break, running from roughly mid December to late January. Since there is a consultation, a records appointment and a finance decision between the click and the case start, the enquiry has to arrive well before that. In practice that means building through Term 4. Note also that term dates differ by state, so a national campaign flighted on one calendar will be wrong somewhere.
Are Local Services Ads worth using for an orthodontist?
They are not available in Australia. Google lists Local Services Ads in eleven countries, and Australia is not among them, even though Orthodontist is an eligible category in the markets where they run. This matters because Local Services Ads are a standard recommendation on United States orthodontic marketing pages, which rank well for Australian searches. If an agency proposes them for an Australian practice, they have not checked.
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