An orthodontic practice in Los Angeles County. 1 campaign I built, filmed, and ran. Here's the whole case, including how I know the numbers are real, because in this industry that's the part nobody shows you.
Every marketer shows you their dashboard. Dashboards count clicks, and clicks aren't patients. So we did it the slow way: we took the people our campaign captured and matched them, one by one, against the practice's own patient system.
17 of our captured leads exist as new patient records in the practice's chart system. A chart opened before the inquiry is dropped, no matter how well the name fits.
Midway through the window, we audited the patients known at that point line by line. 12 of the 13 carried "Booked By: Website" in the practice's own appointment book. That's their field, in their software, written by their system. Not mine.
1 lead our tracker called "booked" had no chart and no appointment on their side. We left her out of the count. That's what verification means: it can subtract.
Matching is done on phone number, not name, because parents fill forms for their kids. Where a claim can't be verified in the practice's records, it isn't made.
These are the practice's patient acquisition campaign for the window stated, not everything they spent. A separate discrete test ran alongside it, found no audience, and was paused; it is reported on its own and is not blended into anything below.
| Metric (31 days) | This campaign | Industry benchmark |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per lead, Facebook lead campaigns | $75.67 | $76.71, dentists and dental services |
| Cost per click | $2.56 | $9.78 |
| Click-through rate | 2.22% | 1.05% |
| Ad spend per additional patient | $133.54 | $520 all-in average for orthodontics, agency fees included |
| All-in cost per patient, our fee included | under $520 | $520 all-in average for orthodontics |
Cost per lead is the one row where this campaign sits level with the industry. It stays in. The difference comes after the lead. The industry figure is what a practice pays for every patient, fees included, and it stays at $520 at any scale. Our fee is fixed, so each additional patient is media cost only: $133.54. With our fee counted, the all-in cost per patient in this window still sat under the $520 average, and the gap widens as the book fills.
Benchmark sources: LocaliQ Facebook advertising benchmarks (cost per lead $76.71, cost per click $9.78, click-through 1.05% for dentists and dental services) · First Page Sage, Average Patient Acquisition Cost: 2026 Report ($520 for orthodontics, all marketing cost per new patient, 8 practices reporting) · Patient Prism patient acquisition cost benchmarks (68% typical inquiry to appointment conversion for orthodontics; cites First Page Sage for the $520). Our figures are from the campaign's ad account and the practice's records for the stated windows. Cost per click and click-through rate are all clicks on both sides, which is how LocaliQ defines them: total spend divided by total number of clicks. One caveat worth stating: LocaliQ's lead benchmark measures Facebook's native in-platform lead forms, and this campaign runs an off-site landing page. A useful direction, not a perfect match.
Not ads bolted onto a practice. The whole pipe, built in order:
By my choice. They're a real practice with real patients, and their name is theirs to give, not mine to spend. If we end up on a call, I'll walk you through the case in as much detail as you want.
That's not a slogan. It's the pricing.
The schedule is quoted on the call, in writing, before you sign anything. Nothing surprises you later, because surprise pricing is an agency move and this page exists to be the opposite of one.
I take on a small number of elective aesthetics practices in Los Angeles: cosmetic dentistry, orthodontics, aesthetic medicine. I look at how a new patient finds and books you before we talk.
20 minutes, no pitch. You leave with written findings either way.
Prefer email? smashit@cakesmashmedia.com