Invisalign open day marketing versus always-on campaigns: costs, capacity and follow-up
Invisalign open day marketing concentrates a few weeks of promotion into one event, usually with free or reduced-price consultations, and produces a spike of enquiries and consultations on a single day. An always-on campaign runs continuously and produces a steadier flow. Both can work. Which one suits a practice depends less on the ads and more on whether the practice can handle the spike, and follow up everyone it creates.
The choice is one part of marketing clear aligners. The comparison below includes the capacity and follow-up costs, not only the cost of the event itself. There are no conversion figures here, because I haven't found a sourced one worth quoting.
Open days
An open day is a scheduled event at the practice, promoted in advance, where interested patients come for a consultation, a scan and information about treatment, often on a Saturday or evening.
What open days do well:
- Create a deadline. People who have been thinking about aligners for a while have a date to act on.
- Make the first step feel social and low-pressure. Other people are there for the same reason.
- Concentrate effort. One campaign, one set of creative, one event.
Most open day ideas are variations on the same few things: a scan with a preview of the planned result, a talk from the clinician, finance explained on the spot, and a time-limited offer. The ideas matter less than the basics around them. Book attendees into timed slots rather than an open house, so the clinician isn't overwhelmed at noon and idle at three. Send a reminder the day before. Decide before the event who will contact every attendee afterwards, and when.
What they cost, beyond the ad spend:
- Clinical time on the day. Every consultation needs a clinician, and often a scan. A busy open day can use a full day of clinical capacity.
- Front-desk time before and after. Confirming bookings, sending reminders, handling no-shows and rebooking.
- The follow-up load. Some attendees won't decide on the day. Every one of them needs follow-up from the practice over the following weeks. If nobody owns that, most of the value of the day leaks away.
- Offer risk. If the open day uses a free consultation or a discount, it has to be genuine. The CAP Code does not allow "free" where the patient has to pay anything beyond the unavoidable cost of responding (rule 3.23), and any "from" or "up to" price must not exaggerate what patients get (rule 3.22).1
Always-on
An always-on campaign runs continuously: paid social and search running every week, organic content building over time, and consultations booked into normal diary slots.
What always-on does well:
- Matches demand as it arrives. People decide on their own schedule, not the practice's.
- Spreads the load. Consultations and follow-up arrive at a pace the team can handle.
- Lets the platforms learn. A steady flow of results gives Google Ads and Meta more consistent signals to learn from.
What it costs:
- Patience. Results build more slowly, with no single day to point at.
- Ongoing creative. Continuous campaigns need fresh creative to stay effective.
- Consistent response. Enquiries arrive every day, including evenings and weekends, and each needs a prompt reply.
Choosing
| Open day | Always-on | |
|---|---|---|
| Demand pattern | A spike around one date | A steady flow |
| Clinical capacity needed | A lot, on one day | A little, every week |
| Front-desk load | Heavy before and after the event | Constant and moderate |
| Follow-up load | Large batch after the event | Small and continuous |
| Best for | Practices with spare capacity on set days and a strong follow-up process | Practices that want predictable demand and can reply quickly every day |
| Main risk | Filling a room, then losing most attendees to no follow-up | Slow start; judging it too early |
| Offer risk | Free or discounted offers must be genuine | Lower, as offers are rarer |
My view: for most practices, always-on is the base, and an open day is an occasional push on top of it, run only when the practice has the capacity and a follow-up owner. An open day on its own, with no always-on activity around it, tends to produce a busy Saturday and a quiet quarter.
Measuring either
Both approaches are measured the same way, which is the only way to compare them fairly. The measures come from the practice management system (PMS), not the ad platforms.
| Measure | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Consultations booked | Shows the campaign reached people |
| Consultations attended | Open-day bookings made weeks ahead are easy to forget without reminders |
| Treatment starts | The result that matters |
| Starts from follow-up, weeks after first contact | Shows whether follow-up is working |
| Total cost per start, including staff time | The fair comparison between the two approaches |
Two cautions. First, count open-day starts over a long enough window: some attendees start weeks later, so a report run the Monday after will understate the result. Second, include the staff time. An open day that looks cheap on ad spend can be expensive once the clinical day and the follow-up hours are counted.
Follow-up is where most of the difference is made, and it is the practice's own team that does it. The wider picture is on what happens after the enquiry.
If you want to plan aligner campaigns around your capacity, email me about your practice, or read how I work.
Sources
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Committee of Advertising Practice, CAP Code, section 3, rules 3.22 and 3.23. https://www.asa.org.uk/type/non_broadcast/code_section/03.html (accessed 1 October 2026). ↩