Squat practice marketing: planning the first year of demand for a new dental practice
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Squat practice marketing has one problem to solve: a new dental practice has no patient list, no reviews, no search history and no track record, and it needs patients from the day the doors open. The plan works by using the channels that work immediately while building the ones that take time.
A squat practice is one opened from scratch rather than bought. Marketing a new dental surgery runs in three stages: before you open, launch month, and the first year. Opening a new practice is one of the situations covered in marketing by practice situation. None of the timelines here is a promise. They are what the platforms themselves say, and what a new site can and cannot do.
Squat practice marketing: what a new practice can and can't do yet
Launching a new dental practice means working with what a new domain and a new profile can do, and planning around what they can't.
| Asset | What it can do at launch | What takes time |
|---|---|---|
| New website on a new domain | Carry accurate treatment, price and booking information; run ads to it | Ranking for competitive treatment searches, which depends on content, links and history built over months |
| New Google Business Profile | Show the practice on Google up to 90 days before opening, once verified with a future opening date1 | Reviews, which patients can't post until the practice is officially open1 |
| Google Ads | Show ads from the day campaigns go live, with tracked enquiries | Enough conversion data for automated bidding to learn from |
| Meta ads | Reach local people before they search | Proof and reviews to reassure them when they do |
| Patient list | Nothing yet | Every patient you see becomes the start of recall, referrals and reviews |
Google's own guide says some changes to how a site appears in search take effect in a few hours and others could take several months, and suggests waiting a few weeks to judge whether work helped2. I plan for months, not weeks.
Before you open
The months before opening are when the foundations get built. Everything here should be finished before the first patient books.
| Task | Why it comes first |
|---|---|
| CQC registration (England) | You can't provide regulated dental services in England until the Care Quality Commission confirms your registration3 |
| Catchment research | Who lives nearby, who competes, which treatments people search for locally |
| Website with treatment, price and team pages | Somewhere accurate for ads and profiles to send people |
| Conversion tracking | Calls, forms and online bookings counted from the first enquiry |
| Google Business Profile with a future opening date | The profile can be created with an opening date up to a year ahead, and shows on Google 90 days before opening once verified1 |
| Booking route and phone cover | Enquiries in launch month are wasted if nobody answers |
Google advises setting the future opening date before you verify, so the practice doesn't show as open early1. Get the name, address and category right the first time.
The months in that diagram are a planning assumption, not a forecast. Some areas and treatments move faster, some slower.
Launch month
In launch month, the practice needs demand it can't yet earn organically, so paid media does the heavy lifting. Launch paid media means campaigns planned for the opening, rather than switched on and left.
| Channel | Launch-month job |
|---|---|
| Google Ads | Catch people already searching for a dentist or a treatment nearby. See running Google Ads for a practice |
| Meta ads | Tell local people the practice exists and what it offers |
| Google Business Profile | Opening posts, photos, services and accurate hours |
| Local partnerships and events | Awareness in the community, tracked with their own phone number or link |
Two cautions. First, a new practice's ads compete with established practices that have reviews and history, so the landing page has to do more work: prices, clinicians, what the first visit involves. Second, new-patient offers and claims in ads fall under the same UK advertising rules as any other practice. Being new is no exemption.
Reviews from zero start in launch month too. Ask every patient, in the same way, once they've been seen. Don't offer incentives and don't filter out patients you think might be unhappy. The policy-safe approach is in getting Google reviews the right way.
The first year
The first year is about turning early paid demand into assets that compound: reviews, content that ranks, a patient list that returns and refers.
| Period | Focus | What to measure |
|---|---|---|
| Months 1 to 3 | Paid search tuned on real search terms; reviews from every patient; fix booking leaks | Cost per booked consultation, answered-call rate |
| Months 3 to 6 | Treatment content from the research; profile posts and photos; first recall bookings | Enquiries by source, review count and rating |
| Months 6 to 12 | Content depth for high-value treatments; paid budget shifted towards what books | Treatment starts by source, share of enquiries from organic and profile |
A good first-year report shows where patients came from and what they started, even when numbers are small. Small numbers are normal for a new practice. Unmeasured numbers are the real problem, because you can't tell which spend to keep.
Domain age is often blamed when a new site doesn't rank. I don't treat it as a lever. What a new site lacks is content, links and a track record, and those can be built.
If you're planning a squat practice and want the first year mapped before you open, email me at [email protected]. You can read how I work first.
Sources
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Google Business Profile Help: Add a business opening date, accessed 1 October 2026. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4
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Google Search Central: SEO Starter Guide, accessed 1 October 2026. ↩
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Care Quality Commission: Register as a provider, accessed 1 October 2026. ↩