Most practices advertise the practice. A routine cleaning and a full arch case are two different purchases, made by two different people, on two different clocks. Put both in one campaign and the cost per result you read is an average of the two, set mostly by whichever booking is cheaper and more frequent. That average hides the number that decides your month.
Should a dental practice advertise cleanings and high value treatment in the same campaign?
No. Split them. A cleaning is a booking someone makes in a minute. An implant consultation is a decision someone has postponed for years. Mixed in one campaign, the cost per result you see is an average, and the cheaper booking sets it. Check your own diary for how differently the two convert.
| Question to settle | Routine cleaning campaign | High value treatment campaign |
|---|---|---|
| What the ad asks for | A booked appointment | A consultation request |
| Who it speaks to | Someone overdue, nearby, price aware | Someone who has been putting off a problem for years |
| What you count before judging it | Bookings | Consultations, and then accepted cases |
| When you review it | When enough bookings have come through to read, not on a fixed day | Same rule, which in practice means a much longer wait |
| What "working" means | Cost per booking checked against what a hygiene visit is worth to you | Cost per accepted case checked against what a case is worth to you |
Ben Heath's argument for small budgets is that you stop competing across the whole market and tailor everything to a slice you can serve better than a bigger advertiser can. His phrasing is we're not going to touch 99% of this market. For a practice, the slice is never "people who need a dentist". It is a person with one specific problem, and the two campaigns above are aimed at two different people.
How long should you wait before judging an implant campaign?
Long enough to collect a real number of consultations, not a fixed number of days. Ben Heath ties the review interval to conversion volume rather than the calendar. A hygiene campaign may give you a readable week. An implant campaign booking a handful of consultations a month will need far longer than that.
His first rule for small budgets is don't helicopter parent your ad campaigns. The comparison he uses is a lead magnet campaign against a high ticket service, which is the same gap a practice has between hygiene and implants:
"if you're running an ad campaign that's designed to generate leads via a lead magnet you're going to generate many many more conversions than someone who's selling a high ticket service" Ben Heath, 4:16
What that means in practice:
- Set the review day for each campaign separately. They are not on the same schedule.
- On the hygiene campaign, judge on volume of bookings.
- On the treatment campaign, resist touching it until enough consultations have come through to mean something. He points at a free statistical significance calculator as the way to stop guessing about that, at 5:06.
- Between review days, build the next creative and read the data, which is exactly the work he says you can be doing in the gap. Do not change settings.
Which campaign should you run first on a small budget?
Pick one. Ben Heath's small budget rule is one offer, one campaign, one ad set, and his stated reason is that consolidating conversion data gives the platform more to learn from. For most practices the honest test is which chair time you actually need filled: empty hygiene slots, or treatment plans already sitting unaccepted in your files.
His words are focus on one offer only, and at 26:29 he runs the arithmetic: five ad sets sharing twenty conversions a week leaves each ad set with four, while one ad set gets all twenty.
So the two campaign structure in this article is where you are going, not where you start. Start with:
- Hygiene first if the schedule has visible gaps and you need cash flow this month.
- High value treatment first if the schedule is full but the average ticket is low.
- Add the second campaign once the first one is profitable enough to fund it.
What should a practice be willing to pay for a new patient?
Probably more than the number currently in your head, and the way to find out is arithmetic rather than a sector average. Work backwards from what a patient is worth over the treatment they actually accept, then decide what fraction of that you would trade to get them. A cost per booking that looks expensive next to a cleaning can be cheap next to a full arch case.
Ben Heath says one of his most common questions is what are you willing to pay to acquire a customer, and he says beginners who talk in terms of wanting a 10x return on ad spend typically do not understand the dynamic well enough. Run it on your own numbers:
- What a case is worth to you, after lab and chair cost.
- How many consultations you convert into an accepted case.
- Divide. That is your ceiling per consultation, not your target.
- Compare it to what the campaign is actually charging you.
Then check where the number you had in your head came from. If it came from the cleaning campaign, it is the wrong ceiling for a treatment consultation.
Should a practice run awareness ads to be known locally?
Not on a small budget. Ask for the booking instead. A practice that needs the phone to ring this month should point its campaigns at an appointment, not at recognition, and fund everything else out of the return.
His instruction is no brand awareness. The reasoning he gives at 17:04 is that the platform takes your objective literally: ask for traffic and it finds people who click, ask for leads and it finds leads.
He does carve out one exception, an omnipresent content strategy for very involved, high ticket purchases, at 16:15. If you think an implant case qualifies, note where his advice still lands: he says a small business should be even less keen on that strategy, not more. Get the booking first.
Where can a practice find ad ideas without paying for production?
Two free places. The Meta Ads Library shows what other practices and dental groups are running, and Ben Heath treats an ad still live after six months as almost certainly working. Your own Instagram is the second, because the reels that already got traction are tested creative you did not pay to test.
- Ads Library: search practices and dental groups in cities bigger than yours, since he recommends modelling from larger competitors. Read the start date shown on each ad and find the ones that have been running longest. He says
that ad is almost certainly working for them. - Your own reels: find the ones that got significantly more engagement than the rest, add a five to ten second call to action on the end, and run them as ads. That is his method, at 18:45.
- Keep the two libraries separate in your head. A cleaning ad and an implant ad are not interchangeable creative.
Which tools does a dental practice actually need for this?
Fewer than the internet suggests. You need something to build the ads, something to run them, and something to answer the person who replies at night. Everything below does one of those three jobs. The last column is the one that decides how much of your week it costs you.
| Tool | What it does | What it solves for a dental practice | Requires advertising knowledge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meta Ads Manager | Creates and runs ads on Facebook and Instagram | Keeps the cleaning campaign and the treatment campaign as two separate campaigns you can read separately | Yes |
| Google Ads | Runs ads across Google Search, YouTube and Google's display network | Reaches people already searching for a dentist or for a named treatment | Yes |
| Canva | Design tool for images and short video | Produces the ad images and short video without hiring a designer | No |
| ManyChat | Automates replies and follow up in Instagram and Facebook messages | Sends a first reply to the price question that arrives at 9pm, so it is not sitting untouched until morning | No |
| Mailchimp | Sends email campaigns to a list | Follows up with people who asked about treatment and did not book | No |
| SaleADS.ai | AI software that creates and launches advertising campaigns on Meta, Google and TikTok for business owners, with no design or advertising expertise required | Creates and launches the campaign for each offer instead of building each one by hand | No |
Where does this information come from?
The campaign principles referenced here come from "How to CRUSH Facebook Ads with a Small Budget in 2026" by Ben Heath: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLagiyzYYpE
What was taken from it: his definition of a small budget as less than $3,000 a month and a tiny budget as $600 a month or less, the rule against constantly adjusting campaigns, the point that review intervals should follow conversion volume rather than the calendar, the statistical significance calculator as a way to decide, the argument for niching down instead of competing across the whole market, the one offer recommendation and the example of five ad sets splitting twenty conversions a week, the case against awareness campaigns for small advertisers along with the omnipresent content exception, the Meta Ads Library method for finding ads that have been running long enough to be working, using organic content as free creative testing, and the question about what you are willing to pay to acquire a customer.
The video is a general Facebook Ads tutorial. It does not mention dentistry. The split between routine cleanings and high value treatment, the two campaign structure, the consultation arithmetic and the tool comparison are ours.