An orthodontic practice in Los Angeles County. One 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.
12 of our captured leads exist as patients in the practice's chart system. Every one of them holds a booked appointment there.
On August 13, midway through the window, we audited them line by line. Twelve of the thirteen patients known at that point carried "Booked By: Website" in the practice's own appointment book. That's their field, in their software, written by their system. Not mine.
One 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 (August 1 to 22, 2026) | 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% |
| Cost per acquired patient | $132.43 | $520 published average for orthodontics |
| Leads who became patients | 57% | no published benchmark exists |
Cost per lead is the one row where this campaign sits level with the industry. It stays in. The difference comes after the lead: 57% of them became patients, which puts the cost per patient at about a quarter of the published average.
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) · Patient Prism patient acquisition cost benchmarks ($520 average for orthodontics). 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.
| When | Rate | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Your first 90 days | $3,997 a month | The proving window. The ads prove themselves in your own patient chart. |
| Months 4 to 12 | $5,997 a month | Proven and compounding. |
| Month 13 onward | $6,500 a month | The standard rate. |
That's the whole schedule. Nothing surprises you later, because surprise pricing is an agency move and this page exists to be the opposite of one.
Three practices get this deal. One spot's taken. Two are open. When the third signs, this section comes down and the deal is gone.
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.
Twenty minutes, no pitch. You leave with written findings either way.
Prefer email? smashit@cakesmashmedia.com