TL;DR: A dental practice marketing plan should start with chairs, not channels. Work out the hours you can staff, how many patients are overdue for recall and how many new patient exams you can take a week. Then choose two or three channels for the quarter and one number to watch for each. Recall usually comes first, because cancellations and overdue patients leave more gaps than missing newcomers. It all fits on one page.
Most marketing plans for a dental practice begin with a list of channels: a new website, social posts, a Google Ads budget. Six weeks later the hygiene column has a waiting list, the dentist's afternoons still have gaps, and nobody can say whether the plan did anything.
The plan below begins from the appointment book. It treats the practice as two engines — recall, which brings existing patients back on their recall interval, and new patients, who replace those who leave — and asks which engine has the gap. It belongs to our dental practice marketing strategies guide.
What should a dental practice marketing plan include?
Five lines: chair capacity by provider, the recall position, new patient exam capacity, two or three channels for the quarter, and how each will be measured. That is enough to make decisions and short enough to review monthly. The limit is honesty about capacity; a plan built on hours you cannot staff produces waiting lists.
Each line answers one question:
- Capacity: how many hours a week can each dentist and dental hygienist actually see patients?
- Recall: how many active patients are overdue, and how many recall reminders get no reply?
- New patients: how many new patient exams can you add a week without squeezing existing patients out?
- Channels: which two or three things will you work on this quarter, and why those?
- Measures: one number per channel, checked monthly.
Notice what is not on the list: a target number of followers or website visits. Those can be useful signals later. On the plan, they distract from the chairs.
How do you work out real chair capacity?
Count the hours each provider can see patients next quarter, separately for the dentist and hygiene columns, after holidays, training and known gaps in staffing. That figure, not the number of chairs, sets the ceiling for every marketing goal. Hygienist hours are often the tighter limit, and recall depends on them.
Staffing is the constraint many practices hit first. In the ADA Health Policy Institute's Q4 2024 poll, about three in five dentists worried about recruiting and keeping staff, especially dental hygienists (ADA News). A campaign that fills hygiene appointments you cannot staff simply moves the problem to the phone.
Write capacity in two rows:
- Restorative: dentist hours per week, minus time already committed to treatment plans in progress.
- Hygiene: hygienist hours per week, minus the hours recall patients already fill.
What is left is the space marketing can fill. If it is close to zero in hygiene, the plan for the quarter is about keeping recall tidy, not about attracting more.
Why does the recall cycle come before new patients?
Because in many practices, more of the schedule is lost to cancellations and overdue recalls than to a shortage of newcomers. A recall system that reminds on time, offers easy rebooking and follows up missed visits fills gaps with patients who already trust you. New patient campaigns make most sense once that engine is running.
The ADA's own polling points that way. In October 2022, schedules were about 83% full on average, and nearly 82% of dentists named last-minute no-shows and cancellations as the main reason they were not fuller (ADA News). Across the US population, one adult in three had no dental exam or cleaning in the past year (CDC); some of those people are on your list already.
Practice management software usually handles the mechanics. Open Dental lists automated messaging and integrated texting, and supports recall types; vendors such as Dentrix describe automated reminders and two-way texting. The plan's job is to set the rules: when the first reminder goes, when the second goes, who calls the patients who do not reply, and what the message says. Keep diagnosis and treatment details out of the text.
How many new patients can you actually take?
As many new patient exams as you can fit each week, plus the treatment time those patients will need afterwards. A new patient is not one appointment. The exam often leads to a treatment plan, hygiene visits and a place in recall, so each new patient uses capacity for months. Plan the exam slots with that tail in mind.
A rough way to set the weekly number:
- Look at the last quarter's new patients and how many restorative and hygiene hours they used in their first three months.
- Divide your free capacity by that figure.
- Round down. A waiting list for a first appointment frustrates the person a friend just referred.
If you do not have last quarter's figures, start with a modest number of exam slots, track what follows, and adjust at the next quarterly review.
Example (illustrative, not a real case): a three-chair practice with one associate and one hygienist fills in the page in October. Restorative capacity has space on two afternoons; hygiene is nearly full with recall. The practice manager finds that a large block of active patients is overdue and that most recall texts get no reply. The plan for the quarter: rewrite the recall message, add a second reminder and a phone call for non-responders, and open two extra new patient exam slots on the free afternoons, booked online. One new channel is added: a referral card at the desk. Each line gets one number to watch.
What does the one-page template look like?
It is a single table with five rows and three columns: what you have now, what you will do this quarter, and how you will know. Fill it in with the practice manager and the principal dentist in about an hour. If a cell needs more than two lines, the idea is too big for one quarter.
| Line | Now (fill in) | This quarter | How we'll know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capacity | Dentist hours / week; hygiene hours / week | Any change in hours or staff | Hours booked vs available, monthly |
| Recall | Patients overdue; reminder reply rate | Message rewrite, second reminder, call list | Overdue count, monthly |
| New patients | Exam slots / week; where they came from | Slots opened; booking option | New patient exams booked; "who sent you" answers |
| Channel 1 | For example: Google Business Profile | Complete profile, reply to every review | Reviews and replies per month |
| Channel 2 | For example: treatment pages | Rewrite the top three | Questions at the desk about those treatments |
Two channels are usually enough for a small practice in one quarter. The ideas list in dental practice marketing ideas is a good place to choose them, and how much a dental practice should spend on marketing covers the budget line.
How do you review the plan each month?
Meet for thirty minutes with the practice manager and the front desk lead, read the five rows against the month's numbers, and note one change. Do not swap channels mid-quarter unless something is clearly broken. The point is to learn which line moved, not to produce a new plan every month.
A review agenda that fits on a sticky note:
- Hours booked against hours available, per column.
- Overdue recall: up or down?
- New patient exams booked, and the "who sent you" answers.
- The one number for each channel.
- One decision, written down, with a name next to it.
Keep the page in a shared folder with last quarter's version next to it. Over a year, the four pages become the practice's own record of what worked, which is more useful than any benchmark from elsewhere. For the wider approach, return to the pillar guide.
If you want a structured way to write down your practice's capacity, offers and wording once, so the plan and every AI draft start from the same facts, we are building the Business Brain Starter Kit. Get notified when it launches.
FAQ
What should a dental practice marketing plan include?
Five things on one page: your real chair capacity by provider, how many patients are overdue for recall, how many new patient exams you can take each week, the two or three channels you will work on this quarter, and how you will measure them. Anything longer usually stops being read after the first month.
Should a dental practice focus on new patients or recall first?
Look at your own schedule first. If most gaps are same-day cancellations and overdue recalls, work on the recall system and reminders before you spend on new patient campaigns. If recall is healthy and the chairs still have open hours you can staff, then new patients are the gap to fill.
How often should we update the marketing plan?
Review the numbers monthly and rewrite the plan quarterly. A monthly half hour with the practice manager and the front desk lead is enough to see whether recall, cancellations and new patient exams moved. Change the channels only at the quarterly review, so each one gets long enough to show whether it does anything.
Who should own the dental practice marketing plan?
One person, usually the practice manager, with the principal dentist agreeing the capacity numbers and any clinical wording. The front desk lead should be in the monthly review, because they see cancellations, recall replies and new patient questions first. A plan that only the owner reads rarely changes what happens at the desk.
Sources
- Staffing shortages top expected challenges this year — ADA News, 2025.
- Dentists report less busy schedules in latest HPI poll — ADA News, 2022.
- FastStats — Oral and dental health — CDC National Center for Health Statistics, 2025.
- Open Dental — Open Dental Software, vendor page, accessed 2026.
- Dentrix — Henry Schein One, vendor page, accessed 2026.