Dental practice owners have no shortage of numbers they could track.
Clicks. Impressions. Cost per click. Conversion rates. Phone calls. Website traffic.
Those numbers can be useful, particularly when evaluating individual marketing campaigns. But Shane Simmons, CEO and Visionary of Crimson Media, sees a bigger problem when practice owners stop there.
Marketing numbers need to connect to what is actually happening inside the practice.
In Episode 77 of The Dental Practice Launch Podcast, Shane broke that down into four dental practice KPIs that give owners a clearer picture of patient flow, production and the cost of growth.
Without them, decisions about scheduling, marketing budgets and future expansion can turn into educated guesses.
KPI #1: New Patients Scheduled Each Month
The first number is straightforward:
How many new patients did the practice schedule this month?
Shane makes an important distinction here. He prefers tracking new patients scheduled, not simply new patients seen.
Suppose someone calls on September 28 and schedules their first appointment for October 5.
They haven't been seen yet, but September's marketing and front office work produced that appointment. Counting scheduled patients gives the practice a more immediate view of demand.
And the number should be exact.
"I think we had around 15" doesn't tell an owner much when the actual number was 11 or 18.
Once a practice tracks new patients consistently, trends become easier to see.
Did new patient scheduling dip during a particular month? Has it steadily increased? Is the marketing generating demand that the practice can actually accommodate?
That last question becomes particularly important for dental startups.
During the first several months, much of the schedule is naturally filled with new patients. Around the six-month mark, those patients begin returning for hygiene and restorative treatment. Suddenly, fewer appointment times are available for someone trying to schedule their first visit.
A practice can keep spending more on marketing while unknowingly creating a scheduling bottleneck.
If prospective patients are being offered appointments three or four weeks away, the issue may not be a lack of leads.
There may simply be nowhere to put them.
That's why the new patient number has to be viewed alongside the actual schedule.
KPI #2: Monthly New Patient Production
Getting a patient onto the schedule is one thing.
What happens financially after they arrive?
The second KPI Shane recommends tracking is new patient production per month.
In other words, how much production came specifically from patients visiting the practice for the first time?
For a newer practice, that number helps show how much of the business is currently being driven by new patient acquisition.
But there's a trap here.
Practice owners sometimes compare one month's marketing spend directly against that month's new patient production and make a decision too quickly.
For example:
A practice spends $3,000 on marketing.
New patients generate $5,000 in production during their initial appointments.
Looking only at those two numbers may make the return appear fairly modest.
But those patients don't necessarily disappear after appointment number one.
Some will return for hygiene. Others will eventually need restorative treatment, crowns, Invisalign, implants or other services. Their value to the practice develops over months or years.
That's why Shane warns against being too short-sighted when judging dental marketing.
The first appointment gives the practice one data point. It doesn't tell the entire financial story of that patient.
KPI #3: Total Practice Production
That leads directly into the third KPI:
Total production.
New patient production tells owners what's coming from first-time patients. Total production shows what's happening across the entire patient base.
That includes the patient who joined three years ago and recently started Invisalign.
It includes the person returning for a crown.
It includes routine hygiene, restorative treatment and everything else being produced in the practice.
Tracking total production alongside new patient production helps answer an important question:
What is a patient actually worth to the practice over time?
Shane used a simple example during the podcast.
Suppose acquiring a patient costs $100.
Their first appointment produces $200.
Judging the marketing from that first visit alone makes the return appear fairly small.
But suppose that same patient produces $1,200 over the next 12 months.
Now the economics look very different.
This is why practice owners need enough historical data to understand average patient production beyond the initial appointment.
It also changes the way marketing decisions get made.
Instead of asking whether advertising paid for itself during the patient's first visit, the owner can look at the relationship between acquisition cost and longer-term patient production.
KPI #4: Cost to Acquire a New Patient
The fourth KPI connects the marketing side directly to the practice.
What does it actually cost to acquire one new patient?
That's different from cost per click.
It's also different from cost per conversion.
A conversion in an advertising platform could simply be a phone call or form submission. Shane and the Crimson Media team often refer to those as new patient opportunities.
But an opportunity isn't necessarily a patient.
The number practice owners ultimately need is the cost associated with getting someone scheduled and into the office.
Once that number becomes predictable, planning future growth gets much easier.
Imagine a practice has enough historical data to know that it generally costs about $100 to acquire one patient.
The owner wants to add roughly 10 additional new patients each month and has the schedule capacity to handle them.
That data gives the owner somewhere to start.
An additional $1,000 in marketing investment might reasonably support that growth target, assuming historical performance continues and the schedule can accommodate those patients.
That's very different from randomly increasing an advertising budget and hoping the schedule gets busier.
Individual platforms still matter. A practice running Google Ads for dentists should absolutely monitor campaign performance and make adjustments when something isn't working.
But campaign-level numbers are only part of the picture.
Ultimately, they need to connect back to actual patients and production.
Don't Measure Marketing in a Vacuum
One of the more interesting points Shane makes in Episode 77 is that patient acquisition isn't always as cleanly attributable as a dashboard makes it look.
Someone might see the practice repeatedly on Facebook and Instagram.
Later, they search Google and read the reviews.
A few days afterward, they ask a friend for a dentist recommendation.
The friend recommends the exact same practice they've already been seeing online.
What gets credit for the patient?
The social campaign?
Google?
The referral?
Shane's answer is to look at the bigger picture.
Everything is marketing.
The patient experience contributes to referrals. Reviews strengthen search visibility. Social content creates familiarity. Advertising keeps the practice visible. Community involvement gives people another opportunity to recognize the name.
Those touchpoints work together.
That's the thinking behind Crimson Media's omnipresence marketing approach. A prospective patient doesn't necessarily move neatly from one advertisement to one appointment.
They may encounter the practice several times before finally deciding to schedule.
Trying to assign every patient to one isolated source can sometimes miss how the decision actually happened.
The Four KPIs Work Better Together
Each of these numbers tells a different part of the story.
New patients scheduled shows demand.
New patient production shows what those first visits are producing.
Total production gives context for what patients contribute over a longer period.
Cost per new patient connects the practice's marketing investment to actual growth.
The value comes from looking at them together.
Suppose new patient scheduling drops.
The immediate reaction might be to spend more on advertising.
But the schedule shows new patients can't get an appointment for four weeks.
That's probably not a marketing problem.
Or perhaps new patient volume looks healthy, but total production isn't growing as expected.
Now the owner has reason to look deeper at retention, treatment acceptance or what happens after the first appointment.
The numbers help narrow the problem before someone starts changing things.
Better Data Makes Growth Less Stressful
Shane's larger point isn't that dental practice owners need another dashboard filled with numbers.
It's almost the opposite.
A few useful numbers can reduce some of the uncertainty that comes with practice ownership.
If an owner knows what it generally costs to acquire a patient and what that patient tends to produce over the following year, future growth becomes easier to model.
Want to add 10 new patients a month?
Start with the historical acquisition cost.
Want to increase marketing spend?
Check whether there's room in the schedule first.
Worried because one month was slower?
Compare it with the previous six or 12 months before making a drastic change.
Data doesn't remove every unknown from running a dental practice. It gives owners something concrete to work from.
At Crimson Media Dental Marketing, Shane and the team use marketing data alongside actual practice performance to help dentists understand what's generating patients and where future growth may come from.
Clicks and impressions still matter.
But eventually, the numbers have to make sense at the front desk and on the practice's production report too.