Owners send me a screenshot of cost per lead and ask if the month was fine. For a dental practice, I can tell you what “ordinary” looks like in recent US data. I cannot tell you the month was fine until I know who showed up.

Two samples, both US dollars, both search.

WordStream and LocaliQ’s 2026 benchmarks, from April 2025 through March 2026, put Dentists and Dental Services at about $73 a lead and about $8 a click. About 11 percent of those clicks became a lead. LocaliQ’s healthcare report, covering October 2024 through September 2025, puts general dentistry closer to $85 a lead and about $7 a click, with about 8 percent of clicks becoming a lead.

The “$75 to $90” line is those two medians sitting next to each other. It is a US figure. It is not your city, and it is not a Canadian one. A practice in a competitive market can sit well above it and still be making a sensible trade. A practice in a quieter market can sit under it and still be wasting the click. The full set of nearby categories, including why a 5 percent “conversion” goal is often the click-through rate in disguise, is in healthcare advertising benchmarks.

The number under the lead

A lead is a call or a form. A new patient is someone who booked, showed up, and stayed long enough to matter.

Here is an illustration. Three thousand dollars. Fifty leads. Sixty dollars each, which would look healthy beside either median above. Twenty book. Fourteen show up. Two hundred and fourteen dollars for each patient who sat down.

Now the question that actually changes the budget. Who were the fourteen? A new-patient exam, an implant consult, and an Invisalign start are not the same visit, and they should not share one cost on the report you use to add spend. One of those patients may be worth a few hundred dollars of routine care. Another may be a case you have been trying to grow for a year. The $60 cannot tell you which.

I do not publish a national price for implants or for Invisalign. In that healthcare set, orthodontics was about $72 a lead and oral surgery about $55. Those are still not your cases. Invisalign behaves like a longer decision. People compare. They wait. They ask what it costs and who does it. Your cost shows up in your own shows, or it does not show up at all. If you are also promoting veneers or a similar elective case, read them the way I read a med spa consult, in what med spas pay per consult. Do not borrow the exam target for that campaign.

What to pull before you raise the budget

For each treatment you are trying to grow, you want four numbers from last quarter. Spend. Leads. Booked appointments. Patients who showed up. If the agency report only has the first two, you do not have enough to add budget. You have a total.

Exams, implants, and Invisalign also need their own pages. A blended campaign pointed at the homepage will produce a blended cost, and the blended cost will not describe any of them. How I think about that split is in how to split a dental marketing budget.

If you want the $60 on your report read against the fourteen who arrived, bring last quarter to a consult. If the packet only has cost per lead, say that when you book. It changes what I ask for.