Three options. Only one actually works for your business.
Orthodontics is a $7k-to-$12k decision the patient researches for three months.
Orthodontics has a marketing problem that general dentistry doesn't: an 18-to-24-month treatment cycle on a $7,000 to $12,000 decision that the patient (or the parent of the patient) researches for three months before booking the consult. By the time someone sits in your chair they've watched a dozen YouTube videos, read three before-and-after Reddit threads, compared Invisalign to ceramic to Damon to lingual, and picked a 'kind of preference' before the OPG is even taken. The orthodontist who shows up in those three months of research wins the consult. The orthodontist who doesn't gets the leftovers. Add the adult orthodontics market (now 30 percent of cases and growing), the SmileDirect-style mail-order aligner competition, and the specialist registration moat (3 years of post-dental training, RACDS, AHPRA specialist registration) and you have five different conversations the marketing has to handle and almost no orthodontic practice has the time to write any of them.
Good orthodontic marketing has four layers: a modality-comparison page library (Invisalign, ceramic, lingual, self-ligating Damon, child interceptive phase 1) that wins the three-month-decision-window long tail and answers the comparison question honestly, a dedicated adult-orthodontics track with adult-focused imagery and adult-focused copy (career, ceremony, lingual options) because adult-onset enquirers don't see themselves in the teen-with-metal-braces stock photography, an Invisalign-provider-tier signal (Top 1%, Diamond, Platinum) on every Invisalign page because Align's directory matters, and a consultation-booking flow that's a complimentary consult, not a $200 specialist appointment with no clear value spelled out.
Six agents, working in your accounts.
Account Lead, Web, SEO, Advertising, Social Media, and Content. One platform, one bill, you approve the work.
Builds your annual plan around the modalities and segments you actually want to grow (adult Invisalign, lingual, child interceptive phase 1, complex adult comprehensive) rather than chasing every orthodontic enquiry. Briefs the other agents so the modality pages, the adult-orthodontics ads, the OPG-explainer content and the local SEO all push toward the right case mix, not toward a SmileDirect-style price-shopper fight you don't want.
Imports your existing site, ships a modality-comparison page library (Invisalign vs braces, ceramic vs metal, lingual options, Damon system, phase 1 interceptive for children), builds a proper complimentary-consult booking flow that captures whether the enquiry is adult or paediatric, and keeps the practitioner bios, specialist registration and Invisalign Provider tier up to date.
Goes through your live site for the things that actually move orthodontic rankings: long-tail modality-plus-suburb keywords on every page, Orthodontist schema with specialist-registration markup, internal links between modality pages and the consultation booking page, Invisalign Diamond / Platinum / Top 1% signal surfacing, and a Google Business Profile that ranks for 'orthodontist [suburb]' and 'Invisalign [suburb]'. Auto-applies the low-risk fixes.
Runs Google Ads on the modality-plus-suburb queries (Invisalign provider [suburb], adult orthodontist [suburb], lingual braces [suburb]) where SmileDirect doesn't directly compete. A small Meta ad layer targets adults 28-55 with adult-orthodontics-specific creative (lingual, career-friendly Invisalign), separate from the parents-of-teens campaigns. Never bids on 'cheap braces'; the margin isn't there to fight.
Turns every consented clinical moment into a post in your voice: an OPG-explainer reel, an Invisalign tray check-in, a debond reveal, a phase 1 interceptive explainer for parents, an adult-orthodontics testimonial in compliant form. Builds the trust signal that wins the three-month decision window. You snap a practice photo with consent, agent drafts the caption, you approve.
Drafts the longer-form guides patients and parents google at 11pm: 'Invisalign vs braces for adults: honest comparison', 'when does my child need to see an orthodontist (and when is phase 1 actually warranted)', 'what to expect at your first orthodontic consult'. Two a month, in your voice, that pull the three-month consideration-window search and convert the researcher into a booked consult.
Your first 30 days.
- Site imported, hosting bill cancelled
- Annual plan against your priority modalities and adult-orthodontics push delivered by Sam
- Google Business Profile flipped to 'Orthodontist' with specialist-registration detail
- Modality-comparison pages indexed (Invisalign vs braces, lingual, phase 1)
- Google Ads campaign live on adult-orthodontist and Invisalign-provider queries
- First fortnight of OPG-and-cephalogram explainer captions queued
- Complimentary-consult booking flow with adult vs paediatric capture wired into the practice software
- 'When does a child actually need to see an orthodontist' parent guide drafted
Orthodontics is a $9,000 decision that the patient researches for three months. The consult is won or lost in those three months, not in the chair. The work that wins it is the modality-comparison page library, the adult-orthodontics ad layer, the OPG explainer content, and a Google Business Profile that surfaces specialist registration and Invisalign Diamond tier. All of it is weekly work that has to happen forever, and almost no orthodontic practice has the time.
Agencies are too dear to actually do this work for $4k a month, and they keep treating orthodontics like general dentistry. Tools are cheap but the adult-orthodontics push sits in the parking lot of your to-do list. In-House is the third option: for $299 a month the agents ship the modality pages, run the adult-orthodontics ads, post the OPG explainers, and keep the Google Business Profile dialled in. You snap one practice photo, approve the week, done.