Health
Clear aligners are the rare category where the patient can want the treatment, afford the treatment, turn up for the consultation, and still not be a candidate for it. Clinical suitability sits between interest and revenue, and no amount of marketing gets around it. We build acquisition for dental practices, orthodontists and multi-site groups who measure case starts rather than consultation bookings.
Aligner advertising sells an outcome that is easy to want and expensive to buy.
Straighter teeth appeal to almost everyone. A four-figure course of treatment appeals to considerably fewer people, and the gap between those two groups is where most aligner budgets disappear. Campaigns optimised for consultation bookings fill the diary with people who liked the before-and-after photograph and have not thought seriously about the price.
Then there is clinical suitability, which is genuinely unusual as a disqualifier because nobody can assess it from a form. Severe crowding, significant bite discrepancies, missing teeth, active periodontal disease and untreated decay all rule people out or require other treatment first. Some of those patients are still valuable to a practice, but not for the treatment they enquired about, and a campaign that treats every enquiry as an aligner case will misreport its own performance.
The third problem is the consultation itself. Aligner practices sell in the chair, which means the appointment is the conversion event, and a no-show costs a clinical slot that could have been sold. High booking volume with poor attendance is worse than moderate booking volume, because the practice has already paid for the room.
Consumer trust adds a layer. The collapse of large direct-to-consumer aligner brands left a residue of scepticism that practices did not create and now have to work through.
Calls, clearly, and this is one of the strongest cases for it in the portfolio.
The appointment is the product. A form capturing interest still requires somebody to phone, qualify, discuss price and find a slot. Every stage sheds people. An inbound call collapses that into one conversation while the patient is engaged and has their diary open.
Price should surface on the call, not at the chair. The single biggest source of wasted consultations is patients who had no idea what treatment costs. A brief, honest indication of the price range during the call loses some bookings and saves far more clinical time. Practices consistently underestimate how much this improves the economics.
IVR qualification handles catchment and intent. Postcode and whether the caller is looking for aligners specifically rather than general dentistry, asked before your team picks up. Simple, and it removes the enquiries that were never going to work.
Forms suit the long consideration group. Aligner treatment is frequently researched for months and often timed around a wedding, a new job or a milestone birthday. Those patients want photographs, finance information and reassurance before they will speak to anyone, and pushing them to book early loses them entirely.
Because calls bill on connected duration past a buffer, filtering on catchment before the call reaches your reception desk directly improves the economics.
Paid search. The highest-intent channel and the one with the clearest segmentation. "Invisalign near me", "clear aligners cost", "teeth straightening adult". Branded aligner searches convert better but cost more, and generic aligner searches attract price shoppers, so the two need separating rather than blending.
Paid social. Genuinely strong here in a way it is not in most categories, because the product is visual and the outcome is photogenic. Requires the tightest creative governance of any channel in this vertical, since before-and-after imagery is heavily regulated. Retargeting earns its place given the long consideration window.
Owned comparison properties. We operate comparison and review properties, so aligner demand can be met on our own estate. A patient comparing providers has accepted they are spending the money, which removes the hardest objection before your team ever speaks to them.
Pay-per-call networks. For the reasons above, and where catchment pre-qualification does the most work.
Content and organic. Underrated in this category. What aligners can and cannot correct, how treatment time is estimated, what retainers involve afterwards, how finance works. Patients research this seriously because it is expensive and semi-permanent, and content that answers honestly builds the trust the category currently lacks.
Email and consented data. Effective for nurturing enquiries who wanted treatment but not this month, particularly around the milestone events that trigger the decision.
Catchment deserves more weight than it usually gets. Aligner treatment involves repeat appointments over months, so a patient forty minutes away who was enthusiastic in the consultation frequently disengages by the fourth visit. Distance predicts completion, not just attendance.
Dentistry is a regulated profession and the advertising rules are stricter than most marketers expect.
In the UK, the General Dental Council sets standards for how dental services can be promoted, and the ASA has ruled repeatedly on aligner advertising. Before-and-after imagery has specific requirements around being representative and unedited. Claims about treatment time need qualification, because "straight teeth in six months" is not a promise anyone can make before assessment. Where finance is offered, credit promotions carry FCA obligations.
Invisalign is a trademarked system and providers are certified at tiers. Marketing should not imply a provider status the practice does not hold, which sounds obvious and is nonetheless a recurring problem in this category.
Our position: no guaranteed outcomes, no unqualified treatment timelines, no misleading before-and-after imagery, and no implied provider tier. Aligner treatment is a clinical decision that happens after assessment, and advertising that presents it as a retail purchase sets up a consultation that disappoints everybody.
The commercial argument is the same as always. Practices and groups audit their marketing suppliers, and complaints to the GDC or the ASA end relationships quickly.
Consultation bookings are the metric practices are usually sold and almost never the one that matters.
We report on:
Cost per contacted enquiry. The first honest figure
Cost per booked consultation. Qualified, in catchment, price expectation set
Consultation attendance rate. The number that separates a good source from one booking anybody who answers. A no-show costs a clinical slot, which is the most expensive waste in this vertical
Cost per attended consultation. What the chair time actually cost you
Case start rate, and cost per case start. The only figure that maps to revenue
Average case value by source. Comprehensive and limited cases are different products at different prices, and blending them hides which channel delivers the better work
Attendance and case start outcomes are fed back to the platforms rather than form submissions, so campaigns learn what a patient who actually starts treatment looks like rather than who is most willing to book.
Calls, in most cases. The appointment is the conversion event, and an inbound call collapses interest, qualification, price expectation and booking into one conversation. Forms suit long-consideration patients researching over months.
By setting price expectations on the call, confirming catchment, and booking within a short window rather than weeks out. Most no-shows trace back to a patient who never understood the cost or lives too far away to commit.
Not fully, and any supplier claiming otherwise is overselling. What can be captured is the presence of obvious complicating factors and the patient's own description of what they want corrected, which improves routing without pretending to be an assessment.
Less useful than cost per case start, since case values are high and the gap between an enquiry and a start is wide. A cheap enquiry that never attends costs more than an expensive one that begins treatment.
Most often price expectation, clinical unsuitability, catchment distance, or the patient still being in the research phase and not ready to commit to a course of treatment.
Images must be representative and unedited, with claims qualified rather than absolute. The ASA has ruled against aligner advertising on exactly this point, and it is the fastest way to attract a complaint.
Both. Single practices need tight geographic targeting matched to chair capacity. Groups need consistency across sites and routing to the nearest location with availability, which is a different campaign structure.
Yes. The qualification logic is much the same, though branded and generic aligner searches behave differently and should be run as separate campaigns with separate economics.
It widens the addressable market considerably, since the barrier is usually monthly affordability rather than total cost. Credit promotions carry FCA requirements including representative examples, so the creative has to meet those.
Consumer Genius operates across 11 markets. Dental advertising regulation, provider certification and consumer finance rules differ substantially, so campaigns are built per market rather than translated.
Written by
Luke RobertsHead of Growth, Consumer Genius. 20 years in lead generation, pay per call operations and customer acquisition across 11 markets, with a focus on call quality, consent provenance and regulatory compliance.
Book a growth strategy call and we will map where your aligner funnel leaks, what your no-show rate costs in chair time, and what to change first.
Book a Growth Strategy Call