Loads Of New Patients? It Might Lead To Your Biggest Marketing Mistake

Read Time: 1 Minute, 35 Seconds

Earlier this month, one of our practice owners hopped on a call pumped up about the hot start to her month. And yes, I got the green light to share this story 🟢

"We have 24 new patients already in June! I'm telling you, the Facebook ads are incredible!"

We reviewed her data. Social media brought in exactly 2 of those new patients.

Here's What Actually Happened: Early June is dental cleaning season, people get motivated by summer plans and kids calendars open up before travel. Her Google Ads had been building momentum for months and she had great initial visibility within AI Mode searches locally.

But she was convinced it was Facebook. She insisted on doubling her Facebook ad budget, pulling the money from Google Ads.

The next week? 5 new patients. Not great.

The Success Trap Every Practice Falls Into

You have a great month. You look at what's "new" and assume that's the cause.

Classic Examples I See

• "We started that social media push this month and had our best June start ever!" Reality: Early June is summer prep season for teeth.

• "We handed out referral cards and boom, 26 new patients in two weeks!" Reality: Your Google Ads finally hit optimization.

• "That local magazine ad is crushing it!" Reality: You broke into the three-pack on Google.

The problem? You double down on the wrong thing while neglecting what actually worked.

And here's the thing, attribution is everything in marketing. If you can't accurately track what's driving results, you're essentially gambling with your marketing budget. Most practices are flying blind, making decisions based on gut feelings instead of data.

How To Actually Know What's Working

✅ Track Everything Separately - Google Ads, referrals, website forms, phone calls. Don't lump it all together. It can be tricky but having operations in place to silo these is the goal.

✅ Study 90-Day Trends, Not 30-Day Spikes - Real marketing momentum builds over months, not weeks. To accurately track which efforts are working, you need to be lumping into months and quarters.

✅ Account For Seasonality - Certain times of the year will always see increased traffic. Certain times of the year will always be slow. Don't panic or celebrate based on predictable patterns.

✅ Ask New Patients Directly - "How did you find us?" Then actually write it down and track it. Marketers will cringe at this method because it has a history of being pretty inaccurate but it’s better than nothing.

The Real Danger

When you misattribute success, you make two killer mistakes.

1. You increase spend on something that's not working.

2. You decrease spend on something that IS working.

The end results of both of these? Losing new patients. I've watched practices go from their best month ever to their worst quarter because they chased the wrong signal.

The Bottom Line

Your best month ever can teach you a lot, but only if you're asking the right questions.

Don't let success fool you into making sub-optimal decisions. Marketing attribution is hard, but getting it wrong is extremely expensive.

When you have a great month, celebrate it. Then dig into the data and figure out what actually caused it.

Because next month, you want to do it again.

-Kyle

Recent Post: I Secret Shopped 5 Dental Practices, Here’s What I Found

Recent Post: How One Of Our Dentists Got 39 New Patients From A Single Google Hack

My Podcast 👇